quote:
Originally posted by Athena:
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Some things surprised me in SE IV. I still dont quite understand why, after 4 iterations of the game, such features are like this. Perhaps the vets here can tell me the reasons why Aaron Hall did these things:
1- Only one item build on each planet each turn, with no carry over of production. Induce quite a MM hell if you want to optimize the prod queue. Silly example is I order to build one turn worth of fighters, and during the turn processing one of my transport take some pop and reduce the available production, making the construction take 2 turns, with the second turn using only 10% of the build capacity of the planet.
Well, actually, this is a new feature in SEIV; SE2 and SE3 (the only two previous iterations I'm familiar with), used a completely different build philosophy. Basically, each shipyard could "repair" a certain number of components per turn. When you bought a ship (or fighter), the hull appeared the next turn, but all components were "under construction". When all components were "repaired", the ship was complete. In both SE2 and SE3, you could put multiple ship yards on the same ship; planet-based ship yards were based on having more than 100M population, and I think the shipyard queue was separate from the facility build queue. In SE2, multiple shipyards could work on the same ship, so you could complete large ships quickly by bringing in more shipyards. In SE3, Malfador implemented the system that only one yard could work on a given ship at a time; but, you could move that ship between space yards if multiple space yards were available. The big problem with that system is that stellar-manipulation components were, obviously, a single component. So star-destroying, etc. ships were fast build items (expensive, but fast build). The other issue is that all costs were "upfront"; you paid the entire price of a ship in one turn. SE4 spreads out the cost, and also allows for expensive ships to take a long time to build, thus providing a way to improve game balance. As for using "extra capacity" (i.e., a shipyard only uses part of its capacity in a single turn), I think this is a problem with many turn-based strategy games. Carryover of production ability might be nice, but I have no idea how difficult it would be to program. Or what the effect would be on the AI's production ability.
quote:
Originally posted by Athena:
2- No scenario editor ???
As geoschmo mentioned, you're not the first to ask for this; SE3 was the first iteration to allow modding at all (user could create new components, facilities, and units), and SE4 added even more customization (customize AI, map editor, research areas). So they've made progress; the next logical step is a scenario editor. Maybe for SE5...
quote:
Originally posted by Athena:
3- No parametrable load order. In stars you could order to load population, but leaving at least xxx colonists on the planet. Quite a strong feature if you wanted to automate all transport without fearing to deplete any world (Set waypoint to, leave xxx at waypoint).
This is a small part of another big request from the fans; basically, a number of us would like more options for just about every order. Things like "move to planet X, wait until cargo Y is available, load Y and move to warppoint Z". The people who play mainly simultaneous move games would really like the ability to specify ahead of time how much cargo to load...
quote:
Originally posted by Athena:
4- Some weapons seem to be utterly useless. One can see this even after one day of play. Why Malfador never tweaked the stats, taking feedback from players?
As geoschmo mentioned, there've been many attempts at balancing weapon techs, but without much success. Malfador has made a number of changes to weapons throughout the SE4 run (look through the history file for these changes; at least one change (to the Anti-Proton Beam) was taken directly from player input). Some of the "problems" stem from the changes between SE3 and SE4, and other "problems" are the desire from fans for more unique-sounding weapons with cool abilities, but with enough limitations to keep the new weapons from dominating the game. And most of the veterans have found good uses for many of the more useless-looking weapons; or they've modded the weapons to become more useful.