New ideias / concepts / problems in / for SE4 GOLD after 1.78

[Crazy_Dog]

New ideias / concepts / problems in / for SE4 GOLD after 1.78

This is a sum of ideas i get around the forums...

In the creation of galaxy:
random size and type

New tech:
Stabilize planet core
Restore Star nucleus
Expand Warp (remove problems that damage ships)
Universal colony

In the tactical combat
if you start with fighters outside carriers they are reported, otherwise not ->fix

In the Empire options, add the directives for ministers:

minimum nº troops p/planet (ships don't remove above that number, and the minister try to build up to it)
type of ship priority to build (attack / colony / etc)
mines in all waypoints
satellites in all waypoints
create defense stations

In the Ship designs menu add:

Info about the maintenance of the design
Ship / unit can be build by minister
Maximun number in service of this design (the minister don't build more)

In the ships/units menu add:

Ships of class xxx

upgrade to class yyy
mothball
unmothball
scrap

All Ships AI controled (on/off)

If units, units of class xxx scrap

In the planets menu add:
change all planets type xxx to type yyy

Change the Ship Construction minister :

Generic Ship
Colony Ship
Units

If you have the flag 'Automatically use Individual Ministers for newly built vehicles',
it must include the ships captured or that join you (race surrender)

If a race surrender to you and have techs that you can't (cristal) you can't research it but
can build the itens that they have discovered (if surrender to you, they give you the blueprints)
Also, the blueprints of units/ships they have designed must be acessible

Add the system's Minister

Manage the creation of system's wide facilities (like urban pacification center)
If exist duplications of SWF in a system, remove redundant.
If a planet in the system is rioting / angry, call / build troops or UPC.

The troops minister must have the capability to send troops to rioting planets

If i send order to 10 ships to retrofit on a planet and in that turn only can retrofit 3 the others forget the order.

The retrofit rotine, must take in consideration that exist ships with cargo and add the
capability of removing it temporary (if exist avaiable space in the sector)

Add the capability of the Ships that can close warp points to only do it to
warps with possibility to damage ships (else is too dangerous to asign a minister).

If you put a fighter bay in a ship (you can put it in all), it only have use if the ship is
of design type carrier, otherwise the ministers igore it.

If i put a cargo bay in a carrier (to add more fighters), the minister start to load generic
cargo. Is possible to stop this ?

Is possible to add 'netmouse' support ?

In some games, the minister insist in building small / older models of weapons platforms (even obsolet ones).

The destrutction of ion stroms is still not reported in the log.

Sometimes, the ministers add itens ti queues of shipyards under human control (example: i use some space stations with huge cargo capability to build units in a loop, not minister controled of course, and sometimes appear ships/etc added to the queue.

If the Intelligence make a ship turn to us, in the log they report it but the go button take us to the place it appenned and not to the ship itself.
I think need to be fixed.
I think racial anger modifiers would be great - something that would allow you to represent long standing hatred between races!!
Would also be nice if you could set anger modifiers for use of certain weapons or actions - so you can set an AI to react negatively to a race that uses a planet killer.

Number of race specific modifiers : 2
Race specific modifier race 1 : Terran
Race specific modifier amount 1 : 20
Race specific modifier race 2 : Phong
Race specific modifier amount 2 : -20

The race with this politic file would react very hostile to the Terrans but be very friendly against the Phongs. You could specify as many races as you want. This would prevent the alliance of "mortal enemies" like Eee and Drushoka that we see now. It would also allow you to reduce conflicts between AI's in a solo human player game without making them all declare war on you when you select the "team player mode".

It would be nice if we could get the AI to build defensive capabilities on a newly colonized planet before building facilities just as we human players do. If the newly colonized planet is breathable/huge, it can be 30+ turns before defenses go up, making it an easy target to capture/destroy.

Allow Troops to have a chance stop intelligence against a planet. Chance should never go to zero, more troops should be a diminishing return.

Allow Security Stations and Boarding Parties to inhibit intelligence operations against a ship. I think that to use intelligence against a ship, you have to have some way to establish a contact against that ship when it is visiting a planet. (Hard to infilitrate a ship when it stays away from a port).

It would be nice in the tactical combat mode if the satellites were evenly distributed around the four corners of the warp point or planet "picture"... rather like the traditional symbol for a castle .. a square with a tower at each of the four corners. In this way you would have 360 degree coverage, instead of the 120 or so you get now.
This would help the AI & occasionally the human player.
One of the things I would like to see, (I don't know how everyone else feels) in regards to jammers.
If a ship has a jammer and you clik on it you are not allowed to see what it has, ok, However,

In tactical combat, you can still clik on any enemy ship and see its contents whether they have a jammer or not.
I would like to see, if a ship has a jammer, even in tactical combat, nothing is revealed until the jammer unit is destroyed at which point, everything would be open to view.

AI must have a history of relations and evolve based in that, because is stupid to offer a treaty one turn and declare war next.
if a ship have a destination and not enough supplies to go, select the nearest supply depot, refuel and stay on course

[dogscoff]

Good ideas in there, including some I haven't seen before. I think a lot of the ones you list should be low priorities, but any improvement is an improvement=-)

BTW, universal colony components are already possible they're just not in the standard game. Play Devnullmod, that has unicolonies.

I'd like to add to the list:

-Route-finding code will automatically divert ships to pass through a friendly resupply depot if that can be done at no extra movement cost. This will help both AI and humans.
(Flags in Empire options to turn this on/off for own/allied depots?)

-Intel Project success probability modified by:
--Presence of own/ friendly race on target planet.
--Anger level of target planet. (collaborators.)
--Presence of target race in own empire. (brainwashed agents=-)
--Experience level of target ship.
--Any other relevent factors I've forgotten.
Percentage modifiers moddable in one of the text files.

-Ground combat modified by terrain: Rock planet race at a disadvantage on an ice planet, for example. Percentage modifier moddable in one of the text files.

-"Modify ground combat" ability for facilities, and maybe even for (friendly) ships.

-Allow retrofit, scrap, mothball and analyse to be added to order queues (ie move to planet, mothball.)

-Bring back the Halt command from SE3. Effectively a command that says "Don't move for remainder of turn" and can be added to order queues. (Two of them in a row should mean halting for 2 turns.)

-contextual rather than immediate calculation of "nearest", so that repair/ resupply at nearest can be meaningfully added to order queues.

-ability to re-arrange and remove items from order queues like you can with build queues.

I have many other suggestions, but these are the ones I think could be implemented comparitively easily. Small changes, but I'm going for a high "bang for buck."

EDIT: typos, crapnesses. Need sleep...

[ August 16, 2002, 13:21: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

[Atrocities]

First and foremost, this is simply the best game I have ever played in the 4x market.

All that I would really like too see, is improved Political AI, and the addition of wheel mouse support.

The ability to set the exact number of Neutrals and AI empires would also be very nice, as well as setting each races starting Tech levels.

Past that the game rocks.

[dogscoff]

Hell yeah - I agree with your praise of the game Atrocities (although I wouldn't limit it to "in the 4X market"), but I'm just greedy and I want more, more, MORE features and improvements.

I can't know for sure but I think Aaron must enjoy creating / evolving this game as much as we love playing it - after all you don't get dedication like this from anything but passion.

If this is the case, I assume (I hope) that he welcomes suggestions like this for what they are, (Ideas to help the game acheive its full potential) rather than criticisms of what the game is lacking (which is certainly not my intention.)

EDIT: Does any of that make sense? I didn't get much sleep Last night...

[ August 16, 2002, 13:18: Message edited by: dogscoff ]

[Crazy_Dog]

Yes it is the BEST game i play for as long i remember.
But because MM is so great in supporting / expanding it, guys like me are allways asking for more, trying to see if the ideas that whe have to improve (?) it can be implemented.

Is not criticism, is one of the best apraises that i know

[oleg]

Originally posted by Atrocities:
First and foremost, this is simply the best game I have ever played in the 4x market.

All that I would really like too see, is improved Political AI, and the addition of wheel mouse support.

The ability to set the exact number of Neutrals and AI empires would also be very nice, as well as setting each races starting Tech levels.

Past that the game rocks.

You can easily set exact number of random races : edit settings.txt and put the same number (say 10) to Min. and Max numbers of players for, for example, "medium number of races". Then start the game and you will always get 10 random races when you select "medium number"