Things I don't like in Space Empires 4

[Replicant]

I've been playing Space Empires 3 since 1997. Since then, I haven't tried any game that gives me as much satisfation. I can't wait for the official release of Space Empires 4. I've been playing the demo for weeks now and I love it. But there are some details that still bother me. Here's what I don't like (don't find realistic) in Space Empires 4 for now:


- Droping Troops: It's quite annoying not to be able to drop troops simultanously when you have more than one troop transport ship. My troops get annihilated by the planetary militias one wave after the other, even if they're supposed to be better equiped for attack and defense.

- Planet Construction: Planets with low populations, shouldn't be able to build as many infrastructures as they are doing now. There should be a limit on what a given number of colonist can build. For instance, any planets with less than 100M of population, shouldn't be able to build anything but a Space Port or a Ressuply Depot. Even if the queued items take longer to build on planet with low population, I think they don't take long enough to do so.

- Population Transports: It doesn't seem logic to me that nearly all (478M or more depending on the design) population of a small planet can be held and moved in a single medium population transport ship. There should be a limit on how many civilians can be moved/supported by one single ship.

- Renaming Solar Systems: You should be able to rename solar systems as you wish once you started a game.


That's pretty much it for now.

[wingte]

Yep yep yep AND

What happened to the SE III feature of assigning mulltiple planets to build the same ship???

SE III handled scrapping facilities a lot easier..


Why isn't there a global scrap feature for either obsolete ships or obsolete planetary facilities like Research centers when the tech tree is complete???

Why Have seperate satelite and fighter launch bays that are actually interchangable,, ie,, satalite launch bays are now able to launch and recover fighters and fighter bays are able to launch and recover satelites??



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Wingte

[Klauss]

to replicant:
The troop problem seems to be one of the most important design failures of SE4. Not only the dropping of troops is not well thought out, the whole complex of ground combat is somewhat designed careless. I hope that MM will soon release a patch which adresses this problem.

planet construction & renaming systems: I agree fully

Population transports: this is IMO not a big problem. The limit is only the amount of cargo space you ship has. If you dont want to transport so many people with one ship, use escorts for population transport.
A second solution could be to edit the cargo component.
Or imagine that 1 transport is in (your) reality a whole squadron of large cargo vessels, which is represented by one icon.

to wingte:
interchangeable bays are surely a bug. Should be fixed in the final release I think.

[Mark Pavlou]

Don't forget the actual ground combat itself which appears to be the same as SEIII - everyone lining up in one neat box for a simple elimination calculation.

Given the ability to design troops now it is a pity that the tactical space combat section could not have been modified for ground combat too. Just have different tiles for planet surfaces, perhaps an orbital bombardment option from orbiting starships and perhaps terrain mods to combat.

Of course, this would be so much more interesting if other games could be tied in to handle some of these areas. Imagine having the option of using Total Annihilation to handle the ground combat and Homeworld for the tactical space action? Droooooooool!

[wingte]

Another one is the auto-save feature. I would like to be able to specify how many of those save games are created. Five would be a nice number if a set number is the only way.

Also the Launch/Recover list shouldn't have ships in it that cannot launch or recover fighters or satalites.

In SE III I could select several ships in a group and give them the same orders without having to creat a "fleet" first.

Along with this,, when I look at the "ships" list I should see only ships that are not part of a "fleet".

Ships that are under Minister control should be flaged in the ships list also. The colony ships and population transports do display their orders when their ministers send them somewhere,, but,, "attack" ships under the control of the "Explore Minister" don't display thier orders. Even better,, there should be a seperate class of ships specifically for exploration so I don't have to track down every new attack ship and stop it from running off exploring.


It was suggested that an Escort or some othe ship size could be used as a population tranporter.. I haven't tried it yet ,, but I would almost be willing to bet money it won't work..
I was lead to believe that the ministers keyed on the "ship type" that was selected. This seems to be true for Colony ships since I seem to be able to use any ship size that is large enough to put a colony module in and I must select the correct "type" to match the pod in order for the Colonization Minister to work correctly. And any ship designated as "attack" will take off and explore.. BUT,,, If I select either Transport size and even if I creat a NEW type,, IE Platform or Satalite or Fighter Tranport ,, if the population minister is on,, my Special Transporter will take off and load population. This implies that the Pop Min is keying on the ship size instead of the ship type.

Does the Troop Transport work properly under minister control??

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Wingte

[Paladin]

Btw, there is an "Upgrade Facilitites" option in the construction queues main window (F7), and in a given planet's constr.Q...
Using the later will prove tiresome, but the global setting will try to upgrade ALL of the facilities at once (real expensive...)

On the other hand, I don't think that auto-upgrading ships would be a good idea, since it costs so much to do so, and your ship needs to be at a spaceyard to do so (not a problem with "Engineer class" cruisers ;-)
Then, auto-upgrading really is difficult to decide wich ship to upgrade to, since there are most certainly more than one available model for each ship size...
(What would be needed is a way to retrofit a fleet, all the ships of a certain size regardless of their different model, and to be able to SEE THE CLASS in the scrap-retrofit-mothball window...

Aside from that, everything is looking good (altough Master computers III are expensive, ouch! )

[Taqwus]

A 'ship class tree' might be an intriguing way to go (for a future installment; it's almost certainly too much to add at this point. I'd be happy to see it someday, 'tho.).

Essentially, one should be able to construct a directed acyclic graph (DAG) out of the various classes. The DAG may have branches where one class was upgraded into two different Versions (one earlier, one later but still not 50% more expensive -- or whatever limit is set in the .txt), both of which may be upgradable to the same. Alternately, if we have

in the case that A came first, some were refitted to B, then a design C was created that was barely cheap enough to be upgraded from A, but obsoletes both A and B -- and then D obsoletes C. However, ships of type A or B just returning from extended tours of duty (actually, that's rather limited by supply... as long as ships keep running in trouble faster than the _Enterprise_ =); but if there were ship morale, long tours between returns to port would surely affect it) have too high a price differential, so they'd have to be upgraded via A->B-D. The computer could easily calculate the upgrade cost (resources and time -- well, the latter needs to factor in repair time. Hm. Measure in damaged components.) per edge of the graph, and compute the 'best' upgrade path given either priority. Then, having a setting like 'Automatically upgrade idle ships using up to NN% of net income', or 'Automatically upgrade idle ships N or more generations behind' becomes possible, because it can figure out how to upgrade without fear of turning your missile boats into beamers, or so forth, unless you so choose -- because it can ignore disconnected ship class hierarchies (like E->F).

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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[wingte]

[quote]Originally posted by Paladin:
[b]Btw, there is an "Upgrade Facilitites" option in the construction queues main window (F7

This button doesnt work to purchace the planetary upgrade facilities like the Atmosphere changer. Also when these upgrade facilitys have done their job,, you have to goto the planet and then click a seperate scrap facilitise button then find the facility and ... well it is tenious....

Not as tediuos as that ship list though...




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Wingte

[jars_u]

quote:

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Originally posted by Mark Pavlou:
Don't forget the actual ground combat itself which appears to be the same as SEIII - everyone lining up in one neat box for a simple elimination calculation.

Given the ability to design troops now it is a pity that the tactical space combat section could not have been modified for ground combat too.
Of course, this would be so much more interesting if other games could be tied in to handle some of these areas. Droooooooool!

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Have limited exp. using in ground combat in SE4 but the ship/troop design elements of SE4 are one of the things I like about it best. I do think it would be nice though if ground combat was handled in a similar way as space combat - perhaps with limited radmom generated land maps, and number of actual units consolidated i.e. each chasis stands for more then 1 actual unit.

Now the idea of other games being used to handle different aspects of combat is sweet. If I am not mistaken the old Breech games tied in with another game to handle ground/space combat in a similar manner. Now if we could get Shrapnel to tie SE4 and AOA:WDK2K together into one HUGE game that would be something. I realize the work that would involve but think (I know someone from Shrapnel is reading this) you could sell two games to a lot of people, I already own the one and pre-ordered the other. Now that would make for some really sweet and interesting Online play think of the possibilities...

My .02 of rambling for the night.

Jim

[Fionn]

I remember having both Rules of Engagement and Breach II - the pair that "fit together" to handle ship-to-ship and boarding actions with the two seperate programs. It was awesome in the extreme! I think the only reason I stopped playing was because my Amiga died and I finally went PC so I could bring work home. Couldn't find copies of the games for that platform by that point . . . :-(

If it were left in my little monkey paws, I'd come up with a data packet protocol that'd allow stats such as boarding party info, ship layout and so forth to be handed about between applications. That way, 3rd party developers could come up with various add-ons (the boarding module, the ground combat module, the super-fancy 3D space combat with retreat option module . . . ) that could be added or subtracted from the line-up as desired.

SEIV Plug-Ins, IOW. :-)

A note on the interchangable launch facilities - I agree (for whatever that's worth) that it is probably just a bug. I picture the facility as specialized launch and recovery faciities that can handle just their specific type of "cargo". I think an interesting addition, however, would be a generic Hanger component. At the cost of increased size and cost, to handle the larger multi-purpose facilities and tenders, it could launch anything from mines to fighters.

Oh, and I'm also a proponent of being able to change star (system) names. I'm tired of setting up shop in the Devonshire star system. I thought Devonshire was in England, not out beyond the Crab Nebula.