SE4 Advanced brainstorming

[Urendi Maleldil]

Hey guys, the SE4 Advanced mod is progressing nicely.

One of the big advantages of the new tech tree is that there is now plenty of space for more components, facilities, research projects, mounts, and all the rest of them. Unfortunately it also means that there's a lot of empty space in there with just the stock data. I've added in a few things like Gun Batteries and Light Missiles for low-end weapons, but I don't yet have enough stuff to fill in everything, *especially the Psychology and Biotech trees.

What I want you guys to do is post your ideas as to what can fit in these tech areas. Feel free to come up with crazy awesome stuff that's never been modded before. Even if you think it can't be done. Then I'll find the ideas that work with the mod and flesh out the details.

The General Tech areas are:
Construction
Electronics
Physics
Weapons
Biotech*
Psychology*

[Urendi Maleldil]

Just to give you an idea of the flavor of each area,

Construction is generally hulls and space yards
Electronics is generally sensors and scanners
Physics is generally engines and power generation
Weapons is generally shooty things
Biotech is generally medical and organic extraction
Psychology is generally troops and training, plus a few system bonus facilities

[Gandalf Parker]

Arent there some old wishlist threads around?

Construction: Base Building Pods. Tiny hulls that can barely carry a colonizer. Meant for colonizing moons and fleshing out the colonies of a system.

Biotech: agroponics bay. allows for population expansion enroute

Psychology: Infiltration bay. When on a ship in space over someone elses planet it increases unhappiness? leads to revolts? maybe at a higher level can affect the entire system?

Weapons/Physics: Web Mines. Tractors which slow a ships progress without much harm

Weapons: TnT. Used to blast a moon or asteroid field causing a large amount of resources to be immeadiately available but draining that source 2 or 3 or 4 times the usual amount

Electronics/Biotech: scanners which can detect life in the next system over. Or maybe just a planetary view (the view you have when you have visited but have left)

Weapons: Autolaunchers. A facility which will autolaunch mines each turn. And one for fighters. And one for satellites. and drones. Possibly also a component for star bases and yard ships.

[Fyron]

You have to have a movement point to colonize, so the colony pod will need an engine.

Population can't grow in cargo.

I don't believe anyone was able to get something like the infiltration bay to work, especially for use over enemy planets.

Web mines won't work without causing actual damage. You can make engine-only damage mines, though. None of the damage types that do not do physical damage work on mines.

Weapons can't generate resources. You can make a "scrap mining" type of facility that produces extra resources but lowers planet value (VIP ability works as a negative), but that's about it.

There is no way to implement scanning of other systems, short of cloaked drones. They will hit any mines present, unless you want to make all drones skip minefields in settings.txt:

Drones Can Be Hit By Mines := True

In SE5, you can make a new drone unit type that skips mines, while leaving the others as normal, but such fine-grained control doesn't exist in SE4.

Autolaunching units can be accomplished via repeat orders, though I'm not sure you can do it for planets in sequential movement games, due to launching immediately.

[Urendi Maleldil]

Just keep brainstorming. I want to hear every idea no matter how outrageous.

[Gandalf Parker]

Psychology: a facility that will boost Intell projects in that system

BioTech: cheap facility to increase the tolerance rating on a planet instead of terraforming it

Psych/BioTech: levels needed in each in order to create a cyborg facility which will increase construction rates of space yards

Psych: a "self-help" facility which improves the planets stats in areas such as suicide and accidents caused by depression. Shows up as an increase in "luck". (lowers chance of bad events in that system). overlaps abit with religious trait

[Urendi Maleldil]

Web Mines are good. I haven't finished implementing a good warhead and mine system yet. They'll probably exist as Ion Warheads just to be consistent with existing SE4 tech.

I already have several facilities in the Psych area that lower anger, increase production, and decrease the chance of bad events or intel. It might be interesting to have a mobile ship component that does something similar.

[Urendi Maleldil]

The organic racial trait and the psychic racial trait depend heavily on the Biotech and Psychology trees respectively. I currently need more low-end (1-5) and high-end (20-30) stuff for normal races on those trees.

I also haven't settled on a ship hull size scheme yet. Right now I'm using stock hulls. Like regular SE4 they get progressively bigger. But this may change. What do you think?

[Suicide Junkie]

Gritecon style hulls are a good alternative.

Use maintenance reduction abilities and component scale mounts to make the average ship cost (ie build time) be proportional to size squared.
The average ship maintenance cost can at the same time be proportional to the square root of the size.

Then you can give all the ship hulls right from the beginning, and they'll get used.

[Urendi Maleldil]

That's not a bad idea. I may do something similar, but I probably won't use the system as it is. I want to avoid scale mounts. Just a personal preference.