New Features You Would Like to See That Would Have to Be Hard Coded

[Lastseer]

How do I see drones?

Like a probe. Hull size approximately that of an escort (~150). Can not contain any weapons. Can fit more engines (maybe upto 8). Has a certain level automatic cloaking like mines (or must use stealth armor/Clocaking device). This makes it a fast moving unarmed scout. Best when used with long range scanners or temporal/EM scanners etc.

Go V-ger.

[Suicide Junkie]

Capnq:

As I see it the drones would be hardcoded to fly to X and do Y.

Any ship that happens upon it would be able to capture it without difficulty unless the drone's orders were to attack that ship/fleet.

ie.

quote:

---

Order: fly to sector 3:
Velocity insufficient -> full power to engines.
...
Velocity insufficient -> full power to engines.
...
- by Drone # 51972

---

a la infinite loop, since another ship has grabbed it and is holding it in one spot

IMO, Drones are supposed to be dumb, and can't handle unexpected situations.

The only reason why it might not be captured & analysed is if it had a self destruct device. This would not destroy the capturing ship, since they have all the time in the world to scan the inside and decide not to board, but fire on and destroy it.

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I would allow any parts that a ship/fighter can have (depending on its size), and make it an "is that your final answer?" order system. A series of orders should be possible, such as "attack sector 1, attack sector 2, attack sector 3, repeat" Also, only one order would be done per turn. This prevents you from ordering an attack every sector along the way to prevent interception. If you did order an attack every sector, the drone would end up only moving 1 square per turn and the path could be mined, or a fleet gathered.

Arbitrarily limiting it to a scout role is not a good idea IMO. An attack design would have to get past mines, ships, sats and fighters sent to intercept it. Flexibility is key to SE4, and should not be abandoned.

[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 13 March 2001).]

[jc173]

Recon and intel data on enemy systems and planet that persists after you leave the area. It's not perfect, but it's better than trying to remember what the heck you saw where. If you've seen a colonly location before either be sending a ship there or through an intel project that map should remember it as a suspected enemy position. Same for more detailed info on facilities and population etc if you happen to scan the planet or orbit it. Should definately apply if someone breaks a partnership and declares war on you. I'd think someone in your empire's intel service would have at least marked down the locations of the other guy's conlonies.

[Jourin]

Barnacle Bill,

I absolutely love your suggustions on diplomacy and treaties. Did you send them to MM? I consider colonizing in my system without my approval an act of war. I know the AI dosen't so my reputation gets hurt. Sometimes I just cheat like become the AI and redirect the colony ship. I really like your idea!

[Urendi Maleldil]

How about MM add a simple text editor, an empire notebook so to speak, with different sections for intel, diplomacy, and other things. MM could have it automatically add entries pertaining to user-defined things like intel projects, and the user could also take notes on whatever they want manually.

[jc173]

Once I caught one of my partners trying to sneak a colony ship into one of my systems, I asked my ally to remove all of its ships from that system which they agreed to. I thought that was the end of the it, but a couple of turns later I went to check on that system, and my so called ally had colonized a planet in that system anyway.

[Urendi Maleldil]

I already program mine layers to lay mines using the "repeat orders" function. It takes a whole lot of hassle out of laying mines.