Where are the Civilians?

ZeroAdunn · #1 June 3rd, 2001, 08:51 AM

I'm glad somebody liked my idea.

Normally, unless you were moving something along the shipping lanes (pop, fighters, mines, etc.) they would just appear to be lines. If you moved something it would use your largest available transport picture to represent the movement of stuff.

To raid shipping lanes is all one would have to do is place a ship along the lanes and select a "Raid" option. Then every turn the resources produced by the system would be transfered from you empire to theirs.

Making resupply depots in that system useless would be an excellent idea, I think.

(In reality this system requires no extra work by the player, in fact it would simplify things, imagine no longer needing to have all those useless transports lying around to move you population and cargo, instead, just transfere them via the shipping lanes)

A natural merchant race (space port on every planet) would get kind of crowded with lines.

------------------
Captain, I found your pants.

Gimboid · #2 June 4th, 2001, 01:59 AM

Imagine the intelligence operations you could have with trade routes!

Your ignorant neighbour is moving some WP and fighters from one of his homeworlds to one of his fringe colonies. When u successfully perform a 'Trade Route Mimic' on them, and steal his new toys, depriving him of defences and possibly picking up some new weapons designs

capnq · #3 June 3rd, 2001, 06:54 PM

quote:
Normally, unless you were moving something along the shipping lanes (pop, fighters, mines, etc.) they would just appear to be lines. If you moved something it would use your largest available transport picture to represent the movement of stuff.

To raid shipping lanes is all one would have to do is place a ship along the lanes and select a "Raid" option. Then every turn the resources produced by the system would be transfered from you empire to theirs.

It would be a good idea to be able to toggle the lines on or off to keep the display from getting too cluttered.

I don't think the Raid option should be an automatic perfect success; you should only get a small percentage of the trade per raider. The cargo capacity of the raider should be a factor as well; you can't assume that you'll capture the traders intact and have them haul the booty home for you.

------------------
Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

Baron Munchausen · #4 June 3rd, 2001, 10:17 PM

If this "supply lines" concept were implemented I sure hope you'd have the option to EDIT those lines! The default movement routines can make some pretty stupid choices. Sending merchants through a black hole system, for example... Also, would you get a "supply line" that ends in a crazy scrawl at a warp point where an enemy ship happened to be sitting when it was automatically drawn?

Being able to change the route would be essential.

Saxon · #5 June 4th, 2001, 05:04 PM

Fixed trade routes might not be all bad. Lots of trade routes in history we fixed by geography or the goods being carried, so they are not totally unrealistic. They would also be something you just have to live with, just like getting good planets and bad planets.

These routes might have automatic ships going on them, which you don't control, but that other people can raid. Similar to the situation where cops have to protect citizens, who do pretty much what they want. This allows for raiding, gives you something else to worry about, but still doesn't need too much micro-managing. I don't need more micro managing, I do enough of that in real life.

Someone mentioned realism. Find me a population that grows (through births) at 20% a year, anywhere in the world at any stage of history. Kenya managed 4% for quite a while in the 70's and 80's and I hear that Rwanda has really been jumping (odd psycological reaction to the genocide) but nothing like our races do in SE4. This is not a complaint, just an observation at some of the things that have been done to make the game playable. And things that made is sooo very playable.

jc173 · #6 June 5th, 2001, 10:14 PM

quote:
Originally posted by capnq:

I don't think the Raid option should be an automatic perfect success; you should only get a small percentage of the trade per raider. The cargo capacity of the raider should be a factor as well; you can't assume that you'll capture the traders intact and have them haul the booty home for you.

I agree I suggested a raid ability be included in SEV if possible. I thought that the raiders success should be influenced by the speed of their ships, their sensor capability, stealthing/cloaking ability, and crew quality. I also thought the targetted player should be able to possibly defend his convoys with either escorts or placing ships or fighters in key systems with orders to intercept raiders/pirates. So if they detected a raiding force or a convoy was attacked there would be a chance for them to engage the raiders.

DirectorTsaarx · #7 June 6th, 2001, 04:44 PM

The convoy idea could be expanded a bit to make remote mining more useful. Rather than mining reducing an asteroid field's value by a percentage point per turn per ship/base, have asteroid fields always use the "finite resources" settings. Then, rather than automatically getting the resources from those mines, the resources have to be transported back to a spaceport (of course, resources should also be able to be stored at the asteroid field until a convoy comes by). I'm not certain what to do about planets, since eventually a player may want to colonize a planet that's been remotely mined. Maybe the reduction per turn per ship/base should be changed to a reduction per YEAR per COMPONENT.