eXperience: the 5h X

[TacticDragon]

Cyrien, that must have been quite an experience. However, I don't know if this is implementable in SE4, and again, I must say I'm not too fond of the whole civil war thingy. I like the idea of a control system where empire size introduces inefficiency. This was actually done in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (SMAC), although it didn't have a big effect. But I'll leave that to other games.

Jimbob, sorry, I don't know how to use quotes either. Anyways, I prefer to refer to past sections by using letters or numbers, like this:

g) In my opinion, the Orion Techs should be freely tradable/stealable/conquerable just like any normal tech. The Antarean Techs would not, however. But this is just my opinion.

As a side note on fighters: Jimbob, I feel sorry for you that you don't use fighters. They can be very, very powerful. Plus, they cost zero in maintenance. They are simply great to guard warp points in the early game. In my opinion, even greater than satellites or mines, because they can move to the warp point by themselves. Another "trick" with fighters is what I call the "instant fuel bug":

Situation: a fleet is out of fuel; if the fleet has carriers with fighters, these can be launched, thus creating a new group of ships with full tanks (!); if these ships are then integrated into the fuel-less fleet, the fuel is likewise tranferred and shared; all that remains to be done now is to dock the fighters on the carriers again (wait until the next turn to do this), and voila: the fuel-less fleet can move normally again. Repeat as necessary...

[Q]

Many of the interesting things proposed here need a hard-code change, but we have quite a few possibilities to keep the game interesting when your empire has reached MEE status and you actually have won the game (many of these ideas have already been mentioned on other threads):

1.) Switch you empire to computer contol and choose a small empire to continue the game: There has been a revolution and you have been exiled!
2.) Make a gift of as many systems/colonies/ships/technologies as you want to a computer empire (you may have to take control for one turn over that empire to make sure that the gift is accepted): This would correspond to the civil war/rebellion.
3.) Switch all computer empires to manual for one turn and make them surrender to one AI empire you think is the most dangerous: All other empires form a strong alliance to combat your empire.
I did this once with my Borg assimilation modification race and was quite in trouble!

Of course nothing of this is random, but you can do it right now without any modification of the game.

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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(Hey, how does everybody do the quote thing with the lines above and below the quote?)

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[ 01 December 2001: Message edited by: suicide_junkie ]

[capnq]

quote:

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Can we do this? I mean, is it possible to introduce a new type of planet with special characteristics AND that always contains ruins?

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Yes and no.

In theory, something like this can be done in the Map Editor, but 1.49 has a bug that doesn't recognize ruins on maps that have been saved in the Map Editor. (I've reported this to MM.)

1.49 does recognize ruins on maps generated in 1.49 itself, so there might be a way to implement something similar via the Data files, but I don't know how to do it.

[Baron Munchausen]

The main benefit of the "Antarean" feature of MOO II was that you could not count on being left alone if you accidently started in an isolated location. You had to build some planetary defenses and some warships just in case an Antarean raid would pop up. This was what 'space monsters' were good for, too. So it was much harder to get a "lucky start" and get way ahead of the other players in empire development because you didn't have to spend on military force until later.

Rather than duplicate MOO too literally in this case - much as I'd like some of the weapons technologies to be duplicated literally - I think we ought to devise something in keeping with the character of SE. I've just recently posted to the beta forums about an idea that would cover this. Let me repost it here:

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Why should "ruins" always be technological candy? Maybe they should contain a nasty surprise once in a while. If you ran the risk of activating a new empire when you took a ruins planet, especially one with advanced technology, life could be much more interesting. If the 'ancient race' awakens they should take the planet from your fledgling colony of course, and revive a decent sized population on it very quickly. Since you will usually go for ruins early it's likely that this would occur in an outlying area far from your warships and the new rival would get a reasonable start. Especially, as the 'ruins' theme implies, if they start with higher technology than most of the other races.
It would be cool if MM would create a specific race/shipset for this. We could make a back story for it. This ancient race once ruled the galaxy but they faced some sort of plague that even they could not cure, so they put themselves into hibernation. It's been so long that no one remembers where all their planets were anymore and you never know when you might run across one...

It would be specially interesting if the various planets that got revived would be smart enough to automatically ally with each other rather than be seperate fragmentary empires.

Another way to possibly increase variability in the game is to have some of the 'neutrals' change their political character part way through the game and start expanding like regular empires.

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Anyway, with hidden enemies scattered around that may pop up at any time when you or any other player colonizes their 'hibernating' world we could have a 'threat factor' much like MOO II with the Antareans but in a unique style. I'd still like to see some MOO-style space monsters, though.

[ 01 December 2001: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Spyder]

Probably the single best 'Calamity' you could have is the "Pissed off Wife" calamity. She always appears after about 30 minutes of playing while you're meticulously solving the current crisis and she verbally threatens you if you don't get up. After about 30 more minutes, she comes in with hands on hips and threatens your masculinity with a paring Knife. After about 30 more minutes, she comes in and cuts your power cord. So, you have to win the game in 1.5 hours or you're done.

[ 03 December 2001: Message edited by: Spyder ]

[dmm]

ALMOST ALL of these great ideas, and many more, would be EASILY implementable right now, IF ONLY WE HAD A SAVE-GAME EDITOR, which is something that I've been begging for since the release of SEIV.

The only criticism of this idea that I've heard is that it might allow people to cheat. But that is easily handled by having the save-game editor use a special save-game file that can only be written if the appropriate check box was enabled at game start-up.

Once the save-game editor is available, you just make up your own rules for random events or MEE events and roll dice in the comfort of your own office.

Everybody, help me lobby MM for this tool! It would give us fantastic possibilities!

BTW, MEE means "Mega Evil Empire." And MM is "Malfador Machinations."