Non A.I. issues for upcoming patch

[Taqwus]

Hrrrrrrrrrrm.

More neutral AIs? I'd worry that, from a human perspective, they're going to mean precisely one thing: free tech, particularly colonization tech. There is, after all, no apparent diplomatic penalty from bullying the small and weak in this game, or, for that matter, for simply genociding them. I'm not sure that the AI is nearly as good as exploiting them -- in my current game, for instance, the Noraks appeared to have simply annihilated the Cluk-Ruks, with no evidence of using them for their atmosphere (Methane; Noraks use O2) as a human might have. I only found out of the C-R previous existence since the Norak ships (carrying missiles as their main armament) left behind a C-R satellite they couldn't shoot (apparently the combat AI doesn't know about shooting sats with PD).

If there were a penalty -- perhaps interfering with a helpless neutral should cause a LOT of unhappiness, at least for peaceful types then it might not be as tricky an issue.

As for pirates, I'd rather not have practically undetectable fleets wandering around. It's a bit bizarre (that's more advanced tech than anybody else can have), and leads to gamey aspects (because somebody *will* capture one eventually regardless of self-destruct, master computers and so forth -- and then arguably should get such advanced tech. But then, it can't be allowed to happen because it'd completely unbalance the game...).

If you want to give them nifty abilities, some might be --


* high base experience (otherwise, they wouldn't have remained alive as outlaws for that long)

* Innate power conservation, learned due to life on the run (same reason for repair skill)

* ability to move components from ship to ship, damaging them in the process (again, life on the run, in space, without planetary support is going to require some DARN good mechanical skills to stay alive. This would be used for taking components from captured ships and using them in their own. So instead of necessarily coming from an advanced culture from the start, they salvage parts, even if it results in some extremely weird ship designs -- like ships with organic armor and allegiance shifters and so forth. Actually, the stranger, the better... So they take whatever components they like, siphon off the supply, and blow up the rest.)


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-- The thing that goes bump in the night

[Instar]

"5) Damage to kill population should be changed from 10 points to 20 points. This will make wiping out planets take a little longer. "
Matter of choice. It used to be that planets were impossibly hard, but now they are middle of the road. I think its fine the way it is.
"6) Different damage points for different target types. An example would be a beam weapon would do say 50 pts damage to a ship,25 points to a planet,and 10 points to a fighter group."
Too much work and micromanagement. You'd have to look up every value and it would be a mess,IMO.
"8) All Anti-matter and Quantum torpedoes need to have a 30 weapon modifier to make it more accurate to make up for it not firing every round and it's size,and not being able to fire on fighters and sats. I exhaustively tested them against other weapon systems to reach the 30 weapon modifier value. There needs to be a small Quantum torpedo in it's tree."
Agree, the quantom torps are weak. Also the small quantom torp is a good idea, I suggested it in the beta forums before, no response.
"10) Shard cannons should fire every round."
Changed for balance reasons, they used to fire once every time, but not anymore. As I said, they were too powerful and changed for balance reasons.
"11) Raising the output levels for Monoliths may be warranted."
They produce each resource, at a pretty good level. Can't be good at everything.
"12) If an engine can store 500 supplies and be an engine and be only 10 kt large why is a supply storage 20 kt in size? Maybe it should hold 1000 supplies or reduced in size to 10 kt. If you change the size to 10 kt the AI ship designs must be changed to utilize the added space that will be available."
Supply storage III does hold 1000 supplies.
"16) Solar Sails should only be able to be used when a ship runs out of fuel. They should be standard tech for all races at all tech levels. Each one in the tree should be larger in size than the one before."
I don't know. Standard for each race? As in given to each race in the beginning?

[Barnacle Bill]

>More neutral AIs? I'd worry that, from a
>human perspective, they're going to mean
>precisely one thing: free tech,
>particularly colonization tech.

That could be addressed in various ways, including just not allowing transfer of colonization tech. Frankly, though, I didn't even think of it because in my own data set it is a non-issue. I have converted all the races to "rock", removed gas giant colonization tech and removed all ice planets with atmosphere other than "none". I've done this because I personally don't feel it is realistic for humans (or anything from a similar environment to ours) to live on ice planets (as I understand them, frozen atmoshere not just a terrestial type planet with an arctic climate like in Star Wars) except in domes, or on gas giants at all. With this change, gas giants are useful only via remote mining and because they sometimes have "rock" moons. You can colonize those no-atmoshere ice planets with domes, but atmosphere conVersion doesn't work on them because there is nothing to convert them to. So, you see in my data set the neutrals and players all start with the same colonization tech and this concern is a non-issue.

>If there were a penalty -- perhaps
>interfering with a helpless neutral should
>cause a LOT of unhappiness, at least for
>peaceful types then it might not be as
>tricky an issue.

I think there should be some pretty severe diplomatic penalties to genocide or other sorts of "evil" behavior. The penalties would be both in happiness within your empire and the attitude of AI empires toward you.


>As for pirates, I'd rather not have
>practically undetectable fleets wandering
>around. It's a bit bizarre (that's more
>advanced tech than anybody else can have),
>and leads to gamey aspects (because
>somebody *will* capture one eventually
>regardless of self-destruct, master
>computers and so forth -- and then arguably
>should get such advanced tech. But then, it
>can't be allowed to happen because it'd
>completely unbalance the game...).

Special pirate abilities like their stealth & repair ability are "racial traits", and humans could not play pirates, so captured pirate ships would lose these special abilities just like ships of a Priopulsion Experts race lose their movement bonus if captured by a non-Propulsion Experts race. The indetectability is admittedly cinematic, but think of it as the pirates just being very clever Errol Flynn-style rogues rather than "tech". The whole concept of pirates in cinematic to start with, "Space Opera" chrome.

[Commander G]

The pirate suggestion is interesting. If implemented, they should also allow supporting pirates as an intelligence op. Could make this intelligence operation also cost resources as well. Once formed, they would be self supporting. England supported buccanear raids on Spanish gold shipping. Basically, they allowed buccanears to refuel at their ports and spend their money at their colonies. The difference between a pirate and a buccanear was the buccanears had paperwork from English authorities authorizing the raid. Independent pirates were considered outlaws. The Spanish pretty much saw no difference between the two, except that Buccanears were a diplimatic issue as well.

[Barnacle Bill]

I think the term you are looking for, to refer to "licensed" pirates, is privateer. Bucaneer is just a synonym for pirate, derived from the fact that the earliest Caribbean pirates were escaped slaves & convicts (much the same in those days) who originally hunted & tanned hides to support themselves before discovering that piracy was easier and more profitable. A privateer was someone in possession of a "Letter of Marque and Reprisal". This document was issued only during wartime, and authorized the privateer to raid the enemies of the issuing nation for the duration of the war. Countries did this because regular navies were virtually non-existent in peacetime, and could not be spared in wartime to fight in secondary theaters. The privateer kept the bulk of the loot from his raids, but the issuing government got a cut (with kickbacks to the individual issuing official, of course). So, if a war broke out all the pirates were quick to go see the nearest colonial governor of one of the combattants (another selection criteria being that the governor in question wouldn't shoot on sight) and apply for their letters. Sometimes the same guy would get a letter from both sides. One occupational hazard - if the war ended and you didn't hear about it before conducting a raid, the guy who issued the letter might just hang you for a pirate when you got back. This entire system fell into disuse once countries started maintaining large peacetime navies, and stationing regular navy squadrons in distance colonial waters.

The reason that the Spanish did not distinguish between pirates and privateers is that they did not recognize the right of any person of any other nationality to be in the Caribbean. A treaty between Spain and Portugal in 1494, arbitrated by the Pope, established "The Line" running north-south 370 miles west of the Azores. The Pope gave all of the New World west of The Line to Spain, east of it to Portugal. So, the Spanish considered anybody else colonizing west of The Line to be trespassing. The Spanish also had laws against their colonists trading with foriegn ships, so any foriegn ship west of the Line must be a pirate. This resulted in the condition described by the term "no peace beyond The Line", meaning no matter what the diplomatic state of affairs was in Europe the Spanish and everybody else were "fair game" to each other in the Caribbean (especially the English, since as Protestants they rejected the authority of the Pope).

During the reign of Elizabeth I, in the years leading up to the Spanish Armada incident, the English government turned a blind eye to the piratical activities of a group of English captains call the "Sea Hawks" (in return for a share of the loot). The did not issue "Letters of Marque & Reprisal" to the Sea Hawks, though, for reasons that we would today call "maintaining plausible deniability". The Spanish Ambassador would complain, and Good Queen Bess would shrug and say she had no control over what happened in Spanish colonies in the new world, there was no evidence against any of the Sea Hawks that would stand up in court, etc... The Sea Hawks then formed the nucleus of the English fleet which opposed the Spanish Armada. Some later colonial governors took much the same approach with pirates on a local level, before European governments finally cracked down in the early 1700's.

Still, creating pirates in enemy territory might be a valid intel project.

Ahr...beam 'em the Jolly Roger signal & fire a quantum torpedo across their bow, matey!

[Jubala]

Bill, a very good summation of affairs in the Carribean. And I agree, supporting/establishing pirates in others territories shuold be something we can do.

[Tomgs]

Now that would be a fun game in itself. Sid Meier's Pirates in Space . I would love to see a game like that maybe set in a Space Empires galaxy.

[This message has been edited by Tomgs (edited 15 January 2001).]

[Eisenhans]

Remote Mining Bug:

When mining with a bunch of robominers on one battlestation(it's not really woth it, I know by now) I found the following:
I had 7 mineral miners, 5 organics and 2 radioactives miners on board. Each turn the value of the planet decreased by 7 percentage points for EACH of the ressources. This should be changed to 7/5/2 in this case, i.e. it should depend on how much is mined of the specific ressource and not on the maximum for one ressource.

I'd love to see the pirates too! Especially those component stealing ones. They would have really crazy ships!
The intel project is perfect too.

(Funny how we're beta-testing a full-release, no? But then: that's kind of part of the fun )

[Instar]

More neutral AIs as in more in number during the game? Or more to choose from during setup?

[Nyx]

I'd like trade to become more important. Right now weak empires want to trade with strong ones to get big bonuses. Big empires have no reason to trade with anyone. And I mean treaties not trade offers. Here on earth, trade is very important. Cutting external trade to a nation cripples its economy, even if the nation is essentially self-sufficient. I'd like to see something like that implemented in the game. I don't, for the life of me, know how, but I know I'd like to see it.

I'd like to see the scoring system fixed. Right now there are several ways to get an amazingly high score while being exceptionaly weak. For example, the scoring system counts numbers of ships and bases, not what's on them. So a baseship with a master computer and nothing else, sitting in orbit mothballed has about 4 times the effect on your score as a cruiser decked out with weapons and actively crushing your enemies.

Morale bonuses and penalties for battle need to extend beyong the system where the battle is fought. They need to have empire-wide effects. If I send a few hundred ships to their deaths in a far off corner of the galaxy, this should make my people unhappy. But it doesn't. Similarly, if I am victorious in battle capturing a new system from my enemy, this should make my people happy, but it doesn't. Battles only effect the morale of the planets in the same system as they occur. Blech!

I despreately want to see planet conditions get the same treatment that Atmosphere got. There is no reason to even delude yourself into thinking that a race from ice worlds with no atmosphere would use a Climate Improvement Facility to make a planet more hospitable to a race who lives on methane-based Gas Giants. My optimal conditions should be deadly to someone else, and mild to a third party. Just implement "Conditions types 1-5" or go with the Star Trek Class-system, but do something!

Low populations need to have severe production penalties, and the best way to do this would be as a formula, not as a list of population sizes and bonuses/penalties.

Ruins could have interesting things like a neutral race, an advanced ship, resources, or even something dangerous. Limiting it to tech is a little dull.

I'll back the people who want to see fighters as starting tech. I don't understand why I can build interstellar craft, but not interplanetary ones. However, I'd much prefer the idea for variable starting tech. Not necessarily totally random, but it would be nice if different races had differnt starting techs.

A race from a Gas Giant shouldn't be terribly happy living on an Ice World. Sure they can learn how, but it's just not the right environment for them. Same with people from Rock worlds on Gas Giants. right now there's a 1:5 ratio for population and facilities on domed:not colonies. I'd like to see a 1:3:5 with the 3 for not domed wrong planet type.

Domed planets, wrong world type, and conditions should all LIMIT, not modify, LIMIT happiness levels. It's too easy to get lots of modifications to happiness and overcome any penalty. But limiting the total happiness makes those worlds much more likely to get upset, and makes choosing your targets in war much more important.

Someone recently posted something about wanting plagues to spread, and I really liked that idea. Who ever posted it pat yourself on the back for me.

I'd like to see environmental resistance effect maximum population.

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