New Weapon Concepts

[TerranC]

VGA Planets is one of the grandfathers of 4X gaming. It looks like MOO IMHO.

[capnq]

From SFB really, but maybe make some weapons that have a "myopic zone" where the damage is 0 at close ranges (i.e 0 0 0 50 40 30 20 10 0 ...)

It would have to be

1 1 1 50 40 30 20 10 0 ...

SE IV interprets the first 0 in the series as "out of range".

[Ruatha]

Originally posted by TerranC:
VGA Planets is one of the grandfathers of 4X gaming. It looks like MOO IMHO.

Concerning Graphics MOO1 wins easily, but in gameplay VGA planets (And Winplanets) beats Moo1 anyday.
It's a PBEM game, stopped playing it when I found SE4.

[Puke]

VGA planets is possibly the longest played, most detailed space 4x game out there. it is actually too detailed for me, which would not be bad, if it had a better UI.

SJ had a cool idea for a new weapon: biochemical missiles and torps. add boarding defense to crew, brige, and boarding parties. make a weapon that targets 'security stations only.' And thats it. there you go. cheer.

[Ruatha]

Originally posted by Puke:
VGA planets is possibly the longest played, most detailed space 4x game out there. it is actually too detailed for me, which would not be bad, if it had a better UI.
.

It's not complicated, take research for example, only ten levels in four areas, wich has to be bought on each station you wish to build those components at.
Lesser research, lesser components and far lesser facilities than SE4.

All the add-ons complicated things as you had to remember different "friendly codes" for ex NUK, HYP etc (I guess we were up to well over 100 different codes),

[ January 08, 2003, 22:55: Message edited by: Ruatha ]

[Suicide Junkie]

It would have to be

1 1 1 50 40 30 20 10 0 ...

SE IV interprets the first 0 in the series as "out of range".

Actually, the zeros work fine.
The weapon won't fire at those ranges, but will fire normally if you step back into firing range

An interesting possibility is point defense that has an extreme case of myopia, as Slick put it
If point defense cannons could only fire at range 8, say, then missiles could be more dangerous either by closing range with the enemy to get under their PD cover, or by getting fewer shots at the missiles.
Fighters would be pretty effective too, so perhaps small point-defense-like guns with accuracy bonus, but no opportunity fire (point defense ability) to fend them off.

[Ed Kolis]

How about the Pickpocket Scanner from Stars? Lets you steal enemy ships' cargo!

Or a Polymorph Beam - changes the target into a random object of the same general size? (Or maybe into a harmless object like Inner Space's Wildcard Defense)

What about area of effect weapons? Would make fleet formation much more important - do you group your fleets tightly to get a quick kill or do you spread out to avoid heavy bombardment missiles?

How about bombs that reduce a planet's value or population/cargo capacity?

Stars also had a device that reduced the speed of all ships in combat by 1/2 square... that shouldn't be too hard to implement in SE4 or SE5...

In a similar vein, MOO2 had a device that reduced all fleets passing near a system to warp 1... maybe there could be a facility and/or component like that in SE5... Interdictor Cruiser anyone?

How about weapons that instead of disrupting the enemy's reload time, merely make it harder for him to hit for a while? (Or target specific sensors... how about a generic "Targets these component families" ability?)

In the same line of thought as area effect weapons, streaming weapons - weapons that can destroy many ships in a straight line or wedge!