SE5, Tell Aaron what's on your Wish List

[Paul1980au]

Area damaage would be a useful addition for the 3D battle engine.

[HP Delron]

Currency

Money, seperate from building materials. It would be used as part of construction costs like other resources. But, it would differ that in for upkeep costs, there would be a set cost per type of ship, since it would just standard crew upkeep costs: Pay, Food etc.. So a Battle Cruiser that cost 10,000 units of currency to build, would still only cost 100 units of currency to maintain, just like one that cost 5,000 , 2,000 or 1 units of currency to build.

Each empires currency would have a different trade value. Currencieswould be compared against a meaningless stanard (don't wanna get TOO complex). So, if empire A is worth 1.0 vs the standard, and empire B is worth 0.8 against the stanard. and Empire B pays empire A 10,000 units of currency empire A would only get 8,000 units. To keep things simple these values would really only come into play during trade, costs and the amount of wealth the empire has would be shown in terms of the stanard. Since, i'm not sure if i'm explaining this correct heres an example of what i'm imagning in game. Well call them generic credits.


The Spotted Zebra Empire Currently has:
100,000 Credits

The Striped Horse Empire Currently has:
100,000 Credits

The spotted Zebra's Currency has a trade value of: 0.7

The Striped Horse Empires Currency has a trade value of 1.3

The spotted zebra empire wants to buy level 1 tech in "Awesomeness" from the striped horse.

The spotted zebras offer up:

10,000 credits.

This offer then gets multiplied by thier trade value 10,000 * 0.7: 7000

Then divided by the trade value of the Striped horses

7,000/1.3 = 5384 (realy messy number, so i rounded down)

rounding, will cause some spontanious credit loss in game, but its needed since. having .s of currency would be hassel.

So, the striped horses only stand to get 5384 credits, due to the difference in the currency values. None the less its worth it for just tech level 1 in "awesomeness". The deal goes through.

at the end of the deal

The Spotted Zebra Empire has:
90,000 Credits (and their new awesomeness level 1)

The Striped Horse Empire has:
105,384 Credits

of course these worth values would be applied to whatever forms of credit generation are used (probably taxes from colonies).

and, as an added bonus if an empire wanted to see how much money they had in terms of thier own currency they could probably look on the empire screen see something like this

Striped Horses:
Current Credits:
105,384 (81526 Horseians)

Spotted Zebras:
Current Credits
90,000 (112,500 zebrians)

A little more on what role money would play.

There would be some formula to determine what a planets product was. Lets give Planet X 100,000 units of currency passing within it. You'd then have a tax rate (would be nice if these could be set in the empire globally, and invidually for planets). lets call it 3% in this case. You'd get 3% of that planets 100,000 creds; 3,000 creds/turn. Taxing low, would keep people happy but give you less moo-lah. Heavy taxes give you more money, but can result in unhappiness or even riots.

Ships that didn't get their currency maitence paid, wouldn't take damage but would take hits to moral (see next section).


Morale:

Another factor in ships, that changes battle preformance ( like experience). Low moral results in negative to-hit and evasion modifiers. High moral, just the opposite. Moral could be affected by many things:

Things that might affect morale postively:
- Victory In Battle
- Presence of Other Ships from same empire
- Being in systems with high-happiness Planets
- Being on a "safe" ship (high shields/armor values)
-Things that might affect morale negatively:
- Retreat
- Large presence of enemy ships
- Being in systems with low-hapiness planets
- Being on a ship with suicide parts (sun destroys, cobalt warheads etc..)

more ideas later...

[ July 07, 2004, 04:26: Message edited by: HP Delron ]

[bearclaw]

An easy way to determine 'trade value' of currancy would be to base it on each player's ranking. The player with the highest score would set the standard, and everyone else's currency would be a factor of the first place player depending on thier own ranking.

[bearclaw]

IIRC, this was origially the intention for SEIV, but never got implemented.

Various sizes of Warp Points limiting the amount of traffic through it each turn. Eg: Tiny, small, med, large and huge Warp Point sizes (to match planets sizes) might only allow 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35 ships total to go one way or the other in a turn. Would add a whole new dimention to warp point attack/defense.

[Paul1980au]

Yes i would prefer a scaling on warp points of up to 10 size levels - in addition to the jump gate idea (mobile linked warp points as explained in the previous thread) build a matching pair at planet A - tow one out system to anywhere on the map (distances could extend the tech levels) - put 2nd jump gate somewhere then x amount of ships can travel either way per turn. if one is captured - perhaps the enemy can use it to send ships through to origin gate - although it could be destroyed etc.

Jump gates could be given as gifts to allies to move allies fleets to where the actions is - though each gate would only allow travel with its twin gate (ie if you have 2x sets of gates - you couldnt travel from 1A to 2A only 1A to 1B and 2A to 2B)

This could be an intermittant tech level before warp point openers and closers and would add another element to the game

With the currency - well it sounds like a good idea - a 4th resource type that perhaps could be used for armed forces wages, upkeep, tax levels could affect growth, happiness, productivity levels as another level over planet populations that are present now in SE4.

You could gift money to a planet to raise happiness or get a temporary productivity boost (sort of like emergency build) it could also purchase ships quicker or buy tech levels of allies. Bribe enemy ships - if we put pirates or merchants in the game it could be used to get them to do several coursair actions etc.

[HP Delron]

Originally posted by bearclaw:
An easy way to determine 'trade value' of currancy would be to base it on each player's ranking. The player with the highest score would set the standard, and everyone else's currency would be a factor of the first place player depending on thier own ranking.

Well, i don't like that idea since it only makes the strong, stronger in all cases. And, the biggest strongest nation isn't always the one with the most valuable currency (see real world). Thats why just the sort of imganiary standard.

[bearclaw]

Perhaps currency could be a racial trait?

Some alien cultures may not have a concept of money, or may have evolved past the nessesity of it. Currency traits could have positive and negative aspects so not everyone may want to take it.

[bearclaw]

Just thought of how currency could best be implemented. Instead of it being a resource or a trait, government funding in the form of currency could be represented as a Budget Slider.

Somewhere like int the Empire window, there would be an indicator that shows the portion of funding going to things like Ship Maintenance, Research, Production, Resource Extraction, Intel, Trade, etc.

If the indicator is left alone, then all aspects are produced as normal amounts. But if you needed a boost to one area or another, you would have to take it from another area. So if you needed to develope a new tech sooner, you could reduce funding to Resource Extraction and Construction to say 50% and it would boost your Research output up to 125%. Actual ratios would have to be analized to ensure game balance, but I think this would do the trick.

Perhaps a maximum/minimum funding could be set and be modded in the settings.txt. To go even further, there could be an option that certain planets have various funding amounts or it could be applied system/empire-wide. Funding could affect happiness as well. Underfund a planet too long and they won't be happy.

while some may say this will add too much micromanagement, this would also have the benifit that you wouldn't have to use it. If you wanted to just leave everything alone, you could and everything would stay at normal output amounts.

[Paul1980au]

Well it would seem to be a alteration or idea worth pursuing ?

[HP Delron]

Originally posted by bearclaw:

while some may say this will add too much micromanagemen

no such thing. The more the better, I say.

[ July 08, 2004, 10:50: Message edited by: HP Delron ]