SE5, Tell Aaron what's on your Wish List

[Colonel]

Multi grid combat-Have extemely long range weapons that can fire on ships up to one grid square away so you would have ships entering combat from a square away

EDIT:This is bit hard to explain. Have ships order to send for reinforcements if you order them to-only in tactical screen-and you can choose from a list of ships in the sector to respond but any ship that responds loses its next turn

[ July 29, 2004, 21:08: Message edited by: Colonel ]

[Antonin]

Originally posted by Shane Watson:
Also, on another point and something that fills me with cold, cold fear:

ABSOLUTELY NO STORYLINES. I don't need the game to think for me or to provide some hack reason for getting my peopel out into space. WHY game companies have thought that this is a good idea I will never understand, but it totally destroys the appeal of the game for me, not to mention the replayability.

Cheers,
~S

I want to second this in the strongest possible terms. PLEASE PLEASE pretty please, Aaron, no story lines and NO "MISSIONS."

Please!

[Shane Watson]

...further thoughts
(I spend way too much time thinking about this stuff...)

• Communication lag times. This falls under the Space is HUGE Category again. I'd like to see a multi turn delay between the time that an order is issued and it being executed based on how far out a ship/fleet/planet is. If it's off the main communication lines, it could take some time before the communication beam gets to it's destination. Something like 1 turn for every 5 lightyears the recieving vessel is outside the the communications Umbrella.
• If a ship is lost when it is outside the communications umbrella, you don't ever really know what happened to it unless it was able to beam something back before it was obliterated. If you lose a lot of ships in deep space/alien territories, this could be really frightening because you wont know who is offing your vessels.
• Emperor as a character with POV. The emperor/player should be something a little more than just an omnipresent force behind the empire. Make them a character that is actually in the game and can move around from planet to planet. Wherever the player is, the Center of the Empire is. Kind of like when Shadam IV went to Dune. Dune became the center of the Empire for the duration. The obvious downside to this is that if you happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, like Shaddam, you can get killed and your empire defaults to the next in line (which, incidently would allow the player to continue playing, but as a new ruling character).

And yes, you can count on more later

[EDIT] I should clarify about communication umbrellas briefly: Anything with communications ability would have a communications umbrella. "instantanious" communication, like what we see ingame right now, would only be possible where these umbrellas overlap.
[\EDIT]

Cheers,
~Shane

[ July 29, 2004, 21:22: Message edited by: Shane Watson ]

[Colonel]

I like that communications idea but i would make it so no tech could make instantoeus communications.

Instead you would need a communications grid
Communications sateilites-build them and each one would have a certian range, so you could have instant communications if you had satelites near them--------one thing what about combat for a ship outside the communications range.

[Q]

1.) No hard-coded limits for units in space, ships, systems and number of races. I frequently reach the limit of 20000 units in space in SE IV.
Of course recommended upper limits can and should be given. Then nobody can complain when the game crashes with 10000 systems!
2.) At least an option to keep tactical combat turn based. I don't understand what the real-time combat will add to the game and how you command 10 or more ships in a real-time combat. However I choose tactical combat when I want to study in detail and with all the time needed the possibilities of a certain combat situation. I don't see how I could to this in real-time.

[ July 29, 2004, 12:50: Message edited by: Q ]

[Fyron]

All it would take would be communications satellites on each side of a warp point (ie. wormhole) to get instantaneous communication between systems.

[ July 30, 2004, 01:14: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Colonel]

my Last idea sort of went with the idea of getting rid of wormholes connecting sectors and just haveing open space between sectors so maybe one sectors has a star and planets then a few sectors of open space then another sector with planets

and haveing wormholes very rare and hard to detect (needing advanced tech) and they would connect far reachs of galaxy\map

[ July 30, 2004, 01:39: Message edited by: Colonel ]

[Fyron]

Warp points are probably here to stay... they are one of the defining aspects of the Space Empires series. There may or may not be an alternative method to travel between the stars without the use of warp points in SE5, who knows.

[Shane Watson]

I am rather hoping that the whole Warp Point concept is ditched, with the exception of perhaps Star Gate type technology (ala Babylon 5).

With respect to Aaron, I personally feel that the Warp Points have been a major detractor from the game, and are not even remotely realistic. Perhaps I'm in the minority here, but I want to be able to send my ships to whatever system I want without having to shunt through 30 dozen other territories before I get someplace. It's terribly annoying.

Colonel, you've pretty well got what I'm talking about for the communications lag. Communication networks would be needed, *and* would become strategic targets as well.

[SIDE NOTE on items built in deep space (space beyond the Oort Cloud or boundery of a solorsystem - a ship, planet or satelite would be in effect impossible to find. Think of it this way, during WWII, Japan effectively hid their ENTIRE Pacific fleet in the middle of the ocean, an are large enough to drop all of Asia into. The US was frantic to find it, but couldn't. The end result was Pearl Harbor.) This also goes under the Space Is HUGE Category ]

That said, while Deep Space items would be almost impossible to find, there would be a sliver of a chance that they *could* be found. The US *could have* found the Japanese Fleet.

As far battles outside the communications umbrella, only a recording would be available assuming anything survives the engagement.

This of course will not be popular with the realtime battle crowed, but it is much more realistic. Even with our battlefield communications today, ultimately, you have to trust your people in field to do their jobs when they are in the thick of it.

My whole purpose for this sort of thing is I want a realistic, unbelievably TENSE game. You don't ever have full control. You can nudge and push, but ultimately, it's out of your hands

[Colonel]

Two ideas haveing to do with Mines,

One, is it just me but shouldnt mines hit enemy ships even after peace is declared i mean you dont see mines on earth not blow up after peace is declared, of course this could be solved by a mine computer to deactivate it but anyway
Two with the idea of getting rid of mass wormholes how about multi squared mine fields. So outside your orginal solor system you could put a mine field of X number of mines around and the more mines you have the better the chance of hitting enemy ships so if you had one mine in a huge are chances are you wont hit the ship but if you have 100 you most likely you would hit it

EDIT:this is not really an idea just a thought, how about multiple Empires colinizeing the same planet, so in some cases if war broke out you would have troops from everyone trying to take out the other Groups

[ July 30, 2004, 02:40: Message edited by: Colonel ]