SE5, Tell Aaron what's on your Wish List

[AgentZero]

Not to split hairs or anything, but Capital Ship is simply a Category into which you put your largest ship. So a destroyer is technically a capital ship if it's the biggest thing you've got. Nevertheless, I was thinking of something similar in the form of the Flagship. You would be obviously be allowed only one Flagship per fleet. Designating a ship as the flagship would give it a large boost to all its stats (shields, engines, weapons, etc) and also give a lesser, but still signifcant boost to all the other ships in the fleet.

In terms of doubling the size of the ship, I'm not too sure about that, but it does lead me into another point I wanted to make which was that in SE4 I don't really think there's enough difference in the size of ships. I currently play with my own mod which starts out with an Escort (which I've renamed Corvette. I think all the old SE4 beta testers remember my feelings on the topic ;-) ) at the usual 150kt, but a Dreadnought weighs in at 12000kt. And I tell ya, they may be prohibitively expensive and take ages to build, but one of those babies is all it takes to seriously ruin someone's day.

[AgentZero]

Ooops... Dang wireless keyboard somehow posted that before I was done. Maybe it's just trying to tell me I shouldn't be posting at 2am.

Anyway, a couple more points before I meander off.
I'd like to see the current ship hulls split into 3 different categories, and maybe see a few new ones. The 3 hull categories would be Escort, Ship-Of-The-Wall, and Capital Ship. In the Escort Class you would have the Corvette, Frigate and Destroyer; SOTW would be Light Cruiser, Cruiser and Battle Cruiser, and Capital Ships would be Battleship, Dreadnought and please please please could I have a Superdreadnought this time around? Your initial shipyards would be able to build only Escort-class ships, and would require upgrading in order to build each succesive class. Planetary Shipyards would only be able to build up to SOTW-class ships, unless someone can tell me out to get a 12,000kt dreadnougt off the ground.

This leads me into my idea about orbita spaceyards. Basically, when you're designing a spaceyard you would have to decide how much space would be taken up by shields, defensive weapons, and SY/repair bays, and how much would be taken up by 'Modules Mounts'. What a Module Mount is should be obvious, and the Module itself would simply be something that you designed like a station, only smaller, and it would fit onto an existing station. So, for example, I build a space station with just a bridge/crew quarters/life support, basic shielding, and 4 Module Mounts. I design a seperate Module containing a Space Yard and Repair Bay, build one of each, slot them together, and voila! I have a working space yard which I set to work building Destroyers. Some time later, I discover the Light Cruiser hull, which is a Ship-of-the-Wall. But SOTW-class ships require a station with at least two SY components, so I build another SY Module and attach it to my existing station. I then decide the station could use a production boost so I build a third SY Module to start cranking out those LCs a bit faster. Then, realizing that this is the only station I have that can build LCs, I decide to improve its defenses and build a Module filled with Weapons and shields, and add that to the station.

Of course, Battle Stations and Starbases, being much larger, could also accomodate a lot more Module Mounts. In fact, I was just thinking, one could design a Module that held 2-3 Module Mounts in order to create massive, sprawling space yards that could build big ships very quickly, and even work on several at a time, which is where the Module idea really comes into its own. If, for example, a LC needs a station with 2 SY comps and can be worked on by a maximum of 3, and I have a station with 9 SY comps, I would just have to pull up the build queue for that station, tell it to build 3 LCs, and it would autmatically begin simultaneous production of them. I think this would remove a lot of the hassle from trying to build large numbers of ships quite quickly.
It would also create the situation where an empire would have only a few centralized construction areas where their biggest, most powerful ships could be built. So, during a war, a bit of sabotage or a carefully timed surgical strike could have devastating effects on an opponent.

More later after I've had some sleep...

[brianeyci]

tmce, can't a lot of the changes you mentioned be made by editing the .txt files in SE:IV?

[AgentZero]

Not really, as far as the SY idea goes, since as far as I know, the restriction of 1 SY per Station isn't an editable attribute, which mean that even if it is possible to put a restriction like 'Requires a station with 2 SY comps for construction' could be added to SE4, there would be no way to implement it since a single station cannot have 2 SYs anyway. And if anyone knows how to make a component that can store other components which would actually exceed a Station's (or ship's) max tonnage, please tell me how to do it.

[tesco samoa]

hey... another thread gave me this idea

Base happiness stuff on %

Ie... instead of losing 1 ship costing this much

make it losing 1 % of your ships will cost this much

Same with planets etc.....

[Colonel]

PLanet Stability:I think it can be assumed that not all planets are going to have the same contiental plates and on some planets the contiental plates would move alot faster then on earth causeing earthquakes, and cutting down on the amount of structures possible on planet.

Next, I think it should be alot harder and take alot longer to set up colonies. If you think about even if there was a wormhole thingy in the Real earth solor system it would still take awhile for us to be able to build up the resourses and find the best spot on the planet to set up the inital colony. You can't just plop down anywhere on the planet and hope to succeed.

This is an AI thing, In the Resarch txt thing it is set up to make all AI research shields, weapons, Ship Contruction, but that is SOOOOO unrealistic, Instead it should have different AI research patterns depending on gameplay, Examples
If a race has lots of Mining Colonies they should devolpe Mining technology.
Or if a race is stuck by itself with no contact with other races, they shouldnt devolpe to high technology. I think you guys will understand that.

[TNZ]

Will SE5 have the ability to generate a resource based on population level, for example, a population of 100m people = 100 resource points (manpower, currency)?

[AgentZero]

I just posted a big ol' tirade about manpower and money at http://games.Groups.yahoo.com/group/SE4/message/5655
Feel free to comment.

[bearclaw]

TNZ said:
Will SE5 have the ability to generate a resource based on population level, for example, a population of 100m people = 100 resource points (manpower, currency)?

They will be moddable yes. Aaron has said that there will be room for 5 moddable resources that we will have the ability to change around. And if I understand it correctly, we will have a HUGE amount of play-ability in what we can do with these. The stock game will still have the standard 3 that we are familiar with.

[Ed Kolis]

Really? When did he say we'd have moddable resources? The data files he showed us had the regular 3 resources, not anything like this:

<code>
Cost Num Resources := 3
Cost Resource 1 Resource := Minerals
Cost Resource 1 Amount := 1000
Cost Resource 2 Resource := Organics
Cost Resource 2 Amount := 500
Cost Resource 3 Resource := Radioactives
Cost Resource 3 Amount := 500
</code>

Of course that would be rather unwieldy for *every* *single* *component* *and* *facility*, so perhaps Aaron figured out how to make moddable field names!