SE5, Tell Aaron what's on your Wish List

[AgentZero]

That's what I'm saying. If a telepath proposes a deal to an alien and the image they recieve back is that of a large carnivore attempting to mate with a tree, even if they know the carnivore is something called a Hergart and the variety of tree is a Smengart Tree, they still won't be any closer to knowing what the alien actually thinks of the deal. And if they don't even know what a Hergart or Smengart Tree is, they'll stand no chance at all.
It's only when actuall communications between the two races becomes possible that they would discover that "Your Hergart is humping my Smengart Tree!" is an expression used when presented with a deal that seems too good to be true.

On another line of thought, I'd like to see a bit of work done on the 'Demands' system. At the moment, if I have ships in another empire's space, and they demand I remove them, I can accept their demand, but do nothing. Odd thing about this is that since I continually accept their demand to move the same ship, my relations with them end up getting better.
I think if you (or especially the AI) accepts a demand to move ships, the ship should be automatically given orders to leave the system. If you countermand those orders to make it stay, your relations with said empire would worsen. Also, if you're contantly being sent demands to remove your ships, it should worsen your relations with other empires, since they'll start worrying about their space being invaded by your nosey little scoutships next.

[larrybush]

I just read the Last transcript with Aaron Hall and it answered some of my wants in SEV (thanks Aaron). He said he was chatting with his left hand and coding the map editor with his right! Since your working on that here's a suggestion that would truly help us solo players (like me)

1) Allow for me to create a map with just the stars (their name, location and associated image files). Allow me to push a tool button to randomly flesh out the solar systems within. Then I can use my real star maps without knowing every detail in them. The use of formulas would be nice too! Like if its a binary system then use "binary1" thru "binary3" in creating the solar systems. This way we could tell the game or map editor the kinds of solar systems that would be expected with the varying star types.

and this one's kinda hard to explain...

2)Since it appears to me that the warp point movement style is hard coded maybe it would be possible to "fake" other styles of FTL drives... If the map editor uses squares or hexes just allow a feature or mod that would connect all the edges of all the squares/hexes with invisible warp points and lines together as a grid, so that it appears to be movement from square to square or hex to hex. With the addition of a component ability type that allows warp point movement, you could create warp engines, hyper drives and only these ships could move through visible or invisible warp points. With these features you could simulate the Star Trek, Bab 5 and Star wars FTL types by using variations of the expanded warp point styles..

[Elowan]

... have standard Windows dialogs in the Save Game choice? It would be nice if you could choose a name from the file list and append something to it rather than have to retype everything just to implement an incremental save game. Now if you choose a name from the list it overwrites that file. If you choose New Save Game - you get to type in everything. Woo Hoo! I'm not impressed!

[Baron Munchausen]

larrybush said:
I just read the Last transcript with Aaron Hall and it answered some of my wants in SEV (thanks Aaron). He said he was chatting with his left hand and coding the map editor with his right! Since your working on that here's a suggestion that would truly help us solo players (like me)

1) Allow for me to create a map with just the stars (their name, location and associated image files). Allow me to push a tool button to randomly flesh out the solar systems within. Then I can use my real star maps without knowing every detail in them. The use of formulas would be nice too! Like if its a binary system then use "binary1" thru "binary3" in creating the solar systems. This way we could tell the game or map editor the kinds of solar systems that would be expected with the varying star types.

and this one's kinda hard to explain...

2)Since it appears to me that the warp point movement style is hard coded maybe it would be possible to "fake" other styles of FTL drives... If the map editor uses squares or hexes just allow a feature or mod that would connect all the edges of all the squares/hexes with invisible warp points and lines together as a grid, so that it appears to be movement from square to square or hex to hex. With the addition of a component ability type that allows warp point movement, you could create warp engines, hyper drives and only these ships could move through visible or invisible warp points. With these features you could simulate the Star Trek, Bab 5 and Star wars FTL types by using variations of the expanded warp point styles..

1) We requested something like this in the SE 4 map editor. For some reason he never got around to it. It seems simple enough to be able to 'randomly' generate one system at a time, especially if you choose one of the templates from the quadrant file.

2) While it would be very nice to have some other alternative intersteller movement system -- 'warp drive' in a flat universe, hyperspace, or even sleeper ships at sublight speed -- some simple variations of warp points are so easy that I cannot see why he doesn't add them. First, as you already noted, let us setup a 'required component' for warping. Then you can have 'system ships' without warp capability and 'star ships' with warp capability but less space for other equipment. And then from the other side, let us setup 'artificial' warp points, 'warp gates', which we totally control. Then we can have treaties allowing use of each others' warp gates for trade or military transit. Both of these simple variations would add tremendously to the game and aren't much work compared to totally new and different methods of movement.

[larrybush]

I think Baron, maybe the math is pretty large, I sat down one day and blacked out the graphics to the warp point so it blended in to the starmap.bmp. Then I started making warp points on each 11 edge (44 per solar system total), then I made the reciprical warp points on all the other adjacent squares. All of a sudden I realized this was 140,624 warp points in a 68 by 47 square grid. I'm not sure how long this would take me but I hav'nt worked on that map since! Maybe the program can't hanlde that many numbers? I don't know but it would sure be nice.....

[Suicide Junkie]

larrybush said:
I think Baron, maybe the math is pretty large, I sat down one day and blacked out the graphics to the warp point so it blended in to the starmap.bmp. Then I started making warp points on each 11 edge (44 per solar system total), then I made the reciprical warp points on all the other adjacent squares. All of a sudden I realized this was 140,624 warp points in a 68 by 47 square grid. I'm not sure how long this would take me but I hav'nt worked on that map since! Maybe the program can't hanlde that many numbers? I don't know but it would sure be nice.....

You can go with just 12 evenly spaced around the edge of the system, and it will work just as well.

On a small map it takes about 12 hours to do.
See: SJ's FTL map

[larrybush]

Suicide Junkie, I have downloaded and used your map actually, but my thread is to get Aaron to think about incorporating some of these ideas into SEV (not that my ideas are the Last word in gaming, just that it would help out my style of play & maybe others too).

[TCGiant]

I registered just for this, so I figured I might as well make use of it before my eyes turn square and I have to go back into hibernative naptosis for a few more hours:

* Weapons that strike in a cone-like manner, so they could hit more than one target at a time and have the fortunate side effect of looking pretty cool while doing it
* Dyson spheres. Not sphereworld, sphere SECTORS.
* An AI that would rather do smart stuff like not freak out the moment you enter a sector they're in or declare war on first contact. Also, AI that played deceptively would be nice.
* Swarm-like missiles as opposed to(or in addition to!) the huge missiles in SE4. Again with the coolness, but from a strategic standpoint, the more projectiles coming at an enemy, the more trouble they'll have avoiding them. It'd simulate more realistic combat, at the very least.

I'm sure I'll think of more, but most of my ideas aren't really briliantly unique or anything.

Oh! I almost forgot: Miniaturization. It would make sense that as you learn more about technologies, then older ones should get easier and easier to make or improve on, which was kind of factored in automatically in Master of Orion 2, but never in SEIV. Ever play Spaceward Ho!? You could research miniaturization technology, which reduced the amount of metal(non-renewable resources) it took to make a ship, but increased the cost in cash(which was renewable) as a result. It'd be neat to be able to shrink down one's technology(as I was actually thinking about for a mod!), at the cost of it becoming more difficult to repair as a result of its' compressed nature, which would be reflected by a higher maintenance cost or lower damage resistance.



Also, would it kill ya for some higher resolution modes? Those of us running at 1600x1200 have to look at all that ugly negative space outside the 1024x768 playing field right now, and it drives me nuts. :/

[AgentZero]

In terms of Heroes, or more specifically, Planetary Governors, how about a Popular Support rating? Each Governor would have a Charisma stat. Governors with low charisma would give higher bonuses to production etc. but would not be terribly popular leading to lower population happiness, greater vulnerability to subversive acts, and at the extreme (Tyrant) end of the scale, rioting, civil war, and rebellion. Governors with high Charisma, on the other hand, would not give as large production bonuses, but would be well liked by the population, and thus increase happiness.

The Emperor (you) would also have a Popular Support rating which would be affected by how your population felt about their standard of life (abundance of goods represented by large resource stockpiles), their saftey (ships/troops), the economy (number of new/developing colonies), and even things like ethics (if you declare war against an empire that is liked by your citizens, they won't be happy).

Things would get interesting if a Governor's Popular Support on a given planet/system rose above yours, meaning the people of that world/system were more loyal to the Governor than the Emperor. Then you might be faced with the prospect of that governor deciding to break off and form his own empire. You could remove the Governor from office, which would of course cause widespread discontent. Or, you could just as easily have him assassinated and blame a 'popular' empire you'd like to invade. Then your people would be quite happy when you sent the Fleet out to teach those meddling aliens a lesson or two.

[WrathPhoenix]

I thought I heard combat is going to be realtime, but im going to place this anyways.

If combat is still divided by tactical/strategic, then let there be more of an impressive show on the board for strategic then a bunch of dots. Let us see some replays of the battle too!

If turn based will still be an option, allow tactical multiplayer as an OPTION in turn based multiplayer games, and even PBEM. Some of us realize it would take forever but still miss that aspect of the game in the multiplayer modes, all of them,

Saving during combat would be another great option! (And probably the big requirement... if you could save during turn based combat now, The above option would be completely availible!