SE5, Tell Aaron what's on your Wish List

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Let modders specify certain comps needed on ships. Say, a ship needs B/LS/CQ, but the description says it also needs a Gravitonic Nullifier to prevent all the stars in the galaxy from orbiting the ship, or because the Nullifier is needed for WP travel. In SEIV this would be practically impossible, but plz could you make this a feature for SEV?

[NullAshton]

Scriptable components, facilities, hull sizes, and all that good stuff.

[AMF]

It would be nice if your homeworld was displayed in the center of the quadrant map, and you explored out from that. And I would like warp points that automatically 'wraparound'

As it is now, if my HW starts in the corner of the map, I know that I am in the corner, and can gear my exploration aroudn that. It's much more realistic, and fun, to send explorers out not knowing where "the edge of the galaxy' is.

And I would really like a "zoom" on the quadrant map. When one starts making a lot of warplines, it gets real crowded real quick, and hard to tell which system is connected to which...

Alarik

[Tom_Holsinger]

I just learned of SE5 and am checking in. I participated in the run-up to SE4 and had a blast with the game. Some of you may remember me from that, and Master of Orion where I was more involved. I have quite a few ideas for expanding the political and intelligence sides of the game, mostly with fairly easy spreadsheet stuff, but getting here late means most probably can't surface until SE5 Gold. But we might be able to squeeze some in.

My highest priority is to have player-definable racial animosities a la Master of Orion I and MOO3, both as a major, major, boost to role-playing, and as a vehicle for:

The Space Empires V Backstory Contest.

Backstories right now mean nothing in SE5 game play - one empire is the same as any other for diplomacy. But when some races hate each other's guts, err, innards, and others just love to sqooze each others' tentacles or whatever, that can make games much, much more interesting. Check out this MOO3 forum thread for examples - http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums...hreadid=331031
(Making Diplomacy Make Sense: Fish Friends, Lizard Lickers, and Humanoid Haters)

That sort of thing could make good backstories an effective part of the SE5 - working within the backstory could the difference between winning and losing.

And I expect fans would love an opportunity to write backstories based on a new game feature of racial animosities. Malfador could have a contest for the best 3-4 backstories - those would become part of the game CD. The contest winners would design pre-set races and the racial animosity table to go with their backstories for players to import into new game setups, with randomly designed maps, etc.

It would also be nice eto have Space Empires V governments mean something besides a name - have governments modify racial/imperial attributes a bit, again player-configurable. And let those become part of the backstories too.

Tom Holsinger

[Emperor's Child]

The one thing I still find artificial after all this time is the one ship per tile rule of the tactical combat. This gives the game a very 2d feel. It would be nice to allow ships to pass over each other at the least, or even stack, should they opt to. This would give the game more of a 3d feel in the 2d environment of tactical combat.

[Suicide Junkie]

The main problem with allowing ships to stack, is that you'd always keep all your ships in the same square to optimize your firepower.

Combats are more interesting when your ships have to pair off to some degree against the enemies.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

As far as I know, you could stack ships in SEIII. I played the demo several years back, and in the simulator my ship(s) and the enemy ship(s) always ended up in the same square.

[Suicide Junkie]

Yeah, but at least in SE3 you couldn't choose new targets in the middle of the shooting phase... You had to spread your fire, or waste the whole turn destroying one ship with massive overkill.

[Emperor's Child]

I think my main issue is not stacking, which I can understand from a game balance perspective, but not allowing ships to pass over others. It just does not make sense at all that you can build an impassable wall of ships abreast in space, the AI handles this poorly, people do the HUH? It would be less artificial if they were allowed to move OVER other ships, but not land on them.

Now, on the topic of stacking... This would be a much more complex code alteration and would significantly alter game play. However, if stacking were allowed, ships would be able to mass fire much more efficiently than they can today (which presumes that opposing forces choose not to stack themselves). But how does that kill the game's flavor? Formations in space are formed for...why? Because you can't stack? A better (more realistic) answer would be that ships in close formation are easy targets... like shooting fish in a barrel.

I would propose that if your were to allow stacking, you should also stipulate the following rules for ships in a stack:

1. Every ship above the first in a stack gives a -5% defensive modifier to ALL ships in the stack to reflect the “fish in a barrel” quality of maneuvering together. So, if you have 20 ships in a stack you would have a –100% defensive modifier, etc…

2. 25% of damage from hits to one ship in the stack will “spill over” to EVERY other ship in the stack, representing the other ships getting caught in the crossfire, getting hit by pieces of the first ship, etc.

This would give some rather compelling effects to the rest of the ships in a stack and would give lots of good reason why they normally don’t want to do it.

[Kana]

I see both sides of the stacking issue...I would at the very least like the option for going to range 0 on an enemy...besides with weapon arcs being a part of SEV, flankin is going to be an important tactical consideration...so stacking or not...maybe a bad tactical choice in terms of maximizing firepower...

Kana