SE5, Tell Aaron what's on your Wish List

[Q]

Renegade 13 said:
Hey Q, have you looked in the bottom right corner of this screenshot? http://www.malfador.com/SE5scr017.htm

That's great!

[LordFulgrymm]

Not sure if this one has been suggested, and its probably a bit late anyway, but here goes - debris fields forming after battles, that can be mined using robo-miners like asteroid fields.

It could be useful for finite resource games. Think about it; there's just been a few dozen dreadnoughts blown away in a sector. Thats potentially several thousand kT of resources, so why not let some of that be reclaimed? have the value of the field based upon a percentage of the total value of the destroyed ships.

OK, it may not immediately be worth it, but I have found that many battles take place in the same locations (same heavily contested planets or warp points) so the debris could potentially accumulate after each battle.

I guess this can bring in other ideas such as procuring technology from debris/derelicts etc...maybe a % chance to find an intact component in a debris field if you use the right type of equipment, say a salvage tug equipped with a space yard and some sort of scanner, but perhaps thats complicating things a bit.

Talking of derelicts: one thing thats always slightly annoyed me is if you can't afford the maintenance costs anymore, you lose a random ship or ships (crew scuttles the ship); firstly, why not set a priority system for which ships should be abandoned, and also set whether the ships are scuttled and destroyed, or should simply be abandoned but left intact in a stable orbit somewhere, for later retrieval and repair. Abandoned ships have no allegience, and all components would be inactive; all thats required is a boarding party to come back and reclaim the ship.

Of course, simply leaving the ship somewhere runs the risk that an enemy could easily capture it! I just think it would be nice to have the option; do you just blow it up and build another, or risk leaving it and try to reclaim it later? Could produce some interesting situations, racing to claim that hi-tech dreadnought that someone foolishly left floating in space...

[Kana]

LordFulgrymm said:
Not sure if this one has been suggested, and its probably a bit late anyway, but here goes - debris fields forming after battles, that can be mined using robo-miners like asteroid fields.

It could be useful for finite resource games. Think about it; there's just been a few dozen dreadnoughts blown away in a sector. Thats potentially several thousand kT of resources, so why not let some of that be reclaimed? have the value of the field based upon a percentage of the total value of the destroyed ships.

OK, it may not immediately be worth it, but I have found that many battles take place in the same locations (same heavily contested planets or warp points) so the debris could potentially accumulate after each battle.

I guess this can bring in other ideas such as procuring technology from debris/derelicts etc...maybe a % chance to find an intact component in a debris field if you use the right type of equipment, say a salvage tug equipped with a space yard and some sort of scanner, but perhaps thats complicating things a bit.

Talking of derelicts: one thing thats always slightly annoyed me is if you can't afford the maintenance costs anymore, you lose a random ship or ships (crew scuttles the ship); firstly, why not set a priority system for which ships should be abandoned, and also set whether the ships are scuttled and destroyed, or should simply be abandoned but left intact in a stable orbit somewhere, for later retrieval and repair. Abandoned ships have no allegience, and all components would be inactive; all thats required is a boarding party to come back and reclaim the ship.

Interesting idea...sort of like a reverse engineering ship capture thing...as for the abandon/scuttle issue due to resources...instead of destroying the entire ship, maybe some form of stepped effectivness system should be initiated. Like when you dont' have a bridge, LS, CQ, and your are restricted to 1 move, no attacks, that sort of thing, or maybe even damage random systems for each turn with out supplies/maintence...

Kana

[LordFulgrymm]

Kana said:

Interesting idea...sort of like a reverse engineering ship capture thing...as for the abandon/scuttle issue due to resources...instead of destroying the entire ship, maybe some form of stepped effectivness system should be initiated. Like when you dont' have a bridge, LS, CQ, and your are restricted to 1 move, no attacks, that sort of thing, or maybe even damage random systems for each turn with out supplies/maintence...

Kana

I certainly like the damaging idea better than the current system; maybe a combination of the above ideas, especially if crew becomes a resource - damage the ship until the crew (or you) decide to abandon the ship due to lack of life support, giving the choice to scuttle or leave the hulk for later reclaimation. Makes even more sense if crew is a resource because then you've gotta decide - save an experienced crew, or limp on in the hope you can reach a repair facility before the crew dies.

[Colonel]

I think if a colony ship runs out of supplies the population on it should die off because of lack of food

[cshank2]

How about being able to put different races as crew onboard a ship to gain specific advantages? Like say, a Terran ship would be good with weaponry or so, while an Eee crewed ship (although still under terran control) would have better shielding, or maybe mixed crews and give a nerfed version of the racial specials to the ship?

Also, maybe add infantry in stock games? Give them a better to-hit ratio due to their ability to get into smaller areas?

Oooo, since we have crews in the game, maybe an escape pod component? Say Ship A's crew has 13% Experience, their ship gets slagged, the crew escapes (or most of them do) and their pod acts like a fighter craft and can slowly shuffle back to a planet, whereon they act like cargo to be loaded on a ship built from that planet (Or possibly be moved to another one). Then when Ship B is built, the crew would have about 9% Experience (To simulate the loss of some crewmembers during combat/trip).

And I have a question, has it been stated whether or not the different races will have different facility models? (Thought that's a lot of strain on modellers and texture artists.)

Another suggestion on ships, basically is component placement has some strategic value, say Ship A has it's bridge in the middle deck, on top, bottom and around it are armor components, whereas Ship B has the bridge on the Top Decks and right at the front of the ship with no armor around it. Ship B fires at Ship A, Ship A's components in front of their port armor become destroyed along with the armor, leaving the bridge intact. (I always thought it was silly that armor HAD to be on the outside of ships. Seems more like a job for shields.). Ship A fires on Ship B, scoring a direct hit on their Starboard components and their bridge since it was unarmoured.


Those probably didn't make sense so please forgive me.



Oh, One last thing. Would it be possible for us mac users to get a version? (Right now I have my old dell set up just to play SE4) I'm sure it wouldn't hurt sales seeing as how Mac users are limited to Civilisation 3 and Moo3 in the way of 4x games. (Edit: I can't believe I spelt Sales as Sails...)

[LordFulgrymm]

cshank2 said:
How about being able to put different races as crew onboard a ship to gain specific advantages? Like say, a Terran ship would be good with weaponry or so, while an Eee crewed ship (although still under terran control) would have better shielding, or maybe mixed crews and give a nerfed version of the racial specials to the ship?

Interesting idea...might make things a bit comlpicated though...

cshank2 said:
Also, maybe add infantry in stock games? Give them a better to-hit ratio due to their ability to get into smaller areas?

Would be nice to have infantry and other types of units in ground combat; it certainly needs a major overhaul...there has been some lengthy and interesting discussions on ground combat earlier in the thread

cshank2 said:
Oooo, since we have crews in the game, maybe an escape pod component? Say Ship A's crew has 13% Experience, their ship gets slagged, the crew escapes (or most of them do) and their pod acts like a fighter craft and can slowly shuffle back to a planet, whereon they act like cargo to be loaded on a ship built from that planet (Or possibly be moved to another one). Then when Ship B is built, the crew would have about 9% Experience (To simulate the loss of some crewmembers during combat/trip).

Escape pod component...yeah, gets my vote. Not too sure about having to fly a craft back to a planet tho...might be better just to have an escaped crew automatically go back into some kind of crew pool.

cshank2 said:
And I have a question, has it been stated whether or not the different races will have different facility models? (Thought that's a lot of strain on modellers and texture artists.)

different race-> different facility models...this would be good...could have a system where we have the generic pictures/models in one area, then under each race folder, a file which points to race-specific models/pictures which overrides the generic files...

cshank2 said:
Another suggestion on ships, basically is component placement has some strategic value, say Ship A has it's bridge in the middle deck, on top, bottom and around it are armor components, whereas Ship B has the bridge on the Top Decks and right at the front of the ship with no armor around it. Ship B fires at Ship A, Ship A's components in front of their port armor become destroyed along with the armor, leaving the bridge intact. (I always thought it was silly that armor HAD to be on the outside of ships. Seems more like a job for shields.). Ship A fires on Ship B, scoring a direct hit on their Starboard components and their bridge since it was unarmoured.

Again interesting idea...although I'm not sure if it would really be worthwhile; why would anyone put armour on the ship and not put all other components behind it? unless of course you introduce components that cannot be behind armour...

[cshank2]

LordFulgrymm said:
Again interesting idea...although I'm not sure if it would really be worthwhile; why would anyone put armour on the ship and not put all other components behind it? unless of course you introduce components that cannot be behind armour...

Basically for a couple of reasons, one, weapons can't fire behind armor (Unless, it was like a blast-door or something, but I'm talking massive plates.). Second, Sometimes you may want to armor certain components on a ship if you're pressed for space, IE Life Support, CQ and Bridge to keep the ship running. Or, of course, engines. On Cargo Transports you armor up the cargo bays.

[henk brouwer]

I was wondering if mines in seV will work the same way as they do in SEIV, since I kind of dislike the SEIV system. The problem is that it is kind of an all or nothing situation. When you have researched mines and your enemy hasn't you're kind of invincible. It's very cheap, and very easy to lay a minefield, and your enemy has no chance to get through untill he has researched mines and has built enough minesweepers to sweep one hundred mines (or more if the game settings are changed). After that point mines are completely useless, and you might as well not bother to build them.

A solution would be to make mines work differently:
The main defence against mines should not be minesweeping but mine avoidance. A player that wants to defend it's ships against mines could research a "mine detection" technology. when discovered a ship-component would become available that gives ships a 70% (or some other percentage) chance to escape from a minefield unharmed.

When a fleet consisting of ships equiped with these components would enter a minefield, each ship would have a 30% change to be hit by the mines, which would most probably mean the ship would be completely dead. 70 percent of the fleet would survive, which would make the mines less of an all or nothing weapon. This would also mean we could abandon the silly limit of a hundred mines per sector which we have in SEIV.

Ofcourse research in mines would lead to components which makes mines more effective, and gives them a to hit bonus, this would lead to a research arms race between mine avoidance on one side, and more effective mines on the other side. Also designing mines would be a bit more interesting, you would have to choose wether you put in that extra warhead for maximum damage, or that new sensor that gives your mines a larger chance to hit.

Ofcourse normal minesweepers would also be available, but they should probably be less reliable, and more suited for sweeping minefields around planets or warp points that have already been taken from the enemy.

What do you think?

[cshank2]

I wouldn't go that far, but maybe something like, weaponry without special mounts (Normal DUC's, AP beams, etc) can sweep some mines.