SE5, Tell Aaron what's on your Wish List

[Seik]

Hi,

without reading the whole thread just my two cents:

1. Improved Mini-Map
for a better strategical overview I would like to see
- the systems colored (red = enemy units present, yellow = neutral units, etc.)
- "picture" (remember) the systems from last visit (planets, units, etc.)

2. Make planetary weapons useful
In SE4 planetary weapons were rarely used ...
- increase the needed damage to kill population by 10x
- increase (only) planetary weapons damage by 10x


Best regards
Seik

[Arkcon]

Stellar muanipulation is SE4 sometimes causes other distant obects to disappear without explanation. One hopes this bug gets squashed firmly in SE5.

[Q]

Speaking of stellar manipulation: one component I always wanted already in SE IV is the "genesis generator".
I first destroys every object in the system with the exception of warp points but then recreates a random standard solar system.
And make the "only one sun per system" restriction for star creation moddable. I like to have multiple sphereworlds in a system!

[Colonel]

Q said:
Speaking of stellar manipulation: one component I always wanted already in SE IV is the "genesis generator".
I first destroys every object in the system with the exception of warp points but then recreates a random standard solar system.
And make the "only one sun per system" restriction for star creation moddable. I like to have multiple sphereworlds in a system!

This gives me an idea, why not have some that cost unbelieveable amounts of material which can create a whole new system. So you bring a ship with the component on it to a system it creates a new warp point and a whole new system on the other end. of cource it would be a random system so it might wind up being a nebula, or black hole, but it could also create a perfect 9 or 10 planet system.

[AMF]

Zoomable strategic and local maps...they get real crowded...and my eyes will eventually go...and when I'm 80 I still want to be able to play...so maps that are zoomable will help me do that...

[henk brouwer]

Q said:
Speaking of stellar manipulation: one component I always wanted already in SE IV is the "genesis generator".
I first destroys every object in the system with the exception of warp points but then recreates a random standard solar system.
And make the "only one sun per system" restriction for star creation moddable. I like to have multiple sphereworlds in a system!

Great idea, I would definitely like to see this. Maybe it should only work in systems without stars though, we already have plenty of weapons of massive (stellar) destruction in the stellar manipulation techtree in SeIV, and somehow this component sounds more like something that should create stuff, not destroy entire civilisations. but it's a very nice idea!

And a suggestion of my own: (not really a new idea)
I saw in the new SEV screenshots that the race portraits have gotten a major upgrade from seIV, They look absolutely stunning compared to the weird "floating-heads-with-huge-eyeballs" aliens of SEIV. The new race pictures definitely help give the races some more character. What I'm hoping is that the speech files for the different races get simillar attention, SEIV shipped with just one speechfile that was used for all the races (mineral planets are the best!). I know from personal experience that writing a good speechfile takes a lot of time, (I did the united flora ages ago) but it really helps in giving the different races more character, you could really start hating the arrogant jraenar, and feel sorry for the friendly but naive EEE. I know this could also be done by the modding community after the game is released, but I think it would be a good selling point for the game if the races in the game are really different from eachother, it makes the universe seem that much more alive and exciting.

[Q]

And make speech have an effect on the mood of AI empires!

In SE IV you can send whatever insulting messages you want to an AI empire without effect. Of course I realize that you cannot really ask for the AI to analyze the message itself, but if you only had some major categories of general messages like

- pleading
- insulting
- threatening
- friendly

and some more and specify for each AI the reaction to it, you might add some more flavour to the game.
I think this was already planned for SE IV with the "message tone" but as far as I know this has no effect at all.

[Q]

According to the screen shots this might already been implemented:

- keep the race culture as it is in SE IV: a modifier that you select at the game setup and will remain. You still can edit the culture.txt file during the game if you want as I do for the AI. I use this instead of the AI bonus.
- the new government type: a modifier that you choose at the game setup, but every player can change it during the game as he wants! If your production is critically low you might change to a government type that gives you here a bonus (but has disadvantages in other fields). Later you might switch to a government type that gives you a better bonus in combat but has lower production bonus.

[Ed Kolis]

I couldn't tell from the video, but do weapons have firing arcs? If not (they were a pain to mod in Starfury), here's a simple way of doing it:

1. The arc WIDTH is determined by a parameter on the weapon's data entry, e.g.
Weapon Firing Arc Width := 90
2. The arc POSITION is calculated by converting the XY position of center of the slot where the weapon is mounted to polar coordinates.

edit: and maybe the arcs could be affected by mounts?
Spinal Mount: set to 0
Turret Mount: set to 360
Heavy Mount: decrease by 25%
Gatling Mount: increase by 45 degrees

[Zaamon]

Ed Kolis. What if you want to place weapons shooting ahead to sides?