What's on my wish list? Ooooooh....
* the ability to carry cargo on units. I'd like fighters to be able to drop commando teams. This would also allow for the equivalent of helicopter insertions
* more realistic mass for populations
* ships remember what their previous orders were. So when they spot enemy ships and dump their orders, I can see what they WERE going to be up to.
* "launch mines whenever sector drops below maximum" order
* "build units when cargo space becomes available" order. This, combined with the previous, allows me to build a minelaying spacestation at a warp point and forget about it. Whenever someone clears out a few mines, it builds and launches some more. When the minefield is full, it doesn't waste resources.
* ability to reload fighters during combat, like in the Starfire books.
* Sliding scale component development. I don't want a 30 kt DU V. I don't want a 45 kt DU V. I want a 38 kt DU V. or a 92 kt DU V. Basically, the ability to devise my own components for each design. So I can build a battlecruiser with a single spinal-mount weapon that can pierce the hull of a dreadnought. This system would also allow infantry mounts and fighter mounts very easily
* ability to give all ships of a class the order to detach from fleet and head to the nearest spaceyard for retrofit.
* ability to track moving targets in turn-based movement games. That is, I want to be able to tell my refueling ships to go back and refuel, and then have them join up with a fleet on the move.
* for the above, have the refueling ships recalculate where the nearest resupply depot is each turn, so they'll be more efficient.
* self-destruct components that are powerful enough to damage surrounding ships
* separate fuel and ordnance supplies, at least as an option. "This is a shooting war, colonel. Get me something to shoot..."
* fighters seem insanely large. the USS Enterprise (aircraft carrier) is only 70kt in real life, yet a large fighter is 1/3 that size. An Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate is 4.1kt. That's 1/4 the size of a small fighter! These aren't fighters, they're intra-system frigates. B-52s at full weight weigh 219 tons, or there about. 100, 200 and 300 ton weights for fighters seem somewhat more reasonable, even though that means that carriers can pack ungodly numbers of them.
* ability to get racial tech from conquered/surrendered species. The Sallegan empire has surrendered to me, complete with all their scientists, but I am now incapable of using temporal technology?
* immunity to intel projects racial ability: the bugs from StarFire
* ability for ships to drop mines when they see enemy ships closing on them. this would help minelayers survive in strategic movement games
* bigger sphereworlds and ringworlds. a dyson sphere has 0.5 billion times the surface area of Earth. Since you only get 5x the number of facilities and cargo as a Huge planet...that seems skewed. a ringworld has about 3 million times earth's surface area.
* no mineral/radioactive harvesting on ringworld/sphereworld. You daren't breach the hull!
* endless research trees. Make those 300-turn games something fearsome in terms of technology.
applied intelligence 68, anyone?
* multiple forms of warp drive. warp points, plus ship-based ability to warp into a system, plus maybe something like hyperspace, all in the same game
* newtonian motion as an option. If I have almost no fuel left in a ship, I want to point myself in the right direction and use the Last bit of it to get moving.
* refittable fighters. I'd like to be able to choose between DU cannons or missiles before sending them into combat.
* variable ship tactics. A ship that selects from different strategies depending on what faces it, so a destroyer will run from a dreadnought, but will vigorously attack an empty carrier or cargo ship.
* ECMs that make ships appear to be other kinds of ships. I'd love to have a dozen frigates appear on the system map as a dozen baseships. This would only be in non-combat maps as I envision it initially.
Sorry if there are too many repeats in this. I read through about four pages of ideas, and didn't see these =)
Just delete my post if it's too annoying =)
[ December 30, 2003, 14:06: Message edited by: Patowic ]