SE5, Tell Aaron what's on your Wish List

[thorfrog]

What I'd like to see:
-a GUI interface to help design game races. Currently you have to edit the text files. How about a race generator.

-Palace/capital planet. When captured or distroyed your empire risks civil war or distruction

-Recreate the availible weapon types. All weapons should have some benefits over others. Recreate weapons that are useless like Torpedoes.

-GUI interface for creating new technology

-Leader that give planets,ships,ect bonus. Kind of how MOO2 and Master of Magic.

-Space monster & borg like invasions that threaten all races.

-Improve trade. When you are looking for tech to trade with you should be able to view a list of tech the other race has to offer. Not what you allready have.

-Recreate how Espionage is done. Maybe like the way it's done in MOO2. You have to build spy to infiltrate a race. Then choose a mission. All spy options are availible. Tech improves spy success. Keeping a spys home protects your empire.

-Three types of ground forces
Infantry- used to capture a planet
Armor/Mechs- to distroy other armor/mechs, distroy buildings & defensive structures, artillary support for infantry.
Air Force-to add bonus for armor and Infantry

-Ground combat battle map. Each planet type has different advantages. Building are spread out accross the battlefield. Each side places their forces. Fight until there is one winner.

-Different Government types that have benefits that can effect the game. Democracy, dictator, empire, ect. Ref. MOO2 and Civ3

-More victory conditions
* Regicide-empire distroyed when your leader is killed. Like CIV3.
* Political Victory-allies vote you as Galactic President

[President_Elect_Shang]

Hidden warp points. Let me explain, You start in system A with one warp point that leads to B, B has one warp point that leads to C, C has two warp points one leads to D and one leads back to A. Now that you have traveled through the warp point that leads back to A you can “see” it to use it. Now A has two warp points for you to use. Think of the possibilities.

[Kevin Arisa]

Whoa! Long list! Well, I hope these ideas are not being repeated but this list is far too long to sift through. Aaron sure has his work cut out for him. Anyway, here are 10 suggestions that I have to offer.

1: Combat should be real time but it would be just fine to leave the managment part turn based. The previous idea of attack Groups in fleets is good. Lets stick with 2D space just for simplicity's sake.

2: Keep with bitmap\gif\jpg style graphics. For ships they should rotate the flat image when moving similar to the way the ship in Asteroids does. That way all the great shipsets made now will be compatible with SE5. This also allows people who use uncommon 3D renerers to be able to create shipsets. Real time rendering would limit the total amount of shipset creators which is very bad.

3: Weapons should be animated by using bitmap sheets. One bitmap for each weapon or something like that. Similar to the way they were done in Star Trek Armada for example.

4: Lots and lots of weapon\component\facility abilities. You can never have too many.

5: Weapons should be able to have more than one attribute and many things like cloaking devices should have effectiveness percentages instead of levels. There needs to be an attribute for forward arc only guns and open radius turrets. Guns should be stronger but turrets more practical. Missiles Launchers should be the components you mount but the missiles themselves should be replenished the same way you replenish supplies. That is, of course, until you develop matter replicators!

6: Keep warp points but introduce a method of traveling without them. In a way that it will take 3 turns to go to a system 300 units away so if you can find a warp point you should use it. Something like that. Be sure to leave that option open so that the rate of travel can be easily modded. (I am formulating ideas for that already!)

7: Ground combat should be handled just like space combat. Facilities should be randomly arranged on the surface of the planet and troops when deployed should be controlled just like ships. Militia would just be little people that run about trying to kill your troops with little handguns. Fighters would be useful for both space and ground combat. Troops would need a form of propulsion like wheels, treads, and repulsors. Each having it's own advantage. This setup for ground combat would give meaning to troop weapon ranges, move rate, shields and armor.

8: Whenever you need to give something to another empire you have to load it up on a freighter and send it to them. Wouldn't that Xiati battleship just love to nab all that ore you are sending to the Terrans! More strategy is very good.

9: Pirates. We need some pirates that randomly pop up. They would start when someone steals something, whether it is a freighter or a fighter and escapes to a location where you can no longer locate them. The next thing you know you see that freighter attacking another freighter. So on and so forth, if you do not get the situation under control you could be in trouble. But of course, you would still have to worry about another species' pirates on top of your own.

10: Keep the sound in either wav or mp3 format. Those are the easiest to manipulate and we want to keep the game as modder friendly as possible.

Thats it! I have added my 2, er, uh, 10 cents to this already massive line of ideas. I now close my eyes and pray.

[Ed Kolis]

I mentioned morale in combat for ships like in Dom2, but I'd also like to bring up the topic of morale outside of combat... you ever notice how all your planets might be rebelling and forming new empires, but you can easily crush them with your massive fleets? So why don't ships and units ever rebel? Of course, one ship rebelling would stand even less chance than one planet, so perhaps they could rebel in some sort of group... all ships and planets from one empire that got really angry in one turn rebel together into one new empire, perhaps, with an increased chance of rebellion for ships and planets that are in insurrection? This would also help stem the "A breaks off from B, surrenders to C -> C gets all B's tech" problem, since A would be larger and thus less likely to surrender.

[jimbob]

Ed,
I agree. But you could have it that all ships built at that planet would rebel (the assumption here is that all the crew came from that planet too) with the planet. Thus a player would need to keep their important space yard planets happy, or risk having all their military units "return home" when the revolution happens.

Jim

[PvK]

Mhmm. Ship crew origin could even be tracked. Some empires might try to mix crews from different planets, which could have pro's and cons. You could have situations like the Klingon ships in Star Fleet Battles, which have slave crews from subjugated planets, and then Klingon command crews and security stations to control the crew, and the ability to split their ship apart and self-destruct the slave portion if it comes down to that. Sounds a bit more complex that typical Malfadore fare, though. Having all the ships at a planet rebel might be enough. If a single ship mutinied, it might at least get a head start and be able to get away (especially if SE5 has improved ability to escape detection).

PvK

[Atrocities]

PLAYER COMMUNICATION
1) An in game chat system for TCI/IP (Not message by message, but one that is active like IIRC)
2) A way to send voice communications over a TCI/IP game.


CONSTRUCTION QUE ideas/suggestions
1) A way to UPDATE all ques with a new design.

IE you have 30 ques building Battleship type 1 and you upgrade the desgin to Battleship type 2 and you want all actively constructiong ques that are building Battleship type 1 to update all at once to build Battleship type 2.

2) A Place ALL on all button. A button that will place all of your ques on/off hold at the same time.

GAME PLAY
1) When an empire surrenders to you, you gain the ability to build ships based off of that empires Race ship set.

MODDING
1) A built in editor that will allow you to change AI settings in any AI file in an easy, intuative, mannor like the AI editor or Component Editor, but one that can also edit Construction Design, Research, etc.

[PvK]

Do people actually use the TCP/IP mode? It doesn't work through my NAT firewall, PBW works just as well and is far easier to set up and more reliable, and after the first few turns, it's much less convenient to try to get people to play together at the same time and the same pace.

PvK

[Fyron]

The entire point of TCP/IP is to have the people together at once, all playing at the same time. Thinking of it in terms of PBEM/PBW is a mistake.

[Ed Kolis]

Why not add a TCP/IP mode like Dom2 has - instead of requiring everyone to be together, one player sets up a server and the others connect to him to submit their turns - in other words, a private, built-in PBW? Then again, someone's already made one of those for SE4 (when PBW was down for months on end), so I guess the only reason for adding one to SE5 would be for advertising - you can't claim to support TCP/IP servers out of the box if they're only available as a user-created addon!