unit design rant and planet management in SEV

[klausD]

Hi all,
I would like to express some ideas for managing units and planets in SEV.

1. Planets
- SEV should have generic athmosphere types (moddable) and generic planet types (also moddable). If somebody wants to play with a Jungle Type planet with helium athmosphere, then why not.
-planet types should have an impact on the pregeneration of beginning resources.
-amount of inhabitants should have somtimes an impact on the number of available facility slots.

-Additional facility types should include
-facilities which cannot be built on every planet oder athmosphere type
-facilities which generate additional empty facility slots (eg. underwater, subterranean or orbital habitats, or representing just an improved city-infrastructure)
-facilities which need a certain amount of pop to be fully operational (if not they are effective only at a certain %)
-facilities which cost maintenance

Additionally racial and planetary features should include: Corruption/Crime percentage. This %amount reduces income. Some facilities and intelligence operations combat against this.

All these options are for enriching the management of colonies.

2. Planet interface
-the facility window like it is in SE4 if one clicks on a planet icon. if you are lucky there are no ships in the orbit and the window goes up and you see the planet, but not what you have built. You have to click up to 3 times untill the cargo of the planet goes up. This seems very tedious. I would like to have a info-window appearing with all the vital planetary data (cargo, facilities etc) if the mousepointer goes over a planet without clicking.

-scrapping should be possible if I left-click at a facility icon.

-auto-launch for satellites/mines after building

-little unit icons over a planet should include the number of those units stored at the planet too.

-Get rid of these population bars over the planets. Better would be say 3 pictures of each planet type. First pic portrays an empty world, second level is a colony with some small structure layouts and third level is a busy hiveworld with traders and orbiting sats etc. I would make the planet pics larger (about 2 times the size or even larger) and the amount of available planetary objects per system smaller. Of course I would add many more systems than 255 to insure real epic games.

3. unit design rant
Maybe I am alone with this opinion, but I liked the units in SEIII much more. In SEIII you had all these handy units with fixed values - no fuzzing around with unneccessary designing.
I see no major tactical advantage in designing troops or mines in SEIV. Unit designing is for me just adding useless micromanagement. My troops are everytime the same (1 or 2 shields and the rest ground cannons - so whats the design?). My mines are always the same (max Warheads - so no tactical design at all, just clicking around) My weapon platforms are the same (main weapon, big mount, shields - no design). My fighters are sometimes a little bit different but the most time not. Only my sats designs are worth the designation design.
So I would suggest for SEV, either reducing units as they was in SEIII to reduce micromanagment or making the game options for units more interesting so that it is REALLY important to have several different Troop, Weapon platform or mine prototypes.

tschüß
KlausD

PS sorry for my bad english

[Phoenix-D]

"1. Planets
- SEV should have generic athmosphere types (moddable) and generic planet types (also moddable). If somebody wants to play with a Jungle Type planet with helium athmosphere, then why not.
-planet types should have an impact on the pregeneration of beginning resources.
-amount of inhabitants should have somtimes an impact on the number of available facility slots."

Agree here, though the Last might be a bit too much micromangement- what happens if it falls too low and some of the slots would not be available?

-"Additional facility types should include
-facilities which cannot be built on every planet oder athmosphere type
-facilities which generate additional empty facility slots (eg. underwater, subterranean or orbital habitats, or representing just an improved city-infrastructure)
-facilities which need a certain amount of pop to be fully operational (if not they are effective only at a certain %)
-facilities which cost maintenance"

1 maybe, 2..eh..seems odd (*cough* sphereworld with 100 of these), the rest sure.

"Additionally racial and planetary features should include: Corruption/Crime percentage. This %amount reduces income. Some facilities and intelligence operations combat against this."

Could be..maybe tied partially to happyness

All these options are for enriching the management of colonies.

"2. Planet interface
-the facility window like it is in SE4 if one clicks on a planet icon. if you are lucky there are no ships in the orbit and the window goes up and you see the planet, but not what you have built. You have to click up to 3 times untill the cargo of the planet goes up. This seems very tedious. I would like to have a info-window appearing with all the vital planetary data (cargo, facilities etc) if the mousepointer goes over a planet without clicking."

Please no. Would make managing a busy sector uneededly difficult.

"-scrapping should be possible if I left-click at a facility icon."

Useful.

"-auto-launch for satellites/mines after building"

With a slight tweak this could be done in SE4- just give planets, ships and bases the ability to take a "launch" order even if they have nothing in their cargo hold, and allow the repeat order button to be selected in sequential games.

"-little unit icons over a planet should include the number of those units stored at the planet too."

Probably too cluttered, especially when you get multiple types of units involved.

"-Get rid of these population bars over the planets. Better would be say 3 pictures of each planet type. First pic portrays an empty world, second level is a colony with some small structure layouts and third level is a busy hiveworld with traders and orbiting sats etc. I would make the planet pics larger (about 2 times the size or even larger) and the amount of available planetary objects per system smaller. Of course I would add many more systems than 255 to insure real epic games."

Definitely do not like this idea. It reduces the amount of planets in a system for..what? More eye candy.

"3. unit design rant
Maybe I am alone with this opinion, but I liked the units in SEIII much more. In SEIII you had all these handy units with fixed values - no fuzzing around with unneccessary designing.
I see no major tactical advantage in designing troops or mines in SEIV. Unit designing is for me just adding useless micromanagement. My troops are everytime the same (1 or 2 shields and the rest ground cannons - so whats the design?). My mines are always the same (max Warheads - so no tactical design at all, just clicking around) My weapon platforms are the same (main weapon, big mount, shields - no design). My fighters are sometimes a little bit different but the most time not. Only my sats designs are worth the designation design.
So I would suggest for SEV, either reducing units as they was in SEIII to reduce micromanagment or making the game options for units more interesting so that it is REALLY important to have several different Troop, Weapon platform or mine prototypes."

Again I disagree. In one of my games I have five distinct weapon platform designs for different roles, two types of mines (cheap and heavy), ship attack fighters vs interceptor fighters, police troops vs quick defense troops vs assult troops..in addition, simplfing the units would remove many possibilities for modding.

[PvK]

Good ideas. For facility maintenance, as with ALL maintenance costs, they should be modable per item, so for instance armor can cost little or no maintenance, while a city might cost mainly minerals to build, but cost rads to operate.

For unit design, I'd rather the designs were given a more interesting purpose, than the design ability be removed. In SE4, at least they can be modded to have at least a little purpose to design.

PvK

[Suicide Junkie]

3. unit design rant
Maybe I am alone with this opinion, but I liked the units in SEIII much more. In SEIII you had all these handy units with fixed values - no fuzzing around with unneccessary designing.
I see no major tactical advantage in designing troops or mines in SEIV. Unit designing is for me just adding useless micromanagement. My troops are everytime the same (1 or 2 shields and the rest ground cannons - so whats the design?). My mines are always the same (max Warheads - so no tactical design at all, just clicking around) My weapon platforms are the same (main weapon, big mount, shields - no design). My fighters are sometimes a little bit different but the most time not. Only my sats designs are worth the designation design.
So I would suggest for SEV, either reducing units as they was in SEIII to reduce micromanagment or making the game options for units more interesting so that it is REALLY important to have several different Troop, Weapon platform or mine prototypes.

You just need to try some mods
Take P&N, where units actually use the same components as ships do, just with "Mini" mounts.

It sounds like you have yet to try any advanced unit strategies either...

Try making a bunch of shield-heavy troops to land first and soak up damage, then drop big artillery troops in behind them to bLast the enemy. Lastly, you can have your command troops, with all the combat sensors and ECM support for the rest of the troops.
Then, once the planet is captured, lay down your inexpensive "Police troops" to quell the riots.

In the end, you can just save your designs with your race, and not worry about designing units or even ships anyways

Having the option is good!

---

As for the first two points, I agree with Phoenix-D

[ May 21, 2003, 20:08: Message edited by: Suicide Junkie ]

[tesco samoa]

for 3....

Create a default Empire at max tech. Then design the ships and units you want... Then Save the empire.

Now go start another game and use this empire.

All the unit designs and ship designs are there But. The ones that show up in the build que are the ones that you currently have all the tech for.

Not only that but your settings (what you like to see on the maps )is saved as well as your fill ques...

For the auto launch... Do this
Turn 1.
Have Planet build unit ( place on Repeat )
Turn 2.
Order the Planet to launch the unit ( hit the repeat order button )
Thats it
The planet will build and launch...

Can you set it so the units will move to a way point ?????? in that system ?????

[klausD]

phönixd

-amount of inhabitants should have somtimes an impact on the number of available facility slots."

Agree here, though the Last might be a bit too much micromangement- what happens if it falls too low and some of the slots would not be available?

Good argument. Maybe I should overthink this idea.

-facilities which generate additional empty facility slots (eg. underwater, subterranean or orbital habitats, or representing just an improved city-infrastructure)
-facilities which need a certain amount of pop to be fully operational (if not they are effective only at a certain %)
-facilities which cost maintenance"

1 maybe, 2..eh..seems odd (*cough* sphereworld with 100 of these), the rest sure.

I think facility which provides additional facility slots could be a real "hammer" for colony planning. I see not much problems with this. (of course it has to be balanced with costs in production and tech) Eg an empire researches the tech "marine habitats" which enables him to build a underwater facilty (only one per planet) which gives him 2 or so additional facility slots on this planet. In combination with point one (not every facility can be built on every planet) the whole colony planning could be very tricky.

"-auto-launch for satellites/mines after building"

With a slight tweak this could be done in SE4- just give planets, ships and bases the ability to take a "launch" order even if they have nothing in their cargo hold, and allow the repeat order button to be selected in sequential games.

Thanks for the tip, but I would rather like an "official" and easy to handle button.

"-Get rid of these population bars over the planets. Better would be say 3 pictures of each planet type. First pic portrays an empty world, second level is a colony with some small structure layouts and third level is a busy hiveworld with traders and orbiting sats etc. I would make the planet pics larger (about 2 times the size or even larger) and the amount of available planetary objects per system smaller. Of course I would add many more systems than 255 to insure real epic games."

Definitely do not like this idea. It reduces the amount of planets in a system for..what? More eye candy.

Yes its both, some eye candy AND to see at the first glance which importance the planet has. (to avoid clicking at) But even for a TB strategy game this graphical eye candy is rather simple (compared to the real time combat engine of starfury)
Reducing planets in a system is the like reducing ships in SEV because of the new RT engine(yes, starfury - and so SEV - will demand this...)

Again I disagree. In one of my games I have five distinct weapon platform designs for different roles, two types of mines (cheap and heavy), ship attack fighters vs interceptor fighters, police troops vs quick defense troops vs assult troops..in addition, simplfing the units would remove many possibilities for modding.

Well maybe you have some use for different unit types in SEIV. I did not have yet an advanced use. Maybe I am playing the game wrong
But of course I would rather like to have a game where the units have some sense too, instead of getting back to SEIII.

PVK: ditto

Suicide J.
thanks I will try your mod. Maybe designing the units there has some sense.

Guys - thanks for answering so fast and competent
tschüß
KlausD

[klausD]

tesco s.
thanks, but maybe I did not express myself good enough (english is not my parent language) I referred to the SEIII units which have every stat included without designing them. I know there is the possibility in SE4 to save a race and units designs, but this was not my point. I reality I would like to have some real use of different units but up to now I didnt see the full advantage of "designing" units. (contrary to ships/Bases which I love to design in SE4 and which has alot of sense)
For me designing units in SEIV is just a "gimmick" (a some additional tedious mouse clicking) but not really necessary for winning, losing or even enjoying the game. In SEV I think the game rules for units has to be improved alot.

tschüß
KlausD

[Me Loonn]

What me would like is similar auto queueing when colonizing a planet as it was done in "Stars!".
It would (well, at least _might_) reduce micromangement, if your new colony would automatically start building SY, resupply fac, then few WPs, some 50 fighters and so on ...

And make it possible to add facilities as now is with ships and units, multi add ! That would really make easier to handle 200+ colonies.

[Slick]

Originally posted by Me Loonn:
What me would like is similar auto queueing when colonizing a planet as it was done in "Stars!".
It would (well, at least _might_) reduce micromangement, if your new colony would automatically start building SY, resupply fac, then few WPs, some 50 fighters and so on ...

And make it possible to add facilities as now is with ships and units, multi add ! That would really make easier to handle 200+ colonies.

Well, it isn't automatic, but you can save any number of custom construction queues to be used over and over. See the FAQ for details.

Slick.

[Suicide Junkie]

If you really wanted to, it would be easy to make a mod with fixed stats for the units.

Just make a set of combo cockpit/weapon/armor components to pick from as if they were the entire troop.