[AMF]

A cool thing about heroes, especially if they're pretty rare, is then you open up the field to intel projects built around them. Assasinations, subVersions, misdirections, etc...

Also, I would think that heros should have a single, or at most two, stats that they affect. Some examples I think would be good:

Local heros:

Hero Admiral: + 5-20% bonus to ship offense, ship defense or both.
Hero General: + 5-20% bonus to ground combat offense, defense or both.
Hero Governor: + 5-20% bonus to planetary production rates
Hero Administrator: + 5-20% bonus to one or two planetary resource production rates
Hero Marine: + 5-20% bonus to ship boarding actions
Hero Scientist: + 5-20% bonus to the research production of a planet
Hero navigator: +1 movement for a single ship or fleet of ships
Hero engineer: +1 repair rate, or + 5-20% to space-based shipyard rate
Hero Explorer: has 10-50% chance to avoid stellar damage (ie from storms, black holes, etc...)

I don't think heros should be "mercenaries" - they don;t get paid, and would only switch allegiances if your enemy ran a sucessful "subvert leader" intel operation on them. Neither should they stack - two hero admirals wouldn't give you both their ship combat bonuses. Only the highest.

Also, I would hope that the heros would be treated just like ships in that you could name them, move them, etc...

And, I think there should also be Empire-wide heros, such as below, which would be limited to no more than 1-3 per empire I would think (since they have empire wide effects):

Hero Spy: + 1-5% bonus to spy points, (or perhaps allows new missions, or can do missions on their own?)
Hero Trader: + 1-5% to trade amounts gained by your empire?
Hero Diplomat: +5-15% in diplomacy with neutral races (NOT AI empires)

And, once again, I don't think there is any need to have unique hero
pictures - just use the racial portrait pic, maybe modified slightly,
for all the heros in your empire.


Thanks,

Alarik
Ps: cross-posted to SE4 yahoo group