[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Yeah, I know it's going to be a loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong game if you have millions of systems to explore/colonize/conquer, but it would, IMO, add to the fun.

As I said, there should be a dialog box for the length/width of the galaxy with a maximum allowable value of something in the order of 10 million... I know it's gonna be 1 million grid squares, but it would be fun. Also, add a dialog box to set the "average gridsquares-per-system" where you could specify the average number of empty grid squares for each system with a minimum of about 5-10 so you could play on a tiny map crammed with systems so a warp point opener level 1 (100 ly, ie 10 gridsquares, ie standard, not modded) could be used to reach dozens of systems without moving. The maximum should be about 100 or something, so you can play on a gigantic map with only a few dozen/hundred systems, making warp point opening less easy, and you need to plan out wp rooutes to get to a system just beyond your reach... would be interesting for trader-games!

(Trader-games are something I dream about sometimes... games where the main part is not necessarily "colonize, research and conquer" but "trade for prosperity". There could also be a small amount of small Empires that were the only ones allowed to go to war with each other, as mercenary-style empires, and such empires could be hired by any party to attack any other party (perhaps even the large trading-empires) for money. This could be fun for the small mercenary-empires, playing two empires against each other by drawing higher and higher bids from them, or driving bids up yourself by stating another empire made you a better offer. That'd be nice to play, with lots of diplomacy involved - and backstabbing. For instance, you covet the systems occupied by one of your Partnership friends, and so because you still want to keep the treaty you hire a mercenary empire to attack the other covertly so you can colonize his former planets. I have even made the "Star Credits Price Table" for these types of games; i.e. "I attacked that planet for you, you owe me 1000 SC" "I can give you 20k organics, 10k rads, and 25 medium fighters" "You bastard! That's only 700 SC! I want my payments! Now!" etc. Exchange rates are fixed - boarding ships, racial-specific ships, etc. to hire/buy, 1k of resources is 2 SC, small troop is 1 SC, medium 3, large 5, etc. This makes trading objects (units, ships, planets) much more interesting than trading resources, since it's much more efficient to trade a ship than to trade 10x its cost which amounts to the same amount of SC.)