Initial thoughts on SEIV

[Repo Man]

I am still new to SE, having only played the demo for several weeks now. I do have a few questions, and observations.

First: It seems the only important resource is minerals. Was this true with SEIII? If so, it seems to me that the other resources could be eliminated or a different balance established to make them a consideration.

Second: I know that population is important, but its effect is hidden. A status bar stating how effective a planet is running based on pop would be helpful.

Third: Maintenance seems to be very, very high. At 25% per turn, the total maintenance per year is 250% of the cost of a ship. Was it this high in SEIII? The current numbers do seem to keep the number of ships playable, so I guess it works, but still, 250% per year seems excessive.

Fourth: For PBM/Strategic combat, a battle video such as the one used in Stars! would add tremendously. For those who don�t play Stars!, all combat is handled by the computer similar to the strategic mode, except you actually can view the combat. The results are written to a file, and each player can play back the same file during their turns.

Fifth: Does anyone use finite resources? I like the idea of finite resources, but I�m not sure there would be enough resources to allow for grand epic games. Experiments at tweaking have proved interesting, but exceeding minerals by a factor of 10 seems to cause the demo to crash. As a side note, it seems to me that organic should remain infinite even when finite resources are checked, although this could be a real play balance issue.

Sixth: Old equipment: It would be kind of neat if the old equipment was still around after an upgrade. The old equipment could be sold/given/traded to other empires, or kept as a reserve for emergencies.

Seventh: It would be interesting troops used population. Maintaining a large number of active troops would drain economic output.

Eighth: For ship maintenance, I would rather see ships take damage when less than 100% maintenance is paid, as opposed to scrapping entire ships. The amount of damage would be in proportion to the amount of maintenance paid. Thus, empires could cut back on maintenance without mothballing entire fleets, but effectiveness would be compromised.

Ninth: A more complicated economic model which expands, but not replaces the current system. The sole purpose of this change would be to allow players more opportunities to disrupt enemy economies than exist now. For example, consumer goods could be a new item which would need to be produced and shipped to colonies. Shipping should be done via A.I. These shipping lanes could be raided and disrupted.

Tenth: I�d like to see the ability to allow each system to be semi-autonomous, meaning that at a player�s option, each system could have its own pool of resources which is segregated from the empire-in-chief resources. This would allow the resources of a single system to contribute to a local war without dipping into the rest of the empire. In a similar note, having a empire capitol and an system capitol would be a nice touch. These capitols would give some bonus or ability.