Wishlist: High level design thoughts

[Gregstrom]

A lot of games with component level ship design have some of that. Stars! had nice efficient slower engines coexisting with fast thirsty ones.

[MattII]

Oh right. Most of my experience is with the Space-Empires line, which doesn't have such, beyond perhaps weapons, although I suppose with the modifiability of the game...

[MattII]

Ah, seems I misunderstood.

Originally Posted by Central_Speaker_Dan

Look at it this way:
If I researched Photon Pulse Weapons (whatever they are...) then it will cost me less to develop Photon Torpedo Weapons because I already have much of the basic knowledge.

On the other hand if I develop technologies that use Neutrinos (a sub-atomic particle) It will cost me a lot lot more to research technologies using Anti-Neutrinos because if they aren't separated properly they would annihilate, rendering BOTH devices useless.
In fact it may not even be possible to use both in one civilisation therefore if I have one I CANNOT research the other at all.

[Gregstrom]

I like that idea, as it adds to strategic choices in the game. Perhaps the choices should be something in the line of 'I can research this weapon tech at the expense of closing this area of stardrive research'. That way it's harder to min/max than a choice between two different guns.

[Central_Speaker_Dan]

Ideally, nearly every tech, in some small way, would effect nearly every other tech.
I know that this is a hell of a lot of work to do at this late stage and may well need mass reconstruction of the tech tree/s and total re-balancing so you don't need to work your socks off trying to fulfil the concept.

Had I known of this sooner I would have posted and it would have saved you a very large amount of work (depending on how far you actually are).

Anyway, I am very pleased that you like the idea.
Good luck and thank you,
Dan.

[Gregstrom]

By the way, I'm not part of the dev team. I just like discussing the game.

[Central_Speaker_Dan]

Oops.

Sorry, thought you were.

[Gregstrom]

Just realised I never put what I'd like to see into this thread.

I'd like a game with a great depth of tech tree, so that you could go from something near current technology to the very heights of space opera if a game went on long enough. I'd like to see a slightly different tech tree each time I play, to keep things interesting. Special-case technologies that aren't part of the standard tree and require odd trigger conditions would be great.
The ability to choose from a great range of galaxy sizes would be awesome and let me control the likely duration of the game.

And ideally I want a game that loses nothing in PBEM, so self-resolving combat where I can make meaningful tactical input in the form of battle plans is essential, as is the ability to watch said battles in spinnable, zoomable cinematic detail.

I may be asking for rather too much, of course.

[MattII]

Well the variable-between-games tech tree sounds a bit much, but the rest of it is almost doable with Space Empires, certainly the complex tech-tree, some special techs (ancient techs, racial techs, and techs that require either of them and certain normal techs), and a variable galaxy size anyway.

[Smight]

Originally Posted by Gregstrom

And ideally I want a game that loses nothing in PBEM, so self-resolving combat where I can make meaningful tactical input in the form of battle plans is essential, as is the ability to watch said battles in spinnable, zoomable cinematic detail.

totally agree whit that