SE5, Tell Aaron what's on your Wish List

[spoon]

I'd like to see the Minimum Chance to hit raised to something like 20%.

I think this will curb a lot of frustration I see new players suffer from when their 100-ship fleets get squashed by ten ships with max defense.

In any case, both Minimum Chance To Hit and Maximum Chance To Hit should be something modders can tweak.

[Me Loonn]

IMHO, the there should always be 5% change to hit or to miss - it worked so well in fallout 2. Its better that way since there would be more unique battles, even the best ship CAN miss (even with the talisman).

[Atrocities]

What would be nice would be if the AI had predisposed demeanor settings.

You choose Aggressive / Cunning and the game automatically uses a preprogramed AI that is aggressive and cunning. Of course you can always edit this and tweak it or add new combinations.

The nice thing about an option like this would be the ease of pick and choose your AI type without all of the guess work and lack of actual benefit of a races predisposition that we currently have.

The Ai will know that it is to attack in X way if X predisposing is selected. IE if the AI is set to Friendly / Peaceful, then it will not declare war upon you the instant it meets you like the AI currently does.

The problem with the current AI is that it does not understand demeanor, race definers, or mood settings such as peaceful, hostile, etc.

If we had preestablished parameters for the AI to use, that could be edited of course, then the AI would have a solid foundation on knowing how it is suppose to react. Oh sure you can make the agreement that we have this ability now, but the truth is we do not. All AI's, regardless of settings, seem to act an awful lot alike.

The second thing I thing should be included as a must have improvement is something that I have discussed many times before. The addition of the AI to understand Demeanor in diplomatic Messages. IE if I send a message and tag it as friendly, then the AI knows it is a friendly message and will respond accordingly. Now if I send a hostile message then the AI will understand this and our relations will grow strained.

Couple these two ideas together and you will have an AI that will act like it is told to act, and will respond accordingly to other races demeanors and tones.

So when I select Gun Boat Diplomacy as an AI setting along with Aggressive, the AI will know that I expect it to respond aggressively and with force to any unsatisfactory diplomatic situation.

The reverse is true for a race that is set up to be Peaceful and Polite.

Just my two cents worth.

"If I had two cents, I'd spend it." - CW

[ October 29, 2003, 20:31: Message edited by: Atrocities ] dogyams

[Ed Kolis]

The current "100 mines per sector" limit seems rather arbitrary; here's an alternative way to curb uber-minefields, borrowed from Stars!

Mines have a decay rate! Each turn, some percentage, say 2% (of course moddable in the data files and modifiable by racial traits, mine hulls, mine components, etc.) of every minefield, spontaneously detonate / run out of supplies / whatever. (Perhaps if they spontaneously detonate this detonation could be detected by enemies, alerting them to the presence of a minefield?) Anyway, so suppose you manage to build a 1000-mine minefield. You don't have 1000 mines for long, though, because you lose 20 the next turn, and just in order to *maintain* the minefield, you have to launch 20 new mines! There could always be some minimum value like 100 for which no decay occurs, so smaller minefields wouldn't need to be maintained and they would work like in SE4.

The same logic could be applied to satellites and any other kind of units that are deployed in space in large Groups for a long period of time... though it's a bit less evident why a satellite would spontaneously self-destruct... (it might run out of supplies though)

[Ed Kolis]

After playing the Dominions II demo (wow, can't wait for the full game! I wonder if it's moddable like so many of Shrapnel's other games?) I got to thinking, "gee, there are a lot of cool ideas in here that would fit into SE5!" (Really! ) Here are a few that I can think of right now:

-Morale in combat - OK, we don't have individual soldiers running around on the battlefield, but we could apply the system to ships' crews, so when a crew runs out of morale points (which could be affected by taking crew losses, losing friendly ships, or by special weapons - the Psychic tech tree would become even more interesting, and the WMG is pretty awe-inspiring in itself), the ship automatically turns and flees! Of course, installing a Master Computer would mean your ship never flees (unless some modder designed to create master computers that are intelligent enough to have morale ) Morale could also be affected by a racial trait, either the Happiness trait or a separate one.

-Save in the middle of a turn - OK, I know, it's something we've been bugging you about since SE4 was released, but this just gives me an excuse to bring it up again

-Artifacts and special items that can be assigned to units. In Dom2, certain units can construct special weapons, armor, rings, etc. by using magical crystals. Or, you can find them, win them in contests, whatever. These items can then be assigned to units (usually commanders since they can make the best use of them). The way this might work in SE5 is, you might have your standard Anti-Proton Beam which can be constructed at any old spaceyard. But there might be some experimental Version that can only be constructed at a special lab and retrofitted onto a ship there. Or instead of finding Massive Ionic Disperser technology at a planet, you find three or four Massive Ionic Dispersers... you can try to analyze one or more of them and gain the technology, but that could be risky - they could blow up, or you might take them apart and still not be able to figure anything out... or you can take them to your Xenotechnology Lab and fit them onto your flagships...

-Mercenaries! Bid on them and the highest bidder gets to order them around for a few months, and if enough survive, they go back to auction! Or do it the Merchant Prince way and you pay them a salary every turn based on how many are still alive, but the auctions are more fun

Also, I have an idea for making supplies & maintenance a bit more interesting & realistic without making the game too cumbersome (like some people say Stars! is, with the shuttling minerals around):
Get rid of "supplies" and instead let ships carry around resources (min/org/rad or whatever SE5 uses) to use as supplies, just like they carry around cargo, with the full range of transfer commands. Yes, this sounds like Stars!, but wait - There's also a global pool, like in SE4! Merge the functions of "spaceport" and "resupply depot" so wherever you have a spaceport, your ships can stop to draw resources from the global pool to use as supplies (or return them if you need them for construction). Maintenance costs would then be some value assigned to each component and hull in the data files, independent of the construction cost, and maintenance would be deducted from each ship's supplies/resources every turn. But how do you get your resources to your planets to build things? Well, there would be a two-tiered system: local resources and global resources. Local resources are like in Stars! where you have to move them around; any fresh colony starts with a few generated from scrapping the colony ship; make sure you build a spaceport first! Global resources are like in SE4 and come into play when you have a spaceport in the system (which isn't blockaded, and your planet isn't blockaded either ) Construction would use global resources first, saving the local resources for times of shortage (like a blockade). So all in all, most of the time you wouldn't *have* to micromanage your resources (due to the global pool), but there'd still be the strategic element of laying siege to a system by blockading the spaceport!

[narf poit chez BOOM]

that stuff about supply's made sense. but i still want moddable types of supplies. probably a few people here who want a whole economy going, to.

[DarkAngel]

I'd like it if you could have more than 255 systems

[Monolith]

I know it's pure eye candy, but the 3-D map of MOO3 is quite nice and adds flavor; surely SE V will have it right?

Disclaimer: I do NOT play MOO3!

[ November 02, 2003, 14:46: Message edited by: Monolith ]

[Ed Kolis]

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:
that stuff about supply's made sense. but i still want moddable types of supplies. probably a few people here who want a whole economy going, to.

Wow, it did? It barely made sense to me when I was typing it!
Yeah, I'd like moddable types of supplies and resources, too; no reason my idea would be incompatible with that...

[tesco samoa]

here is one i would realy like to see.

Game Setup

Quick setup .... ( you know what we have now )

Or Detailed setup.

Where the admin picks the number of planets the player starts with and either a random generation of locations or they can go into the map and pick the planets., What tech levels the player starts with, The starting number KT of ships and KT of units that are available. What events they want to occur and when ( and/or quick pick default types ) Be able to select the cost of each research type and what levels are available. And alter any component or facility costs abiliites or what ever. So if it is available in the game it is available for manulpilation at the game set up screens.

Then the Player on turn 2399.9 gets to go through and place what ever facilities they want on their planets, Design and deploy all ships and units in their controlled space.