New features I would like to see>>>>

[Dracus]

This one would not effect game play at all, but would be nice to have for role playing.


I would like to see date stamps added to planets and ships.
For ships, it would show when they were first build. This would help in tracking their history.
For planets, when they were colonized.
This I would really like.


This is a maybe.....
Maybe even a history log for each ship and planet.

For ships, showing the battles they have been in and the kills they hve made. 5 battles, 3 kills and the dates for these.

Would be removed when the ship is scrapped or distoryed.

Once a ship is distroyed/scrapped then maybe a log showing the ship name and the date it was losted. so at the end of the game, You can review the total number of ships you owned and losted.

For planets---the battles and maybe the events that they have gone through. Would be deleted when the planet pop is distroyed, if captured then the history would show the date of the capture for the new owner, plus all prior history.

I also would like a history log that shows the total number of ships I killed against a race and the number of ships I lost to them.

[ZeroAdunn]

Do you have any idea how big this would the save file? Even a textfile would have to massive. You often create ships in the thousands in a long game, and give billions of orders in a game. If every single little order given to a ship or planet was saved it would produce a massive file.

[Dracus]

Not every order. Let me try again.

I create a ship escort called scout 1

I view that ship, there is a entry under it's name, class that shows it was commissioned on stardate 2400.1
(this is doable as it only requires a new entry field.)

Now for the hsitory file....only can be seen by owner of ship. (maybe an intell attack to get history file.) this is a maybe.
I view the ship history
commissioned on 2400.1
battle with phong on 2404.3
battle with phong on 2405.1
killed 3 ships
battle with phong on 2405.3

Now for planets


entry file on planet view under planet discription.
Current colony started on 2407.3
(very doable, does not change the game any, just adds a tag.)

history file: (seen only by owner) a maybe...
colony started 2407.3
attacked by phong 2408.2
attacked by phong 2408.3
(if planet captured by phong all above and this is what they would see.)
captured by phong 2408.4
planet riots 2410.1

IF all pop dies then history file is cleared.

log file>>>>

1200 ships lost to phong to date.
1000 phong ships killed to date.
500 ships scrapped to date.
6000 ships built in history of race.




[This message has been edited by Dracus (edited 06 November 2001).]

[ZeroAdunn]

Again I state this would be a huge file. Think about how many ships you make in a single game. Think about how many battles you go through in a single game, even minor ones. Planets are the same way.

Now if it only kept current ships history and deleted a ships history once it was destroyed it wouldn't be to bad. Later in the game it would get pretty big, especially if you were playing in a big quadrant.

Don't get me wrong I would love to see this feature, it could just turn out to be incredibly problematic.

[Dracus]

Yes if the ship is lost then the history for that ship would be deleted and the counter in the total file would be increased by 1.

[LazarusLong42]

It wouldn't be any larger than the game file. Figure:

1000 ships. 20-30 lines per ship. Each line 10-12 bytes (once you compress the information into numbers). That's 300 kB or so.

In a 20-player game, the .gam files *starts out* around that size and gets bigger

LL/Eric

[Baron Munchausen]

The date stamp is doable and I agree it would be a good idea at least for colonies. All you'd need is an extra word because you only need to record the turn number. I doubt anyone is gonna play 65,535 turns on SE IV. Besides being informative for the player, this could be used in the game code. A 'new' colony would be much more susceptible to panic when bad events happen, but stability would increase as the colony aged. An 'old' colony would be a more severe morale loss to the empire if it was destroyed.

The other ideas might be 'cool' but others have already observed that they might become nightmares in memory and disk space usage, not to mention bookkeeping code in the game itself.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 06 November 2001).]

[President Delerith]

This feature could be done in a separate file (like other .trn files), and it musn't be send to the other players in the .gam file.

[mac5732]

Back in the old days, Star General used to have a section where it showed how many total ships, ground units, etc, each race built and the total number destroyed. Maybe something on this order could be done taking up less space then breaking it down in more individual staticitics.

They broke it down according to ship and unit types.. ie; battleships, cruisers, etc
They would show say 5 battleships built, 4 destroyed, 10 cruisers built, 7 destroyed, etc

just some ideas mac

[This message has been edited by mac5732 (edited 07 November 2001).]

[Suicide Junkie]

Some new abilities:
- "Explodes when destroyed"
When this component takes enough damage to be marked as destroyed, it will apply an extra [Value 1] points of damage to the ship, of damage type [Value 2].

With this ability, you can have supply storage tanks and/or weapons explode when they are hit, and even "StarTrek" style warpcores that usually destroy the ship when the enemy gets a lucky hit.

- Planet - Tractor Beam
All ships within a distance of [Value 2] have an increased maximum movement of [Value 1].

This ability would allow you to move engineless crippled ships back to base for repairs, if they are close enough to the tractor beam facility. You could also launch interceptor ships faster than their normal movement, to help defend against enemy incursions.
A long chain of planets with Tractor beam facilities would form a sort of highway, moving ships across your empire quickly, at the expense of many facilities.