Would anyone be interested in more planet development?

[SunDevil]

It wouldn't be hard what so ever to make the ai use whatever add on facilities that are made. No I am not going to make any new facilities requirements. In the game right now there is a total of how many required facilities? 1 = spaceport. And even then if you pick natural merchant as a racial trait you don't have one required facility. Why change a good thing about the game. As posted earlier, the facilities that I might add will either be available at the start of the game and can be improved as the game progresses, or can be researched within the first or second phase of research in that particular project. So lets just focus on the brainstorming of new facilities and ideas. Thanks.

[SunDevil]

Let's just focus on new facilities and new ideas. All ideas and new facilities welcome.
Thanks.

[LintMan]

Another concern I meant to add before was that I'm not sure if adding more facility slots to planets will be unbalancing to the game. I've seen posters here who think there's already too many facility slots on planets. With double the facilities per planet, there's a lot less need for expansion to new planets/systems. (But then, it makes every planet much more valuable and worth dedicating some facility slots to their defense).

An alternate possibility might be to create some new double-duty facilities that would free up some slots for other things. Maybe like a space port that also works as a resupply depot, or a combo value enhancer/climate control facil, or a "space complex" that acts like a space port, resup depot and space yard all in one. Hmm. maybe factor a robotic factory into one of those space port combos, too.

Other new facility ideas:
- "military research centers": provide both research and intel points, analagous to monoliths for resources.
- "global network": gives % bonues to both research and intel, like robotic factories do for resources
- "planetary long-range scanners": works like the ship component, but with longer range.
- "planetary sensors": an assortment of these for planets to match the ship-based gravitic, tachyon, etc ship sensors.
- facils that give a unit or facility or ship production boost, while leaving the other rates untouched.
- I like Tenryu's idea of a facility you could build that would allow you to build more facilities (within limits of course).
- a non-racial facil to increase population.
- non-racial med lab facils to L5
- a security facil that decreases the chance of ALL intel attacks on the planet, and then maybe also a system-Version that decreases chance for the entire system.
- Military command centers - some non-racial facils that improve your combat or defense system-wide.
- planetary shield regenerator - regens planetary shield at, say 300 pts/turn
- planetary cargo facils beyond L3 to allow much more cargo (ie:room for platforms/units) on small planets.
- facils that boost planet values at higher rates than 3%/year
- "ultra-warp-scanner" facil that lets you see all the goings-on in all systems connected by warp points the system the ultra scanner is in.
- total system-wide stellar manipulation blocker - no warp points can be opened or closed into this system, no planet or sun bombs, etc. (To prevent someone from becoming impregnable sealing off their system warps and then building this, a new stellar tech at the top of the stellar tree could be added to trump this facil).

And how about some "galactic wonder" type facils that are extremely expensive, but provide empire-wide benefits (I wouldn't make them "only the first to build it gets the benefit" deal, though (I always thought that was silly) - every race to build one could benefit from it).
- A communications wonder facil that puts you in contact with every race.
- a "galactic news" facility that lets you hear about the major events in the galaxy, for all races you are in contact with. (ie: a major disaster strikes, an empire declares war on another, allies or surrenders, a major battle was lost (no replay though), a ringworld was built, etc.)
- a galctic trading center that doubles(?) your empire's trade income.
- a galactic library to give you a bonus % of research points from EVERY empire.
- empire security net: makes intel attacks against your empire MUCH harder to accomplish

[SunDevil]

Good ideas LintMan!

[E. Albright]

quote:

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Originally posted by LintMan:
- I like Tenryu's idea of a facility you could build that would allow you to build more facilities (within limits of course).

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This could be problematic (hence aforementioned your limits). While this would definately be interesting, you'd have to be careful with it, and it could be annoying to code. For starters, it'd almost have to be one-per-planet [for ea. type, at least: you could have Subterranean Habitation Caverens, Floating Cities, and Micro Pocket Dimensions (or whatever) all on the same planet for (1 fac. * planet size) ea., but not two Floating Cities].

Another point to remember is that any such facilities would by necessity have to be the Last things killed, 'cause Bad Things would happen if your 50-fac planet suddenly lost the Uber-Storage-Complex V that was giving it room for 25 of those facs... [in a sense, this could be a desirable thing ("Use da Smartbomz to collapse da filthy 'Umies' caverns!!!"), but distinguishing between facs which are and are not "underground" could be a hassle to code].

[This message has been edited by ealbright (edited 07 February 2001).]

[dmm]

Some famous billionaire rich guy (Rockefeller, JP Morgan?) was once asked how much money it would take to make him happy. He answered, "Just a little bit more."

In that fine tradition, I say, "More, MORE, MORE! More is better!" I want so many choices that I can't reasonably use them all in a single game. More research areas, more special race abilities, more facilities, more components, more choices. I want to be bewildered and overwhelmed. I want my community college to start offering courses on SEIV. I want to be able to put "Certified SEIV Expert" on my resume. In conclusion, let me just say:

"Mooooooooooooooore!"

[Spyder]

Personally, I LIKE lots of things to build & research. I didn't mind the tons of building & management in MOO2 & Civ. However, if there were a tool that would allow you to build a certain item on selected planets, all planets, etc, then this would be greatly simplified. But, overall, the more stuff, the better

I also thought that Civ's research tree, with each new discovery attributable to two or more previous discoveries, was much more fun than SEIV's research tree, and made your research strategy more difficult to plan out (and, of course, essentially, puzzle solving is what we're doing here...right?).

I also wish that their strategic combat system was a little less difficult to use...one thing that bugs me is having to click on the mini-map just to re-center the big map somewhere else...the ship's auto-pathing is poor also...

By the way...I am working on a complete research tree document and will publish it here when I'm done. It'll be in PowerPoint because I'm not an artist, I'm a computer geek Any artists out there can feel welcome to take the finished product and put it into some nice graphical form

Paul E. Mason
Senior VMS Systems Admistrator

[Tenryu]

Ealbright,

I do agree with your concerns and those of the others here regarding some limits. Isn't that true of everything?

In any case, not being a programmer myself nor having access to the mind of Aaron Hall, I have no idea how difficult it would be to code. I like to remember that in programming, like a magic show, you don't really have to do what your audience thinks you are doing. It just has to LOOK like you did it.

I can imagine, however, that this ability might be better implemented as a Vehicle only type.

For example:

Ability 1 type := Facility Space
Ability 1 Desc := BLAH-Blah-blah
Ability 1 Val 1 := { the facility family # goes here so that we can specify which facility family }
Ability 1 Val 2 := { the maximum number of facilities goes here }

I know there are a whole bunch of other issues, like most stuff, but, oh well, I am given to strange imaginings at times.


[This message has been edited by Tenryu (edited 08 February 2001).]

[dmm]

quote:

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Originally posted by Spyder:
Personally, I LIKE lots of things to build & research. I didn't mind the tons of building & management in MOO2 & Civ.

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I agree. I like micromanagement. I'd even like to be able to design cities like in SimCity! (SimSEIV? OK, that's extreme to the point of wierd, I know.) And I'd like to control space and land battles in fine detail.
BUUUUT, I also have to agree with the macro people here, that once your empire gets big the micro can get pretty tiresome. (Can anyone say "carpal tunnel syndrome?") That's where good AI ministers come in.

quote:

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Originally posted by Spyder:

However, if there were a tool that would allow you to build a certain item on selected planets, all planets, etc, then this would be greatly simplified. But, overall, the more stuff, the better

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Yes and yes.

quote:

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Originally posted by Spyder:

I also thought that Civ's research tree, with each new discovery attributable to two or more previous discoveries, was much more fun than SEIV's research tree, and made your research strategy more difficult to plan out ...

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Never played Civ, but played SMAC, which is similar. I disagree with Spyder here. I found the Civ/SMAC research "net" idea restrictive -- at least the way it was implemented. I was forced to research almost everything in order to get the stuff I really wanted. So trading of research wasn't worthwhile, because everyone had most of the same stuff. And it was the same every time.
What I wouldn't mind, and which I think would add some fun complexity, would be the choice to have the research lines either all independent (as they are now), or to have them be interdependent (like in Civ/SMAC). But for interdependent I would want two additional options. First, I'd want the interdependence to be different each time. Or, even better, different for each empire. (Oh man, that would rock! Just think how that would affect trading! And how about a special racial ability that can ignore research prereqs?!) Second, I'd want to be able to set the granularity, meaning that I could set the number of interconnections anywhere from few to many.

quote:

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Originally posted by Spyder:

By the way...I am working on a complete research tree document and will publish it here when I'm done.

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Nice. Looking forward to it.

[E. Albright]

quote:

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Originally posted by Tenryu:
I can imagine, however, that this ability might be better implemented as a Vehicle only type.

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...and then we could have orbital city Bases, as well as obscenely massive Baseships (where the name isn't a misnomer)...