SE5, Tell Aaron what's on your Wish List

[Rigelian]

Replace attitive calculations with multiplication, to reflect actual probabilities; eliminate bizarre 'edge effects'.

This is best illustrated by example: I have a 25% chance to hit a ship at a certain range. If that ship is equipped with ECM-1, that gives him a 20% defence bonus. Logically I should be 20% less likely to hit him (.25*0.8), giving me a 20% chance to hit. Of course the mechanics in SE4 do not currently work like this. The percentages are simply subtracted, giving me a 5% chance to hit. In this situation his '20%' ECM is actually giving him more like 80% protection. There are examples like this wherever percentages are calculated.

To correctly implement probabilities, factors should _always_ be multiplied.

I'm sure Aaron was/is well aware of this fact. My strong suspicion is that the floating-point maths required to do this correctly, as opposed to much faster integer maths for addition, was one of the limiting factors. Given the massive increase in processor speeds since the original SE games, I think that the average PC could cope with this now. I would much, much rather have this than any whizz-bang rotating 3D maps..

And while I'm here.. can we have sizeable windows and right-click support back again? I'm sure the code is still out there somewhere

[Rigelian]

A few user-interface enhacements (and one on fighters). Usability over eye-candy every time.

Large zoomable (2-D!) galaxy map, with detailed sidebar, so I can choose a system and get a list of planets, values etc in the sidebar. A bit like the old Mac classic Spaceward Ho!, or the little I saw of SE3.

What would be perfect for me would be the ability to 'zoom' to an area of the galaxy and show several systems as 'scaled-down' system maps. With fleet locations, WPs and ship movement lines, and ability to issue orders from here. I currently do this manually on a sheet of A3. See note on high resolution below!

Fleet list and galaxy map shown at same time, so I can
- see what fleets are in which system on the galaxy map.
- click on a fleet in the list and have its location highlighted in galaxy map.

Construction queue to show list and details for higlighted item at same time. Ability to select multiple queues and add same job (build a frigate at all 6 of these systems..)

Support for my 1600*1200 screen to show all this at once.. 8-)

Simplified, Starfire-like fighter combat with separate, low, 'anti-Fighter' hit probablities for most ship weaponry. One hit, one kill, no killing the whole stack.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Rigelian:
Replace attitive calculations with multiplication, to reflect actual probabilities; eliminate bizarre 'edge effects'.

This is best illustrated by example: I have a 25% chance to hit a ship at a certain range. If that ship is equipped with ECM-1, that gives him a 20% defence bonus. Logically I should be 20% less likely to hit him (.25*0.8), giving me a 20% chance to hit. Of course the mechanics in SE4 do not currently work like this. The percentages are simply subtracted, giving me a 5% chance to hit. In this situation his '20%' ECM is actually giving him more like 80% protection. There are examples like this wherever percentages are calculated.

To correctly implement probabilities, factors should _always_ be multiplied.

I'm sure Aaron was/is well aware of this fact. My strong suspicion is that the floating-point maths required to do this correctly, as opposed to much faster integer maths for addition, was one of the limiting factors. Given the massive increase in processor speeds since the original SE games, I think that the average PC could cope with this now. I would much, much rather have this than any whizz-bang rotating 3D maps..

And while I'm here.. can we have sizeable windows and right-click support back again? I'm sure the code is still out there somewhere

How can you be sure that MM does not prefer many of these bonuses/penalties to be additive instead of multiplicative? Additive values make sense in a lot of places. ECM does not alter the current chance to hit, it alters the base chance to hit.

[Lemmy]

Stay away from 3D, it seems when game creators try to move their games to 3D First: you gota buy a new computer. Second: the gameplay goes in the crapper. Stick with good gameplay and micromangment(kidding, not too much micro).

But in this case, most of the 3d part is already done in Starfury, so it won't be at the expense of gameplay.
About the first part...i guess it depends on the game, and how many cutting edge 3d features are used. May i ask what computer you have now?

[Stone Mill]

In the Construction Window, ability to right click on a given planet and select "Go to Planet." This will take to to the system map with the planet highlighted.

Pretty please?

[Baron Munchausen]

Speaking of combat, there's a simple (and logical) feature of most games which the SE series has never had. Variable damage. If your weapon hits it always does the same damage. This is a bit odd. Can't you get a 'near miss' where your missile explodes near but not near enough? Can't you have a beam hit but not stay on target long enough to do full damage? Maybe MOO went a bit far with such widely variable maage for all weapons, but there really ought to be some sort of fluctuation in damage in SE combat, even if it's just a random chance for an occasional near miss. On the flip-side of course, there are also things called 'critical hits' in many other games. This would also be a nice feature for SE to have.

If we had a user controllable (setting in the text files) chance for both 'near miss' doing half damage and 'critical hit' doing double or quadrupal damage we could add a very nice element of unpredicability to combat. Ship could occasionally do surprising damage, or survive much more damage than expected, as happens in real life.

This could be done with SE IV right now, let alone in SE V.

[ March 07, 2003, 19:21: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[ts22]

1. One feature that I would love to see is a way to implement 2 ways to enter a system. The first is via the wormhole (ie SEIV) and the second could be through a slower more direct path which ignores the wormhole. I haven't played Moo3 but I think it institutes ship travel like that. Anyway, I think it is a good idea b/c it still enables you to attack an enemy homeworld that has a well defended wormhole. The cost, of course, is that it will take you much longer to get to the enemy homeworld without using a wormhole.
2. Would love to be able to add more then 20 races in the next game.
3. How about being able to set pre-game racial enemies, etc.
Maybe this has been mentioned, maybe not. Just my 2 cents...

[Ragnarok]

I like that idea Baron. Someone, but I forget who mentioned this before. Right now the damage system is set, if you hit it does whatever damage at that range.
Such as, for example: 80 80 80 70 70 60 0 0 0 0 0
The other person that mentioned this said the system could be changed to do this: 80-60 80-60 80-60 70-50 70-50 60-40 40-0 0 0 0 0 0
To me, this would be a good system to use. I give credit for this idea to that one person. Dang memory can't think of who it was though. Sorry whoever you were.

[thorfrog]

How about Palaces.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Ragnarok:
I like that idea Baron. Someone, but I forget who mentioned this before. Right now the damage system is set, if you hit it does whatever damage at that range.
Such as, for example: 80 80 80 70 70 60 0 0 0 0 0
The other person that mentioned this said the system could be changed to do this: 80-60 80-60 80-60 70-50 70-50 60-40 40-0 0 0 0 0 0
To me, this would be a good system to use. I give credit for this idea to that one person. Dang memory can't think of who it was though. Sorry whoever you were.

I mentioned that I emailed that suggestion to MM a week ago or so. I doubt I was the first person to think of variable damage, but I was the one that posted about it a short while ago.

The critical hits would be another nice addition.

BM:
It would require major rewriting of many code functions to implement such systems, and so it is very unlikely that it would be introduced in SE4, as SE4 seems to be done with patches adding major new features. It better be done for SE5 though, or else a certain game developer is going to get a lot of complaints.