New Features You Would Like to See That Would Have to Be Hard Coded

[tictoc]

Dualhead display for strategic/tactical combat same as star trek armada.

tic

[Triumvir Emphy]

I would like to see a way to trap ships, i seem to remember a trap on Startrek somewhere, where there was a damaged ship as bait. When your ship goes in to capture it finds itself in a field surrounded by mines that drain the power from your ship. Preventing movement and draining life support.

Planet Based tractor beams that actually have a little bit of range and let you capture a ship with troops on the planet would be nice.

Assault shuttles (MOO2) style where you have marines crash it into the ship and attempt to take over the ship.

The ability to Strip mine a planet as an offensive weapon, so we can make that little old russian tactic usefull. Kinda like playing with limited resources i guess.

Allow for the ability to mimick an other race or class ship. (during worldwar II certain "freighters" where really destoyers used to lure U boats, U boat thinks easy target and surfaces to board, wooden supper structure comes off, no they are starring in to dozens of 10 inch guns).

Planetary camoflage.

Ability to propell asteriods and use them as weapons in planetary assault

(pssst wakeup,.. stop dreaming and get back to work)

[Lastseer]

Two most important things for me:

1. Save start options between games. With a reset to defaults button.

2. Ability to set Starting AND Maximum allowable tech levels for each tech. (which would also be saved like above) Low is fine and High is fine, but Medium just doesn't cut it as it stands. Customization through the GUI rules.

[Miles]

quote:

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Originally posted by Miles:
Ring Worlds/Sphere Worlds (RW/SW) have almost no reason to exist. It would be nice if they had some additional abilities...

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Been thinking about this. The Modders could provide plenty of reasons to build RW/SW if you could put the right requirements into a facility. For example:
0) If tiny planet=1, small=2,...,RW=6,SW=7. It would be nice if you could specify that a facility had to be on a 6 or bigger.
1) It would be nice if you could specify how many of a family of facilities could be present on a given world. This way you could create a family of super-duper facilities and require the player to build a different RW/SW for each one.
2) Finally, the Modders need some more effects that they can bind to a facility.

My current favorite new effects would be if they could bind some of the 'Advanced Traits' to a facility. These are all empire-wide effects that are only available at game setup. Hopefully, it would not be too much work to allow a modder to add these effects to a facility. So, suppose that you didn't pick 'Propulsion Experts' at empire setup. Late in the game you could research to the end of the Propulsion research and get the 'Empire-Wide Go-Juice' facility. Then you could build a RW to host it.

Miles

[KiloOhm]

Someone had mentioned this before, but I'd like to be able to click on enemy ships / planets in the galaxy screen and see their components (if you had previously ID'd them before).

KiloOhm

[jaylord]

Saner armor and engine systems!!

As they work now, they make no sense!! Pop six Ion Engines I in a 150KT escort and it has a movement of 6. Put the same 6 engines in a 600KT Battle Cruiser and it also moves 6!! Worse yet, to restrict the movement of BBs and up you're limited in the number of engines you can have. This actually leaves more space for other components, when a DN should have to use at least a 100KT of its mass allotment just to move 3 (with Ion Engines). The engines should be rated with the ability to move y-mass x-squares, with less mass meaning you move farther, more mass you move less. It sure would be fun (and make sense) to have little escort class scouts really zipping around the map.

As for the armor, the same thing applies. One armor provides the same protection to an escort that it does to a DN. It should be each ship size should have a min number of armor to cover that size ship. 1 armor for an escort up to 9 for a base ship. Then the calculation for whether a shot hits the armor could be based on the percentage of the armor coverage the ship carries, which of course could be reduced in combat. Add in the suggestion that many have made that emissive armor should actually reduce damage by 10-30 points, and you have an armor system that makes sense. Especially with properly working emissive armor.

As for difficulty in programming this, I'm a programmer myself and watching a game play you get an idea how the coding probably goes for certain routines. I even wrote some psuedo-code (not sure what language SE IV is written in) for the armor changes just for my own amusement. It ended up being fairly simple so I might share them with MM in the hopes it would be implemented.

[capnq]

Re: jaylord's suggestions about armor -

Rather than setting a minimum amount of armor for each size, how about making armor's ability to absorb damage a percentage of the hull tonnage? i.e.:

1 Armor I component = +10%

1 Armor I on an Escort = 15kT damage

1 Armor I on a Frigate = 20kT damage

etc.



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Cap'n Q

[This message has been edited by capnq (edited 08 March 2001).]

[Suicide Junkie]

quote:

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'Empire-Wide Go-Juice' facility.

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Perhaps it takes up 75 Facility slots? That would make it really expensive (ie. cost of the sphereworld/ringworld)

quote:

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Saner armor and engine systems!!

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Definitely, emissive armor needs to be like in SE3, (Reflects the FIRST Xpoints of damage)
As for needing X armor components to cover a ship, just think of it being spread really thin. One armor (40 hp) on a DN is worthless defensively, when you have 2000 shields.

Consider: two escorts fighting with one weapon each. That armor takes two hits & so Lasts 3 rounds (without perfect accuracy)

If we had DNs instead, the armor would be destroyed by the first hit (large mount) and the DN would proceed to fire three or four more large mount shots into you.

The same amount of armor is useless on DNs
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Solution for the engine problem:
Set the engine components to provide 150 normal (not bonus) movement points.
Now, set each hull to require its mass in engines per move.

Thus, an escort would require 150 engines per move. While a destroyer requires 300 engines per move.

So, four engines on an escort (4x150 movement) gives 600 movement points. Since the escort requires 150 engines per move, It ends up with 600/150 = 4 movement points.

On a destroyer those 4 engines & 600 points are divided by 300 engines per move, and 600/300 = 2 movement.

Thus, the destroyer, at twice the mass move at half the speed, using the same number of engines.

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I would like an option to auto-launch space units into orbit, so they don't clutter up my planet & I don't have to micromanage

I would also REALLY like shields to stack properly. Mixing phased and normal should give you TWO separate layers of shields, not one non-phased shield layer

[Miles]

quote:

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Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
'Empire-Wide Go-Juice' facility.

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>Perhaps it takes up 75 Facility slots? That would make it really expensive (ie. cost
>of the sphereworld/ringworld)

That would do nicely. I have only seen facilities use 1 facility slot. If you could enforce this, you could create a 'super-duper' facility and balance the costs and the effects.

Miles

[Sinapus]

Code so that you can make settings in ComponentEnhancement.txt to make heavier armor for various size ships. That would make armor a little more 'sane' IMHO.

Also something so you can make weapon mounts for seeker weapons that affect the seekers.

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--
"What do -you- want?" "I'd like to live -just- long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price. I would look up into your lifeless eyes and wave like this..." *waggle* "...can you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"