SE5, Tell Aaron what's on your Wish List

[deccan]

Note: Sheesh, I started this yesterday, but SJ beat me to it. Anyway, mine is just a list of the suggestions that I really like, so keep that in mind.

Okay, I've gone through the entire thread, and here's my favourites, edited and rewritten in many cases. I've assumed that it's given that SEV will use a real-time, 3-D, tactical combat system. I've left out "obvious", "too much is never enough" demands like greater modability, eye-candy, better sounds, better AI, better multiplayer support etc., some things into which I might to go into greater detail later and technical, behind-the-scenes stuff.

General Gameplay

1) Diplomacy system with greater granularity, mixing and matching specific conditions and rules, and of course, AIs that can understand and work with such a system. (Puke, Phoenix-D, dumbluck, dogscoff )
2) More realistic / sophisticated and less absolute minefields system, that factors in such things as number of ships moving in the mined sector that turn (small, single ships have a chance of slipping through from pure luck), complex characteristics of mines (instead of just damage) etc. (Pax, Imperator Fyron, LGM, Ed Kolis)
3) More realistic / sophisticated trading system with physical trade routes / ships that need to be defended and is linked to resource procurement even within an empire. (Puke, Slick)
4) Also, trade routes should initially cost resouces to set up and return a profit only over time. (Ed Kolis)
5) The ability to analyze units and facilities for tech, not just ships! (Ed Kolis)
6) Me would like the ability to tow bases in system. (Me Loonn, Ares)
7) Retrofitting should take shipyard capacity so that retrofitting is not a loophole past the capacity limit! (LGM, Erax)
8) Ability to change a race's abilities / characteristics through technology. (Some1, Gryphin, clark)
9) Units and facilities should cost maintenance. (LGM)
10) Realistic implmentation of passive / active cloaking and detection. (orev_saara)

User Interface

1) Ability to use mouse-wheel and move windows within the game, more keyboard support / more hotkeys (Gryphin, Loser, TerranC, Andres)
2) 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. (Stone Mill)
3) A list of spotted enemy ships, a way to remember their positions.
i e a foreign ship log, so that you can quickly see incursions and the way they are going. (Ruatha)
4) Editable / savable/ loadable orders for ships with greater detail and control. (Baron Munchausen, Me Loonn)
5) Queues / lists / reports need more sorting options. (Me Loonn, tesco samoa)
6) Search and replace for queues. (minipol)
7) Be able to give the launch order to planets from the colonies list. (rextorres)
8) Lists / queues / reports should remember their position. (minipol, Imperator Fyron, steveo)
9) Using TAB pages like when clickin planet(detail/facil/cargo/ability) on SECTORS too, when sector has more than one planet or whatnot. (Me Loonn)

Ship Modelling / Mechanics

1) The "Lego" ship design model. (Ed Kolis)
2) Percentage-based cloaking ability depending on many factors including cloak ability, enemy sensor ability, distance, ship size, sector-specific features etc. (dumbluck, Arkcon, Rigelian, jimbob, Ares, LGM)

Combat

1) Randomized damage within a range instead of a fixed number, perhaps influenced by partial successes (the die roll barely made it), critical successes (the die roll succeeded by a large margin) etc. Supplemented perhaps by a critical failure system (the die roll failed dismally, increase reload time for this weapon)? (Krsqk, Imperator Fyron, Baron Munchausen, Ragnarok, Rigelian)
2) Editable, independent damage types, shields only, skips armor, damage only to components with a specific flag etc. Might also be conditional, e.g. if shields, then quad-damage to shields, else normal damage to engines only or whatever. (Ed Kolis, Andres, Krsqk)
3) Damage to fighters should be one-hit, one-kill, instead of having damage spill over to the rest of the stack for normal weapons. (Rigelian)
4) Ability to switch from tactical combat to non-animated strategic combat. (TheBlip, Imperator Fyron)
5) Ability to retreat from combat. (Tenryu, Chronon, Jmenschenfresser, atomannj, Noble713, Magnum357)
6) More variation in the 'hit probability profile' of different weapons. (Rigelian)

Tools / Utilities

1) The ability to easily set the game to run for x turns or until some specified condition is reached. (PsychoTechFreak)
2) The ability to save/reload game settings and to regenerate a map on the first turn if you don't like your starting position. (HEMAN, Gryphin)
3) A scenario editor with ability to support pre-scripted events happening when set conditions are achieved. (BadAxe, pmazolo, Noble713)

[ July 03, 2003, 03:35: Message edited by: deccan ]

[deccan]

Some elaborations on the Lego-design model for ships.

I really like this idea. Naturally, it would work best in a 3D, real-time combat system, with limited arcs of fire. A simple way to do this would be like in the MechWarrior game. You have predefined, 3-D mechs (hulls) with predefined component slots. Specific types of components go on specific types of slots. You also need to take into account component tonnage and physical size of the slot. Which component takes damage depends on where you hit the mech and what component is located there.

Perhaps, one way to do this for Space Empires would be to predefine a number of hull types (3-D models with predefined component slots) for each hull size. I believe that the model used in Starfleet Command 3 can be considered as a very simplistic way of doing this.

Some problems that I foresee: however you do it, you'll be deviating from the standard SE totally free-form design philosophy. Some hull types will definitely be superior to others and it would be very difficult to strike a balance amongst the different races. Also, it would take a lot of work to do. I'm willing to live with these limitations, but I'd bet that many are not.

[deccan]

Space Travel

This has been mentioned before, but I really dislike the "warp point" travel system used in SEIV. My reasons:

1) One of the most fun aspects of SEIV I believe is that it provides a generic system that players can mod into their favorite SF universes. However the most popular SF universes (Trek, SW etc.) use an FTL travel system. Even in B5 with warp points created by big ships, it takes time for ships to traverse from point to point.

2) There's no sense of "deep space" in SEIV, everything is so ... local. The game doesn't really capture the sense that outer space is really huge compared with the scale of solar systems. I believe that in-system travel should take next to no time at all, while interstellar travel would be very, very slow.

3) Like other posters have said, it eliminates heavy defenses at warp points.

4) If you like, make things more interesting by incorporating MOO3-style starlanes (perhaps stick with the original MOO3 idea that they should only be very slightly more efficient than regular interstellar travel at first and only gradually improve with better navigation infrastructure at both ends of the starlane) and stargates.

[deccan]

Miscellaneous

Some relatively simple stuff that I haven't seen other people mention:

1) A better resupplying system. Allow supplies to be transferred between ships the way that cargo is transferred. Make a component (Deep Space Refueling System). Give ships equipped with that component a special command that when turned on will make it automatically top off all other non-resupply ships in its fleet.

2) I don't normally have a problem with abstracting supplies to mean both fuel and ammunition in general. I do have a problem with ships with quantum reactors generating missiles and bombs for ships, so perhaps they should really be broken up into two separate areas.

3) Maybe borrow some ideas from MOO3 for formations. Ships should be assigned positions within a specific formation, say, picket, escort, core, vanguard, rear-guard etc. Each formation savefile should save information on how the ships with different assigned positions should be positioned relative to one another in 3-D.

4) In the Ships / Units list, I really hate seeing ships that I have assigned to fleets appear as individual ships. If I've assigned them to a fleet, I manage the fleet as a whole and hate to have to worry about them as individual ships.

5) Make the entire game play in simultaneous mode only. Eliminate the "immediate" mode (or whatever it's called) entirely.

[Loser]

Originally posted by deccan:
5) Make the entire game play in simultaneous mode only. Eliminate the "immediate" mode (or whatever it's called) entirely.

Interesting, but why?

[Fyron]

Originally posted by deccan:

quote:

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Originally posted by Loser:

quote:

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Originally posted by deccan:
5) Make the entire game play in simultaneous mode only. Eliminate the "immediate" mode (or whatever it's called) entirely.

Interesting, but why?

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I think it's the way the game really *ought* to be played. If I play in the "immediate" mode, I can use the attack command on a sector, and if 30 rounds of combat isn't enough, launch enough attack command and so forth with using up movement points. Surely, the designers didn't intend this!

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Surely, they did. Otherwise, it would not have been programmed that way. A lot of people prefer to play the game in Sequential mode instead of Simultaneous. The game caters to both crowds, and is not hurt by it in the slightest.

Space Travel

This has been mentioned before, but I really dislike the "warp point" travel system used in SEIV.

Warp points are what make the game Space Empires. There is almost no chance of them not being used in SE5.

[ July 03, 2003, 19:54: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Ruatha]

I'd like the possibilty to add add-ons like in VGA Planets.
New features (EXE files or DLL files) to the game by indipendant authors.
And then a graphical standard UI to handle it.

[Ed Kolis]

Custom Unit Types
All of the ship and unit types (ship, base, fighter, satellite, etc.) are really defined by a set of attributes or flags - "can move", "can warp", "can be carried as cargo", "launches in Groups", "consumes supplies just by sitting there" etc. So why not allow modders in SE5 to create their own unit types with whatever combinations they want - a fighter that can warp, a ship that consumes supply every turn, drones that launch in Groups, etc. I can try to draw up a complete list of these abilities and which ones are prerequisites or mutually exclusive...

[deccan]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Warp points are what make the game Space Empires. There is almost no chance of them not being used in SE5.

Does StarFury use warp points as well, or aren't you allowed to say?

[deccan]

Originally posted by Loser:

quote:

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Originally posted by deccan:
5) Make the entire game play in simultaneous mode only. Eliminate the "immediate" mode (or whatever it's called) entirely.

Interesting, but why?

---

I think it's the way the game really *ought* to be played. If I play in the "immediate" mode, I can use the attack command on a sector, and if 30 rounds of combat isn't enough, launch enough attack command and so forth with using up movement points. Surely, the designers didn't intend this!