Space Empires V and VI: Expansions and the Future: Tell the Company What's on Your Wish List

Most of the above it up to you...the community to develop and release. That is why the game is so moddable. If you have an idea and you want to see it come to light, then go out and make it.
MM have made the building blocks...it's up to us to put it together.

Ok, those last few points in this post...you're talking about fundamentally changing the format of the game from Space Empires...to something that isn't Space Empires.

From you're posts (too many IMHO) it sounds like you've got a lot of idea's rattling around in your head, some of which sound good. If you ever want to play those ideas for real then you are the one who's going to have to put them together. Learn how to mod the space empires game, or better still learn how to program and create a completly new game around your vision.

They will most likely release only the basic game and then move on to different ideas and leave the expansions to us.

All i'm saying is don't feel dissappointed when the company doesn't make any of the suggestions you've posted a reality. Because more likely than not, they won't.

Someone been keeping their eye on Spore?

I would like to see the placement of the components on the ship be more important that it is now. For example, if you place a component in the middle section and in an interior slot, it would be more protected that if it was place on the upper level in an outer slot. Also, make it where weapons have to be placed in outer slots to be able to fire.

I would also like to make it where you had the option to place a satellite or space station in fixed position or actually have it orbit the planet.

One thing that I really think should be added before the game is published is the Tactical Combat Option Window. It needs to contain more information on the battle. It should at a min show how many ships are involved on each side. It should also show if it’s around a planet.

SPACE MONSTERS!!! And don't cheese out and just make them another npc race, make them like in Master of Orion, where they enter the galaxy and wander through the stars, attacking randomly until someone hunts it down and destroys it. Make the monsters very interesting and lots of variation on size and power.

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All that is done before the naked stars is remembered

Something might be possible with the 'events' feature. Might require a bit of scripting, but it wouldn't have to be too elaborate.

MOO had a very simple design for space monsters:
Create ship at x,y with target z1 (throw in a rule that makes x,y coord long enough to make it take 2-5 turns to get there)
If ship wins, wait random 2 - 5 turns then target z2
Repeat until ship dies

What's more is that MOO only had about 2 or 3 different space monsters, with the SEV engine you could have thousands. One's that level up (only on creation) with their intended target using tech lvl+10 or something.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

I wish MM would fix all the bugs with SEV. That's what I wish for.

What I'm missing in the Demo are some Planetary extras like Alien Artifacts (giving research Boost or opening up a new tech branch), minor races (giving a bonus to whatever is appropiate - envisioning my mindbender race to grow their own bulrathi type forces) or even discovering some ancient high-level nemesis (B5 Shadows anyone ?)...

Balancing these things (meeting the Shadows on turn 1 spells certain doom) could be the option to scan a planet before colonizing it - should take a few turns on low level and give more info with better scanners.

Considering scanners - I think they work much too fast. See a planet on the map and bingo - I got everything from type and size to atmosphere, conditions and even resources. IMO "scanning" planets should be made active (upgrading the explore command to include scanning planets) and should take a while. Colonize a planet without scanning - no problem, but then you could be stuck on a lifeless moon.

Multidimensionality - since the early Games like Master of Magic I loved the concept of some parallel dimension able to cross over to ours. The other dimension could have some requirements to start there (e.g. crystal tech or organic) and should have some very different properties to "normal" space(like "normal" engines don't work as well as in normal space, shields don't work, scanners are less effective) Crossing over should be done via a few special wormholes at the start, later you could build your own (or stop others from doing so)

Something that seems to need a little tweaking:

How does population affect planetary construction levels ? IMO it should affect everything including research, intelligence mining and production but e.g. research centers are working at 100% even when the planet is barely populated.

Ive always thought a spore-esque design is the future, I mean ships are designed around their guns and engines, not vice versa.

Combine a simple mod that makes homeworlds heavily defended and...

I don't like the idea about the scanners though, computer AI intrinsically knows the layout of the galaxy from the start as it requires that information to function. Forcing players to scan before colonising would slow the players down even more compared to AI players.

I'm just hoping that manouvering thrusters make it into SEV from Star Fury.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

Oh my brain has managed to put some practicality in this spore->ships idea...so here goes

You get your normal SEV hulls researched, and this will give your basic ship shapes. This will also give you a number of points to spend on the hull shape & size (increases with tech level).
The points will get translated to volume.

In the design window, you will need a full rotational engine so you can work in 3d. You will have the basic shape, say frigate. But you will only see a flat-shaded wireframe view with a 'skeleton'. This skeleton will be the vertexes, but much more visible.

You'd be able to pull/push/move these vertexes around, all the time the design window will calculate the volume of the ship and adjust the points you have available.

That deals with the ships shape.
Now the componants will be more varied in size&shape, not your standard square. An engine would take up 1/2 a ship or something. Mounts would 'clip on' to componants and again increase their size.

Tonnage would be a thing of the past, you would have to think spatially to create your ship.

Some people out there would like to see that implemented, but the majority wouldn't simply because of the complexity of designing something in 3 dimensions. You would need a very very simple 3d editor in-built, like spore incorporates. Something like that would need to be built from the ground up, not an easy task by any means!

My opinion on this whole matter is stick with what we've got. It's miles better than SEV and any more would be greedy (for now, wait a few years then move on to the next step).

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

Think of the system resources(for the computer) it would require to have a unique map for every planet especially in a huge map with all those planets.
It would make more sense to have a few templates for the planets, maybe based on the planets size and type.
That way you would get a variety planet maps without using a lot of computer resources.

I've played a game somewhat like Space Empires, although im not sure which it was i didnt play long before returning to SE III and SE IV that had an option to automatically run the game 20, 30, 50 turns or whatever you chose ahead. it was an option you could choose to take, of course that come with its own inherrent dangers. But ive been wondering if there would be a way to mod that sort of thing or patch that sort of thing into the game.

I think i liked the old SE III way of handling colonies, where you could set the production output of the planet by percentages, for example 75% output made the planet happy because they didnt have to work so hard and 125% would piss mthem off so to speak plus other colony specific options. Id like to see something like that brought back.

*EDIT*

I also seem to remember setting a lower production output also increased reproduction, nothing else to do i guess lol

The changes I would like to see are:

1) Different color range rings for Missiles, Guns, and PD in tactical combat.

2) Different color sensor range indicator for cloaked vs. regular (red- can't see, yellow - can see un-cloaked, green - can see everything)

3) Much faster turn processing by eliminating the animated ship movement.

4) Cleaned up and optimized UI

On any screen where you are looking at a planet's details can you please place a next and previous button to cycle through the planets so you don't have to back out and drill back down for each planet?

On the Construction Que list where you show the list of the all the planet's construction ques, can you put a button to put all construction on Hold and one to turn them all back on again. It a 3 steep process to turn a planet's que off or back on and when you want to do it to all of them it takes forever.

On all of the layouts where you can customize what information you want to view, a option for Facilities needs to be added. Often I want to reduce my research and increase resources and I need to find a planet that has a research facility I can destroy but also has the type of resource I'm looking for. This option would make it a lot easier.

I agree. the other thing that needs to be added to all custom layouts is system name where the item is.

I never liked that concept of the nebula surrounding a planet like on BSG. It's ignoring the rules of gravity. In reality that planet would have pulled in all the surrounding gas and compressed it to a pressure value that is directly related to the planets mass (eg, earth pressurizes gas at 1 ATM).

To add to that the absense of a star would make that planet extremely cold, so the gases would naturally cool to liquid/solid with reletivly little pressure needed.

Nah, i don't like the idea of nebulas around planets.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

This can be simulated with a facility on each planet that increases population growth. The AIC mod in SEIV has a component that simulates this by adding to the population each turn on the planet it is constructed. similiar to a starport. in your case just call it a stargate and give it the ability to increase planet population x amount each turn.

Two things to remember about scanning.

1st is the time scale of the game, Each turn is 1/10 of a year, so you are actually spending quite a bit of time each turn doing things. You can learn a lot of things about a planet it that time. maybe not everything that is shown to us but quite a lot.

2nd is even with todays "primitive" technology we can learn a lot about the other planets in our system and even a little about those nearby to ours. visual inspection alone will reveal the existance of flora and fauna on a planet. does it have water (ok so mars was a bit of a problem for us). we can determine basic atmospheric conditions (gee is that giant red spot on jupiter a storm?). doing a scan of the other spectrums allows us to determine basic composition of the atmosphere, if any, of planets.

so taking into account good old science fiction the ability of the scanners to give data at a distance is valid. "coming into system captian. Sensors indicate the third planet of this system is class m with an oxygen nitrogen atmosphere similiar to earths......"

I just came across a section of space, and my ship could see a few blue nebula clouds.

I immediately knew there was nothing of interest in the solar system, and went on to the nearest warp point without further exploration.

Modding in a second nebula solar system with some valuable planet seems like a good idea to me. Maybe one in five nebulas has a planet or something.

Same thing with those plain asteroid belts.

I've thought myself this would be a cool idea, both in games like Stars! as well as SE. It should definitely be a late-game development, and planet movement should be very slow (maybe take 10 turns or so to move a planet one sector?). But in the end, I can't think of any real strategic uses for it.

I think rather, I'd just like to see the planets move by themselves to orbit around their planets. Again, very very slowly, and somewhat "random" - i.e. maybe one sector every 10-50 turns or so (so all the planets don't move at the same time), depending on how far away from their star they are.

I'd argue that things are already nearly like that:
- Ancient ruins on a planet (sorry, haven't played enough of SEV to know if it still has this concept) give you a surprise tech advance, or some such thing.
- Entering a new star system is blank until you fly around and scan it out, revealing...surprise! Planets, nebulae, etc.

I personally like the idea of either random monsters to be found/encountered and/or rogue fleets of a strange enemy that wander around messing things up.

And of course, the odds of encountering such baddies should increase along with your current ranking in the game (i.e. the 1st place player should encounter slightly more frequently than the last-place player)

Gal Civ did this pretty well. You could investigate anonmalies with a survey ship and receive tech upgrades, new complete ships, or release space monsters.

Simply fleet maneuvers, handeling, and for that matter building based on manpower as well as money/industry. If you can't get enough men to man the vessel it isn't getting built/finished. Fleet sizes limited to the capabilities of Admirals, etc.....

A planet being hidden inside a storm cloud/nebula sounds very interesting.
It might also give us something to look for that requires more than just basic sensors.
As well as a planet that might be hard for an enemy to detect.

It is true that a large or huge planet in a small to medium nebula would probably destroy the nebula, however some nebulas can span several light years and in that case it is possible to have a planet inside. We have even detected young stars inside of some nebulas so while it would probably be rare it could happen.
A planet inbedded in a large nebula would have a cleared zone around the planet. The size of the zone would depend on the size of the planet.

Do like they did in startrek, park a few planets in a giant plasma storm. You could even call it The Badlands if you want to but, but that is niether her nor there.

As far as nebula systems, they arent worhtless. I play the game very zenophobic. I I secure my self inside about 12 or so systems, make myself a few sphereworlds. and setup System Grav Sheilds and then use those worthless systems as staging areas for my fleets. I usually have a few transports full of population waiting to colonize planets outside the safe "core worlds" so to speak, and an opaque nebula makes the perfect staging area.
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Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum
Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe.

Suggestions for SE VI?

- Ships/weapons actually haveing fire axes. Being able to restrict weapon fire is an important tactical factor.

- Simplified ground combat. When there are 100 planets ut there, capturing them while playing a C&C clone is not fun. Look at how Master of Orion 3 did their planet takeovers. It's tactical, it's simple and taking a planet takes time (like it really should. We're talking about billions of potential guerilla soldiers)

- limit on the uber tech. Nothing ruins my Sci-fi experience as god-like tech that's total rubbish. Blasting a sun or creating a planet?
If you turned every atom on Earth into pure energy that wouldn't be even nearly enough for the task. Stay more down to earth. Big ships...big explosions.

More stuff..once I think of htem

You just have to make it go nova. And that's actually not that hard to do, relatively speaking. Probably easier than blowing apart a planet directly..

In terms of physics, it's a hell of a lot harder to destroy a star than it is to destroy a planet. The energy difference alone between the two is trillions upon trillions. In fact, it would be easier to just push a planet into a star.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

it just seems like a star is an explosion waiting to happen, that it should be fairly easy, relatively speaking(i am taking about a space faring race here) to disrupt the stability of the star enough to let it blow itself up, as opposed to actually causing a planet to blow up, well, that is to say expell enough matter and energy to, at the very least, vaporize the atmo of anything in the solar system and sear the surface clean of any life on it, boil the oceans, all that wonderful apocalyptical stuff. Not actually blow the star apart, as in nothing left but some space dust
especially, i would think, to cause one star become unstable, than say wipe out all of the planets residing in a solar system, like the 9 or 11, or however many they count now, in our own solar system..

but i freely admit i aren't no scientist, much less have i done extensive research in solar system scale genocide.

It's interesting that you should mention that a star is an explosion waiting to happen. You're not far off the mark. A star is actually kinda 1/2 way between an explosion and an implosion. The fusion causes the expansion and the mass causes the contraction.

If you introduce a large heavy mass to a star it would turn into a dwarf.
But if you removed a large mass from it it'll nova.

In either case, to move mass you need energy and to move enough to do either of those things to a star you need a crap load of energy.

In fact, stargate hit the nail right on the head when Carter blew up that star. They sent an open stargate into a star, and the address they dialed was to a black hole. The stargate sucked the matter away from the star, greatly reducing it mass (and therefore gravity) enough for the fusion energy to cause the star to nova.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

"...when Carter blew up that star"

Oh, Amanda, we're gonna miss you on Firday nights.

it just seems that such a violent, complex reaction should naturally be unstable, and that being stable,(again, relatively speaking, we do have our solar flares and what not don't we) not take a whole lot to throw it out of whack, which may infact be the truth, but i fully appreciate that just because you disrupted a stars stability doesn't mean BOOM, super nova.

Perhaps a poor analogy here, but I guess its like how most people simply expect a car to explode when the gas tank is shot, when the reality is it just springs a leak(thank you myth busters).

I think a good space game would consider real life stuff. Have it were, depending on your location in the universe, have mods for speed and point generation (relativity stuff)! Instead of warp-points, hyperdrive and temporary warm-holes! Multi-Atmosphere gases, and include magma and water planets. Have more realistic systems like the ones in real life. Non-inteligent alein life forms.

Oh and maybe be able to add ship parts to custom ships like in Gal. Civ.

And about a dozen other things...

I have to admit, G.Civ II got that right. The ability to design your own ships, in game, invcluding the graphics, is COOL.

The only problem is, there were WAY to many components without any kind of sort list except if they were "your" type or not, and not enough components to always let you find what you were looking for.

There are 10 types of people in the world:

Those that understand binary, and those that don't.

For Spaceempire6. The population needs to eat. Can only be produced in homeworld planet types. You can name your food, so each race have different food. Then you can trade with them. You will also have to supply ships with food. So your ship will not end in space with dead crews. Disappear from view after a few turns of no food (lost contact). That means make crew quarters like population cargo bays. Will need to put population in ships for it be operational.

This is my first post. Sorry if i make mistakes.

There is organics consumption by population in SE:V already.

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Space Empires Depot | Space Food Empires!

I did not notice this, thanks.

the Star is actualyl quite sstalbe. It's basicly a frekin huge nuclear ractor. It will take approx 5 billion years for our sun to die (and it will swallow Earth in doing so).

What bugs me is that due to very bad sci-fi shows and "documentary" shows 8which have very little in common with common sense) a lot of people belive a lot of silly stuff...
Like a katana cutting trough armor or anything else for that matter.. and imilary, that it's easy to blow up a star.

It's a simple thing - the law of action and reaction. You want to sun to go boom, therby you want to trigger the greatest release of energy in known universe (it's so big no one even calculated it as far as I know). And for that you have to spend a relativly equal ammount of energy.

Given that if you used all planets of the solar system for fuel in a uber-rector you SILL wouldn't have enough energy.

You could chuck all the planets of the Solar system into the Sun and it would barely notice it.

Most people cannot even phantom the sheer redicolousness of how uberly, extreemly, impossibly colossal energy requirements that would require.

Any civilization that could create black holes or supernovas or temporal shifts would have to have ways of producing power that are simply impossible to achive.

Immagine what would our wold be like if everyone had a power cell in their cell phone that has as much powers a a nuclear power plant? I don't think we would live to see the next day...

just to clarify, noone said, or atleast really meant, "easy to blow up a star", just easier than other things.

i won't argue the bad sci fi's, if i hear someone solve a problem again by reversing the polarity of the flux capacitors, or inverting the harmonic resonaince frequency, i'm gonna rip my hair out.

I am however reminded of the story of why the nazi's were unable to make the nuclear bomb, their scientists were operating on a misconception that it would require a ridiculous amount of uranium to achieve the explosion, its been awhile, but i believe their designs called for every neutron to collide, when in reality only a few had to in order for the reaction to start, which resulted in a much more manageable amount of nuclear material.(wonders if homeland security is now going to start monitoring these boards)

If scientists knew everything, there'd be no need for them, and the world, especially the literary one, would be a very boring place.

I don't totally agree with TrashMan's comments. To me this is an issue of stability. Currently our sun is maintaning a stable fussion reaction steadily producing Helium from Hydrogen and releasing energy in the process. If any perturbation occurs that speeds up or slows down this reaction, the reaction will return to it's original rate once the perturbation is removed.

However, with a sufficiently large perturbation, a bifurcation point could be attained where the reaction speeds up significantly resulting in an explosive reaction and a supernova. Take a nuclear reactor for example. Normally it runs at a slow stable rate producing a steady stream of power. However, remove enough control rods and the reaction rapidly speeds out of control producing more of a nuclear bomb instead of a reactor.

The whole concept of each action producing an equal and opposite reaction only applies to newtonian physics which is based on a linear equation F = ma. The reactions taking place inside the sun are quite nonlinear and far more challenging to predict the behavior of. With that said, I would not go so far as to say blowing up a star is easy, just not as challenging as TrashMan is implying.

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The goggles... they do nothing!

They did it in stargate. But even they had to connect the star with an existing black hole.
Lets forget the inherent impossibility of the stargate itself lol. Definitely not an easy thing to do.
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Interdum feror cupidine partium magnarum Europae vincendarum
Sometimes I get this urge to conquer large parts of Europe.

See the bolded part? You have to ask yourself what is a sufficiently large perturbation for a Sun?
A solar flare is 100 larger then Earth and it is considered a minor turbulence.
In theroy, everything IS possible...even if the probablity is 1: 100^100^100^100.
For any race to produce so much energy would be ludicorous.. even if it could be done it would be a massive waste of resources..

Ahh... but the Black hole is the only phenomena in space that can rival a supernova. Using it's energy to trigger a supernova might work, but the stargate bit is iffy.

First how do you open a portal to the inside of the sun (who placed the other gateway on the sun?)
Secondly, can a portal even be opened, given the conditions inside hte sun and the black hole?
Wouldn't the HUGE gravity well interfere with everything in unpredictable ways? Wouldn' it suck in the gateway itself?

that's all assuming that you cna open such a portal in the first place. A wormhole might do the trick, but then again, to open one you'd need roughly the same energy as a supernova....oh, and two polarized plates the size of Earth...

...And one squeeze of lime juice. And a wrench.

The Kardashev Scale is a general method of classifying how technologically advanced a civilization is, first proposed in 1964 by the Russian astronomer Nikolai Kardashev. It has three categories, based on the amount of usable energy a civilization has at its disposal and increasing logarithmically:

Type 0 Development of Civilization

0.25 (3 108 W) Roman Civilization
0.50 (1011 W) Industrial Revolution
0.60 (1012 W) 1891 to 1938 technological expansion
0.70 (1013 W) c. 2000: Nuclear Weapons and Fission Power (The Earth - 2006 A.D.)
0.80 (1014 W) Fusion power
0.90 (1015 W) Space elevators, the creation of an Ecumenopolis (a continuous world-wide city)
Type 0 to Type I transition

Type I — A civilization that is able to harness all of the power available on a single planet, approximately 1016 W. (W is its power output in watts)

Type I Single Planetary Civilization
Near space colonization, Near space industry,
Asteroid Mining, Planet Mining for fuels and energy.
A Type I Civilization has which has enough energy to modify the weather.
So They have enough energy to alter the course of earthquakes, volcanoes, and build cities on their oceans.
First Interstellar travel
Increasing levels of technology, Increasing levels of space exploration, space based energy sources increase, offworld civilization centers increase, increasing energy usage, increasing area of habitation

Type II — A civilization that is able to harness all of the power available from a single star, approximately 1026 W.
Type II Civilization has extended to the entire Solar System
Dyson Sphere completion (actually a Dyson Shell),
Exploration and Colonization of nearby star systems.
Active SETI programs.
Star Lifting (removing a substantial portion of a star's matter in a controlled manner for other uses) and
Shkadov thrusters (a type of stellar engine which is a class of hypothetical megastructes which use a star's radiation to create usable energy. Some variants use this energy to produce thrust, and thus accelerate a star, and anything orbiting it in a given direction),
Planck scale particle accelerators.
Automated galactic or intergalactic colonization effort may begin using von Neumann probes (self-replicating spacecraft used for exploration).
Increasing levels of technology, Exponential growth in stars that are colonized, centralized systems increasingly draw resources from further systems which have not had their resources harvested–– driving increased expansion.

Type III — A civilization that is able to harness all of the power available from a single galaxy, approximately 1036 W.
Type III Colonization of the Milky Way Galaxy has completed
(Continued) colonization of nearby galaxies.
Highly hypothetical at this point, there are no proposals for this or higher levels.
Increasing levels of technology, centralized systems increasingly draw resources from further systems which have not had their resources harvested –– driving increased expansion.

Type IV - This is 1046W; within a few orders of magnitude of the energy output of the visible Universe.
Such a civilization approaches or surpasses the limits of speculation based on current scientific understanding,
and may not be possible.
However, it has argued that "Type IV" should instead be used to refer to a civilization that has harnessed the power of its supercluster, or the "the largest gravitationally bound structure it originated in".
For the Local Supercluster, this would be approximately 1042 W.
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As you can see from this excerpt this game takes us from a Type 1 thru a Type 2 with the goal of controling the galaxy which is well on the way to being a Type 3 Civilization.
Which as a Type 2 Civilization, it would be very possible to move a star or even to destroy a star.
We would find it hard to imagine what a late stage Type 2(or even a early stage Type 2) would be capable of.
Let alone a Type 3.

If you don't mind me saying but that list is as usefull and "real" as my imagginary friend her.. What do you mena you don't see him???

You could have as well quoted some sci-fi author or some doomsday sect leader and their quotes would be equally close to hte truth as that.

And Dyson Spheres? Phuulease.....

???? Is it juse me or should you be able to get a LOT more power from a sun than from a planet??? The difference here is pathetic.

There's supposed to be a ^ in between there.
As in, 10^16 watts, and 10^26 watts.

If you want real you need to throw out the entire game, because the realistic proposition is ships moving at 4g acceleration, at best, and limited to a single solar system.

Just thought I would throw some "real science" into this for information, not that I think the game should be changed.
But it does bring up some interesting ideas like the idea of moving a star along with it's solar system.

Not really. There is a difference between something that's achivable in the (relativly) near future and something that0s highly unlikely to be ever achived.

Scine rarely say that0s something is impossible - even something with a 0.00000000000000000000000 *continue for several pages* 00001% probablity still Is possible, altogh HIGHLY unlikely (to put it mildly)

So things like blowing up stars, making Dyson spheres, creating black holes, mind-reading a completely different race and similar things are as mcuh likely to happen as as a wolf asking you to direcons for grandma's house.

Colonization and future space combat are however, highly likely.
We do not know exactly what form it will take, but there are a dozen theories for FTL travel allready. My best bet is that it will be done trough wormholes, as other types require a friggin huge ammount of energy, however, who know....

B.t.w. - I don't recall ever finding any numbers of the sun's energy output. I wonder where he got his?

All the FTL proposals I've seen involve negative energy, ridiclous amounts of "regular" energy, or both. And by ridiclous I mean "supernova looks like a wet fart" ridiclous. Oh, and FTL inherently involves time travel, to boot..

Any way of FTL travel will without a doubt require a friggin lot of energy. However, supernova or planet grade? Many woul require that much energy but some (in theiry) shouldn't - altough it's still huge.

FTL doens't inherently involve time travle, b.t.w.
Most new drive theories play with the notion of not travling trough normal space.

IF wormholes or subspace inherently exists in the universe, they are the most probable way ot travling.

I think my favourite explanation of FTL travel was from Event Horizon where he folds a sheet of paper and drives the pencil through it.
Works for me... just need to find a way to stop all the death doom and destruction that follows >_Space Empires 4 Mod Launcher V2.26

"Subspace" is a math term, borrowed by scifi because it sounds cool.
A Subspace is a notion similar to a subset.

I agree with Phoenix-D's wet fart analogy. Distorting space so severely as to bring two extremely remote points together might entail something like vaporization of an entire galaxy into it's componant energy. That might distort a chuck of space within it's confines enough to bring two distant points together. Briefly.

LOL. I now officially declare this thread hijacked.

It seems to me like we should start a whole new thread called "The science and fiction of space empires" and go to town arguing about what science fiction concepts are and are not feasible.

That said, I think it is hard for us to imagine what will be possible 100 years from now let alone 1000 years from now. Think about computers for example... construction on such a small scale must have seemed downright impossible to poeple who lived 1000 years ago... who knows what will be possible in the future. Our physics of today is by no means definative. Any physicist you speak to will admit there's still much in this universe we don't know and our models can't explain.

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The goggles... they do nothing!

1. Random wandering monsters, that appear and wreak havok with the races they encounter. Not a hack like a custom race, but a true random wandering monster, please see MOO 2 for inspiration.

2. Exploration more interesting. This makes scouting half the fun of the game now, instead of just a bothersome chore that the computer does better than you. You can find abandoned ships, rare asteroids (give a one time BIG bonus in one of the ore types), you can find strange artifacts that you can put on ships, ect... Only limited by imagination. One fun idea would be a mini-quest concept for the ship, like a choose-your-own-adventure book, you pick a series of actions once you detect something strange on a planet, which determines the outcome.

3. I always liked the second level to MOO2 with the extra-dimensional super-aliens that you could defeat as an alternate way to win the game. Like in MOO, by the time you have an uber-fleet built that can do the job, it could also stomp across the galaxy and pretty much flatten everyone else as well. The tricky bit will be when several races all develop their Antarian killer fleets at the same time, and begin sniping at each other to wittle down the other guy's fleet.

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All that is done before the naked stars is remembered

Partially true. While it is difficult to predict the future, we now have the scientific method and we can tell about SOME things with reasonable certanty that they will or will not be possible.

Even assuming a 100% efficient matter-to-energy conversion, humanity couldn't produce enough power to blow up a star....

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On TOPIC: I like those proposals. Indeeed MOO2 and MOO3 all had some excellent ideas that should have been considered more carefully.

Alright for me there are only 2 things I want to see in an expansion. I want complete neo-standard shipsets for all races that were in SE4+Sithrak and Race portraits, and Space Monsters that grow as they eat planets, ships, sun, etc. I would pay good money for an expansion with all of those included.

Crews treated sort of like cargo in that they can be removed from ships and added to other ships.

I have a small fleet of destroyers and frigates which are highly trained, but, now I have a very nice cruiser, I would like to be able to transfer 3 of the frigates Elite crews to the cruiser (which is needed somewhere quickly and doesn't have time to train) and split the 150 green crew currently on the cruiser between the frigates.

Might not be as difficult as everyone seems to think.

Item 1. Not all things are quite equal. Gravity is a lot weaker than any other force, so much so that all the mass of the earth can't stop you from lifting objects off the ground.

Item 2. The amount of energy bound up in matter is enormous. A nuclear explosion only converts a few grams into energy, but can destroy a city. The release of the energy in a 150 pound person would probaby crack the planet open (or at least make a crater the size of north america)

Still would take a lot of mass (haven't calculated it, but possiblly in the lunar to earth mass range, definately below jovian mass range)

The above does not take into account the possibility of zero-point energy (which is based on quantum fluctuations). There are scientists who believe that there is enough energy chained in a cubic centimeter to boil away earth's oceans (for a story with zero point energy use see Arthur Clarke's 3001, which mentions the complete destruction of a solar system, btw).

On Topic: would love to see 1. weapon arcs.
2. space monsters.
3. ai capable of intelligently using stellar amnipulation, the wife and I are currently locked in a war of galactic annihilation and sterilization

All right, I want to say something about the impossibility of blowing up a star.
Firstly, a millenia ago there was no way imaginable to keep lights on in the homes of thousands of people constantly, but here we are today with lightbulbs.

By the methods of today, and any comparable method of the future, blowing up a star is nearly impossible, and definitely impractical. But remember, we can't begin to imagine the new methods of doing things that might be discovered in the future. For all we know, the are of Stellar Manipulation uses a (by that time) simple field effect to destabilize matter-matter reactions.

-----Entering The Topic-----

More complex things similar to drones, but what I would call probes. They are given a specific, long term task that they go and do until ordered to return or dead. For example, you could make survey probes that are cheaper to maintain and do survey work that your full starships won't have to.

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With all these people, you would expect one of them to carry an iguana around...

heh.

Gizmos gizmos gizmos.

This is all well and nice if the game has only human players.

But wake up, the game is mostly played in single player.

I'd like to see large scripting work on the AI, make it have pre-designed shiptypes to use , and make sure you simplify the AI's tasks a -lot-
It doesn't understand to use treaties, it has no clue what supply is most of the time.
It doesn't understand formations and probably never will.
Remove its abilities to use most diplomatic options, exept the basics.

Also formations are mostly useless anyway., I can't find a single formation worth using, but I have to use em cause I have to put ships in manageble fleets.

And despit having a gazillion useless commands in the interface, where is my ALL FORWARD, ALL HALT , ALL ENGAGE , ALL RETREAT buttons, cheesus, without the simple mechanics added, how can you proceed to the more advanced.

With regards

janster

id like to see tactical combat in multi-player kinda like MOO style.

1) A race of monkeys, whose sole weapon technology revolves around their poop.

2) Super-Duper Universe Technology which allows you to build a miniture universe with little itty bitty people that act like the characters in the Sims, or possibly act like that miniature culture that Lisa in The Simpsons created with her tooth.

3) Intelligence mission that steals the mascott of other empires, which would cause their happiness to go down.

4) Trans-gender Technology which increases happiness, but decreases loyalty of the people.

I would settle for SE VI, the AI mod.

Features a wast AI to challenge our every desire.

One that will kick our asses and show us what its all about.

One that will field massive fleets and do coordinated invasion of our systems, one that will use smart shipdesigns to waste us just that extra bit more.

Heck, atm I'd settle for a cheating AI that actually just sends ships at me.

Janster

Correct me if I am totally off beam here, but isn't this a forum for a science fiction game about interstellar empires?

Surely the *best* resource to consult is science fiction, instead of demented speculations about the energy needed in existing systems of physics needed to obliterate suns or planets. Can't we just sweep this all under the veil of some future technological singularity and get back to talking about what cool stuff (tm!) we want in SEV (or VI) instead of ragging on poor old Soviet futurists?

Sheesh.

P.S. I want more complex ground combat, ala MOO3, like someone else suggested. Planetary takeovers should be worthwhile and take a while.

I also think, unlike some others on the forums, that MOO3 combat sensor ranges were quite neat. I'd like to have a more complex sensor/anti-sensor system that places more importance on combat level detection, as well as the existing sector level detection. The futuretech equivalents of ECM and ECCM if you will.

I'd *also* like some kind of fundamental changes in technology to occur, perhaps triggered by ruins or something, representing massive increases in available technology so there is a difference between tech level that is more than "my AP beam has longer range than yours" (for example: the Festival's 'Bouncers' vs. the New Republic's 'Lord Vanek' from Stross' "Singularity Sky").

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Trithemius

What about Warp Engines? I'd like to see warp engines that allow ships to open their own warp points and go where they want to. Something for late in a game so that people can get from one side of the galaxy to the other quickly. Granted there are warp point makers that allow for longer warp travel but it would be nice to have ships c