Game improvement ideas

1) Could you add a particular reason why you would like it to be this way?

2) You can mod something similar to this, by causing shields to take 95% damage from weapons, or something similar. However, linear reductions aren't possible for shields so far as I know.

3) Which special weapons do you mean? As far as the X-Only weapons, they are effectively worthless if you must take down the target's shields and armor before they deal damage.

4) This is a modder's choice, and completely possible. In fact, I believe there is a mod out that does just what you want.

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A project a day keeps the deadline away.

Imo you need to look at his 1) and 3) as one thing. Curently shield regens makes "special" weapons almost useless (there is high chance that they will regen bit of shield, so X weapon will shot, but do nothing. With "shield down" condition, there would be bigger window of oportunity.

But imo better change would be, that if weapon would have two condition. One allowing it to fire (eg. target HAS shields, target has engines, ...) and one disaloving (target has shields).

So if you had engines only weapon, it would not fire on ship with shields (but once shields would be 0 it would fire imediately) and it would stop firing after destroying all (or set percentage?) engines.

Sounds like you want weapon class types and weapon fire/no-fire options for combat.

Would be nice to be able to select which weapons you wanted to fire and not fire, would help with the fact your firing weapons that can't hurt shields when the shields are up.

I suppose you could do a weapon class type with the AI tags so certain weapons with their associated stats will only be allowed on certain hull types. This isn't the first time someone has tried to delineate weapon types versus ship hull types.

The ideas sound neat.

About 4.

I can see a few ideas here.
First, such mounts 'doubling' the effect of a ship hull's base defense rating, making smaller ships even harder to hit, while making big things with a defense penalty much easier to hit.

For making it so only PD weapons could shoot at fighters, there could be a new weapon mount called a "Fast Tracking Turret" or something like that. Have some effect like 2x rate of fire, 1/4 damage, +50% accuracy, -20ls range, and adding Fighter, Satellite, Drone and Seeker to the list of what the weapon can target list. On the flip side, toss in a limit of direct fire weapons with a max limit of 40kt and certain weapon categories (High Energy Weapons, for example, generally can't hit units in the first place iirc). This is also because the naturally 'big' weapons would be to big to even attempt to put into a fast moving turret.

The idea of shields reducing damage done to them makes me think of Master of Orion 1&2 (mainly 2).
It placed a need for bombers and heavy fighters equipped with anti-ship capable bombs, as a ship with the best shield type and one of the shield affecting optional equipment (Hard Shields, iirc) could be rendered effectively immune to standard fighter based weapons, and even lesser 'nuclear' bombs.

Other assorted things I can think of.

Some sort of "Impulse Drive" type thing, basically Afterburners for ships, giving them a speed boost in combat, andd maybe also a lesser speed boost to normal movement.

A "Spinal Mount" type weapon mount. They would be fairly big, basically equivilent to a Base weapon mount, except with greater weight increase (extra stabilizers and whatnot since the ship isn't stationary and 'stable' like a base).
Also would be limited to 1 per ship (maybe 2 for Battleships and Dreadnoughts). Would have a limited firing arc, and the ship would have to 'point' itself at the target.
Allows for ships to be made into 'flying guns', sacrificing several smaller guns for a big gun that has much greater damage and better range. Allows for someone who likes smaller ships to be able to put some serious hurt on those who like big ships, without needing their own big ships. It would also allow for a big ship to have some decent chance of slugging it out with a Defense Base.

Mounts for Seeker weapons.
Images come to mind of two warships simply sitting there, tossing huge anti-ship missiles at each other with very long ranges, and also help to counter the fact that quite a few weapons on Sat, Bases and Planets can get range bonuses that allow them to fire far beyond the ranges of ships, including the range of regular missiles.

Another one could be small turreted launchers that have much the same effect as the "Fast Tracking Turret" idea I mentioned, allowing for small anti-fighter style missile batteries that have slightly less range, much less damage and much greater speed.

Defensive Facilities.
I'm not talking WPs, I'm talking facilities, as in big weapon crammed facility, it is a facility and not a unit, so it cannot be transported off planet, and would be able to pack far more weapons than even a large WP can hold, and possibly have its own 'armor' that gives stuff protection even if no extra armor is added into the design.
Some could have special 'built in' weapons not available for ships E.g., a large 'weapon' that is part of the facility, or maybe done in a way that a 'integral weapon' can only be put on that specific facility type, that has 0 weight since they are going to be 'part of' a 1000kt+ facility, have lots of structure so they are not easy to destroy to represent being well armored, and has a limit to how many can fit on the design based on the level of the facility.
One example would be one that fires clusters of long range anti-ship missiles, the higher the level of the facility, the more missils it fires at once.

Another could have a lot of space, but have a requirment of "One really big weapon", either new weapons based on existing ones, or a "Planetary Defense Facility Mount" that makes a Massive Base Mount look a little on the small size.
The 'weight' of the facility would remain the same, no matter how much stuff it was crammed with, since a planet is going to be able to support a massive amount more weight than a ship or station should be able to haul around.

A spinoff of Isopsyco's idea.
Multiple weapon strategies.
Basically, breaking the Target Priority thing into several equal parts. Direct Fire Weapons, Seeker Weapons, Direct Fire Point Defense Weapons, Seeker Point Defense Weapons (which only would iinclude the Bomblet Missile in Stock).
Ships would have another option to set which order of priorities the ship will use when considering movement. It could have the Seeker one as primary, sitting at max range and shooting at big ships, while the other weapons follow their own priorities for whatever else gets into their own range.

For example, being able to designate for a ship with guns to focus on the nearest armed ships, with it also being the main strategy for deciding ship movement, while it's long range seekers can be set to fire on the biggest armed ships in range, and PD weapons (direct fire and seekers) told to shoot at drones, then seekers, and then at other units, so a ship doesn't try to shoot down at a lone fighter while a suicide drone or CSMs are bearing down at it.

I myself would really like an area effect weapon ability that worked off ship/unit size. The bigger the ship, the bigger the chance to hit. Range and damage aside, those can be calculated as wanted.

Mainly, a real point defense is a flak screen, not any particular weapon targeting a fighter, but a wall of bullets. A selectable weapon on / off mode would also be nice: think I'm going to go put that i as a request:)

Personally I automatically mod all "destroys only X" weapons to be able to damage shields while they're still up. That way, whatever spillover damage from a single shot will be applied, making the fast shield regen an irrelevant detail.

But that's me. If you insist upon such weapons being completely ineffective on shields, then you would need a 'shield down' cooldown period. Though how would Crystal Armour work?

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Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

I always wonders why certain weapons would damage shields only or armor only when the end result is damage that is intended to destroy the ship (ostensibly). So if the weapon could damage both shields and armor (which makes perfect sense to me) then shields are just another layer of armor?!

This is already possible in tactical combat with the "fire specific on target" button.

Well I'll be, so they did think of that! I don't play as much as I mod, might be part of my problem in trying to make things work
Guess I'll have to play more....

How about show facilities in the colony list have the facilities sorted and combined "mineral miner x20" instead of 20 lines of mineral miner.

As mentioned in the past, it'd be nice to have a "by weapons" strategy setting. We can make do without it, but it's one of those niceties... probably will need serious coding though - hence, maybe for SE VI.

Anyway, about the Crystal Armour point, I guess it'd just emphasise further the design philosophy of "few shields, thick crystal armour". The lower that cooldown on crystal armour regen, the better. I'd be thinking ~200 shields and enough armour to regen all that in 1 hit.

---Sig---
Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

I´ve been playing the game intermittently since it was out, and in my opinion there are some things the game should

1) Turn processing makes the game unplayable. I yust cant wait 5 minutes for playing next turn.
2) The IA is stupid. Although the mods enhance it, I think it´s too dificult to obtain a challenging IA starting with stock IA, but if you make a simpler game were IA´s dont have to take a miriad of decissions each turn, the IA´s would manage much better and turn processing would take much less time.

I´ve left playing SE5 and retake SE3 were at least playing against all IAs makes the game challenging, and that without any mod installed. Also in SE3 turn processing is near instantly.

I think a game with the graphics and combat style of SE5 and the simplicity and playability of SE3 would be great, once that is obtained, it would be easy to go adding more features for a more complex game (and trying them before implementing). Perhaps for SE6?.

The AI (at least to me) seems to prefer armour over shields. Point for point it does seem to be the better way to go. I'm still experimenting with that idea myself.

Yes, and speaking as an avid Crystallurgy Race, I love that trait (preferring armor over shields).

I've been doing it quite well as an Organic.