Master Wishlist Thread

[lancer]

Pirate Alliance

An additional spy mission, "Negotiate Secret Pirate Alliance".

If successful it enables you to 'gift' ships to a pirate faction and specify a target.

If unsuccessful your dark deeds are revealed and you suffer a big reputational hit.

Idea being to enable you to wage a 'behind-the-scenes' proxy war against an AI empires' trade and resources.

You can do this already by paying them to attack a particular empire but this enables you to beef them up with more firepower and turn them into a bigger threat.

Fine tuning the concept could be the bigger your 'gift' (eg. the total combat power of the ships you are handing over) the higher the difficulty of the mission.

Also, to be fair, the AI - particulary sneaky ones - could use this tactic against you.

A side-effect would be to make pirates a potentially bigger problem than before, especially mid to late game, particulary if they had a large client state backing them.


Cheers,

Lancer

[Data]

Corsair stuff, me like it, you can use it to decimate AI ships without going to war with them - no rep hit should be taken if you destroy an AI ship under pirate flag.

[J HG T]

Nice one lancer.

Though, have to say that this could be done in "normal" diplomacy by giving the player and AIs an option to gift ships to other empires (been requested for some time). Also, being able to request AI empire to attack other even when you aren't in war/have trade sanctions with them would be handy. Currently you can only request AI empire to attack other one only when you are at war with the one you want your "ally" to attack. Same with trade sanctions. These request should, of course, be VERY hard to make so player couldn't exploit them by spamming them on all AI empires.

[cookie monster]

A target direction arrow for the ship when selected.

Its hard to know quickly where the ship is going, unless you look for direction and system name.

It's probably already been wishlisted.

[Data]

It has but it's good you brought it up again, we should put this on the poll as well and I think it would skyrocket to the top. It's small but very important.
Even if this is not implemented a search system to quickly locate any object in the game would be nice also. This could be harder as there are tons of objects in this game [:)]

[Lord_Astraios]

Here is a mix of wish list for me. And in between something about modding too.

1: EVENTS - As we do have our storyline when choose to have it or not but also have other random stories in between, like getting in to a planet or star system triggers a series of events , but also something modable, probably when the system and the scripts are implemented to be able to edit them, or preferably add them. Since i have a science fiction story im making and it would do great if i created something playable in this game.

2: MODDING SYSTEM - I dont know if this can be done but probably an idea for the next expansion, and i know little by little scripts has been made available in patches but my issue is that i want to maintain the same ship sets and same graphics as it came when i bought the game. But the capacity to add and not to replace.

3: EMPIRE SETTINGS AND AUTOMATION - We do have the system but as i recall, and thats why i never use the Empire settings but the ability to add custom values, like for example, the automatic tax change if you select low,

medium, or high on the growth of the planet but the High setting doesnt show what percentage, so we could have something like 3 or 4 options like "at 3 million people will set the tax to 20%" As an example.

4: PLANET OPTIONS - Is mostly to have few more options, like to have controlled ship so we can move people to one place to another, like evacuation if something is coming at your way, or abandon a planet.

More facilities.

5: MORE SHIP FEATURES - Capturing ships, crew on ships. In space empires 4 and 5 they do have that system, a set of crew, a "module subsystem" but not something you use to attack or gets damaged but it gives you 200 crew, also you get to have a command bridge or a master computer, as the computer gives you an advantage, you dont get captured, self destruct module works 75% chance when the ships gets capture and it explodes.


6: PIRATES AND SPACE CREATURES - More varied, Pirates to be more stronger over time, not only one station and a set of ships. Get them to have planets, more bases and stronger, make them grown but 50% less of the speed of a regular empire and less also than a independent colony or also giving them money to boost them up. Where there are more corruption, pirates will find their heaven. Like growth speed example... 100% <Normal speed> for Normal Empires - 50% for independent colonies and they become empires if set - 25% to 5% growth to pirate.

7: MODDING OPTIONS - few more things to have if possible, i mentioned bofore the story, but also scripting of the weapons and making new weapons with new graphics, directional beam weapons like this mentioned above in one of the posts, create new tech or tech tree with new graphics...

About the beam weapons...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVa_M6-iZws

In the editor to have a command system or something to be able to do few details... i havent through on everything but a command to clear all systems from the editor.

Just an idea splatter. [:'(]
[:'(]

[lancer]

[copied from the GeneralForum]

Leader Ideas

Having Leaders to provide further immersion of Distant Worlds living, breathing environment would be terrific. After thinking about it for a while I’ve found that it’s surprisingly difficult to rough out a working implementation.

Leaders could be done in all sorts of ways but once you start looking at the implication of doing this or that you can easily find that you’ve opened a can of worms.

Making it fun is even trickier. Probably why smarter brains than I design and develop games.

Fumbling around with the concept on my own I’ve figured out that you probably have to choose a couple of aspects and maintain a tight focus on these to prevent the whole project spinning out of control and being unworkable.

So for the benefit of general discourse on the possible implementation of Leaders here are my thoughts.

Illustrated and in colour! I couldn’t resist.

Focus

Restricted to the Player only. Makes the task ten times easier. The AI empires can be assumed to have numerous nameless leaders. They don't need to be fleshed out.

Restricted to leaders who will be in control of a fleet.

Keep the focus tight. Widen it to include colonies, research and armies and the job grows like a noxious weed or, alternatively, has to be dumbed down so much, in order to be manageable, that it ends up bland and boring, a-la-MOO3.

Leaders are exceptional individuals whom, because of their status, command very high levels of popularity on their home planets. Leaders are derived from a specific colony within your empire. They come from somewhere.

The Broad Brush

Admiral Rickunder from Planet BeetleJuice is constantly in the news back home. While he might be Mr. Nobody to the rest of your Empire he is regarded as a shining example of the Beetlejuician way of life and a fine upstanding example of Beetlejuician manhood and military genius.

The career trajectory of the Admiral is off great interest to all those who call Beetlejuice home. They are intensely proud of their Admiral and will react badly if he isn’t treated fairly.

Likewise Admiral Rickunder will have a difficult decision in the event of planet BeetleJuice choosing to separate from the Empire. Which, in the right circumstances could come about directly from the urgings of the Admiral.

Will he look to his own or stay loyal to the Empire? The fleet under his command awaits his decision.

Which leads directly to the two areas where I have chosen as a focus for leaders – Politics and Loyalty.

In a Nutshell - Politics

Leaders could have a number of qualities but the two key ones – apart from their skill in leadership – are Political Cost and their Loyalty.

Political cost is a randomly determined number between, say, 1 and 10 for each leader. It reflects the political sway a leader has back home. Think Douglas McArthur.

Now if you want to fire your leader or, heaven forbid, he resigns in a huff at your bad treatment, then there is a direct hit to the Colony Approval rate of his home planet equal (or worse, depending on the situation) to his Political cost.





How often have you read military histories where the wrong General was in charge but the political cost of removing him was considered too high?

So right up front your choice of leader now encompasses not only his level of skill but the political ramifications that may arise from your treatment of him. This feeds directly into the approval rating of his home colony.

You want to dismiss Admiral Butterfingers? You’d love nothing better to do so right now but his home planet of Arial-7 is currently ‘unhappy’ and he has a political cost of 7. Slicing a big chunk of approval from Arial-7 might just be enough to tip it into revolt. Looks like Admiral Butterfingers will have to stay for the time being.

In a Nutshell – Loyalty

Each leader has a loyalty rating. Loyalty to their empire.

In the event of their home planet revolting then the leader must make a choice – Empire or Rebels? The game makes a die roll against his loyalty rating and a failure results in a leader joining the revolt – along with the ships in his fleet.

So now there is a third dimension to your choice of leader. Do I go for Admiral Sensational who is a strategic and tactical genius but a disloyal son-of-a-b*tch or do I play safe and opt for Admiral Plod who is hopeless in a battle but loyal as a brainless puppy.

Fine Tuning Loyalty

Political cost is a straightforward in operation. Visible and easily comprehensible.

Loyalty, however, is a different beast. One that is wide open to abuse. It needs some finessing.

A player could easily choose only loyal leaders for instance. Wayward leader problem solved. Or he could use disloyal leaders and, whenever it looks like their home planet is on the verge of revolt, transfer all the ships out of the fleets they lead as a precaution. Or he could do the same thing just before firing them to mitigate any ‘blow-back’.

To get around players ‘gaming’ loyalty I’d make it a hidden statistic. Over time it is gradually revealed. Eg. When a leader first arrives his loyalty is ‘unknown’. After a year it is known enough to be classified as either ‘good’ or ‘doubtful’. Another year and you’d get a finer grained picture, say ‘rock solid, high, above average, normal, poor’ etc.

The idea being that you don’t know at the start, but over time the picture becomes clearer. Which, if you’re the Emperor, is probably a reasonably accurate picture of how your leaders would evolve in a large, sprawling empire.

One other finesse would be required. Whenever you added an extra ship to the fleet commanded by the leader then you’d get a small lift in their loyalty rating. Egos, after all, are there to be stroked.

Conversely whenever you remove a ship from his command then there is a larger, significant, hit to his loyalty. Furthermore if this drops his loyalty rating below a threshold (and remember you probably don’t have a clear idea of his exact rating) then he must make a ‘loyalty test’ – a simple die roll against his loyalty.

Fail this and he resigns his commission in disgust. Good riddance you might think? Not really. There is an immediate hit to his home planet approval rating of two times his Political cost due to the absolute outrage back home of their favourite Admiral being shafted.

Far fetched? Maybe. What would Montgomery or George S. Patton have done if they were told that – as of tomorrow – half their command is now going to the other general? No hard feelings, fella.

Overview of Politics and Loyalty

With these two simple stats you have a pros and cons process regarding which leaders to use, where to use them and how to treat them. Eg. As a player you get to make interesting and meaningful decisions without being snowed under with ‘too much information’. Paradox, I’m looking at you.

By tying both aspects into their home planet colony approval rating you also get a political sub-game with a reasonable amount of depth but with minimal additional development overhead.

Where do Leaders come from?

You could dabble with additional planetary structures here such as Naval Academies. Or other, similar systems.

All of which probably are a lot of work for little return. I’d keep this part really simple.

Provide a pool. Say six leaders. These are generated randomly and the player can pick from the pool whenever he needs a leader to command a fleet. There would be no limit to the number of leaders you could have in active service.

One for every fleet. Every time you pick a leader out of the pool it generates another random leader and refills. After a certain time interval perhaps, say, two months.

Pretty simple but you could easily make it interesting by having a couple of leader orientated policy settings in your Empire Policy Screen.





‘Allow Ethnic Diversity’ generates leaders from anyone within your empire. All those independent races you absorbed. All those funny looking insects.

Welcome to the Officer Corps! At ease, Son, we’ll find you a uniform that fits. Not sure about the shoe size, though. How many did you say you needed?

Ticking this doubles you pool size. Now you have a wider choice of up to twelve leaders. Much better. The downside is that you now have to keep an eye on your racial situation. Anytime a leader’s home colony gets a negative impact to their approval rating ‘cause you have gone to war with a similar race as they, then your leader suffers a similarly scaled drop to his loyalty.

You may find yourself with an ex-independent colony about to revolt ‘cause of your ill-considered warmongering ways along with their leader who happens to be in charge of a sizeable chunk of your fleet.

With the newly improved migration abilities your ethnically diverse empire could throw up all manner of these situations. So your vastly increased chances of generating better leaders in a larger pool is offset by a potentially more difficult political juggling act.

A second option ‘Highly trained Officer Corps’ provides randomly generated leaders that have a positive modifier to their leadership skill. As this is time intensive you end up with a pool size that is halved.

Now with a racially pure, highly trained Officer Corps your pool size is reduced to only three. They would likely all be better quality leaders than normal, but not always.

With such a small pool your expansion plans would need careful thought because of the time delay between refilling the pool once you’ve assigned a leader. You may well find – in a period of rapid expansion – that you temporarily run out of leaders. Your pool runs empty.

On the other hand if you allowed ‘Ethnic diversity’ then you are back to a well trained pool of six.

You’d probably also need the player to hit a few population size benchmarks before they were able to open up all the available pool slots. That’s assuming a typical 1 planet 4x game start.





Can I fire Leaders?

Sure you can. Don’t like ‘em, get rid of ‘em.

If you fire a leader that is residing in the pool then their political cost acts as a malus to their home colony approval rating. What an insult declare all the local newspapers!

Firing a leader from the pool simply causes him to leave and a new one, randomly generated, takes his place. Bye bye Captain Dead D*ck and hello Captain Wonderful.

Firing a leader on active service is a bit trickier. The slur you are laying down upon the fair citizens of, for example, Beetlejuice and their chosen leaders military prowess is terrible indeed.

Political cost x 2.

What effect do Leaders have?

I’m thinking a kind of fleet-wide effect such as with the ‘Fleet bonus’ techs.

Could be something else. Doesn’t matter as long as there is a range of skill levels amongst leaders. From very good to very bad.

Randomly generated, of course with a positive kick-along to the generation routine if you have a policy of ‘Highly trained Officer Corps’.

As an interesting twist you could make leaders from each unique race have a specific skill focus. Eg. Humans are good at Beam weapons, Rats at Repairs etc.

Now you aren’t obliged to provide every fleet with a leader. However if a fleet didn’t have an assigned leader then it would suffer a penalty of some kind such that the benefits of having a leader, even a bad one, outweigh the disadvantages of a leaderless fleet.

Do Leaders Gain Experience?

Yep. This is another low-overhead, high return feature residing within my thought bubble.

Leaders all enter the pool at the initial rank of ‘Captain’. They then gain experience over time.

Every battle that their fleet is involved in provides a bonus experience boost regardless of the result. You learn by doing, even from your mistakes.

To keep it simple the bonus would be randomly determined within a range. Learning isn’t a linear process. No need to figure more points for bigger battles, etc. Just assume that some leaders are going to learn faster than others.

Gain enough experience, go up a rank. Each rank provides a small boost to the leader’s skill level making them more valuable. Importantly it also increases their ability to command.

So a Captain, for instance, at the bottom of the scale, could exercise his command ability over a maximum of four ships. Any more ships than this in his fleet and his skill bonus is negated (but still better than the fleet not having a leader).

As a leader goes up in rank his ability to command increases commensurately. Say Captain 4 ships, Commodore 8, Rear Admiral 16, Admiral Unlimited.

Your leaders, in charge of specific fleets, become more and more useful over time. With a bit of luck they may even prove to be loyal.

Importantly the experience is with your Leader, not your fleet. No need to track individual ship experience levels and tie that into the battle system.

Now leaders within your talent pool gain experience at the same rate as in the field. The exception is that they aren’t getting a battle bonus.

All leaders start in the pool as Captains. Overtime they increase in rank and usefulness so you have another reason to have a larger pool and to manage it so you have a decent replacement admiral or two on hand to plug the gap in case of an unexpected ‘fatality’ or sudden ‘resignation’.

An additional advantage of ‘grooming’ your pool of potential leaders is that, as they gain experience and go up in rank, their loyalty becomes less and less opaque. You have a better idea of what you are getting, loyalty wise.

So proper management of your pool of leaders becomes important. Weeding out the duds while they are only Captains could be advantageous provided you can ride out any potential political storm.

One other tweak would be to increment a leader’s Political Cost by one every time he rose in rank. Higher the rank, the harder they are to get rid off. If you are going give Captain Dead d*ck the flick then don’t wait till he is tying up a slot in your pool as a full Admiral.

If you wanted to get more into the political side – and I’m off on a tangent here – you could have leaders, residing in the pool, start demanding a fleet command. Their home colony would suffer a permanent approval malus of, say, one point. But this would gradually increase over time – up to a capped value equivalent to their political cost – as their demands for a command become more and more insistent.

The people of Beetlejuice DEMAND that Admiral Rickunder be put at the head of a mighty fleet!

The fact that Admiral Rickunder is a rolled gold dud and you couldn’t find an opportune time to fire him from the pool when he was a lowly captain is now your problem. Have fun.


Other Stuff

The obvious. Leaders in command of a fleet reside in a flagship. Damage to the flagship command module could be the end of your leader.

Leaders could – and should – also be female. Higher loyalty and lower Political cost?

Would leaders die from old age? No, pump them full of life enhancing drugs and be done with it.

Summary

That’s it.

Leaders, K.I.S.S with a tight focus on Politics and Loyalty.

A few thoughts and ideas – O.K, I got carried away – to throw into the mix.


Cheers,

Lancer

[Anonymous]

[Deleted by Admins]

[J HG T]

Good ideas there Lancer. Interesting read for sure. "Allow ethnic diversity" option is a must if/when leaders are put in. Having some Teekan businessman and Quanemo scientists when playing with Kiadian would be so ace!

Umm... "Leaders could – and should – also be female. Higher loyalty and lower Political cost?" Lower political cost? Nu uh, if you ask me! Equal costs for both of them! No offence but I tend to support sexual equality. Maybe just make the costs relative to leaders skills? Better cost more and so on.

[aprezto]

Small tweak in UI of shipbuilder.
&nbsp;
When i click on an item already in the ship configuration, can the selector in the 'possible components' list mirror this? So that I only need to click the 'add', or 'remove' buttons rather than having to scroll up and down to find the component I want to add.

example: I have a destroyer blueprint. I copy it. I decide I want to add armour. I click on the armour already in the blueprint. The component list jumps to armour and I can add or remove using the buttons between the blueprint window and the components window.

At present I have to scroll up and down on the components window to find armour in order to add or remove it.

[cookie monster]

Also on ship design.

When I am removing components sometimes I can remove one and then the interface jumps to something else, just because it has a higher number.

I also believe agent missions should have a cost. I realise agent maintenance must be paid though.

[J HG T]

The agent missions costing you some creds is a great idea. Dangerous jobs bonus, as they say. Also, the agents possible families would need some compensation if the worst is to happen.&nbsp;

[Bingeling]

Design automation by type.

I like manual research, but only for my military ships. I can of course do this, but I need to watch for unwanted AI designs, and empire retrofits get scary business.

So...

I want to be able to tell that I manually control. Escorts, frigates, destroyers, cruiser, capitals. And the rest are automated. Of course, the exact items in my list should be configurable, I may want to include resupply ships too, or star bases.

[cookie monster]

ORIGINAL: J HG T

The agent missions costing you some creds is a great idea. Dangerous jobs bonus, as they say. Also, the agents possible families would need some compensation if the worst is to happen. 

Just imagine the insurance claim when a Capital Ship goes down![:D]

Poor pixeltruppen.

[Data]

ORIGINAL: J HG T

The agent missions costing you some creds is a great idea. Dangerous jobs bonus, as they say. Also, the agents possible families would need some compensation if the worst is to happen. 

Faimilies receiving compensation from the life insurance? Hmm, now what does this remind me of....again [:)]
End of offtopic....again

[Igard]

Remaining off topic for a moment...

The Romulan Star Empire always looks after its operatives families. Unfortunately, they usually end up having horrific accidents involving thalaron radiation.

[Data]

Tha romulan female seems to rather enjoy it [:D]

[J HG T]

ORIGINAL: Data

Faimilies receiving compensation from the life insurance? Hmm, now what does this remind me of....again [:)]
End of offtopic....again

[cookie monster]

The game really needs a difficulty level setting or slider.

IIRC the one way which was said to alter the difficulty level was thru changing the agression setup slider towards Chaos.

This leads to a slug fest with multiple wars rather than a trading game.

You can always set the other empires to mature or tech level 2 or 3 but then the colony race is gone and as soon as fortified bunkers appear everywhere you need double the amount of troops for a succesful ground assault.

If the player wants a hassle free game with no pirates then the empires reputation begins to suffer by forceful takeover of independant colonies. There is no positive reputation gain available by destroying pirate bases.

Spy missions are a very important part of the game, when a mission is succesful you can have the popup box appear, but this can be missed among numerous other popups and messages. AFAIK there is no ability to pause the game after an agent mission. I would like this ability.

When there is no fuel available at the base a colony ship will be built and dispatched with no fuel. This leads to slow hyperdrive speeds and difficulty in ''catching'' the planet as it orbits.

On a fleet selection panel the default value is ''Engage System Targets'' even when the player selects ''Engage when attacked'' this toggle resets when the fleet is given another order. I just had a fleet half destroyed by storming a large space port with two defensive bases. It SHOULD be obvious that the fleet was undergunned for the task and should never have engaged.

[Igard]

With the empire borders suggestion flying high in the polls right now, I thought I'd post up my idea for how to implement a border system that wouldn't destroy our freedom to colonise.

It would create a penalty zone around your colonies. This would represent your area of influence or your border. The settings for the size of this region could be changed in the game setup options, 1 sector, 0.75 sector, 0.5 sector, 0.25 sector, or not at all (switch the system off).

What would it look like?

A coloured region is out of the question since we already have that for long range sensors. A dotted line or solid line denoted by empire colour would suffice.

When can I and when can't I, colonise?

If an alien race has good relations with you, say 20 or above, then you can colonise within these regions without penalty, just as you can do in the game now. If the relationship is between 0 and 20, then there will be a penalty for any colony that exists in the other empire's space. From 0-10, this penalty will be noticable and from 10-20, it will be minor.

If an alien race has bad relations with you, you will find that the colony has a 'can colonise but proximity to hostile race will reduce culture and development' warning, just like there was a hostile independant race on the planet but with some differences. The colony ship will be successful, but the colony will be compromised by its undesirable location. If relations with the other empire are significantly bad, say -30 or less, then the colony will have no chance of success and it will not be possible to send a colony ship.

What if I want to sell a planet in another empire's space?

Colonies within these regions would appear in the diplomacy trade options. They would have to be priced according to how prosperous the planet is, so new colonies would be reasonably affordable, since they would have a low value/GDP. There would have to be a way to avoid exploiting this. If I were to colonise a planet in enemy space, the colony ship might cost me say, 8,000. So, to sell the colony to the enemy, it would have to go for less than this, so I'd be losing out.

If I colonise a system and then another empire colonises next to it, how do we resolve who owns the space?

The larger the population, the greater the claim to the region. This could be exploited by building larger colony ships, so to prevent this there would need to be a minimun population size before the system could be put in place. Say about 300m population and the region is yours, that's if the other empire doesn't beat you to it. If this works, it could create some nice scenarios.

Do race stats make any difference?

Yes. It emulates the nature of a civilian population. More aggressive or the less intelligent races may be amenable to the idea of living near a hostile empire. A passive or an intelligent race would most likely be averse to moving to such a place with the realisation it would be first to be conquered should both sides go to war.

How will the AI behave?

The more aggressive the alien race is, the more likely they are to attempt colonising within your borders as the penalty for such colonies is not as severe. A passive race will only colonise if you have good relations with them, say 20 or above. The more aggressive the race, the more likely they are also to invade a colony within their own territory (defending their space), rather than try to trade for it as a passive, friendly race would do.