AI:
Somebody already mentioned missiles that try to intercept rather than just chase. Absolutely. But still, let people use the old missile behavior too. Just add it as another type of missile AI to choose from. Maybe get creative and add some new behaviors too.

Redesign AI completely. Instead of just x number of set behavior types for NPC ships, give them strategies instead on how to defeat their opponent, based on what their opponents do. Have each AI assign its opponent an enemy type.

For example, if I am an AI fighter ship, fast and maneuverable with forward facing light weapons, and I'm up against another fighter, I will attempt to follow it and shoot it with those forward weapons when I'm really close. If I'm up against a large carrier or battleship, I will swarm fellow fighters and attack en masse firing my weapons at my longest possible range and try to stay out of its field of fire. If I'm up against a bomber, something that has a strong frontal attack but maybe can't defend its rear too well, I'm going to try to outmaneuver it and stay behind it. My behavior should change based on my opponent, not on my own ship type. My reaction as a fighter will be different against these types than if I was a different type of ship. If I was an AI capital ship, I would choose to slog it out against another capital ship at long range, run away from heavy bombers, and chase after weak fighters.

Decide what Opponent Type a ship is right there in the ship resource, but for the player's ship, be a little smarter and assign a type based on its armaments and outfits, or perhaps even the player's behavior. Then, match those Opponent Types with different Strategy Types. Intercept, Chase, Swarm, Stay at Range, Get Behind, Run, Call for Help, and so on.

The benefit of an Opponent Type/Strategy Type system instead of an AI Type system, is that it allows for much more interesting behaviors. A lightly-armed freighter might decide to chase down and kill a weaker fighter, but as soon as a larger pirate ship shows up, or maybe a bomber-type ship, the freighter runs away.

Systems:
Moving planets around based on the time of year is probably not that useful to many people, but it shouldn't be too hard to implement and some people may find it useful so it's worth considering. Give it an orbital period in days and a starting position. It'll use the starting date of the game and do orbits from that point around another spob in the system or 0,0 (null spob). They'd be able to orbit either clockwise or counter clockwise based on another setting in the spob. I wouldn't make it any more complicated than that, such as ellipticals.

Remove asteroids, interference, and murk from the system resource, and instead add them back in as objects like spobs, that can be placed in the system at particular coordinates with particular sizes and shapes. Circles, rings (with a given width), lines (with a given width), and system-wide areas can then be added to create much more interesting system features. Imagine an actual asteroid belt, instead of a system-wide field. Imagine interference given off around a particular spob but not elsewhere in the system, or murk found in just one part of a system obscuring a wormhole. Interference and murk would be easier to have regions for, and asteroid pathing might have to be adjusted somewhat so rocks don't stray outside their regions, but it would be worth it to get all three to no longer be just system-wide. Let people add 4-8 asteroid regions, 4-8 interference regions, and 4-8 murk regions and place them exactly where they want them.

Other than being pretty, imagine the tactical and storyline benefits to regional system hazards. A xenophobic planet or one undergoing a revolt might use jammers to blanket the planet and nearby areas with interference. A fighter being chased by a missile boat might duck behind an asteroid belt or dive into a murky nebula to hide.

I think it would help something that I've believed for a while, that we really don't make as much use of the system space as we could. EV:Nova's systems are reasonably large, but outside of a few thousand pixel range, the only things that exist are wormholes. I'd like to see systems that are much, much larger and grander. Mars should be a considerable flight from Earth, and Jupiter should be about twice as far as that.

Systems should be able to have more spobs, I think. Granted, I love that hyperspace is a large part of EV, but I'd like a more diverse in-system environment as well. Orbiting planets would make that even more fun, because you'd have to try to figure out where planets are in-system when you get there. Might take some considerable flying around if you can't remember where Earth is around the Sun. Of course, sensor outfits could indicate a direction on the radar for you.

Spobs could have individual gravity based on a planetary mass assignment. This might overly complicated, but players might have to get the hang of entering into orbit around a planet before landing, rather than having a landing range of individual spobs. Maybe a little green landing light could go on to indicate that a standard orbit has been achieved. Something a bit more novel or sophisticated than the gravity system currently used in the Nova engine. This may be a little redundant, since you already have to slow down and get within range of a planet to land. I suppose that's pretty much like entering orbit.

Oh, and to make a more dynamic in-system environment, I'd also like the ability to change/replace/destroy/create spobs without having to replace the entire system resource (which has led to a lot of programming issues and mission workarounds.) There would need to be a safety mechanism for missions that dynamically adapts to a planet changing. For example, Earth could have spob IDs of 128a, 128b, 128c, ect. If something on Earth changes such that descs change, commodities change (ecological disaster or player brings in a new mining corporation, whatever,) missions would automatically redirect to the new spob rather than becoming incompleteable, or missions would auto-abort on change if the programmer wishes. The same would need to be true if a system resource itself would need to change.

I'd also like dude and fleet resources to be more dynamic in-system as well. The current system is pretty decent, but I'd like the engine to be a little more intelligent to traffic. But again, without having to replace an entire system resource, I'd like the game to be able to change fleet and dude probabilities. For example, if a mission for the Moash results in their being able to build up a greater military presence, the Heraans might dynamically shift fleet and dude resources so that there are fewer ships away from the far borders and more along the Moash front. Or, as trade resources fluctuate, traders flock to the system or ditch. It's doable with current implementation, but it would max out resource limits in no time. I think with a more robustly coded engine, this could be done dynamically.

On hyperlinks, I'd like to see variable-time hyperlinks. These can have a mass multiplier effect, but I would like to see the Sol-Kerella hyperlink take longer than short length hyperlinks. A single hyperlink would still take 100 units of fuel, but might require more time. My justification for that is that entering hyperspace and creating the window is the energy-intensive part. I would also be interested in the idea of not having hyperlinks to adjacent systems showing up as soon as a system is explored, unless an outfit is purchased that allows for it or maps are purchased. I think this would make exploration harder, but more interesting. The player would be able to do long-range exploration missions. Oh, and multi-jump outfits would still only require 100 units of fuel, but take into account the appropriate amount of time calculated from all hyperlinks combined.

I like the idea brought up of a more GPS style navigation system. Set your destination, and it gives you Google Maps options: fastest route (shortest time hyperlinks,) shortest route (fewest hyperlinks,) safest route (avoid legal situations or pirate systems.) Clicking and pulling the route would dynamically change it. Waypoints would be allowed if you're taking on multiple cargos or passengers.

Passengers also brings up an idea: crew space should be limited. You shouldn't be able to mass trick a Starbridge and pack 150 marines onto it, then take on fifteen passenger missions. Ships should have a personnel limit, just as they do mass and cargo space. Outfits could increase that limit at the expense of mass/cargo space. I somewhat like the idea of press-ganging passengers into military service when capturing vessels, something like passengers could count as 1/2 a person each for crew when boarding, but that's just wishful thinking.

@krugeruwsp, on 20 January 2012 - 11:24 AM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:

I think it would help something that I've believed for a while, that we really don't make as much use of the system space as we could. EV:Nova's systems are reasonably large, but outside of a few thousand pixel range, the only things that exist are wormholes. I'd like to see systems that are much, much larger and grander. Mars should be a considerable flight from Earth, and Jupiter should be about twice as far as that.

This might overly complicated, but players might have to get the hang of entering into orbit around a planet before landing, rather than having a landing range of individual spobs. Maybe a little green landing light could go on to indicate that a standard orbit has been achieved. Something a bit more novel or sophisticated than the gravity system currently used in the Nova engine.

No, Just PLEASE No. Seriously, too many games already do this, and what does it do? Make doing anything in the game take longer for NO reason. We may not use much of the system space, but it's there for battles, not usual use.

As for the landing, it works well enough as it is, don't break a good thing.

Otherwise I really like your GPS ideas. That would be epic.

I think it could be done in a way that is not time-wasting, but still also interesting to the player. It doesn't need to take twenty minutes to get to Mars, but it's a little ridiculous that it's only a few hundred pixels over when you have this massive, massive system to play with. It should be for more than just battles. I'm not saying the system needs to be to scale (especially since someone a while back figured out what that would be like if the Earth was just a one-pixel dot, IIRC, and it was more than the current system resources.) I'm just saying that we could make better use of the space, and the idea of a greater variation of in-system resource placement (i.e. asteroid belts, orbiting planets that change position based on calendar,) would be more interesting than one static system where all the spobs are within 2000 pixels of the system center.

Orbiting a planet to land is probably excessive, and the current implementation is fine. Just suggesting a little out of the box.

@krugeruwsp, on 20 January 2012 - 06:25 PM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:

I think it could be done in a way that is not time-wasting, but still also interesting to the player. It doesn't need to take twenty minutes to get to Mars, but it's a little ridiculous that it's only a few hundred pixels over when you have this massive, massive system to play with. It should be for more than just battles. I'm not saying the system needs to be to scale (especially since someone a while back figured out what that would be like if the Earth was just a one-pixel dot, IIRC, and it was more than the current system resources.) I'm just saying that we could make better use of the space, and the idea of a greater variation of in-system resource placement (i.e. asteroid belts, orbiting planets that change position based on calendar,) would be more interesting than one static system where all the spobs are within 2000 pixels of the system center.

While I think more stuff in-system would be nice, I think it should be done by simply adding more, not spacing it further apart. Too many games space stuff far apart for no reason, and it simply makes doing the most basic of tasks more annoying than they already are. I play EV to kill stuff with my tricked out ship, I don't want to have to waste 4 days getting out of my shuttle because the planets and such are too far apart.

Well I was working on a list of things for some parallel universe version of me that had the time, skills, and resources to program his own EV-esque game with the intention of making it its own topic. But I guess I'll just post it here instead!

My overarching philosophy is that the player should have more choice. As such, most of these ideas are meant to give new dimensions of choices the player needs to make. That leads to a richer, more varied experience, more rewarding gameplay, more immersion, and more replay value. So without further ado:

Zoom
Most important thing ever. Ares has a great implementation. Without it, you need to either sacrifice scale and grandeur by having the game way zoomed in or lose the details and muck up dogfights and maneuvering by having it zoomed way out.

Fighters
Fighters, or maybe all ships, could have an inherent evasion number. This is actually doable in EVN, I believe, if you use lights to represent the ship's graphic and use the rotation feature to make the ship's spin mask flicker on and off, meaning you can make shots pass through X% of the time (again, I haven't tested this, but I think you can do it). That would help to overcome the limitations of the 2D platform while adding a whole new layer of customization. Likewise, some weapons would have a greater or lesser chance of evasion.

Fighters would have a flag for what weapons can actually hit them. Again, you can sort of do this by making the ships/weapons planet type, but this mucks up the AI. While most turrets, if aimed properly and with some luck, should be able to score a hit on a fighter, a battleship's forward-mounted guns shouldn't even factor in.

AI could vary between interceptors, bombers, maybe heavy fighters, etc. Some fighters are meant to clear out the other fighters and can be given that task.

A much easier one: give fighters a rearm/reload time. Larger fighter would of course take longer, and larger docking bays could speed the process.

Better support for housing fighter variants or different types of fighters in the same bay. I believe I've seen it done in EVN, but I have no idea how and I remember hearing it was very clunky and resource-intensive.

Weapons: Heat
If I could add one feature to EVN, it would be this. Heat generation would be a huge problem for just about any weapon system I can think of, since it's almost impossible to bleed heat in a vacuum. I've sort of gotten it to work on my own by using Ionization and submunitions, but it's clunky and doesn't always work.

Ships could have different heat tolerance and different types of heat sinks. Overheated ships could react in various ways, like slowing down/shutting off propulsion, turning off shields, etc. on top of disabling heat-generating weapons (again, this sort of works with ionization - sometimes). Also, different types of electronics could generate heat just from running.

Weapons: General
Missiles traveling at a set speed always struck me as odd.

Tracking on turrets would be marvelous. It doesn't need to be graphically represented, but having different turrets with different tracking speeds would really help diversify the choices available to the player.

Muzzle blasts would be kind of cool. Not the EVN ship firing animation, but a short animation to play at the point of origin of each individual blast, tailored to that weapon. So like a short-lived submunition.

Easier weapon selection. Either in the MechWarrior way of assigning groupings (so make groups X through Y, then bind each to a key for quick selection), or by keeping the EVN system but allow 1) primaries to be turned on and off and 2) secondary weapons to be brought up by key bindings instead of cycling.

Allow any type of weapon to have the "only triggered by target" flag – not just guided weapons. Space is pretty big - passing through the line of fire of another by accident would almost never happen.

Outfits: General
Allow % modifiers to various systems. For a Nova example, make Port and Polish give, say, 50 speed to a Starbridge but only 5 to a Carrier.

The above could also be done by making weapon mass, ship mass, and ship thrust all factors in determining propulsion. That's probably too complex to be a good feature, since that's a lot of information to make the player contend with.

In addition to Nova's item class system, allow limitations on class by ship type with the possibility to mod in more or fewer slots of each. Basically this would be a way of building counters into the Nova engine, which makes it easier and less resource intensive, but also more flexible – especially since then things that take multiple of a counter would work much better. This also enables interesting things like the Delphi computer chip system to coexist easily with mass or space restrictions.

Just let us twist more knobs: thrust on afterburners, power of cloaking devices, that sort of thing.

Just for ease and resource savings, let AI ships use all the outfits that come with them.

Give the outfitter different tabs for different types of outfits: energy weapons, ballistics, shields, etc.

Show stats on outfits in the outfitter dialog and in the "p" dialog.

Outfits: Types
Sensors/Targeting Computers: **** Could have various very cool effects, like increasing weapon accuracy, missile evasion, armor damage, etc.

ECM/ECCM: Decrease/increase accuracy, lock hold, and damage of missiles

Scanners/Jammers: Give or block ship info (shield and armor %, weapon loadout, energy reserves, affiliation, etc.)

IFF/Density: Basically the same, but allow for scramblers as well. Could go under Scanners/Jammers

Ships
Include a field for how many days it takes for the ship to jump

Include a field for ships that are jump capable

Ship upkeep and crew pay could be an interesting limitation, and get away from the "the best ship is the best ship" problem. (This could be toggled as well; a mercenary or freighter captain would pay the crew and pay for repairs, but a military captain wouldn't.)

AI ships could have a customization field with %chance of adding/removing particular weapons and outfits.

Second-most-wanted feature for me: Ship hangars/garages, please!

Miscellaneous
Allow missions to have timer features (which can be done, but again, clunkily). For example, an objective could be to hold off an enemy wave for X amount of time.

Allow a flag for civilian/military that the AI would evaluate when determining whether or not to attack.

Make combat rating depend heavily (or entirely) on missions, not just "hey I got KB."

Boarding ships – board and plunder vs. board and rescue.

Cröns that could be told to evaluate continuously in-flight would be amazing.

Make missions with all objectives complete show up differently in the "i" dialog

Make flag for whether or not a mission objective will allow you to land on a planet – envoy to an enemy government? Sure! Blockade running? Better find another way down...
Also, another function could be added for some ships that can break orbital blockades and such, which would give smaller blockade runner or stealthy ships an advantage in some situations.

Implement battlestations as spöbs – allow them to be blown up, have more than one weapon type, and sometimes be landed on.

Make a "destroy X# or X% of ships" an objective type

Allow for anti-aliasing on masks to make the outline less noticeable.

Allow mission bits to toggle government ally/enemy status.

Allow in-flight energy allocation (thrusters, shields, weapons, a la X-Wing).

Let the "player can't hit this gov't and this gov't can't hit player" flag be enabled by bits.

Allow more düde types per mission.

Allow player to call reinforcements (another one that's doable but clunky).

@archon, on 21 January 2012 - 12:28 AM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:

Zoom
Most important thing ever. Ares has a great implementation. Without it, you need to either sacrifice scale and grandeur by having the game way zoomed in or lose the details and muck up dogfights and maneuvering by having it zoomed way out.

I agree

@archon, on 21 January 2012 - 12:28 AM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:

Fighters
etc...

I have to say, evasion adds a bit too much randomness to combat for my liking. I LIKE that it takes skill to evade, not some magic. And as for those main capital guns, if you're stupid enough to get caught in it, you'd die in 3d too.

@archon, on 21 January 2012 - 12:28 AM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:

Weapons: General
Missiles traveling at a set speed always struck me as odd.

Tracking on turrets would be marvelous. It doesn't need to be graphically represented, but having different turrets with different tracking speeds would really help diversify the choices available to the player.

I think allowing the dev to choose how much a weapon retains of the speed of the ship would be nice. As for tracking, it would really require graphical rep to not be confusing.

@archon, on 21 January 2012 - 12:28 AM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:

Give the outfitter different tabs for different types of outfits: energy weapons, ballistics, shields, etc.

Show stats on outfits in the outfitter dialog and in the "p" dialog.

I agree as long as there is still a condensed view of all outfits for those that want it. (ie. me)

@archon, on 21 January 2012 - 12:28 AM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:

Ships
AI ships could have a customization field with %chance of adding/removing particular weapons and outfits.

Miscellaneous
Boarding ships – board and plunder vs. board and rescue.

I agree with both

@archon, on 21 January 2012 - 12:28 AM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:

Make missions with all objectives complete show up differently in the "i" dialog

This is already possible using bits. In fact it's quite powerful.

@archon, on 21 January 2012 - 12:28 AM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:

Make a "destroy X# or X% of ships" an objective type

While already doable, it's clunky, so yes.

@archon, on 21 January 2012 - 12:28 AM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:

Allow in-flight energy allocation (thrusters, shields, weapons, a la X-Wing).

This seems overly complex over the current system, or the ability to just activate an ability that uses up energy to give more shields, etc.

@archon, on 21 January 2012 - 12:28 AM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:

Boarding ships – board and plunder vs. board and rescue.

Oh, I can't believe I forgot to mention that. I can't tell you how many times I've been in a firefight and, after the shooting stops, looked at my disabled friendlies (not escorts, mind you) and wished I could rescue their surviving crew members for extra brownie points.

@evweb, on 19 January 2012 - 07:44 PM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:

• Allow mutinies aboard captured escorts where you have to re-subdue them. (makes them less attractive)

Actually, I always imagined that when I captured a ship, I would capture the crew and hold them prisoner. The captured vessel would then get a skeleton crew from my ship until I landed next. Upon landing the captured crew would be turned in to the authorities (I only ever board pirate vessels or ships of enemy governments) I would get my crew back from the captured ship, and I would gather a new crew to man the captured ship. I'd basically be giving them their first ship free of charge. In return they would just have to fly with me. If I sold the escort, that was basically the crew of that escort gathering enough money to pay me back a bit for giving them the ship, and then they'd be on their merry way. The only reason it has to be done at a shipyard is so the IFFs and other things can be fixed to the crew's desire. Things an outfitter can't do.

I dunno, maybe I just have an overactive imagination.

@evweb, on 20 January 2012 - 09:04 PM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:

While I think more stuff in-system would be nice, I think it should be done by simply adding more, not spacing it further apart. Too many games space stuff far apart for no reason, and it simply makes doing the most basic of tasks more annoying than they already are. I play EV to kill stuff with my tricked out ship, I don't want to have to waste 4 days getting out of my shuttle because the planets and such are too far apart.

Well, like any good storytelling, the content needs to enhance the experience, not just exist for the sake of doing it. If a system is huge for no reason whatsoever, then yes, it's just going to be clunky and pointless. If there's reason for it, like a more dynamic system with orbiting planets and things are hard to find until you get a sensor pack that can point you in the right direction, then I think it can enhance the gameplay. Yes, that would make it more challenging, and yes, it will slow down the player a bit, but that's why I think it should be done. Slowing the gameplay down is not bad, so long as it stays interesting. Speeding things up to make them interesting can sometimes be a cheap way of keeping the player engaged. You can have a good story development that also takes significant time and challenge.

As for just wanting to run around and blow stuff up in a tricked out ship, I propose a tournament/sandbox mode that would allow just that.

A lot of stuff I'd want has been said, and repeated here. So, I won't say those. Here's what;s left of my list.

-Ability to make a government hostile to itself. A good example of this would be Marauders in vanilla, who are really just people who grabbed a ship and started pirating for whatever reason. Why would these individuals be friendly to each other? Also would have been great for CTC for making FFA missions.

-Eliminate the silly "everyone follow me and focus only on this one enemy ship until it dies or you get shot!" behavior. I'm sure you've seen it before, where say six fighters are fighting six fighters. On both sides, one will be at the head while the other five will sort of hang out behind it and even if the other ships get close, they'll only shoot at whichever one all six of them have decided to kill next.

-Weapon procs! Chance to ionize, chance to make an extra large explosion, chance to have double impact, chance to spew rainbows and kittens everywhere, whatever the developer decided. Or zero procs if they don't want any.

-All weapon types being able to be swivel/turret/PD/whatever. Mostly doable with submunitions, but sometimes results in funky behavior and A.I. stupidity.

-Ability for the A.I. to use mines.

-Fighters launched by fighters launched by my ship/escorts don't turn feral but rather stay friendly.

-Of course, remove the limit on the maximum number of ships in a system.

-Ability to fully customize the weapon selection of a spob and make it use ammo too instead of just giving it one thing with infinite ammo.

-Put Decoy Flares back in.

-DON'T add mandatory complexity for complexity/realism's sake. It's okay to make things more complicated if it forces the player to make interesting choices or otherwise enhances gameplay, but a lot of the times putting things in like 30 fuel types you can only find scattered at the far corners of a galaxy and only one works for your ship just adds annoyance. I'd also have to include the whole "move the system around and make stuff tricky to find every time" bit. In the right situations, it could work, but in general it'd be like your neighborhood randomly re-arranging itself and forcing you to have to track down your house every time you went home after spending a hour trying to find where the grocery store relocated to today.

-DON'T totally change-up the core gameplay. At it's heart, the EV Trilogy is a game about running missions, trading goods, and blowing up other ships so you can get a bigger and better ship. Storylines are there to unlock bigger and better things for you to earn so you can go back to trading/missioning/blowing stuff up. Now, I'm not saying anyone has suggested things to change up the core, but it's always a concern when thinking about sequels, real or imagined.

@joshtigerheart, on 21 January 2012 - 02:38 PM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:

QUOTE

I totally agree.

This post has been edited by EVWeb : 21 January 2012 - 02:47 PM

I actually thought of a refinement of toggling the "can't hit ships of this government and they can't hit you" flag with mission bits. That would be just putting in some sort of "rules of engagement" (or something) interface that would let the player select what governments they don't want to hit, with other toggles for "attack this government if the ship is already hostile with me." Very useful form a gameplay perspective, and completely justifiable realistically, again because the size/emptiness/3Dness of space make it almost unfathomable that a ship would wander into a shot meant for another ship. Aside from stray projectiles that become navigation hazards of course. ("Sir Isaac Newton is the deadliest son of a b**** in space!")

So, is Qaanol working on making this, or what?

@krugeruwsp, on 21 January 2012 - 11:37 AM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:

...If there's reason for it, like a more dynamic system with orbiting planets and things are hard to find until you get a sensor pack that can point you in the right direction, then I think it can enhance the gameplay.

@joshtigerheart, on 21 January 2012 - 02:38 PM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:

...
-DON'T add mandatory complexity for complexity/realism's sake. It's okay to make things more complicated if it forces the player to make interesting choices or otherwise enhances gameplay, but a lot of the times putting things in like 30 fuel types you can only find scattered at the far corners of a galaxy and only one works for your ship just adds annoyance. I'd also have to include the whole "move the system around and make stuff tricky to find every time" bit.

I'd like the ability to make systems which were giant, had orbiting planets (while you were flying in them, not just off a calendar) and used gravity; but not necessarily to put them in the released storyline. Those could make for interesting situations - single-system games(Firefly) and just interesting challenges trying to get into orbit around the right planet. But for the most part, systems would need to be typical "Jump to the main planet in the system." Overdoing it would make it a pain, as you say.

Similarly, I'd like the ability to make more of things like fuel types; so that for future scenarios we could use that as a mechanic. Not necessarily for the main-game though.

Well, that's why I said mandatory. If plug-ins could have you juggle ship fuel, fighter fuel, missile fuel, computer systems, power generation, heat management, weapon hard points, crew happiness, multiple currencies, cargo space, cargo bay sanitation, and a whole lot of other things, that's fine. If every plug-in had to do that without any way to just be simple, then it wouldn't be fine.

A functionality that would be really great in a 3D rendered (In a sprite based game it would mess up lighting i think) game would be different types of turn transformations, an example is the way the eel in Aquaria turns (of course for an inertialess ship). It would allow even more variety to the ship designs.

Restrict all sound resources to using the Macintosh System 7 .snd resource, because that's how you build a forward-thinking game engine in 2002, after the release of Mac OS X.

Yes, I'm still angry about that.

@hamster, on 30 January 2012 - 04:47 AM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:

Restrict all sound resources to using the Macintosh System 7 .snd resource, because that's how you build a forward-thinking game engine in 2002, after the release of Mac OS X.

‘Published in 2002’ is a quite different thing from ‘built in 2002’.

I think the single biggest thing I'd like to see would be my name not at the top of every pirate's list.

I know that I am not always the first one attacked by a pirate in any given system, but I almost always am.

Other than that, I can't make a suggestion that hasn't been made yet.

@archon, on 21 January 2012 - 12:28 AM, said in Your game functionality wishlist:

Fighters
Fighters, or maybe all ships, could have an inherent evasion number. This is actually doable in EVN, I believe, if you use lights to represent the ship's graphic and use the rotation feature to make the ship's spin mask flicker on and off, meaning you can make shots pass through X% of the time (again, I haven't tested this, but I think you can do it). That would help to overcome the limitations of the 2D platform while adding a whole new layer of customization. Likewise, some weapons would have a greater or lesser chance of evasion.

Turret tracking limits would solve this. If you can outfly the gunner of the capital ship turret, it will miss you. You don't need a chance to miss or damage reduction against smaller ships.

Quote

Weapons: General
Outfits: General
Allow % modifiers to various systems. For a Nova example, make Port and Polish give, say, 50 speed to a Starbridge but only 5 to a Carrier.

The above could also be done by making weapon mass, ship mass, and ship thrust all factors in determining propulsion. That's probably too complex to be a good feature, since that's a lot of information to make the player contend with.

A %-based bonus system (optional, you also should be able to have a defined increase) for afterburners, outfits which increase shield/armor amount or regen, other propulsion mods, etc... would help a lot. This way adding armor plates to your carrier would give it much more armor than the same plate on a fighter.

With a %-based bonus system, you don't need ship mass and afterburner thrust or such things, you can just have outfits that make the ship x % faster, or armor plates that make the ship x% slower, etc...

Otherwise good ideas.

On the note about different fuel types, heat generation, etc...
Don't add things for the sake of complexity. Don't add things which will result in gameplay that is mathematically deterministic (stuff for which I will be better at the game if I have pen, paper and a calculator beside me).

Eg: If you want to create a universe of scarcity by not having fuel available everywhere, that will just frustrate the player when he runs out of fuel by accident and can't buy more. If you want to do it by allowing planets to charge different prices for fuel, then you've succeeded and won't cause unneeded frustration.

This post has been edited by LNSU : 30 January 2012 - 06:55 PM