Spring RTS Engine

I (and some friends) have been developing a computer game, which, as yet, has no formal name. This project began several years ago when I realised that there was no game catering to exactly what I desired. The logical progression from that was to build one myself. (Perhaps I have a warped sense of logic)

The game is a 2D Turn Based Strategy set in space, akin to the Master of Orion series and "Anacreon: Reconstruction 4021" It follows the basic 4X in space formula; exploring space, colonising new planets, designing ships, researching new parts, fighting the enemy etc. If you want more details about the game, just PM me, and hopefully I can provide the details you need.

My question to you is, what would you like to see in a game like this? A feature that you have always wanted but never seen, or just thought of when you read this post. At the moment, don't worry about engine constraints, as the code is highly flexible at this point in development. If you provide a suggestion that I do use (that I havent already thought of), then you will find yourself in the credits (wow...) and probably get to participate in closed testing of the game.

-Superweapons like Nova Bombs
-Gravity Manipulation on very large scale
-Large role of environment on combat
-Ship Boarding
-Wreakage salvage
-Black Holes
-Offensive/Defensive use of nearly anything-goes with gravity manipulation
-Ship disabling
-Planetary Seiges, then later seiges of entire systems
-Espionage
-Smuggling to rebels
-Rebels that can become their own faction
-Super projects
-Anomalies/special resources, possibly unlocking projects
-Piracy
-Self-Destruct, to counter said piracy, but should require some special conditioning or social settings to make suicide acceptable
-Supply lines
-Ways to sneak attack - disabling long-range sensors via espionage, or stealth units, or approaching from behind a star
-Weapons that kill people, but don't harm the target, both anti-ship and anti-planet variants- could be used to make boarding/planetary assault easier, could be either radiation-type or chemical/biological weapons
-Interplanetary information warfare- intergalactic hackers
-Special capital ships that can enter planetary atmospheres and provide closer support than simple orbital bombardment
-Scalable ship hangars- think supercarriers that can carry battleships- could be useful to make a superfast fleet
-Long-Range weapons/artillery- nuke torpedoes would work, or more exotic weapons
-Different drive types that vary in more ways than just speed- synthetic wormhole, gravity manipulation, slipstream, warp, hyperspace, jump, stutterwarp, spacial warp
-Ways to oppress a planet's population like propaganda, police, weater control(yes it sounds weird, but think about what controlling the weater would do to a population)
-A culture for your civilization- stronger enemy culture makes a captured planet resist more, a strong culture may make a planet try to revolt and join you (I'm not afraid to borrow a good idea!)
-Ability to highly train ship crews to make them elite
-Ability to take control of enemy ships during a batle
-Possibility of organic ships/ship parts

I think that's all my ideas, right now anyway. :)

Love MOO2!!! Love it!

Anyway... 1 thing id realy like (other than everythiung mentioned and everyuthing in MOO2) is somthings from Fragile Allegiance, like putting gravity drives on asteroids and slinging teh m at opponents.

aGorm

Everything Decimator said and:

Biowepons, nanotechnology, RTS land battles (ta spring engian, mabey?) and if your goverment is a democracy or rebublic then there should be elections, and if you get botted out of power, then its game over for you...unitll the next election!!!

Also, make sure that you can blow up planets!

Also have a advanced level of tech called "Super Construction", where you can build larger then planet structure's, like ringworlds, dysonspheres...intergalactic mackeroine ext.


Oh and have two different advanced ments for your civilization. Tech and Socieal/bilological. Basicaly, every long while your S/B wiggy will level up, allowing you to get a perk or develop your specieas a bit more...like Cybernetic, assimilative, bioships, transendece ext... these would each fundementaly change your race to be even MORE AWSOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and EVEN MORE EVIL!

Oh and have as many type's of saturation bombing as piossible

radiation bombing (use your fleets engins to spew deadly ratiation through the enemy planet

Nuke Bombing (leave nothing but blackened glass!)

Conventinal Warheads (in other words, cheapastic cannons)

Bio Wepons (leave nothing but a massive fungus like creature)

Laser Bombardments (feel free to doodle)

and last, but not least

Core Busters (Twenty four nuke's strapped to a drill with a super hard caseing around it. It gose down to the core of the planet and blows it to crap and back again!)

Planet Killer: A cloud of antimatter weapons, suspended in a massive supersturcture. Omminus and creepy, the gigantink cloud surrounds the planet and starts pummling it with antimatter bombs untill the planet breaks into tiny pices. Then massive atoumated factorys suck those pice's in and use them to make the PlanetKiller EVEN BIGGER!!!!!!!!

Star Buster: Nuff said

Temporal Displacement Wepon: The TDM will be the END ALL WEPON OF DEATH! Fire it into the homeworld of a race and a temporal shockwave will fly forth as time itself is ripped assunder. As the birthplace of the empire is litteraly erased from the timeline of the galaxy, so dose all of its accomplisments. On the planets that have Temporal Sheilding (installed across your entire empire as soon as you get Temporal Manipulation) the wavefront is deflected, keeping your planets safe. All planets colonized by the targeted empire will be reverted to the natrual state, pre terriforming.

Mabey i got a little carryed away on that one...

Zoombie, have you played MOO2? Only.. Steller Converters already exist (or as u call it a Star Buster ). I remeber craming 7 onto 1 ship and laffing at eh computer... 1 ship would take 20 computer ones all by itself.

Still could never beat it on its hardest setting though.. It would always go to war, never allie, and it had loads of bounses. If only it worked in XP ... my disk is now usless.

aGorm

aGorm wrote:..... Steller Converters ... I remeber craming 7 onto 1 ship and laffing at eh computer... 1 ship would take 20 computer ones all by itself.

Still could never beat it on its hardest setting though.. ...

Stellar Converters weren't, by a long way, the most effective weapons you could have. They took alot of space for the damage they could deliver.

I have won the game in the most hardest setting, in the largest map possible.
It got to a point where the game started to complain that it couldn't build any more ships.
When i got into serious fight, the game was already very advanced. I had a fleet of some 6 Deathstars, some 10 titans and a few Battleships all super high-tech. The silicoids (owning the greatest part of the universe) attacked me with so many ships that they couldn't all fit the same battle. They had 2 full rows of Deathstars + 2/3rds of the 3rd row + loads of Titans. When i saw that, i jumped off my chair to the ground.
Anyway, i went first and killed all the ships (every single one) in my first turn. They're ships didn't fired a single shot.

All what the posts above mentioned mean nothing if you dont apply basic design paradigms that allow the game to be fun, replayable and wide-reaching in terms of audience. Try to just add cool features and youll end up with Master of Orion 3...
I wont repeat myself, though, read the nanoblobs post in the AI forum and youll see my reply about those things.