late-game ideas

[ThorWarriorX]

To say that there are millions of people in Starton Eridanus, We need to make the Centurion way tinier. Or the station and capships need to be bigger. I personally prefer the second option.

[OddBob]

To say that there are millions of people in Starton Eridanus, We need to make the Centurion way tinier. Or the station and capships need to be bigger. I personally prefer the second option.

Transcendence is not to scale.

Just in case nobody got that the first two times,
Transcendence is not to scale. First of all, a Centurion could have a hundred people on it, or, considering Rama can fly one solo, it could be a mile long.
But why must stations be bigger? Nobody has complained one bit about CW stations being bigger than planets, or the fact that suns are half as big as some ships are long. Now, don't get me wrong, I like realism. I'd probably like it if things were to scale. But really to scale. No more 1 pixel equals 10,000 km nonsense, but actually scaled. But do you really want a charon cache filling most of your screen? It'd certainly make the fights more realistic, as you would never ever close within visual range of your enemy.

As I understand it, in some early version, the systems were much bigger and George scaled them down because it was a pain to get around.

[dvlenk6]

I just look at the pictures as icons representing the actual objects (ships, stations, etc.) on your ship's display screen...and let my imagination fill in the details.

[palmiche]

Anyway I'd like the stations to be a little (A LOT) harder to destroy, I don't feel you can destroy a SPACE STATION with several million people and hundreds of defense ships with just a few shoots, and long range attacks shoudn't be possible in most cases beacause station have space for bigger generators and reactors than ships and so they can have bigger and more powerful weapons (with far more range than yours).

[Yugi]

I think stations should have 5-6 squadrons of tiny ships (a quarter the size of a hornet) that have a varying weapon strength. I'm thinking of something similar to RedPig's mod. Stations should be reinforced quite a bit,though not just with these squadrons. They also be defended by more large ships such as the Centurion. Stations would need more docking ports if this idea is added.
Since ships can go under and on top of each other, you may be able to haave 2 docking ports, one on top of the other.

Another idea for stations is that they have bigger, stronger weapons that can only be installed on very large capships (like the Mikeno) and on small stations. You could have the ship version of the Tev9, which would deliver 20% damage to the target ship, and the station version which will deliver 50% damage to the target ship (and use more power). These weapons would also be very large (as in mass) and would be very difficult to carry. You could have ship and station versions of

Stations should also be harder to destroy, possibly 2 or 3 times harder to destroy. Think of the cost of a space station; probably very high, something like 100,000,000 (one-hundred million) credits. If you were building a space station, you'd like it to be highly protected, wouldn't you?


I also think planets should be slightly bigger (10%-20% increase in size) and the same with the stars, and possibly stations, though not as much.

[the_holy_thom]

The only things I would change about the scale of things at present are:

1. Planets. They just seem too small, and I don't think gameplay would be hurt too much if they were made larger. The only difference would be that you have more area to hide behind.

2. Capships. I would like to see a HUGE capship, although the problem is turning: the bigger it gets, the more awkward it looks turning from 20 points and surface area: makes them easier to hit.

I'm not bothered about scale, but when you see a huge blue planet on the map and then it turns out to be about the same size as a couple of steel slavers it's quite dissapointing

[ThorWarriorX]

That's my point.

[palmiche]

I would also make stations look bigger in the minimap. Sometimes is crucial to get to a CSS and you get killed if you dont have a targeting rom installed because you cannot tell the difference between the station and the ships around.

[F50]

Perhaps this could be classifyed as necromancy, but what does everybody think of this idea, disscussion about that was kind of sidetracked by New Wellington.

Special endings might be another reason to do missions like Point Juno.

Hero of the Commonwealth.
1. Destroy the major stations in the home system of the opposing sovrigns.
2. Destroy the Fortress of the Charon Pirates.
3. Become Admiral (save Point Juno)
4. Destroy the Ares Communes in Point Juno
5. Defeat the Ares in an epic battle in the Ares system.

Hero of the Ares.
1. Destroy the major stations in the home system of the opposing sovrigns.
2. Destroy the CSC Atlantica.
3. Destroy Point Juno.
4. Defeat the Commonwealth in an epic battle at St. Ks
5. Destroy New Wellington Station.
6. Destroy the station in the first system.

Hero of the Ranx. (Create room for the Ranx by separating the Commonwealth and the Ares)
1. Destroy the major stations in the home system of the opposing sovrigns.
2. Destroy the CSC Atlantica.
3. Destroy Point Juno AND the Ares communes in Point Juno.
4. Destroy All Communes and CSCs between Eta Ceti and Point Juno.
5. Defeat the Ares and Commonwealth (long range communications first) in a random system between Eta Ceti and Point Juno.

There would have to be more to it once post-Heritic is intorduced.

Other endings might include Hero of the Sung and Paragon of Domina or Orucus (sorry spell)

In addition, how about this for Domina and Oracus.

Paragon of Domina:
1. Do a mission for the Sisters (Any penitent stations in a system will be instantly revealed after you do this mission)
2. Do not join the Syndicate
3. Do not destory civilan installations.
4. Do not destory stations of a single primary sovrign in a system.
5. In systems in which there are multiple primary sovrigns in a system, destory all military implements in the system.
6. Destory *all* penitent stations.
7. Destroy *all* Luminous assemblers.
8. Journey to the Core.

Paragon of Oracus:
1. Do no lawful missions (including Korolov).
2. Do penitent mission (to reveal all Domina stations and gives several mapping roms).
3. Destory all Domina stations.
4. Destory all stations you know about.
5. Do not miss more than 2 stations per non-nebula system.
6. Journey past Heritic.


Of course, there would have to be more to it once post-Heritic is intorduced.

[Songbird]

A trivial thing really; while I get that the # of star systems is randomly generated per game, it would be nice to be able to access an "evolving" map showing the linking of systems as they are 'discovered'- in order to be able to easily backtrack if needed.


?

[Maloran]

I wish the sytems were a network rather than a one-way path. It would give you more options of where to go. And there could be dead ends added.

[palmiche]

I wish the sytems were a network rather than a one-way path. It would give you more options of where to go. And there could be dead ends added.

Like in Ascendancy (available at abandonia.com)!!!!

Anyway I'd like star systems to be a lot bigger, I'd love to spend much more time in a single system rather than finishing the game and starting all over again. As I said in another post, in "real life", systems tend to be fully colonized before moving to the next one.

[Fossaman]

in "real life", systems tend to be fully colonized before moving to the next one.

What makes you say that?

I would tend to see colonizing star systems as happening a lot like colonizing territory on earth. While the place sending colonists was generally fully exploited already, they would sometimes send colonists to multiple places at once, etc. The oregon trail skipped over huge tracks of land to colonize the opposite coast of america.

[palmiche]

they would sometimes send colonists to multiple places at once, etc. The oregon trail skipped over huge tracks of land to colonize the opposite coast of america.

Because they were looking for resources and WEALTH not for living space. In the Future Society living space is the main problem and resources can be extracted from asteroids, etc. so settled places don't need to be "IDEAL" in the same way the word is applied to pioniers from a few centuries ago. And terraforming does the rest of the job. There is no point in moving to the next system before fully colonizing the current one because all wealth mainly comes from trade and trade revenue is higher as the distance is lower and the expenses the less.

There are, of course, those who want to "see" and not to colonize and those are the ones who prefer traveling farther looking for the perfect world to settle, which they might never find. For that reason you send a exploring probe and while you wait for the results you settle the curreny system and squize the last piece of mineral from it before you need to move to the next one.

Hey!!! This is just a thought and I might be completely wrong!!!

[dvlenk6]

I agree with Fossaman. Colonization, for whatever reason, is sporadic and progresses in spurts. This is historically true: The Aryan Migrations, The Greek Diaspora of the 6th century B.C., The Mongolian migrations (Turks, Huns, Mongols, Turks again), The Russian-Siberian Expansion, The American Wesward Expansion. All of them ignored huge territories, often rich territories, to cover as much territory as possible as quickly as possible.

In transcendence universe, there are religious and military splinter groups forming the outward colonies. They would go as far away from settled space as feasible to make their colonies.