Use this topic to post endless new ideas that Jay can then take on or ignore. 
Borders.
I already suggested this in the Google+ site, but Iām going to post this here with a bit more detail.
In NP1, the borders were actually the perimeter of the scan range, though not quite defining of the extension on oneās empire, it did allow for one to have more or less an idea as to where the territory came to an end and when someone elseās began.
The idea would be to draw an actual line between the stars owned, and those thatāre not. Creating this way an actual āCountry likeā border thatād allow for a quick glance to show the extension on oneās system. Ideally, this line would go through the middle point between a star owned and another not.
A couple additions to this idea would be that, if any enemy ship is crossing your border and headed towards one of your stars, in the minimap or āMaximum zoom.outā the border would either have a fire or be glowing, to call attention on the fact that youāre being attacked.
Lastly, much like with the statistics, a āPictureā would be taken of the stars and their borders (not showing any relevant data about them such as ships, industry, etc) and youād be able to see frame by frame how the game develops and how each player grows, expands and falls.
2 Likes
Cloaking. The ability to sneak attack other players. There could be a tech, perhaps that could work with it.
Hereās how I imagine it could work:
You could cloak a ship at X where X is your tech level for cloaking.
I imagine it would be an upgrade specific to whatever ship or ships you want to cloak.
You would be able to get 1 (or 2) X/3Y distance to another playerās planet before they could see you - where Y is their scanning level. The stronger their scanning, the sooner they can see you.
There might have to be an indication on the player profile stating how many cloaking ships they had.
I was thinking that this would be a really fun element of surprise and intrigue: now knowing if your allies are sneaking up on you.
Star defense.
Itās inevitable that there ends up being those bottleneck stars. Where if you could hold those down for a while, it would hold off the enemy and allow reinforcements to arrive. It would be probably be easiest to set it up like a costly star upgrade, much like warp gates are.
Perhaps at a certain range, it starts taking out ships. You could make it more complicated by adding a tech that could allow these to be upgraded, such that they start taking out ships sooner, or that gives +2 to that star.
Star defense reminds me somewhat of the feature in Spaceward Ho! (ancient game, showing my age somewhat) of building satelites on your stars for defense - was cheaper than building fleets. NP2 shares a lot of the interesting features of that old game (terraforming planets, etc). I wonder if the code is available, @JayKyburz could use it to improve the AI in NP2ā¦
Good ideas.
Rate payouts for Economy - Industry and Science have payouts per hour. My feeling is that Economy should work with the same model. Banking would no longer give a set payout, but increase the rate at which money is created much like manufacturing.
Weapons power scaling - The relative power between L2 and L1 weapons is huge, especially when you consider early game attacks. As weapons increase towards infinity their relative advantage decreases drastically. The graph shoes that when you have a single tech level over an opponent (defensive adv etc) at L1 you have a 100% force multiplier, but at L20 you have just a 5% force multiplier. To me thatās broken. Combat should look at the relative level disparity in tech and assign a force multiplier of sayā¦ 20% per level over the lower player. In this case you could predictably say āIf I attack someone at the same tech level I need to have 20% more shipsā. Only if you were 5 tech levels above someone would you ever see a 100% advantage like L1 vs L2.
Hyperspace Speed - Itās great to be able to move ships farther. But some of these long paths are arduous, given that your travel can be seen and predicted from many many lightyears away. Other than reaching distant unvisited stars Hyperspace Range is largely useless. I suggest that as the range scales up, so does the speed at which ships travel appropriately. For example L1 lets you travel 3ly, and at .25ly/hr, well then at L2 you travel 4ly at .3ly/hr and so onā¦
Much of the problems with hyperspace range comes in the ability of a distant enemy to respond as your fleet moves in, making multiple, short jumps harder to foresee.
2 Likes
A price calculator.
I am not sure if this has already been suggested before. But if there is a tool for calculating battle outcomes, then why not also have a tool to figure out how much buying economy, industry, or science will cost based on the natural resources of a star and the number of upgrades already on the star? It helps to get an idea of how much terraforming will be worth and how much building on a star will cost when it switches hands, to help players plan out and spend credits more wisely. It could be one of the tools on the menu; the uneven rows (four and three) of icons bother my somewhat OCD brain slightly.
I think an option to disable tech trades between non allied players could make for some interesting games.
4 Likes
Iāve got this half-formed idea about some sort of offensive-only, one way, long range weapon that can be launched from stars.
I envision it as a sort of interstellar āmissile swarmā that can be ācharged upā on one star then launched at another. They would have a longer range than carriers, and they would travel somewhat faster than carriers (or not, whatever works better), and upon arriving at their destination, they either completely demolish the forces on the star (and maybe damage infrastructure too) or fail completely.
In my head I imagine that missiles would be slightly more powerful than ships such that a swarm of 10 missiles would count as 12-13 ships in strength, HOWEVER they do not do damage unless they actually outnumber the ships. Otherwise the ships successfully intercept all missiles. They would NOT be used to capture the star, only a carrier could do that.
I basically imagine these being used to precede a carrier invasion or to hit a distant star or fleet that is otherwise out of reach.
Basically Iād just like some additional offensive capacity other than carriers so I can harass nearby opponents (and be harassed) without having to commit huge amounts of ships to an invasion.
One day Iām going to implement my Nova Bomb idea, that is like this, only the entire star is destroyed and no fleets can jump to it any more. There is one less star in the Galaxy.
Also, lets have a separate thread for each feature request. That way the chit chat can be on a single feature.
I used to play a game called Stars! That had a function like this. You flung resources and the more resources you flung the more damage you did.
Loved the packet accelerators in Stars.
I would love to see hyperspace speed brought back. Perhaps replace experimentation. In large games it can take days to get your ships moved around even with warp gates. If this is not desirable please allow for super cheap warp gates. I find even cheap warp gates are expensive.
It would be a lot easier to make suggestions if everything was categorized. New suggestions should be in 1 category, help or guides in another, a place for general chat, bugs, etc.
I created a sub category for new features yesterday. I will lock this thread.