Nebulae - adding extra level of strategy to our maps

Well, don't forget that your are basicaly navigating through hyper espace. So I am not sure how nebula can affect this.

I'm sure the original galciv had wormholes, but they could be annoying. The AI would have to be fixed to know how to exploit this, which might require specific wormhole subroutines, taking up CPU space for the AI, just in case a rare event happens. If it did know how to exploit them, Then one turn you may find your best planet surrounded by transports appearing from nowhere and anyway, from what I've seen on intelligent, they aren't needed. Hyperwarp just rockets you through the galaxy with ease, and the AI was quite capable of sneaking past 4 of my planets and my pride and joy Oblivion fleet to take Mars.

Nebula wouldn't really make sense considering all the stuff hyper and warp drives do to space, but they would be really cool.

If you assume that at the end of a units turn (out of movement points) that is has to drop out of hyperspace before beginning a jump on the next turn, then nebula can be taken into account. If you passthrough a nebula over the course of one turn you are not effected. If you end a turn in it your ship takes any damage/has limited sensor range etc and will continue to do so each turn until the nebula is exited.

Just imagine the guerilla tactics that could be performed with a nebulae between you and a hostile civ...

I for one would welcome the addition of nebulae as at present the eXplore aspect of the game feels a little dry. Yes in real life space is just one big empty void, but as any sci-fi geek knows, in our heads it is full of exotic phenomena. Especially as the location of stars and other races are known before hand, very little is actually discovered over the course of a game apart from resources and space junk. More space effects, even as just eye candy, would spice the map up a little.

Yeah, that does make sense. And it would make Eyes of the Universe a lot better again, since they capped sensor range at 15, maybe it would give something like a higher cap in nebula? and it would have a brilliant factor in surprise invasions, maybe if theres a nebula next to a planet you'd get an advantage factor?
Wait, thats impossible. Damn.
Oh, and about wormholes,

Link
CaretFarmer says class 8 anomalies are wormholes. If they aren't in the game, they're in the code so it would be quite easy to mod it. If you used default installation, the file will be anomalies.xml in Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming\GalCiv2\Data\English. Those wonderfully happy Korx. Oh look, an anomaly... thats Korx for me then.

I like the idea of nebulae being added to the game, as some of the maps I've played on so far have had some significant empty regions in them. I also really like of tweaking the "wormhole" concept in game - sounds like something really interesting to add into "scenarios".
Here are some other ideas that I've had. Not sure how implementable they are, but heah, you nefer know!

1. Spaceship equipment that can induce sunspots into an enemy sun (either that or be able to "project" an artificial black hole into a sun). The results on the planets insystem would be either to change the weather on planet(s), which would have end results such as changing planets' bonus tiles around, or in more severe cases change planets' classes or, even make them uninhabitable/ habitable depending on the controlling algorhythm).

2. Being able to "colonize" Class 0 planets for the purpose of establishing an outpost/ military stronghold in a strategic location.


3. Space mines. Say you've got a flank that you want to defend, and have no intentions of advancing in that direction out of the sector your currently in. By planting space mines along this flank you don't have to assign as many ships to patrol/ defend that flank.

4. The concept of "overspace", or that there is a normal "X" space (and that is the dimension that we live in) but that there are also parallel dimensions that exist, and that certain researched techs will allow players to build ships can travel thru these parallel dimensions. Example: player builds a "Pirate" ship that can project itself into dimension "Y" (or "overspace" if you prefer). It then camps out along a known trade route in X Space, but projects itself into Y Space so that it is completely undetectable until it then decides to come back into X Space to see if there is any prey around.

5. And speaking of Pirates, how about an option where you can send your ships into "Privateer" mode where they can attempt to blame other races for their attacks (sort of like framing another Faction when commencing Probe Team actions in SMAC).

6. The whole idea that there are other species out there that don't/ can't breathe the same atmosphere that we do, nor are their ecosystems able to simply move in and "take over" when their race conquers/ colonizes a planet. So say "Species A"is busily terraforming a world to their standards (improving the atmosphere, enriching the soil in order to support their ecosystems, etc.), but Species J, who is a military juggarnaut, comes along and sees Species A on this planet. Species J decides to spare Species A because Species J realizes it would simply take too much effort in order to conquer, then re-terraform said world, and decides to look elsewhere for a more suitable victim that will reap easier dividends.

7. The whole concept of expanding upon the planetary conflict aspect of the game could be expanded upon into a full blown parallel game. I think currently there is a void here in the TBS Sci-Fi gaming industry for the next "Deadlock" or "Cyberstorm" (or whatever other names you could insert here that have revolved around a Sci-Fi planet conquest theme...

I'm also very interested in seeing what can and can't be done via the XML code. Anyone started really delving into this yet?


Darsnan

If you assume that at the end of a units turn (out of movement points) that is has to drop out of hyperspace before beginning a jump on the next turn, then nebula can be taken into account. If you passthrough a nebula over the course of one turn you are not effected. If you end a turn in it your ship takes any damage/has limited sensor range etc and will continue to do so each turn until the nebula is exited.

So if we make the big assumption that end of turn means dropping out of hyperspace then it all sounds good. And again if you think about it, being able to intercept a vessel in hyperspace seems rather unlikely but it still happens (as with ship combat).

Remember that we are not necessarily focused on realism here, more so on fun. I guess the real problem is though at this stage whether the AI would be able to handle an addition such as this.

I like the idea of nebulae being added to the game, as some of the maps I've played on so far have had some significant empty regions in them. I also really like of tweaking the "wormhole" concept in game - sounds like something really interesting to add into "scenarios".

Yep this is what had me think of nebulae to add that little bit more to the maps.