I suspect devs have a real love-hate thing with us option-lovers. I wasn't 'forgetting' this sort of stuff, just not nattering on as much as I could. Because we don't know much yet about how the main map and the tactical context interact, we don't know whether a list like your should also include things like that old tree-to-tree teleport that D&D druids could do.

p.s. To the D&D young'uns: there is no D&D after AD&D. The 2nd, 3rd, etc., are abominations born of abomination because the whole scene should have yielded to rulesets like the Hero System or GURPS and the definition of a 'good game crew' should be that they'd tired of canned content & learned how to make their own stories. Wizards of the Coast = dealers trying to keep junkies in their gutters.

a bit off topic, but 2nd ed was TSR, not Wizards of the coast.  It was the original D&D guys at the begining.  On top of that there was 2nd ed D&D and 2nd ed AD&D.  I can agree that 3rd and 4th are abominations, but 2nd ed was pretty loyal to 1st ed, except considerably more streamlined (at least at first).  I mean lets face it... 1st ed was pretty bad.  I love going back and looking at my books where I can play a level 4 'halfling' (because all the race is a single class ^_^)

As far as options are concerned, I just want most things they create to be able to be turned off.  Nothing bothers me more than when a sequal introduces a cool new feature that changes gameplay in a big way... and sometimes you just wish you could turn off once in a while

As far as game development, even software development in general, is concerned, I think that's a bad philosophy to have. It's like creating a new operating system that's supposed to be 98% compatible with an older one. The result is longer development time, inefficiency, and limited feature upgrades/additions. Just look at Vista

No, I think Swicord = buttmunch is a bit more accurate.

hey now, play nice.  To each their own opinion.

The problem with Swicord and people like him is that it isn't good enough for him to say, "Hey - I like GURPS."

No, it has to be, "I like GURPS, and if you like D&D, it's because you're an unlettered plebe who wouldn't know quality if it bit you on the ass."

That sort of unneccessary elitism is stupid and destructive to the hobby, and, if he was really any good as a roleplayer, he'd know that you can have great roleplaying sessions using D&D (of any edition), GURPS, Warhammer Quest, MERPS, BESM, Shadowrun, Vampire, or any of a hundred other game systems.

(And, yes, I've played all of the specifically named game systems [and several others besides], and had a blast with all of them.  Even better, I can tell you about their good and bad points IME without calling a fan of a particular one a moron.)

Tell me you have played RoleMaster from I.C.E. I thought that was an OUTSTANDING system and had many good adventures (we had an awesome GM, which frankly can make pretty much any system great IMO). I was surprised RoleMaster never gained more market share than they did.

Of course I've played Rolemaster!  (AKA Rollmaster, AKA Chartmaster - and totally said with love; MERPS is a Rolemaster derivative, and that was good, too)

The charts for various actions were simultaneously the game's best and worst point; they made resolving any given action take quite awhile (especially for people new to the system), but they were so flavorful in how the result played out that you were usually willing to forgive the extra time.  The exact terminology escapes me after so many years, but I still remember attempting an attack with my longsword, cross-referencing the enemy's armor type, performing some math based on his actual defenses, and finding out that I did a Type A, B, and C hit, which, eventually, resulted in cutting the opponent's arm and basically ending the fight right there.  That was pretty cool. *

I lucked out and had a GM who basically created custom character books for all of us (he'd hand out a binder with the charts for each weapon we used, all the appropriate spell and skill charts, etc.), which sped things up immensely, and then he'd put in a lot of effort to keep the game flowing (an important skill in any game, but even more so in one where it's easy to get bogged down in details).

* I find that, for each of the systems which I don't get to play all that often, there's one or two things that end up more or less defining the game for me.  For Rolemaster / MERPS, it's that initial disarm. For Shadowrun, it was looking up at the GM during character creation and saying, "Wait a second; I can buy a biker gang?"  For Ars Magica, it was throwing together a hasty combat spell on the fly to save my wizard's life, rolling the spell success chance, and failing (Goodbye, magus!), only to remember that I'd taken the Flawless Magic ... perk ... during character creation, which meant I never failed that kind of roll - Hahah!

Ok. I think I got the gist of this post, but things did end up noticably off-topic once RPGs came into account.

As far as pathing goes, I would wonder if the coding from SoaSE's wormholes vs. interstellar phase jumps would be applicable, or at least a starting point for the AI to consider a proper route.

I would like to see some form of shortcut available for transportation, though I'm not sure what my preference might be. A teleportation spell would be interesting, particularly something akin to WoW's Hearthstone for retreat purposes. (Including a lengthy cast-time to avoid an entire army's usage of hit-and-run, though it might work well for small parties of heavily armed and armored soldiers.)

The primary question which comes to my mind in regards to waygates are whether or not they are a connection to an otherworldly network of passageways, or the individual links from point to point. Perhaps it might start as the latter, but a more advanced mage could re-work the teleportation magic to force a jump to another point? Some detrimental effect would be good if that were anything but an end-game ability.

Well, I imagine we would have both for sure.  Since this is supposed to be the closest thing to master of magic since the original, I'd imagine you would have to have that outerworldly connection.  Perhaps not a series of passages per-se, but more an entire world.   Then you'd have your point-to-point waygates HoMM style.   I'd imagine you also have the gate spells (or structures if you are an AoW guy) you can put in towns to let you move between the towns at will.

Now what I think is an important question (and maybe this is what you mean hiriako, but you didn't express in a way I understood) is how will the system handle it?

Because I still see everything is MoM style, I'd imagine that when you occupy a waygate, you will occupy all of the waygates connected at the same time.  In MoM, when you step on a portal that moved between planes, you counted as being on both sides of the way gate at the same time. 

I recall glitches occurring in towns where I casted those instant move portals existing where it wouldn't let me move 9 into a town because another portal had guys standing on it. This may have been fixed at some point, and they don't have this problem in AoW, but in AoW it counts as a step to move from one end of the portal to another town.  Now the reason this is important is if there is any sort of over-map range feature (like somebody I remember requesting artillary of some sort, they are especially important since I'd imagine they couldn't move and shoot or something) then you can't park it half in and half out of a portal, firing off to your heart's delight.

the 'can't move to a space because the other side of the portal (or plane because the other guys have plane travel cast on them) because then the total count is more than 9, even though they arn't at the same place' really bothered me, so I'd perfer the HoMM / AoW  requires move to move through portals or waygates I think.

landisaurus, I'm not sure that waygates/portals and MoM plane-crossing match up here. In MoM, you were dealing with mirrored planes, but in WoT waygates, you were taking a step across a boundary from the normal world to a specially constructed sort of pocket universe. In Stargate stories, you have the same effective situation but with 'normal' terrain on both sides. The starting and destination tiles never had an overlap, although you could step straight into a world of hurt if your luck was bad.

Re requiring a move to pass through portals/waygates, I had unconsciouly assumed that'd be necessary and can't really imagine how it would work otherwise. It also seems like any spell-based teleports would need some sort of 'movement' points at least to get the spell off. Either way, if you use your last action to do the teleport or step through a device, you should be screwed if fresh enemy forces already occupy the destination.

Anyhow, I really hope you're right about the game having some kind of teleportation "for sure." There's nothing useful like that in GC2 and the devs will have to pick winners and losers from the feature wish list or they'll never get the bits to RTM. But with luck, maybe Elemental can lay some code groundwork that will let GC3 civs build swell new versions of the portals they built their first FTL ships out of after the Terrans spread hyperdrive tech.

I'm actually a bit surprised that GC2 doesn't have some sort of teleporting way-gates, since there is an anomoly that will randomly teleport your flagship accross the map.  I hadn't really thought about it before, but it is really missing a structure that lets you do it and it would be very useful.  Sins does at least (even if only 1 faction gets them).

I should point out that I'm coming into this game never having played MoM. I got ahold of a copy once, many, many years later. Had no manual. Couldn't really figure out it because I was impatient at the time. Died too quickly too often.

Anyway, I do like the thought of being able to construct waygates which would allow speedy transporation between your own cities and villages. Should this kind of travel be instantaneous, or take a bit of time? I think that depends on the explanation behind it. It's also another place you could develop upgrades, with it being quicker as you expand upon that type of knowledge, or as you place more essence into the workings.

If you take "waygate" strictly from the Wheel of Time model, it is a semi-stealth rapid transit system and not a teleport. That's pretty much why I like the idea of having both an option to build something like the Ways and to learn to cast teleport spells, just as channelers in WoT could do.

The manual was nice (I had one obviously) though I don't think it really told me much on how to play the game.   I think I figured it out on my own since there were 2 things, 1 - build things in town and 2 - pres end turn.   The spells it did for me (it forced me to research them anyway, later I must have found the spell button)

well, explanation is very easy to what you want, especially if it isn't a main plot point of some story.  

From what frogboy gave us, we know there are things that can be felt through the passage of time and all that, once magic is perfected there really doesn't need to be any further explination for teleporting in any way.  it just happens because powerful channelers and mages figured out how.

I'm using waygate because it's the term being bandied about upon this forum. It could function like the waygates from WoT - with the dangerous elements and all. It could function like the stargates from the show of the same name. It could function like the jump relays from Mass Effect. The name's just for the sake of calling it something.

Insofar as explanations are concerned, it's really just something in my head. I like building a system around a story and vice versa. If you just build the game and add the story later, it feels hashed, all mixed up and jumbled. It's rare that someone can write something coherent. If you have the story and add design elements later, you may end up with things that are entirely out of place. I like to work on both at once, so that you have some concept of where both pieces are heading. It creates a more coherent result.

If the details behind how or why something works are left unfilled, that's quite acceptable too! But if it's going to be in there, let's consider it when tossing about ideas.