Conflict

[paulmagusnet]

1] Please let me have a beserker class/death star ship. please please. I dont care how expensive or silly, i like it.

2] I really really loved those glowing ablative shields for the ships in Moo2, please please keep them!

3] How about someting new to do in combat:

a] When attacking a planet, I would never send in ships, I'd go out to the astroid belt and start tossing rocks. **

b] Drop a singularity (black hole) the size of a dime into the planet. think about it. In about a month the planet implodes.

c] leave bags of bio weapons in the planet's orbit for it to scoop up

d] nano weapons*

4] In Moo2 you actually had to have a combat to be able to stellar convert a planet, you couldn't just blow one up cause you felt like it. I should be able to do these things in anyplace where there is no active opposition.

* Nano weapons are not far future items, with TODAYS existing lab prototypes I could build an insect like flying machine that would enter its target and explode. It would be no bigger than a bacteria if I wanted. This could be done on a single chip using technology available right now. Any tech tree asuming that this is far future stuff is dead wrong.

** Current quantum theory allows that locational information is contained in all particles. By altering this information you can change the location in space (possibly time and or velocity) of a particular particle or group of particles. No need for a worm hole or engine.

[LordEd]

In Greg Bear's "The Forge of God", he tells of the destruction of Earth by a singularity. This singularity was dropped by a hostile force. Not only does he tell the science fiction story, but he goes into the workings of the device. I unfortunately cannot find my copy, so I can't give any exact quotes. The micro-singularity did operate on roughly a month-long time scale, eventually causing the break-up of Earth.

Also, he describes von Neumann devices in the same book. Von Neumann devices are self-replicating machines. This is another idea that might be useful, for it allows the rapid proliferation of weaponry (or other items).

Finally, nanobiotechnology (which exists today) can be harnessed to do amazing things. Essentially this technology involves the mutation and engineering of living materials to serve as controlled biological machines. Furthermore, DNA has been recently harnessed for use as a computer, so it would be possible to design biological nanites for many tasks, ranging from health applications and food preparation to biological warfare.

[paulmagusnet]

Tech

I think you're confusing Bio-Engineering and Nano Tech, Nano tech is building machines on a micro to molecular scale using tunneling electron microscopes or techniques similar to chip manufacture. The 'computer' your referring to should not be confused with your desktop machine, it effectively was a coded piece of genitic material allowed to replicate in a jar, shake, stir and sort to find the 'answer' gene. Not quite ready for prime time.

Actually Greg Bear is very good at speculative fiction, read another one of his books: Blood Music. Leo Frankowski also wrote an interesting book about biological engineering: Copernicks Rebellion.

The real question is: how would you incorporate these interesting things into the Moo3 universe in such a way that they were more interesting than just another change in build stats or some other generic game element modification. Give me something 'new' to do or see or think about, experience.

I'm actually not intererested in rushing to the 'end' of the game, I want lots of interesting things to do and to create someting of value. Most games are designed to go from A to B and end. Sim City and Ceaser III (and similer) do give a feeling of building but become static and you just run out of things to do.

Which does bring up Victory conditions, does everyone persue the same victory condition and can there be more than one winner. ie, player X achieving victory condition A does not preclude player Y from achieving victory condition B, they both win. For example, my goal is to paint graffetti on all blue planets and zorg's goal is to impregnate all blonds with mutant frogs. Can we both achieve our goals?

What Kind of Hall of Fame concept will there be? I would like to suggest a persistant trophy room where you can collect unique victory prizes. Open to suggestions here.

[vmxa1]

I would like the HOF to record more data. I want to know what the game settings were, map size, number of players, race I played and so on. I hate it when I go to the hall and can not tell much about the game. I would like to be able to delete enties from the hall. If I palyed a game and it ended, I may want to reload before the ending and try something else. If I do this I may end up with more than one entry for a given game and lose an entry I wanted to retain.