So I've been thinking about this for awhile. It's been added to, edited, and even purged over the years. This didn't start out in html. I fixed it, so you better be praising me right now.

Hmmm, I should get around to catagorizing these. I mean I have an entire branch that has to to with huge planets. Another branch could be entitled "In you dreams"

And grammer.







An excert from my Great Ideas List:

8th:

Remaking that old game Gravity Well with a multi-player. Add control of the ships, the buldings, a few graphics, and lots of features. Great Idea!

A list of upgrades it needs:

  1. A commander's post. Someone who wouldn't fly a fighter, but would order cargo around and handle tech and boss everyone around. [Actually, in retro-spect, this is probably a stupid idea. All ideas that go along with this are also probably stupid ideas]
  2. Bigger planets, give them shields, more buildings.
  3. A random idea for the planets: make a building on the surface. It would so often make little troop figures to walk around the planet to take shots and fire once in a while. (Or a building inside on the rim that makes them, then shows an elevator lifting them up)
  4. Turning freighters to satelites. It could be to resupply fighters, extend the range of radars (see 5) or defence. It needs turrents. Somehow the user must be able to control this satelites position. Deep space is easy, but orbits?
  5. Range for the radar. (--==Allready Implimented in GWV==--)
  6. Freighters riged with scanner.
  7. Have the suns orbit in a circle around the black hole. So it all stays...[naw, Only two ways about this: A stable system, which just spins, which is boring, and pointless to show when EVERYTHING is spinning. Or you have an unstable universe, which while cool, gives the fates just a wee bit too much sway. Congragulations, you've just established a hard-won planet, too bad it'll be a singularity in a few minutes. On the flip-side, working like crazy to prolong your system's lifespan/doom everyone else would be a cool side venture. Moving a sun though...]
  8. TRUE TO PHYSICS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! includes planets, suns, ships, EVERYTHING.
  9. Stable universes would be hard to calculate. So be able to set a time limit guage thing. A countdown to armagedon. I mean, eventually stuff would have to crash...
  10. Planets crashing into each other! (Its like these things just come to me) Destroying whatevers on it, makeing a bigger planet, or lot's of debre which could float forever, (until you shot it of course, it WAS based off of the old asteroid game) and until it fell into a sun or something.
  11. Some way to predict , and see, the paths of all [most/some] space bodies.
  12. If suns moved, would they be effected by gravity of planets? Could they crash into other stars? Would this obliterate the game? Maybe.
  13. Somthing which shows where the black hole is! That was just annoying. [upgrade]
  14. This is streching it, but if there are little troops on the planet, perhaps a troop transport to take over the planet without having to rebuild everything? (stealing this common idea straight from SC4)
  15. Since the planets are bigger and hard to hit the center of, have the buildings offcenter, a special upgrade or something could be to have a core base or whatever, basically a building in the middle of the planet like a base or similar... and of course some weapons to beat it. (Note: This revolves mostly around large planets)
  16. Would battle-ships be a good idea, or in that case the entire slew of them all. The fighters are fun. would haveing destroyers and cruisers distrupt that? and what about carriers? Possibly that would be a different option, like instead of having planets and empires, have armadas of large ships with either a steady supply or a fixed amount of cash, material, whatever, to make fighters. Perhaps, but it would get away from the gravity well roots. And the GRAVITY!
  17. More and different upgrades, but bigger guns make ships heavy and such. [Weight, of course effectivly reduces thrust]
  18. An upgrade for LONG ranged shots, asteroid thrower or big laser
  19. Space junk, slightly damaging stuff hidden from rader (opt upgrade) and stuff like meteors which do show on radar.
  20. Making different altitudes on the planet? Instead of having circle planets. or would that be too funky?
  21. Ability to, after a lot of work and satalites, enclose the sun as a source of power? Mega base whatnot. (It's a Dyson's sphere)
  22. A better way to steal cargo ships, grapping hooks and docking, or tractor beams or shooting special parts or somthing other then luck.
  23. (deleted)
  24. Scratching the entire planet "claim" idea all together. Possibly a land war, or a system of deploying and clearing mines.
  25. Someway to determine who's closest to whatnot. or just a HUD display toggle to show direction and distance of friends.
  26. In multiplayer, this should also have a variable to say what they're doing. Players can either choose what it says or it can guess what they're doing.
  27. (deleted)
  28. It should still have an AI though. Personallities are cool. The berzerks are easy to predict and useable while things like cowards and coopreative need to be more distictive.
  29. When you got AI, you can have things like a huge AI empire and the players are the little rebel pirates whatnot. Or little AI upriseings to deal with within a good empire.
  30. Oh oh oh, great idea within one: Planet Cannons! It costs so much resources to trasform a base (if its in the middle) to a rock hurling cannon! Cut out a wedge of the planet for the rocks to come out, and a base/primer/square near the middle that would launch rocks!
  31. The last idea almost makes it a need to have players be able to control buildings, and a good interface to launch rocks! something that takes gravity and changeing orbits into consideration and somhow can plan the tragectory of it. The building of rocks, thrust, (and posidbly aiming tracers?) would require resorces and TIME. Possible different material? possible a guage that slowly filled that would be the useable thrust power, and when aiming it any thrust UNDER the guage could be used then subtracted. Until a limit was reached though, it would be a constant drain..... So make a switch to control thrust production.
  32. Outer walls for different buildings, the tech center could have a boomerang shaped wall around it that would take hits before it would. This wouldn't help against lasers, but thats another upgrade.
  33. So with the idea of larger planets, and in a general sense of the game. I think that extending the length of regular shots would be a definate plus. Yeah, longer shots for all
  34. A guage that tells you the DISTANCE of the nearest object AND the direction of it.
  35. With the ranged radar: ranged communication, those out and about can't hear or tell others what's happening.
  36. Different qualities for the turrents. The rate of fire and the aim.
  37. What to do with frieghter congestion?
  38. Grappling hooks that can get your own supplies. The use of fighters as an alternate freighter. Mass would be tremendous.
  39. Various types of ships. and a window, or control of a building that produces ships in which you can choose what kind to make.
  40. Various types of freighters.
  41. Warp jumps. An upgrade for either a planet or a ship. It would make a wormhole connecting 2 points. Fly through it and you're half way across the universe.
  42. How true to physics should it be? Should a turning ship continue to turn in that direction? [no] Should turning involve acceleration and deacceleration?[no] Should it be somewhat automated to make it more like v4.0? [yes] hmmmmmmm Decisions.... [Are made]
  43. Definatly needed with all these ideas and feaures should be a screen to choose what you want to be implimetned. And a nice way to save and share your preferances with others. And to save some preferances while keeping some where you have to make a decision at the startup. Should they be approved by me before being spread across the globe.... hmmm. User-friendly while still being user defineable!
  44. Comets. Why not?
  45. And, of course, along those lines = planet killers.
  46. An astrodrome which holds spare ships. They should take a while to build so you don't just grab a new ship everytime you die. I would like a little penalty for the suicidal. I guess you could hand them off to AI bots while you don't use them... Astrodromes should, of course, be well sheilded. [hmmmm, not sure about this one]
  47. Don't know if I said this or not...[I did] but Huge planets. Bigger then the sun is in v4. But buildings would be either on the surface, a little below, or tunneled way down deep.
  48. Possibly tiny planets? Think a large asteroid. Just one building per rock. Freighters would have to build stuff.
  49. Why not have differnt sizes for planets. Combine all the different sizes for a more complex game. Planets of various sizes. Makes a need for more dynamic building placement/selection. (With all ideas like this the person MUST have the option to scrap these ideas and play it like he wants!)
  50. Power Lines? Buildings need power right? Shoot the lines, cut the power. And they could buldge/pulse/glow when a building uses power. So a turrent shoots, or a radar drains, or a launcher launches and you can see the building sucking your wealth.
  51. Anntenas for communications? A simple structure out on the surface of the building? It looks good. Need picture...
  52. Solar Arrays on sattalies for resources? Trade in the turrents for 2 collectores, and the freighters can stop off at them and pick up the good when they're ready. The sun as a resorce could add some depth
  53. Actually being able to land on frieghters this time. (--==Allready Implimented==--)
  54. A level editor so you can play with the orbits of the planets and stuff.
  55. Life pods. Actually, this is more of a half idea. If this is a one ship kinda game, life pods are cool. If it lands on a planet have a little guy come out. Small pistol. Not really important, but controling a lille stick figure walking around would be cute. He'd be able to build a landing pod like the apollo and make a jump for home. [yeah, a dumb idea. It would make for a very different game. But I still think its cute]
  56. Colony out of your communication reach? Get a couple of satalites to get laser comunications going and share radar data.
  57. Hmmmm minefields maybe? Orbiting mines might get funky, but deep space mines would be easy. Inter-system mines would have to be more like slow suicidal drones.
  58. Frieghters could CRASH into a planet and assemble stuff on the ground. Instead of just hovering over it and -poof- its a building. Or how about just dropping their reasorce payload, and having that crash in the planet, and some mysterious force goes to work.
  59. Enough being the only ships out there. Start the game going with a bustling empire filled with trade, treaties, police, armed escorts, bad-lands, possibly inter-empire treaties with wheeling and dealing. Not by the user though, I don't want it to go there, yet. I'm thinking a pirate game. -Space Pirates-. Get a nice home by some asteroids, set up a base near a trade point, capture the cargo, ship it home.... pirate game.... It's been too long since we've had a good pirate game...
  60. Nebulas. Just a simple blind zone out in space.
  61. Smoke trails out the back of a fighter. Like the nebula, radar and communique couldn't get through, you could encase and stealth a planet. And it's even a good escape method. It should dissapate with time though.
  62. A little puff would be great for loseing homing missles. (It's called chaff)
  63. Flares.
  64. Smoke bombs, ejected out of a port on either side, they go off, spread at a certain rate, you're hidden. (This stuff would have to disipate after awhile)
  65. Pump smoke in front of you as you go to make a stealth ship. You're blind as a bat of course, but it be a good way to sneak in. The ability to blow smoke would have to run out of course. You would have to pretty much guess when to come out of your smoke trail....
  66. Some other smoker variety could let a ship appear to be a comet. As long as it didn't thrust it wouldn't be detected. It would still be blind. I guess there is a question of how long smoke lasts. The quality of smoke and such.
  67. Dumb-fire rockets that vent smoke. A good tool for cowards.
  68. With satalites and such the commander should be able to dictate things like orbit and spin. Satalites should have SOME control of thier destiny. A set amount of resources to use for thrusters. Their solar panels make so much energy per minute depending how close they are to the sun. This energy they can spend on thrusting small amounts. Sending info home would have to be a continual drain. Maybe costing more and more the farther they get out. So a long range probe would be sent out (launched, tossed, whatever), get one pulse off and either have to be near a sun, or manually refueled.
  69. Coordinate readings along with the direction of ship. [what?]
  70. An upgrade to a special sonar-ish like device to use in nebulea. it should be next to useless in combat though. (good to land on hidden pirate planet in the middle of a nebula)
  71. Large, deep-space stations. Anntenea, Scanner, Science building, more guns, ships manufacture. Basicly an expensive dead planet which doesn't revolve around anything. Hmmm, thinking of it like that, it's pretty useless....
  72. If the game explodes into something far more complicated, make mercenaries avalible for hire. They recieve a frieghter, thier ships do a job. Guard transport, kill so many ships, take out starbase/ factory/radar whatnot. More of a political element then anything.
  73. With the idea of really freakin HUGE planets, why not water? A resource planet should be mostly water, right? so this could lead to under-water bases, subs, space-water switch-overs, depth-charges
  74. Ok, this is along with the huge, multi-level planets. But satalites. and I mean REAL satalites that actually orbit the planet. They could be roaming turrents, or surveliance, or even there to keep other's buildings off.
  75. Here's a cool weapon idea, launching a net. It's hard to defend easy targets because the opposing fighter doesn't actually have to shoot at you and can therefore avoid you. So often when defending your base, you need to be extreamely accurate at a dist. OR you could upgrade to fire a net, while slow, would expand to either hinder or cripple the enemy fighter. Similar to the null bomb in GWV
  76. Turrents. An upgrade, or even a different ship. Instead of a fixed straight shot, another 2 buttons control the angle of the cannon. Whether it can go 360, 180, or less is something to play with. Also to play with is whether the rotation is reletive to the ship or space.
  77. With GWV, comming home was more important becuase of mission points, and as usual, getting the ship patched up. If we added FUEL into the game home trips would practically be enforced. But it would be another element which is always cool.
  78. Ok, wow. This is a basic one. FUEL. Yeah, you can only go so far before loseing the juice. So your momentum would constantly be changing... ick.
  79. Variable acceleration. More equals more fuel spent and at exponential rate. This would be a very odd twist.
  80. Overburn. More thrust is applied, but at the risk of damage. Or, possibly, just double fuel consumption.
  81. The current tech center adds a fairly good random factor to the game, but it doesn't make much sense. It would be normaler if the standard tech tree was established. Perhaps the tech centers could provide a CHANCE at advancement to a new technology. After that though, the choice of which tech to install on a ship/freighter/building would still be hindered by cost.
  82. Fighter Turrents. An upgrade, or even a different ship. Instead of a fixed straight shot, another 2 buttons control the angle of the cannon. Whether it can go 360, 180, or less is something to play with. Also to play with is whether the rotation is reletive to the ship or space.
  83. MUD it. I've been playing around with the idea of turning this into a massive online game. Something like x-pilot meets everquest. Home owners would play space lords, pirate lords, empirial officials, and freebee downloaders could play commercial shippers, and ... and I've got this idea for an arcade system in which the players are hired out as mercenaries, or go as freelance pirates, muggers of space. A flight record is kept and it matches the jobs to the mercs. Whoa! I've gotten some wierd dreams where this turns into a sports show and the arcade players have a video cam and the announcers play around with avand gard stuff (like haveing an AI co-host, and a running gag where the [human] host is always injured during the show, and haveing a night where the AI takes over and the prop from terminator two is used as a reacurring droid of death, and that band is brought in and they play "space lord", and where we have fans of the show play as odd characters like space ninja or getting a rich sheik's kid really into it, and flying to germany to get a guy named Fritz to wear a hat with the shows name on it.)
  84. At the edge of the cosmos, (which should be rather bigger just becuase I'm dreaming that ALL specs of the game can be easily expanded upon) warp to the other side. Just like the original. I actually thought that that was one of the cooler things about the game. An official homage I believe. Oh, and the radar should be able to be centered on the homeworld.
  85. more Nebulas. The natrual ones (or upgraded ones) could have ~random electrical storms. little sparks flying around that take a point of damage. makeing an electrical nebula with astreroid debris in it the worst place to be.
  86. TOW missles. large cruise missle type of thing. Shootable, so it's not a perfect weapon, but a little tressel from the ship attaching a big ass rocket would look cool. oh yeah, and more upgrades can automate what the fighter does after control goes to the TOW
  87. ARMOR upgrades. Possibly an old idea, but pretty basic none the less.
  88. Rockets that, when they hit an enemy, don't explode, but attach and spin them out of control. Kinda un-conventional, but it'd look cool.
  89. Scram jets. Possibly another old idea, but expendable booster packs are a cool thing. And they wouldn't look bad. An oh so small rocket attached to the side of the ship in the back. They'd fire off at an angle, but when did efficiency matter in a game. Oh, and they could be used on freighters too. Like an upgrade.
  90. A-LIFE like construction for planets. More of an estetics (sp) thing, but it'd be cool to have a space inside the colony where goop is genesised and transported to the base, where it is formed into bars or whatnot. The formed shit is then trasported either through power lines or by lille bots and put together to make, whatever.
  91. And so, little worker bot to construct shit sounds really cool, massivly wasteful, but something to watch while waiting for an upgrade or reparing your ship.
  92. No more mystery with the upgrades. The ability to Choose what you want. The ability to see either how close you are to it, or what chance you'll get an upgrade. and WHEN! possibly a tech tree
  93. Impregnoshields. The ultimate shield. The only problem is that it's a little opaque. So have the option to turn it on and off at will. Just like the old Asteroids. A further upgrade could make it a segment of shield and rotateable. Or two layered with gaps and auto rotateing. Like tron Seeing would be a BITCH. Another idea is even if it's opaque, you could get radio signals from your base telling you where shit is. but the image should be either choppy, delayed, or both. or Quality could be dependent on range to base. hmmm. The ubershield probably shouldn't be a oneway shield like others, but even the ability to see where your going would be an upgrade. And you could RAM people!!! heh, just thought of that. planets and bases need an exeption though. like you crash into your own shield. It'd be a cool visual to see the part of your ship the shields center on rip out and the rest nose dive into the wall.
  94. Cooler visuals when you die. The scattered debis is a cool idea, but it'd look cooler if the blue/green/yellow/red sections of your ship actually came apart. They'd be like asteroids instead of temporary shots. You could tell when a battle took place that way. And a crater when you ram a planet or a simple ship broken in two when you over roate/Land hard. hmmm, when a crater is made on a planet, it should pile up some dirt around it. Furthermore, SOME peices should fly off. and theoreticy, if you rammed a planet enough, it should be demolished piece by peice... but that's for later.
  95. A melting zone around the sun. marked with a dotted red line, you start takeing damage cross the line... I always thought it odd to be skimming just off the sun...
  96. To ease up on the processor, To have smoother graphics and general good sit. Large objects have their movement pre determined everyso often and they follow that line or curve until their course is adjusted. smaller bodies have it adjusted more often. Also shit can have its orbit tied to other object. And that could be checked for a break.
  97. I'm hearing these ideas about collision detection. I've got an idea. both objects collideing have a variable which ranges from spring to hard. The Difference from rubber balls to pool balls. 2 hard object collide and they bounce right off. a rock hits a shield and it'll bend in a little and slowely be pushed off. Realistic impacts are cool.
  98. ok, a justification for max speed. The faster you go, the more space dust you run into. at some point you take damage from it. with some armor, it slows you down. at some other point it'll match your acceleration. hence, max speed.
  99. hehehe, etherwinds. just for the hell of it. hey! the border of the game could be one hell of an etherwind...
  100. ooooooo, "holes" in the etherwind could lead to different servers in the entire MUD game idea. traveling via, space empires and thier warp hold ideaology. Or you could bs the entire euclidian space thing and say that the holes are currents in the etherwind to other servers, hehe, traveling the ethers, please stand by.
  101. Spice worlds. This obviously leads to a whole shebang of types of worlds and stuff, so here it comes.
  102. So radar is going to be those cool antenea towers right? well how about a dish type radar that rotates around revealing a cone. Broad and short or narrow and wide, change at will.
  103. Viruses. A special weapon you can shoot into freighters/ships/whatever that infects a ship. Lets say it only works on near-death things. When it checks back in at a base it spreads it to the main buildings, other ships, whatever. This could go a lot of places. It could be as simple as reduced performace, spyware, a quick kill, or subversion! Is it instant or is there a "crack/hack" rate? And how to fight it. Science buildings could cure it I guess. Or it could simply be a nuicience; paying attention, a simple click, could fix it. And difference levels of virus: what it does, how stealthy it is, how fast it cracks.
  104. Ok, so when you command a freighter, or a base, or pretty much anything with multiple directional turrents, you could have a "fireing" mode. The arrow keys rotate/move a crosshairs where all the turrents point to. Meh, I don't think mouse control would be good...
  105. We got moons right? And planetary shields are way back there right? So a (Geo-synch) moon could make a X2 or X3 level shield around a planet.
  106. Ok, so with the ranged radar, and the inter-communication between planets and ships and stuff; Jamming stations. A satalite would jam communications going into, or out of it's field. Or both. This couldn't be used to cloak your own planet as it would reasonably kill your own radar. But send one off towards an enemy and the planet/ship would lose view of everything outside of it's radar, or... hmm, others would lose it, no.... hmmmmmmmmm. I don't want this to be some sort of blanket cloaking device.
  107. Hmmm, how and when to allow for player control switching. Right now, seperated planets not in the network could simply be switched over to and you've got their view. This IS a pain though and therefore a viable check and balance issue. It also implies a certain ammount of omnisense of the player. You could restrict it to being on the communication network. You could further restrict it to BEING THERE: docking with a frieghter, landing on a planet/starbase. Such painful protocol would create a demand for simple instruction commands, which would be a pain to work with and make smooth. Strictness would make a pseudo-commander position, more like a hotseat commander, which was what I originally had in mind. But planet managment would directly subtract from the action portion of the game. hmmmm. Well, if so, a special "executive" class of ship could be REALLY fast, stripped of weapons and simply be there to shuttle you around your empire managing stuff.
  108. Limited ammo? naw, only in REALLY crappy cheap ships if you got that sort of things going.
  109. Hmmmm, instead of specific upgrades you could have one generic quality setting for your ship. More armor (health), faster turrents, faster engines, bigger fuel tanks, and hmmm, I guess that's it. So instead of a tech tree, you slowly build a better ship. For one simple ship quality variable, quality should burn through resources faster. Otherwise you could split each attribute into it's own tech field. And remember that weight is always a factor for fighters. You could have a tank that couldn't lift off (armor or fuel capacity), or you could have a ship so fast that it can only maintain full burn for a few seconds. So some various things to improve: Some notes: The weapons portion would be a HUGE deviation from the standard. Also, I hated banging on my keyboard to shoot. I'd perfer a held fixed rate of fire. Futhermore, the either option to research DOWN, or to construct a ship with any specs within your tech range would be cool. I don't really know what I mean by "possible" tech upgrades. Balance issues and all. There are some real problems with this idea. 1)It's radically different from the current tech version, and it wouldn't incorperate well. 2)It changes the response of the ship, which could easily throw people off when manuvering, navigating, or simply launching from a planet. and 3) It would bugger the AI to no end. It would add a whole 'nother dimension tot he AI, which frankly, I don't think that they need to worry about.
  110. While outside of your radar, stars should ALWAYS be visable and on radar. However, the visibility of planets could diminish with distance from radar source, so you don't even know the location of the planet until you're there. Makes radar more important.
  111. HaHa! A death star! Don't ask me how it would be built, or exactly how big it would be. Probably small moon sized. But it would have one onmi-turrent, one DEATH LASER OF DOOM, roundish, and be hideously cumbersome. I know it sounds like the rock launching planet, but I want it to be a ship. A horribly gimped ship though. Just flying it around should be a bitch. But, if you actually manage to make a succesful planet run, you should be able to RAPE it. The main cannon should have a small charge time, and a decient cooldown, but it should be long, and full of planet smacking capability. You know what animation I want for fireing it. And, of course, a small vital area which a small fighter could hit.
  112. Hmmmm, An alternative engine. It inverses gravity. Perfect for launching from HEAVY planets. Bad for deep space manuvers. I dunno, just something experimental. In fact, a whole slew of unconventional techs would be spiffy.
  113. Dunno if this is back there, but flash bombs. Anyone faciing it would have thier screen whited out and a gradual return to normal. Like flashbangs from rainbow 6
  114. Name it Meteor. Seriously, it's a spif-off of Asteroids anyway, and it's not gravity well. I would like to make this my own. I even got a cool idea for the intro: "Rouge object comming in fast, Identifying... It's just a stray comet sir." "Get a trajectory" "... It comes close it's return path sir, but should miss us by 12 Ls." "mmm, leave it be then" (Cut to a comet circiling the sun, as it comes around we see up the tail end and vuage ship features are apparent. It stops billowing gas, the tail vanishes, and it begins to fire. The Satallite or radar ship go down) "ENEMY SHIP INCO~~~~" (all at once) "Warm up the batteries. Recall our fighters. Where the hell are they?" "Sir, we've lost coreward radar. Charging batteries." "Bravo squad return to base" "They're not going to make it sir" "Damn"
  115. AutoPilot. The ability to tell your ship to go to the nearest fuel/fix available. Or even the home base. Additionally, some basic form of auto-pilot for going somewhere. A lot the gametime is spent in transit. Thats time that you could spend manageing stuff.
  116. Different planetary defence:
  117. An alternative shielding device for planets. A small land station that projects an impregno-shield. It'll have to be pricey to sustain or slow to rotate
  118. Fireworks, harmless but spiffy
  119. Clouds. I mean planetary clouds, not nebula
  120. Launching cargo. Instead of useing frieghters, just launch it in a direction. Obviously you'd need some huge launching device and some way to catch it (grappler)Also promotes piracy, which is a good thing.
  121. Rings around planets. Just dust. It breaks and reforms when you go through. Cosmetic.
  122. A grid system in the background that gives you a reference to how fast you're goingA default option to make it look like stars of course for the estetic feel,but I want some sort of ruler mark system so you can zoom out, not see the smallest denominator, but tell that the larger denominator is passing by. Colored stars or something
  123. Different kinds of shields and upgrades thereof. We allready have absorbing shields and reflecting sheilds from the previous games. Both could be upgraded to withstand more shots. The reflecting shields could also have different reflecting properties: Faster reflection, or it could reflect everything that hits it as lasers. Another kind of shielding device could be repulsing shields (think scorched earth), which could have stronger repulsion or greater area of effect. Or it could be used as a gravity sink itself, throwing off other fighters.
  124. Fragile Tech. Ok, so to keep ALL of the tech-tree useful, let us say that better tech, that which is higher in the tree, is fragile. It breaks easily. This way the older, lamer techs won't be all but forgotten later on in the game. So lets say, with an existing game, that if a ship with reflecting shields, fast turning, and red-lasers got too many hits (that got reflected), it might lose it's fast turning. If it loses it's shields and takes half damage, it loses it's laser. Any ship that gets knocked a little could have it's guideing missiles stunned (dumbfire) for a second.
  125. MORE!

Ok, so there's a lot here. I know, it's messy, the spelling is atrocious, and the grammer bad, and it often contradicts itself. But there is hope: The Organized List bum Bum BUM!
First off, a list of things to make as far as emulating GW goes:

  1. Decide on Platform, graphics library, shit like that
  2. Start with a simple ship class, moving about like you want. Hammer out controls. Fireing whatnot.
  3. Planets. Rudimentry gravity on the ship. See if you can get it to land.
  4. Orbiting planets. Dynamic gravity.
  5. StarBases. Keep them hoveing around planets. Another landing pad.
  6. With the ship class and starbases orbiting, frieghters should be easy.
  7. Some form of AI for the bots. This includes: base contruction, freighter control, and enemy fighter control.
Then comes the improvemenst. Descending from easiest and least likely to screw shit up to the difficult to implement and really spiffy.
  1. Any simple weapn upgrades. Easy stuff.
  2. Different ships: shape, acceleration, fire power/rate. Should also be easy.
  3. Selection: in short, this is control over your own buildings. But it would probably require a totally different screen to see a "price" list, or tech tree. Messing with the GUI, could be tricky.
  4. Ditch the "claim" system. Whoever gets there first gets to build.
  5. Quantenize EVERYTHING. ships, buildings, bullets, fuel!, research? ship repair, everything gets a cost associated with it. These are your hard won materials being burned away. Economy is key! Radar, reasearch, and starbases have maintence. CPU intensive accounting, but should be easy.
  6. Fix freighters to work with gravity / abolish max speed. This means some freaky algorithms for finding paths through changing star systems without crashing. FREAKING HARD!
  7. User control for the freighters. After #2, this shouldn't be so hard. "Docking" whatnot could be iffy.
  8. Specialty freighters.
  9. Begin to play with planet/system size and shape. Change base layout and design. Add buildings. Optional buildings. Go nuts. the shit hits the fan here.

And one idea straight from David H. Hoeft:
Better graphics

Back to the gravity