Cloak is Coming: Evidence in the files

I've been thinking a lot about terrain features.

I suggest these:

Asteroid fields. These are impassable to everything except tiny ships. They are spawned at the start of the map and form (player option) x% of the map.... they're scripted to generally form in long thin clumps, not just appear at random in different tiles. This gives the possibility of a tiny fighter, guerilla warfare tactic both for harrassing deep behind enemy lines and for raids on trade lanes before fleeing back into the asteroid field before the big ships can retaliate.

Nebula fields. These have different inherent properties. They form in blobs covering a number of parsecs. The properties they can have are endless. Some might negate lazer weapons. Some might make ships invisible to radar. Some might cause hull damage. Some might explode if missiles are fired. Some might greatly strengthen defenses. The list of possibilities is endless.

Electro magnetic anomalies. These aren't collectable like the ones in game at the moment. They are also undetectable on the map as they are probably natural forces leaking through from another space time continuum. They can have various effects on ships and may grow stronger and weaker over time.... or may pulse on a regular basis - i.e. turn 1 they have a 2 parsec radius, turn 2 they have a 3 parsec radius, turn 4 a 5 parsec... then back down to 2 parsecs again. The effects could be things like greatly lowering (even killing the engine) or increasing your engine speed. Warping the fabric of space making your fleet appear 10 times stronger or weaker. Randomly transporting you to another area of their pulse influence. Again, I see a lot of possibilities.

Damn, I was going to keep all these ideas to myself and write a big huge post with all of them in the next time Frogboy asked for gameplay ideas! Hey well, I have countless other ideas for practically every other part of the game, so I will keep those for the future!

Great ideas I like them. I'd especially like to see stealth in the game.

Where did you find this?

Wow. Lots of good ideas in this thread.

Missed a point to my asteroid field idea and it wont let me edit it.

Asteroid fields would also effectively block routes but would be scripted never to block someone in. This means that a possible scenario is that you are playing in the corner and have two asteroid fields loosely surrounding your sectors. You have a choke point. You can put a military starbase in the gap between the asteroid fields and become a defensive kingdom. The Ai would need to understand that (they already understand the concept of military starbases - I've seen fleets sit a couple of squares outside the influence of a military starbase) and not send constant ships into the killing grounds and instead build up fleets of tiny fighters to approach through the asteroid field to hit on your commerce and planets.

Asteroid fields would also force trade lanes to move around them - again increasing the interest of raiding traders with tiny privateers as they passed the ambush point.

Noticed this too when I was trying to find a way to add culture to a ship, but I'm betting these are all features we will have to wait till an expansion for.

woot, I was hoping for cloak...
on a suggestions note, as I said before asteroid fields, nebulas, gas clouds and such could also replace those completely arbitrary colored resource nodes...
personally I don't like the idea of chokepoints, space is open and any obstacle can be easily circumvented, unlike in a civ type game where there are mountains and such

nebulas and asteroid fields could also be hiding places for planetless factions, like pirates, terrorists, maybe even dreadlords if they decide to add those like in civ 2

Where did you find this?

C:\Program Files\Stardock\TotalGaming\GalCiv2\Data\English\English.str

personally I don't like the idea of chokepoints, space is open and any obstacle can be easily circumvented, unlike in a civ type game where there are mountains and such

You are right in terms of realism. In space you could just as easily go over as go round.... but given the limitations of the game and trying to add in more strategic devices, some terrain factors might create more interesting play.

Cloaking was in GC1 on some ships...

Cool, what about this entry in the starbase table?
[TerrorStar] Terror Star

asteroid fields are rather tiny things on a galactic scale, even if they made up the entire orbit of a star they are still pretty tiny considering the galaxy sizes. Gas nebulas and such are really the only things large enough to really fit on the map in a meaningful way.

Gravitational Anomolies
These "Black Holes" would stop things like advanced drives from working because it should not be possible to fold space so close to them (ie you cannot create a great enough gravity to outweigh the gravity created by the anomaly). This would slow down ships passing by this area.

Wormholes
A wormhole that can either be stable (has a specific destination), or unstable (can leave you anywhere)

Neutron Star
These reduce the effectiveness of sensors allowing you to hide either starbases or ships within them so that nobody can find them

Derelect Precursor Ships
Abandoned space craft from long ago which may hold secrets or bonuses

Woah woah woah. By adding in miniaturization here (as well as editing the abilitybonus.xml) Miniaturization actually shows up on the list when customizing! The best part is it works too!

asteroid fields are rather tiny things on a galactic scale, even if they made up the entire orbit of a star they are still pretty tiny considering the galaxy sizes. Gas nebulas and such are really the only things large enough to really fit on the map in a meaningful way.

GC2 doesn't really represent galactic scales very well and it really doesn't matter. Asteroids are tiny things, but so are planets and stars. Given relative distances, very often star systems are much too close given the distance between planets and stars.

Some star systems are 20-30 spaces away, but Mars is say 4 spaces away. That doesn't correctly scale. But again, who cares. Realism in a game like this would be a drag.

Woah woah woah. By adding in miniaturization here (as well as editing the abilitybonus.xml) Miniaturization actually shows up on the list when customizing! The best part is it works too!

Can you elaborate here to link to another post where you?

asteroid fields are rather tiny things on a galactic scale, even if they made up the entire orbit of a star they are still pretty tiny considering the galaxy sizes. Gas nebulas and such are really the only things large enough to really fit on the map in a meaningful way.

Sometimes absolute realism doesn't compute into a game but rather the ideas of it do.

https://forums.galciv2.com/?ForumID=348&AID=105014
You can add both logistic and miniaturization to the ability list on customization
Don't know if Interest Rates, Crime, Cabinet, or Goverment do anything ingame but they could be added...

I might just make a new thread detailing the steps if it's needed

Space terrain is absurd. Asteroid fields are far, far too diffuse to be dangerous (the Hoth asteroid field, for instance, is absurd and must have been created by a relatively recent collision (hundreds of years). Things like the Sol belt have literally thousands of klicks between rocks that are usually so tiny they're insignificant. Nebulas are less lame, but I have to wonder why a cloud of diffuse gas would block FTL sensors. I think nebulas implemented sensibly (ie, a few, very large nebulas, which sensibly change the characteristics of stars within them) would be alright, but Armada-style 'nebula canyons' and 'nebula fences' should never be considered.

Frankly, I feel the game needs a 'funky' star distribution setting. The star distribution provides terrain by requiring bases or extended-range ships to travel the occasional long starless/planetless distance. Playing on tight clusters all the time you very rarely see this, but on scattered you sometimes see very interesting formations, where someone might be near you but inaccesable for a long time due to the difficulty of crossing the void. A somewhat more 'structured' star distribution setting might provide such astrological interactions more often.

PS Bombard = teh win. The game needs bombs.

Link You can add both logistic and miniaturization to the ability list on customization Don't know if Interest Rates, Crime, Cabinet, or Goverment do anything ingame but they could be added... I might just make a new thread detailing the steps if it's needed

Either Syneris is getting confused with too many windows open, or the forum has created some kind of dimensional loophole and is filtering posts from the miniaturisation thread here!

Perhaps just by talking about anomalies, we created one!!

Sorry, because I was told about the English.str, I found a way to get it working. Then I was asked a question about it and provided a link. And yea, I had about 20 windows open between IE, Editing tools, GalCiv2, a few folders, and different text/game files.

Space terrain is absurd.

Yeah, what next? Bug-eyed bipedal humanoids traveling faster than light shooting death rays.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the devs say that they decided not to have cloaking in the game? (Even though it was in the engine)