FreeOrion

Randomly deleting files in computer program installed under windows is a bad idea. You should have used the add/remove programs feature of windows: http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/faq.html#uninstall at this point, I have no idea if it would work, as you may have deleted the very files tortoise uses to...

Decouple detection range from stealth? Each Sensor has a Range and a Penetration. Detection range: Stars: Sensor Range*2 Planets: Sensor Range Ships: Sensor Range/2 Stealth: Compare Stealth level to Penetration. 2*Penetration <= Stealth: Ship/Building/Planet cannot be detected unless it attacks/othe...

I'm assuming that capturing monsters and breeding them to make starships will be something that people will want to do.

More thoughts: Asteroids can have Solar Forests. Gas Giants can have Spore Colonies. (Traditional) Planets can have Star Fungus. These are called "ecologies". All of these are "hives", in that they spawn mobile space critters. Clearing one of these hives out takes a significant a...

That could potentially be interesting, but I think the main purpose of this thread is to consider things that are easily doable with FO's current code, so we can make the game fun and attract more contributors now . Good point. Then we can build biomes with vegetable life forms. Fauna could "s...

You can get close enough to a star to flip it to being "explored" icon and side panel, without actually seeing the planets.

Biomes?

Suppose we have 3-5 different galactic biomes:

Core
Arm
Void
Nebula
Outer Ring

Creatures could be native to one or more of the above. Some biomes could be more dangerous than others.

That is an interesting idea. Basic Irrigation: +5/3/1 food (Good/Adequate/Poor) Basic Factories: +5/4/3/2 production (Huge/Medium/Small/Tiny) Basic Schools: +5 Research Basic Infrastructure: +5 Infrastructure A Colony Ship generates Basic Irrigation, Factories and Schools on a planet with it drops t...

In a game after the above, I discovered how strong "Incredible Colony Spam" is. Get orbital food, hab domes, and just cover everywhere in fuel range with research bases. This is because growth is linear in the number of colonies until the cap: a planet with 1000+ cap only grows at the same...

Just a brain dump of what happened when I played a few games and read up on a pile of design docs you have in the forum... Getting a colony ship to colonize is tricky. It took me 2 game restarts to figure out how to work out what planets I can colonize, and how to select the ship (and not just the f...