btw old member, new account, im revann1.

when the new designer comes out, i think it would be vital to take advantage and add more abilities that a species can have, with their respective ability points as well so no race is OP.

for example, you can have wings, you can plant parasites, disease, etc, but if there were more abilities that really differentiate a specie from another, it would give more lore behind each and every civilization.

- More than one advance ability can be picked, mixed and match, but if you pick too much youll probably end up with a weak tiny creature unable to walk & grab anything

a few examples of "advanced abilities" would be:

Parasitic Mounting: This would consist of being able to "Mount" any sentient creature with your new biologic weapon, but instead of just being able to "control movement", your entire character, including your inventory, will be replaced by the creature you just mounted, and you control that creature. the requirements are of course being small enough to do this act, relative to the creature you are trying to "control". dismounting that creature will kill it.  ofcourse, this ability would take an enormous amount of points, so youd have to discard size, strength, speed, endurance, health, etc in order to do this.

-    Making a delay to the mounting process, meaning a delay after you mount the victim in order to control him/her, would make the ability less expensive. can choose from instantly, to 5 hours.

- as a avatar, if you die when you are mounted on a host, you will spawn as your regular creature.

- if you parasitically mount a avatar,  the avatar will respawn after being successfully controlled by the parasite, therefore you can mount a player again and again after you die.

-    not being able to dismount from the host would also make it less expensive.

AI Issues With Ability:  having this ability would change how AI soldiers fight, creatures that have this ability and are in your military would automatically have to be equipped this "parasitic mount" weapon automatically so they can find a strong host first before they fight.  
this would make military with a host more valueble than regular soldiers (parasites without hosts), so storing them in storage ships & transfering them to the right ships & guard posts will be important, and would be a hassle no doubt. but FUN

Combat: during combat this one will be tricky, AI would just run up to the victim, and hit it with the ability, but if they have beserk trance they will activate it before & run faster / have more health, certainly would be interesting to see.

some examples would be:

- The Flood from the Halo Universe.
- "Xenomorphs" from the "Alien" Franchise.

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Berserk Trance: A Berserk Trance would let that creature enter a state where their HP and speed temporarily increases to higher levels, call it flight or fight, but a much-exaggerated flight or fight. it would be as a weapon, you equip it, then click it and it would be a temporary buff.

AI Issues with Ability: The only issues I see is AI just equip their weapon and shoot, I suggest if a creature has this ability, that creature would be rescripted to activate it before fighting, as well as run around during a fight, basically be beserk during their beserk trance. this would differentiate martial civilizations from other ones. 

Combat: In combat, they will prove to be more effective, but the creature would have to sacrifice health, ability to not wield a weapon (Advance ability detailed below), or ability to reach TL ( advanced ability detailed below)

some examples would be:

- Orks from Warhammer 4000 Universe.

- Wookies from Star Wars

- Brutes from Halo Universe



Night Vision: Having Nightvision would give you a equipment which you click on as if it were a knife that you always have, but it activates a temporary buff that lets you see during the night.

AI basically already have night vision :)

Can't think of any Examples.



 Queens: (VERY expensive, will not be able to afford important abilities & decent size) A  Host Queen would be a equipment that lets you transform when clicked, there is a delay of several hours once clicked, and only females can become queens. it increases the size of your creature by a lot,  as well as gives you an extra equipment in your toolbelt which lets you spawn creatures of your own species, (ONLY while in a ship with empty berths, if not it will not work) hurting your health while it does that, so you better have a medkit while you spam it. if a creature of an empire that builds a city has this advanced ability, the city will spawn a city queen at the capitol automatically, but it will not spawn any creatures, it only allows the city to have citizens, therefore to have citizens, you must build a capitol first, it would work as a farm, which spawns domesticated creatures.


- Military HQ Queen, having a Military HQ queen will make it more expensive, but this will spawn queens in your Military HQ which will quickly populate the military in that planet, so you can have military guarding/manning defenses quicker. 

- having a cooldown will make the ability less expensive. the more cooldown, the more significant the less expense.

- being restrained & not being able to move as a queen will make it less expensive, and will require AI to bring the queen food every so often from nearby. 

- to produce demi avatars & avatars, you can only Mount Queens. so for species with this ability, regular reproduction needs to be rescripted.

AI Issues with ability: AI creatures with that ability in the military would have to be rescripted to have a command in the crew commands to "become queen" (would do nothing if creature doesn't have ability)  only 1 crew member in a crew can be queen, and it has to be a soldier berth.  if not that creature will not be able to. If a player captain clicks the crew command button on a female soldier to become a queen, she will become the queen of that crew. A crew queen CANNOT spawn creatures outside of a ship, as the point of it is to fill berths renewably, the only way to track it would be killing the ship... that queen would then spam the creature spawn equipment until the crew is full or if a crew member dies, then it immediately spawns a new creature, filling the respective empty berths. meaning opponents/enemies would have to find the queen by tracking the origin ship and killing the queen. 

Combat: The purpose of this ability is it gives a civilization a different strategy rather than to use regular marine soldiers, this ability would be too expensive to as well afford to be able to reach Full TL, or being able to use weapons, so they will certainly have disadvantages. one thing is certain, this ability combine with the parasitic mount ability can be deadly, but the citizens would not be able to reach high TL levels to afford that combination (Reaching TL abilities & Using man-made weapon abilities detailed below.) but the key is it would give you a renewable supply of creature AI to fight with while in an invasion, unless they kill your ship, which is your key as the newly spawned creatures need a berth. so basically, Ships owned by creatures of this ability as also Hives. and Capitol's would be the "Hive" of the city.

Some examples of creatures that have this ability would be:

- Yanme'e from the Halo Universe. (not the flood)

- "Xenomorphs" from the "Alien" Franchise.




Reachable Tech Level: This ability would be the Max by default, so new players do not get confused, but you can decrease your reachable Tech level to allow you to have higher ability points to purchase the above abilities. in order for your species to not be overpowered, you would need to set your ability to reach TL lower than regular if you want other advanced abilities.

AI Issues with ability: simply, TL would need to be rescripted to take into consideration a species' reachable tech level, although stealing weapons and equipment from another species is always an option, which is why this is ability, is cheap.



Able to use Man-made weapons (very expensive): This ability lets your species have the cognition and intellect to be able to use manmade weapons, by default every creature has it, if a species does not have it, it has a lot of ability points to use on other abilities. Technically speaking, when you equip a gun, or a knife, or any tool not native to the creature's biology to damage, it will not show the damage option.

AI Issues with ability: simply put AI without this ability would not be able to use the damage mode of any weapon other than their biological weapon, although, with parasitic mounting, you can control another creature, who can use a weapon, and so can your AI.

Some examples of creatures that DO NOT have this ability would be:

- The Flood from the Halo Universe.

- "Xenomorphs" from the "Alien" Franchise.

- Actual Dragons from any type of fiction


Exploits

For those players who think finding an exploit is a astounding discovery, all new features will have their possible exploits, the issue will not be the exploit, but how to fix it. for example, lets talk about the following possible exploits:

Multiple Empire DNA exploit:   Creating multiple characters of the same empire with different abilities, could be controlled by simply :

1) implementing the "Biolab" building, basically, a designer for new characters with different abilities, which will newly spawn here. This Biolab will need a certain tech level to even build. haxus would decide if he decides to implement this feature with the new designer.

2) Without the "Biolab" you can create a character normally, but it should restrict you from changing amount of limbs, arms, body compositions, race (glabrian, avian, etc) and abilities. 


Creating new random characters just to teleport them to your location and use them. This exploit can be restricted by restricting teleportation by berth to a certain tech level as well, I always believe characters should not just teleberth anywhere just like that anyways. Restriction to a certain Tech Level would solve that perfectly, you will either have to look for that new character you randomly created, which rewards for that trouble, or get that civilization to a certain tech level to be able to teleport, which in my opinion is worth the trouble as well.

sure, being able to fix these exploits require restriction in certain aspects, for example being able to create any type of secondary race for an empire, but I think its worth having this idea implemented. and let's be honest, did we as a human race start with orcs and elves next to us? no lol, each civilization should logically start with 1 race anyway. 



i have more abilities such as shapeshifting, but i will post them later, let me know what you guys think below and if you can see these abilities actually being implemented.

We have the option to use empire colors in designs, so that the design uses colors specified as the empire's theme colors.

I modeled a cute little gas station building, and I decided to use the "Empire Secondary" color. Mostly because I wanted it to be different for other empires, and I used the secondary because I felt that it would be more suited than using the empire's main color.

My questions are:

• How do you guys use these empire colors? A lot? Not at all?
  
• What colors did you pick for your empire? And how did you order them? Darkest to lightest?
  
• What differences do you use for exterior and interior colors?
  

Street Light Tweaks
In old cities, street lights gave off dim candle light when there was no power.

Street lights got several tweaks.

• Street lights now give off candle light when there is no power. Attenuation distance is 5m, unless that is brighter than the light bulb was configured.
  
• The size of the glow sprite is based on the attenuation distance of the light.
  
• Maximum attenuation distance increased to 250m.
  
• Road highlight increment was changed to 10m, to make street light spacing easier. 40m is a good spacing.
  
• Light color presets updated. UI changed to a combo box, ordered by Kelvin value.
  

Currently the new-style buildings generally only require their primary construction material, this means that the old version of city progression is broken. The best example of this is the Airport Terminal, it only cost stone to build so you can build it right away.

With the old-style city progression you had to aquire metal before you could build a capitol or a bank, this gave a clear goal of what to start out building first. An airport terminal required electronics production, which meant that it was the end goal of a first city before going to the moon.

List of affected building:

• Capitol used to require metal
  
• Bank used to require metal
  
• Apartment used to require hammers, but could use textiles
  (See Merge House and Apartment for discussion)
  
• Well used to require shovels
  
• Airport Terminal used to require electronics
  
• Airport Repair Shop used to require electronics
  
• Casino used to require electronics and gen rings
  
• Many other buildings used to simply require hammers
  

I started making a kilometre long ship, with some big rooms.

I hadn't noticed it on my smaller ships, but even with 39 crew it feels pretty empty. If you try to distribute crewmen to different rooms, you might easily have a bridge the size of a large boardroom with only three or four people on it.

How hard would it be to add citizen posts to ships? So that NPCs sit in front of screen textures or stand around by machinery and control panels, without actually doing anything. If it's a problem of AI calculations, they could be more or less entirely static, not reacting to threats or doing anything except swivel a bit and look busy. Or, if it's no worse than on planets, they could walk up and down corridors like the citizens who appear near you. Unlike real crew, they would only have to exist when someone can see them.

A nod in that direction would go a long way to making big ships feel less lonely.

Currently, your new battleship has to travel, perhaps many parsecs and at considerable fuel cost, to pick up its commanding officer from wherever he lives. How about a Starfleet HQ building which allows officers to be deployed from any world at a central location? The officer is still tied to his actual homeworld with all the usual restrictions.

I have a relative who used to command a submarine - now, I never actually saw him going aboard, but I have a vague assumption that they would order him to report to Portsmouth, rather than trying to send the submarine up the tiny river to his house in Chichester.

A thought for the vehicle designer.

The ordnance menu for vehicles is quite slick and intuitive to use. It sits oddly with the cargo/fuel system: physically dropping a crate of stuff into a nearby seat. I like the tangibility of that system: no reason to get rid of it. But when we update vehicles, could they also have tabs for cargo holds and fuel cells the way ships do, volume allocated in the designer? It would be nice for a dropship or an APC to carry a good and well-organized table of equipment for its attached squad. Boats especially need this, I think.

Would go nicely with my deployable defences idea, too. Easy for trucks and shuttles to move stuff between sites.

You can't build on enemy worlds, and that's perhaps as it should be. Instead, I'd welcome a system for defences, containers and other useful objects which can be deployed in the field. These could mesh well with the item designer. The possible ranges for their attributes would have to be limited, and they would use volume inefficiently compared to buildings of similar size. Some examples to think about:

Earthworks: Defensive trenches or parapets. Must be dug personally with a shovel, so harder work than just grading with the F11 menu. 
Electro-Barb Wire: A length of wire which slows movement speed and inflicts damage on avatars moving through its area (defined like a room void). 
Czech Hedgehog: Puts down a barrier of limited max size. Immune to collision damage, so unlike tents and other objects cannot be run over by vehicles.
Barracks Tent: Allows troops or pilots (in the future) to be garrisoned on a hostile world when their mothership departs orbit. 
Field Hospital: Carries a surgery station.
Storage Chest/Tank: Holds ammunition, med kits, fuel etc. Whatever is needed. Can be accessed by vehicles and troops within a certain range.
Power generator: Portable generator, draws from storage tank. Charges weapons and shields, etc.
Deployable shield: Creates a bubble shield of limited max strength. Protects against transporters while active. 
Sandbags: Provide cover. You would have to design them for your race's specific height.
Bunker: Sturdier than sandbags, provides all-round cover. 
Field Artillery: Ultra low-yield weapons bays mounted on gun models. Stationary but with more punch than vehicle weapons; operator is vulnerable to small-arms fire. Can target other field encampments and defences.
MG Nest/AA gun: Like a guard tower, but lower hp and must be physically accessed by a vulnerable troop.

These would presumably be balanced so that a well-aimed fighter's bomb could take out a whole camp, unless it's shot done first, but weapons bays couldn't target them. They would durable enough to become familiar little enclaves to dueling players, but nowhere near as strong as a captured city. Defenders could also build them, of course.

Deployables are neutral, so they don't count as an enemy presence on your world, and if you have physical access to them you can use them, regardless of your empire. Push forward and take an artillery park; it's yours instantly to use against them. Can be cleaned up from a claimed planet if there are no enemy units present.

The way I see it, defences like these could lead to immersive situations: you log in to your space house, hear the guns in the morning, just as you've done every morning for the past three weeks. You can see flashes in the distance as the enemy's forward camp exchanges fire with the city walls, smoking craters around their wire walls. Supply shuttles come and go in the distance, occasionally harrassed by your friendly fighters. It would give ground combat a more definite sense of place: you might actually remember famous battlefields like Monte Cassino, Caporetto, D-Day...

Looking to Found a republic civilization with other players, the race would be human, and it would be RPish styled, if your interested let me know ::) peace

Street Lights
Street lights remain unfinished in new style cities.

Street lights can now be created in the designer.

• To design a street light, change structure to Street Light on the design properties window. Unimplemented structures were removed from the Structure combo box, until they are ready.
  
• Street light can have one light bulb that emits light, similar to the headlight on a spacecraft.
  
• The number of street lights, headlights, vehicles, and other lights that illuminate the scene is controlled by a scene setting. Light sources are demanding. Only the nearest light sources to you emit light, up to the number configured in your settings.
  
• Street light can have multiple light lens parts. Lenses do not emit light but each of them gets a light glow sprite, centered on the lens geometry. This sprite is visible even if the light limit prevents the light bulb from emitting light.
  
• A simple street light blueprint was added to the blueprint exchange.
  
• Street lights switch on automatically in the dark, if they have power.
  
• Street lights do not consume power; they simply require it to be present.
  
• Light bulb properties can be configured on the Properties menu. Headlight bulbs of spacecraft and street light bulbs can be configured. they are the same kind of object.
  
• Light lens properties can be configured on the Properties menu. Light lenses in spacecraft and street lights can be configured. They are the same kind of object.
  
• Headlight lenses in spacecraft designs made prior to this update do not store light color. They are identified as "Headlight Lens" where the new lens is identified as "Light Lens". Select a headlight lens and run the Make Light Lens command on it to turn it into a light lens, if a different color than carbon arc light is desired.
  
• Street lights do not count against the 500 building limit on worlds. Their volume does count toward the building volume limit.
  
• Street lights can be placed on existing sites and new sites can be placed that overlap them. When placed on an existing site, you might not be able to access the construction window due to ambiguity of which site you are in.
  
• Street light designs will report commodity storage space, because that is the default for unused volume. Nothing will store anything there.