From: commons@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU (Peter Commons)
Subject: Spaceward Ho! 3.0 Comments Response
Originator: commons@Sunburn.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department,  Stanford University.
Date: Wed, 29 Jul 1992 18:28:09 GMT


After the deluge of Ho! 3.0 comments (thanks), I thought I'd respond right 
away to some of the suggestions:

First of all, the primary goal of Spaceward Ho! is that it be fun for hours
on end. As it has said in the Ho! manual in the past, "We sacrifice realism
at every turn for a good game." (approx. quote) One of the primary elements of
this philosophy being making it "simple to learn but difficult to master."
In general, we at Delta Tao like the current approx. level of complexity of 
the game & thus don't plan to go crazy with realistic complexity. For those 
of you who really want that, I suggest buying Pax Imperia (when it ships).


Given that preliminary, here are some thoughts:

1) Global metal would definitely make things more realistic but also about 30 
times as complex. Do you really want to ship metal all over the place? I
find it very convenient that I can build ships exactly where I want and don't
have to build them all over the place and then send them to where I need them.

2) In response to the desire for tankers: People want a ship that will fly to
a marooned fleet or fleets and then, after 1 turn, refuel all the ships there.
It would could about as much as a colony ship. Well, a colony ship does exactly
this. And it happens to colonize the planet in the meantime. If you don't 
want the planet, just abandon it afterwards.

3) We'll definitely be beefing up the computer strategies. We'll add at least
one level between dumb and average and will have computer players with very
different strategies for winning. I'm not sure if this "partial auto play" 
option will go in, but we'll definitely include an autoplay options dialog 
that will let you tell the computer a bit more about how you want it to play
(e.g. dig in and hold everything vs. clean up the galaxy). Computers will
send messages and ally like everyone else. They'll also surrender if they
losing badly.

4) The whole idea of limited information is really a big part of the game. 
It actually permits people who are behind to possibly catch up. For example,
if you're behind & someone's flying around with a really monster fleet, you
can build a really large satellite force at one of your planets (if you spread
them out over all your planets, they'd each be crushed). Knowing that you 
have (or might have) such a sat force somewhere will make the aggressor wary.
If he were able to tell where it was (e.g. going there and retreating or 
detecting it somehow), you'd just be dead. The idea of being able to detect
where a battle took place but nothing else is kind of interesting...

5) For those who always slam their weapons/shields bars to max. Try attacking/
defending with a high speed/high weapons/no shields force. For those who
get killed by such a hs/hw/ns force, try building a really large fleet of 1/1
ships. There's a lot to say for really large numbers of ships.

6) Some little things we'll definitely try to include: 
	- saving your favorite default ship setups
	- adding different galaxies & making starts more spread out
	- cooler battle graphics
	- improving spending, fix spending command, adding savings account

Well, that's all I can think of now. More later.