User Interface

[MrNonchalant]

I've been thinking about this a while and I've come up with the following ideas:

Information and Briefings- Information about each ship type available from a pop-up menu at the bottom. Kind of a in game manual.
Multi-player Partner Communication- Choice of regular text, streaming audio, or web cam.
More Intelligent AIs- AI can learn, adapting to your style of gameplay.
Ability to Minimize- I like the fact that there is no bar on the top, but I would like to go into other programs.
Programmable Pilots- A interface that would allow a pilot to interpret his orders intellengly, a oder could be "mode: aggressive, but repair once you reach x% damage or fuel consumtion"

These may tax computer systems, but they will be optional. Plus, think how computers will advance in the next couple of years! Anyway, post your interesting ideas and scathing critisms:

[Kiith Dreiheit]

Good idea about viewer for ship. Sort like the one they had for HW before game came out. Click and a window pops up with ship and info.

Most games have hard enough time wioth their buggy net code. Not sure good idea to add more crap.

With today processing power good AI should be a given. not much terrain to navigate so use the power for AI.

Pilots with too much time on their hands could micro manage a game into a bore with the programable pilot.

[MrNonchalant]

True, the multi-player comm. idea is a little over the top, ok scratch that.

With the programmable pilot, it wouldn't be too complex. I got it from the view of F Admiral Paktu, in the argument between him and Admiral Riif-Sa. In it he said "The attacking Strike Craft should be ordered to retreat to the support ships at the 60 to 70 percent damage level in order to not wast personnel." I realized we don't have the ability to do that, we half to micro-manage them to do that. So maybe the concept should be to have that standing order in place for all strike craft.

[Fallen-Solo-ATC]

These ideas are not too "out there".

Better AI, is a given.
Progammable pilots would go hand in hand with better AI. it could be limited by menu commands.
The Ship inteface is an easy addition.

And with regard to in-game verbal communications . . .

There are currently two communications software systems out there that can be used whild playing on-line. One is free - Roger Wilco, and the other is a Microsoft supported systems (formerly know as BattleCom) that has a free shareware version as well as an advanced "pay" version. Each use the same type of compression technology that many internet telephones use.

I just got a 1.2 GB athalon with nice graphics card, and I have a cable connection. I have used RogerWilco with my friend who also has a fairly souped up system with DSL. I must say that it works wonderfully if you set RW to use little CPU power and Bandwidth. The voice quality is not great, but it's definately understandable - much like a cell phone connection. For me, I set the "f12" key as the activation key, but my friend has it set for voice activation, much like a speaker phone.

Also, we're able to play much better with the increased in-game communication - which means that we may be able to hold our own as opposed to losing every time! :)

Incoroporating this type of voice compression tech into a game should not be too tough. You could set it to have voice activation for allies, and a hot key to talk to everyone. You could limit the voice support to "in game" only, so the lobby is not full of talking. I think this is a logical "next step" in on-line gaming.

Web-cam would be cool if it were an optional small screen overlay in the corner. However, this, I believe is a couple of game generations away. Personally, I don't want to see that the person beating me is a 10 year old brat that thinks that Brittney Spears is the best thing since Boyz 2 Men!

[Dr_17 Alpha]

Scriptable commands. Starcraft style selection of commands. Bindable keys or something similar to :
hit key s and type /scriptnamehere to assign a script

[Alpha_Monkey]

I'd agree with the "refuel/repair at #%" thing. I think it was originally meant to be implemented in HW, but got dropped.
Remember the hassle of refuelling squadrons on the Kadeshi maps???:(