Several issues were covered in the discussion with Ray and Brian:

1. scripting - this is a critical part to make sure the game is adequately complex and customizable. the user should be able to script fleet movements, political interactions, almost anything (all)
2. we need to find the main goal of the game and refine it from there (b)
3. factions - everyone - people + governors + special characters belong to a faction, which basically represents their main interest, so far we have the following factions:
   • military
   • industry
   • research
   • society
   • religion?
   A person's faction is kind of like their ideology, it would give them bonuses and penalties for varous things that you may want them to do.(r)
4. multi-player/single-player flexibility - the game should work equally well in either multiplayer or single player modes. Additionally, there should be a consistent interface and gameplay model for either play mode. That is, we have to have a realtime with some sort of non-trivial control over how fast game time progresses. (all)

A couple of other interesting points:

• control granularity - what is the finest level of control the player will have, that is, how complex should the simulation be?
• communciation latency - should messages take time to travel from place to place?
• happiness model?
• different political systems? or should we stick to a dictator system (player has absolute control), or should the player have to jump through political hoops (under certain governments)?
• governor's stats influence stats of people under him, that is they affect things like how happy, how efficient, how educated they are.

Some of Zog's comments:

1. industrial production - producing enough manufactured goods to keep the society running (and the military fighting)
2. politics/diplomacy/espionage - negotiation of treaties, alliances, both within and without the empire, to expand and maintain the power of the empire
3. races (creation in the beginning, learning about/finding new ones) - dealing with the abilities (advantages and disadvantages) of various races, maximizing your advantages, minimizing your disadvantages while possibly assimilating other races who have desirable characteristics.
4. economics - the management of resources; efficiency of production, inter and intra empire trade, creation and optimization of stable, safe trade routes, construction of trade ships and free-trade policies, dealing with pirates and malicious internal & external entities.
5. technology - deciding how to better the empire by means of knowledge and technological advancement. Predicting which technologies will be important, and knowing which technologies your empire is developing on their own, which technologies to nurture and which to smoosh.
6. combat - the use of military force to acquire resources, either territorial, informational, political, racial, or economic, or to prevent hostile entities from acquiring aformentioned resources from you.
7. society - keeping the people of your empire happy, making sure they are happy enough to work (or at least not to revolt), making sure they have enough food, and luxuries (but not too much)

1. Artifical Intelligence (20)- two types: (1) unit and (2) player, also includes scripting
2. Balance (10)- this aspect of the game concerns how to balance units, structures within armies and between armies, very important!
3. Economics (15)- how money is made and spent, how to get resources, how much units cost, etc.
4. Gameplay (25)- how should an actual game play out? that is, how should the tactics and overall game feel to the user? This is pretty much an integration of all the components.
5. Graphics (5)- minor detail
6. Research (15)- what technologies are there, how do you get new ones? etc.
7. Sound (5)- another minor detail
8. Theme (5)- background information

1. Artifical Intelligence (20)
   But the primary focus will be on intelligence, which is the most difficult part. It is much easier to give computers specific rules rather than general codes of conduct.
   The primary aspects of component intelligence should be (IMHO):
   
   (1) intelligence between heirarchical group components. That is, there will be groups composed of components, these groups can be of varying size and can have either units or subgroups within them. A unit is a single physical entity, either a vehicle or a building (loosely defined). A component is either a unit or a group.
   (a) Components in a group should be able to exchange a certain type of information with other components in that group. (point out target position, fire support, ask for repairs, etc.)
   (b) groups should be able to communicate with their super-group (that group that encompasses them) controlled by the commander of the group.
   
   (2) meta-component intelligence. there are two types:
   (a) meta-unit intelligence. A unit should be knowledgeable of its own abilities and should be able to know how to maximize its individual efficiency. This, of course should be configurable. That is, a unit with a flamer should automatically try to flame any enemy straw huts and leave the stone buildings to the tanks. But he could be told to attack the stone building if necessary.
   (b)meta-group intelligence. This is similar to meta-unit intelligence, but involves the capacity of a group to know it's abilities and place in it's super group.
   
   This probably sounds kind of confusing so I will illustrate with an example. You are planning your next attack. You want to lead off with the bombers and follow up with tank and ground forces supported by gunships. Intelligence indicates that they have heavy anti air defence at the target site. You decide to lead off the bombing run with your stealth bombers, targeting anti-air defenses with your laser guided-armed bombers and radar with your anti-radar equipped bombers, both protected by fighters of various armament. You group all anti-radar bombers as one group, and all anti-air defense bombers as another group. You then group these two groups as one group along with your fighters. Each different group has a different behavior - maybe you want your bombers to retreat after they suffer only 10% casualties, and your fighters to fight to the death.
   You group the air-attack group with the ground-attack group, so that when you give the "go" command, your air group will launch just as the ground group is coming up on the target. If the air group reports failure, then the ground group may call it off, or it may continue.
   
   
2. Balance (10)- this aspect of the game concerns how to balance units, structures within armies and between armies, very important!
3. Economics (15)- how money is made and spent, how to get resources, how much units cost, etc.
4. Gameplay (25) one thing that I think is cool too is unit customization (this may have been mentioned). You should be able to change the weapons and armor of units, and there should be much more variation in this dimension, rather than creating 87 million different unit types.
   Here are my thoughts on unit types (based loosely off ta):
   tech types
   
   1. energy converters
   2. powerplants
   3. weapons
   4. defenses
5. Graphics (5)- minor detail
6. Research (15)
7. Sound (5)- another minor detail
8. Theme (5)- background information