Rant: Things that sucked about...

[AngleWyrm]

I feel like spewing, so without further ado...Has 'ado' ever been used in another context? Is this further ado? And why is ado always further? What about the initial ado? Anyway...

Things That Suck About
MOO3:
1. It takes way too long to realize a player's move (reward frequency)
2. Player decisions are counter-manded by the player's own peices (detachement)
4. Moves planned out for players (Programmers playing instead of players); simulation rather than game.

Galactic Civilizations:
1. Graphics are lame.
2. Scenario-based, no strategic game.

GC2:
1. Turning up difficulty becomes a SuperCheeze competition.

SEV:
1. Lousy GUI

StarCraft:
1. Linear plot
2. In-between-mission missions added for filler.

Massive Assault:
1. Scenario-level only

UFO:Aftermath:
1. Boringly repetetive scenarios. (scenario design requires too much labor)
2. Lame strategic play (waste of time)

Starfleet Command III:
1. Removed tactical controls and player feedback.
2. Demoted strategy game to shooter.

SpellForce 2
1. Lack of monster differentiation (model shortage = level 12 mosquitos)

[AngleWyrm]

One of the main probs with 4x is their economic explosion. There's some initial struggle to survive, a critical mass, and then an exponential growth that trivializes all money.

I think it is mostly because the currency is magically centralized.

If all resources were restricted to their locale, the game wouldn't explode. Freighters would have to be used to ship minerals to a factory. Shipyards could only produce with what's on hand. And the result would be a lot less explosion.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Here's a thought: Why not reduce the number of ships as technology develops? Now, unless I'm miss-remembering, ship battles in the mediteranian in the greek and roman eras often involved up to three hundred ships. Now, the entire US navy, the most powerfull nation in the world, significantly larger than the roman empire, has 280 ships total.

So, my suggestion for tech levels is, less numbers. Less ships, less units, but significantly more powerfull ships and units. First firepower goes up, then speed, then area control.

[Kana]

Well then this would mean that the more powerful ships will cost more to build, and therfore cost more to maintain as well...

[AngleWyrm]

Just tried looking for a demo for Stars!, but no luck. Google seems to ignore the exclamation point, and moves on to thousands of irrelevant pages.

Many cheap units vs a few expensive ones. Quantity vs Quality. Production vs Research. Some core philosophies there.

In MOO3, the research tree was priced to match typical research point income during the course of an empire's growth. So it had an exponential cost to closely mimic the player's development.

That was the plan, anyway. But just sleight variance in starting conditions effected the exponential trajectory in a major way. The butterfly effect made starting conditions almost a deciding factor.

[Atrocities]

Tribes Vengenance
1. Unreal with spinfuser
2. Rampant on line MP cheating
3. Developers didn't listen to the fans - took a great game franchise and turned it into FUBAR.

MOO3
1. Bad horrible UI
2. Fuzzy Fonts
3. Released an early alpha as the full game.

Dominions II
1. Small tiny graphics
2. Lack of intuative player controls for economic, unit, and expansion control
3. Needed TANKS!

Sim City 4 - pre rush hour
1. Half a game
2. Horribly executed game
3. Just out right nasty game

Civ 3
1. It gave me nightmares
2. Still get sick to my stomic when thinking of it.
3. Caused absolute dispair and generated feelings of depression

Space Empires V
1. NDA - Cannot talk about the one or two little things that upset until NDA lifted.

[Suicide Junkie]

AngleWyrm:
GGmod promises some nice horde vs hero options...

Ship construction costs are roughly proportional to the hull size squared. Maintenance cost grows slower than size.

Thus, you can quickly have a horde of small ships (which are somewhat high maintenance, so throw them at the enemy quick), or you can take your time to build big, beautiful Dreadnoughts

[Fyron]

AngleWyrm said:
...If all resources were restricted to their locale...

Stars! did that, and it wasn't much fun at all.

[Artaud]

AngleWyrm said:
One of the main probs with 4x is their economic explosion. There's some initial struggle to survive, a critical mass, and then an exponential growth that trivializes all money.

I think it is mostly because the currency is magically centralized.

If all resources were restricted to their locale, the game wouldn't explode. Freighters would have to be used to ship minerals to a factory. Shipyards could only produce with what's on hand. And the result would be a lot less explosion.

I agree with you on all points, but for many players such a degree of micromanagement would be intolerable.

I myself enjoy micromanagement, but I also like to have a rudimentary AI to automate certain things if I decide to use it.

I like micromanagement, but when my SEIV empires reach a certain size I'm a crappy micromanager. I forget systems for turns and turns, I forget to add stuff to the R&D queue, etc.

So, I don't complain about the SEIV AI. My own sloppiness in the later stages of the game I call "the friction of government," and in my eyes its effects are balanced out by weaknesses in the AI.

So I always have fun.

[Baron Munchausen]

AngleWyrm said:
One of the main probs with 4x is their economic explosion. There's some initial struggle to survive, a critical mass, and then an exponential growth that trivializes all money.

I think it is mostly because the currency is magically centralized.

If all resources were restricted to their locale, the game wouldn't explode. Freighters would have to be used to ship minerals to a factory. Shipyards could only produce with what's on hand. And the result would be a lot less explosion.

These problems are due to the extremely abstract nature of the economic model. You have a general availability of minerals, radioctives, and organics, and you have a general 'mood' of the population affecting productivity. But nothing about the logistics. The relative availability of one resource does not affect any of the others, and the relative availability of labor has only the very crudest effect (things stop when the population riots).

In the very early betas MM had workforce as a factor in facility production. Each facility required a certain number of workers to operate at full efficiency and if there were less available the output/production would be reduced accordingly. Unfortunately, when some testers complained he completely removed it instead of trying to adjust it. If he had just tried some different models than 'fill from top to bottom' (meaning the facility workforces filled like a single resource tank and some would have zero work force while others were at full staff) -- proportional distribution would have been so much better -- most testers would not have been so unhappy. He could even have used my suggestion to make 'productivity' itself a seperate resource. Worker time is also a resource, after all. So count each population point as generating a certain amount of 'labor' and have technologies that multiply this just like you do for mining or farming or whatnot. You could then have very high tech products that use little resources but require lots of labor to produce. (Like modern electronics!) This would lead naturally to large population centers being large production centers -- unlike the game is now where you can put a huge shipyard complex anywhere at all.

All sorts of interesting economic wrinkles are possible with a system that takes labor supply into account. But he was afraid to experiment anymore and that was the end of that.