Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!

[Marco]

Hi Ed
quote:” Turn-based tactical combat: Whether tactical combat will be turn-based or real-time is still up in the air, but if it is real-time then it's likely that it will be pausable with the option to auto-pause every so often so you get the best of both worlds"
Have you ever considered a system of continuous turn based mode like Heroes of Might and Magic V?
IMHO is the best turn based tactical combat system, beside it can easily model the eventual initiative advantage of multiples activations of swift smaller ships or fighters against clumsier bigger juggernauts.
Another question: is retreat from tactical ship to ship battles allowed (like SE3) or there is a turn number limit (like SE4)?

Thanks

[klausD]

Originally Posted by Ed Kolis

Modern screen resolutions: Yeah, I'm doing development on a 1600x900 screen, and we're trying to keep the game playable on as wide a variety of resolutions as possible, by using self-scaling UI elements, as opposed to fixed-size ones like in SE4 and SE5.

Sounds good.

Originally Posted by Ed Kolis

Big universe: I'm not sure what direction Ken has in mind for this, but my personal opinion is big universes lead to long, drawn-out games that get boring after a while due to the insane amounts of empire management required... Not to say we can't support them for folks who do like that sort of thing, but I really don't know what the plans are at the moment

Well, boring or not is IMO in the eye of the beholder and maybe to some users which dont have alot of time. But in my experience many 4x fans take their time to carefully complete even big games and traditionally dont care about the modern trend for immediate satisfaction. So it would be nice to have a game mode for those of us who love to play BIG and long games. IMO also the fact that Star Legacy offers big games with multiple connected universes would put it into a special position NO OTHER 4x game ever had. Such a feature is useful for marketing and an interesting unique selling proposition.

Originally Posted by Ed Kolis

Several FTL methods: Yes, we're planning on having warp or jump "zones" in each system (enter the zone and engage the jump drive, and you start zipping off to another system with no way to command the ship until it arrives), but we also plan on having some sort of hyperdrive which allows ships to travel faster than light without being restricted by jump zones.

Thats great.

Originally Posted by Ed Kolis

Turn-based tactical combat: Whether tactical combat will be turn-based or real-time is still up in the air, but if it is real-time then it's likely that it will be pausable with the option to auto-pause every so often so you get the best of both worlds.

Well. thats not great. Even that you consider to make it real-time is a reason for me to drop-out. SEV was realtime and I hated it. The same with Armada 2526. I didnt like the realtime portion of the game and deleted it from my HD after one game. So I really hope you will decide to go against the modern trend and make it good old fashioned turnbased like the grand-masters of the genre SEIV and MOO2.

Originally Posted by Ed Kolis

Ground combat: I'm not sure about that really...

Are you not sure that you will include ground combat at all? Or make it rather simple? I hope the second. Eg. its absolutely necessary to have at least a token ground combat system. But it should be better resolved than SEIV small ground unit system, which was not very clear, what the Aaron meant with it. My take on the topic is that with a not very complex BUT clever designed sub-system for ground combat you should have a winner. Even easy and simple rules could be a challenge for designers.

So ground units could have
-a transport capacity (like in SEIV)
-combat value (maybe one for soft targets like infantry and one for hard targets like tanks)
-a empire should have a reason to invest in additional ground tech (to allow the purchase of advanced ground combat units) and planetary bombardement tech
-a terrain modifier. (like Sand-troopers in Star Wars)

Such a basic system would possibly be enough. No planetary movement, no extra rules are really necessary. A more complicated system is only good if you have an excellent ruleset to back it up. (not like SEIV - which ground combat came with a very weak rule set)

BTW: A good and useful ground combat system was for me SEIII.

Originally Posted by Ed Kolis

Economic rules: Again, not really sure

Maybe I should elaborate what I mean with simple economic rules. SEIV and MOO2 economic system were better than ANY other economic system of any 4x game out there. Why? because you could calculate the planetary output in your head. Eg. in SEIV a mine produces xy metal modified by percentages. Thats a great system and very intuitive, because everybody with elementary school education can calculate percentages in advance before colonizing and after colonizing. In GalcivII it was the opposite. I never was able to pre-calculate possible outputs, so this was one of the reason why I lost interest in the game because the numbers were too hidden, too complex and too abstract and felt like constantly playing on cotton wool.

I hope this helped a little bit to clarify my take on the topic 4x games. In the last several years there was where several 4x games which came out but only one which was done 100% right and was able to get me hooked, CIV4.

The rest like galciv II, SEV, armada 2526 and whatever other had all the problem they had either a real time component or they had a cotton-wool over-complex economical or combat calculations.

[Captain Kwok]

I don't share KlausD's sentiment about a continuous (or real-time) combat. It's how combat should be resolved as it's the most fair system for all combat participants.

Now, that's not suggesting that it can't be done better than in other titles. For example, SE5 had a feature for automatic timed stops, which was a good. However, the downside though was that there wasn't an easy way where you could cycle through your ships to issue updated movement/firing orders during the stop.

Providing the flexibility to either run straight real-time or a range of timed intervals should cover off most player's preferences.

[klausD]

Originally Posted by Captain Kwok

I don't share KlausD's sentiment about a continuous (or real-time) combat. It's how combat should be resolved as it's the most fair system for all combat participants.

"Fairness" is just an hollow word and its a straw man argument. In reality of game design it depends entirely on the quality of the ruleset if something is fair or not.

Or do you imply that famous turnbased games like CIV or MOO2 are not "fair" and fairness began exclusively with the advent of RT games several year ago? This would be an insult to the skills of designers of traditional TB games and an unqualified attack to the taste of any TB fans.

[Captain Kwok]

To be fair to my comment, I only said that it was the most fair, which means only that the other systems are less fair, not necessarily unfair. I'm not sure how you can be more fair than to allow everyone's ships to move and fire at the same time.

Most complaints against real-time are not about the fact that everyone moves simultaneously, but rather that control is difficult and you can lose the aspect of micromanaging a combat, which is appealing for a lot of players.

So, make it the best of both worlds. At one end, combat can run straight time. On the other, you can approximate a turn-based system with automatic timed stops. The key for either is to have a good set of controls to make both satisfying and easy to work with.

[Ed Kolis]

To expand on the timed-stops theme:

Remember a REALLY OLD game called "BEGIN"?

In Begin, you piloted a starship of the Federation, Klingons, Romulans, or Orions, and your AI allies and opponents would pilot starships too.

The game was essentially turn-based, but in a way real-time as well - there were ten (later expanded to 100 with the advent of faster CPU's) "phases" per turn. The game would execute all of those "phases" before returning control to the player for his next order (fire torpedoes, set a course, whatever).

Really, the only differences between real-time games and turn-based games are the granularity (RTS is finer, while TBS is coarser), and the ability to think as long as you want (RTS you can't, TBS you can). We're trying to merge the two - include the fine granularity of RTS, but leave in the ability to plot your strategy at your own pace like in TBS.

Thus, if we DO have real-time tactical combat, it will be structured such that the game host (or the player, in single-player games) has complete control over the rules for when players can pause the combat. If you don't like RTS, don't join a multiplayer game with the "autopause every X seconds" option disabled or set to a really high value, or with the "auto-unpause after Y seconds of strategizing" option set really low! There will surely be other players who like the leisurely pace - and why NOT cater to everyone if it's that simple?

Since the main issue people (myself included!) have with RTS games is the inability to plot strategies, and there's no harm (besides extra bandwidth usage) in turning up the level of detail, I really don't see a downside to this plan

[Captain Kwok]

I don't see how you can practically run tactical combats in multiplayer games though - particularly those that are remote games.

[MarcoPolo]

I agree its insane to run a game like CIV IV as a multiplayer as is. Its just crazy having to wait for the other person to resolve his turns within a given time limit. Real time is the way to go, you could have a continual and steady push for resource gathering and economic advancement while still having a wholly satisfying 4X space game unravel in exciting and very unique ways.

Having a chess system per turn approach is unworkable in multiplayer because it ties up everyones time and makes for drawn out boring scenarios that drag on forever. You can still employ a Sins of a Solar Empire style way of resource gathering and planet hunting while still resolving battles in an intelligent way that may still be turnbased for those hardcore TBS fans.

But multiplayer games of this nature almost always lose audiences than secure more when the multiplayer system is poorly thought out and laboriously tedious. People want to be engaged in the atmosphere of the game 100% of the time and not just when their turn starts.

[Edi]

Did anyone here play the old Age of Wonders game? It had two modes of play: full turn based and simultaneous turn based. Of course, given the nature of the game, this was on the strategic map, not tactical combat map.

Simultaneous mode worked so that everything happened more or less in real time at the same time (all sides giving orders such as moving units) until everything was done, but things did not progress to the next turn until after everyone had hit "End turn".

This could be some form of compromise.

Want another example, X-COM: Apocalypse had tactical combat where you could select either real time or turn based and in the real time variant you could pause it whenever you wanted. Of course, it was a single player game. In MP, that would have to be implemented using automatic pausing at intervals.


Personally, I despise RTS combat most of the time, so if at all possible, there should be an option of setting up a game to use a fully turn based model or to use whatever RTS/simultaneous turn based/continuous turn based alternative is implemented.

If a full RTS with auto-pausing is to be done, it should have the possibility to pause as often as desired in SP mode. I would very much prefer to have a fully turn based tactical combat for SP and for hotseat games it would necessarily have to be that.

How do these ideas sound?

[klausD]

Originally Posted by Captain Kwok

I don't see how you can practically run tactical combats in multiplayer games though - particularly those that are remote games.

It depends how much understanding the game makers have about the basic mechanics of a good turnbased game. For example Edi said it already. If you ever played age of wonders, there where 2 different modes one traditional and one with simulataenous turnbased execution. So if the Age of Wonders designers (which where doubtless quite talented because the game was great) could program such a interesting turnbased mode, why not the Star Legacy makers?

Ever heard of changing mini-initiative? Or bidding turns? These are concepts for certain turnbased games to learn who comes next and how many units he can move till his enemy comes. Today the alternative concepts of turnbased game design is more evolved than 10y or 20y ago.

Or do you think that every turnbased game has always to be the same old Igo-Yougo?

Possibly thats the reason of your wrong perception of the socalled "unfairness" of turnbased games?