Sins of a Solar Empire

[Ragnarok-X]

http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/lost-emp.../857907p1.html

[AstralWanderer]

Ragnarok-X said:
Then again, GalCiv combat always majorly sucked balls.

And its tech tree is more a bush compared to SE - do you still have to research from scratch in every scenario of the new GC campaigns?

And you can't have big fleets of ships, only street gangs.

And you have a 3D ship designer that almost forces you to labour on each ship design/upgrade to avoid making them appear like a dog's breakfast.

And you have the online activation...

But to be fair, GC did come in a nice shiny box.

[Xrati]

Would you guys like a little cheese with your 'whine'? I'll talk to Narf and see what he can do!

[Ragnarok-X]

One thing i absoutly liked about GalCiv is the planet surface divided into grids with specials.

[Fyron]

Wasn't that MOO3, not GalCiv? Or did they do something different with planets in GalCiv2?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

One thing I really like about cheese is you can eat it.

[Baron Munchausen]

Fyron said:
Wasn't that MOO3, not GalCiv? Or did they do something different with planets in GalCiv2?

MOO3 had "regions" on its planets, which is a reasonable idea, but there was no 'grid' or other display of the planet surface. Not even in ground combat. Ground combat in MOO3 was like SE IV ground combat. A mathematical model only. Apparently GalCiv is different. (I haven't played GalCiv, just heard about it.) It would be kinda nice for SE VI to have "regions" on planets so you could have a planet shared by several races and/or even several empires. Hey, if the armistice gets signed while a planet is only partly conquered, that's the way things are left -- until the next outbreak of war.

[PsychoTechFreak]

Fyron said:
Wasn't that MOO3, not GalCiv? Or did they do something different with planets in GalCiv2?

You may want to scroll down to the pictures:
http://forums.galciv2.com/?aid=170595

I have just started with GalCiv2 and its addons a few days ago.

[AstralWanderer]

GalCiv 2's ground combat consists of displaying two numbers (attacker and defender) and counting them down at different rates. Whoever reaches zero first is the loser.

You see a vaguely representative picture of a battlefield, but to my mind it is more simplistic than SEIV. You can choose a tactic (more effective ones cause more planetary damage) but that's it.

As for planets, the grid setup looks nice at first - but you can only develop each square in one of 4 ways (boosting population, production, influence or research) with some unique options available later on. The 1995 game Ascendancy provides more options to consider in planet development (connectivity, free population, special facilities).

It's a pity since the grid could make ground combat more interesting (allow an attacker to choose a landing point, allow defenders to create fortifications on key squares) and the planet development aspect could be beefed up by including proximity (similar/complementary facilities closer together work better) and connectivity (require everything to be adjacent or connected on non-breathable worlds) but at the moment it is more glitz than substance.

[Ragnarok-X]

Fyron:
http://www.stardock.com/media/twilight/index.8.jpg




In all honesty, i still love MoO3. I liked how each planet had a biosphere with temperature, atmosphere, heat, surface type etc. All modifying the ability of your race to colonize and develope the world.
I really like space combat as well. Forming squads of ships which will fire their stuff. And orbital bases...that was awesome.

Ground Combat was likely the best model i have seen at this point. There is no way you can compare it to SE, Baron.

Each species had several distinct abilites for fighting better/weaker on underground, air, surface etc. Plus their were like 20 abilites (strength, endurance, to-hit, lifepoint etc etc). In addition, there were 7-8 different troop types, (milita, marines, headquarters, agents, tank, battleoids etc) all boosting different aspect and all more or less suited for different terrain.

In addition, attacker and defender could each select one of about 20-25 different tactics (prone, sweep, fall back, full-assault etc etc) which had different combat power modifiers depending on the combination of attacker/defender tactic. And when winning a ground combat you gradually conquered regions of the planet. And you could place military DEAs on a planet and they would work like military bases, holding the invasion for at least one turn per military DEA.

MoO3 was so bugged, but awesome. It still is my favourite 4/5X game. I can only assume its full potential.