SE5, Tell Aaron what's on your Wish List

[Ed Kolis]

Dogscoff, you really sound like someone who would actually enjoy MOO3... it's been described quite accurately as "SimGalaxy"... me, I can't stand the Sim games

A few more ideas for SE5 (or even an SE4 patch):

When you trade tech or analyze ships, if you don't have the prerequisites for a tech, the data is just thrown away, even if you get it later in the same package! What I'd like to see is, if you get say Shields 2 but you don't have Shields 1 or even Physics 1, the data is stored away in a database (i.e. the tech is placed in a "pending" list that you can view from the research screen), and when you research or otherwise acquire the prerequisites, the tech finally becomes available. Note that I'm treating Shields 1 as a prerequisite for Shields 2 here, and I'm saying that Shields 2 could be explicitly gifted to an empire that doesn't HAVE Shields 1 - this would make tech trades much simpler, since you wouldn't have to play the game of "subtract my tech level from your tech level and hope the other guy isn't lying" - you just give him levels 3 through 5 of Advanced Military Science and if he was lying about his tech level, well tough for him because he either won't be able to use the tech right away (if he overstated his level) or one or more levels will be useless (if he understated it)!

edit: Oh yes, and it would be handy to have a display of our tech level vs. their (known) tech level in the tech gift/trade window next to each tech e.g. (dunno if this will look right on the board)



Ours Theirs

Advanced Military Science 3 1

Construction 1 � blank represents not yet known that they have it

Energy Stream Weapons 4 6

Physics 3 1

Phased Energy Weapons 0 3

Also, about the resource value distribution across planets - currently, all resources have simply a minimum and maximum value, which is the same for all resources, and the statistical distribution is (I think) flat - you're just as likely to get a 23% mineral planet as you are to get a 100% mineral planet. What I'd like to see is a more varied distribution, with separate settings for each resource - so minerals might run from 0% to 150% with a fairly flat distribution, much like in SE4, but organics might cluster around 100%, and radioactives might run all the way up to 500% but most of the planets would have very low values.

[ July 08, 2003, 21:56: Message edited by: Ed Kolis ]

[deccan]

Hey, let's keep this forum a friendly place, okay? If I wanted nasty arguments, I would've stayed in the MOO3 forums .

I think that the thing to keep in mind is that there is no such thing as what a strategy game, or any game at all, *ought* to be like. What any game is like depends strictly on what the designers and players would like it to be. I think that you can avoid a lot of bitterness by avoiding such phrases like, "A strategy game should have such-and-such features..." and rewording them into phrases like "I would personally really enjoy it if a game had such-and-such features..."

As a matter of personal taste, I would side with Dogscoff in wanting more detailed modelling of planets. I would also greatly enjoy a space strategy game in which combat is optional, not required.

However, I would disagree with Dogscoff if he implies that all of the extra detail would have little impact on the level of micro-management required to play the game. If all of the added detail were to be meaningful, then surely the control that the player has over them should (uh-oh, the "should" word again ) have a discernible impact on gameplay, and dealing with the control of those details means added micro-management time. Doing otherwise would replicate the MOO3 problem of plenty of "look-but-don't-touch" details. In other words, I agree with Imperator Fyron that those details that won't require constant player attention and oversight "ought" to be abstracted.

[deccan]

To be fair to Dogscoff, I'd like to add that there does seem to be a huge disparity between the level of detail modelled for planets and that for ships in SEIV, considering that in the "real-world", a planet would be a far, far more complex thing than a ship.

This really isn't surprising given that most players really enjoy customizing ships down to the smallest detail possible (and there are players in this thread asking that ships be built component by component and then assembled). Even Imperator Fyron is on the record for requesting better customization options for missiles and more sophisticated modelling of minefields. In fact, I don't recall anyone saying, 'Hey, enough is enough, ships and combat are plenty detailed already!"

Detailed modelling of planets / population / economies is quite a different matter, but I'd like to go on the record that I'd like a better, more sophisticated modelling of these aspects of the game. I suspect that Proportions-mod fans, who enjoy building up planets over time, will like this as well, but of course, I can't speak for them.

[Ed Kolis]

Hear, hear! And here's to hoping the SE3 idea of "over/underworking" your population with an effect on their happiness returns... but this time, there could be different ethoi (happiness types in SE4-speak) - the "workers" ethos, for example, might actually ENJOY being overworked (to a degree) and get angry if you don't provide enough work for them!

A simple idea I thought of which could probably be implemented in an SE4 patch is to have a setting on the planets list where you can filter it to planets within X distance of a resupply depot (yours or an ally's) - very handy for Ancient Race players, since their planet list gets all cluttered up with stuff on the far side of the galaxy!

[narf poit chez BOOM]

the "workers" ethos, for example, might actually ENJOY being overworked (to a degree)

like it.

[dogscoff]

Umm... no. I have never tried to divert any discussions into tedious quibbling over semantics. The only times I argue about semantics are when it is directly relevant to the discussion. Also, my post was nowhere near a diVersion into semantics. That one line was about classification, not word meanings.

See what I mean?

Hey, let's keep this forum a friendly place, okay?

Don't worry, Fyron knows I'm just poking fun out of him. It's kind of like the national passtime around here

If all of the added detail were to be meaningful, then surely the control that the player has over them should (uh-oh, the "should" word again ) have a discernible impact on gameplay, and dealing with the control of those details means added micro-management time.

Well, not if those details were modelled as indirect rather than direct consequences of your actions. You'd still only be managing the same old things, but you'd have to think a little more carefully about the fallout.

For example, it's all very well releasing a plague on a neighbouring enemy's planet, but you'd have to consider that the plague might infect your planets by means of a friendly third party trading across both borders.

Or you might think twice about bombarding that stubborn breakaway planet if you knew it would create a refugee crisis on your nearest planets.

Another thing to consider is that if somehow extra micromanagement is involved, you can always hand it over to the ministers. Let's just hope the ministers in se5 are better than those in se4.

As for me liking Moo3... I've never played it, but from what I hear I don't think I'd liike it. I'ma micromanagement nut. While I believe that some things should be handled in the background by the game, there are also some things that the player needs to be in control of, and it sounds to me like Moo3 took those things away.

[Fyron]

See what I mean?

I saw what you meant as soon as I read the post. Yes, that Last post was about semantics (well, the Last sentence was), and, it was directly relevant to the discussion at hand.

Don't worry, Fyron knows I'm just poking fun out of him. It's kind of like the national passtime around here

I think that the thing to keep in mind is that there is no such thing as what a strategy game, or any game at all, *ought* to be like.

Noone has said what a strategy game ought to be like. Classifications exist for a reason. The game genres are well defined so that almost all new games can easily be placed in one of them without a second thought. Games are not made so that they have everything they need to fit into a genre, they are just placed in the most relevant one when they are done. There is really not any list of things that a game has to have to be a strategy game (or for any other genre). Both SE4 and Chess are strategy games. What do they have in common? They require similar types of thinking to play them, and pretty much nothing else (turn based is irrelevant, as that is not genre defining). If there was a list, one of these games would not be classified as a strategy game.

That being said, a strategy game ought to require future strategic planning. It ought to have varied choices available. It ought to have depth.

[Loser]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Games are not made so that they have everything they need to fit into a genre, they are just placed in the most relevant one when they are done.

Tragically this is not true. Big, impersonal, method-driven companies will frequently target their search for a concept around the money-making genre (MMPROG, RTS, whatever). I can't think of a 4X game made so, and I don't imagine companies like Malfador or Shrapnel take this approach, but sadly it does happen.

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
Both SE4 and Chess are strategy games. ... If there was a list, one of these games would not be classified as a strategy game.

True: I'd say Chess is a Tactical game, to use the genre-ish terminology (Warcraft is strategic, MechCommander is tactical).

Originally posted by Ed Kolis:
A simple idea I thought of which could probably be implemented in an SE4 patch is to have a setting on the planets list where you can filter it to planets within X distance of a resupply depot (yours or an ally's) - very handy for Ancient Race players, since their planet list gets all cluttered up with stuff on the far side of the galaxy!

In situations like these I'll go into the Empire window and mark every damn system in Systems to Avoid. Setting the Planet window to No Systems to Avoid cleans up the display. Then, as you open up a new ring of colinizable worlds, take those worlds out of Systems to Avoid. This can cause a problem when ships are set to avoid Systems to Avoid, but it's a decent trade in my book.

[ July 09, 2003, 13:17: Message edited by: Loser ]

[Ed Kolis]

On a more upbeat note

How about an option for fleet strategies that prevents faster ships from "flying ahead" of slower ships, thus breaking the formation?

[Erax]

SE4 is not a war game, it is a strategy game. A war game is just that; war. They focus on manuevering predetermined forces against each other in combat. They are complex, but they do not encompass nearly as much as SE4 does. A strategy game is war + economics, essentially.

Both SE4 and Chess are strategy games.

Fyron, is there a contradiction here ? Personally, I see no reason to make a distinction between 'war' and 'strategy' games, they're all strategy games to me, with war games as a subset. The important point is that they all appeal to the same kind of player.