Grand Strategy Stellar Monarch: Turn based 4X space empire builder

[Norfleet]

You mean tactical combat?

Among other things. You have to have a combat system in there, and, frankly, the fighting tends to be the meat of the game, especially when you're pushing everything else off. Perhaps a tactical combat system that works similar to, say, the Dominions games, where you give the orders prior to the battle starting and the battle plays itself out as your dudes attempt to follow the battleplan to the best of their ability under normal circumstances, with a more direct hand in things if the Emperor himself is present.

 

[baturinsky]

A really epic way to avoid micromanagement would be to implement communication lag. So, distant places will receive your orders several turns after you issue them, and if something happens you will know about it also several turns later. So, you have to rely on instructions, regulations and delegation once you have sufficiently wide empire.

 

[Galdred]

One combat resolution system I liked was the one in use in World In Flames(ww2 tabletop wargame) for naval combat :
Each Sea is divided into 5 boxes(IIRC). Ships can go to a box up to their remaining movement allowance (after getting from a port to the given sea), they can go to a lower one.
Each sea box has a search number, which is the number to roll (or higher) to take part in naval battle. They are 0,1,2,3,4 .
When one or both player want to initiate combat, he first chose a sea area, then the default combat type is :
-naval air combat (if one side has carrier or planes)
-naval combat (if both side have ships)
-sub combat (if one side has subs only, and the other have ships or convoys).

Each side then roll to determine which units can take part in the battle (lower is better): all ships in sea box where the search number is lower or equal to the number rolled can take part (having a carrier in the sea box increases the search number to roll by 1).
It also gets a surprise score equal to the search number of the highest sea box(modified for carrier) + the dice number rolled by the opponent.
If both sides have no ships able to take part, there is no battle this round, but if one side has some ships able to take part, and the other not, it can chose which opponent sea box(es) to include in the battle.

The side with the highest surprise score can then affect them to :
- avoid combat
- force another type of combat (ie naval instead of naval air units
- gain bonuses in combat resolution
- chose the target for attack (instead of the defender).

I think such kind of abstracted combat would work better (than having a minimap where ships move in 2D), and still present interesting decisions (whether to group ships, to avoid them being attacked separately, at the expense of engaging the opponent under worse conditions, and risking not to engage at all, then how to spend surprise points).
There are some issues of course as you get benefits from the highest sea box whatever the number of ships there, but they could be remedied easily with more complex calculations.

Argh this could be a nice little 4x game if it was free, as a commercial product it doesn't stand a chance in what is already a over saturated 4x market.
Mimicking moo1 and 2 has been done to death already and I don't see what's significantly different here, plus there's FreeOrion for free which is pretty neat and is constantly improving.

When it comes to 4X, it is much harder to find the time to play these than the money. Most of the 4X are micromanagement hells, so this could stand out, if done well.

 

[Destroid]

I like the idea of applying the complications of ww1 and ww2 naval combat to space themed 4x. I feel like tactical combats go with ship design, you should have either both or neither.

 

[Galdred]

A cool way to have space battles be how you want (lore wise) is to have them take place in warp space, like in the book/animes Banner of the stars.

 

[Chris Koźmik]

Mimicking moo1 and 2 has been done to death already and I don't see what's significantly different here, plus there's FreeOrion for free which is pretty neat and is constantly improving.

The game is nothing like MoO2. I was getting suggestions that I should make Moo2 clone instead "for a sure hit" Resisted it. I don't get it, those devs went crazy, everyone and his dog makes these MoO2 clones (it's like 80% of space 4X total). As if there were no other inspirations (like board games)...

Each side then roll to determine which units can take part in the battle (lower is better): all ships in sea box where the search number is lower or equal to the number rolled can take part (having a carrier in the sea box increases the search number to roll by 1).

Hmmm, an interesting mechanic... Not sure I will be able to use it, but yeah, it's compatible with the overall abstracted feel of the game.

Among other things. You have to have a combat system in there, and, frankly, the fighting tends to be the meat of the game, especially when you're pushing everything else off. Perhaps a tactical combat system that works similar to, say, the Dominions games, where you give the orders prior to the battle starting and the battle plays itself out as your dudes attempt to follow the battleplan to the best of their ability under normal circumstances, with a more direct hand in things if the Emperor himself is present.

No, no, there will be a combat system for sure I was only undecided if it should be more automated or tactical (in terms of manual, obviously these ships will fight each other in a tactical style). I tend to lean to automatic (possibly with generic orders before/during battle, but not like giving orders to individual ships or stacks but to give global orders to the whole fleet that is fighting), especially since battles can take more than one turn to finish (prolonged battles with relatively low casualities and an option to send reinforcements) and due to rather many battles (like 3-5 per turn, each turn, on average (at least with current balance which might be changed)).

At *this moment* the combat is made out of 9 phases, and each side (there might be more than 2 sides per battle) has ships displayed as groups (on group per ship/hull type) and shot at each other completelly randomly (which will be inproved later of course ). I guess, I could make it so the player is allowed to give some generic & global orders each phase. Yet, auto combat must work very well since I suspect the player will use it a lot (especially since due to damage system most ships will get damaged and rerouted to shipyard for repairs rather than annihilated, so losing a single battle, even a big one, is not a tragedy).

I feel like tactical combats go with ship design, you should have either both or neither.

There won't be ship design (at least not in a traditional sense, I find it boring to create new designs each time they research a new laser; there will be more of a strategic level customization of ships, also probably components you can install after the ship is built (modernization)). So, yeah, I guess tactical is less compatible here (especially if we take into account that there are areound 50-250 ships in a standard battle - possibly more in huge battles - so tactically manage these... undoable unless we go for stacks like in HoM&M).

 

[Marobug]

Argh this could be a nice little 4x game if it was free, as a commercial product it doesn't stand a chance in what is already a over saturated 4x market.

Where is that over saturated market?? i would like to see it

Mimicking moo1 and 2 has been done to death already and I don't see what's significantly different here, plus there's FreeOrion for free which is pretty neat and is constantly improving.

for the last 10 years minimum.. and if you call that "constantly" then..

Have you been living under a rock ? Check space sector and compare the upcoming releases+plus those made in the last two years, and compare with the years before. Like Destroid said, it's been more quantity over quality but it's saturated nonetheless. It's worth noting that there's been some decent/ok releases in this sea of shit like stardrive2 and endless space.
Also wtf do you mean by "for the last 10 years minimum.." ? There's been new freeOrion builds almost every week, with the last one being like a day old. If you are complaining about the fact it's been worked on for 10 years then I'd suggest you google the definition of "constantly".

The game is nothing like MoO2. I was getting suggestions that I should make Moo2 clone instead "for a sure hit" Resisted it. I don't get it, those devs went crazy, everyone and his dog makes these MoO2 clones (it's like 80% of space 4X total). As if there were no other inspirations (like board games)...

Well it judging by the info and screenshots you made available it does seem to follow the 20 years old template moo and moo2 laid down very closely. Not saying it's a clone, but neither were most of those games that came before, and so far it doesn't seem like anything particularly new or original and being the space 4x junkie I am I'm already more than tired with playing the same game over and over again.
Wish you good luck though, I certainly won't complain about having more options.

 

[Norfleet]

At *this moment* the combat is made out of 9 phases, and each side (there might be more than 2 sides per battle) has ships displayed as groups (on group per ship/hull type) and shot at each other completelly randomly (which will be inproved later of course ). I guess, I could make it so the player is allowed to give some generic & global orders each phase. Yet, auto combat must work very well since I suspect the player will use it a lot (especially since due to damage system most ships will get damaged and rerouted to shipyard for repairs rather than annihilated, so losing a single battle, even a big one, is not a tragedy).

It doesn't seem like having a fixed number of "phases" makes much sense. It'd be like that silly Endless Space system, where every single space battle ALWAYS comes down to first a long, then a medium, and then finally a short-range knife fight, no matter how much better your engine technology might be than theirs, and somehow the battle just manages to END right there with everyone in everyone else's face, and I never quite got this.

Obviously, some phases are expected (you should have to approach, after all, having the battle start with them already chewing your face off is annoying as fuck), but battles should be fought until one or both sides are destroyed, flee, or surrender. Incidentally, my experience with space battles across a large number of systems is that, unless ships basically remain 100% effective until the moment of death, there are very few injured ships that make it out alive. You either withdraw the moment you know the battle is hopeless, before you've taken any real hits, or you fight, and start losing systems, by which point it's probably too late to run because your engines have been wholly or partially shot out and you no longer have the speed to run.

In keeping with your Space Emperor focus to the game, perhaps the tactical combat can normally resolve itself like Dominions or Gratuitous Space Battles, where you have some influence on how battle is to start in the form of orders and pre-battle formations, but once it starts, you are basically a spectator, but if you actually bring the Emperor to the battlefield, you can control things more directly in real-time.

I like the idea of applying the complications of ww1 and ww2 naval combat to space themed 4x. I feel like tactical combats go with ship design, you should have either both or neither.

Eh, WW1/2 in space is tediously overused to the point of being a trope. Space should be more like its own thing. It's like early sci-fi writers predicting how aerial combat would be like naval combat, with flying warships engaging each other with broadsides and trying to cross the T...the real thing turned out to be nothing like that. Why, then, should space continue to imitate the tired traditions of old-fashioned naval warfare? Even naval warfare isn't fought like that anymore!

 

[Destroid]

I like the idea of applying the complications of ww1 and ww2 naval combat to space themed 4x. I feel like tactical combats go with ship design, you should have either both or neither.

Eh, WW1/2 in space is tediously overused to the point of being a trope. Space should be more like its own thing. It's like early sci-fi writers predicting how aerial combat would be like naval combat, with flying warships engaging each other with broadsides and trying to cross the T...the real thing turned out to be nothing like that. Why, then, should space continue to imitate the tired traditions of old-fashioned naval warfare? Even naval warfare isn't fought like that anymore!

I can't think of any space 4x games that attempt to model anything remotely like naval combat. They often take stylistic cues and have fighters but that's about it.

 

[Chris Koźmik]

OK, I made a blog post about the core design goals (it's basicly the copy of the first post). Do you have some suggestions which points I should highlight more? Or overall suggestions how to convey the core idea more efficiently (I'm less interested into making popular marketing stuff or adjust to the masses and more into conveying the message to players who already wanted to play something like that).
http://silverlemur.tumblr.com/post/116540526046/core-design-goals

I also recommend everyone reading this post on this blog about 4x's:
http://www.big-game-theory.com/2013/02/a-failure-to-end-too-much-what-and-not.html

Yeah, a nice one (I agree with like half of it, which is a lot :D). I just wish that guy provided more solutions (like he wrote about the need for combined arms, which I fully agree, yet provided no solution or examples how it might/should work).

 

[Norfleet]

I can't think of any space 4x games that attempt to model anything remotely like naval combat. They often take stylistic cues and have fighters but that's about it.

Honestly, I don't think combat in games really ever moved too far beyond the Age of Sail. We still blast away at each other with broadsides of cannons fired manually at visual range, measurable in distances of no more than a few dozen shiplengths. Naval warfare hasn't been that way in a hundred years.

Also, submarines. In space.

 

[Executr]

I can't think of any space 4x games that attempt to model anything remotely like naval combat. They often take stylistic cues and have fighters but that's about it.

Honestly, I don't think combat in games really ever moved too far beyond the Age of Sail. We still blast away at each other with broadsides of cannons fired manually at visual range, measurable in distances of no more than a few dozen shiplengths. Naval warfare hasn't been that way in a hundred years.

Also, submarines. In space.

I kinda agree. Then again it's easier to identify with real life ships and arguably cooler. Hell, most 4xs stil have the same nomenclatures for ships hulls size (corvette, frigates, battleships...). Why not think of new ships with different purposes?
Games could also consider acceleration, projectile speed and gravity pull but that might be too much to simulate (some do).
I feel SOTSII does some nice things in terms of battle strategies and tactics, like formations, rules of engagement and weapon firing and distance, despite its many shortcomings.

Oh, and LordArchibald please don't go the Endless Space combat route. It adds a significant luck/gambling element to it.

 

[tindrli]

Yes but do unt underestimate luck as well since luck is real shit

 

[Galdred]

I kinda agree. Then again it's easier to identify with real life ships and arguably cooler. Hell, most 4xs stil have the same nomenclatures for ships hulls size (corvette, frigates, battleships...). Why not think of new ships with different purposes?
Games could also consider acceleration, projectile speed and gravity pull but that might be too much to simulate (some do).
I feel SOTSII does some nice things in terms of battle strategies and tactics, like formations, rules of engagement and weapon firing and distance, despite its many shortcomings.

Oh, and LordArchibald please don't go the Endless Space combat route. It adds a significant luck/gambling element to it.

Actually, it is not the worst. The problem is that the maneuver cards make little sense in the context:
I'll quote a post from Riel from the Endless Legend thread :

Yes of course they(Reach for the Stars and Endless Space combat) are somewhat similar since both involve "little player intervention" but where ES battle system is a soulless uninteresting clusterfeast with actions as varied and unrelated as Nano Repair and Offence in RFTS actions are better organized, make more sense and are better intertwined with battle statistics.

In RFTS you pick:
Desired battle distance which gives tactical importance to engines (completely irrelevant in ES)
Battle formation which affects the effectivity of different weapons systems and defence systems (ES's unorganized battle card collection plays this role as you said but it does so uninspiringly)
Lets a huge fleet take on another fleet (In comparisson ES battles look like border skirmishes)

So yes, both battle systems are obviously related but in execution RFTS kicks ES in all aspects. Not saying it should be simply copy pasted, but certainly ES2 could learn a lot from RFTS in this regard, A LOT.

Of course if amplitude studios poll their players again in relation to a (potential) ES2 sequel I'm 100% sure people will ask first and foremost "TACTICAL COMBAT OH YEAH" so we'll probably get a system the AI can't cope with that turns into a click feast by game end as did for example Orion II.

The system that would work best really depends on what you want the space combat to be like :
If you want to have it play like modern naval combat, with screening anti missile ships, missile cruisers, and carriers, I think something like WiF could work well actually (it is just an exemple of course, it might be broken and is just there to illustrate how abstracted combat could still work with input that would not be as "pasted on" as Endless Space cards):
Give each fleet a role : first, even though the system is abstract, each fleet would have a formation, that would define its point defence, and sensor values for each side (front, flank, rear). For instance, a sphere formation would have point defence (or anti missile or whatever) screening ships in all direction, and split their point defense and sensor values equally in all direction, while a Core + wall formation or whatever you call it would have all of its point defence forward.
Then, Phase 1, each player would assign fleets to task forces, and chose orders : (frontal assault, flank, support other TF...).
And then, each grand admiral rolls for maneuver depending of the complexity of the order, and the mobility of the task forces. For instance, If one side is trying to flank with 4 Task Forces , but is outmaneuvered by its opponent, it could chose to engage one or 2 TF first, and then ignore the other, or attack the other separately, while if the side trying to flank was the one outmaneuvering the opponent, it could chose all the TF but one(it is assumed the defender can still quickly turn its fleet around) to get a flanking bonus.
If you want to have it play like pre WW2 naval combat, something simpler might work (put all ships together, determine if both sides come facing each other, or perpendicular, and then, determine who gets to cross the T for bonus damage and defense).
You can also decide to have it play like hard Sci fi, but I think it works better with a low number of ships, and lower tech :
each group of ships would be given an orbit. Changing orbit, actively dodging, or shooting require energy.
Ships have to chose when to engage (ie, engage at long range, or wait for a better orbital configuration), how "dodgy" to be (ie, how often do you randomly change vector), the intensity of anti missile laser fire, when to shoot kinetic missiles (they can only correct trajectory a few times before running out of fuel themselves).

You can also have most of the fighting happen in warp space, and have it play however you want (like submarine wars?), but then, you still need to decide how it is supposed to work, and how to implement it.

 

[Chris Koźmik]

Oh, and LordArchibald please don't go the Endless Space combat route. It adds a significant luck/gambling element to it.

Care to extend your thought? You mean boring cards or something else?


About combat system:
The basic info how it will work (without details).

- it will be more or less WW1 style (frigates, destroyers, battleships), it's consistent with the planet conquest system (it's a bit like WW1 trench warfare, territory is super important, you don't lose all ships in one battle, the battle might drag on, jout can't 'jump" behind enemy lines, fight on borders, you can use territory to effectively slow down the enemy, important supply lines), escort ships will protect capital ships there will be also fighters and drones.
- there won't be "submarines in space" (whatever it might mean )
- ground combat will be important (it's not enough to win the space combat, you need to take it over by infantry - bombardment of planets will have limited use, won't be sufficient to destroy the planet), some races (The Hive) will not even have space ships (they will launch big rocks with insectoid troops inside - the player will try to intercept these rocks, a space battle when you get no casualities and all and just try to destroy as many those approaching asteroid as possible, before these crash on the surface releasing hordes if deadly incect warriors)
- planetary installations ARE able to ATTACK passing by enemy ships (so typically no planet is defenceless)
- a bigger battle would be 5 squadrons 200 ships per squadron, so 1,000 ships (on player's side only), so all "direction a ship is facing" is out of the question. We are talking here about stacks of units, not individual units (althrough, each unit is simulated engine wise so there is no problem making a complex system where each single ship targets another ship - but the player will be able to see only agregated data of this, like how many ships did what)


Note: at the moment combat is done on strategic level only in the current prototype, so I'm eagerly reading your ideas how to implement this I will do it later (when all strategy level works), so there is still time.

 

[Executr]

I'm not saying battles were only about luck, but I felt the card system took away the control of your fleet. I believe that playing the cards to counter the enemy cards in addition to the fleet composition to determine its effectiveness was a detriment to combat, to the game itself like some sort of afterthought. It was light in strategy and a bit un-immersive.
I mean, look at the variables in consideration for combat: the rock-paper-scissor weapons and armour system, the number of ships and their hp and then the card system (you can also add the heroes) all linked to the three phases of engagement. It was light in strategy and tactics, in fact no tactics whatsoever. Battles could easily be undecided. Sort of like the time limit for battles in SOTS2 (between 5 to 12 minutes). (What were they thinking?! Was it because of the multiplayer?) Such ridiculous design decisions.

When I imagine space battles involving galaxy-wide empires, I imagine thousands of ships, like for example in Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Not battles between a dozen ships as seen in Endless Space. That's why I agree that, to avoid micromanagement, you should control fleets, as an abstract system. If possible considering fleet organization and positioning, tied to its admiral stats (why not?).

LordArchibald, I'm very hyped about the combat system you described. Can't wait to see/read it in more detail. I liked that you decided to add asymetrical combat, in terms of the different race-related approaches to combat like The Hive.

 

[Norfleet]

- ground combat will be important (it's not enough to win the space combat, you need to take it over by infantry - bombardment of planets will have limited use, won't be sufficient to destroy the planet), some races (The Hive) will not even have space ships (they will launch big rocks with insectoid troops inside - the player will try to intercept these rocks, a space battle when you get no casualities and all and just try to destroy as many those approaching asteroid as possible, before these crash on the surface releasing hordes if deadly incect warriors)

If these races cannot be pacified and are just vicious insects that fight to the death, wouldn't you have to basically exterminate every last one of them because they would never surrender and would fight to the death? So the problem with ground combat is that you're fighting what could be billions or even trillions of these things, and you're going to go down on the planet and kill each and every last one of them by hand? We haven't even successfully done this with non-aggressive Earth creatures that we want to kill.

Faced with such a problem, the obvious solution is just to bump a large asteroid into a collision orbit. Not a particularly high-tech move. To actually invade such a place on ground would not even begin to be covered by "thousands" of ships. We needed thousands of ships just to invade Europe. Invading an entire freaking planet is going to involve millions of ships just to transport the billions of troops needed to attempt to seize the planet by force.

- planetary installations ARE able to ATTACK passing by enemy ships (so typically no planet is defenceless)

Presumably, these would end up destroyed in the process of overcoming the space-level defenses, otherwise you're not going to be hanging out there much, since the ability to drop any reasonably useful number of troops requires that the defenses be suppressed.

And honestly? Planet-wide ground combat modelled an abstract, yet tiny, scale, isn't actually very interesting. Most games that have this feature some kind of game in which an impossibly tiny number of troops manages to wrest control of an entire planet from an equally tiny number of defenders. The outcome is pretty much never in doubt, because even if for some reason the attacker was unsuccessful, he would just end up having to nuke the planet anyway. The MORE interesting thing is to model the fact that frankly, the defenders really have no chance in any kind of open resistance, while the attackers have no chance of taking the planet at all if the defenders aren't willing to submit to some level (See: Bug Planet). The interesting thing is in the occupation: Assuming the defenders are not willing to simply be nuked from orbit or have large rocks smashed onto their heads to exterminate all life more complex than microbes from the planet, the attackers thus win and the process of occupying the planet, suppressing low-level resistance, and generally trying to actually control the place begins...and this is frankly a lot more interesting than watching a few hundred marine-dudes run across a landscape and kill a few hundred other little dudes, and that's that. Conquest is easy, control is hard...especially if you're dealing with aliens: What makes these guys tick? How can we integrate them into our empire? That you can force a planet to submit or be destroyed is by no means the same thing as actually achieving their productive integration into your empire, and pretty much no game covers this: It just kind of magically happens. You would think that dealing with this is very much an important part of the Emperor's level of view.

 

[Chris Koźmik]

When I imagine space battles involving galaxy-wide empires, I imagine thousands of ships, like for example in Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Not battles between a dozen ships as seen in Endless Space. That's why I agree that, to avoid micromanagement, you should control fleets, as an abstract system. If possible considering fleet organization and positioning, tied to its admiral stats (why not?).

So, following this way of thinking, I see three possible approaches:
- combat formation (initial setup for ships and tactics) is decided manually by the player at the start of EACH battle, from here the AI admiral takes over
- combat formation (initial setup for ships and tactics) is defined by the fleet's "tactical doctrine" which is set by the player but no more that once per turn (can change it only if all battles were ressolved), it affects ALL battles involving squadrons of that fleet, from here the AI admiral takes over
- combat formation and everything else is decided by the AI admiral

LordArchibald, I'm very hyped about the combat system you described. Can't wait to see/read it in more detail. I liked that you decided to add asymetrical combat, in terms of the different race-related approaches to combat like The Hive.

Really? I thought it would be just me liking that part
A bit more about fleets & squadrons: http://silverlemur.tumblr.com/post/110151975596/fleets-squadrons

As for asymmetric combat it will be done more on operational/strategic level. Like some races are highly mobile (can attack any distance from their borders - like the late game extragalactical aliens who enter via transdimensional rifts, if these are not sealed) while others (The Hive again) can attack only planets neighbouring their planets (so the strategy of keeping "a border of one system wide scorched earth" is a desirable here). And the choice of annihilation tools vs certain targets (like you are allowed to use nukes, nano weapons, chemic and biological weapons against non sentient races (insects, parasites) while doing it against other civilized humanoid races is not really an option (brands you as the enemy of all civilized worlds and everyone wants to kill you now just like insects). Also conquest, if you conquer a humanoid owned planet you take it over (alien cities are habitable to you), while conquered insectoid planets (worthless and even dangerous insects tunnels deep below the surface) stays uncolonized (in such case you don't even take over the planet, just make it not owned by the insects anymore, and you can colonize it later).

If these races cannot be pacified and are just vicious insects that fight to the death, wouldn't you have to basically exterminate every last one of them because they would never surrender and would fight to the death? So the problem with ground combat is that you're fighting what could be billions or even trillions of these things, and you're going to go down on the planet and kill each and every last one of them by hand? We haven't even successfully done this with non-aggressive Earth creatures that we want to kill.

Faced with such a problem, the obvious solution is just to bump a large asteroid into a collision orbit. Not a particularly high-tech move. To actually invade such a place on ground would not even begin to be covered by "thousands" of ships. We needed thousands of ships just to invade Europe. Invading an entire freaking planet is going to involve millions of ships just to transport the billions of troops needed to attempt to seize the planet by force.

Yes, yes, yes But fortunatelly the aliens with superb ground forces are hive minded. Which mean, you can just make a ride deep inside the enemy territoty (actually not that deep, like 3-4 systems) and kill the local overmind, then all insects on surrounding planets will die out soon without the mental control of the overmind.

But yeah, the basic strategy here is to not let the insects engage you on the ground in the first place (that's the point of keeping an orderly line of ships orbiting the frontier planets which would intercept and destroy 90% of incoming insectoid meteor-transporters with zero casualities) or to use heavy weapons against them (nukes). The ground combat is the last resort in this case.
Also, always you can customize your infantry to be more efficient vs insects (at the expense of making them less efficient against traditional armies). Or you could focus your research on ground combat bonuses making you an equal match to these brutes.

Also note that orbiting ships provide a huge advantage to the ground troops (communication, instant ground recon, precise bombardment, emergency evac, supply drops), so it's not that bad.

 

[rezaf]

Yes, yes, yes But fortunatelly the aliens with superb ground forces are hive minded. Which mean, you can just make a ride deep inside the enemy territoty (actually not that deep, like 3-4 systems) and kill the local overmind, then all insects on surrounding planets will die out soon without the mental control of the overmind.

Is it possible you don't understand the concept of a hivemind?

Probably what you're referring to is that they have a ant/bee like social sctructure, i.e. kill the queen, all the drones die off.

Anyway, you have some interesting ideas, though I reckon some of them are going to be hard to realize and/or balance.

Argh this could be a nice little 4x game if it was free, as a commercial product it doesn't stand a chance in what is already a over saturated 4x market.
Mimicking moo1 and 2 has been done to death already and I don't see what's significantly different here, plus there's FreeOrion for free which is pretty neat and is constantly improving.

Slight Pretty big Massive exaggeration?

There's been a few notable 4x games, but none of them were REALLY good and came anywhere close to MoO.
Depending on someones tastes, Endless Space, Distant Worlds or Stardrive are arguably the best of the bunch, but none is good enough to overall dethrone MoO. (OpenOrion is far, FAR away from being feature complete.)
Which is also the reason some folks will always recommend cloning MoO when someone makes a space 4x game - it'd be great to finally HAVE a MoO successor - but I think it's great LordArchibald decided to go for something different.

Many more or less obvious ideas have still never been tried in a space 4x.
baturinsky spelled one out with communication gap.
Where are "reactive technologies" where you have to develop armor resistant against space acid when fighting the bug-aliens or a way to effectively penetrate energy shields when taking on the pseudo-Protoss?
Where are different aliens utilizing different propulsion methods? (One of the RTS/4x hybrids tried something like this in a very limited manner.)
Where is simple communication as an obstacle to overcome (besides researching "Universal Translator" as one of your first techs)?
Where are the challenges of building such vast empires modeled? Where's independence movements or rebels? Where's inefficiency adressed properly?
Heck, where ARE proper galaxies? The Elite sequels had such a wonderful galaxy, with remote tourism planets / stations, with industrial worlds, with independend endeavours and secret military installations, gas mining bases and full blown worlds with billions of inhabitants. I played no 4x that produced anything remotely like that, props go to Distant Worlds for at least trying.

I could continue this list for a while, but you get the point.
More power to anyone trying to make yet another 4x in this oversaturated marked, instead of going for something revolutionary exotic like an FPS, a Bejewelled clone or a F2P mobile timewaster.

 

[Destroid]

Is it ok if I make a F2P mobile timewaster space 4x game?

 

[Chris Koźmik]

Is it possible you don't understand the concept of a hivemind?

You do? Anyone who fully understands the concept of the hivemind is obviously over the psyhic influence of the overmind and shall be exterminated immediatelly, and just to be sure his/her neighbourhood should be purged by the imperial fleet from the orbit, just to be sure :D
On a more serious note, yeah, kind of worker being unable to survive (not willing to survive) outside the range of the overmind. But I would not provide ingame explanation how and why exactly it works

Anyway, you have some interesting ideas, though I reckon some of them are going to be hard to realize and/or balance.

Probably, I will allow unballanced stuff and instead give the player to deal with the unbalanced situation. Like, if you are overrun by a clearly superior enemy (due to unlucky galaxy generation for example) the player would have desperate measures in disposal. Like admitting publicly the enemy is superior to the Empire (a significant blow to prestige of the Empire) or calling to arms every single soul in the Empire (huge defensive bonuses vs target race but a loss of prestige/reputation). The player would be able to pull off such a trik like up to 3 times per game (each of them not being without consequences) and then will be disposed by the people as incompetent :D

I mean, the early elimination of the player is relatively unlikely (note that the aliens do not play the game, they live in the galaxy and have better things to do that looking at "score", so even if they could they would not invade the imperial homeworld with billions of citizens willing to die for their last line of defence and therefore suffer significant casualties for a planet they don't really need). Of course there are exception, but that's late game (extragalactical race of annihilators who simply want to purge the whole galaxy and yeah they would want to kill the player - and everything else). Similarly the player usually would not want to annihilate other humanoid races (since they can always be used as a shield against common enemies like insects, methane breathers, parasites, annihilators), as long as they agree who is the boss here, why not, they are free to live and prosper (and maybe even pay a tiny tribute to the empire).

Where are "reactive technologies" where you have to develop armor resistant against space acid when fighting the bug-aliens or a way to effectively penetrate energy shields when taking on the pseudo-Protoss?

That one I will have for sure! One of the premises for the Fleet/Squadron system is that some fleets will be adjusted with specific shields/armous vs specific aliens and station on border planets with that particular alien, and not being so great vs other alien types (so, getting all squadrons and tossing them against all agains one alien won't be too smart).

Where are different aliens utilizing different propulsion methods? (One of the RTS/4x hybrids tried something like this in a very limited manner.)

Probably will have it, but in a limited manner as well.

Where are the challenges of building such vast empires modeled? Where's independence movements or rebels? Where's inefficiency adressed properly?

Will have it, althrough it won't be a rebellion simulator (OK, maybe it will contain a small rebellion mini simulator). At least in the first version it will be quite basic (I have it partially working in the prototype).
Important note here, in the game the player (Empire) will not have expansion penalties like in Civ games (at least not before 200-300 planets). So the player is actually encouraged to build a huge empire.

Heck, where ARE proper galaxies? The Elite sequels had such a wonderful galaxy, with remote tourism planets / stations, with industrial worlds, with independend endeavours and secret military installations, gas mining bases and full blown worlds with billions of inhabitants. I played no 4x that produced anything remotely like that, props go to Distant Worlds for at least trying.

I want to add "Prison planet" type (but not sure how it should work :D). I could use some ideas on that part. Note I will not go for the scope you described, but some mining worlds or a few tourist world for the rich, ocassional megacity world, sure.

 

[Marobug]

Yes, yes, yes But fortunatelly the aliens with superb ground forces are hive minded. Which mean, you can just make a ride deep inside the enemy territoty (actually not that deep, like 3-4 systems) and kill the local overmind, then all insects on surrounding planets will die out soon without the mental control of the overmind.

Is it possible you don't understand the concept of a hivemind?

Probably what you're referring to is that they have a ant/bee like social sctructure, i.e. kill the queen, all the drones die off.

Anyway, you have some interesting ideas, though I reckon some of them are going to be hard to realize and/or balance.

Argh this could be a nice little 4x game if it was free, as a commercial product it doesn't stand a chance in what is already a over saturated 4x market.
Mimicking moo1 and 2 has been done to death already and I don't see what's significantly different here, plus there's FreeOrion for free which is pretty neat and is constantly improving.

Slight Pretty big Massive exaggeration?

There's been a few notable 4x games, but none of them were REALLY good and came anywhere close to MoO.
Depending on someones tastes, Endless Space, Distant Worlds or Stardrive are arguably the best of the bunch, but none is good enough to overall dethrone MoO. (OpenOrion is far, FAR away from being feature complete.)
Which is also the reason some folks will always recommend cloning MoO when someone makes a space 4x game - it'd be great to finally HAVE a MoO successor - but I think it's great LordArchibald decided to go for something different.

No, it isn't a massive exaggeration for anyone who follows this area with any degree of attention, it is quite obvious in fact. Like I said in my post after the one you quoted, saturated market doesn't mean quality games and I never claimed it was the case, on the contrary. Never said there wasn't potential to do something different and/or better either.
Just that he's going against more experienced people, with a far bigger budget in a saturated market. Not saying, as a player I don't mind another space 4X if it's good. In fact and I quote myself a post before "you certainly won't hear me complain about more alternatives". It's just that as a developer, he's going have to do harder than everyone else who came before and with much less means.
If it was free like I thought it was it could be great, maybe in a dwarf fortress/donationware kind of way it would be a no brainer.

As it is, right now the bar has been set far higher than ever before and it better be better than at least the vast majority and/or offer something truly different that actually works to be worth my time and money investment. Just my two cents.

 

[rezaf]

Probably, I will allow unballanced stuff and instead give the player to deal with the unbalanced situation. Like, if you are overrun by a clearly superior enemy (due to unlucky galaxy generation for example) the player would have desperate measures in disposal. Like admitting publicly the enemy is superior to the Empire (a significant blow to prestige of the Empire) or calling to arms every single soul in the Empire (huge defensive bonuses vs target race but a loss of prestige/reputation). The player would be able to pull off such a trik like up to 3 times per game (each of them not being without consequences) and then will be disposed by the people as incompetent :D

I mean, the early elimination of the player is relatively unlikely (note that the aliens do not play the game, they live in the galaxy and have better things to do that looking at "score", so even if they could they would not invade the imperial homeworld with billions of citizens willing to die for their last line of defence and therefore suffer significant casualties for a planet they don't really need). Of course there are exception, but that's late game (extragalactical race of annihilators who simply want to purge the whole galaxy and yeah they would want to kill the player - and everything else). Similarly the player usually would not want to annihilate other humanoid races (since they can always be used as a shield against common enemies like insects, methane breathers, parasites, annihilators), as long as they agree who is the boss here, why not, they are free to live and prosper (and maybe even pay a tiny tribute to the empire).

That's why I wrote these things are going to be hard to balance properly - not balance in the sense of multiplayer balance, but balance in the way that it's not immediate game-over if you start next to the aggressive bug people, but it also doesn't look like the bug-people are actually a nerfed non-challenge you can just ignore.
Your text contains a lot of handwaving - and that's fine, you have plenty of time to figure out the specifics - I was just pointing out this is going to be part of the challenges you face while developing the game.

That one I will have for sure!

Probably will have it, but in a limited manner as well.

Will have it, althrough it won't be a rebellion simulator

Note I will not go for the scope you described, but some mining worlds or a few tourist world for the rich, ocassional megacity world, sure.

Heh, this was more like a general listing of things not yet featured too much in the genre, not a laundry list of things I'd expect you to tackle in your first game. It's great anyway that you appearently plan on having something of each in your game.

 

[rezaf]

No, it isn't a massive exaggeration for anyone who follows this area with any degree of attention, it is quite obvious in fact. Like I said in my post after the one you quoted, saturated market doesn't mean quality games and I never claimed it was the case, on the contrary.

Well, I guess we just have a different definition of what's an over-saturated market.
I agree with everyting you wrote in principle - but people keep churning out platformers that have no features whatsoever that REALLY set them apart and sell them for money on Steam - why do you expect a 4x game developer to publish his work for free? Surely it's much harder to develop a full featured 4x game than it is to make a semi-decent platformer...

If the game ends up being decent, I'm sure it'll find it's buyers, market saturation my arse. And if it's crap, well, I wouldn't even play a crap game if I got it for free.

You are, of course, entitled to your own opinion and can hardly be blamed for being sorta stingy with your gaming dollars - it's not like I don't understand your reasoning.
But programming a game is quite the effort, and I can't blame LordArchibald for at least expecting a little something as a token of appreciation for all his hard work.
The list of donationware games I'm aware of that manage to pull in a decent total is quite short and both begins and ends with the name "Dwarf Fortress".

 

[Chris Koźmik]

Research system

(sorry for the low quality of the video, further ones will be better once I learn how to do these )


Short version:
- you set priorities to fields of research, then these collect res.pts. separately
- then you spend these individual res.pts. for technologies (within proper field)
- techs within a field have levels, you need to research at least level 1 to be able to research level 2 and so on