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

[worldsmith]

Due to asymmetric nature of most races strength would be frequently irrelevant

You seem to have misunderstood what I was asking. I was specifically asking about the "fearsome alien race" tracked by the "doom timer" that pops out at turn 500. If they just appear out of nowhere (from the edge of the map or whatever) from who knows where at turn 500, then the "results of border skirmishes" (with the local aliens the player can see before turn 500) tells the player nothing about how strong this "fearsome alien race" will be when they suddenly show up -- unless you mean that the "fearsome alien race" themselves will engage in limited border skirmishes before turn 500? (But even then, that would only tell the player how strong their individual ships are and nothing about how strong the total force that will show up at turn 500 will be.)

Of course, if you're setting up enough hurdles for the player that if they pass the hurdles then they will be strong enough to face the "fearsome alien race", then it doesn't matter if they don't know its strength beforehand.

Yes, indeed. I was thinking of a few "survival tests" on the way.

The one suggestion I would make for such hurdles is to try to make it so the player is not rail-roaded into the same order of development every game (first develop thing #1 to handle hurdle #1, then thing #2 for hurdle #2, etc. where e.g. thing #1 is the same thing every game) or it may negatively impact replayability. One way to keep things fresher might be to make all of the hurdles scalable, and then in each game present them (or some subset of them if you have more different hurdles than are needed for any single game) in random order. For example, maybe the "get 50 planets" hurdle is actually "get N planets", where if it's the first hurdle of the game N=50, but if it's the third hurdle maybe N=150.

to give them some kind of motivation for the player to figure out and/or thwart.

But there would also have to be some benefit to the player in the figuring-out/thwarting. So far it sounds like the player just takes over everything, so if some races are wasting resources doing something other than defend themselves or fight back (or take other supporting steps like research to do the same), that only helps the player. So perhaps these random things could be how some races get a big research bonus (or some sort of other large bonus) that would make them stronger - then the player has to either 1. take them over first (before it kicks in), 2. not take them over but thwart what they are doing (so they don't get stronger), or 3. let them get stronger and deal with the consequences later.

There's also the question of how does the player go about figuring out that a given race is attempting a given goal (and that by doing so that race will get a bonus).

 

[rezaf]

Also, how exactly these "goal cards" could work? You mean like a race being constructed from predefined random parts?

I think what he means is that the other races have some sort of objective they wish to do in your game, drawn from a pool of things they might want to do so that it differs from game to game, to give them some kind of motivation for the player to figure out and/or thwart.

Norfleet basically got it right. In Risk, you get these cards that say "Capture continent x" or "Destroy player y" or "Have x territories with 3 or more armies in them".

So you could have the bug aliens drawing their goal for a game from a list at the beginning of each game, too. "Own x swamp worlds". "Have at least y brainbugs". "Kill no less than z enemy population". Stuff like that.

The problem with this, of course, is you said aliens aren't playing to win, so what happens if one of the races reaches it's goal? Worldsmith asked this same question while I was typing this.

Please post more of these It fuels the imagination. (later I will post about races)

Isn't your collection of aliens already pretty much done at this point?

Here's a few more anyway, just for giggles:

A race that survives on a certain resource type and will try to own each world providing said resource in the game.
A mercantile race aiming to have a giant trade network.
A PRISM race that will try to build hidden listening posts around every other player's homeworld.
A nomadic race that will only ever own a single world, consume it in a couple of turns and then move on to another world (Galactus / ID4 aliens).
A miniature race that will only own (live in) asteroid fields.
A slaver race that constantly needs to invade other worlds to capture the surviving populace.
A cult race that aims to look for and own a number of "artifact worlds" in order to speed up the return of your endgame aliens.
A religious race that will be kinda and generous if they view you as a good guy, but will mercylessly try to destroy you otherwise.
An energy based race totally alien and impossible to communicate with that dwells directly in stars, reducing their energy output and harming all orbiting planets. Totally harmless if left alone, a fearsome enemy if ever attacked.
An advanced race of xenophobes that will "wall off" stars they own with energy fields making them impassable to all other "players".

 

[Chris Koźmik]

I think what he means is that the other races have some sort of objective they wish to do in your game, drawn from a pool of things they might want to do so that it differs from game to game, to give them some kind of motivation for the player to figure out and/or thwart.

I'm glad you brought it up, it's an important unique part of the game.

You all think it terms of aliens being opponents while more accurate would be to think about them as the environment. Do you build flood barriers because the ocean will flood the valley and get +5 VP for territory control? Do you try to thravn the devious plan of some plant to bear tasty fruits (instead of trying to exploit it)? I want to get rid of the gamey mechanics (you are to build the Empire, there are no opponents per se, if some alien can help you that's fine, if they stand in the way you crush them - but there is never a goal to "outrace others", they are not taking part in the race).
Sure, there will be aliens you simply want to eradicate (The Hive, Parasites) and that simply want to eradicate you. But most of the time you don't. If some race wants to "reach the next level of existence" then you are all for it (you might even help them reaching the noble goal of abandoning the attachment to material goods - which you can grab later :D)

I think, I should add a mechanic/statistic "% of worlds owned by civilized races". If it's high it means the galaxy is strong overall (and can face common enemies better). You might also want to help you humanoid enemies (so they do not fall prey to insectoids which would be much worse).
Also, probably a mechanic like "if you own 20% of planets and at least 70% of planets are owned by civilized races you are crowned the emperor of the whole galaxy", that should be consistent with the premise... Or "all trans dimensional rifts (places where the end game fearsome alien race enters) on planets controlled by civilized races have halved capacity" (all rifts on your territory are completelly sealed).

Overall, I think in terms of other civilized races the player will tend to think in terms of "exploit" than "exterminate" (like a noob player would crush everyone while a smart player would try to manipulate the civilized races to fight their wars (cannon fooder)).

You seem to have misunderstood what I was asking. I was specifically asking about the "fearsome alien race" tracked by the "doom timer" that pops out at turn 500. If they just appear out of nowhere (from the edge of the map or whatever) from who knows where at turn 500, then the "results of border skirmishes" (with the local aliens the player can see before turn 500) tells the player nothing about how strong this "fearsome alien race" will be when they suddenly show up -- unless you mean that the "fearsome alien race" themselves will engage in limited border skirmishes before turn 500? (But even then, that would only tell the player how strong their individual ships are and nothing about how strong the total force that will show up at turn 500 will be.)

Of course, if you're setting up enough hurdles for the player that if they pass the hurdles then they will be strong enough to face the "fearsome alien race", then it doesn't matter if they don't know its strength beforehand.

I see... Yes, that might be problematic. Maybe make waves? Like first they send a weak wave and then, if to their surprise the galaxy survived, they send a second strong wave.

Isn't your collection of aliens already pretty much done at this point?

Yes, but there is always a chance others will have a better idea (and mosty of the aliens races are not implemented yet, so I can still adjust at this point).

 

[worldsmith]

You all think it terms of aliens being opponents while more accurate would be to think about them as the environment.

So, strategically, it might be frequently more benefitial to let the opponent live

Though, I got that they are environment despite the mixed message.

I think you are misreading us - we understand these "minor races" are not playing the game to win, so they are never meta-level opponents. But that doesn't mean they can't be (in game) opponents. (E.g., it's similar to the minor powers in Imperialism - even including the part where they can join a major power's empire.) As to how many of them will be "good (but independent) neighbors", how many will join the empire willingly, how many will be forced into joining, how many will be annihilated, how many will be ignored, how many the player might help, etc. (and therefore how many will be considered opponents by the player), that we don't know yet (and would likely vary from game to game and based on the player's style of play).

Anyways, a good mix of minor races that can be allies (in deed rather than in word) and those that need "a firmer hand" seems a fine way to go. But that still means there will be some that need to be crushed, and in that case the idea of thwarting them (so they don't get stronger and harder to crush) still has merit. Though this discussion also points out that in some cases (i.e., for those races that are allies in deed) the player might wish to assist them with their special goal (if reaching that goal provides them real benefits).

Maybe make waves? Like first they send a weak wave and then, if to their surprise the galaxy survived, they send a second strong wave.

That really doesn't help. The first wave still doesn't indicate how tough the second wave will be. (Furthermore, either there's a bunch of dead-time between these two waves, or the player has insufficient time to actually do anything in preparation for a second wave, though this latter issue could be handled by having the first weak wave come well before turn 500.)

I think a better approach would be to provide the player some means to gather intel. Maybe have a special ship type they can construct whose sole purpose is to leave the area of space the player can actually see and interact with and scout out "the great unknown". This doesn't actually give a map of stars outside the playable space to the player, and the player has no control over where these special ships go. (In fact, they don't "really" go anywhere - sending them into deep space is just a game mechanic.) Instead, each ship sent has some % chance of finding the turn 500 fleet and reporting back information about the strength of that fleet (count and type of ships, weapons, defenses, etc.).

If you wish to keep a bit of cheese out of the game (players skipping the expense of such scout ships because they've played the game before and already know how tough the turn 500 fleet is), you can just add one or more other benefits to a successful scouting. For example, maybe the turn 500 fleet is really a turn 400 fleet, but fearing that you need more time to prepare, your scout ships have been equipped with a device which can fool that fleet into making a detour that will cost them 100 turns. (The trick will only fool them once, so there's no pushing their arrival back indefinitely.) In this case the "doom timer" might originally start at 400, and only gets set back another 100 when the scout indicates they've fallen for it and taken the detour. (Maybe the doom timer starts out at something a bit off like 437 or 395 because it's based off a legend and the timing between purges was really not known with very much accuracy, and/or maybe they don't really arrive like perfect clockwork killers. A more accurate time is then provided by the successful scout ship based on direct observation of their position and velocity.)

 

[Chris Koźmik]

Sigh... need to do some marketing soon (it's soo annoying and distracting, but I can't escape it). If you have comments post.

Made a big picture with summary of the core idea of the game (mostly text from the first post). Any comments what I should highlight more?

Also made a newsletter (release announcement only): http://eepurl.com/blcMDr
(the kicker is first 2k subscribers will get a small cosmetic DLC - probably a custom gfx set)

 

[Galdred]

I would rather go the opposite route, like make some sort of military base that exert power to neighbouring planets.

The rule of thumb: try to think from the point of view if the Emperor, not an Admiral/General. Feeling of being an Emperor is what I'm trying to grasp with this game. Deciding what forces land on which region are not the most grand strategish issues.

As for me wanting the ground invasion to matter, it's a secondary or even tetriary thing. I can resign from it if needed, no problem. I basicly wanted the ground invasion being important (on strategic level, not necessarily operational/tactical) for the sake of the few alien races that have no space forces.

Actually, all of this could still be astracted without having several regions :
You can just have a percentage (% occupied)
Then let each side choose whether to attack slowly, recklessly, or defend when a planet is contested, and whether to focus on casualties or terrain.
All remaining forces are wiped when one side controls 0% of the planet.

To make fleet interact with ground combat, make it hard to ferry reinforcements, something like assign abstract transport fleets to move armies from one planet to a planet under attack. To keep things abstract, you can decide something like 1 transport fleet takes 1 turn to transport 1 army to an arbitrary distance of 1, so you need either 10 transport fleets or 10 turns, to ferry units to a distance of 10. Obviously, you cannot go faster than your fastest engines(ie if your ships can travel a distance of 5 each turn, you will need at least 2 turns to ferry your armies regardless of the number of transport fleets assigned).

This way, it remains light on micromanagement (you don't have to manually move the transports), and if it takes time to ferry reinforcements, taking more risks makes to take the planet before help can get there can make sense.

 

[Chris Koźmik]

I think you are misreading us - we understand these "minor races" are not playing the game to win, so they are never meta-level opponents. But that doesn't mean they can't be (in game) opponents. (E.g., it's similar to the minor powers in Imperialism - even including the part where they can join a major power's empire.) As to how many of them will be "good (but independent) neighbors", how many will join the empire willingly, how many will be forced into joining, how many will be annihilated, how many will be ignored, how many the player might help, etc. (and therefore how many will be considered opponents by the player), that we don't know yet (and would likely vary from game to game and based on the player's style of play).

Anyways, a good mix of minor races that can be allies (in deed rather than in word) and those that need "a firmer hand" seems a fine way to go. But that still means there will be some that need to be crushed, and in that case the idea of thwarting them (so they don't get stronger and harder to crush) still has merit. Though this discussion also points out that in some cases (i.e., for those races that are allies in deed) the player might wish to assist them with their special goal (if reaching that goal provides them real benefits).

I think we use a different terminology to describe the same thing
Anyway, everything you wrote above is what I meant to say :D

I think a better approach would be to provide the player some means to gather intel. Maybe have a special ship type they can construct whose sole purpose is to leave the area of space the player can actually see and interact with and scout out "the great unknown". This doesn't actually give a map of stars outside the playable space to the player, and the player has no control over where these special ships go. (In fact, they don't "really" go anywhere - sending them into deep space is just a game mechanic.) Instead, each ship sent has some % chance of finding the turn 500 fleet and reporting back information about the strength of that fleet (count and type of ships, weapons, defenses, etc.).

Well, number of ships won't help much. The real indicator of the danger would be (probably) how strong the alien races on the way are (slowing them down, the annihalators come via rifts that are scattered basicly everywhere, so attack from all directions). Hmmm, that one will be tricky to balance it seems...

Actually, all of this could still be astracted without having several regions :
You can just have a percentage (% occupied)
Then let each side choose whether to attack slowly, recklessly, or defend when a planet is contested, and whether to focus on casualties or terrain.
All remaining forces are wiped when one side controls 0% of the planet.

To make fleet interact with ground combat, make it hard to ferry reinforcements, something like assign abstract transport fleets to move armies from one planet to a planet under attack. To keep things abstract, you can decide something like 1 transport fleet takes 1 turn to transport 1 army to an arbitrary distance of 1, so you need either 10 transport fleets or 10 turns, to ferry units to a distance of 10. Obviously, you cannot go faster than your fastest engines(ie if your ships can travel a distance of 5 each turn, you will need at least 2 turns to ferry your armies regardless of the number of transport fleets assigned).

This way, it remains light on micromanagement (you don't have to manually move the transports), and if it takes time to ferry reinforcements, taking more risks makes to take the planet before help can get there can make sense.

Much better, percentage occupied is consistent with other mechanics.

One thing I wanted is to make defence "no brainer". There will be a lot of battles and smaller skirmishes and letting the player decide on these would be too troublesome. Offence is different, here the player explicitly says what needs to be invaded and when, so risk management and more complex stuff is acceptable. Also, it's more realistic, I mean local infantry defend the planet on their own as they see fit, while more rare elite forces are capable of following more complex orders and operations as the player dictates.

Reinforcements - a hard rule, planet that has enemy *space* forces present can never get any reinforcements (blockade), also they are unable to repair/build ground defences. Affects both defence and offence.

The rest is "negotiatable"


Alternative idea for offensive reinforcements: make it based on combination of ships orbiting the target (X regiments per turn transported, based on ships capacity - quite similar to what you wrote) and military bases in proximity (some mechanic that makes you prepare ground installations (bases) on nearby planets (like 2-3 systems away) in order to project your ground forces to enemy planets), but not sure if that's a good idea...

Or maybe ignore fleets and assume offensive storm troopers have attached frigates and they can arrive everywhere (as long as planet is safe for landing)? In such case there would be some "cooldown" mechanic (you can use storm troopers for an operation but they will be unavailable for X time). The kicker here is storm troopers then can be used as some sort of special ops too (sabotage).

 

[Riso]

Give the http://www.spacegamejunkie.com/ guy a copy of your game and get invited on the podcast/twitch stream to talk about it.

And Comic Sans? Get out of here. This is not the 90s.

 

[Destroid]

Also, how exactly these "goal cards" could work? You mean like a race being constructed from predefined random parts?

There's a couple of quite good boardgames that use this feature, Vinci and Small World. You play a succession of rising empires trying to grab the most points you can before setting them into decline and launching a new one, with each empire being composed of a pair of random features. Small World is the better of the two, although some people find the amount of arithmetic (quite a lot of +1 -1) tests their patience.

 

[dehimos]

I don't know if it was linked: http://www.big-game-theory.com/2015/04/a-shattered-dream-critiquing-4x-genre.html

I think this article (and the blog) can help the author and other devs.

 

[Destroid]

I agree with almost everything written, but I think all this stuff is quite apparent to anyone who has given the genre some serious thought.

 

[Chris Koźmik]

Comic Sans

I was wondering is someone will bring that one up :D I was not disappointed :D

There's a couple of quite good boardgames that use this feature, Vinci and Small World. You play a succession of rising empires trying to grab the most points you can before setting them into decline and launching a new one, with each empire being composed of a pair of random features. Small World is the better of the two, although some people find the amount of arithmetic (quite a lot of +1 -1) tests their patience.

Oh, you mean like Small World... So, aliens being built with "modules". Sounds good, but I'm not sure how to fit it with unique races (like if a race is non sentient or has no ships at all). But maybe it could be used for minor races or some of the more standard major races?


Anyway, here is a raw dump of possible races (from my design doc):

* Taygete Parasites [green]: cyclic, lead by a queen, bio ships only, instant planet takeover (infestation), one planet only (jungle)

* The Hive [orange]: local overminds, distance restricted (combat power loss), only ground (launching rocks), can spawn new overlords (random empty place, prefers jungle)

* Gaians [green]: terraform planets (except jungle and lava), live in clusters (minimum 3-5 planets next to each other), scattered, local homeworlds, pacifistic, will attack planets next to homeworlds only???

* Elders: decadent?, passive, powerfull, slowly going to extinct (at turn 200 should perish), local defence only, they never colonize, but might want to take planet back (sometimes), revenge strikes possible

* North Antarians & South Antarians: they fight each other, located just next to each other (distance 4-6 between homeworlds) worlds between (distance from both capitals) extra desirable; periodic truce (cyclic?), also if sum of both below 20 planets instant truce

* Rodent monarchy: civil war meter (combat power decreased during civil war), civil war will not start (or will end) when below 20 planets, if below 15 planets they get high aggression and boosts, player can incite civil war (option to support usurper)

* Vorg league: big, can not exceed 80 planets, very pacifistic if have a lot of planets, low tech ships, eager traders; an event (option) that splits them into 3 races?

* Corrian collective: desire stability (will eagerly discuss claims to planets), have core planets and colony planets (will trade colony planets, except if neighbours core planets; +1 core planet per 50 turns, start with 8 core), protects core planets at all cost, prefers big ships (minimum destroyer)

* Reptilian republic: player can bribe politicians to stop the war or make a treaty or even buy frontier world cheap, they love lava/desert planets and hate ice planets

* Procyon followers: behaviour depends on government, they might switch to pacifistic "move to the next level of existence" race, the player can use diplomacy to alter their government (supports faction), will immediatelly switch back to militaristic if below 12 planets


* Minor races: 3-9 planets max, max expansion 2 jumps from homeworld, can be vassalized (free recon, tribute), each has a rare product (made on homeworld; there are max 2 sources of same rare product in the game)

 

[Destroid]

No, I wasn't the one who brought up the concept, I was just pointing out somewhere that particular thing you raised had been done with success.

 

[Trash]

Looks pretty awesome. Not to mention fresh. Especially the whole aliens as enviroment and throne room shennanigans you seem to be going for.

Will rebellions have specific goals? Like a governor trying to secceed. An admiral taking the fleet and marching on Rome your homeworld to claim the throne. A demand to lower taxes and give certain rights? Try out EU: Rome to see how much fun it is to have your own generals and governers turn on you.

Will you have to contend with different factions within your own government?

Will you be stuck with one specific goverment type? It would make sense that you got different options and challenges in a feudal hierarchy than in, for instance, a democratic society.

Will you implement stuff like space stations, asteroid mining and orbital bombardments?

Have you considered implementing an alien race that lives solely in space? Think of hive clusters, colonised asteroid belts or giant sentient ships/organisms.

On that note. Will we see a return of massive space monsters roaming the void?

 

[Chris Koźmik]

BTW, here is a topic about audiences:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...n-sf-4x-looking-for-ideas.98649/#post-3897120

Also a screen of throne room:

Will rebellions have specific goals? Like a governor trying to secceed. An admiral taking the fleet and marching on Rome your homeworld to claim the throne. A demand to lower taxes and give certain rights? Try out EU: Rome to see how much fun it is to have your own generals and governers turn on you.

Probably not, they just want to take over (to become the new emperor/military council/republican government), I try to portrait the rebels in a negative way (and when they win you get a screen "after a few years the whole Terran race extinct", since the player is the only one who can save the galaxy :D).

Will you have to contend with different factions within your own government?

There will be, most likely, court factions. Like a balance of power you tray to maintain (so no single faction get too many planetary governor seats or military positions).

Will you be stuck with one specific goverment type? It would make sense that you got different options and challenges in a feudal hierarchy than in, for instance, a democratic society.

Yes, it's the Empire. The game is about building the empire, so other gov. options are only represented by misguided rebels. Plus, it would not really fit the theme (old bureacuratic empire, with slight feudal flavour). The thing is the galaxy is going to extinct soon if no one is to stop the incoming "annihilators", so a strong governemnt is the only reasonable option in this universe.

Will you implement stuff like space stations, asteroid mining and orbital bombardments?

Not really, I want to avoid all the "space technical stuff", it's an empire, you deal with planets. Also the overall tech level in the galaxy is not that high (space stations would be unfeasible, not when people on the ground are mostly simple farmers and there are famines and plagues).

Have you considered implementing an alien race that lives solely in space? Think of hive clusters, colonised asteroid belts or giant sentient ships/organisms.

No, it would not work with the map system. The based "territorial unit" is a planet connected by nodes with other planets.

On that note. Will we see a return of massive space monsters roaming the void?

Yes The outskirts of the galaxy will be infested with monsters, pirates, etc.
Althrouigh some monsters got upgraded to whole races (like parasites who own a single planet and from there wreak havock to nearby systems).

 

[Chris Koźmik]

I have managed to actually make a video that's of acceptable quality (first one)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVtRkzy8HmQ (length around 4m)
It's about parasites invasion/cycle (one of the unique/weird races).

 

[Chris Koźmik]

Rare resources (question)
There are rare resources (one per planet max), quite similar to Civ3-5 style. These grant various bonuses. Now I wonder how to handle "quantity". Like if you control 3 Uranium resources your power plants get +8% to energy production. But how to handle scaling? You start with 10 planets and end up with 200, so statisticly you will have minimum 1 resource of each kind quite soon...Maybe scale it to size of the empire (population and/or number of planets)? Like at the beginning you need 1 Uranium to get the bonus while later you need 8 Uranium for the same bonus? Also maybe make the bonus scalable (+1% to energy production per each Uranium source)? Or relative to planets like bonus=Uranium sources/number of planets? Also, how to explain this to player/show on the interface?

 

[Galdred]

Actually, it would not make much sense to have precious resources wasted on backwater planets, so a number/planet would not work too well. Maybe have resources get a global or local effect (1 uranium source = +15% energy in a radius of 5 for instance, or 1 uranium source allows you to upkeep 10 uranium battleships)?

Anyway, if your goal is to reduce micro, it is much better to have production be handled at the empire level than at the planetary level.
It also would make uranium much simpler to manage :
Each planet has X factory points. Each uranium turns 1 factory point into a super factory point (or into 2 factory points).
You total factory points and super factory points, and voila. Just add a build limit so that the player cannot build 25014 ships through the same shipyard, and you don't have to handle planetery build queues or other local stuff.

 

[Chris Koźmik]

Maybe have resources get a global or local effect

All resources have only empire wide effect. I don't want to go for lower level (micro and overall needless complexity, especially since it's less than a secondary feature).

Anyway, if your goal is to reduce micro, it is much better to have production be handled at the empire level than at the planetary level.

Yep, it is Each planet provides IC (Industrial Capacity) which is later handled on empire level. Same for food, etc.

 

[oscar]

Cumulative but with a max limit e.g each planet you own with a resource gives +2% to whatever but to a hard limit of 25%

You'd also want to make resources rare enough that you don't max out that hard limit 1/3 of the way through the game but only sometime near the end if ever.

I also like the sound of Galdred's uranium example.

You want to make special resource planets a very tempting and obvious "colonise/'liberate' me" instead of just another "oh a little more industry and food in ten turns, okay whatever". While with a special resource planet the player goes "hell yeah time for some more of those mighty uranium battleships".

 

[Chris Koźmik]

Cumulative but with a max limit e.g each planet you own with a resource gives +2% to whatever but to a hard limit of 25%

So, a simple system without scaling to size of the empire... Well, I guess it will be trivial to explain (clear help files) How about adding to it a flat -X% due to size of the empire? Like you get additional production bonus thanks to these rare resources but get it reduced due to number of planets (not sure it's a good idea)?

I also like the sound of Galdred's uranium example.

You want to make special resource planets a very tempting and obvious "colonise/'liberate' me" instead of just another "oh a little more industry and food in ten turns, okay whatever". While with a special resource planet the player goes "hell yeah time for some more of those mighty uranium battleships".

I have a problem with tying number of planets (rare resources availability) to the size of the fleet (uranium ships). It's troublesome to balance. Also, a bigger problem, it would mess up the interface since on the shipyard screen you would need to have these rare resources displayed. Overall, I love the current shipyard system where you just spens credits, IC (Industry Capacity) and SC (Shipyard Capacity) without tracking any resources and the like (especially in the scenariou where you produce hundreds/thousands ships).

 

[Chris Koźmik]

OK, I think I should start crowdfunding/greenlight soon. Do you have any advices?

 

[Chris Koźmik]

There's a couple of quite good boardgames that use this feature, Vinci and Small World. You play a succession of rising empires trying to grab the most points you can before setting them into decline and launching a new one, with each empire being composed of a pair of random features. Small World is the better of the two, although some people find the amount of arithmetic (quite a lot of +1 -1) tests their patience.

I was thinking about races and maybe I should make them more modular.

Instead of crafting (coding) every single one separately make classes of races and then modify these classes by using building blocks.
* civilized (the most traditional ones, the player can trade and make diplomacy with them)
* insectoid The Hive (their purpose is to fill the gaps in the space (prevent too many uncolonized planets, they basicly spawn everywhere), that one would be in every single game)
* cyclic/hibernated (cyclic race with one planet from where they wreak havoc on regular basis OR races that start dormant and activate later - these always are war oriented) Examples: Pirates (random spawn), Parasites (cyclic), WarMachines (buried deep underground, dormant until turn X), Methane Breathers (enters via the edge of the galaxy at turn X), Annihilators (end game race, enters via rifts)

Now in one game The Hive would have no ships and just launch rocks (filled with warriors) vs neighbour planets while in another play they could have living ships. Yet always it would be ruled by 3-5 overminds that exert mind control over minions up to X systems away (same basic mechanic).

Sometimes even simple changes would suffice (if Annihilators use beam or missile weapons might be a huge deal - if you knew it it advance and were able to tailor your research & fleet to counter these).

You might consider allowing the player to pre-plan their tech path so they are purchased automatically when you have enough points available - constantly checking, or even having a notification to go buy things would get pretty annoying.

Done

If you wish to keep a bit of cheese out of the game (players skipping the expense of such scout ships because they've played the game before and already know how tough the turn 500 fleet is), you can just add one or more other benefits to a successful scouting. For example, maybe the turn 500 fleet is really a turn 400 fleet, but fearing that you need more time to prepare, your scout ships have been equipped with a device which can fool that fleet into making a detour that will cost them 100 turns. (The trick will only fool them once, so there's no pushing their arrival back indefinitely.) In this case the "doom timer" might originally start at 400, and only gets set back another 100 when the scout indicates they've fallen for it and taken the detour. (Maybe the doom timer starts out at something a bit off like 437 or 395 because it's based off a legend and the timing between purges was really not known with very much accuracy, and/or maybe they don't really arrive like perfect clockwork killers. A more accurate time is then provided by the successful scout ship based on direct observation of their position and velocity.)

Hmmm, yes, I do want to allow the player to control the flow in some way like that. Also I like the information gathering (but I would make it by studying ruins/ancient alien artifacts rather than scouts).

Also, I think I should make more similar styled races/tests on the way. Like at turn 300 WarMachines (remains of some ancient war) weak up and try to kill everything at sight. So, it's not such a big surprise when the doom fleet arrives via the rifts.
Like make 2 such "strange invasions" along the way and then the final one at the very end (for example Methane Breathers colonize at turn 150, WarMachines weak up at turn 300 and final Annihilators enters at turn 450)? Also maybe some minor ones (random) on the way (like Pirates, Rebels, space monsters)?

 

[Destroid]

The scout missions could also unlock access to techs (or outright grant) various sorts of bonuses specifically for dealing with the annihilators.

 

[Chris Koźmik]

Better portraits (finally :D)