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Atarask
Mar 8, 2008

Lord of Rigel Developer
With minor species, the idea is that they're pre-warp civilizations. They also tend to be on planets with strategic resources used for end game technologies (planet killers, dyson spheres). Some may be guarded by space monsters.

Ideally how you interact with them can impact your diplomacy with other FTL species. If you decide that a ground invasion to take the planet is a good move, that for instance won't make the Humans happy who believe in non-interference.

Minimal interference where a trade agreement is worked out for specific resources can also be done, but runs the risk of that species wanting more tech.

Uplifting is also planned, they'll become a full fledged species and take on the ship designs of whoever uplifts them. It's a good way to create client states.

Generally minor species will have bonuses above and beyond even custom species. So one minor species may be insanely good at ground combat, very aggressive, and uplifting them can completely backfire.

Story wise minor species will be ranging from early neolithic settlements to early 21st century tech. Generally if they have the ability to have in-system expeditions they would have discovered the Rigelan artifacts that have given FTL to most of the species in the game.

Also to give a sense of some species designs with some rough concept sketches:

The Selach are our aquatic species. They also fit the trader archetypes. They're obsessed with getting you stuck in a subprime mortgage and selling your planet out from under you. Literal loan sharks.

I suppose Darwin from Seaquest combined with Quark is a good way to think about them.


Then we have the Katraxi, who as I said before fit with the Kzinti/Kilrathi sort of "honorable warrior cat." They're from a high gravity planet and tend to be excelent at ground combat.

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I am Communist
Apr 19, 2002

I can show you what endless looks like
I can show you a single infinite thing
I can let you taste the sweet and sour of forever
Unending. Eternal. Inevitable
Taste my darkness
Climb into my abyss
Fall into me. Into my eyes
Look at them. Depths unfathomable
Pain immeasurable
A cruel promise fulfilled

Atarask posted:

-Races and kick rear end stuff-

This looks cool as hell. Hey Atarask, what are the plans for government types / bonuses etc? The only thing I liked about MoO3 was the manual and it's explanations of governments and ruling styles. It had oligarchy, military juntas, everything. Pretty neat. Also do you plan on random events with a newscaster?

Maybe with random bits of fake news about a blob singer famed through the galaxy in a scandal along with relevant happenings? I always got a kick out of those when enacting a new law in I forget the game name but you're a dragon king and have a newspaper remarking on your edicts like the sun or enquirer.

Travic
May 27, 2007

Getting nowhere fast
This looks great. I can't wait. One of the things I've always missed from MOO was that the races felt really...alive. They somehow had lots of depth to them and were very satisfying. GalCiv species were very flat. Distant worlds' species never really grabbed me either (despite me liking the games otherwise). The examples you've put up so far look excellent. Keep up the good work.

LotsBread
Jan 4, 2013
Atarask, there's another MOO coming called "Predestination"

Made by a goon called Nyphur

I suggest you two duel in gladiatorial combat to determine who is the true successor

Riso
Oct 11, 2008

by merry exmarx
You know, in Birth of the Federation, factions like the Klingons and Cardassians got a major bonus to subjugation of minor races instead of diplomacy.

Include that feature please, thanks.

Kylra
Dec 1, 2006

Not a cute boy, just a boring girl.
Seems a little early to start the hype train. But anyway, how do you plan to lay out the tech tree/web/cylinder/whatever?

I am Communist
Apr 19, 2002

I can show you what endless looks like
I can show you a single infinite thing
I can let you taste the sweet and sour of forever
Unending. Eternal. Inevitable
Taste my darkness
Climb into my abyss
Fall into me. Into my eyes
Look at them. Depths unfathomable
Pain immeasurable
A cruel promise fulfilled

LotsBread posted:

Atarask, there's another MOO coming called "Predestination"

Made by a goon called Nyphur

I suggest you two duel in gladiatorial combat to determine who is the true successor

Is there a thread in games? If so please link. I'd like to see it :)

LotsBread
Jan 4, 2013

I am Communist posted:

Is there a thread in games? If so please link. I'd like to see it :)

Sadly no, Nyphur is too busy working on the game to actually post a drat thing. Can link you to the dev blog, though:

http://predestinationgame.com/

Atarask
Mar 8, 2008

Lord of Rigel Developer

Riso posted:

You know, in Birth of the Federation, factions like the Klingons and Cardassians got a major bonus to subjugation of minor races instead of diplomacy.

Include that feature please, thanks.

That's something that we'll do. :)

I am Communist posted:

This looks cool as hell. Hey Atarask, what are the plans for government types / bonuses etc? The only thing I liked about MoO3 was the manual and it's explanations of governments and ruling styles. It had oligarchy, military juntas, everything. Pretty neat. Also do you plan on random events with a newscaster?

Right now government types are dictatorship, feudalism, democracy, and unified. We did sit down and make a huge list of types like kratocracies and we may do that expanded list based on player feedback. The current government mechanics will be pretty simple like MOO2 but we've discussed expanding gameplay mechanics down the road based on player feedback. We want to keep the core game very much a "MOO2 HD." But down the road integrating the leader and political mechanics (so democracies act a bit like the politics in Rome: Total War while feudalism plays a little more like Crusader Kings with landed titles given to underlings and succession wars) is an idea we've discussed but it wouldn't be a 1.0 feature. Basically we want to have it so you can play the core game in a mode that's basically an updated MOO2 (warts and all), the "Master of Rigel" mode, then we have our own main game with the expanded roles of the elder species to add more dynamics to the end game and politics/coalitions, and then DLC packs would ideally add gameplay expanding features (expanded culture, leader, and politics mechanics) that players can use or not depending on their tastes.

One again, it's pretty early, but the hope is to use expansions to add features above and beyond the core game like Civ 5 did. Not just piling on new species and techs.

When it comes to juntas, rebellions will have a bigger role since you can incite rebellions MOO1 style and they become factions in their own right unlike MOO2. So they behave more like rebellions in the Total War games.

I am Communist posted:

Maybe with random bits of fake news about a blob singer famed through the galaxy in a scandal along with relevant happenings? I always got a kick out of those when enacting a new law in I forget the game name but you're a dragon king and have a newspaper remarking on your edicts like the sun or enquirer.

There will be a GNN news caster, with real and fake (well... tied to who gets framed for spy actions) news. When it comes to "edicts" and such we're avoiding quest missions like a lot of recent games have added. The Galactic Council can issue galaxy-wide edicts though like in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

As for the GNN guys, they also sort of have their own agenda too (at least in the backstory). The elder species (Rigelans and Arcturans) while ancient are part of a very old cycle of evolution and ascension. The GNN bots needless to say are much more ancient and advanced than they seem to be, how else could they sneak in and get accurate reports on everything in a whole galaxy? ...and only a foolish galactic emperor would think that journalism is objective...

LotsBread posted:

Atarask, there's another MOO coming called "Predestination"

Made by a goon called Nyphur

I suggest you two duel in gladiatorial combat to determine who is the true successor

We're well aware of Predestination, M.O.R.E., Lords of the Black Sun, Stars in Shadow (which honestly is the one I'm really excited for thanks to Arioch's art style and MOO1 cartoony vibe), and Horizon and are confident that our game is different enough. Also, unlike other genres 4x players do tend to buy most of the games and it's not mutually exclusive. It's not like just because you like Endless Space Civ5 is all of the sudden terrible!

Kylra posted:

Seems a little early to start the hype train. But anyway, how do you plan to lay out the tech tree/web/cylinder/whatever?

We're sticking with a MOO2 style tech tree of pick one out of three in a research field. We've reworked things so there's harder choices for each tech stage. Personally I liked the MOO1 tech tree better, and one like MOO2 is more "gamey" but it does encourage hard choices and trading/espionage.

Quite a few games are promoting custom techs for certain species and custom tech trees. For the core game, we're not planning that (outside of special elder race techs that are different for the Rigelans and Arcturans) but the AI for different species will be biased towards picking certain techs to give a flavor but the player isn't restricted in their choices.

The custom tech trees in Sword of the Stars, and the unique FTL drives is an interesting idea, but once again we're serious about the "MOO2.5" and deviating less from that formula than a lot of the other games that have been released or are in development. If there's demand, unique techs for species can be added.

Similarly, the unique FTL thing in SotS starts to get a bit gimmicky past the basic warp/stargate/node-starlane dynamic. Since so many games have gone with starlanes, we really wanted to keep the simple island-hopping warp drive mechanic here.

I am Communist
Apr 19, 2002

I can show you what endless looks like
I can show you a single infinite thing
I can let you taste the sweet and sour of forever
Unending. Eternal. Inevitable
Taste my darkness
Climb into my abyss
Fall into me. Into my eyes
Look at them. Depths unfathomable
Pain immeasurable
A cruel promise fulfilled
Hey, I forgot to ask. How were you guys going to do ground combat? I liked seeing the screens in the MoO series with tanks and soldiers shooting. You planning in having any of that?

Atarask
Mar 8, 2008

Lord of Rigel Developer
Ground combat we plan to do exactly like MOO2. We want to make the core game as close as possible to that (even our new things will be optional). We might add more in depth ground combat for an expansion if people want that. But we'd want to do it right and give it the proper time and focus like tactical ship combat.

Also, as a special goon exclusive the Katraxi destroyer:
http://p3d.in/O1RMw

We've been working on the UI for the ship designer. The tactical demo has suffered a little feature creep since we're basically going to be giving full skirmish mode for the Human and Katraxi fleets. But hopefully once seeing tactical in action in late February people will see we're putting our money where our mouth is :)

Atarask fucked around with this message at 06:28 on Jan 21, 2015

I am Communist
Apr 19, 2002

I can show you what endless looks like
I can show you a single infinite thing
I can let you taste the sweet and sour of forever
Unending. Eternal. Inevitable
Taste my darkness
Climb into my abyss
Fall into me. Into my eyes
Look at them. Depths unfathomable
Pain immeasurable
A cruel promise fulfilled
Yeah this looks pretty good. Sounds like you're all working in a forward direction and that's always a plus.

I am Communist
Apr 19, 2002

I can show you what endless looks like
I can show you a single infinite thing
I can let you taste the sweet and sour of forever
Unending. Eternal. Inevitable
Taste my darkness
Climb into my abyss
Fall into me. Into my eyes
Look at them. Depths unfathomable
Pain immeasurable
A cruel promise fulfilled

So anything new? Figured I'd check back after a bit. (Hopeful its still moving forward)

prometheusbound2
Jul 5, 2010
This looks really cool. I know this is a really hard space where a lot of talented people have tried and not succeeded, so I wish you guys the best of luck. Some specific questions:

1. There is a trend in space 4x games to have more linear weapons/defense/subsystem progression. This has some positives: I think GalCiv2's AI is so good because its working with a relatively simple system. But one of the things I loved about MOO2 was the variety of weapon types and subsystems(along with weapon mods) that did more than +1 to attack power +1 to defense. It was not necessarily balanced, but it made for a lot of fun. What will your approach be to this issue?

2.) Antaran invasion? One of the cool things about Master of Orion 2(and well built 4x's) was the ability to build a custom storyline in each game. There were a lot of elements that helped with this. Distinct alien races with vivid art, a good diplomacy system with good flavor text, and the galaxy news network were all elements that contributed. But more than anything else the Anataran invasion did. Will there be an Antaran invasion? What elements are you pursuing to develop the galaxy outside of mechanics? (This is an area where a lot of would be MOO successors come up short, I think).

Of note is that one of the few things that MOO3 did well was backstory and developing cool races; this is a nice bonus in 4x games but not a necessity. What are you plans for this?

3.) Other influences? Master of Orion 2 is a great game and in many respects hasn't been topped in the 20 odd years since it came out. But there's still been a lot of very worthy games in the genre that have done their own thing(GalCiv2, Space Empires, Distant Worlds). Are you incorporating any ideas or influences from these games?

Atarask
Mar 8, 2008

Lord of Rigel Developer

I am Communist posted:

So anything new? Figured I'd check back after a bit. (Hopeful its still moving forward)

We're alive, and finished upgrading to Unity 5 this week. We've been pretty silent on the site and twitter but quite a lot of progress has been done on the soundtrack and a new, finalized, art style for the Humans.

Meet the Destroyer!
http://p3d.in/raXzS

prometheusbound2 posted:

This looks really cool. I know this is a really hard space where a lot of talented people have tried and not succeeded, so I wish you guys the best of luck. Some specific questions:

1. There is a trend in space 4x games to have more linear weapons/defense/subsystem progression. This has some positives: I think GalCiv2's AI is so good because its working with a relatively simple system. But one of the things I loved about MOO2 was the variety of weapon types and subsystems(along with weapon mods) that did more than +1 to attack power +1 to defense. It was not necessarily balanced, but it made for a lot of fun. What will your approach be to this issue?

We're following a progression like Master of Orion 2 with technologies. It does come with the downside that the AI may not be able to take full advantage of many special devices but we're working on tailoring the AI for each species. Basically, we're viewing them not as players trying to win the game but as non-player characters you interact with who have their own goals. Fun is more important than rigid balance.


prometheusbound2 posted:

2.) Antaran invasion? One of the cool things about Master of Orion 2(and well built 4x's) was the ability to build a custom storyline in each game. There were a lot of elements that helped with this. Distinct alien races with vivid art, a good diplomacy system with good flavor text, and the galaxy news network were all elements that contributed. But more than anything else the Anataran invasion did. Will there be an Antaran invasion? What elements are you pursuing to develop the galaxy outside of mechanics? (This is an area where a lot of would be MOO successors come up short, I think).

We're aiming for that. Especially flavor text since a few recent games seemed to have cut corners on that.

Instead of an Antaran invasion, we're including two elder species the Rigelans and Arcturans who are actively manipulating galactic politics. The Rigelans seeded planets with FTL technology and are in a cold war with the Arcturans. So basically imagine the Orions and Antarans still around, hurting from their last war, and trying to gather enough influence to finish the others off. But we're not necessarily going to make either side mustache twirling villains.

prometheusbound2 posted:

Of note is that one of the few things that MOO3 did well was backstory and developing cool races; this is a nice bonus in 4x games but not a necessity. What are you plans for this?

3.) Other influences? Master of Orion 2 is a great game and in many respects hasn't been topped in the 20 odd years since it came out. But there's still been a lot of very worthy games in the genre that have done their own thing(GalCiv2, Space Empires, Distant Worlds). Are you incorporating any ideas or influences from these games?

We're not throwing the baby out with the bathwater on MOO3, it had some solid ideas that were executed poorly. Overall the Rigelan/Arcturan war is very similar to what MOO3 was trying to do with the New Orions and Council Species.

As for backstory, we've thought about the cultures and backgrounds for our species and they are reflected in their ship designs and music. Our species will hit major tropes (feline warrior archetype, silicon based, machines, etc.) but should feel fleshed out.

We've all played Endless Space and GalCiv, so a lot of advances in terms of UI are being implemented. We're also being cautious to not overburden the design with "this was really cool let's add X, Y, and Z" and focus on a solid core game and expand out from there on mechanics that make sense.


Also, something we recently implemented are wormholes in the galaxy generator:




Systems generally have a pretty small chance of having a wormhole. But some types of stars (white dwarves and neutron stars) are pretty strategically important as they tend to have wormholes and can serve as hubs of galactic transit.

Atarask fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Mar 9, 2015

Garfu
Mar 6, 2008

Much like buttholes, families are meant to be tight.
So StarDrive 2 just came out. It's pretty much an exact clone of MOO2 down to the names of things on the customize race screen. So it looks like 2.5 MOO2 has already been done. Thoughts?

I am Communist
Apr 19, 2002

I can show you what endless looks like
I can show you a single infinite thing
I can let you taste the sweet and sour of forever
Unending. Eternal. Inevitable
Taste my darkness
Climb into my abyss
Fall into me. Into my eyes
Look at them. Depths unfathomable
Pain immeasurable
A cruel promise fulfilled
Is that the one with RTS combat?

Garfu
Mar 6, 2008

Much like buttholes, families are meant to be tight.
Oh, right, the main difference is real-time combat and some sort of HoMM ground combat that is terrible apparently. But seriously they use the exact same names of stuff for the race customization screen and the same exact concepts as far as research and whatnot goes. I'm not saying the game is bad, I haven't played it. Just saying it's an almost 1:1 rip of MoO2 and I know LoR is going in that direction.

Meme Poker Party
Sep 1, 2006

by Azathoth
In the future all space games will aspire to be 1:1 rips of MoO2.












Oh wait they already do.

Bug Squash
Mar 18, 2009

Space 4X as a genera would be a thousand times better if MOO2 had never existed.

There, I said it.

Digital Flower
Sep 5, 2011

Bug Squash posted:

Space 4X as a genera would be a thousand times better if MOO2 had never existed.

There, I said it.

You monster. How do you live with yourself?

Fangz
Jul 5, 2007

Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!
At this point the only way a MOO2 clone would be interesting to me is if it works, and works well, on my phone.

Bug Squash
Mar 18, 2009

Singing Sunflower posted:

You monster. How do you live with yourself?

Imagine a world in which a new space 4x game was designed to be a working system rather than a laundry list of "features" taken from MoO2. What if people thought to themselves: "actually, a ship designer would just be pointless busy work in my game", or "do I really need 22 different kinds of lasers"? What if game devs went to any of the countless non-space strategy games for inspiration, rather than making MoO2 clone #137?

It would be a better world, and all it would cost us is one really good game. All we need to do is finish researching Temporal Engineering, and *believe*.

Fintilgin
Sep 29, 2004

Fintilgin sweeps!
There's actually part of me that would like a MOO -1- clone. Lean, clean, simple, and I could build hilariously gigantic fleets of 14,450 outdated ships that could overcome the enemy through sheer numbers.

I picked up Stardrive 2 and yeah... seems interesting but the techs/tech system/race customization are literally ripped straight from MOO2 almost unchanged. If it had turn based combat instead of clunky real-time combat it would pretty much be a modernized MOO2.


Thoughts I'd have on an explicit MOO 2.5 would be making sure the races have lots of personality (don't skip on the music for this, I'll still hum the little MOO1 Sakkra opening 'bum dum DUM dum DUM dumdumdum'). Good UI is essential, as well as a way to reduce the tedious micromanagement of building queues full of countless buildings for a couple dozen planets.

Otherwise I'd tend to agree with the sentiment that I'd be more interested in a fresh take on the genre that borrows some of the best bits (like the mutually exclusive tech tree) without being slavishly devoted to the old game. On the other hand, MOO2 is still fun, and a literal modern clone with better graphics, slicker UI & conveniences would still get some play time from me.

Nordick
Sep 3, 2011

Yes.
I assume I'm in the minority here, but I actually liked Stardrive 1. Yeah it wasn't quite complete, but what was there still made for pretty fun gameplay. And I never gave a poo poo about multiplayer in my 4X games.
Anyways, I just saw in Steam today that Stardrive 2 was out, searched for it on the forums to see if there was a thread, and found this instead. Seems very much like something I'll be following keenly, I'm always up for some new space 4X. :)

Not too bothered about cribbing a lot from MoO2 either, as pretty much the only thing that keeps me from still playing MoO2 is its completely braindead AI that just can't design a functional ship to save its life. Most of the time, as long as I survive the early stages and get some ship tech together, it's just a matter of building a few advanced battleships and mopping up the enemy's fleets of laser cannon armed titans or whatever, so a game of MoO2 is pretty much just going through the motions at this point (and this is probably the part where I have to repeat that I don't care for multiplayer). So in that light the unique AI personalities sound good, if you guys get them to work well and provide some variety in the game.

So I guess what I'm saying is, if this game ends up being to MoO2 what Xenonauts is to the original UFO/X-COM, I'll be a happy space emperor.

LotsBread
Jan 4, 2013
Let us remember that Zero had a hissy fit when, surprise surprise, people got mad at how he abandoned his early access game in order to developed Stardrive 2 and refused to even acknowledge this was a bad move, saying that a game that kept crashing was feature complete. And then cowcaster closed the thread.

Nordick
Sep 3, 2011

Yes.
Oh yeah I'm aware of what he did, I'm not defending him. I'm just saying I still enjoyed the game for what it was, even if it should've been more. It never crashed on me, though.

I agree that going "Want these problems fixed? Buy the next game" is a skeezy thing to do, so I'm not gonna give him full price for StarDrive 2.


EDIT: Actually, I reminisced a bit and went back to read the last pages of the Stardrive thread, and would like to retract my above statements. He didn't handle the discussion in the thread very well, but otherwise I'm actually on his side.

Also that's all I have to say about the subject, I don't wanna derail this thread further.

Nordick fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Apr 17, 2015

Brendan Rodgers
Jun 11, 2014




Bug Squash posted:

Imagine a world in which a new space 4x game was designed to be a working system rather than a laundry list of "features" taken from MoO2. What if people thought to themselves: "actually, a ship designer would just be pointless busy work in my game", or "do I really need 22 different kinds of lasers"? What if game devs went to any of the countless non-space strategy games for inspiration, rather than making MoO2 clone #137?

It would be a better world, and all it would cost us is one really good game. All we need to do is finish researching Temporal Engineering, and *believe*.

It's true, picture the genre in 10 years from now. Look at how many trash features have been nostalgiafied into being considered necessary just because they were in a bad game that reminds people of their childhood, look at this ffs:

quote:

Ground combat we plan to do exactly like MOO2. We want to make the core game as close as possible to that (even our new things will be optional).

Brendan Rodgers
Jun 11, 2014




Even a game like Star Ruler 2 will be all "we're not cloning MoO" then you look closely and it's got a stupid ship builder. MoO2 has ruined the genre it's just gonna take a bunch more Stardrives being released for people to realise this.

Nordick
Sep 3, 2011

Yes.
Actually ship design is one of the most fun parts of 4X space games.

NoNotTheMindProbe
Aug 9, 2010
pony porn was here

Nordick posted:

Actually ship design is one of the most fun parts of 4X space games.

Agreed. The worst holdover from MoO2 is the planetary build queues and pop management. Does anyone gain any enjoyment from repeating the same build order 100 times over and fiddling with pops to maximise a turn-to-finish number?

Bug Squash
Mar 18, 2009

Nordick posted:

Actually ship design is one of the most fun parts of 4X space games.

When it's appropriate to the game, and done well.

The problem is that it's always there, even if it makes no drat sense, like in endless space and galciv (not the model builder part though, that was rad as all hell).

ZenVulgarity
Oct 9, 2012

I made the hat by transforming my zen

I would love a 4x game I could play on an android device

TheCosmicMuffet
Jun 21, 2009

by Shine

NoNotTheMindProbe posted:

Agreed. The worst holdover from MoO2 is the planetary build queues and pop management. Does anyone gain any enjoyment from repeating the same build order 100 times over and fiddling with pops to maximise a turn-to-finish number?

I don't. But when I watch a good player LP Civ 5 on Deity and see the way they balance their construction needs, what I see is a system where the decisions definitely matter and it's not just about getting your planet to tick off every mark on the box. That's what I *want* it to be like, and wish MOO2 4xs could achieve.

I think MOO2 missed a basic thing that MOO did perfectly; if you're going to treat a planet like simplified object for production purposes, then just fold these elements into a bar that represents 'production effort' or research or farming. If you're going to make buildings that are genuine trade-offs, you have to work a little harder to make it clear why you do or do not build them. For instance, that drat antaran gate was something I only needed or wanted 0-1 of, but was in every planet's queue. I kind of like that idea. Except, for that specific case it wasn't a useful or interesting choice. Another place where it worked alright was Androids; if I had a choice, then on some planets, I'd want the excess population in scientist form, or farmer, or whatever. Unfortunately, again, because of the way the game worked, you generally didn't bother. Plus the droids-past-pop-cap thing was buggy (even if it made sense).

If 4xes played like you didn't have the time to invest in more than a few types of buildings, and you really had to focus on the ones you wanted--while also paying attention to a different but more visible infrastructure problem (similar to tile improvements and worker placement in Civ or district building in Endless Legend), then it'd be a different story.

MOO is a super efficient game when it comes to modeling your economy. MOO2 is trying to still be efficient and add depth, but failed to develop an efficient counterpart to the new routine of building unique stuff.

Weirdly, Sid Meier's Starships is kind of hitting the right note for me in terms of handling economy in 4x. You get resources each turn, buy infrastructure in bulk, or wonders for specific bonuses. Or technology with a separate research currency. Basically everything is pretty clear and straight forward, and there's no queues. Wonders handle both the idea of building on a planet *and* unique tech upgrades, while tech is treated as a simple ramp-up for your starship systems. You handle starship design by allocating various numbers of modules to different starship systems.

It's probably a little too simple, but I enjoy how straight forward it is. I don't have to guess if a disruptor is better than a phaser. I just put a tech point in long range beam weapons.

I still like the stardrive 2 ship design the best. Especially because the ship layouts that vary by race introduce such a rich way to add quirks to ship-design. Like, if your race doesn't build cruisers with a fat central hull, you can't have a science module for science-vessel research boosting until you research battleships. I find that *really* interesting. That's the best of what a ship design system has to offer.

The worst is placing 120 armor modules around the edge of the hull one at a time.

Thank god he got rid of power conduits.

Sins of a Solar Empire does a good job with it, I think. Though, I find it kind of boils down to going hard for fighters if you have a race that does that well or hard for turrets if you don't. Infrastructure is just a reaction to what kind of planets are available to you. Still, I always feel pressure to be efficient and goal oriented, which I don't in most other 4xes.

Riso
Oct 11, 2008

by merry exmarx

Brendan Rodgers posted:

Even a game like Star Ruler 2 will be all "we're not cloning MoO" then you look closely and it's got a stupid ship builder. MoO2 has ruined the genre it's just gonna take a bunch more Stardrives being released for people to realise this.

Ex-Paradox guy Chris King makes a 4x without ship builder http://store.steampowered.com/app/322540/

ZenVulgarity posted:

I would love a 4x game I could play on an android device

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tresebrothers.games.factionwars

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.corytrese.games.startraderselite

Nordick
Sep 3, 2011

Yes.

TheCosmicMuffet posted:

I still like the stardrive 2 ship design the best. Especially because the ship layouts that vary by race introduce such a rich way to add quirks to ship-design. Like, if your race doesn't build cruisers with a fat central hull, you can't have a science module for science-vessel research boosting until you research battleships. I find that *really* interesting. That's the best of what a ship design system has to offer.
I very much agree with this, I like that while the races all get basically the same kinds of hulls, they vary in size and shape. Like, a Vulfar corvette is barely bigger than a fighter, while Kulrathi corvettes are almost as big as some races' frigates. Some races have huge honking wide ships that can fit preposterous amounts of forward firepower but are also way easier to hit as a result, while others get longer hulls for zooming past things and letting rip with huge broadsides. I just kinda wish there were as many different hull types as the first game, where we had light and heavy frigates, battlecruisers, etc.

Really liking the game otherwise too, it still has some bugs but the frequent patches seem to be making good headway in removing those. A bit too easy on Normal difficulty though.
Also, about a third of the people in my empire are sapient elephants. :3:

PerniciousKnid
Sep 13, 2006
I'm confused because I remember MOO2 tactical combat being two fleets flying toward each other and shooting until one was dead, as opposed to MOO1's less-realistic but more tactical chessboard knife-fighting. Is it possible MOO2 combat was better than I remember?

Pochoclo
Feb 4, 2008

No...
Clapping Larry

PerniciousKnid posted:

I'm confused because I remember MOO2 tactical combat being two fleets flying toward each other and shooting until one was dead, as opposed to MOO1's less-realistic but more tactical chessboard knife-fighting. Is it possible MOO2 combat was better than I remember?

No, MOO2 combat compared was rather lacking, all about turning. MOO1 was better, since you had stuff like repulsor beams and heavy varieties of weapons with 2 squares range and stacks of ships and stuff.

TheCosmicMuffet
Jun 21, 2009

by Shine
MOO2's advantage wasn't so much the specifics. It could have been more like Gratuitous space battles. But it was much better in terms of the kinds of cool things you could do with different ship systems.

I mean, sure, repulsor beams were key in MOO1--especially since you needed 2 banks of them to park in front of your planets and prevent the lovely AI from virus bombing your pristine worlds with giant piles of throw-away ships. But otherwise, it was about trying to figure out a good mix of firepower and survivability.

MOO2 had stuff like launching salvos of missiles, cloaking, then coming in at a ship from a facing where its shield was down, or using the time device to take a double turn. Teleporting away from fighters. Using tractor beams to hold the enemy in place and board them. Or giving up on trying to stay ahead in the ships race, and just get great ground tech so your assault shuttles would be insane and you could steal good ships from the other guys.

None of it amounted to a really awesome tactical combat game, but it made the design part of the game more interesting. If you were thinking about how these different systems and abilities would interact, that made designing ships more than just 'ok, I need this shield booster, and this beams booster, and then as many beams as I can have'.

Even if it still just ended up as deathstars full of plasma beams.

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Glass of Milk
Dec 22, 2004
to forgive is divine
The midgame is really key for space combat in these games. Usually the beginning fleets and ending ships consist of how many guns you can cram on the frames- the former because your technology doesn't allow much more than that and the latter because you're just mopping up and can brute force through tricky mechanics or abilities.

If they built in the ability to have one cool mechanic per ship no matter what era or size, I think that would be a cool thing. Suddenly you don't have 20 ships with laser I versus 20 ships with laser II, but you almost get class based abilities like X-Com or something.

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