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zedprime posted:I don't know, it sounds simpler than the CK2 combat sim for example. Paradox games don't exactly have the most simple combat sims compared to the rules of thumb that spring up that serve a player well enough. Although I do like when they tend toward the EU4 level and all my complaints about the ship editor have already been laid out last week. This is exactly what I'm concerned about, yeah. Few people bother to really figure out the CK2 and EU4 combat sims because you can get 90% of the way there by following a rule of thumb that some sperg figured out years ago in both games. In CK2 you basically just show up with more guys, maybe a Welshman, and keep an eye on terrain. In EU4 you have roughly equal numbers of inf and art and a couple cav, maybe keep a reinforcement stack around, and keep an eye on terrain. Neither of these games would be improved by having combat play out in real time - the level of player feedback and involvement is pretty good in both. I'd love to be wrong but the system just looks way too deep for how much I imagine the player is going to care about it. Unless combat is way rarer than in CK2 or EU4 I imagine there will be a consensus fleet composition that you'll throw into combat and (hopefully be able to) autoresolve.
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Jan 25, 2016 14:59
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It really is Master of Orion 2, just without the player being able to directly influence the battle. I'm really unsure how much I will enjoy that. As an avid CK2 player, I generally don't mind the more hands off combat system, but on the other hand I loved playing admiral in MoO2. I'm super curious what combat feels like in the finished game.
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Jan 25, 2016 15:15
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I started watching the TV show The Expanse over the weekend and it rekindled my desire for a hard sci-fi game focused on a single system. If anyone's played Alien Legacy (1994) it was a strategy game where you arrive in the Beta Caeli system with a colonization ship where you settle on two Earth-like planets and explore the various planets around there. The key part of the game was that it had realistic planet rotations so in the early game where you suffer from inefficient fuel engines you are very dependent on the planet orbits to make the trip between them. There were ways to optimize your production of various resources and you would produce life support elements on your planetary colonies to pay the upkeep on your orbital stations where you would do research. You could also build a station around the gas giant and produce huge amounts of energy and obtain the most ores at asteroids. The game's focus was the story plot though and it got sort of rushed and the strategic element suffered from it. The core gameplay of it was great though and I'd love a city-builder like game based on the idea with the political elements from Stellaris where conflicts could arise between the colonies like in The Expanse.
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Jan 25, 2016 15:48
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Torrannor posted:It really is Master of Orion 2, just without the player being able to directly influence the battle. I'm really unsure how much I will enjoy that. As an avid CK2 player, I generally don't mind the more hands off combat system, but on the other hand I loved playing admiral in MoO2. I'm super curious what combat feels like in the finished game. I'm indifferent about being able to directly control ships. It's fun for a while, but in MOO battles were mostly won or lost on the design screen anyway, barring a few bullshit tricks only available to the player.
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Jan 25, 2016 15:54
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This sums up my understanding of Unit Designer re: combat: Research High-Energy Chemistry -> X Chaos Rovers -> Repeal UN Charter -> Crush enemies, see them driven before you, hear lamentation of women.
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Jan 25, 2016 16:01
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DrSunshine posted:This sums up my understanding of Unit Designer re: combat: You forgot nerve gas pods 
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Jan 25, 2016 16:02
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DrSunshine posted:This sums up my understanding of Unit Designer re: combat: (Gaian) mind worms or bust!
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Jan 25, 2016 16:06
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Torrannor posted:(Gaian) mind worms or bust!  Deirdre was always my favourite, I just wish that it was more viable to work xenofungus tiles. You can make it work, but way deep in the tech tree when it no longer matters and you already did a ton of terraforming.
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Jan 25, 2016 16:14
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I honestly don't mind the auto-combat, in games like Moo2 I usually tired of fighting battles myself after the first few and would just turn Auto on for any tactical combat and let the computer slam head on onto my opponent. The only reason I didn't just use auto resolve was so I could see what the AI was fielding. Here it soinds like we get a pretty show (that we could ignore and scroll away from I'm sure) and a summary we can look at later. RabidWeasel posted:
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Jan 25, 2016 16:51
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It was inefficient but a lot of fun to wipe out the target's infrastructure with a wave of fungal missiles before charging your alien hordes in over the hostile territory that counted as friendly highways for you.
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Jan 25, 2016 16:56
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Demiurge4 posted:You forgot nerve gas pods That's why they're X Chaos Rovers. 
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Jan 25, 2016 17:19
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Demiurge4 posted:Edit: I will say that I don't like the ship designs at all. The aesthetic is very generic. I think it's understandable that they'd want a generic look for the initial stuff, the whole game is like that really. Hopefully it'll get more interesting with visual DLC. I have been kind of unimpressed with the visuals though.. there have been a lot of people saying this is Paradox's best looking title by far, but I think HOI4 looks miles better. It's the refinement of 2 decades of map games and looks nice and crisp from the borders of the countris on the map to the lighting effects to the slick propaganda portraits on the UI. Stellaris by comparison looks like a wholly generic space game.
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Jan 25, 2016 17:45
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Polygon has a pretty lengthy interview with Johan about HoI 4.
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Jan 25, 2016 17:56
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Demiurge4 posted:Edit: I will say that I don't like the ship designs at all. The aesthetic is very generic. I'm getting a distinct Gallente vibe from the ones in these shots, actually. Lots of flowing curves with green/turquoise highlights next to bare steel.
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Jan 25, 2016 17:58
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Oh no, the paradox forum goers are clamoring for the Distant World civilian economic system. It just makes the galaxy feel so alive!! But hey, it's kinda like the Victoria 2 economic system... (can we be sure it wasn't developed by the same satanic programmer?) Pimpmust fucked around with this message at 19:57 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 19:55
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Pimpmust posted:Oh no, the paradox forum goers are clamoring for the Distant World civilian economic system. It just makes the galaxy feel so alive!! The Distant Worlds economy is cool but it was never balanced because there isn't enough consumption to counter the insane production rates you amass eventually. Civilian ships just move around increasingly enormous hoards of junk materials that add up in your stockpile, the only thing that gets used fully is the super rare resources. I'm all for civilian traffic in systems but I think they are better used as a visual representation of the level of infrastructure present. Asteroid mining colonies, gas siphon stations around gas giants and transport ships that haul it all around but not actually real physical objects you interact with. You could use them to show damage as well if you perform raids into foreign systems and put them aflame.
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Jan 25, 2016 20:03
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Well that's the thing, it doesn't "do" anything, or... it does everything on its own. You're just sitting there watching ships zip around while numbers build up and if you want to get fancy you look up whatever resource you are missing and take a planet (but you don't really have to, or you'd do that anyways because you are taking over the galaxy). If you want something that "feels alive" you can just have some sort of graphical representation of your abstracted economic system instead of trying to be a really clever programmer and have this "complex" black box that does everything for the player (and there's no way the player could do it all on manual past a certain point anyhow) just to show... off? Classic case of "the programmer had more fun making this system than the player will ever get out of it" (At best it does what it says on the tin and you don't have to bother with it, or more likely; the whole economic simulation is faulty and decides to poo poo the bed 400 turns into the game ala Victoria 2).
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Jan 25, 2016 20:06
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Bold Robot posted:This is exactly what I'm concerned about, yeah. Few people bother to really figure out the CK2 and EU4 combat sims because you can get 90% of the way there by following a rule of thumb that some sperg figured out years ago in both games. In CK2 you basically just show up with more guys, maybe a Welshman, and keep an eye on terrain. In EU4 you have roughly equal numbers of inf and art and a couple cav, maybe keep a reinforcement stack around, and keep an eye on terrain. Neither of these games would be improved by having combat play out in real time - the level of player feedback and involvement is pretty good in both. Those sims are relatively simple because all the combatants have relative technological parity. In EU4 different compositions barely matter because of the level of abstraction. You can allocate slightly more cav or slightly more infantry, and pick between perhaps two generals. There may be an idea group involved. Why watch those battles? If you want different races with different FTL drives, different weapons techs, different shield techs, etc to be able to face off against each other, then the extra depth / complexity is needed. Think of it like this: This is the framework you need if you don't want boring, pointless battles like in CK2 or EU4 and get stuff that you might actually watch. It needs a certain amount of differences between the units, and this system allows for that.
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Jan 25, 2016 20:07
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For a while there was a glitch or something in the system Distant Worlds used that would cause civilian transports to try and ship fuel where it was needed even if the source the transport was shipping from only had a tiny amount available and it needed to be shipped from one end of the galaxy to the other. This would cause the ship to use more fuel than it was shipping and after a while resulted in the galaxy running out of fuel and grind everything to a halt. Fun times. I love playing DW but I don't think this game would have anything to gain by modeling an entire, seperate economy. The added eye candy to give representation that it was there would be pretty neat though. I love eye candy.
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Jan 25, 2016 20:12
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Psychotic Weasel posted:For a while there was a glitch or something in the system Distant Worlds used that would cause civilian transports to try and ship fuel where it was needed even if the source the transport was shipping from only had a tiny amount available and it needed to be shipped from one end of the galaxy to the other. This would cause the ship to use more fuel than it was shipping and after a while resulted in the galaxy running out of fuel and grind everything to a halt. Besides the general buginess of such a complex system (because it's hard to test it properly or balance it) it's also a bloody CPU resource hog. DW starts running like rear end once the empires are built up on anything but the smallest of galactic maps. Graphical representation of the "system looted" modifier? Sure, individual ship modelling and tracking of Whitehorse Large Hauler #1-#43? No thanks.
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Jan 25, 2016 20:16
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Just abstract the economy the way Mount and Blade does with peasants and caravans. Have ships moving around from planet to planet and system to system with a few different types and sizes (i.e. passenger liner versus small freighter versus asteroid miner versus giant megafreighter--as your empire grows there will be more traffic whereas in the beginning it might just be ) so the galaxy seems alive, but really all they're doing is adding or subtracting from the various planets' prosperity ratings. The ships making it where they're going increases prosperity (by larger numbers for larger ships and smaller numbers for smaller ones). The ships not making it where they're going, whether due to raiding enemies or pirates or just accidents in space, decreases prosperity. Various prosperity levels mean higher levels of tax and production on your worlds and your planets will slowly move up and down between levels based on their civilian ships getting where they're going or not (or completing their mini missions, like an asteroid miner might leave its planet, mine some asteroids, and return to its own planet again). Different levels of prosperity also affect your pops and their happiness with your rule, so a far-flung colony that's dirt poor because it's constantly raided by pirates is more likely to want to abandon your empire and strike out on its own so it can build its own warships to defend its economy. At certain levels of prosperity you could also add and subtract new kinds of ships, too. Maybe your super high prosperity world has luxury space yachts cruising around the system not contributing to anything but presenting a risk for pirates, while your low prosperity world has a bunch of smugglers operating there that make it a bit more chaotic but also increase prosperity. This way you have the civilian ships zipping around making your galaxy feel lived in, and you have incentives to protect your economy, and the potential for commerce raiding in war exists, and pirates are a real threat, and an added layer of interactivity is given to your populations and worlds, but you don't actually have to code Vic3 in space to represent the economic system. vyelkin fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 20:17
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The one big thing I like about the Civilian model in DW is that it sort of encourages you to get your military ships blown up.quote:So, if you’re doing manual micromanagement you’re not getting that planning bonus. But, if you’re doing the proper planning, then you’ll be able to have a big advantage when you execute that plan. I really like that they're giving you bonuses for using the planning system in HOI4, that whole system in general looks like a lot of fun and really intuitive.
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Jan 25, 2016 20:21
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I imagine you're going to want to build your fleets around your admirals (within reason according to your tech levels). An admiral that gives bonuses to missile guidance and ECCM is going to be much stronger commanding a fleet that makes good use of missiles, giving you an incentive to keep a few designs around. I hope the game allows for some level of tactical planning and ships can fulfill roles within a fleet, picket ships are light and fast, armed with point defense and protect the capital ships that are armed with medium range weapons and protected by heavy armor that allows them to tank a lot of damage and long range cruisers armed with missiles stay back and project power. Basically use fleet compositions from Hearts of Iron. One optimal fleet composition would be countered by the fact your admirals have specific skills. Edit: There's also fleet size to consider. In other Paradox games you are penalized for stacking your armies too much (combat width) and I'm sure they'll use a similar system in Stellaris. If we assume they use a naval model that means you can design your fleets around roles, fast fleets with light ships to raid and harass the enemy (submarines), slower support fleets that support a carrier group and battle fleets with big fuckoff dreadnoughts armed with planetary bombardment weapons. Demiurge4 fucked around with this message at 20:39 on Jan 25, 2016 |
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Jan 25, 2016 20:31
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A lot of simulationist space 4x games do the equivalent of plopping the player down as the disembodied ruler of unified earth ca 1836 (pre-warp), letting the game run to ~2000 before bumping into any aliens, while giving the player exciting tech choices to develop the economy through ca 3 different tech tracks consisting of "minor additive bonus III" vs "major additive bonus IV vs minor negative modifier II" vs "multiplicative bonus +135% economic Goodiness". The player quickly learns which bonus is the best to pick (first) and then numbers just grow (maybe with the correlating IT'S AN OMEN random disaster events that may or may not completely gently caress you over). Then you bump into an alien civ with a diplomacy AI dialed into an "Make War Now or within 10 turns?" setting of 80-250% range and maybe a "AI Will Never Accept Peace? Y/N" setting too 
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Jan 25, 2016 20:33
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YF-23 posted:It was said in an earlier dev diary that the actual stuff that happens in combat is a reflection of what happens in the actual combat calculations, so by observing the combat you could figure out what went wrong and how to improve your fleet, I imagine. I would like to see this development for most future Paradox games. It's a very hard problem to solve but Paradox are quite clever. It would be pretty cool in EU4 for the game to figure out e.g. to depict scenes of horses running all over your mans if you are losing a battle handily because cavalry shock is turning your peons into pyramids of skulls. Thanks! Time to crush on Johan instead of working~
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Jan 25, 2016 20:37
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Pimpmust posted:A lot of simulationist space 4x games do the equivalent of plopping the player down as the disembodied ruler of unified earth ca 1836 (pre-warp), letting the game run to ~2000 before bumping into any aliens, while giving the player exciting tech choices to develop the economy through ca 3 different tech tracks consisting of "minor additive bonus III" vs "major additive bonus IV vs minor negative modifier II" vs "multiplicative bonus +135% economic Goodiness". Luckily Stellaris will just shatter your 18 system Empire into six smaller ones aligned around whatever transhumanist faction are in vogue in their stellar neighborhood! (This is a good thing)
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Jan 25, 2016 20:41
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The planet tile stacking mini-game looks stupid, ship design way too detailed, combat a complex rock paper scissors thing you can safely ignore once a few "optimal fleet design" guides come out. But as long as the game provides cool stories and a sense of evolving history I'm excited.
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Jan 25, 2016 20:59
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Demiurge4 posted:Edit: I will say that I don't like the ship designs at all. The aesthetic is very generic. Yeah, they weren't super distinguishable in that screenshot. I think they need to push unique colors more. Not just 'metal', 'chrome metal', and 'very slightly tinted metal'.
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Jan 25, 2016 21:03
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Rakthar posted:Those sims are relatively simple because all the combatants have relative technological parity. Much like many other good things EU:R tried to do this but from what I remember it didn't work that well and you usually just got as much heavy infantry as you could afford with a bit of cavalry on the side. Combat events were a fun idea too! And the pop system was arguably the precursor to the base tax / production / manpower system EU4 now has. What I'm saying is where's my loving Senate / Parliament / Council / etc. in EU4 Wiz 
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Jan 25, 2016 21:06
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RabidWeasel posted:Much like many other good things EU:R tried to do this but from what I remember it didn't work that well and you usually just got as much heavy infantry as you could afford with a bit of cavalry on the side. Combat events were a fun idea too! And the pop system was arguably the precursor to the base tax / production / manpower system EU4 now has. How soon we forget...
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Jan 25, 2016 21:58
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RabidWeasel posted:What I'm saying is where's my loving Senate / Parliament / Council / etc. in EU4 Wiz
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Jan 25, 2016 22:38
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For those of us who didn't play EU: Rome, what was so good about the Senate/Parliament/Council system in that game?
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Jan 25, 2016 22:43
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I'm pretty sure it involved trains and modernisation, somehow.
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Jan 25, 2016 22:44
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My Emperor, the Senate has elected Goonius Maximus as its new leader! We are sure this new politician will bring order and dignity to the office.
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Jan 25, 2016 22:44
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EU4 has parliament mechanics.
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Jan 25, 2016 22:45
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AdjectiveNoun posted:For those of us who didn't play EU: Rome, what was so good about the Senate/Parliament/Council system in that game? I think it's mostly nostalgia for an old forum game Wiz was involved in, goons roleplayed senators and formed political factions
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Jan 25, 2016 22:45
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 It's been such a long time since I actually played EU:R, but the senate stuff worked real nicely with the CK-style characters to have things going on within your own empire. It also was a pretty nice feedback system that rewarded/penalized you for how you balanced your empire. Imagine mixing CKII characters with EU4 estates and Victoria's political parties. Enjoy posted:I think it's mostly nostalgia for an old forum game Wiz was involved in, goons roleplayed senators and formed political factions also this, tbh. I'm very guilty of this myself, to the point where every once in a while I get a strong urge to mod one of the latest Paradox games to put in Cretan politics. Populists forever!
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Jan 25, 2016 22:55
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Pimpmust posted:I'm pretty sure it involved trains and modernisation, somehow. But I like both these things and EU:R has neither??? Nor do any recent games, really. Paradox, for your next game please skip all the EU and Victoria and HOI sequels and just ripoff TTDLX in its entirity please. I'm sure Chris Sawyer won't mind since he apparently heads up a mobile games company now and its safe to assume is dead (at least on the inside).
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Jan 25, 2016 22:55
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Yeah but that's dumb and bad and also you only get it late game or if you're England. E: I'm willing to admit that I totally forgot that it existed though since I rarely get to Con Mon and never play as England 
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Jan 25, 2016 22:57
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Let's Play! › Bull-men are the epitome of civilization! Europa Universalis: Rome The first thing you should notice about that thread is that it is 857 pages long.
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Jan 25, 2016 22:59
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