So, hello! My first post. (and it will be a long one so grab some tea and a sandwich and I'll hope I'll interest you)My english is a bit bad, but I'm here to state some opinions I've had over my gaming career!
So, Galciv 2, SPAZ(Space Pirates and Zombies) and Sword of the Stars are my favorite space games yet, and Total Annihilation is my favorite strategy game ever(hopefully this will be my new favorite game when it's released!).
But none of them where perfect in my mind, I often dreamt of making my own game and creating my own ideas(who hasn't?)
So, in short words.
I want research, I want real time battles, I want customizable units, I want balance, I want defense buildings and I want progression.
I want to be able to research weapons like blue laser and dumb rockets, I want to be able to build my ship how I like it(within certain limits/balance, sacrifizing offense for defense, or vice versa), I then want to see how my units fire blue lasers and rockets in a real time battle, and I then want to progress to the next level of the campaign and still have my research and my choices.
But.
Whenever I played Galciv2 or SotS I always had the same problem, there was no limit on how much you could research, and I didnt think it was fun to build units with blue lasers, and by the time they where done, I had a better version of the laser available and they became outdated, and by the time my already outdated units find the enemy I had progressed even further, so I always fortified myself to the max and just researched everything until I could make the best ships avalaible, and I didnt quite like it to have everything avalaible like that, cus the small battles with 5-10 low tech ships is just as fun as the big ones.
So here's what I've been thinking, set a limit to research.
I dont know how to implement it, but I have a couple of ideas.
You could make different "eras"(I think its called eras? well u get it :<) and different "game time modes" within one game.. or something, let me try to make an example instead. ;<
So lets say we've just started a game.Now I have 40 turns of research to do, research is then locked for 30 turns(these numbers could be customizable) and I need to put the stuff I've researched into good use.Someone researched 3 levels of lasers, having real strong laser offence, while I researched homing missiles, and someone else concentrated on maximizing his benefits for the next "era" (researching population growth, maybe shields for defense, research bonus etc)
This would make every tier of ship and weapon more useable, and I think it would make more of an interesting game.lets say on a really small map, where players find themselves close to eachother at the start, combat would initiate quickly.After the 1st research era, player 2 discovered that player 1 seems to have focused on lasers, which makes player 2 research defensive shields against lasers, while player 1 discovered player 2 had a lot of missile units, which makes him research countermeasures for that, a little rock paper scissors from era to era. For each era the turns could change, like1st era - 40 turns of research - 20 turns of lockdown.2nd era - 30 turns of research - 20 turnsn of lockdown.3rd era - 50 turns of research - 60 turns of lockdown.
well you get it.
You can of course sacrificing resources and fighting under the research eras - but then you'll risk getting underdeveloped:D
And in the campaign this also could work, as every mission could be 1 era. So in mission one you could have 20 turns of researched and then lockdown for the rest of the mission, and you would then take some or all of that research to the next mission, which have 50 turns before lockdown, etc etc, slowly progressin into the higher techs as you advance.
Well, that's some of my ideas, I hope I didnt waste your time!
Not going to happen. GalCiv is a turn-based game, and the devs have already stated, that you won't be able to control each ship during combat.
Also not going to happen. At least, if you are talking about balance in multiplayer.
Both have been stated in this interview.
As for your research idea, I don't like it. It's too unbalanced. A race with good research skills and/or lots of colonies will out-research a race with bad research skills and/or few colonies. This advantage will only increase, the longer the game goes on. Unless the weaker race manages to get techs another way, it'll be unable to catch up. This is already the case in the base game, to some extent, but your idea makes it even worse.
Just think about it. During the 1st era, Race A manages to research Planetary Invasion, while Race B doesn't even have weapons yet, because they focused on economy. During the lockdown, Race A crushes Race B, which has no way to prevent this.
If research is too fast for you, then set the research-speed to a lower setting. If even that isn't slow enough for you, then you can mod the tech costs. At least in GalCiv 2 this is easy to do, it just takes a bit of time.
"Not going to happen. GalCiv is a turn-based game, and the devs have already stated, that you won't be able to control each ship during combat."
I think you missunderstood me, I want to see my lasorZZ pew pew, I dont really care if I'm the one making the decisions or if its like it was in galciv 2. I just want the "real time" battle to happen and not just be a combat log.
Yeah, of course the idea needs fine tuning. But I still would like to see a game mode like that, and people not liking it would be able to decrease or turn off the lockdown completly.But someone who solely focuses on economy would always be steamrolled if someone rushed offense.
And planetary invasion could be in its own research thread, so if you tried to rush it, you wouldn't have enough firepower to get your ships to bypass the most standard defenses.The one who focused on economy would have a higher income, and could quickly set up low-tech defenses fending of the rusher.
But yeah, it needs tuning!
Just slowing down progression just extends the game time for me, not actually making me use the low tech stuff, sadly.
In that case, you shouldn't call it real time battle, because that has a completely different meaning.
simulated battles? I dont know the correct term for this type of battles
Personally, I'd like to see research conducted the way it was done in Sierra's "Outpost" game -- where each research facility had the option of choosing what it was researching.
That is, for the sandbox version of the game. Odds are, if the campaign is like it was in Gal Civ II, I won't be playing the campaign. However, with the campaign in mind, then there should be certain things you have to research and thus those things should already be researched in the next phase of the campaign.
Of course if, as the commander, I have Alzheimer's: then by all means require me to research the same things over and over and over again in each and every phase of the campaign... (but rest assured: I won't play it!)
SK
I think what you mean is that you would like the battles to look better, or at least more 3d looking. The way that research is suggested on this post I don't like; except, the tech eras. This could be a way that the game designers could use to make the Ai to research feaseable techs at a certain level. Like for instance lets say one era you are required to research one of your combat weapons and a first level economic tech and other stuff. Maybe one era could require you to research planetary invasion and other stuff. This would at least require the Ai to research the minimum reguired techs. The eras would have to be longer and most games that have this have at least four. but remember that empire earth had 15. I don't like the idea of no research periods.
Completly agree with you, for me a campaign is about telling a story and opening up the game for you as you progress, just making the campaign last longer by making you research everything from the beginning every time isnt so much fun.
I remember a game called warzone 2100, it was a perfect 4x campaign-game, you built your base and that base would always look like they way you constructed it, your research slowly progressed and never got "reset". As you progressed further more and more of the map got avalaible to you for exploring, So if you made some early mistakes that would reflect on later missions, so you really had to think of everything, "if the next mission is to send an attack squad to another area, do I have enough newly designed units? If my base is getting attacked the next mission, are my defences properly set up? etc etc" The only time you lost your units/base was when you moved to a whole new stage of the campaign and that didnt happen too many times.
Yeah, exactly. Maybe that'll work too, but I would really like people almost getting "forced" to do some lowtech-battles, maybe implement a restriction on the weapon tech trees'? to progress further you must live-test the weapons in a real combat situation or something like that.Most people maybe likes the idea of being totally free in their choices, but I'm one of them who likes to have some tricky features and challenges, I get a greater feeling of accomplishment then.As it is right now research is all about how much income you have, nothing else, I find that a little dull. /:
I'm afraid I'm gonna have to agree with Gaunathor. Research otherwise wouldn't work the way you said. Anyway the research is realistic if you think about it. The latest research always takes a while before it percolates to everyday life/ships...
I would be able to adjust to this change in game mechanics, but I can't say I would prefer not have to test my weapons before I can research them. This probably not make much of a difference to me since I don't research weapons before I have to. I hope that their would at least be a reasonable amount of weapons before I couldn't research further. Have you checked out that post on slow tech researching. This sounds like a similar mindset. I would rather this as an option to the game as far as what you suggested on limiting weapons research. Ironically I think that tech eras are a better compromise.
I think the original problem in the first post is that research is becoming outdated before it can really get out on the field. If that's happening regularly then I think it's just a problem of the research being too easy. Make it cost more to get each step in the technology or possibly speed the ships and/or shipyards up so that technology can get to the battles faster.
One thing I would really like to see is technology spreading. If you're battling with another race or if you've even got a lot of immigration between two races then there should be bonuses to researching technology the other has. After all, you're seeing plenty of examples of them.
Another would be to break up the technology penalties and bonuses of each race. Instead of just having a blanket +25% on everything, break that up into the various types of technology that are out there. That will give each race more flavor.
The end result of both together would (hopefully) be that certain races will likely be the first to get certain technologies but the races that are second will probably be the ones that happen to be close to the first race. When you play through a game as your favorite race with the Huffalumps close to your starting point, you'll find yourself with a mix of your own race's specialty technologies plus the Huffalumps'. If you've got the Woozles close at hand the next time you play, you'll end up with your own specialties plus the Woozles' tech. Each play through will be different according to what races you happen to bump into. Also, when you run up against another race, their own technology will be different according to what other races they ate for breakfast.
I posted on a post awhile back about my ideas for Galactic civilizations 3. You would probably like some of my ideas for tech research.
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