There are certain small additions which I think would add fun to the game. Not necessarily strategy, just fun and polish.
1) DARCA1213 mentioned that the stars look like marbles. He's right. Stars aren't just illuminated balls. They are covered in fiery storms, sunspots, etc. Give them character, as they are some of the main characters on your map. Flares. Binary systems. Accretion disks.
2) When ships move, they shouldn't just slide across the map. Different engine types should animate differently. Rocket blast... Ion burn... Hover disks... should shoot out the engine in the other direction. Or perhaps the ship can spread out in the direction of travel as it bends space. This is 21st century gaming. Give the movement some character.
3) As I mentioned on the other thread, I think some impassible terrain (up to a certain engine type) is a good idea to give the map some definition.
Trying to generalize the above a bit... Any time that you can make a technology visible through a graphic or animation, you should try to do so. This keeps them from being purely passive behind the scenes bonuses. In Civ, when you research tanks, you get a tank model. When you research railroads, you convert roads to rail.
How can you animate sensors? Engines? Soldier techs?
Isnt this already a thing? Because thats very important.
Asteroïd fields, ressources and nebulas already contribute to map definition. Planets and range, too.
It is not. You can go through nebulae and asteroids. Both are tend to be small anyways.
To compare to Civ again, the map is defined as much by the sea as it is by the land.
Guys, it is alpha, they don't even have particle effects in yet. Leave pretty for later.
Understood. Howeever, I am talking about things that were not in gal civ 2.
Fair, though they do have at least black holes planned according to some of the xml files, which might cover number three.
It might, though I think you'd either need a lot of black holes, or they'd have to have quite a radius on them to serve as a real terrain feature. When water is 70% of the planet, where it is matters. A dot that you can go near in a vast space... isn't even a speed bump.
Considering how big space is in the first place, I find it more awkward that there is something in the way that I can't go around. If you want water or soemthing to be an obstacle play Civ with no boats.
If terrain isn't important, then random maps are pointless. Who cares where the tiny slow you down nebula is. It doesn't affect play.
It's a space-sim. There IS no significant terrain in space.
In fact, the overriding restriction is distance. Both in terms of the time it takes to travel, and the maximum range of your ships.
I *do* thing GC3 should pay more attention to range.
In particular, Range should SOLELY be a function of distance to the nearest supply starbase or planet and the Range Components on the ship.
I *really* didn't like that researching a new Life Support tech in GC3 automatically extended the range of existing ships. If they wanted more range, they should have to replace the existing LS components with more advanced ones.
On this note about Life Support, I'd like to suggest the following:
1) New LS tech DOESN'T increase any ship range. It merely gives access to new ship components, which are what determine range.
2) LS components should start out LARGE (in terms of space), but cheap. Improvements should reduce the first slowly, but increase the second quickly. E.g. "Basic" LS should be size 10, cost 5. Reduce size by 2 per new tech, but double the cost.
3) Range should NOT be adjusted by map size. It should be scaled for a Small Map, then left fixed. One of the things that *should* be a challenge on larger/huge/etc. maps is that you MUST load up your ships with life support to enable them to cross the vast distances.
One of the Life Support tech descriptions states that it is a software upgrade of the existing hardware that makes the ships travel further, figuring out how to squeeze more out of what's already there! With this explanation it makes perfect sense that that could be immediately distributable to all ships.
Fate,
Having to build new colony ships with greater range would suck, let it auto upgrade the ships range when you get the new techs. Also, I don't want it to feel like Civ in space, I want it to feel like Gal Civ, or in other words... the nebulae are a cool addition, they add tactical value. Something that couldn't be passed at all would be annoying, and would probably require more intelligent coding in order to make it not be something that messed up maps more than it aided maps. It seems silly and not worth it to me.
Loving your ideas Trims2u, I think it's fantastic we have so many alpha testers bursting with ideas and willing to share them with others (even at the risk of being unpopular), props to you!
As for game mechanics I do like the simplicity of auto-upgrading range and like the software upgrade rationale behind it - it sure would be nice to try some of these ideas out during some of the later alpha iterations to see how they affect the early, mid, and late game - I'd certainly be keen to try it out.
I like the ideas to add more animation to the game and I think it would be nice to extend it to starbases as well. Yes it is all well and good that we see new modules as they are added, but I think that starbases could use some more visual effects to reflect certain modules particular combat or economic enhancers by adding some small craft flurrying around the starbase, or to give certain modules distinctive glow effects.
On a more functional standpoint, I think some depth could be added by focusing on orbital and lunar structures. I noticed that many of the planets in the Alpha have moons and I wondered if it would be possible to make those more than just a set piece. I am curious if the development team might consider adding lunar facilities or enhancements either through an asteroid mining or similar vessel or through the planet construction menu. It could be equivalent to one tile where a player can decide to dedicate the moon base to production, trade, or research. Or perhaps the moons can contain some precursor relics or something, I think that would add more depth to the early expand and exploration game and make planets with moons more sought after.
I am also interested in seeing orbital improvements in a similar vein. I know that the two build queues discussion has thrown around a few ideas about making space ports like starbases. I thought it might be better to have them as an orbital structure and not floating out in deep space. Then I started thinking what about other orbital improvements such as habitats, trade stations (intra civilization), research centers, or defensive stations. I think it would add another layer to the game and bring more depth to managing individual worlds.
I also think it would be cool (and I know I may be going off the deep end a little with this one) if we could establish bases on habitable moons of gas giants (either colony or moon base mentioned in second paragraph) to add some value to otherwise dead systems. And for an even crazier idea I wonder if for some late game techs for when players reach nearly omnipotent levels of technology that an option to build ring worlds or Dyson spheres around otherwise solitary stars could be implemented to add a late game expansion boost, or that some of these can be found as artifacts (granted massive artifacts) left by the precursors (surely they had that level of technology right?) which would be exceedingly rare but very valuable, just a thought...
If there are 8 different Galaxy sizes in the game, the basic range settings should be optimised for tier 3 or 4, making range techs almost irrelevant in smallest Galaxies and strategically important (to obtain or circumvent) in larger Galaxies.
Loving ALL this DABalke7 especially making use of defunct stars that had no habitable planets with advanced tech/research. I would love to see more animation too whether it be gradual transformation of planets as they populate (as was suggested on a different thread) or around starbases or other orbital constructs. Awesome thoughts!
On a similar but slightly different vein I hope the 'Twin Moons' special feature on a planet will actually display two moons orbiting the planet rather than nothing as I found in one game - I love the graphic of an orbiting moon and two would be twice the fun... ahhh that's right... no fun in the alpha... that must be it lol.
I did something similar in my GalCiv 2 mod:
1. The standard LS techs don't increase range.
2. Nobody starts with basic LS components.
3. The Hyperion Re-Supply Center is gone. However, the Yor have access to a more powerful GA version of it.
4. The Yor LS techs don't unlock new components, but grant a big boost to ship range instead.
5. The size of the LS components is fixed, and slightly bigger than originally (base size is 4 now, instead of 2). Each new version is slightly more expensive (+1) and increases the range only a little (2 tiles more).
6. All LS techs can neither be traded nor stolen.
The net effect is, that expanding early game is a bit more difficult, because you can't just add LS modules to your ships to increase their range. Once you have researched your first LS tech, you can add the modules to your ships, but they take up more space than before. The Yor, on the other hand, don't have to worry about this, because their range increases automatically once they've researched their LS tech. However, they need to expand, either via new colonies or new starbases, in order to expand further, because they don't have access to LS modules.
Overall, I really like the change in gameplay this provides. Even the AI manages to deal with it quite well. For the most part at least. The only bad thing is, that the range-adjustment based on map size is hardcoded. Else, I would have removed that.
Which one? I've been dealing with those techs a lot, reading their descriptions countless times over the years, and I don't remember any of them saying something to this effect.
Pretty sure Fate is referring to one of the new descriptions in the alpha, can't remember which one and am off to bed lol
The LS techs in the Alpha don't have their descriptions yet, so he must have been referring to GalCiv 2.
oh ok, my bad, could have sworn I read it somewhere too.
No, there are some descriptions for alpha techs. Fate is correct.
Re: Distance. One of the first things I did was add in a 250% range penalty to all races, since I play almost exclusively on Immense.
I just researched the Life Support techs in my game. None of them had a proper description. I even looked in the game-files, just to make sure, that I didn't misremember something.
Well, I remembered seeing it in the tooltip for the tech, but now it appears that the tooltip is for the sensor tech, a bug.
Have just found the software blurb for LS in the Founder's Vault - can't reproduce it apparently in the forums (at Frogboy's request) but it is there (and presumably in the alpha somewhere) as Fate and I believed. Cheers
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