The strategic layer
This is where the player spends most of their time, and they do so at different zoom levels. Do you guys think it would be fun, immersive and informative if:
What do you guys think about a Galactic News Network button? It's tucked away in the corner somewhere, and if the player wants they click it and a small pop out window appears that can be moved around. This window video streams all the latest from the GNN e.g. a video of planetfall indicating a colonization event, or a video showing ship to ship combat indicating a battle has taken place or a video of a summit indicating a diplomatic event has taken place. This way the player can continue doing what they're doing while having the news on in the background.
The tactical layer
I know there won't be tactical battles that you can control in GalCiv 4 but I think it would be fun if you could watch the battles and control the camera zooming in and out, turning and panning the camera as you wish. You could do this in GalCiv 3 but I found the camera controls wonky and I couldn't watch the battles the way I wanted to.
I think the tactical layer would be a great opportunity for some battle chatter from both sides. If you are clearly dominating the enemy then the battle chatter would reflect that e.g. "We caught them with their pants down".
The battle chatter would reflect the personalities of the species involved.
At the start of the battle there would be a broadcast from both sides, the side initiating the engagement would broadcast first.
If you are fighting an enemy similar to the Borg from Star Trek, at the start of the battle you would hear something similar to the the infamous line "We are the Borg, prepare to be assimilated, resistance is futile".
If you are fighting the Drengin they would tell you how puny and pathetic you are and that they will crush you like the insects you are etc.
It would also be great if the battle chatter could give you an idea of how effective/ineffective your weapons/defences are.
When hearing battle chatter you'd also hear background effects that give you an idea of the health of the ship e.g. battle chatter from a ship at full health will be clear with some muffled weapons fire in the background. Battle chatter from a heavily damaged ship will have much more interference with sounds of explosions, decompression and screams in the background (unless it's Yor, the Yor don't scream)
If a ship is about to be destroyed you'd hear battle chatter like "power core going critical!".
This is probably beyond the scope of GalCiv 4 but it would be cool if you could zoom right up to the bridge of a warship and see the crew in action. Or watch as a mass driver punches a hole in the side of your ship causing that section to decompress and you'd see the venting of atmosphere and crew!
Will debris persist during the battle? It would be cool if an energy beam carved a ship into two and those pieces floated across the battlefield.
I like the imersion factor this would provide.It would also be cool if the things you can overhear with other civs increases as your tech increases, or as your spies infiltrate etc.
[quote quoting="Post]
The tactical
Will debris persist during the battle? It would be cool if an energy beam carved a ship into two and those pieces floated across the battlefield.[/quote]this makes me think scenes like in the Rath of Kahn.
Imagine if GalCiv4 made you feel like shouting Khaaaaaaaannn at teh screen!
Definitely!
Yea these are definitely cool ideas that hadn't really occurred to me before. Are you proposing text or audio "chatter", or some combination of the two?
I feel like audio would be a pretty big undertaking, but would seem the most appropriate for battle dialogues especially: "I've lost flight controls, we're bleeding out!" etc.
As for the empire-wide chatter I agree that it would be interesting if a lot of it were integrated into an Espionage system where you could get sort of like the Presidential Briefing Report every turn: "our sources indicate that the Iconians are considering war with the Torians, proximate cause: Deep Space Starbase 7" type of thing (which you could then use that information to attempt to goad them into war, for example).
When I was reading your post I was actually thinking a lot about games like the GTA series, or Cities Skylines where you have all of these radio stations that you basically listen to for hours on end. Some of them play music, and others just play a bunch of crap. And depending upon which station you listen to you can hear different kinds of crap. I was sort of musing about whether it would be possible to have state-sponsored media that you could listen to while we play that would give news/programs from the viewpoint/perspective of each of the races.
I mean, this is what we have on earth: BBC, RT, DW, Al Jazeera, CNA, NHK, etc. They all report the same news, but with a particular slant.
If it were done well, this would actually be an awesome DLC.
I'd vote for making the "Chatter" text and putting it on GNN. Certainly I'd prefer that than knowing the Top 10 Dating Planets. I plant rows and rows of roses on my planets, does me no good.... But "Unknown Planet" usually makes a big splash on those kinds of lists. For some reason.
And I like tid242's Briefing Report: Having that come up every certain number of turns would be good. It would be better if you could choose how often you get it and it becomes more detailed and Eyes Only when it contains information on Races/Core Planets you've got spies on. Anything that tells you more about, not just the Korath Clan's relationship with you and why, but their relationship with the Alterians and why would be useful information. Not that I would exploit that information, no, of course not. It's just terribly sad the Korath Clan and Alterians might go to war and I'd do anything I can to help. Like give the Korath Clan this really good, well armed and armoured warship and some bc and some intel that the Alterians are planning war on them...An act of peace, as anyone can see.
Good ideas that would ramp up the immersion and could be used to provide audio cues to the player. Even if it was only for the planet screen to give an idea of how things going on the planet that would be cool and give a good sense of life on the planet. A new colony could sound more quiet vs a bustling highly populated planet. I doubt it would happen though based on the amount of varied audio work it would require.
Definitely full, high quality audio chatter with subtitles/closed captions for the deaf/hard of hearing. It would be great if there was radio chatter and audio like in the games you mentioned. It would definitely make you feel like you were part of a galaxy that was 'alive', especially if the radio chatter/news broadcasts reflected/mentioned the consequences of your actions.
The pop out window would allow you to switch to a number of different channels; it would be hilarious if one of the channels was an alien cooking channel or teleshopping channel or something like that.
I have no idea what Stardocks budget is for this game but it would be amazing if our ideas were part of the initial release. If not, I'd pay for these as 'stretch goals' or a 'season pass' or part of an expansion if, as you said, they're done well.
Ah I see you're a man of culture as well, yes we would never use this information to manipulate other factions into going to war with each other.....promise.....
One thing I would say about the gnn. It needs to be reprogrammed to be a list from the species you have met. If you hadn’t met any species yet, then a list of planets that you have.
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