Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

Well, I hope you go the way of "small numbers" and not 500 Million or so.

MOO2 showed that managing abstract population icons are much better than dividing population numbers in small micromanagement fractions like 1 Million out of Billions or so. You should not aim at developing a "simulation". The aim should be creating a fun game and not a spreadsheet.

In this respect even SEIV failed. The population management in this game was NOT really a good design, obviously mostly due to the fact that the makers were too much into "simulating the correct population numbers on a planet" instead of game. It was no hindrance, thats true, but managing population was no fun. But in MOO2 it was fun, mostly because its designers were able to use boardgame concepts and translate it perfectly to their PC game.


For example: in Moo2 a planet could have between 1 population icon and 35 or so. Thats ok, because its abstract and small numbers enable the intuitive creation and handling of subsystems like transport=5 POP per transport per turn etc. Had MOO2 numbers like the SE-series where you handle "realistic" population which went into the Millions and Billions, such intuitive (and great) population handling subsystem would not have been that intuitive or even possible.

So my tip: keep the numbers small and handy and dont blow it up just because you want to create a simulation. Eg. for inspiration look at some SciFi 4x boardgame concepts out there. First and foremost SL should be a game and not a spreadsheet simulation.

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

sure it is easier to squiggle few lines and save it as a gif and call that ship, but in my experience it is actually easier to make 3D ship that looks decent than it is to draw a sprite that looks good also, with sprite you loos one whole dimension to make ships look interesting.

for example took me an hour to make this model for star ruler
http://img89.imageshack.us/img89/7577/47743646.jpg

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

Well I've had a look at population thing and come to the conclusion that you can pick three (and scrap one) of:
- Planet Population (how many people it's realistic for a planet to have to be properly industrial)
- Ship Population (how many people a ship could realistically carry)
- Time Scale (how long it would take, realistically, for a fresh colony to become properly industrial)
- Reproduction (how fast a colony could realistically grow)

Space Empires scrapped Ship Population, from the brief description klausD gave MOO2 seems to have scrapped either Planet Population or Reproduction.