Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

when it comes to reporting the money flow, be sure to include the ending balance for last month in addition to the usual projected balance for this month. The breakdowns from SE4 were thorough enough, but not having the end of month numbers makes it difficult to track trends accurately. For example, take a look at SE4. If half my queues finished this turn, then in the Empires tab my Construction costs at the start of the turn will reflect only what is CURRENTLY being worked on. It's much more accurate to look at what we DID, instead of what we think we MIGHT do...

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

I think the pitfalls to making such an overcomplicated system for the purposes of balancing turn based moves versus realtime ones are obvious. CPUs of today cant handle the type of ambitious gaming dynamics we cry out for. So to simplify things is the compromise.

I dont mind having a Sins of a Solar Empire type rendition to the overall look and feel of the game as long as the basic premise is still as far reaching as the solid efforts of past games, MOO2 and SE4. Its original concept design that makes and breaks a game, also implementation. But there are alot of has been 4X games that could of been amazing but fell short, some are Imperium Galactica II. It could of been incredible if done in a more expansive way. Although it did have some unique ideas that are appealing to me still.

Well I just hope Star Legacy can balance the expectations of many 4X fans. My requirement is simple, please make the star systems as realisitic as possible, like Haegemonia, with star types and planet types having at least some bearing to habitability and resources available. I really am yet to see a game that boasts being able to be scientifically accurate in the way planets are generated, and having spectrally precise stellar bodies ie stars. Wouldnt it be amazing to visit Sirius and see a blue giant that perhaps has quite a different array of planet types to choose from.

If one can exploit differing level of resources based on tech level and abundance of terrestrial planets, asteroids, versus gas giants and star type, then I am happy :) Im sure its quite clear by now from my previous posts that im abit of a logistical nut and immensely enjoy astronomical accuracy. Being abit of science buff too and how human development would carry on realistically beyond the stars.

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

This is of course just my personal opinion, but I don't care at all if the game is realistic or not. It must be fun to play it!
Chess is definitely not a realistic war game and yet people play it for centuries.

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"Q" you've done it again!!! :D
What a concept! "Make It Fun" who'd of thunk it!!! :doh:

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

Computer can handle a lot more today then they could, but the evolution of a turn base game comes down to a couple simple factors for combat resolution. Actually controlling your ships in combat is only good for single player games. If you try and have manually controlled combat in a multiple player 4x game, regardles of wether or not it is RTS or by turn, someone, somewhere is going to be sitting there waiting for other players to finish their combats, and deciding to go do something else. Combats need to be auto-resolved in order to keep 100% of the people at their computers and interested in the game.

In your single player game, it totally acceptable to give the person control of the fight, because he stays involved in the game 100% of the time. Wether it is RTS or a frm of turn based combat... that depends on other elements of the design and come up to a designer decision.

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I agree with the MP aspect and if the game is to work for PBEM, then having the autoresolution done Dominions 3 style would be the best option.

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:up:

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

Maybe combat could be broken up into say four (ex.) segments. Four segments would constitute one combat turn per game turn? After each segment, ships could be re-ordered to continue, change tactics, reinforce, or disengage! ;)

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With SL rekindling my interest in the genre I just wanted to share this article I found in my surfing that might be of interest to this group:

history of space empire games 1980-2002

:why:

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Wow, I've played and still have some of those games all the way back to Reach for the Stars! Avalon Hill put a couple of board games out that weren't even mentioned in the article. I still have the box games from AH. I've played about 97% of the games mentioned in that article and I never realized it!!! ;)

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I've played many of them myself and thought it was a fairly good history for the time frame it covered - couldn't really find anything comparable for 2002 - Present. But this covered some:

http://www.spacesector.com/blog/tag/4x-game/

It does show how far we have come in a lot of respects from 5.25 floppies to now. I understand the need for MA$$ appeal - good game design often I think has to be about capturing those KISS compromises without succeeding in simply making everyone unhappy.

Here is another good article about what made MOO2 the "gold standard" for many:

Master of Orion 2: The Formula behind the Success

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

MOO2 was an amazing breakthrough for Space Empire games and there is no denying that. But it isnt the pinnacle of gaming dynamics and shouldn't be touted as the best games of this genre will ever become.

I have fond memories of many 80s and early 90s games too, but I can see many ways of improving things with todays graphics and power.

Please make a game worthy of the genre shrapnel guys. Please look at some of my ideas and use them, I charge no royalties lol. Look at Hagemonia for minimal gfx styling and dont make this another spreadsheets in space borefest. I just want a wholly satisfying game.

I still think the solution for combat would be a realtime 2d plane simulation ala Gratuitous Space Battles. This being if gfx requirements are a big concern. Otherwise minimal 3d like Sins of a Solar Empire. Now lets stop posturing over simultaneous turns vs TBS and get this game up already lol

Peace guys.

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Speaking of 5¼ floppies, I still have the box, disk and manual for Starflight! ;)
Wow, what a reminder that was!!!

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I think time has a way of warping memories, X-Com is still one of my favorite games of all time and nothing in that vein has ever equaled it (Chaos Gate was close but not quite) but that doesn't mean I want to play it today. Those circumstances that made it great are gone.

I agree we should look forward - and borrow and even down right steal from the best examples available now to make SL the next gold standard.

And firing arcs too...

:deadhorse:

JK!

Here are some other interesting projects that only go to show people want a good 4X and will pay for one.

• Free Orion

• Distant Worlds

• Thousand Parsec

• Aphelion: Phoenix Rising

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

Hey jars, what were some of the things you really liked about X-Com?

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

Chaos Concepts released a version a few years ago. UFO Extra-Terrestrial. They are now working on a UFO-ET 2.

I don't know about Jars, but things I liked about X-Com were:
-LOS/Fog of War was really well done.
-Jumping off roofs (LOS) to avoid getting killed by aliens.
-Lightness/darkness vision modifiers.
-Multiple positions for your soldiers.
-Enough maps/ships to keep the game interesting.

Many more. Overall it was a well developed game. :up:

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

-destructible buildings/terrain

There hasn't been a second X-com, but it has inspired a ton of spiritual successors, even good ones.

UFO:A games have been the most polished and likely biggest budget of the pack. I love them, but a lot of people don't. The pausable real-time combat throws a lot of people off, but with the right settings it essentially plays the same. The setting is different too, as you play a group of humanity rising from an an apocalyptic attack. Good game all-around, though.

For multiplayer, there are two games that essentially take the artwork and mechanics straight out of the original. The first is UFO2000, and the second... I don't recall the name of. Something like UFO: The Two Forces. These two feel like the original mainly because they ARE in every respect that matters. Multiplayer only, though.

UFO:ET, while I wanted to love it, hit the mark for me. The game felt clunky (and not in the way I had grown used to running X-Com on a modern machine), the levels weren't terribly engaging though attacking alien bases were hectic and dangerous enough to be a fun challenge... I don't regret buying it, exactly, but I haven't had it installed in a long time either.

UFO:AI is another game that plays a little closer to the originals, but with updated graphics and reworked weaponry. It's open-source and dependent on contributors, but is very active and puts out significant updates every month.

But.... yeah, about that Star Legacy...

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

Another one:

X-Force: Fight For Destiny

Tried it out some time ago, and it looked quite promising. According to the forum, they're nearing v1.0 release ...

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

From what I best remember about playing X-Com

* RPG aspect of seeing your soldiers advance in skill as well as being able to customize their equipment by mission/preference
* destructible terrain and environment
* suspense/atmosphere created in a lot of the missions by things like environment (still remember loving to set things on fire to light up the night)
* always liked the tactical battles best and really thought of that as the meat of the game but the other components - base building/research/world map were meaningful without being cumbersome
* turn based - more thinking or at least planning and less button clicking (I enjoy a good RTS but that is a very different game and think "hybrid" systems are dangerous (aka bad).

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

Threadjackers! :D
Makes me think about some good nightshifts X-Com though...

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OK, Off Topic Thread started! :doh:

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

Thanks ;)

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

I agree that last month's numbers should be kept. In fact I would like to see the game keep detailed records of your production history, broken down by each production center (planet, ship or whatever).

It would also be nice if the game's financial interface helped you to project what the most productive way of building up a planet would be. For example, would I get more resources by building the resource centers first and then a Space Yard? Or should I build the Space Yard first? What if I want to maximize SY time instead? How long will it take to pay off facility construction with new production revenue? Having to manually plug all the relevant numbers into a spreadsheet is a pain, and the alternative is to be outproduced by a more thorough enemy. Plus, if the game can calculate these numbers for you, it could calculate them for an AI.

I would also like to see some kind of trading interface. Being able to post offers and trade with other known civilizations would be fun. You could trade lots of stuff, not just resources. Maybe even hire some of your ships out as mercenaries or to transport cargo. It would give the whole political system more depth, too.

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

I think this is an especially good idea that would add some good depth both in being able to hire or sell mercenary services. Players that focus all on butter could use that cash to hire the guns. In another aspect you could also sell mercenary services (I'd buy that for a $1) to an ally involved in a conflict without actually becoming directly involved in the conflict yourself.

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

Hmm... awefully quiet here. Me no like.
Any new info about SL?

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

I came in to see what's going on - hi everyone.

Is there a synopsis or compendium someplace, or should I just start opening threads and reading?

TT

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

Hmm... too bad there isn't that much news. :(
Ah well, it will appear soon enough.

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

Apologies for missing this comment earlier.

To be honest, I think real time combat would be better, provided that it was pausable to issue orders and slow enough to observe what's happening. In my opinion, that would be more fun and engaging than being turn based. It would feel more realistic as well. It would be better for the same reason I found combat in Baldur's Gate more fun than that of Ultima VI (if you're old enough to remember the latter one).

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

Has anyone here played Star Chamber? I just started and it's pretty much kicking my ***.
I don't know if anyone remembers a card collecting / deck building game called "Spellfire" from the early 90's (maybe late 80's) but it's like that... only not, cuz it's a boardgame.... only not, cuz it's online... with a computer... so.... yeah.

Anyway, check it out - very simple and fast but HEAVILY HEAVILY reliant on skill and strategy. HEAVILY. Did I say very big on Strategy? And it's "free":
http://starchamber.station.sony.com/

EDIT: This should probably be moved to "Off Topic"?

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

Anything new to share on Star Legacy Development?

Recent emails from Impulse about a discount on Star Ruler reminded me how long its been since I bought a 4X game I truly enjoyed - but the reviews for it are still a pretty mixed bag with the bugs worrying me more then game play issues.

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

Hmm, I don't recall if anyone had mentioned the colony infrastructure system before, so I guess I could describe it here...

Basically, it's like the population assignment system in MOO2 or the budget sliders in Civ - you reassign population to different tasks like mining, farming, and science.

The main difference is that there's also an "infrastructure" level on your colony. This infrastructure level determines how efficient your population is at doing whatever task. If you have more people assigned to a task than you have infrastructure for that task, then the excess people are "unemployed", and will not be as efficient at producing resources. The infrastructure, however, will grow over time to fill demand. On the other hand, if you have too little population to work the infrastructure, then the infrastructure decays over time as it's unused.

So, say you have 5 billion people on your homeworld, and 1 billion each of mining, farming, science, culture, and government infrastructure (infrastructure types subject to change). Your population is initially divided evenly among the five tasks, but let's say you want to focus your homeworld on science.

So you move half a billion people off of mining, say, to science. Now you have 500M miners with 1000M mining infrastructure, so you get, say, 500M metals, and your 500M unused mining infrastructure decays - now you have 950M total mining infrastructure, assuming a decay rate of 10% per turn.

On the science side of things, you have 1500M people trying to be scientists, but only 1000M science infrastructure! So you get your 1000M science points from the people who have infrastructure, plus a small amount from the people who are trying to work without infrastructure - say, 10%, or 50M science, for a total of 1050M science. Then, your infrastructure grows to 1050M (assuming a 10% growth rate) since there are 500M "unemployed" scientists. The next turn, your scientists will get to use that science infrastructure, for 1050M + (450M * 10%) = 1095M science points. Changing a planet's production takes work, just like in SE5 where you'd have to scrap and rebuild facilities, but it's much less micromanagement!

Though actually, writing this out like this makes me want to consider suggesting a change to the system - with the percentage growth and decay based on the number of unemployed people or unused infrastructure, you'll never actually reach your target level of production, so you'd actually be better off "overshooting" your allocations so you can actually get to the production levels you want to be at! Thus, I'd want to suggest basing the percentages on, say, one or the other of the two values (infrastructure and workers), or maybe the average of the two, rather than on the difference between them!

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

Would planets have innate value of some kind, like a mining value?

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

Yes, they will most likely have a value which is factored into the production calculations. Thanks for reminding me of that! :)

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

This sounds like an intriguing idea to planet and resource management.

What I want to know is whether a players empire will have autonomous and self sufficient planet resources, ie will they be almost like city states in CIV? What I mean is if a planet experiences starvation if growing faster than the infrustructure... then in Civilization there is little a player can do to aid one city over another, they basically are at the mercy of what the city micromanagement screen permits and will not help if the city infrastructure is maxed out. This kind of defeats the purpose of having an empire if you cannot stretch one city to its limits with the full support of the outlying colonies. Kind of like Rome, where all the riches can be hoarded to the capital from the provinces (which is what historically happened in Rome) to truly prosper and bring with it more wealth.

I always felt that it would be nice to allow the player the ability to push production in favour of having a larger capital or core planets with the support of outlying colonies being specialised to specific tasks. Like science (ie science moon colony) or manufacturing/production (asteroid refineries) ..so that a player can diversify and actually not just capture planets in order to just found more and more pointless colonies. Its wonderful to have alot of Earths to manage, but also making Earths not so abundant and having the choice of also settling rocks that are more geared for production than population would be interesting too.

It would open up other possibilities, and maybe even change the dynamics to waging war on an opponent (if say he has many many moons and asteroids that taking over 1 or 2 of his earth planets, will still not impact him since his production power lies in his control of the stars with huge asteroid and moon resources) Perhaps making moons and asteroids easier to colonies and less inefficient and specialised would throw a spanner in the works, from having to see countless 4X games in the past fall quickly into drudgery of many earth planets micromanagement.

Just my 2c

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

We are planning on having automatically generated "civilian freighters" used to transport population and resources about without direct supervision by the player. If this turns out to be too troublesome for pathing or combat, or too CPU-intensive, we can always fall back on a modified version of the "spaceport" system from Space Empires: if a colony has a spaceport, it can access the "global pool" of resources, otherwise it's limited to what it can produce locally! I doubt we'd go with a system where every colony is expected to be completely self-sufficient all the time! :)

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

Hmm. If you are planning on having the computer handle migration for you ala SE5, might I suggest Target Population Densities. It would just be slider bars for each valid race that you have access too. Don't want any aliens on the homeworld? Move the slider bar for your race up to 100%.

That brings up another question. How does SL handle non-breathable atmospheres? I'm thinking of a system where non-breathers suffer infrastructure limits. So you have 500M non breathers and 100M breathers on a planet? The 500M non-breathers would suffer an infrastructure limit (based on planet size), while the 100M breathers would work "outside the dome" and have no such limit.

So, if the non-breather infrastructure limit for the above planet, is, say 250M, then half your non-breather workforce would be without infrastructure. So you'd have 350M + (250M*10%=25M) = 375M production (assuming there was enough infrastructure in place for the the 250M non-breathers + 100M breathers).

Another thing to consider would be how having 500M non-breathers crammed into a 250M rated "dome" would affect happiness levels. :)

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

Sounds like a promising idea.

I just hope this doesn't turn into a spreadsheets in space game, because those I can't really stand anymore, hence why I never could get hooked on SEIV or SEV. Developers should understand that we are not living in the 80s anymore where one could ignore any graphical oversights in favour of more intense gameplay.

Peace.

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

How do you plan on handling construction? I was thinking maybe it should be just another factor in the Infrastructure idea you were talking about earlier. So if you want Planet A to start working on that Big Military Construction Project, you'll have to move people off of the Research they were working on. And if you don't have any Construction Infrastructure in place, it will take a while to spin up the construction rate.

Also, from the sounds of it you're going to have 4, 5, or even more sliders per planet, and moving one will make the others adjust accordingly. Without a way to lock the sliders in place, you'll end up spending a whole minute or two just getting the sliders where you want them. It would be much better if I could adjust Research to where I want it and lock the slider. Now when I move the Mining slider, Research stays put. :)

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

Regarding "locked" sliders, we've (actually I think it was Kwayne's idea, IIRC!) come up with a clever way to deal with that...

Remember MOO2, where you had the population assigned to various tasks (mining/farming/research)? To reassign population, you first click where you want to DEallocate people, then click where you want to allocate them TO. The farther left you click on the first list of people, the more people you deallocate from that task; then you just plop them down somewhere else.

We're adopting that same mechanic for allocating infrastructure growth and even research. The only difference is that it's a continuum of points allocated, not a granular "list" of people. So imagine you have 100 RP allocated to lasers, none to armor, and none to sensors. You want to move some RP from lasers to sensors, so you click somewhere in the lasers bar; if you click at exactly the halfway point of the bar you will end up grabbing 50 RP from lasers. Then you click in the sensors bar, and that moves the 50 RP (or whatever you just deallocated) over to sensors.

With this system, you don't have to worry about sliders reallocating themselves automatically, because you always explicitly specify where the points come from and where the points go! :)

Re: Welcome Star Legacy Development Group!
 

Sounds entirely workable. :)

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

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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.