[Fyron]

Originally posted by raynor:
Even if Moo3 was unplayable, typically there would be enough people looking for it that at least someone would pirate it. I'm brand new to P2P networks such as Kazaa. But I think they use some sort of ranking so that people who have UP-loaded lots of stuff can get faster downloads somehow. I think...

This is not just directed at you raynor, so don't take it personally, but... let's stop discussing illegal activities such as software piracy on Shrapnel.

KlausD:
The main game should be turn based. That was not my point at all. But, real time for combat (with slow rates) is better because it eliminates a huge number of problems that are inherent in turn-based combat. Some examples are the complete lack of realism of one side always being able to fire all of their weapons at once, then the other side fires all of their weapons. Some games (not SE4) make some attempt to fix this by using initiative systems (like MOO3) so that some of a players ships go, then some of the other side's go, depending on whatever is used to determine initiative. But, that is still a flawed system. You can not fix the inherent flaws with turn based movement unless you have an absurd number of initiative increments to get very fine gradations, and it is just like real time combat at that point. MOO3 combat is not going to be like Starcraft or anything like that.

2. You mention that MOO3 is a "soft" form of RT combat. Maybe. But nonetheless even such a "soft" form of RT combat as in MOO3 has one important unacceptable feature. The guy which has a better hand-eye coordination wins more battles than others. Why? Well, simple. In MOO3 you can give orders at any time. (mainly moving taskforce orders) If 2 guys with exactly the same fleets and the same tactical abilities battle another, the guy which is used to play RT games and has a good hand-eye coordination will click at more optimized time moments at this "move taskforce" button and will have an advantage to the guy who just clicks later on it. It plays no role if this advantage is high or not. Its enough that there is an edge to the coordination guy. A good 4X game should be a contest of the minds not a contest of coordination. It should be FULLY FREE of honoring a players clicking abilities.

With how combat is supposed to be implemented in MOO3, faster hand-eye coordination is irrelevant because a few seconds of delay are supposed to make no difference at all. I agree that this can be a problem. But, proper balancing and mechanics can very easily eliminate any hand-eye coordination benefit. And, combat in multiplayer games (esp. with multiple human players) should always be done in strategic mode with no additional input from the players, so that it does not slow down the game for players not involved in the battle, and so that PBEM is possible. These very well eliminate any issues with hand-eye coordination.

NO they did not want to make the engine turnbased because they want to make more money if they design a mainstream product like shogun or medievial with a mixed system.(see above my rant about the likings of gamers of today)

Maybe, but that is probably not the main reason why they went with real time. Well-done and slow-paced real time combat is better than turn based combat in pretty much every way. The main reason that older games were not ever real time is that it requires more CPU clock cycles to execute real time combat as opposed to turn based. So, computers of the old days could not run real time very practically, so it was not used.

4. A further problem is that many people do make the assumption that a 4X game is a simulation of beeing a leader in a pre-specified environment like sim-city in space or so. This is not my opinion. In my opinion a good 4X game is a a computer aided board game and not a simulation. And board games have a long tradition beeing turnbased. Several thousands of years.

I hope that was a general statement and that it was not directed at me. MOO3 will be turn-based like a board game. It will just take the initiative systems that the better board games use to the next level, using continuous initiative intervals.

PS. sorry for my bad english

There wasn't really much bad English. Maybe a few punctuation errors, and a few cases of "k"s instead of "c"s, but other than that it was good English.

[ February 26, 2003, 00:09: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]