Re: Fuel in a 4x game
I remember Stars! system pretty well, you had a fleetwide fuel gauge, could refill at planets, had ramscoop engines that could travel for free at certain speeds, and had fuel transport hulls that generated fuel every turn. It was a decent system, though it didn't account for crew supplies, you had to maintain supply lines and front line starbases, and chasing down or intercepting enemy fleets or retreating after a big loss got real interesting.
I also recall MoO2's travel system, IIRC you had engines with different ranges, if your engine couldn't make the journey to another star system outside your outposts and colonies, you couldn't go. Simpler, and abstracts fuel and supplies a bit, but interesting.
If there's reliable automation so that I dont have to micro manage transfer of the supplies yet it still has an effect on the overall strategy(like as you expand you have to leave outposts and supply lines behind, or bring supply ships with you) then go for it, but it can be abstracted like in moo2 if you justwant to focus more on fleet maneuvering.
The ultimate 4X game(that I haven't quite seen made yet) would be like a 3D Stars!(with Stars! Coordinate movment system) but with planets that revolved around a sun instead of the 1 star one planet(like Moo2's but those last few million miles actually matter), SEV's supplies, starbase production queues, planetary queues, and ship building, Stars!' resources(the different mineral types, and the production power of it's facilities based on weather or not your planet has the population to run them), SEV's hybrid simultanious turn based orders and movement, a cross between MoO2's tech tree, and SEV's(research big concepts like fission, then decide what to use it on depending on your empires "creativity").
One thing I haven't seen much of yet is combat that occurs outside of a "combat" instance. Like I move my ships somewhere, they fight it out right there, I can zoom in and watch, they start launching weapons as soon as they enter range, or retreating means actually running away under fire.
>_> um yeah.. supplies... supplies... Well I guess if you really want a big game having to manage the supplies every turn would begin to drag after awhile...
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