Some remark from a stars! player

Athena · #1 May 6th, 2002, 12:43 PM

It has been some weeks now that I play SE IV, and I have a bLast. Before I played to the death Stars from Crisium.com, and managed I think to reach a veteran position, having done quite a number of MP Games. I would like to share some thoughs, as I'm a 'transfuge'. Don't get me wrong, SE IV is a great great game, and I now thinks that he is, at least partly, superior to stars! in many way. Don't blame me for my remarks, look at them as innocent critiscism

Some things surprised me in SE IV. I still dont quite understand why, after 4 iterations of the game, such features are like this. Perhaps the vets here can tell me the reasons why Aaron Hall did these things:

1- Only one item build on each planet each turn, with no carry over of production. Induce quite a MM hell if you want to optimize the prod queue. Silly example is I order to build one turn worth of fighters, and during the turn processing one of my transport take some pop and reduce the available production, making the construction take 2 turns, with the second turn using only 10% of the build capacity of the planet.

2- No scenario editor ???

3- No parametrable load order. In stars you could order to load population, but leaving at least xxx colonists on the planet. Quite a strong feature if you wanted to automate all transport without fearing to deplete any world (Set waypoint to, leave xxx at waypoint).

4- Some weapons seem to be utterly useless. One can see this even after one day of play. Why Malfador never tweaked the stats, taking feedback from players?

Lord Balzingo · #2 May 6th, 2002, 02:46 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Athena:

3- No parametrable load order. In stars you could order to load population, but leaving at least xxx colonists on the planet. Quite a strong feature if you wanted to automate all transport without fearing to deplete any world (Set waypoint to, leave xxx at waypoint).

Try using "Cargo Transfer" as opposed
to "Load Cargo"

thorfrog · #3 May 6th, 2002, 03:58 PM

Some good points. malfador time to step up to the plate.

geoschmo · #4 May 6th, 2002, 04:37 PM

It is natural to assume that people that have been here a long time have some special influence or understanding into the whys and wherefores of Aaron Hall's thought processes, but that is not really the case.

As far as your specific points:

1. This is a good point. I have never heard it put in exactly these terms before, although that's not to say it hasn't been. Perhaps this is simply a case of noone has asked for it. Or perhaps it's "on the list". There are many things that get requested, that even Aaron says he likes and plans to do someday, but don't get done for lack of time. Unfortunatly the nature of the industry, and this type of niche game limit the resources he has to work on this game.

2. This one has been requested, a lot. I don't know if it's just a matter of lack of time to do it effectivly. That's my guess though. He could throw toghether a half a$$ one, but it's not likely to please most of the people waiting on it, and that is not been the way he normally does things. Many of us have developed tecniques to work around this though and make fairly effective scenarios.

3. Again, a nice feature to have. There are ways to program the AI to do this, so you should be able to program your personal races AI and then turn the pop relocation over to the ministers, but I am not sure. It may be another case of not enough request for it, or nobody expressing it in the way you do that is so easily understandable.

4. Here I have to disagree with you a bit. I don't really believe any of the weapons are "useless". A lot of them become obsolete at different points in the game, but that doesn't mean they aren't useful in their time. Plus getting a consensus on a problem in these areas is much easier than getting a consensus on the solution. Many "solutions" in fact open up a whole new set of problems. Ask anyone who has tried to do a "weapon balance" mod how easy it is.

But this is an area where SEIV has no equal. If you feel there are problems in these weapon areas, there is very little you can't change yourself in a mod to make it the way you like it. Then you don't have to convince Aaron it's a problem, you can go ahead and fix it yourself. He's given you the tools.

Geoschmo

disabled · #5 May 6th, 2002, 05:15 PM

On the scenario editor, I recall Aaron saying that the expense of making it outways the benefit of making it. I suppose when MM grows, there will be mroe people and resources to absorb the cost.

1FSTCAT · #6 May 6th, 2002, 05:17 PM

One of the things that our "Stars!" player missed was:

The ability to give a merge fleet order. I can't tell you how many turns I've wasted just trying to get two fleets of ships to sync up.

This headache is even worse, if you have fleets with 2 different movement rates, because then you have to calculate how to move them, to get them all to arrive in a combat sector within the proper combat phase window, where they will all fight at the same time!

There's nothing more frustrating than sending 2 or 3 fleets to attack a planet and having them arrive one combat phase apart, and having them destroyed because you didn't have the #'s on your side..

--Ed

Prophet-PBW · #7 May 6th, 2002, 05:21 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Athena:

1- Only one item build on each planet each turn, with no carry over of production....

2- No scenario editor ???

3- No parametrable load order. In stars you could order to load population, but leaving at least xxx colonists on the planet....

4- Some weapons seem to be utterly useless...

From another former Stars! player, I too see problem 3. It becomes a real difficulty during multiplayer. Early in SE4 games, I try to spread my population to the newly forming colonies (higher populations means higher production). But at some point, shortages force me to limit how many people to put on new worlds. This limitation cannot be automated. The transferring to-and-from the transport must be done manually, making the process takes extra turns.

Number 2. Yeah, this kinda baffled me. A Scenario button, but no scenarios. I know there are Mods. But if there is talk about working on a Scenario Editor (or even some official Scenarios), I'd vote that be worked on (I know... picky, picky, picky

).

Problem 1 irked me at first, but it happens so often in other 4X games that I don't notice it any more.

On weapons, I must disagree with you Athena (and thus, agree with Geo). I have heard many players say certain techs/weapons are useless. I think that is somewhat based on a player's strategy. Some people say Fighters are pointless, but I have success using them. Same with weapons.

And there's my Two Cents.. go team.

DirectorTsaarx · #8 May 6th, 2002, 05:29 PM

quote:
Originally posted by Athena:
<snip>
Some things surprised me in SE IV. I still dont quite understand why, after 4 iterations of the game, such features are like this. Perhaps the vets here can tell me the reasons why Aaron Hall did these things:

1- Only one item build on each planet each turn, with no carry over of production. Induce quite a MM hell if you want to optimize the prod queue. Silly example is I order to build one turn worth of fighters, and during the turn processing one of my transport take some pop and reduce the available production, making the construction take 2 turns, with the second turn using only 10% of the build capacity of the planet.

Well, actually, this is a new feature in SEIV; SE2 and SE3 (the only two previous iterations I'm familiar with), used a completely different build philosophy. Basically, each shipyard could "repair" a certain number of components per turn. When you bought a ship (or fighter), the hull appeared the next turn, but all components were "under construction". When all components were "repaired", the ship was complete. In both SE2 and SE3, you could put multiple ship yards on the same ship; planet-based ship yards were based on having more than 100M population, and I think the shipyard queue was separate from the facility build queue. In SE2, multiple shipyards could work on the same ship, so you could complete large ships quickly by bringing in more shipyards. In SE3, Malfador implemented the system that only one yard could work on a given ship at a time; but, you could move that ship between space yards if multiple space yards were available. The big problem with that system is that stellar-manipulation components were, obviously, a single component. So star-destroying, etc. ships were fast build items (expensive, but fast build). The other issue is that all costs were "upfront"; you paid the entire price of a ship in one turn. SE4 spreads out the cost, and also allows for expensive ships to take a long time to build, thus providing a way to improve game balance. As for using "extra capacity" (i.e., a shipyard only uses part of its capacity in a single turn), I think this is a problem with many turn-based strategy games. Carryover of production ability might be nice, but I have no idea how difficult it would be to program. Or what the effect would be on the AI's production ability.

quote:
Originally posted by Athena:
2- No scenario editor ???

As geoschmo mentioned, you're not the first to ask for this; SE3 was the first iteration to allow modding at all (user could create new components, facilities, and units), and SE4 added even more customization (customize AI, map editor, research areas). So they've made progress; the next logical step is a scenario editor. Maybe for SE5...

quote:
Originally posted by Athena:
3- No parametrable load order. In stars you could order to load population, but leaving at least xxx colonists on the planet. Quite a strong feature if you wanted to automate all transport without fearing to deplete any world (Set waypoint to, leave xxx at waypoint).

This is a small part of another big request from the fans; basically, a number of us would like more options for just about every order. Things like "move to planet X, wait until cargo Y is available, load Y and move to warppoint Z". The people who play mainly simultaneous move games would really like the ability to specify ahead of time how much cargo to load...

quote:
Originally posted by Athena:
4- Some weapons seem to be utterly useless. One can see this even after one day of play. Why Malfador never tweaked the stats, taking feedback from players?

As geoschmo mentioned, there've been many attempts at balancing weapon techs, but without much success. Malfador has made a number of changes to weapons throughout the SE4 run (look through the history file for these changes; at least one change (to the Anti-Proton Beam) was taken directly from player input). Some of the "problems" stem from the changes between SE3 and SE4, and other "problems" are the desire from fans for more unique-sounding weapons with cool abilities, but with enough limitations to keep the new weapons from dominating the game. And most of the veterans have found good uses for many of the more useless-looking weapons; or they've modded the weapons to become more useful.

Cyrien · #9 May 6th, 2002, 06:41 PM

For the weapons part. It seems this way. But I have found that it just isn't so. Each weapon can be usefull depending on your strategy. For the most part I use a weapon that most consider worthless. The Meson BLaster. high research cost but the only weapon that has higher comp cost/kt size to damage ratio is the Ripper Beam which has a greatly reduced range. Long Live the Meson BLaster.

From a Stars! standpoint I see this point of view coming about from the limited number of weapon Groups in Stars! Each group had very specific abilities and strengths/weaknesses. But there weren't a whole lot of them. If memory serves you had missiles, torp, and beams as the basic weapons with steady and constant modifiers on each. (I played Stars! before SE4 and really want to see SuperNova come out)

In fact I think the weapons system of Stars! and its lack of diversity is one thing that turned me away from it eventually. There are only so many strategies you can use. If you know the persons weapons you know what strategy they are using. In SE4 you just can't really tell.

Is the person an insane genius using that weapon or just stupid?

Phoenix-D · #10 May 6th, 2002, 07:38 PM

"The Meson BLaster. high research cost but the only weapon that has higher comp cost/kt size to damage ratio is the Ripper Beam which has a greatly reduced range."

Not true. Sure, the Meson has a high initial cost, but it only goes to level VI. That makes the actually cost quite low; it's something like a THIRD of the cost to research max Meson BLasters as opposed to APB. (especially if you're playing medium tech, which gives the first two levels free)

Phoenix-D