Your History With SEIV

[Spyder]

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Originally posted by TacticDragon:
MOO3 is actually advertised as a "5X" game, the 5th X standing for eXperience. And yes, the battles will be in real-time, but the strategic dimension of the game is turn-based, as it should be. I am not worried about this, since the MOO series has traditionally always been very concerned about gameplay and game balance. And, as a big fan of Homeworld, I think space battles are actually best rendered in real time and 3D. Imperium Galactica and SW Rebellion battles were also RT/3D and it worked great.

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Well, Homeworld was given to me for Christmas by my step-daughter and so I played it out of duty. It quickly turned into a twitch-click, who-can-get-there-fastest-with-the-mostest game...like warcraft. No strategy involved. I would have not finished it had it not been a gift. I hope that MOO 3 will allow is to at least to stop/pause action to issue/reissue orders, otherwise, there'll be no tactical strategy...it'll all depend on how fast you (that's YOU, not your empire...big difference) can click the right ships and get them to shoot the right things at the right time.

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I like the idea of "eXperience", since I am constantly looking for the ultimate gaming experience. I'm sure most of you here would agree that gaming is not about winning, but about playing, i.e. the game or the "experience", is its own reward. I just hope that this is what Quicksilver has in mind when they mention the "5th X", and that it is just not some phony marketing thingy.

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I've always referred to these games as Logistical Puzzles. You have to figure out how to respond, strategically & domestically, to each challenge. The variety of challenges is what makes a game of this type good.

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It certainly is a challenge for a game designer to create a good gaming experience. Ideally, a game should not have a preset difficulty level. Rather, the game should adapt the difficulty as the campaign unfolds.

Think about this imaginary situation: you have struggled in a SE4 game and overcome all the challenges the AI has thrown at you. You know you have won the game, and what is left of it is only hours of boring "insect crushing" of the Last enemies, as you lazily finish to research the Last technologies, and you spend more time micromanaging your 200 colonies than doing exciting stuff...

Sounds boring? It is... But, suddenly, out of nowhere, a warp point from another galaxy appears and an alien invasion fleet strikes your empire with fiery destructive force... What are you going to do? Sounds cool? It would be... This is an example of how the game decides that you must be bored and it gives you a new challenge. Unfortunately, such a game is yet to be invented. Just think about it...

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yeah, this would be great I don't think that it would be that difficult to do, but, the space requirements would be huge. To keep things interesting, there would have to be a variety of things that happen when you hit that 'bored' stage. These games can be anything but predictible. Once you get predictible, the game shelved because the challenge is gone.

One thing that comes to mind comes straight out of Civilization (the Board Game). There are Calamity cards that you get through trading and one of the Calamities that can hit your empire is called Civil War. Another is called <something else, can't remmber>. Both essentially require you to split your empire and allow you to choose which half you want.

This would translate to SEIV this way:

Once you hit MEE, your chances of having a civil war increase dramatically. The longer you're MEE, the higher they are. This means that you better win quickly after hitting MEE or your Empire will split.

[ 30 November 2001: Message edited by: Spyder ]

[Cyrien]

I did some paper pen stuff before I had a decent computer (had a 286 with no HD but two low density double sided disk drives and a monochrome monitor and 640k memory! woohoo) though maybe I'm not being fair since I did play lots of early games off the disk . On the computer I started with SE2 in 1995 off of a Shareware CD with a new Win95 Pentium 100mhz computerwith 16 RAM blah blah(woohoo). Then SE3. Then SE4. And lots of stuff like MOO2, Stars!, Pax Imperia, EotFS and many others.

Look forward to MOO3 and Stars! Supernova Genesis.

All the games have their strong points and their weak points. Moo2 was good... but the combat system was flawed what with the shoot first never recieve return fire thing going on.

I just want to see what the future has in store. Hopefully someone will get the genius idea of combining MOO, SE and Stars! with all their best components into one united game front as these three IMNSHO(Not So Humble Opinion) are by far the best of these types of games.

[mac5732]

I like the idea that TD & Spyer mentioned. Similiar to Birth of Federation where the Borg shows up. Now I'm not a programer but I have seen a lot of the vets/modders here create new races etc, how hard would it be to create a new race, make it super xenophobic, weapons, ships, etc, program it to only enter game on a random factor each game, sometimes after MEE arrives, maybe before MEE, and others situations, it arrives from more then 1 entry point, fleets glaze and capture/colonize planets, begin new empire, all the current tech available to them, they start at specific levels in each or certain tech areas, Maybe give them several starting fleets of a specific number or a random number of turns as reinforcements, to get started, etc. Couldn't you just take a current race and tweak or modify its traits, change weapon names and increase their strenghts etc in order to do this? I'm not sure about how you would implement the random factor.
Is this possible or at least something capable with the current system to implement something like this. If anyone interested, I or maybe one of you could start new thread on this so we don't clog this one up with discussion. Sorry for being off topic.

just some ideas mac

[TacticDragon]

First of all, I realize some of my postings are a little "off-topic" and I am creating a new thread called "eXperience: the 5h X" to move the discussion dealing with how to make SE4 more challenging in the "boring phase" of the game.

But, to address Spyder's concern about Homeworld: I agree that Homeworld easily became a "click feast" and I just hate that in a RTS game (even more than I hate pointless micromanagement). Even though it was pausable, it was impossible to give orders while in pause. But the graphics, the music, the storyline, and the overall "mood" of Homeworld were so great that I still loved it. I spent a lot of time in pause though, and kind of "prepared my orders" while in pause, then unpaused to quickly actually "give one order", then paused immediately again to do the same with the next order. This was true especially in combat situations of course.

[capnq]

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how hard would it be to create a new race, make it super xenophobic, weapons, ships, etc,

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This part's easy...

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program it to only enter game on a random factor each game, sometimes after MEE arrives, maybe before MEE, and others situations

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...but this part's the show-stopper; it would require major hardcode changes.

I suppose while I'm here I should list my history, too. I discovered SE IV while doing a Web search for some other game, almost a year ago, I think. Downloaded the demo, quickly got hooked, ordered the full Version. Started playing on PBW in Geo's "Survivor" Tournament. SE IV is my favorite game, and 4X is my favorite genre; I like the early eXplore phase the best.

[ 30 November 2001: Message edited by: capnq ]

[Gryphin]

Wonder if a new thread should be started for:
"My life leading up to SEIV"
My first 2X (eXpand, eXterminate) was a board game, "Tactics II". This ruined my college carrere. Eventualy the paper Version of Star Fires. This brought my retail carrer to an end. At some point I found Empire II, III, and Deluxe.
That was, (my now X) wife's fault, she make me go sell computers. A "friend" introduced me to SE III. That contributed to the "D".
Now that I'm single, it is all I play.
I wonder how many others have the "same" story?

[Gryphin]

5X game:
Now that I think about it, the "D" would make SE III and SE IV a 5X game.
the 5th X would be my wife.
< bemused grin >