Dominions 3000 (name confirmed!)

[Darkwind]

JimMorrison said:Okay, before I do a brief outline of all of the ideas that I had knocking around in my head (many of which I touched on in the original thread), I just have to say, R'lyeh is IN! The more of this thread I read, the more shocked I was at their lack of mention, until it finally happened and I cried out in pure joy. They're Illithid Starspawns - the perennial space aliens of Dominions, excluding them would be a terrible travesty!

Can I assume this means that I can go ahead with my terrible orgy of madness and non-Euclidian geometry?

and the various and sundry races from games like MoO, Ascendancy, and Galactic Civ should give plenty of templates that can be made as similar or as generic as we want them to be.

I'm surprised someone else here as heard of Ascendancy. I think it's a great game, and I was thinking we might want to borrow some of the concepts there.

-Species specific worlds - We can make the sites in certain species' homes radiate cold or heat. "Dominion" itself shouldn't play as large a part in this. In fact, if we could alter the relative bonus/malus of shifting your temp scale to make it unattractive, then we might avoid the possibility of someone making your planet cold, from 20 light years away, "on accident". Also each planet in a world would have several factors explored as far as resources (resources!), habitability (pop), and prevailing conditions (temp altering sites).

-Dominion spread will be a definite issue of some kind. In large part, due to the ridiculous idea of spreading cold or heat "through the galaxy", but also with the encapsulation of territory, dominion spread could create significant imbalances in short order. My best idea would be to make everyone act like Mictlan, with no Preaching, and Temples not providing checks. It needs to be engineered in a way that keeps people from being dominion killed through random events - I'm looking for ideas on how to make this work. <3

If we can remove random events, one solution would be to just remove Dominion-altering events that would prevent dominion kill. As to making sure that people don't change the temperature of empty space or other planets simply by wishing it to be so, we could force nations to have a specific pretender setup and have national sites (or preset sites, in the case of non-homeworld worlds) alter the heat/cold scales of the world (I think I'm leaning more towards one-province worlds now, for easier site-setting time and to allow a greater diversity of worlds).

-Summoned/Built ships - Forgot to mention how much I like this idea. I think perhaps "items" should have a less significant role in the game, and "summons" play an even greater role. It would be nice if most of the more interesting units are not built with generic "resources" (though there will always be the dichotomy of the average infantry lifespan of 9 seconds, with the acknowledged impossibility of holding a planet without infantry!). So the challenge is to produce a dynamic where you need cheap castle chaff, but you also need to develop your summons, and really push your gem income.

I'm glad you liked my idea (or was that one of the ideas also posited by this JimMorrison fellow? ). What I was thinking was that the stronger, more cost-efficient ships would only be able to be accessed through summoning (and the strongest of ships would be unable to enter land, meaning that a fleet of smaller ships would be necessary to guard the space-worthy landlubbers as they fly through space to take enemy planets). Thus, someone relying only on recruitable ships would likely be very weak compared to someone using summoned ships as well (or summoned ships only, for that matter).

Also, please excuse me for ignoring most of your post. That's a big post and I don't want this to devolve into huge posts quoting posts that quote posts which quote multiple posts all quoting one giant post.

[Aezeal]

I'm thinking all races should get a certain earthgem income and some lvl 0 starting summons for ships summonable. Each race could then also get race specific summons.

Maybe a few recruitables too?

Jim.. I specifically said all planets in a system would need to be neighbours too.

[llamabeast]

Really like your map Aezeal.

I wonder if it might work to have a couple of provinces per planet (even several on the larger planets), and have inter-planet transport only possible by using spaceships. Within a solar system, nearby planets might only be separated by one space province, so they could use short-range transports with sailing to get them between worlds. Between solar systems, long-range transports would be needed. These would be amphibious vehicles which granted water-breathing to the units they led.

I wonder if it might be best to exclude spaceships from ground combats? Or rather make them ineffective. They could have landshapes which represent them landed on the planet's surface. They would be unable to fight, or at least unable to move. Capital ships might even be aquatic, and hence unable to enter a land province at all.

[Aezeal]

Well my idea was to make large spaceships aquatic llama as I already said above
and maybe some shuttles amphibious

ps watershape isn't in effect yet or is it?

[Aezeal]

PS llama your idea for sailing and solar systems is nice too.. but a few solar systems would make for HUGE maps (each solar system a few planets of a few provinces)

Since at start there will be only a few races I wanted to make a small map (mine is to large already)

PPS you can't really like the map.. it was 15 min work and it's ugly.

PPS see my new thread for ULM IN SPACE.. (with references to dominions 3 ulm.

[HoneyBadger]

Your map might be a little unrefined, Aezeal, but it's exactly what I had in mind, and I think it's perfect, so 15 mins well spent!

[Aezeal]

but is watershape in effect already?

[Darkwind]

Actually, I just finished making a map (I figured I'd see if everyone liked Aezeal's style better or the test map I made). It's small (25 provinces, 16 of which are space, the way I made it) but it will hopefully do. Attached is the map un-bordered. Also, keep in mind this is just an image, I haven't turned it into an actual map.


I forgot to mention, made with the Warcraft III Map Editor.

[Aezeal]

PS anyone wanting to refine my map (since it's unrefined) should do so ASAP

and then volunteer to do graphs on Ulm in space

[JimMorrison]

llamabeast said:
Really like your map Aezeal.

I wonder if it might work to have a couple of provinces per planet (even several on the larger planets), and have inter-planet transport only possible by using spaceships. Within a solar system, nearby planets might only be separated by one space province, so they could use short-range transports with sailing to get them between worlds. Between solar systems, long-range transports would be needed. These would be amphibious vehicles which granted water-breathing to the units they led.

I wonder if it might be best to exclude spaceships from ground combats? Or rather make them ineffective. They could have landshapes which represent them landed on the planet's surface. They would be unable to fight, or at least unable to move. Capital ships might even be aquatic, and hence unable to enter a land province at all.

Wow, open up a can of worms, toss it in a barrel of monkeys, and look out? I can see where you're going with your ideas here, but it just seems awfully complicated to actually implement? I mean spaceships that can't approach planets, troops that can enter space, systems that take several months for species with FTL drives to cross.

I think my main problem with all of this, is that in our near future we will be branching out into our solar system - and all of the resources that we collect will be funneled to this Earth. With this complicated setup you describe of space between planets, and having to cross that space rather than hop planet to planet, implies to me the planets cannot be connected provinces. That sort of implies most objects would be similar, so it would seem out of place to have a planet "connected" to an asteroid field for example. THis all makes movement, "fort" building, and planetary production a bit cumbersome. At least in my eyes - maybe you have that all worked out, but I'm not seeing the reasoning extrapolate out yet.


Darkwind, you may be on to something. I am unclear about the moddability of Events, I hope someone can set us straight on this point. And I do agree, the easiest way to handle temp preferences is to enforce some sort of rule about keeping the scale neutral. BUT, that means if someone is set to like Heat+3, they lose 120 design points over this. I suppose this could be offset by buffing the pretender options for the species that have temp preferences. That could be a huge balancing-juggling act to make workable though.


Making some ships purely Aquatic is an interesting choice. Perhaps have an analogue to Pendant of the Fish, some sort of Subspace Field Stabilizer, or N-Point Generator that allows them to enter the gravity wells of planets. Working with the terrestrial/amphib/aquatic constraints does give some interesting possibilities for unit specialization. It also makes it more feasible (and possibly necessary) to draw up the systems like you already did, Aezeal.

Some ships could even be PAmph. Landing Craft for example that are intended to provide support fire during ground assaults, or smaller Destroyers who are weaker in planetary battles, but more capable in open space. Can the actual effects of PAmph be modded? Since Attack/Defense will play a lesser role. Or if we do get access to ground forms and water forms, some weapons would only be usable atmospherically, and some only available out in space.



I think the toughest part will be figuring out what to do with all of these mechanics. Once they're worked out, we can burn out content like crazy.


And Aezeal, while I think "Ulm in Space" (makes me hear the announcer from Sesame Street saying 'Pigs in Space' for some reason) is a good workable plan, I don't really think it's any more original to base a D3K species off of a Dom3 nation, than to base it off anything else someone might grab.

But wait, it gets better! Might I offer the catchy name and concept..... "The Brotherhood of Steel" ?! I hope the beauty and grace of that particularly unoriginal concept keeps you awake tonight.