Traitor

[thecyclemania]

My comments on MOO2 : the best game I ever played.
I'll always remember this game by this typical phrase : "One more turn... I play just one more turn and I'm going to bed...what time is it anyway ? ARRGGHH ! 5h30 AM and I have class...guess I'm not going to that one, again..."

I'm very excited about MOO3.
The religion system looks very cool. Never seen this in any other 4X game. I look forward to see how will the "command points" (imperial focus - IF) system will work. But it looks promising.

I always thought it was very unrealistic, and boring, that you could control every single aspect of the gameplay in 4X. Of course, it can be fun to some extend to control everything, and most games let you do so, but it's just not that fun. I would love to have a game where my ministers have a real impact on the game. Their personnality and ambition could have so much impact on how the game evolves. Think about it: your security minister didn't tell you about the robbery of your new ship prototype, because it was caused by his mistakes...
The posibilities are endless. I want to manage the game, yes, but managing ministers that would be really more cool.

About SE4 in general, this game is fun in multiplayer. It has lots of possibility, but still lots of issue.
Strategic combat in particular. It totally sucks. You have to guess as to what is the best design to build within the strategic combat system. We don't have access to sufficient information to design ship successfully. You can design ships that will totally rock in tactical combat, and get wiped out all the time in strategic.
I haven't played one game yet for more than 100 hundred turns. Also, the longest play session I had is around 9 hours. That's to me really reflects my level of enjoyment. The more hours I can play in a row, the better the game usually is.
MOO2 ? How about 28 hours...
Alpha Centauri ? How about 22 hours...
Civ I ? How about 24 hours...
The 9 from SE4 tells a lot.

Hey don't get me wrong. I still love this game, but there's still way too much problem with the game right now.

thecyclemania

[Atrocities]

I could not tell you why MOO2 did not appeal to me, but it just did not. I found that the game play was ok, but only having up to 5 planets in a system kinda weak.

Of all the 4X games I have had the oppurtunity to play, BOTF was, IMHO, the best for me. Sure it was based in sorts off of MOO2, designed by the same people, but it had a lot of little details that made it worth while game that has to this day provided me with hours of game play.

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"We've made too many compromises already, too many retreats! They invade our space and we fall back -- they assimilate entire worlds and we fall back! Not again! The line must be drawn here -- this far, no further! And I will make them pay for what they've done!" -- Patric Stewart as Captain Picard
UCP/TCO Ship Yards

[raynor]

Interesting. You are the first person I've met who liked Birth of the Federation. I seem to remember that one having a really bad interface.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought MOO2 lacked something. I enjoyed playing it, and played quite a few games. But it did seem to lack something. I think I may have stuck with it because it was easier to get it to run under 95 than MOO1.

[Barnacle Bill]

In addition to command points, MOO2 also addressed the swarm thing by economics. You couldn't afford to build thousands of ships.

I do agree that Alpha Centauri was a successor to CivII. There were a few things about it I did not like. One was that the scenario was too fixed. Another, related to that, was that you could not turn off PLanet. The great thing about CivII was that you could make scenarios about almost ANYTHING. With AC, no matter what you changed in the part of the game easily accessible to modders, you were still stuck playing in the AC storyline. The other thing I did not like was about units. Even for a game on that sort of scale, units should represent more that 1 vehicle or squad. I mean, a bae is obviously a domed city with thousands of inhabitants. The way things were set up, you really couldn't do mods on any of the things units were built of, either. I think the concept is good, but it needs some modification.

If I was going to do a 4X game that takes place ON a planet (which I'm not, never having programmed in anything more advanced than Turbo Pascal), I would let you design vehicles & squads similarly to AC, only without the graphics for every chassis & component so you could roll your own easier. However, units would be built out of squads & vehicles as in Norm Kroger's TOAW series. I would use a somewhat simplified combat system based conceptually on TOAW, as well.

Of course, I would use a hex grid. I've never understood the irrational predjudice of most computer gamers against hex grids. A square grid creates a huge movement distortion because of diagonals, which hex grids eliminate. The earliest board wargames used square grids, and often introduced complexities like charging you 1.5 MP to move diagonal instead of just 1 to deal with the diagonal problem. Hex grids became nearly universal once introduced because they solve that problem so cleanly.

[Tenryu]

Hey Bill. You must be an old-fart!

Maybe if we told them that they can shift each successive line of squares first right 50% then the next left 50% they'd feel better 'cause they're not hexes!

[Barnacle Bill]

quote:

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Originally posted by Tenryu:
Hey Bill. You must be an old-fart!

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Yep, the old man of the sea. Bought my first wargame about 1972, at JC Penny's. It was Avalon Hill's "Blitzkreig". I was in junior high school. They still had some of those old-time "squares instead of hexes" games from the 60's in print back then, though, which is how I learned what a great inovation hexes were The board game thing is probably also why I like games you can mod yourself so much. When the "rules" are printed on paper instead or hard-coded, and the units are cardboard counters instead of 3D animated graphics, anybody can mod any game all they want.

[ColdSteel]

Hey Bill, I graduated from high school in 1973. Guess we're the same age. So, there's at least 2 old farts here.