Traitor

[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.

[Sabre21]

I guess there's 3 old farts....probably a few more hiding out there I graduated HS in 74. I have to agree with Atrocities, MOO2 was OK but no where as good as the original. Also I too liked BOTF...I liked the Star Trek theme. Besides, the varity of unique installations really made each race different to play. I wish we had the ability in SE4 to make unique facilities, ships, and components for a specific race.

[DirkHowitzer]

I too liked BOTF, if only because of the combat which I thought was cool...lol. What I didn't like was the clumsy interface and the pacifist to the extreme AI...I could never get anyone to fight me!!!

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"He's dead, Jim."-- Lt. Commander Leonard "Bones" McCoy |Chief Medical Officer / USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)