Alien Races

[Drake]

The only 4X game I know of that's even attempting to do something like that is Stars! Supernova Genesis, where the Alternate Reality race is supposed to adhere to a set of physical laws that are different from the norm. That's not even out yet, so who knows if it'll make the final cut. I imagine balancing something like that could be a serious problem...

-Drake

[Q]

Drake I think you got the crucial point. A race with such unique traits would most probably be either invincible or completely lost. I don't see haw you could balance races that have completely different technologies.

[Nyx]

What COULD be done, however, would be to alter the nature of the custom tech trees. Give organics organic hulls, five different organic weapon categories, organic resource harvesting, bio-computers, and so forth. Even if all you did was replace 90% of the component's cost with organics instead of minerals and made a new component image that was a bit greener, you'd have gone a long, long way toward making it happen and that's totally do able. No balancing issues because you're not changing anything really. Even the techs would have the exact-same cost and effects, just different names and visuals giving them an organic feel. After you get that Version working, later upgrades would include alterations, like organic components regenerating, crystal ones having a higher than normal damage resistance, Temporal resource harvesting facilities would produce more, and so forth. That's when the balancing act would get ugly which is why I don't recommend it as a beginning step.

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[Baron Munchausen]

quote:

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Originally posted by Nyx:
What COULD be done, however, would be to alter the nature of the custom tech trees. Give organics organic hulls, five different organic weapon categories, organic resource harvesting, bio-computers, and so forth. Even if all you did was replace 90% of the component's cost with organics instead of minerals and made a new component image that was a bit greener, you'd have gone a long, long way toward making it happen and that's totally do able. No balancing issues because you're not changing anything really. Even the techs would have the exact-same cost and effects, just different names and visuals giving them an organic feel. After you get that Version working, later upgrades would include alterations, like organic components regenerating, crystal ones having a higher than normal damage resistance, Temporal resource harvesting facilities would produce more, and so forth. That's when the balancing act would get ugly which is why I don't recommend it as a beginning step.

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The most characteristic techs, the weapons and armor, already have special images that look organic. Certain "common" technologies like engines, shields, and life support could be given organic variations to improve the look but I don't think most of the other techs need to be changed. A race with a special ability isn't necessarily going to do EVERYTHING according to its special ability. A wave-motion gun is a wave-motion gun, and probably ought to use the same picture regardless of who develops it.

As far as special hulls, though, seperate ship sets for each racial ability could get really bulky and difficult to manage. We need some "abilities" to be added to ships when they are built rather than having to be written into the config files before the game starts. If we had this, we could have "Darloks" with innate stealth, organic races with innate regeneration ('living ships' instead of just living armor), and other goodies without all the hassle of a dozen independent ship sets in the config files.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 06 February 2001).]

[DirectorTsaarx]

Another trick would be to "close off" certain tech areas based on use of racial techs. For instance, if you use temporal techs, you don't get to research the standard beam weapons. Organic races don't get either beam weapons or seekers (since they have their own seekers). Granted, the AI's usually focus on available racial techs, but they still eventually spend research points on other areas. Why waste the research points? Of course, I'm not certain how to balance this yet, but it should be doable...

[Tampa_Gamer]

quote:

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Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
As far as special hulls, though, seperate ship sets for each racial ability could get really bulky and difficult to manage. We need some "abilities" to be added to ships when they are built rather than having to be written into the config files before the game starts. If we had this, we could have "Darloks" with innate stealth, organic races with innate regeneration ('living ships' instead of just living armor), and other goodies without all the hassle of a dozen independent ship sets in the config files.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 06 February 2001).]

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Agreed. The way I got around it for the Darlok (originally before I ditched the ideal of modifying everyones racial traits, components, and research data files) was to create and add a special racial component (0k in size) to every Darlok ship design. This component had basic stealth ability. You could only get and upgrade this component with the "Stealthy" racial attribute. It worked great (except that until the next patch comes out the AI doesn't cloak). But I really hate for everyone to modify those three \Data files just because they are using the Darlok.

[This message has been edited by Tampa_Gamer (edited 06 February 2001).]

[This message has been edited by Tampa_Gamer (edited 06 February 2001).]

[DirkHowitzer]

As far as shipsets go, how hard would it be to do something like MOO where each ship size(Escort, Frigate, L. Cruiser, Cruiser, etc...)had several different types(basically just different pictures)which were accessed by left and right arrows. Possible to do? This alone would add a bunch more color to the game.

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