Ideas on creating Emperor of the Fading Suns 2.0
First off this is a long post.
Emperor of the Fading Suns V 2.0
I find it interesting that if you search the Wikipedia you see the following passage, “This game was based on Holistic's in-house role playing game (Fading Suns) that has attracted a cult following.” Interestingly enough on Shrapnel Games’ forum there was a thread titled “What types of games would you like to see made” there were more requests for an EFS remake than any other game. I find it interesting that this now, ten year old game still captivates a lot of people, even though the game had many bugs and not all of the features, i.e. Patriarchs other than Orthodox were fully implemented. Further that there are still updates to mods such as Hyperion, NOVA, and Subversion is a testament to the devotion to the game.
Anyhow the purpose of this thread is to outline some general ideas regarding an EFS remake, and hopefully generate discussion and interest in the game in general. I have a lot of ideas regarding a remake. Unfortunately I am not a game developer or even a hard core programmer, I am just a marginal programmer at best, my purpose is mainly to generate discussion, and interest. Whether this leads to anything happening, is most likely just a ‘pipe-dream’, note to all if I suddenly become independently wealthy I will strive to have such a project come to fruition.
The Fading Suns universe offers a great wealth of material to draw upon. I think one of the strong suites of the original game was diplomacy and the number of options available and the uniqueness of having the regency and the imperial ministries. EFS was also unique in that it had more emphasis on planetary surface combat than any other 4X game (i.e. Master of Orion series, Space Empires) and unlike other 4X games there was air-land-and sea based combat. In general I was thinking of some ideas that would be unique for an EFS remake, some ideas would borrow from other games that are popular.
In general the following themes are items that I think would greatly improve a remake.
1. Noble house – unlike other 4X type games you are head of a noble house, vying to become Emperor of the known worlds. In the original game the houses were more or less the same, save for certain advantages disadvantages that were chosen at game start up, such as battle-master, friend of the league, enemy of the church. On area which could vastly set aside an EFS V.2 from other games and keep with Fading Suns settings would be adding more governance options, am thinking of something similar to the Europa Universalis/Victoria/Hearts of Iron series of games were you could make changes to your governing style. Of course there should be limitations to this, based upon one’s house, for example it would hard to imagine Housee Decados suddenly becoming a benevolent, pious, noblise oblige ruling house. In the original game you started with five nobles and that was it, unless you ‘captured’ rebel nobles. I think this should be changed so that you manage your own dynasty, this could be similar to Medieval Total War, or Crusader Kings in that your produce heirs. This could add further diplomacy elements such as marriages between houses, further, it could allow for things such as appointing a family member to a bishopric, if the family is pious. This overall scheme would require further elaboration so that there would be various benefits and trade-offs and some degree of balance amongst the houses. Lastly the houses should have differences militarily, for example the houses could have vastly different spaceships, which could be based off of the designs from the Noble Armada tabletop game. Further, the houses should have differences in their military units.
2. Known Worlds – in the original you started off with a basically a capital ‘city’ on your houses home world and some outlying cities, everything else was under ‘rebel’ control. I would envision the Know Worlds being more like how things were just prior to the Emperor Wars, and the noble houses would already have holdings on other planets. The difference would be that unlike the original in which you had complete control of your house, save if something went rebel, the various Noble houses would be split into sub-factions (families), which would be consistent with Fading Suns literature so that it would be necessary to properly govern and diplomatically manage your house. Another element would be the addition of minor houses, from the game setting. Gradually over time there should be a consolidation of power as one governs their house. This would also add more of the ‘feudal’ aspects of the game. For example an excerpt from “Lords and Priests” indicates that
the prince can rarely enforce their ownership in full. The prince awards titles and land management rights to a number of dukes, a rank that usually confers rulership of a continent, moon, or outer planet.
The prince being the noble ruling one of the houses. A system such as this would require a restructuring of the planetary maps, to break different areas into fiefs. I like hex based maps, but my inclination is that a province system would be easier to implement, and aesthetically would look better. Many games such as Medieval Total War, Dominions, Battle for Middle Earth 2 and all of the games based on the Europa Universalis engine uses provinces. I think the best bet would be a strategic based map with provinces with a tactical map for combat and empire building.
3. Third parties – The Church and League require major overhauls to make them more functional. Church and League militaries should continue to be powerful, the League should offer expanded services such as the Muster. The Symbiot menace should be even more menacing. Further, the barbarian races should be added, as counter balances, since House Hawkwood and Hazat are in theory out of the immediate reach of the Symbiots. Lastly, all of the minor races of the game should be introduced, providing various trade-offs if they are enlisted.
4. Game play – should be greatly streamlined. One area in vast need of improvement is espionage, the whole manner of having stacks of spies/assassins that could then be wiped out by legions of tanks was silly. There should be an entire espionage element modeled within the game. Some of the concepts from Hearts of Iron Doomsday, could possibly be incorporated. Various agents could be recruited, likewise counter-espionage measures would have to be taken. Instead of moving ‘spy’ units on a map various types of missions could be assigned thru an espionage game interface.
Likewise the entire trade model should be revamped all too often it was impossible to get certain key components from an agora, trade should not be so restricted, however it should be dynamic with supply and demand effects, and there should be comparative advantages, based upon a variety of factors, quality of good, regard of the league, monopoly, governing policies. Ultimately this would lead to a revised economic and industrial model.
Another item that could be potential tedious, and one that I am not sure the AI could properly handle, or that it was in keeping with the Fading Suns setting in that not much is newly built was whole process of building engineers and new cities and roads. I have given thought that there should be population centers on the map, within a population center there would be industry, commerce, and science. Players would be able to manage the population center in terms of adding or expanding industry, thematically if this should be represented by ‘finding’ lost technology or building new industry is a point of debate. Population centers would have a hierarchy, mega-city, city, town, village, hamlet, colony. I liked in the original and in most strategy games that there are resources/commodities on the map to be harvested. In terms of build able structures I think these should be limited to resources gathering structures, of course this would have to fit within the context of the type of map used, whether it be hex based, or province based. A lot of players enjoy building from scratch, therefore, I think colony building should be allowed, there could be unclaimed fiefs/provinces/areas and a player could establish a colony, which would be a very basic population center.
I like the ruins, and alien ruins from the original but I view these as causing problems in that you could have very powerful rebel stacks rampaging across the map, and these sites could lead to gamey tactics by human players. I think a better implementation would be to add the concept of ‘questing knights’ thematically this would be more in keeping with the spirit of the Fading Suns universe. I leave it to debate if this should be abstracted like I proposed be done with espionage, through a separate interface (think of the X-pedition fleets of Master of Orion III of course how that game ended up was a big disappointment, but that is a separate and equally long thread), or if one should recruit an questing knight expedition and move it along the map.
I have further ideas, but this post has become rather long winded. I hope now that some discussion will be sparked, maybe even a living design document on how to go about creating a remake, for those clever enough to turn ideas into working source code, and ultimately a game.
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