Adding depth to Space

I'm guessing someone else has suggested these things, but if not here it goes. It would be nice to see weather, nebulas, black holes, super novas, solar flares, and radiation affects in space. There should be an option at the beginning of your game to add any of these different affects and then how often you would like to have them take place (rarely, uncommon, normal…etc). Some of the different weather types could be
- Blind your sensors to 1 sector (or something less then max range) while you are inside the storm.
- Sensors cannot penetrate the storm, so any ships hidden inside the storm are hidden.
- Storms that will damage/destroy your ships, damage/destroy building on your planet, damage/destroy your space stations.
- Storms that prevent or limit the effectiveness of a specific type of weapon(s) (laser/missiles/mass drivers), and/or the effectiveness of shields/chaff. Or the storm may only damage hull armor if you have unshielded ships…etc.

Nebulas, you can pretty much apply any of the suggestions mentioned above to a Nebula type.
Radiation could fall under the "storm" or "nebula" category, but I was actually thinking in terms of having radiation in some form that would kill colonist onboard the colony ship unless you had researched a tech shielding or genetic mutation to protect your people. It would be nice to be able to have different sections of the galaxy off limits for a long while until you advanced enough technology wise to be able to explore it safely. This would help create a second "land rush" further along in the game.

Solar flares would also be a nice touch for mini-events that can blind a fleet for several turns, or potentially damage/destroy one that is too close to a star, or stop/limit production/growth/research for a set amount of time.

Super Novas would be a random event (infrequent) that would mean the destruction of an entire solar system. All planets/ships/stations within X range would instantly be vaporized. All planets/ships/stations within Y range would take damage. The damage might include planets losing a 1-5 points (or more) of quality (Class 15 becomes a Class 10) instantly and 5 randomly selected building tiles (in my example) are destroyed (including the buildings on them) and the tiles are unusable from then on. Ships and stations would take hull damage or be destroyed. The solar system that was destroyed could become a radiation field or black hole with some very different but equally negative affects on ships passing within range or through that section of space. Ships would then have to avoid that area or risk taking damage/sensor issues/destruction.

These types of other events could add an additional layer of depth to the game. Storms/Radiation/Nebulas would force players/AI to mix up their tactics and ship design to take advantage or the situation. A player could attack a superior enemy during a storm that limits the effectiveness of beam weapons by 50%, if your enemy used beam weapons and you used another type. You might normally lose that battle, but due to the storm you have a chance to win a major victory. As the AI becomes smarter or multiplayer games are added, you would be able to hide the attack fleet and strike at your enemy before they even know you are coming.
The same could be said for nebulas. If a player based their weapons tech on missiles and then discover a huge nebula which causes missile to miss 20% of the time, they are going to be at a big disadvantage. Or maybe the nebula causes mass drivers to overload 5% of the time causing the ship to blow up. Planets in nebulas could also have growth/production/research bonuses or negatives. There are tons of different options.

Imagine having your major ship producing world destroyed by a super nova. The solar systems close by become lower class planets. You’ve lost a portion of your fleet. You now have to scramble to rebuild and reorganize. This could mean the end of a game for a player in weak position, but it could also mean a 2nd chance for all other players if the strongest empire was hit with this disaster. The AI would have to be smart enough to take advantage of these situations and be able to reorganize should something like this happen.

I fully admit having too many of these events could become annoying which is why it would be important to allow people to customize their gaming experience.

Comments?

Chubain
6,431 views 15 replies
Reply #1 Top
I've suggested this a couple times. I've gotten mixed respones from the community.....mostly negative. I'd like to see some kind of "terrain" and obstacles in the game and there are certainly enough interstellar phenomena to use.

Haven't heard much from Stardock about this....I imagine the problem would be adapting the A.I to deal with obstacles and hazards. Don't know if it would be easy or difficult.....you'd think it'd be easy considering everything they already make the A.I do.
Reply #2 Top
I like the general idea of adding "terrain" effects, but I don't think it will work with the current game design. There just isn't enough room on the map to squeeze these things in, and stil allow room to maneuver around the effect if you want to avoid it. As it is, maps of almost any size get very crowded towards the endgame with freighter lanes, starbases, fleet movements, etc. It's ironic that a game set in the vastness of space gets so crowded, but it does allow for efficient gameplay and less scrolling around the map.

For something like this to work, I think we'd need much more room between star systems. It might also require ramping up the baseline speed and range for ships, to compensate for the added distance. Maybe we'll see something like this in GalCiv3?
Reply #3 Top
For something like this to work, I think we'd need much more room between star systems.


This is a limitation of having everything on one map. In real life the distance between stars is measured in light years or parsecs Link. Solar systems are much smaller with the distance between a planet and it's star measured in light minutes or hours or AUs Link

It is not possible to show this scale on a single map. Some other games (e.g. Space Empires Link) only display planets when looking at a single solar system. The vast distances between solar systems are bridge via warp points (e.g. star gates). Their galactic map shows all the solar systems and warp points but no planets.
Reply #4 Top
For something like this to work, I think we'd need much more room between star systems.


This is a limitation of having everything on one map. In real life the distance between stars is measured in light years or parsecs Link. Solar systems are much smaller with the distance between a planet and it's star measured in light minutes or hours or AUs Link

It is not possible to show this scale on a single map. Some other games (e.g. Space Empires Link) only display planets when looking at a single solar system. The vast distances between solar systems are bridge via warp points (e.g. star gates). Their galactic map shows all the solar systems and warp points but no planets.
Reply #5 Top
For something like this to work, I think we'd need much more room between star systems.


This is a limitation of having everything on one map. In real life the distance between stars is measured in light years or parsecs Link. Solar systems are much smaller with the distance between a planet and it's star measured in light minutes or hours or AUs Link

It is not possible to show this scale on a single map. Some other games (e.g., Space Empires Link) only display planets when looking at a single solar system. The vast distances between solar systems are bridge via warp points (e.g. star gates). Their galactic map shows all the solar systems and warp points but no planets.
Reply #6 Top
For something like this to work, I think we'd need much more room between star systems.


This is a limitation of having everything on one map. In real life the distance between stars is measured in light years or parsecs Link. Solar systems are much smaller with the distance between a planet and it's star measured in light minutes or hours or AUs Link

It is not possible to show this scale on a single map. Some other games (e.g., Space Empires Link) only display planets when looking at a single solar system. The vast distances between solar systems are bridged via warp points (e.g. star gates). Their galactic map shows all the solar systems and warp points but no planets.
Reply #7 Top
take out all the star systems that have no inhabitable planets and it would probably open up a lot of space, those are obstacles now, might as well turn em into something else that affects the game.
Reply #9 Top
Sorry for the multiple posts. I kept getting a timeout error when I hit submit.
Reply #11 Top
If you play on gigantic maps with tight star clusters like I do then there is PLENTY of empty space. I could see if you picked "abundant stars, tiny map, loose clusters" empty space might be a problem.

This problem would be solved by making "terrain" adjustable like everything else....i.e abundant, common, uncommon, rare.
Reply #12 Top
Well, with the "nebula" things in the background being of such low quality (its like the standard photoshop cloud filter, no fancy business), dont expect any of this to look good
I'd rather see Stardock hire some talented artists, and have these types of features in GalCiv3 instead
Reply #13 Top
supernovas would be sorta unfair, but I'd like to see a "realism mod" which made planets and ships smaller in comparison to stars and replaced "resources" with things like black holes and nebulas, for example research starbase would orbit black hole, military starbase would orbit asteroid field, economy starbase would orbit nebula... just thoughts
Reply #14 Top
While I would love this, I doubt it will happen. I've also asked for these sorts of things, though I hadn't thought of super novas. Though you could do slow star death at well which would just slowly lower the quality of your planets over time.

Super Novas would make for a great strategic element too if you could set them off late game. Kind of like nukes. Star Killers you could call them. Would make for a good UP issue. Yes I know it's just like Civ IV, but nuclear proliferation and other weapons of mass destruction are a meaningful subject to people today.
Reply #15 Top
I agree that currently space seems pretty empty.

I love stuff in space... even giant amoebas and crystals. Black Holes, nebulas with hidden pirate bases, and contagious deep-space fungus would all be good fun.