we're not yet sure how it will work out but Kryo and the Metaverse Council are working on being able to include mods in games listed in the AltMeta. Stay tuned for future announcements.
For fairness you should only allow games using mods that have only cosmetic changes and don't affect the game play. However, mods that affect the game play are likely the most fun.
I never said [AltMeta] did. What I said was that it provides different classes for different types of games. I thought that your point was that the gigantic abundant all epic game was too long to be interesting and you expressed interest in playing smaller sized maps.
On the topic of milking or to put it another way, ending the game at it's earliest possible point, I think influence wins specifically and civil victories (i.e. non military victories) in general pretty much *do* preclude milking.
My point was playing for a high score (no matter what system) was contrary to playing for fun. I find the fun part of the game to be the part where the overcome is unclear. Once you are so powerful that victory is certain (even if all the remaining players unite against you), the game is over and you are just going through the motions. By the time you can win an influence victory, you are likely at this point. Extending a game past where you could win a military victory just to complete the tech tree, social development, and/or build-up a massive naval fleet you will never use is not fun, especially if your system is straining under the load! If I'm not playing the Metaverse (or some other system) then I can quit a game when it ceases to be fun and start another with another setup that I want to try out.
In one post Brad complained that the Metaverse was ruining the game because of the focus on scoring rather than fun. Someone replied that he like having a history of all his games which Brad agreed was useful. This is likely why DA 1.6 Beta 2 includes the following change, "NEW: Added code to save score data for non-metaverse games locally in the My Documents\My Games\GC2DarkAvatar folder".
In another post, you had mentioned that you had purchased DA but would probably stick with DL because of the changes to morale and speed. The morale changes mean it will be much harder to have planets with >21B (under DL 1.2 with just a stock exchange and virtual reality center or several stock exchanges, my planets did not drop below 100% morale until they got up to 21B due to morale resources and neutral bonuses). I only grew my population to these levels to grow a massive economy for a higher score which is no longer my concern. Speed was nerfed in DA because the AI can't cope with fast combat ships and troop transports. Since I'm now playing medium maps, I don't feel the need for dreadnoughts with speed 34 and troop transports 46. I think the following DA changes (just started my first game) will make for a more fun game:
(1) AI improvements (e.g., Brad rewrote the AI code for planet development)
(2) need to research colonizing techs (makes the colonizing rush more interesting)
(3) super abilities (look like fun but probably not balanced)
(4) you now may build older planetary improvements (e.g., build a Factory on a new colony rather than an Industry Sector or you could place a level 1 farm on a 300% bonus farm title for a population cap of 6B + 3B*4 = 18B which
might be okay under the new morale limits; otherwise, these tiles should still be avoided)
(5) mining asteroids
(6) UI and graphic improvements
(7) more ship jewelry
(8) more support for modding
I look forward to experimenting with these changes and the many cool looking mods!
