How could the exploration stage of Galciv be improved?

mmm tough one. maybe the universe is 'warped' until the discovery of stellar cartography (which could be the first tech), which then fixes the star map properly. then maybe when you discover a star system, you get some neat report or 3d animation that details the planets. perhaps planets have some kind of randonly generated special resource that adds to influence or morale or whatever.

dunno really. i'd still like to see sectors based on mass ie 4 star have a bigger sector that 1 star - it would mean that controlling the 4 star sector might be really important even if there are no habitable planets in it.

sorry hungover again

I think the problem is that your rivals know where the planets and resources are, so it is a mad panic to rush to as many as possible. No room for a lesiurly, interesting exploration. you just don't have time for it.
Once the intial panic is over, you know it is pointless exploring further, apart from finding other Civs. There will be no planets or resources not already exploited.

I like how moo2 did it. Create different planet environments that cannot be colonized until the right tech is discovered. Also there was much more variation in planet distances. Range was computed by Parsecs rather than "If it's in a sector you can get to, you can get to em all in that sector. That would be cool.

I miss having to think about tactical implications for terrain too. But it seems that terrain doesn't make much sense in space at the scale we are playing.

~SDC~

And actually I think the influence thing does alot of that also. Why colonize a planet in an alien cluster when it's going to be flipped. Moo2 you could colonize into that cluster and not worry about the influence thing. You had to defend it. But here you might as well not even try. So you pull back and establish firm boundries. Civ 3 works alot like that with the added corruption and the influence. It isn't as enjoyable early game as civ2.

maybe mini-galactic resources: nebulas, asteroid fields, etc that also affect movement rates. that can be the equivalent of forest, mountains, ponds, etc in civ2.

I agree with what someone said earlier.
What about planets and resources that can only be exploited when you have the right technology.

I like the galactic terrain idea too. A Nebula where you can't see other races' ships (Wrath of Khan, anyone?), an asteroid field where you take damage while you pass through it, a roving ion storm that knocks down your shielding while you're inside it, a black hole to affect your movement within a given radius (and the square itself is impassable and destroys ships), a zone of "warped space" where your movement may not proceed as intended (this could be VERY frustrating!).

Maybe there should be a tech at some point mid-way through the tree that, once you have the tech, colonizing a class 13 or 14 planet turns it into a class 15 or 16. But the upgrade only happens when you colonize it, so taking all the 13 & 14s beforehand will just stick you with a bunch of crappy planets. Then, knowing where those systems are will be a big key to a second phase of expansion.

Even something relatively simple, like a certain percentage of planets have Saturn-like rings, and once you get to a certain tech (e.g. Zero-G Manufacturing) planets with rings get an extra production bonus due to the wealth of available raw material.
Or planets could have certain qualities in varying degrees besides just an overall Quality rating (good climate for economy, rare-mineral abundance for military production, dilithium deposits for ship power enhancements, whatever) that certain techs would enhance, so it would be more strategic to acquire systems with traits in common, so as to maximize the return on your technology investments. Researching Dilithium Tech would improve the ship offense only for ships built on planets that have Dilithium as a native statistic.
[Edit] These stats could apply to ALL planets, not just the nice ones, so it may be very worth your while in the long run to colonize that class-11 planet with the SuperAbundant Dilithium that makes ships 50% better all around.
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I think the best way would be to emprty a number of sectors completely an then require certain techs to navigate them, that way you could create empty zones between planetclusters making it a strategic imperative to control the chokepoints.
The added change I would like to see is to have these technologies confer a percentage chance to "run the gauntlet". I.E. if 12 ships cross an empty sector there's a % chance that x of them don't make it. This would make garrisoning a bigger priority and create a certain element of surprise, at least until sensor range is increased or you can find time to build bases in the voids. All in all should make for a more interesting early game, you might even feel the need to colonize low PQ in order to be able to rush to new planetclusters.

Only thing is with empire spending the way it is now, it's hard to take advantage of planet-specific bonuses for ships.

The big point lies in AI performance, the more functions you pile into the game the lesser your AI gets, it can't handle more functions and juggle prioities like humans do (long term planning). The key is to think minimalistic, like you were designing a boardgame, few parameters but endless variations within the few.

Agree. The more frills the less thrills. The AI would have to learn to use and cope with these new things. There are a lot of existing stuff in the game that the AI could already learn to use much better.

~SDC~

I liked the idea that a nebula can hide ships, and if they're attacked, they can ambush (i.e. the ship hiding in the nebula gets the first shot, even though it's defending).

Maybe have asteroid fields that aren't impassable, but give a bonus to smaller ships in a fight - cause they can dodge asteroids that dreadnoughts can't. That could encourage some combined-arms thinking. If the enemy's got lots of dreadnoughts going around, and you've only got cheap ships, you could send your stack into an asteroid field, and wait for a tempting target to pass by. The enemy could send in dreadnoughts, but they'd get more damaged than usual. Alternatively, he could send a few cheap ships and not get penalized.


As for exploration itself - in those civ/smac games, there's often important decisions you have to make when exploring. Here, it's often a case of just mapping out the location of resources across the map. With that in mind, an auto-explore function (not just auto-survey), that looks for the nearest black spot and heads towards it would be nice. If you want a ship to explore in a certain direction, send them there manually first, then do auto-explore and they start an expanding circle search pattern.
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I really liked how the MOO games (plus some others) introduced (or tried to) strategy into their games. Warp lanes are one of my favorite. You could create choke points that would become the center of many battles. Sure you could travel anywhere you wanted to, but if you didn't use a star lane it would take you a freakishly long time.

How about more eye candy? I've always been one for eye candy Like durring planetary invasions I'ld like to see the suffering my minions are serving or receiving.

Course, then GalCiv would look a lot like a MOO clone.....

Anyone played/remember that Star Wars game called "Rebellion"? It was a Galaxy conquest game. Pretty sure I got the name right. God I loved that game.

Improving on anothers post- Nebulas could also be mined for gasses like hydrogen and helium, and there could be Gold, Silver, Copper, etc. rich asteroic fields that can be mined for added economy, starships, et cetera.

Pirate and Terrorist organizations
Your people can secretly agree to support some space pirates for protection and help. Terrorists randomly are captured, bribed, or killed, which could either bring some info in one burst (torture), bring info over long periods of time (bribery, informant) or rise public awareness od terrorists (kill)

and mercenaries with unique randomly-generated names and ships. (I.E. Freelancer Jim Brown, modified defender AT 5 DF 4 speed 3)

EDIT: Anyone ever heard of Imperium Galactica? That's where the mercenary idea's from. And mining asteroids and allying with terrorists is from Freelancer. both awesome. (Rebellion prawnzored)
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I prefer less eye candy and more AI. There's lots of games we can play for eye candy, not too many for good single-player AI.

I'm hoping the focus on the 3D graphics for GC2 doesn't come at the expense of AI.

~SDC~

Heroes are in Brad's wishlist for GC2. That should be fun but they should not be unbalancing (like HOMM).



~SDC~

All good thoughts - I feel that the Civ 'colonising' was fun because you had a hand in the decision about WHERE to colonise; that is, you discover the terrain but the choice of position is up to you. Terrain drives a LOT of decision-making in a game like Civ3 and especially Alpha Centauri. Pontius' suggestion is an interesting 'work around' for this point becuase although you don't get to decide 'where', there is excitement in deciding 'when' (and perhaps beating the AI to it). The other consideration might be to exclude certain races from colonising certain planet types. From memory I think this occurred in MOO 2: you could select a racial trait that would enable you to colonise gas giants, when other races couldn't, for example. Thus, instead of spending your ten point allocation on PQ bonus, you might spend it on "Hardy Constitution" that would allow you to colonise, say, PQ10 or less planets with no economic penalty.

I'd supporrt any plan to introduce 'terrain' to GalCiv, although I am conscious of the programming problems alluded to by Orpon and Ray.

I'd hope to see the designers focus on game mechanics that are truely unique to exploring and colonizing space, not just analogies of planet-based terrain. Things like stable worm holes, or black holes that can be used to "slingshot" ships at tremendous speeds come to mind.

I also think they could make better use of the variety of star and planet types that this game has. Right now they just serve as eye-candy (yes, I actually used the term "eye-candy" in talking about GalCiv ) Why not allow certain planet types that are unsuitable for habitation to have other uses? This may put some exitement into the exploration phase.

~SDC~

One thing I thought may make larger maps more exciting, and exploration imperative, would be to limit the distance that colony ships could travel from their home star system. It would mean that you would need to establish a colony and then build a colony ship at that new colony in order to push further out. Plus, before you could build a colony ship, your population had to be at a certain level.

That would slow the colonisation rush and mean that exploration of available star systems, and choosing which ones to colonise first, gained greater importance. Also, you would be encouraged to build planetary improvements in order to increase your population growth on newly colonised planets in order to reach that pop. limit quicker. You would need to always be making choices on how much you spent on ships and social improvements to maximise the colonisation rush.

Plus, there is no pressing need to build defenders in a colony or to escort colony ships with a defender. Would a greater number of (weak) space pirates or monsters which were strong enough to destroy a colony ship or a newly established colony but not a defender, add an element of tension to the colonisation stage? That would mean you had to build a navy as well as colony ships or juggle between various ships at the start. The home worlds might be set to produce defenders whilst the outlying colonies produced colony ships when they were able to.

Once a colony ship had been built, the planet would probably be under the required population, and would need to wait until its pop. increased, unless a transport arrived to boost its population. Hence an incentive to research and build transports early in the game: they would increase your ability to colonise.

Would this make the early stages more interesting and strategic? And would the AI be able to cope?

I think Gal Civ needs more outposts. Mining outposts, listening (spy) outposts etc etc. Mining gas giants and such. Maybe they could be used as an upgrade to something as long as you possess or own such an outpost. Something like 2% bonus to ship defense because of the ore/gasses being mined. Could be any bonuses...just something that makes sense with the environement.

I remember Imperiem Galactica. Liked the game. Love the idea of secretly funding pirates.



If I had to choose I would also go with AI. Would having a ground combat sequence like MOO2, where outcome is already set, detract from AI? I don't know this so I'm asking
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Eye candy like this only detracts from AI in that any time Stardock spends programming eye candy detracts from time they're spending on AI.

Fair point - the other thing for me in SMAC was that the terrain raise/lower affected colonisation decisions and various strategies. Maybe the galaxy creation technology or some earlier star creation tech in galciv could actually allow you to create stars/planets and thereby change the dynamics of certain areas of the galaxy.

The other ideas about choke points and/or slow areas would be amenable to such an idea. What if you could create a nebula/stellar cloud that obscured things and also slowed any travel, thereby being able to add that dimesnion of strategy.

Just some thoughts.
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I am not a terrain fan - Games like Conquest: Frontier Wars and others were great games with wormholes as choke points and did not need the pseudo-terrain of gasses that sped you up and slowed you down.

There are two parts to the early game, the colonization and the survey goodies. How about if there was more interrelationship between the two, since they both end at around the same time.

For example, some survey items would either boost your existing colonies 2PQ or reduce them all 2PQ. Do you dare to explore it? If so, after you have colonized all the planets you can, or beforehand? Perhaps some of the goodies could expose areas you could not otherwise see, helping you in the "rush" but the map was only 80% correct. Do you go for what you know or something promising you are 80% sure of.

Another goodie could speed up your ship 75% of the time and slow it down 25% of the time. Do you pick up that goodie with your Hero or a colony ship racing to a promising sector?

I am not sure I like this whole "gambling" model, but it would add excitement to the exploration process.

Maybe the cost of colony ships could be greatly increased. That would force you to make decisions about whether to prioritize colonization versus jumping out to a tech lead for quick invasions, or getting those freighters out, or grabbing resources, or even getting a couple more survey ships.