MoO1 was SP. MoO2 was MP from the start. My manual includes a section on IP play, and I started with a pre-order.

The MP people forgive MoO2 for having poor AI because they played MP. The SP players, well, they are the ones down on MoO2's AI. Note who those include. Like the Big Bad Bradman himself.

Completely agree MoO2 was "too stupid" to play , I guest if I wanted MP I would probably like it

MP games are more like chess - all you need to enjoy them is a good partner ,while SP games ... you need a lot of things there to keep player interest.

Basicly we have 2 "factions" here : SP fans (that liked original MoO more - I one of them ) and MP fans that (liked MoO2 more) ...
Well the third "faction" is GalCiv developers that for some strange reason try to make "something different" despite the noise two other "factions" make all the time demending to see the improved clones of their beloved games.

Btw: good game that have both goods SP and MP parts extreamly rare, probably there are more but currently I can name only HoMM3 and (from absolutely different area) Half Life.

Well, have no idea what version you have, my Microprose box does not say anything about MP, nor IP. Hmmmmmm.
Oh, and there is, even if in the minority, a 4th fan, I loved both MOO, and MOO2. Enjoyed Many an hour playing, I also Love GalCiv and GalCix2, for what they are, a highly entertaining, well made, with few bugs, as compared to games that are sold in the main stream retail. AI is challenging, graphics in 1 were great, 2 so far are a large improvement.
As Beta Testers as well as fans of Gaming, I feel it is up to us to allow the devs the ablity to not only use other games good points but to encourge them to improve those good points. We as the gaming community deserve the best the Devs can do.
Yes MOO, and MOO2 are 2 of the best games done, but, to me they were just the beggining of a great voyage into games that most of use at the time could not visulize. Heck, I still play TA and HoMM3 & 4

GW

Well ask yourself why this thread is here and why this discussion come up each time, ask yourself why users "pressured" you so much to add ship design and additional playble races and you will know the answer

GalCiv I on OS/2 had ship design via the Shipyards add-on (circa 1995).  Playing as any race has nothign to do with MOO.  Most strategy games let you do that and we woudl have allowed that in GalCiv I if it weren't for budget.

You get insulted again
It was not my intent.
What I meant is that this was great features and people obiously wanted them.
The point is that MoO had a lot of great features like this.

Just a question for Frogboy, what moron decides the budget for you guys anyway and how much say you have on it? Is it somethign that comes down to pure money, or is there something amongst the lines "this won't cost a lot of money, but we have little expierience programmign that and it might take a long time and be hard to implement." Does the developer and game designer decide any of the budget things? Liek saying "we need mroe moeny allocated for colony development because it will make this game a lot better." Or are you all running on the expectations that you will only sell x-amount of boxes regardless fo the small features of final product? I know Moo3 suffered hemerroge from the budget commitie which totally fudged up lot of the game. Most evident is the space combat. Ships appearign and dissappear for no friggin reasons is not a feature people :/ Cloak? Gimmie a break...

Stardock is the developer and publisher for GC2. They're distributing boxes in stores through Take Two Interactive (I think), but TTI isn't the publisher. SD funds its own projects and sets its own priorities for the most part.

Just a question for Frogboy, what moron decides the budget for you guys anyway and how much say you have on it? Is it somethign that comes down to pure money, or is there something amongst the lines "this won't cost a lot of money, but we have little expierience programmign that and it might take a long time and be hard to implement." Does the developer and game designer decide any of the budget things? Liek saying "we need mroe moeny allocated for colony development because it will make this game a lot better." Or are you all running on the expectations that you will only sell x-amount of boxes regardless fo the small features of final product? I know Moo3 suffered hemerroge from the budget commitie which totally fudged up lot of the game. Most evident is the space combat. Ships appearign and dissappear for no friggin reasons is not a feature people :/ Cloak? Gimmie a break...

Astax,

The "feedback" you just posted is not very helpful to Stardock. Most of the people who post here are trying to contribute useful comments to the developers so they can improve the parts of the game that are still not fully designed. Calling the developers morons is just plain rude. Stardock is trying to build a game that is fun AND PROFITABLE. They don't owe you, or me, or anyone else anything. If you don't like the way GalCiv 2 is shaping up, then I suggest you go post on the Quiksilver/Atari site and ask them to start working on MOO 4. Good luck with that!

-PC

Ground tile specific improvement (i.e. higly rich mineral tile useful for manufacturing center), sounds an aweful lot like Ascendency, whilst the designing of your ships sounds similar to Fragile Allegiance.

I am not bashing them for using these concepts, I'm praising them. Mainly because nobody else uses them at present and its a real shame.

Im not refering to Devs as Morons... I assumed you guys have some corporate big-wig that never wrote a line of code and his geeking accountant side-kick with thick glasses calling the shots. There's nothign wrong with stereotypes. If the devs themselves set the budget well then Im sorry. I just think it would help everyone to understand the process behind this so that people won't post ideas that they know will never be put in because of the constrains behind the scenes, even thou the ideas might be pretty good. Sorry if anyone got offended. I'll edit it if youd like.

Just a question for Frogboy, what moron decides the budget for you guys anyway and how much say you have on it? Is it somethign that comes down to pure money, or is there something amongst the lines "this won't cost a lot of money, but we have little expierience programmign that and it might take a long time and be hard to implement." Does the developer and game designer decide any of the budget things? Liek saying "we need mroe moeny allocated for colony development because it will make this game a lot better." Or are you all running on the expectations that you will only sell x-amount of boxes regardless fo the small features of final product?

Well, Astax. I'm the "moron" who decides the budget.  The budget is based on over a decade of experience in designing and making PC games.

You'll note that as great as Master of Orion I/II was, the company that made it no longer exists wheras Stardock does.

We look at the type of game we want to create, look at what kinds of features we think our user base wants, and then figure out how many engineering hours each feature will take versus how much demand there would be for such a feature (along with how many total sales).

At he end of the day, the game is a product and so we have to make sure our budget doesn't exceed what we feel the game is likely to sell.

Stardock is a technology company. It is run by developers, there is no "corporate big-wig" here.

BTW, Astax, anyone who was part of the Galactic Civilizations I beta knows that we listen to people's suggestions.  The starbase concept in GalCiv was entirely from beta tester feedback.

However, we get guys who send suggestions such as "You should change this part of the game to be like how MOO had it."  Some people simply want Master of Orion remade and don't like a given feature simply because it's different.

Back in 2002/2003 the MOO "community" over from moo3.com would crap on GalCiv as much as they could until MOO 3 shipped.  Now it sometimes feels like we're getting refugees from the MOO community who would through sheer loudness try to shove their demands down everyone else's throat.

Given the # of editor's choice awards GalCiv I got and that GalCiv I seems to be shapping up to be even better, we feel confident in our own design instincts.  In addition, we're more likely to listen to GalCiv I players than people who thought GalCiv I "sux".

You'll note that as great as Master of Orion I/II was, the company that made it no longer exists wheras Stardock does.

Beware with such sayings , I am totaly on your side, Astrax completely out of the line but you can make a lot of fans angree over this.
Finansial success (or in this case survival ) does not nessesary mean the game was good or bad.

Let me simplify my question: Budget, flexible? Yes/No I assume you mean No.

Some people simply want Master of Orion remade and don't like a given feature simply because it's different

I hope you don't mean me! I have stated many a times I like some different features. In GalCiv2 I especially like the game map with planets and stars on the same layer but not interfering with eachother. I like the way you can design the look of the ship. And the graphic interface is just awsome. Zooming out to a map is also brilliant. True soem arent GalCiv-only features, but still they are different than Moo. Also influence was my favorite galciv 1 feature.

 

What I mean is that some people have literally said:

"You should put in feature X"

We ask "Why?"

They say "Because MOO had that."

and we ask "Okay, but WHY should we have that feature?"

They repeat "Because MOO had that".

We put in features that we think makes the game more fun.  But some people want features specifically because they're in MOO, not because they make the game more fun.

Beware with such sayings , I am totaly on your side, Astrax completely out of the line but you can make a lot of fans angree over this. Finansial success (or in this case survival ) does not nessesary mean the game was good or bad.

Stardock's last two games in a row won various editor's choice awards. 

My point is that I think evidence shows that we know what we're doing.

Beware with such sayings , I am totaly on your side, Astrax completely out of the line but you can make a lot of fans angree over this. Finansial success (or in this case survival ) does not nessesary mean the game was good or bad.

I think really the comment was saying that Stardock set their development budgets to make sure they don't overextend themselves. If you budget for modest success rather than great success you make a profit ans stay in business. Alot of companies break the bank gambling on huge sales, when the product doesn't sell as well as they had hoped they go bust.

Frogboy was pointing out that Stardock's policies have kept them in business when their 'rivals' haven't. Moo2 might be considered by many to be the benchmark for the genre, but its unlikely that any more Moo games will be made because Moo3 was too expensive for the company to sustain. The independent developer has to watch his step, if a title fails to break even the company can easily go under.

Astrax, if you follow independant game developers, you'll find that it is the case. Go look at Cornutopia, for instance. Same thing there, and its a whole (successful!) company of 1.

What you find is that successful independant companies stay successful by being realistic in their sales projections. For instance, Cornutopia projected they'd make $10K off its Flatspace game, and cut their development budget to be $5K in accordance. At a risk: losing that $5K and the time to make the game. Expected reward: $10K. (Flatspace did a bit better then expected, letting Cornutopia more easily fund Flatspace 2 ). If you go check up on the history of GC1, you'll find a similar story. Star Dock expected to sell about 10K worth of units of GC1. Thanks to MoO3 being the total flop it was, GC1 really sold out. But Star Dock couldn't bet on MoO3 being a failure. It couldn't bet on when MoO3 was coming out. And if MoO3 had been a smashing hit, Star Dock would have only had typical sales of the 10K units of the game. That's why Star Dock budgeted GC1's develop as they did... so they'd weren't risking the companies future on how big a hit GC1 was.

Star Dock has budgetted more for GC2, AIR. But then, they have a lot of pre-orders (so they know what their guaranteed sales are). And then there's the fan base and other elements. Star Dock expects to sale a fair bit more then 10K of units of GC2, but they still cannot afford to sink in the $10 Million that EA backed studios would spend making a MoO4, for instance. Brad wants to keep feeding his family just as much as everyone else, so he just can't go mortgage his company to sink in such large budgets into making GC2.

As I said, go check out the indie game market. You'll see its the way they all the successful companies work. They budget for small to moderate sales, and use that as their baseline for how much to invest and risk. Sometimes, they sell as expected. Sometimes, they are breakout hits. A lot of time, they fall short. But as long as they don't fall too short, the indie can cover their costs and have a bit of pocket change left over.

You want GC3 to have a bigger budget? Get all your friends to buy GC2 and pre-order GC3 when Stardock starts collecting pre-orders for it in a few years. Then GC3 will be a meatier product!

The real grandfather of the space 4x genre on the PC platform is Reach for the Stars as far as I know. Maybe MOO1 and MOO2 which appeared several years later have been good games, but they also took many design ideas from RFTS. Also back in the days of the Atari or Amiga there have been some space 4x games (dont remember the names correctly, but one I think was called imperium galactum) and they also had ideas like ship design.

I think the designers of galciv should adapt good ideas from other games of the genre freely. Its no need to re-invent the wheel if there is already one in the neighbourhood. Of course improving it if necessary is a good thing.

As one which played a lot of 4x games the last 20 years, I saw many concepts come and go. Often the (maybe too proud) designers of new games just hesitated to take good concepts of former games just to claim for THEIR game that it is new and innovative. The last example was MOO3. They tried to find a groundbreaking new approach to the genre and failed. Even their star designer Alan Emmrich was not able to turn it into a good game.

BTW: what I never understand is that the designers of space 4x games never gives ground combat the attention it deserves. Many design concepts concentrate on ships, while the ground combat has never many options. And appearantly Galciv2 is no exception in this. Its a pity.

A strong focus on ground combat would turn a 4x game into an RTS, or would require the inclusion of a separate game/tactics engine to do a turn-based ground war.

A 4x game with strong ground combat elements becomes a bit of a genre hybrid. Saying it's sad that 4x games neglect the ground is like saying it's sad that sci-fi RTS games don't have a galactic strategy component.

One very strong point in GalCiv 1 is the AI. It makes good decisions and makes the game challenging. If Stardock were to add a whole new component to the game, such as ground combat, they would have to put a great deal of effort into making the AI smart enough to react intelligently to that new part of the game. They may not be able to justify the cost of enhancing the game core to support these "nice to have" features.

I've played several 4x SF Galactic Conquest games that included complex planetary combat. Guess what? Every one of those games failed! Why? Because it took too darn long to play the game! That killed the word of mouth for those games, and they promptly failed.

Consider the scale of what you are talking about. In a Medium sized map, you could end up with 200 planetary battles (if you go with very common world settings!). Can you imagine if you had to do a TBS world conquest game per world?

If you have some way to skip the "planet tactical", that won't help. Why not? Because we all know that your brain will be able to micro-manage the utmost advantage out of that fight. So, that will force you to have to do the planet battle yourself, at least until you reach that point where you are just clicking the next turn button to reach the victory screen.

Honestly, its the same problem with providing a "tactical" layer for starship combat. If you can do a better job in that layer then the AI, then you will be forced to do it, at least until you have such an overwhelming force and production that the excessive loss from letting the Automatic resolution do it won't matter.

Be careful what you wish for. For instance, consider: On the Atari, the Star Trek themed "Galactic Wars" included a Civ style World Conquest layer. That's right... you'd jump from doing space battles into a long, TBS world conquest game that would last for 300 to 800 turns (depending on world geography). Then you'd go back to your galactic war, ordering ships and fleets and such. Think about that. Would you even remember what you were doing? Most players didn't. Needless to say, Galactic Wars did not break even (as word quickly got out about how freaking long games would take and the inclusion of the World TBS layer!). We (well, the vast majority of GC customers) don't want that.

A little complexity in world conquest layer will go a long way to taking up time in your game. But not really add any fun to it. If it doesn't add to the fun, what's the point of including it?

moved my response to planetary invasions topic, sorry posted in wrong topic prob. Basically as above poster wouldn't want it to be to detailed on ground combat as strategic and non military elements are a big part of the game. However a few tweaks to the system might be fun !

I wonder why compare these 2 games myself, maybe because they are frustrated with M003, that is why.