Sethai

seeing how much i enjoyed the gal civ three tactical battling thread, and how weird, confusing, complicated and unfun the gal civ 2 economy is generally thought to be, i thought i'd gather peoples thoughts over how they do the economy for gal civ 3 if they were starting from scratch. personally, i think the whole concept of production (for buildings and ships) is a pointless middleman. currently tracking the pennies as they move through the game's economy is a horribly arcane

i'm pretty positive. i've read a few posts where brad has spoken wistfully on the subject. he's implied for example that any gc3 would use the elemental engine. i just don't think they're in a hurry. mostly because - whatever you'd like done with gc - the game as is basically works. i think the tipping point will come when people looking for a new space 4x start looking at gc2's clunky, blocky graphics and gems-floating-in-space and say "ugh." though personally i do that already.

@ elestan. good points. regardless of whether or not we'd want such mechanics in battles, it is my experience that stardock so far tend to prefer incredibly simplified (almost suffocatingly simple) battle mechanics (elemental is another great example of this). a system with the variables you describe sounds like EVE levels of complexity (though even that doesn't have arcs of fire), but even in that game a lot of the variables you describe have optimal behaviour solutions that can be c

It should be done like in Gratuitous Space Battles. In three dimensions there is very little point to tactical battles. everyone can almost always hit everyone so long as they're in range. All we would be doing would be selecting all our ships and targetting the ship with the highest attack: defense ratio. ie, exactly what the game does now. what is needed is simply more mechanics. make it possible for small ships to outmaneuvre the big guns of big ships, bring in range and ra

PRODUCTION MUST DIE! So much newb confusion, bad economic management and bad AI comes from the existence of the production mechanic for social and military development. it is a totally superfluous level of complication. everyone ultimately (often painfully) finds out that the production slider must be at 100% for an efficient economy. this effectively makes maintenance and construction costs the same thing. the balance between building manufacturing generators and buildings that apply

[quote who="BigJKU" reply="22" id="2328243"] Sorry but any game that has fighters able to just fly with impunity around capital ships is basically making an artificial distinction. If you limit the weapons to just a handful of super-heavy weapons it would make sense but there is no logical reason why a large ship could not also carry anti-fighter weapons. All men of war built since the 1920's have had some level of anti-aircraft weaponry. It is illogical to think

i think people misunderstand me. i only meant to remove building maintenance, not ship maintenance.....?

[quote who="Scoutdog" reply="7" id="2328136"]Well, it all looks good, except for the thing about elminating mainenance: I fear that that would make the rich-get-richer problem worse by removing one of the diminishing-return factors. Mainenance costs are one of the few ways currently in existance to keep the steamroller effect in some sort of check.[/quote] I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this, but I'd like to hear you elaborate on it. As far as i can see, maintenance:pro

Mascrinthus; I have been reading your posts, and they largely inspired a lot of this topic. I like to think of it this way: What happens if you expand too quickly and your production costs you more than you can afford? You lower your production slider, of course. This is exactly what happens in my system, if you remove the idea of paying for production. The only difference is that, instead of the player stopping paying for production, they simply stop paying for ships and buildings in

One could argue that these costs are included in the cost of the colony module. Or perhaps the player may initially have to set negative taxes on some colonies to encourage growth - ie, paying people to go there. If we can stay away from absolute building maintenance, i think that is a good thing for everyone. While that might honestly be the best way of modelling it, I think it would be an unwelcome compromise, having worked otherwise arranged a maintenance-free system. Thanks for mentioning

[quote who="BigJKU" reply="16" id="2325245"] The problem with giving fighters an inherent advantage over smaller craft is that it is something that is totally artificial. If a medium hulled ship can carry anti-figther weapons then so could a large ship. It may not be the most efficient way to do things but it could be done if one felt so compelled.[/quote] I don't intend these advantages to be artificial. If you've ever played EVE online you'll know that a sm

This is a continuation of the analysis I started in my previous post. In this topic I'm going to talk about more fundamental areas of the game. Like I said before, I believe that GC2 is one of the best strategy games ever made, but it has some fundamental problems that prevent it from satisfying it's players or from reaching out to new players. The two biggest problems I see in these area

Thanks Mascrinthus! The answer to your question is simple: If this is to be a truly great game, we should have both. I've read the topic you've linked with great interest and it has greatly influences my next topic, in which I have outlined my favourite way of modelling the economy. I'm about to post part two right now!

BigJKU, you have touched upon fleets on a level I had not considered. Currently, I definately find that it is far too easy to outwit the AI with a massed focused assualt on a planet, especially if you time your naval assault for the same turn as launching your ground invasion, and if logistics limits were higher this would be even easier. The AI does not seem to understand the doctrine of fighting concentrated a

agh, wrong topic.

I believe a compromise art style can be found to suit most people and keep the same level of customization. I had not realised that bout the OFM; i assumed it was just for that one world. The one final comment I will make is that the AI needs to be better at designing ship visually as well; it doesn't matter how much effort you put into your own if you're still going to end up facing monstosities like that thalan frigate in the OP.

Image fixed. Most people seam to agree with me about the art stuff, or are at least ambivalent. Some general statements about fleet combat: It's obvious that the current system is too crude. Some new dynaimcs need to be introduced both for visual reasons and to add an additional level of strategy, beyond the current attack % defense rock/paper/scissors. I would suggest that this extra dynamic be concerned with fleet composition, and make make certain types of ships better against each

Having read your post (and many other on the same topic from that thread) i have come to a few conclusions. The religious adherence to the current all encompassing dice rolling has got to go if any depth is to be added to fleet combat. The current system can remain for calculating damage, but a separate aiming mechanic MUST be added at the least. I would model fleet battles in the following way. Add four new mechanics: initiative, aiming, drones & experience. This adds mor

i don't really get why races have to be replaced; i can create a custom race with a custom tech tree whenever i like without overriding anyone, so how come imod can't? surely the only difference is that their races will have new images and new components for ships?

everything. this game is great, but there's so much more to get in. space is a big place full of interesting stuff personally, i'd like to make the game a little smaller in scale - fewer planets but more interesting and more to do with them. when you think of all the different kinds of stuff there could be out there - habitable moons, binary star systems, binary planets, rogue planets, volcanic planets, planets in solar syncronous orbits - and all the cool scenarios sci fi writers hav

Some broad statements first. GC2 is a great game. One of the best strategy games ever made. But I believe there is still massive room for improvement. It has won numerous awards and rave reviews, but in terms of sales it's no Halo 3, or even Sins of A Solar Empire. Not only do I want it's successor to be a better game, I also want it to get the sales it deser

Seems kinda stupid, but is there a site where users upload and share user content, with a list of all content, or is everything all over the shop and just linked to from this forum? I'm not really into the total conversions or anything, i just want more content people have created for the game. Eg, custom races and tech trees. Or even just a set of new race pictures and logos. Most of the non-major civilization ones are really naff.

I love the idea of a game that keeps thing interesting and presents new challenges to you once you achieve the critical mass necessary to win the game. However, so many of the mega events just feel so arbitrary, illogical and game breaking. I think this is stardock's biggest (but probably only) problem as a developer; they don't understand how important immersion is to players. The Political Machine has the same problem, where players can take totally contradictory stances on very simil

In some ways the espionage system is really quite good. It could have been absolutely awful and have a random chance f success like in the Total War games. The agents cancelling each other out is very simple, and they are easier to manage. However, the logic used for the costing is just mind boggling. There's no way anyone's economy grows at the rate needed to recruit new agents. It's not just the way the cost increases though; they're just too damn expensive overall. Most of t

Wrong game, but I remember one of the Neverwinter Night 2 devs being shocked when his character was beaten to death by a door. They are set to faction hostile you see, and somehow this one had acquired special abilities.