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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:Eh, sort of. There are tons of automation options in the game but about half of them are completely busted and unusable, and they are hidden in like 3 different menus and half the time your military ships will just ignore them anyway. Your civilian sector of course always handles itself anyway which helps a lot since that's where a large portion of your income comes from. This is exactly why I stopped playing Distant Worlds. The mechanics are cool, and the fact that the economy largely runs itself once you've set it up is fine. The civilian part of the game works and is satisfying, for the most part. It's just that military management is flat-out broken and attempting to do anything at all with your fleets is an exercise in frustration. I just want to be able to tell my ships to pick up X troops and invade planet Y without having to fiddle with fifteen different automation sliders. Instead, if you want them to do something useful you just kind of have to hope that all of the variables are exactly right and in that case they might pull of a successful invasion fifteen years later, if they feel like it. Instead of helping you cope with the enormous scale of the game, it just makes you feel powerless.
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Jul 30, 2015 20:01
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Yeah, you know your game design has problems when you have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to work around the game's automation features. Invasion fleets usually weren't too bad though, just keep your troop transports in a seperate fleet, queue up to load troops from a planet, send your offensive fleets in to attack first, then send your troop fleets in and queue up to drop the troops onto the planet. Certainly not nearly as bad as trying to deal with the constant pirate raiders attacking your one god drat system you don't have a fleet at currently (which leads to PittTheElder's suggestion of making every mine into a fortress).
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Jul 30, 2015 20:13
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:I also think it's the best space 4x in a very, very long time. Which is as telling of how bad the genre is as much as how good Distant Worlds is Me and Beamed had this conversation the other day about how much we love Space Empires IV, despite the fact that it is a bad no good terrible lovely game.  All I want is for a space opera game that lets me do cool space opera poo poo. Like, you know, build ringworlds, abandon planetary life and become space nomads, blow up stars, shoot planets into other planets...
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Jul 30, 2015 21:06
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Anyone try Colonial Conquest? Looks like a simpler, turn based Victoria. Any good?
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Jul 30, 2015 21:17
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Autonomous Monster posted:Me and Beamed had this conversation the other day about how much we love Space Empires IV, despite the fact that it is a bad no good terrible lovely game. Yeah, SE4 suffered from most of the classic Space 4x issues, but it had a lot of fun stuff in it as well. It's hard for me to play it at this point though, it was clunky and ugly when it came out and it's aged even worse. I was always a fan of Stars! back in the day. It had multiplayer very much like Dominions, and design-a-race with unique playstyle options. Plus to this day it still has my favorite mine-field mechanics of any space 4x, giving you actual area-of-denial options, which were fun when they interacted with races like Hyper Expanders.
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Jul 30, 2015 21:27
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Autonomous Monster posted:Me and Beamed had this conversation the other day about how much we love Space Empires IV, despite the fact that it is a bad no good terrible lovely game. 
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Jul 30, 2015 21:34
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I just want EU but with the freedom to make whatever game mechanics cause it's not rooted in history.
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Jul 30, 2015 21:38
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My guess for the new IP: A war and faction focused game in the Classical Antiquity. Instead of a state (Europa Universalis) or a single (ruling) character/family you will manage the fortunes of your faction, with a deep focus on combat/troop management (deeper than EU4 or CK2).
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Jul 30, 2015 21:38
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Bort Bortles posted:A game that is not built around fighting and winning a domination victory. I could write paragraphs but I think it really comes down to the classic MoO2 nostalgia. I want to feel like I am exploring a galaxy again. Too many games have a beginning exploration period but there are a limited number of places to explore and you eventually explore the whole galaxy - I want to be exploring the whole game (I know you eventually did explore the whole galaxy in MoO2 but sometimes it could take a while). Myself, I prefer a sort of "mid period" game, where the world is fully explored, mostly colonised and a rough international community, but nobody's managed to roll up into a dominant/hegemonic superpower yet. All too often, in 4X games especially, I feel like the game never actually reaches that stage. Either the early game land rush fails to produce a scenario that's even or varied enough or it just fails to get that far enough, and you're stuck in perpetual exploration mode. I guess that's why I like Paradox's games so much; you start out in that mid period. But I guess my perfect space opera game is one that can be configured to play out any sort of space opera narrative? Exploration and colonisation games if that's your bag, galactic great power politics, Fading Suns-style internecine conflict in the collapse of a great empire, etc. Can you make a game out of the "elder race" experience? Skulking around the edges of known space with your hypertechnology, manipulating the neonate races as they poke through your ruins...
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Jul 30, 2015 21:52
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I would love a space empires game that skips the expansion phase. The prospect of doing that over and over again really puts me off them.
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Jul 30, 2015 21:56
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What I really want them to do is Victoria 3. but since it's a new IP, I'm hoping for Victoria 3 in space. That would be ideal.
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Jul 30, 2015 22:06
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I never want to play another space empires game again where every single faction starts with exactly one planet, one colony ship, and one fighter.
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Jul 30, 2015 22:13
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Autonomous Monster posted:Myself, I prefer a sort of "mid period" game, where the world is fully explored, mostly colonised and a rough international community, but nobody's managed to roll up into a dominant/hegemonic superpower yet. All too often, in 4X games especially, I feel like the game never actually reaches that stage. Either the early game land rush fails to produce a scenario that's even or varied enough or it just fails to get that far enough, and you're stuck in perpetual exploration mode. I guess that's why I like Paradox's games so much; you start out in that mid period. Well, the first 50 turns of a civ game is full of intense, very meaningful decisions. The thing is, it's very hard to make a game where you can gain a huge advantage by making good decisions in the opening also have a multipolar world after the opening phase because of said impact. That and the fact that the first 50 turns are the most playtested part of a game is why every 4x i've ever played including the ones I love sputter out as the mid and end game come up.
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Jul 30, 2015 22:17
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telcontar posted:I never want to play another space empires game again where every single faction starts with exactly one planet, one colony ship, and one fighter. This holy gently caress. I think one of the reasons that people say that they would like to see Paradox make a space grand strategy game is that if it was anything like any of their other games there would be asymmetrical starting positions with the interesting "majors and minors" type choices you get with EU nations. One of the things I like least about Civ is that everyone starts off with their one city; sure, your starting terrain matters a lot, but it's hardly the same as choosing between France and Luxembourg (and more to the point in civ games your start position is totally random). Basically I want to be nibbling chunks off of a decaying ancient space empire or something that sounds fun.
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Jul 30, 2015 22:21
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RabidWeasel posted:This holy gently caress. I think one of the reasons that people say that they would like to see Paradox make a space grand strategy game is that if it was anything like any of their other games there would be asymmetrical starting positions with the interesting "majors and minors" type choices you get with EU nations. One of the things I like least about Civ is that everyone starts off with their one city; sure, your starting terrain matters a lot, but it's hardly the same as choosing between France and Luxembourg (and more to the point in civ games your start position is totally random). Honestly, I don't mind random start positions- it'd be cool if part of being a civ was how much of the random map you started with- Venice is an OPM, while Russia has a huge, poorly developed territory. Colonial powers would have little bits on other landmasses. It'd be an awesome way to differentiate factions.
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Jul 30, 2015 22:23
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Yeah I love this idea that people don't have to start in perfectly balanced situations. A game is an experience, it doesn't have to be a perfectly "fair" competition with perfect symmetry like chess. I play these games for the narrative that develops as I play. Play england and see if you can out-do their empire building. See if you can reform and save China. Try to survive as a new-world culture. None of those countries start out anything remotely "balanced" to each other because there's no intention of it. I'd love a space game with a bunch of radically different starts and start options. Maybe a core of human space with a bunch of squabbling human nations and outside that insane and barely comprehensible aliens. Everyone has different mechanics and challenges. The generic human nation may simply want to expand and become more rich and powerful, or unite humanity, or colonize/expand their corner of space, or what ever. Perhaps there's some ancient powerful civilization but they're paralyzed with decadence or corruption. Or some great power that simply has nothing to gain from conquering a bunch of primitive humans because it wouldn't be worth the effort and they have bigger problems to deal with. A 4X space game with the same design and balance philosophy as EU4 would be amazing. Specially if they gave us lots of random starting options. Maybe you want to play in a universe with no aliens, just dozens or hundreds of human empires. Or maybe you want that classic more or less balanced start. Hell I'd go nuts just starting in an empty galaxy with Earth. Colonizing the solar system, expanding from there, exploring cool poo poo, trying to keep my empire unified but ultimately seeing my far flung colonies become independent. Or start in a crowded developed universe where every worth while system is settled by someone ranging from independent settlers or pirates to vast empires and everything in between.
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Jul 30, 2015 22:35
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Before anyone gets too excited about it being East vs. West rebooted, keep in mind that project Augustus was announced around the same time as the original east vs. west. It would be extremely strange for Paradox to help develop and publish a cold war game, and then immediately release their own version that would be in direct competition with it. A cold war game won't be happening for a long while still.
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Jul 30, 2015 22:36
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Extremely strange, or completely according to plan? 
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Jul 30, 2015 22:46
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VerdantSquire posted:Before anyone gets too excited about it being East vs. West rebooted, keep in mind that project Augustus was announced around the same time as the original east vs. west. It would be extremely strange for Paradox to help develop and publish a cold war game, and then immediately release their own version that would be in direct competition with it. A cold war game won't be happening for a long while still. In an East vs. West game elections would not be that important. On the one side the election ballot only had one choice and if you didn't mark it correctly you might have ended up in Lubyanka, while on the other side the difference was often only marginal and didn't necessarily follow party lines (think Nixon and Reagan for the two extremes in one party).
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Jul 30, 2015 22:47
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Autonomous Monster posted:Me and Beamed had this conversation the other day about how much we love Space Empires IV, despite the fact that it is a bad no good terrible lovely game. I actually love Space Empires IV and play it every now and then, including this past weekend. It has an awful interface and game design straight out of the 90s, but it scratches my space 4X itch in a way most games just don't, and allows enough customization in game setup to make different games unique enough for replayability.
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Jul 30, 2015 22:51
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VerdantSquire posted:Before anyone gets too excited about it being East vs. West rebooted, keep in mind that project Augustus was announced around the same time as the original east vs. west. It would be extremely strange for Paradox to help develop and publish a cold war game, and then immediately release their own version that would be in direct competition with it. A cold war game won't be happening for a long while still.
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Jul 30, 2015 22:53
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I love Space Empires IV. I think it's my favorite space 4X. (SMAC is my favorite game of all time, but it's really just Civ II on another planet rather than a true "space game".)Bob Ojeda posted:What I really want them to do is Victoria 3. but since it's a new IP, I'm hoping for Victoria 3 in space. Sign me up for this. A space game where you're thrown into an already developed system rather than one where everyone is just starting out. Yes. 
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Jul 30, 2015 22:53
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telcontar posted:I never want to play another space empires game again where every single faction starts with exactly one planet, one colony ship, and one fighter.
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Jul 30, 2015 22:55
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I guess what I want to know is if this game is a close relative of the current PDX 'family' of IPs in terms of the common design features, or whether it represents another attempt by the studio to spread its wings into something a bit different.
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Jul 30, 2015 22:58
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About a month ago, Paradox filed a trademark for a piece of "computer game software" called Stellaris. I've been down this road before, and it's almost never what you think it is, but still, 
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Jul 30, 2015 23:03
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Pakled posted:About a month ago, Paradox filed a trademark for a piece of "computer game software" called Stellaris. Sounds to me like a space game, maybe even 4X!
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Jul 30, 2015 23:05
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Pakled posted:About a month ago, Paradox filed a trademark for a piece of "computer game software" called Stellaris. A month ago is way too late to be registering a name for a game that been in development for ages. e: but if it is the millionth moo2 clone then I hope to god the first bit of actual pr is an account of what makes it different and unique to all the others Alchenar fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Jul 30, 2015 |
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Jul 30, 2015 23:09
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Blizzard tends to file their trademarks a week before announcement. It's not unheard of.
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Jul 30, 2015 23:15
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Stellaris is latin/italian derived therefore its a Rome game. Alternately Marvel is getting incredibly aggressive about getting bit characters into media and Paradox is branching out into branded video games.
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Jul 30, 2015 23:17
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Alchenar posted:A month ago is way too late to be registering a name for a game that been in development for ages. Not really. There's no compelling need to have the name of the title picked, you can always Ctrl-H that poo poo in the code later. Pakled posted:About a month ago, Paradox filed a trademark for a piece of "computer game software" called Stellaris. Too late, I already got hyped.
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Jul 30, 2015 23:22
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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It's not that uncommon for games that have been in development with a project name to get their trademark filed pretty late on in the game cycle, it prevents people from finding out and starting wild speculation, such as with most MMO expansions and what have you.
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Jul 30, 2015 23:45
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Pakled posted:About a month ago, Paradox filed a trademark for a piece of "computer game software" called Stellaris. So, I'm guessing there's like a 60% chance that all the Paradox devs reading the thread just visibly winced.  (And a decent chance it has nothing to do with 'Augustus')
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Jul 30, 2015 23:59
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Pakled posted:About a month ago, Paradox filed a trademark for a piece of "computer game software" called Stellaris. oh god I'm already hyped I'm going to be disappointed, aren't I?
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Jul 31, 2015 00:18
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Phlegmish posted:This is exactly why I stopped playing Distant Worlds. The mechanics are cool, and the fact that the economy largely runs itself once you've set it up is fine. The civilian part of the game works and is satisfying, for the most part. It's just that military management is flat-out broken and attempting to do anything at all with your fleets is an exercise in frustration. I just want to be able to tell my ships to pick up X troops and invade planet Y without having to fiddle with fifteen different automation sliders. Instead, if you want them to do something useful you just kind of have to hope that all of the variables are exactly right and in that case they might pull of a successful invasion fifteen years later, if they feel like it. Instead of helping you cope with the enormous scale of the game, it just makes you feel powerless. This is similar to my issues with Distant Worlds as well. I love it conceptually, but in practice it just gets kind of annoying to play. It's really unclear how important the various resources in the game are and how much of them you need, your military and fleets can theoretically be given automation orders about range and stance but they never seem to actually follow them, and overall it just seems like it's got a lot of complexity without actually being that deep. That said, I DO like the idea of it, especially the whole private sector aspect; I'd love to see that expanded to Victoria style POPs, which would create a more natural supply and demand for each planet that traders can respond to. On top of that, Star Ruler 2 has a great fleet system for military control - fleets are based around a central capital ship which is supported by a bunch of smaller defense ships. All orders are given to the capital ship so combat is less about micromanaging individual ships and more about just ordering fleets around and letting them handle the details. Defense ships aren't even built manually - you just set a target number of each type for your fleet and they'll be supplied by the nearest friendly system, based on that system's capacity to build them. Actually Star Ruler 2 does a lot of interesting things and is worth checking out if you're into space 4X games. It's not as huge in scale as Distant Worlds and is fairly game-y in some regards (every planet only produces a single resource, for instance), but nearly every system in the game is a fresh take on 4X tropes and they all work really well. Anyway long story short, a space 4X with Vicky's POPs and Star Ruler 2's fleet management would be great.
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Jul 31, 2015 00:34
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:I also think it's the best space 4x in a very, very long time. Which is as telling of how bad the genre is as much as how good Distant Worlds is Hahaha fair enough Autonomous Monster posted:Me and Beamed had this conversation the other day about how much we love Space Empires IV, despite the fact that it is a bad no good terrible lovely game. I always preferred SEV because it lets you do some of that poo poo, whilst Star Ruler covers some of the rest. But I 100% agree that space 4X games really really do need to start being about insane futuristic poo poo if we're ever going to see the genre move forwards. Why can't I be the Borg, and have a huge internal conflict about whether we're a single hive-mind or a connected association of a trillion souls or what, or genetically engineer myself into being a Tyranid swarm that eats planets down to the bedrock? Why can't I make myself into a Hegemonizing Swarm, move into a system, eat every ship and asteroid, and move on to two new systems with all the new drones I made? Why can't I pursue research into nano-, pico-, and femto-technology until "Design a spaceship" turns into "Design a new element"? Then I can just build Elerium-115 engines and get my poo poo kicked in by Guile. Why can't I create portals to alternate dimensions, either to give every human being their own personal universe or to find some similar world to our own to recruit from? And why don't my ships and systems ever start out looking like grubby 21st century poo poo and graphically change over time into Crystal Wise Fucker Spires And Togas or Future Elf Hippies or Cybernetic Nightmare depending on choices I make? The genre should stop looking to semi-realistic visions of the future and start thinking Lensman is a good starting point. If you can put your idea into an existing game mechanic in an existing game, throw in it the trash! i bet i could make an amazing space 4x but it would be so autistic that toady/steve walmsley would say "whoa hold up there son that's a bit much" e; that reminds me, it was easy enough to mod Space Empires V so I made every tech have 100 levels instead of 10, and changed the growth of research so that instead of being a flat +50 per facility per level or whatever, it was +10x([tech level][tech level]) which led to some hilarious and amazing exponential growth. Ms Adequate fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Jul 31, 2015 |
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Jul 31, 2015 00:35
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Pakled posted:About a month ago, Paradox filed a trademark for a piece of "computer game software" called Stellaris. You've been down this road before, now you're coming back for more? Project Augustus confirmed to be about guiding an alternative rock band from Ireland to success during the 1990s.
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Jul 31, 2015 00:59
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Bort Bortles posted:Yeah my post above did not directly touch on this - in my rambling I did not say that I would not care if I started out in an EU style scenario, where there are already pre-existing countries and what-not, because that would be awesome. Then, just like in EU, I could pick a country on the edge of the map and gently caress off into an arm of the galaxy and ignore the existing empires. Or start in the middle and be Prussia-in-space Goose-formationing my way to victory. I would loving love it. Distant Worlds let you do exactly this. Hopefully some DW2 news comes out soon.
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Jul 31, 2015 01:05
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Emperor of the Fading Suns reboot. Released in 1997, sold three copies, and I've forgotten what the other clues are but they all fit too
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Jul 31, 2015 01:16
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Defeatist Elitist posted:You've been down this road before, now you're coming back for more? There was some old DOS game exactly this and all I remember from it was the hilarious random event generator would sometimes break and you'd have to deal with your grandmother trying to sell you PCP.
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Jul 31, 2015 02:46
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Bob Ojeda posted:What I really want them to do is Victoria 3. but since it's a new IP, I'm hoping for Victoria 3 in space. "Victoria 3 in space" is something I didn't realize I desperately wanted until just now.
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