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Mans posted:they went really into detail about how the Liir, giant space whales, socialize and reproduce. If anyone is looking for a good laugh, look up the old SOTS2 thread for the compilation of the best patch notes/bug list I've ever seen. So many divide by zero errors...
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Aug 4, 2015 15:39
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Mans posted:meanwhile in SOTS 2 a meteor shower could panic your fleet and make them surrender to the meteors The best part was that the meteors could capture your admiral.
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Aug 4, 2015 15:49
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The races in SotS1 work well because they actually have unique, meaningful gameplay differences, instead of just racial bonuses and superficial balance tweaks like some space 4x games. Unfortunately much of the rest of SotS1 doesn't work so well.gradenko_2000 posted:That's why Alpha Centauri is so fondly remembered. It's really a heavily reskinned Civ 2, but it just oozes style and lore such that it doesn't feel like a reskin. On the other hand, SMAC is exactly the kind of game he's describing there. The AI is completely worthless and the gameplay mechanics are a completely broken mess of micromanagement and poo poo you can horribly abuse. The flavor of the game is fantastic, but actually trying to play the game at more than a superficial level is pretty awful.
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Aug 4, 2015 15:52
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:The races in SotS1 work well because they actually have unique, meaningful gameplay differences, instead of just racial bonuses and superficial balance tweaks like some space 4x games. Unfortunately much of the rest of SotS1 doesn't work so well. That's one of the things that's great about Endless Legends. The faction you play totally changes how you play the game and the factions can all interact in satisfying ways.
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Aug 4, 2015 16:03
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Every time I say there's no fun space 4X games someone always slides in to talk about the lore in SMAC or SotS1. Saying flavor and lore and stuff makes up for a game itself not being fun is like saying it's OK to leave the sugar out of cookies as long as there's some sprinkles.
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Aug 4, 2015 16:06
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Larry Parrish posted:Every time I say there's no fun space 4X games someone always slides in to talk about the lore in SMAC or SotS1. Saying flavor and lore and stuff makes up for a game itself not being fun is like saying it's OK to leave the sugar out of cookies as long as there's some sprinkles. Yes but this is an actual thing that happens in SOTS1 
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Aug 4, 2015 16:08
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Munin posted:That's one of the things that's great about Endless Legends. The faction you play totally changes how you play the game and the factions can all interact in satisfying ways. Yeah Endless Legend is a pretty solid game, definitely one of the better 4x games in general in recent years. It manages to have a lot of flavor and decent gameplay, which is an extremely rare occurrence in the genre. The AI is a bit weak though, but it is a game designed around multiplayer so I can forgive it a fair bit for that. Not sure if they ever fixed the weird AI issues where it would just stop doing anything around 100 turns or so. Lum_ posted:Yes but this is an actual thing that happens in SOTS1 Which is really funny, but shouldn't convince someone to actually play that game. Gwyrgyn Blood fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Aug 4, 2015 |
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Aug 4, 2015 16:17
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It's more the fact that each faction is totally different in how they move around the map, which is a large part of what defines them on the strategic layer of the game. Terrans have their node drive, Tarkas have a hyperdrive, The Hive race just slowboats to the next star and sets up a teleporter etc etc. There's uniqueness there that you just don't see in other games.
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Aug 4, 2015 16:20
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Drone posted:Project Augustus is really just the project name for HOI4's first expansion pack, Mare Nostrum. In a cunning PR move, the expansion will be released before the full game
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Aug 4, 2015 16:33
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So I take it Endless Legend is actually good? Even though it's made by the guys who made Endless Space?Larry Parrish posted:Every time I say there's no fun space 4X games someone always slides in to talk about the lore in SMAC or SotS1. Saying flavor and lore and stuff makes up for a game itself not being fun is like saying it's OK to leave the sugar out of cookies as long as there's some sprinkles. Just drop it man, there's a huge gap between "I don't think game is fun" and "game is not fun, period".
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Aug 4, 2015 17:03
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GrossMurpel posted:So I take it Endless Legend is actually good? Even though it's made by the guys who made Endless Space? It's really good.
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Aug 4, 2015 17:04
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:On the other hand, SMAC is exactly the kind of game he's describing there. The AI is completely worthless and the gameplay mechanics are a completely broken mess of micromanagement and poo poo you can horribly abuse. The flavor of the game is fantastic, but actually trying to play the game at more than a superficial level is pretty awful. The SMAC AI is weird as hell. Some of the AIs tend to play well, typically the ones that can just spam units the hardest: The Hive, the Aliens, even the Gaians. And if one of them started in the extra food jungle they'd just run away with things which was nice. Then sometimes they'd just get trapped by a single Spore Launcher and do nothing all game. But by the time you crank the game up to Transcend, it's at least kinda challenging, which makes all the lore that much more enjoyable. A decade or more later, I think one of the biggest weaknesses is the narrowing of the tech tree. The bottom end allows for loads of choices and options, but by the end you're always chasing the same techs as everyone else, every game. Conversely I really liked say, Distant World's tech tree, where you just aren't supposed to climb all of it (mostly in the weapon techs I guess).
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Aug 4, 2015 17:05
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Yes, it's like a lava lamp.
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I think your ability to enjoy playing SotS1 pretty much boils down to your ability to somehow find the combat system in that game fun, since that's most of what there actually is to do in the game. I think it's pretty much just the absolutely worst thing imaginable which is why I really can't enjoy playing the game. Similarly with SMAC, your ability to actually like the gameplay in that pretty much boils down to how much fun you think ICS and micromanagement are. I can see why some people might like that, but it's not for me.
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Aug 4, 2015 17:18
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Larry Parrish posted:Every time I say there's no fun space 4X games someone always slides in to talk about the lore in SMAC or SotS1. Saying flavor and lore and stuff makes up for a game itself not being fun is like saying it's OK to leave the sugar out of cookies as long as there's some sprinkles. SotS1 is a straight out a great game. The lore is great and the integration of the lore into the mechanics is nearly unmatched. But the game itself is good. It abstracts away a lot of the tedium of 4X and focuses on the battles and once you get the battles it becomes something special. There's a very neat arms race of weapons and counters and the random tech tree means you sometimes have to scrap together a solution by the seat of your pants but their are enough tools to do so. Enemy is going heavy on heavy beams? Use disruptor shields, which protects you during the head on portion of combat where their most deadly but lowers the number of weapons you can carry, lowers your turn speed so your flanks are vulnerable, and does nothing against non-energy beams. Or load up on mass weapons, heavy beams have a small firing arc and require the ship to align to you, mass weapons will knock them around and cause them to miss or not be able to get on target. Or go for ships that outrange them. Or use smaller ships with heavy weapons and swarm them. And all counters have their own counters and costs. The strategic level is simple but the economic/colonization section gets the job done and theirs a certain amount of cleverness in strategic warfare. It's too bad all the abstraction and focus turned out to be a product of constraint and once they had some resources with SotS2 they strapped on a unplayable mess of a strategic layer to a still good battle system.
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Aug 4, 2015 17:41
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Mr Luxury Yacht posted:If anyone is looking for a good laugh, look up the old SOTS2 thread for the compilation of the best patch notes/bug list I've ever seen. Do you have the post handy?
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Aug 4, 2015 17:42
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Phlegmish posted:Do you have the post handy? http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3521006
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Aug 4, 2015 17:44
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I really didn't like SotS1, the economy and colonization were boring and the combat was just a drawn out rock-paper-scissors thing you had to sit through  Out of all 4X games I liked moo2's combat best. Your ship design actually mattered, weapon facing and movement mattered. The balance was a bit off, but otherwise solid.
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Aug 4, 2015 18:14
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Honestly speaking, if it is a space game, I'd be more than content with a reskinned EU4, set in space, with a galactic map instead of a world map. EU4 has parliaments and elections and things now (as was teased by Paradox a week ago), and your leader is pretty important as well. I could imagine a space opera game based heavily on EU4, with more of a SMAC-like/CK2-like dependency on your faction's leader for various realm-wide bonuses and penalties.
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Aug 4, 2015 18:20
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Gwyrgyn Blood posted:I think your ability to enjoy playing SotS1 pretty much boils down to your ability to somehow find the combat system in that game fun, since that's most of what there actually is to do in the game. I think it's pretty much just the absolutely worst thing imaginable which is why I really can't enjoy playing the game. Well, yeah, SotS1 is a slimmed down 4x game with a clear focus on combat. If you dislike the combat, then obviously the game won't be fun for you. I have gotten a couple of hundred hours out of SotS1, mostly multiplayer, which is far, far more than any 4X released after it. It just works and the races play differently enough from each other that it doesn't samey after a play through or two.
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Aug 4, 2015 18:20
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DrSunshine posted:Honestly speaking, if it is a space game, I'd be more than content with a reskinned EU4, set in space, with a galactic map instead of a world map. EU4 has parliaments and elections and things now (as was teased by Paradox a week ago), and your leader is pretty important as well. I could imagine a space opera game based heavily on EU4, with more of a SMAC-like/CK2-like dependency on your faction's leader for various realm-wide bonuses and penalties. The big question for PDX has always been 'once they get bored/run out of ideas iterating the historical games, what can they do when they strike out with a blank slate?'
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Aug 4, 2015 18:28
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Lum_ posted:guys i hate to break up the Toussaint L'Ouverture fanfic but I'm pretty sure Paradox's next big IP is not going to be Haiti Universalis Haiti, Sixth Rome
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Aug 4, 2015 18:30
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Alchenar posted:The big question for PDX has always been 'once they get bored/run out of ideas iterating the historical games, what can they do when they strike out with a blank slate?'
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Aug 4, 2015 18:40
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DrSunshine posted:Honestly speaking, if it is a space game, I'd be more than content with a reskinned EU4, set in space, with a galactic map instead of a world map. EU4 has parliaments and elections and things now (as was teased by Paradox a week ago), and your leader is pretty important as well. I could imagine a space opera game based heavily on EU4, with more of a SMAC-like/CK2-like dependency on your faction's leader for various realm-wide bonuses and penalties. I want this to most. I find 4X to be pretty boring and lifeless, a lot of fluff of how everyone interacts with everyone but really it's just basically turn based game of any other strategy game. There's more, but how different are Starcraft and 4Xs from each other? Still the same flow of things. But a world, with areas and actual stuff in it that isn't just your growing numbers? That'd be nice! You can keep the fleet combat in there, too. That'd be pretty sweet.
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Aug 4, 2015 18:41
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gradenko_2000 posted:That's why Alpha Centauri is so fondly remembered. It's really a heavily reskinned Civ 2, but it just oozes style and lore such that it doesn't feel like a reskin. Gwyrgyn Blood posted:On the other hand, SMAC is exactly the kind of game he's describing there. The AI is completely worthless and the gameplay mechanics are a completely broken mess of micromanagement and poo poo you can horribly abuse. The flavor of the game is fantastic, but actually trying to play the game at more than a superficial level is pretty awful. When SMAC came out it was a fairly significant refining of the Civ gameplay formula; it was the first game with really meaningful differences between factions (some of these were a lot more significant that they look, due to how the social engineering worked) and it had some significant improvements to other areas due to the setting meaning that 'realism' (I use the term loosely given spearman-beats-tank is a thing) could be ignored a lot of the time. Objectively it's a sucky game now compared to modern offerings but it's still fun to play if you just ignore the most broken stuff like supply crawler abuse and mega ICS. And it's still one of the most stylish strategy games that I've ever played.
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Aug 4, 2015 18:45
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I'm sure SMAC was groundbreakingly revolutionary for the time, but honestly each time I've tried to play it - as someone who's first Civ was Civ 3 - I just couldn't get into it. The quotes and videos are pretty neat though.
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Aug 4, 2015 18:58
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You know, thinking about it? Maybe the reason there are so few good space 4X games is because of spaceships. I mean, don't get me wrong, spaceships are cool! Giant capital ships hurtling across the stars, fighters zipping between the void in duels of light and death, Ascendancy-class battleships trading broadsides with Galaxy-class battlecruisers while Outstanding Contribution to the Historical Process-class destroyers go on suicidal torpedo runs, it's all good, and it's all very cinematic. But there's the problem - cinematic. Civilization can get away with generic historical archetypes mashing into each other, but spaceship combat seems to demand more spectacle and more involvement. If you have spaceships you really need to be able to design spaceships, too, because that's what Master of Orion did and designing your own spaceship and your own glorious/funny ship names seems almost integral to the idea of commanding a space fleet. And if you need to design spaceships, you'd obviously want some kind of tactical combat system of at least some depth and balance so that the spaceship designs aren't just pointless wankery. Then you'd want a tech system that ties into the tactical combat directly, too, so that you're not just using the exact same design for the entire game more or less, and then you'd need to go and balance that as well to accommodate every crazy design idea the players might come up with. And once you've got all that you need at least a minimum of graphical coolness, because what's the point of mounting a giant death laser if it looks, sounds, and feels like an unusually lethal ping-pong ball? And once you're done with all that, you'll find out that you've just devoted something like half your schedule and budget to the tactical combat system, and you're not sure how much you have left for the strategic layer. Which is fine if you go balls-deep on the tactical combat and use the strategic layer almost solely to support the tactical combat, but if you have pretensions to anything more than that you end up overstretched somewhere or other and unable to do your vision justice. So if you want to make a good space 4X, it seems like there might be two options. One is to go the Sword of the Stars route and throw everything into spaceship design and battle and make for a game of glorious space combat. But the other, less charted route is to eschew detailed spaceship design and combat entirely in favor of a deeper strategic layer. Take a risk and hope that you can improve the rest of the game enough that you'll be forgiven for a lack of spectacle. Focus on space politics, or space diplomacy, or space economics, or even space logistics and grand warfare while the actual spaceships blowing each other up get abstracted into a dice roll with modifiers. Much, in other words, like the way Paradox tends to handle combat.
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Aug 4, 2015 19:10
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I would love to see Paradox make a EU IV like game based in the Battletech universe. There is a lot of interesting things that might cross over fairly well, especially differences in culture/religion/government. It even has a horde(clan) mechanic that might be interesting too! It might work out ok as a CK II kind of game as well. The Battletech universe tends to have a pretty limited amount of spaceships, and tends to focus mainly on ground based warfare, which might lend itself well to the already developed models of interaction that Paradox has.
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Aug 4, 2015 19:23
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Tomn posted:Spaceships
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Aug 4, 2015 19:25
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For me, I need factions in these games to have personality to care about why I'm expanding. When it's CK, EU, etc, it's not hard to buy into them because they are historical nations and the idea of Prussia or the Caliph or the Soviet Union accomplishing things they didn't historically is compelling. Imagining a Muslim France or whatever is interesting because we are familiar with how history actually went down and how a deviation could change its course. That's built in to an extent and everything Paradox does is to enhance that built in narrative. I wonder if Paradox could pull off a similar game with fictional factions when there is no built in narrative. Do you care as much when the X Republic conquers Burgo IV as you do when the Pope colonizes Brazil?
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Aug 4, 2015 19:31
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Yeah, a large reason I care about Paradox games is the historical setting. Really hope they can make a compelling setting if it's a space game.
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Aug 4, 2015 19:41
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SickZip posted:SotS1 is a straight out a great game. The lore is great and the integration of the lore into the mechanics is nearly unmatched. But the game itself is good. It abstracts away a lot of the tedium of 4X and focuses on the battles and once you get the battles it becomes something special. Or you can just put a bunch of biological weapons into stealth cruisers and send them on suicidal runs 
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Aug 4, 2015 19:42
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Get ready to have your mind blown: Space straits. Let me tell you in excruciating detail how the Alpha Centauri wormhole cluster had an enormous influence on space history. Chief Savage Man posted:Do you care as much when the X Republic conquers Burgo IV as you do when the Pope colonizes Brazil? Obviously, the solution is to just take all the historical nations and add "space" in front of them. The Space Pope colonizing Space Brazil. Edit: But more seriously a near-future setting could alleviate that, if all the factions are based on existing nations.
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Aug 4, 2015 19:44
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I played as the Space Ottomans in both Spore and Endless Space, role playing as an enlightened empire that conquered the world and went on to spread Islam to the stars. That's what I had to do to make those games even halfway interesting to me.
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Aug 4, 2015 19:48
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Spore's space age was pretty fun playing as an intergalactic rear end in a top hat race. gently caress with the atmosphere of planets to screw with the developing species there. Genetically engineer strange horror creatures and drop giant versions of them on planets to attack cities, etc...
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Aug 4, 2015 19:53
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I predict a map game dating sim where you play the as the Falkland Islands and have to choose between all the large gentlemen vying for your attention
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Aug 4, 2015 19:58
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Tomn posted:Let me tell you in excruciating detail how the Alpha Centauri wormhole cluster had an enormous influence on space history.  The essential features of a space game is espionage, the economy, and fighting stupid ground wars on some jungle/desert planet because challenging your competitors directly risks complete galactic annihilation through the exchange of relativistic missiles and wormhole delivered anti-matter bombs.Tomn posted:Edit: But more seriously a near-future setting could alleviate that, if all the factions are based on existing
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Aug 4, 2015 19:58
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Kainser posted:Yeah, a large reason I care about Paradox games is the historical setting. Really hope they can make a compelling setting if it's a space game. They could go really bonkers and reveal they've partnered with CCP to release an EVE Online history grand strategy game.
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Aug 4, 2015 20:05
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Tomn posted:You know, thinking about it? Maybe the reason there are so few good space 4X games is because of spaceships. Obviously a "4x" inspired by the LoGH setting would be ideal 
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Aug 4, 2015 20:12
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Tomn posted:So if you want to make a good space 4X, it seems like there might be two options. One is to go the Sword of the Stars route and throw everything into spaceship design and battle and make for a game of glorious space combat. But the other, less charted route is to eschew detailed spaceship design and combat entirely in favor of a deeper strategic layer. Take a risk and hope that you can improve the rest of the game enough that you'll be forgiven for a lack of spectacle. Focus on space politics, or space diplomacy, or space economics, or even space logistics and grand warfare while the actual spaceships blowing each other up get abstracted into a dice roll with modifiers. Endless Space works like this and is really boring as a result. In fact, it sure feels like most 4x game recently have tried to streamline combat - either because they felt that it was too in depth or too much of a use of resources. SOTS1 remains well liked because the combat system is meaningfully tied to the rest of the design and the whole design works overall. It's also why games like Battletech and Starfleet battles are remembered fondly - because the combat system turns the battles into combat with decisions and victories. Do you really feel that EU4 would be worse for having a more in depth combat system? I don't. A deep enough combat system really allows for some meaningful differences in approach and strategy. I'd love to see designs where the tactical complexity is matched with the overall design and the gameplay - not where it is simply de emphasized. To me at least, a good strategy game has larger decisions that get made, but also places where those decisions are tested. A tactical system should be deep enough to allow for that and make it fun in the process. So I don't think it's Starships that's the problem.
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Aug 4, 2015 20:25
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Man, an unsymmetrical galaxy start would be the best thing that could happen to 4x games. Some large, old, advanced empires, some small new ones. Kinda like CK2. I think a combat system somewhere in between HoI and Eu4 could work well: research different paths and doctrines, and raise large fleets, but the fighting itself is hidden, with a limited number of units and upgrades. I'm space Stalin ruling over dozens of planets, I don't have time to fit a missile launcher to a gunboat. Honestly, the massive dissonance between ruling entire systems, yet having to design and control individual ships, have always felt a bit ridiculous.
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Aug 4, 2015 20:32
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