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Jack Trades posted:Do majority of 4X players actually like ship/unit designer features? I enjoy it when it reaches the right balance between ease of use and depth of customization. Personally I think Stars! did it right. 
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Feb 1, 2022 22:15
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the rogue AI also got all the AI techs (naturally), so while it was basically a minor nuisance and ~3 lost systems at turn one it would rapidly outpace every other player if not squashed posthaste. Having an AI rebellion on your territory was guaranteed to gently caress you up bigtime but setting it off deliberately was tantamount to lighting your poo poo on fire in the hopes you could backstab everyone else while they panicked and rushed to put it out most of the grand menaces were the same kinda deal of localized problems that'd derail your war plans but would get worse if you put them off, except it's a little less fun when the game's doing it than when a sore loser is. The stellaris ones were pretty lame by contrast, basically just spawning one more hostile empire on top of all the others with better stats than everyone else, but there wasn't really much you could do with stellaris's core mechanics that wouldn't be lame. A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Feb 1, 2022 |
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Feb 1, 2022 22:26
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I always liked playing hiver and stripmining the entire galaxy and transporting it to my homeworld to convert it into the galaxies greatest industrial centre. Why yes, I would like to produce several dreadnaughts a turn from one planet, how did you know game?
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Feb 2, 2022 02:23
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the Zuul were so OP we generally kinda agreed to not use them in multiplayer but nothing will ever be better than seeing someone's first time encountering those FTL highway maintenance ships with the gun that'd yeet an entire fleet out of the game
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Feb 2, 2022 03:27
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ate poo poo on live tv posted:Those are so artificial though and are honestly just lazy design that developers throw in because they realize that their game system doesn't work but they need to have some kind of end-state so they can finish their game. None of the SotS grand menaces came remotely close to instantly ending a game unless you just sat there and did absolutely nothing about them like a deer in headlights. The System Killer and the Peacemaker gently caress off on their own even if no one deals with them(though the Peacemaker can come back later) and the Puppet Master and the Locusts start relatively weak and manageable and only spiral out of control if literally no one tries to do anything about them at all. The pseudo-Grand Menaces like the AI Rebellion and the Von Neumanns are also "this only becomes a problem if you never do anything about it" threats. A Wizard of Goatse posted:I never rolled the system killer somehow, but that one did sound just straight up bad. Like if there's a human player who isn't already pretty much dominating the game there's a solid chance that's just the end for them. The rest are all totally beatable by the time they show up, the point is that someone has to take care of them but diverting the forces to do so makes you vulnerable to everyone who didn't, especially if you under-commit and lose. It shakes up the status quo of the endgame so that there is a point in playing through, if you're lagging and woulda otherwise been facing getting ground into dust over the next 200 turns and a grand menace pops up you might just be able to turn things around in all the chaos and if you're really getting your rear end kicked you can always roll the dice on AI research and hope Skynet pops up on your frontline instead of your capitol. The System Killer just draws a line through the galaxy and kills everything it happens to bump into along the way, so if you're on the ropes and can't put together a fleet to handle it you can grit your teeth and work around it. It's also very killable with a decent fleet and can be intercepted before it reaches a critical planet; it matters more for humans to stop it in some cases than other races, but that's one of the prices you pay for having the fastest FTL drive by leaps and bounds(except for endgame Morrigi flock drives in full fleets). Absolute worst case scenario is you end up with a split empire where you have to slow boat between two close stars.
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Feb 2, 2022 03:38
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Kanos posted:None of the SotS grand menaces came remotely close to instantly ending a game unless you just sat there and did absolutely nothing about them like a deer in headlights. The System Killer and the Peacemaker gently caress off on their own even if no one deals with them(though the Peacemaker can come back later) and the Puppet Master and the Locusts start relatively weak and manageable and only spiral out of control if literally no one tries to do anything about them at all. The pseudo-Grand Menaces like the AI Rebellion and the Von Neumanns are also "this only becomes a problem if you never do anything about it" threats. Oh I know. I'm not saying they were impossible to deal with. I 'm saying they are boring and lazy. Those types of things are used by game designers that realize their game system doesn't work on it's own to provide a satisfying endgame. This is why I specfically offered the alternative of just a 1turn universe wipe, because then the player can just start a new game which in almost every 4x game is the fun part.
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Feb 2, 2022 04:05
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ate poo poo on live tv posted:Oh I know. I'm not saying they were impossible to deal with. I 'm saying they are boring and lazy. Those types of things are used by game designers that realize their game system doesn't work on it's own to provide a satisfying endgame. This is why I specfically offered the alternative of just a 1turn universe wipe, because then the player can just start a new game which in almost every 4x game is the fun part. Okay, so let's unpack that last statement a bit. Why is starting a brand new game the most fun part in almost every 4x? In most cases, it's because 4x games suffer from a massive case of endgame stagnation where the player has either snowballed sufficiently that nothing can really challenge them or stop them any more, or where the player has failed and has no real chance of winning any more. Grand menaces(and mechanics like them in other games) are not meant to be a "the game is over now" warning, they're specifically meant to introduce new factors into the equation to stop it from being easily solved. Player A might have a huge advantage in a game of SotS and then the System Killer appears and happens to draw a line through their heartland. They're now faced with a difficult choice - do they take the boot off Player B's throat and pull ships from the frontline to go deal with the System Killer? Do they keep the pressure up and absorb the losses and hope that doesn't put them in a difficult position against their other opponents? Similarly, from Player B's perspective, do they let Player A withdraw or do they push a counteroffensive knowing that Player A is in a pickle? Is Player C going to intervene since the military balance sheet is now shuffled and there might be an opportunity for them to backstab Player A or possibly roll in and conquer the weakened Player B and take Player A's position as top dog? Without some sort of somewhat unpredictable external pressure, a 4X game is generally decided the moment a player snowballs sufficiently. Most 4X games don't have external pressure sources that are sufficiently impactful, so you end up in the situation of "well no one can challenge me anymore and all I have left to do is paint the map so I guess I'll restart so I can play the first 50-100 turns where the game is fun because I haven't won outright yet" in almost all of them.
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Feb 2, 2022 04:31
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I spent a bunch of pointless time with a friend hashing out a 4x design that had regular board clearing resets as part of the core gameplay loop You basically kept aspects of your empire growth, but the world around you changed - and got progressively harder, with your foot on the gas to determine how much you pushed each reset I honestly think a lot of designs that address fundamental issues with 4x difficulty also actively push away the happy empire building casuals that make up the bulk of the audience, so I'm not sure I'm ever going to find one that really scratches my particular itch, definitely not in what passes for the "AAA" space. There are a few indies doing experimental stuff that I find appealing but that comes with the usual compromises in other areas.
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Feb 2, 2022 04:49
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There's been a bunch of games built around passing incremental progress through multiple generations/resets/whatever, albeit not a whole lot competitive multiplayer ones probably for the pretty straightforward reason that even getting a group to play all the way through one strategy game is a big lift; you probably couldn't even assemble a playtest group to try out anything that hinges on doing several in succession. It's definitely not because strategy game development is lacking for cranks who passed up more marketable genres to pursue their own very idiosyncratic ideas about game design. As Far As The Eye sounds like the latest one along those lines though I haven't gotten around to playing it yet; SOTS had that generation ship scenario that ran exactly as you described and every hundred turns or so you started over on a fresh, harder map with a handpicked subset of the last game's fleet; go a little further back and Emperor of the Fading Suns was basically a dozen separate strategy games running simultaneously, where you had a common tech tree and could ship maybe a few score units between boards at a time but otherwise had to take each planet basically in isolation. A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 06:46 on Feb 2, 2022 |
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Feb 2, 2022 06:05
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I kind of hate it when 4Xs add ship designers. They usually don’t add anything of value unless the 4X is focused around tactical combat, like with RTW or SOTS
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Feb 2, 2022 06:27
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unwantedplatypus posted:I kind of hate it when 4Xs add ship designers. They usually don’t add anything of value unless the 4X is focused around tactical combat, like with RTW or SOTS Ship/unit designers are a total waste in 95% of the games they show up in. Even in otherwise "good" games. I'll die on the hill that Alpha Centauri would have been a better game without one, or at least that the unit designer didn't add anything of substance.
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Feb 2, 2022 06:35
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So after a long while playing Age of Wonders 3 again, I moved off it to another older game....Stars in Shadow. It's not a great game or anything, but it's light enough that I can play it on autopilot while doing other stuff, has just enough different mechanics to not feel like a total clone of other games, and is generally a decent enough time. It's probably worth it's normal $25 price, but it's DEFINITELY worth the $5 ($6 with the DLC) it costs on Steam right now. I'd recommend giving it a look....I'd rather have the game than a Starbucks coffee. 
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Feb 2, 2022 08:06
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Ship designers feel like a sacred cow that's been carried over from the original Master of Orion. A lot of things are like that, honestly.
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Feb 2, 2022 08:38
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So which games have meaningful Ship Designers? I've heard Star Ruler 2, which I'll make sure to check out. What else?
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Feb 2, 2022 08:40
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Kanos posted:Okay, so let's unpack that last statement a bit. Why is starting a brand new game the most fun part in almost every 4x? In most cases, it's because 4x games suffer from a massive case of endgame stagnation where the player has either snowballed sufficiently that nothing can really challenge them or stop them any more, or where the player has failed and has no real chance of winning any more. Right my thesis is that introducing "grand menaces" doesn't actually solve the end-game problem anymore then just reseting the map does. If the System Killer shows up and you can't deal with it? You start a new game. If the system killer shows up and you are already rolling, it's a speed bump and annoyance since ostensibly you were probably having fun doing something else, (If you weren't having fun, then you probably shouldn't be still playing in the first place). Or worse case, you actually have an interesting geo-political situation in the game state where the various factions are somewhat balanced so you aren't just rolling yet, and maybe you have a chance to make some interesting strategic decisions as you try to win. What does a "grand menace" add in any of those situations? There are ways to make the end game have an interesting goal that isn't just painting the map, or filling up the blue research bar all the way. MoO2 did it, and I'm sure other 4x games have too. Games with good diplomacy normally have some kind of diplo victory which can be implemented in an interesting way as well. But spawning random battles out of nothing in the mid-to-end game isn't the right approach. I'm playing against some rivals that I expect to be following the same rules I am and my goal was set on turn 1, I don't want it randomly changed for turn 200. Games that do asymmetrical starts can be great too, but I'm not talking about those.
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Feb 2, 2022 09:08
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Star Ruler 1/2 and Sword of the Stars are probably the gold standard for ship designers in "modern" 4xs. Stellaris could be cool if there was a way to dictate ship behavior effectively, since some of the weapons there are more esoteric than just bigger number, and with how evasion and armor stats work in that game there's just enough of a hint of a cool counterplay system in weapon usage and target priority except you can't actually dictate either of those things. Distant Stars has a great ship designer imo but it's just as impenetrable as the rest of the game. Also I hate to tell you this guy who posted above me but the grand menaces were very cool, even the system killer
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Feb 2, 2022 10:05
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ate poo poo on live tv posted:Right my thesis is that introducing "grand menaces" doesn't actually solve the end-game problem anymore then just reseting the map does. If the System Killer shows up and you can't deal with it? You start a new game. If the system killer shows up and you are already rolling, it's a speed bump and annoyance since ostensibly you were probably having fun doing something else, (If you weren't having fun, then you probably shouldn't be still playing in the first place). Or worse case, you actually have an interesting geo-political situation in the game state where the various factions are somewhat balanced so you aren't just rolling yet, and maybe you have a chance to make some interesting strategic decisions as you try to win. What does a "grand menace" add in any of those situations? If the System Killer shows up and you can't deal with it, you let it go and play around it. It's not going to hunt you to the last planet, it's going to do its thing and leave. It can also bypass you completely and hit your enemy, or hit someone you haven't even met. As for it being a trivial "speed bump", it's explicitly not - Grand Menaces show up generally around the ~75-125 turn mark, at which point it's going to be an actual investment to deal with that will require you pulling resources from other sectors, especially if you're engaged in active conflict with a comparable opponent. Shockingly, they thought about that! The grand menace adds spice to an interesting geopolitical situation because it brings the potential to flip the script, like I said. It's a chance for a losing faction to stage a comeback, or a sudden interruption in a winning state's roll, or an opportunity for a third party to make advances that would otherwise be dangerous or unwise. It doesn't change the objectives of the game, it introduces complications towards achieving the objectives that were set at the very beginning. You're still exploring, expanding, exploiting, and exterminating. The System Killer is an unexpected threat just like an enemy faction you hadn't yet scouted is an unexpected threat, or the enemy you're fighting pulling out new tech is an unexpected threat, or Neutral Third Party declaring a backstab war on you is an unexpected threat. You adapt and overcome. It's extremely difficult to design a 4X game where the AI is legitimately playing by the same rules as you that can remain interesting into lategame, because 4X games have ridiculously complicated decision trees that simplistic "if x, do y" AI programming can't handle, and those decision trees only get more complex the longer a game goes on and the more complicated the game state is. This is why almost every 4X game ever made resorts to increasing levels of AI cheats at higher difficulty levels. "I want a game where I'm playing the same game as the AI" is already kind of a unicorn dream that doesn't exist.
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Feb 2, 2022 10:15
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Space 4x games should take a long look at Victoria 3 and consider whether or not removing individual units (fleets) from the game and using a front system isn't the way forward. The idea of abstracting the war machine to doctrines, generals/admirals and just a reflection of your industrial base, manpower and technology is very attractive to me. I have high hopes for Vicky 3 for this reason and I hope the risk they're taking on this innovation pays off.
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Feb 2, 2022 10:15
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I don't know if I'd say Star Ruler 2's ship design system is good. It's certainly meaningful in that player designed ship can be multiple magnitude better than the default design (at the same construction cost), and there is enough components and limitations where you can make interesting choice in your designs. However, it takes way too long to do so you pretty much have to design your ships before hand then just load the templates once you are in-game. It also takes a lot of time to test your design if you want to make sure it behave the way you imagine it to. It suffers from the same gradient problem where while running a galaxy spanning empire you are spending as much time colonizing a whole solar system as designing one ship.
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Feb 2, 2022 11:04
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Star Ruler's ship designer is honestly unwelcome. I never used it very much and just went with the default ships that I'd just upscale along with my production capacity. The interesting parts of the game was the resource management and the actual fleets colliding. The ship designer actively broke the flow of the game whenever you opened it.
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Feb 2, 2022 11:10
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Worth mentioning even though everyone in this thread probably already has it: Stellaris is free on Prime Gaming this month via GoG
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Feb 2, 2022 12:08
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I like the ship builder in Distant worlds, as you can mostly ignore it then make that wierd ship if you need to. Bar whacking 5x the fuel storage the default designs come with. I got an hour of Distant Worlds 2 in this morning , and it feels good so far, even with the limited press build I got. the UI feels a lot better - though I can't tell if the automation controls are hidden, missing from the game or just missing from my version! (also I look forward to recreating my title event.)
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Feb 2, 2022 12:31
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jng2058 posted:So after a long while playing Age of Wonders 3 again, I moved off it to another older game....Stars in Shadow. It's not a great game or anything, but it's light enough that I can play it on autopilot while doing other stuff, has just enough different mechanics to not feel like a total clone of other games, and is generally a decent enough time. It's probably worth it's normal $25 price, but it's DEFINITELY worth the $5 ($6 with the DLC) it costs on Steam right now. I'd recommend giving it a look....I'd rather have the game than a Starbucks coffee. SiS has quietly become one of my favourite 4Xes over the past few years, purely by virtue of how fast and tight and clean it is. It may be the only 4X I've ever encountered where playing it never feels like work. pedro0930 posted:I don't know if I'd say Star Ruler 2's ship design system is good. It's certainly meaningful in that player designed ship can be multiple magnitude better than the default design (at the same construction cost), and there is enough components and limitations where you can make interesting choice in your designs. However, it takes way too long to do so you pretty much have to design your ships before hand then just load the templates once you are in-game. It also takes a lot of time to test your design if you want to make sure it behave the way you imagine it to. Yeah same. Like, even as a guy who likes and enjoys ship designers, the ones like this and StarDrive's where you have to construct ships from lots of little parts are an exercise in tedium.
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Feb 2, 2022 13:19
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"Classic" ship/unit designers are filled with artificial rock/paper/scissors mechanics that don't need the designer to be implemented. They have false decisions where the new thing adds a slightly different stat than the old one but is still clearly an improvement. They often have obviously optimal designs. And, worst of all, basically every one of them could be removed entirely and replaced with a Civilization-style unit roster and literally nothing of substance would be lost. They're inconsequential to the actual game! It's cosmetics for nerds. I'd much rather see the game developers spend their time on making actually interesting units (hello, Age of Wonders!) instead of lazy cookie-cutter crap that fits into unit designers. The only ship/unit designer that I can say offhand is actually meaningful, and not just an impediment on the player's way towards creating a pretty obviously optimal unit, is Aurora's... because what Aurora is really simulating with it's designer is the logistics and planning of design, and not just skipping everything except for the final product. You have to plan for what's required months or even years in advance (it can take months to research a new missile engine, much less a carrier). You have to accept reasonable tradeoffs (Ship A can use this engine cribbed from Ship B to save research time, but it's going to be slower since it's bigger and heavier...). You solve actual problems (hmm, if I can shave 10% off the mass on this missile it can still fire from my old systems but I really don't know if I can afford to reduce the fuel mass, do I need to sacrifice payload?). Ship classifications fall out natively from the mechanics and demands of your nation, they aren't shoehorned in arbitrarily. There are extremely meaningful consequences of your decisions; ships will often be forced into sub-optimal roles not because of any mistake by the player but because the situation changed faster than your process could catch up. You cannot remove the designer from Aurora and have it be the same game. Distant Worlds gets partial credit here because of how it influences the economy under the hood, but even then I think that it's a better game if the player is locked out of the ship designing itself and just has to accept whatever their empire rolls with based on available technology and national predisposition. Or, perhaps, if the player was able to influence the automatic design by telling it "our empire has a lot of excess vibranium, small but existent access to kryptonite, and literally no unobtanium whatsoever", or perhaps "I want a ship that can go 1000 nebula miles at 50 space knots with a construction time of 3 months, under those constraints what will it cost and how many guns are on it".
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Feb 2, 2022 15:09
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The biggest issue with the ship design in SR, to me, is that combat is just blobs of ships rubbing against each other until one is gone, which isn't necessarily bad but it makes the ship design feel hollow when it's not immediately obvious how well your designs are performing other than your ship blob lasting a bit longer or damaging the enemy ship blob a bit more than before. SEIV probably has my favorite ship designer of any space 4X. Other than a few restrictions for game balance purposes, you're free to do whatever you want and can design a ship to fill any role for your fleet your imagination can cook up, including a lot of useful non-combat roles that are underrepresented in other games. It helps that SEIV has hundreds of unique ship components that aren't just ten iterative improvements on the same component (though it is guilty of doing that too). The downside being that if you use auto combat it's not nearly as satisfying to watch your designs working, and manual combat is tedious as all hell and can last ages in the mid to late game when fleets start to get massive. Fortunately there is a simulator where you can pit your designs against known enemy designs (or your own) to make sure they are effective before handing the reins to the AI. DW:U has a really great ship designer and running around with huge fleets blowing poo poo up is by far the most fun part of the game for me, since the economy\management feels pretty lackluster, despite being such a detailed simulation under the hood. I agree a lot with the suggestion of abstracting fleet combat. Detailed ship designers are really cool for games that involve a much smaller number of ships (or a single ship). Ship designers are less cool when you've got hundreds of ships zipping around with an optimized design that only requires occasional upgrades to better versions of the same lasers and shields or whatever. It would be interesting to see that abstracted style of warfare in this genre where positioning, supply, detection, and economic factors are more important than making sure your ships have shields instead of armor depending on who you're fighting or are all equipped with particle beam IV instead of the old particle beam III. If there has to be a ship designer, use it for a small number of capital ships only that you can deploy to different fronts\sectors where you need the extra firepower and support, making them an expensive but useful asset of your own design that you must make meaningful decisions about where to use. Kibbles n Shits fucked around with this message at 15:59 on Feb 2, 2022 |
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Feb 2, 2022 15:50
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Grey Hunter posted:I got an hour of Distant Worlds 2 in this morning , gently caress I'm jealous, hopefully it's at least on track for release in a few weeks. Ship designers in games are fine, if the focus of the game is tactical combat. Space Empires does that pretty well and you can make some pretty goofy ships with the stuff in that game. I'll have to reinstall SE4 or 5 depending on which one is less broken these days. SE5 was great for the move to hexes and real time combat taking away a lot of the tedium but it had a pretty broken AI and ran like rear end at the time. Those games still burned hundreds of hours for me back in the day. Distant Worlds is also good at it, because it's actually not a very complicated system, and you can fine-tune your ships to match your preferences. If you want to use mass drivers, slam on tons of engines so your ships can charge into close range, or use tons of slower lightly armored missile ships and carriers. It's fun to see your ships battle it out based on the capabilities you gave them. The game also doesn't operate on a GalCiv-style rock-paper-scissors bullshit system so you don't generally have to completely redesign every ship for every new war. If the enemy has a qualitative advantage you can still run fleets around their territory wiping out their mines and transport ships to cripple them. Strategic Sage did a recent LP of Distant Worlds that was a pretty good tutorial as well, at least if you have a few hours to kill. The only real weaknesses of DW's version is the need for barebones early-game stuff and the designer doesn't handle having different versions of the same type of ship or station very well IME, meaning upgrading stuff is still sometimes a hassle. But it filled that Space Empires-shaped hole for a long time for me. Star Ruler 2's actual innovation was the diplomacy system. Voting for things and getting what you want requires points in a minigame to achieve and you had to basically play diplomacy cards you accumulate in order to influence things your way, while other powers get to do the same. You have to be real choosy about what things you push for and not spread your influence too thin. 4x games basically require some form of diplomacy so you might as well make it its own game as well just so it doesn't get into the usual cheesy 4x trend of "add more money until the other guy accepts."
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Feb 2, 2022 17:15
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Jack Trades posted:Do majority of 4X players actually like ship/unit designer features? I enjoyed the fun stuff you could do in Space Empires. Master of Orion combat was on a small chess board and you had limited design slots, so there was some challenge in timing new designs and balancing cost/space efficiency vs modernity. I can't think of any other games where I did anything but smash the Autodesign buttons.
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Feb 2, 2022 19:23
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One of the dope things (among many I’m finding) about Distant Worlds’s unit creator is that you can save designs to a file and load them in later games. So you can tweak and customize and min max to your heart’s content and then never touch it again if you so choose. That’s pretty bad rear end. Speaking of Distant Worlds, I’m finally sinking into this game while following along a tutorial. I’m doing a prewarp start and learning how to do everything manually. And I gotta say, it’s FAR easier to learn the game this way than the old DW thread advice of “leave automation on and just jump in.” I tried following that advice a few times and kept bouncing off the game. It was impenetrable for me trying to play it that way, because while the AI was running every thing, I had no way of knowing what to do, where to jump in, what could be improved or even if the AI was doing a good job. So, to anyone in the thread like me who may have bounced off of Distant Worlds in the past, I’d highly recommend loading up TortugaPower’s YouTube tutorial and follow along. You’ll learn how to build and work an empire from the ground up and see that the game is not nearly as hard to learn as it appears to be. Edit: How’s Distant Worlds 2, for those of you in the beta? chaosapiant fucked around with this message at 19:30 on Feb 2, 2022 |
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Feb 2, 2022 19:25
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I know I said it before but SEV will always have my favourite ship creator just because of how much freedom it gives you. You get a grid, a list of components, and the game tells you to go nuts. A tactic I always liked doing was having a cloaked ship with a full sensor suite, multiple supply generators, and a huge ordinance storage. My battleships would forgo regular sensors and storage space in order to fit more guns and shields onto it. That way the cloaked ship basically plays AWACS so the combat ships can go full tilt shooting stuff. You can do so much weird poo poo and the game encourages you to get weirder with it
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Feb 2, 2022 19:35
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Unit builders are a design tool that accidentally slipped into a production release (I'll grant an exception to games where the level of granularity is ship vs ship or whatever, and the individual greebles you're bolting on actually make a meaningful impact on engagements - this is 10000% not the case in empire sims)
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Feb 2, 2022 19:40
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Kanos posted:The grand menace adds spice to an interesting geopolitical situation because it brings the potential to flip the script, like I said So introducing a coin-flip that made the decisions and development of the game world that came before meaningless improves the game? quote:It's extremely difficult to design a 4X game where the AI is legitimately playing by the same rules as you that can remain interesting into lategame, because 4X games have ridiculously complicated decision trees that simplistic "if x, do y" AI programming can't handle, and those decision trees only get more complex the longer a game goes on and the more complicated the game state is. This is why almost every 4X game ever made resorts to increasing levels of AI cheats at higher difficulty levels. "I want a game where I'm playing the same game as the AI" is already kind of a unicorn dream that doesn't exist. There is some subtlety here. An AI can absolutely play the same game as the player and still provide a challenge. For example in Civ4 (one of my favorite games) the AI has the same rules as the player. The AI can't for example build cities on Mountains, or in the Ocean. The AI can't just create a city out of nothing, it has to actually transport a settler to the city location. It can't build units that require Oil if it doesn't have oil. It can't just create infrastructure without using workers. It has to research techs in order to use them. These are the rules of the game. Where the AI get's advantages is that maybe a grass tile produces 2food and 2hammers for the AI. Maybe the AI get's a %discount on how many hammers it takes to build a tank, or how many beakers it needs to research the next tech. Maybe the AI has a diplomacy bonus to other AI's so that they are more likely to "gang-up" on the Player. Maybe the AI get's bonus happiness, or the player get's a happiness malus all depending on difficulty. These are the handicaps applied to player because we don't have a magical AI for Civilization. The "rules" of the game are what should stay consistent and the designers of the game should let the player know early on if the design of the AI means they have different rules. The easiest way to communicate this is with asymmetric starts but I'm restricting this discussion to symmetric starts. The handicaps can be changed for difficultly purposes this isn't "cheating" it's making up for an AI that doesn't play as well as a player does. I see the grand menaces as a lazy way of changing the rules and they are necessary because the designers made a game the AI can't play. In some cases they introduce a new player that isn't restricted to the same production scheme as the rest of the game universe (The locusts fall under this), or changing the map topology (system destroyer), or allowing fleets to change ownership (whatever the non-AI mind control event is). All of these things could be interesting and incorporated into the natural development of the players and most importantly could be significant end-game snow-ball technologies, but they aren't. They are one-off events and once they have passed in 50 or so turns they no longer matter which kind of leads to the question: "Why are they there in the first place?" The AI-Revolt trees are actually an example of an interesting decision based "menace." You can bee-line to them and start building your huge fleet at double the efficiency of the pre-ai universe, but you run the risk of rebellions. So do you try to build a huge fleet using your AI Bonus and then use that fleet to put the rebellion down? Or do you play it safe and wait to get the fixed AI before going for the bonus? Maybe you risk it and beeline to the Research Bonus AI, so that you can quickly get the fix. Maybe you just ignore AI completely since you are already ahead?
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Feb 2, 2022 19:40
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lol dude you literally don't know what you're talking about, like you're writing all these long posts arguing with people about a game you clearly haven't played or don't remember at all and guessing how it works wrong every step of the way, what's with that? that's not what grand menaces do, that's not how the AI rebellion works, you don't get to start at the very end of the tech tree and then work back to the part where it might turn out bad for you A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Feb 2, 2022 |
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Feb 2, 2022 19:57
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What? This thread is about 4x games and I'm discussing the design aspect. My claim is that grand menaces or coin-flip events are bad design. The specific implementation that SotS used isn't really what I'm arguing about.
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Feb 2, 2022 20:55
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ate poo poo on live tv posted:What? This thread is about 4x games and I'm discussing the design aspect. My claim is that grand menaces or coin-flip events are bad design. The specific implementation that SotS used isn't really what I'm arguing about. But the specific implementation in SotS is good you dingus. That's what everyone is getting annoyed with you about.
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Feb 2, 2022 20:59
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Pharnakes posted:But the specific implementation in SotS is good you dingus. That's what everyone is getting annoyed with you about. The only thing in support of them I've seen is this: quote:The grand menace adds spice to an interesting geopolitical situation because it brings the potential to flip the script, like I said
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Feb 2, 2022 21:08
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ate poo poo on live tv posted:What? This thread is about 4x games and I'm discussing the design aspect. My claim is that grand menaces or coin-flip events are bad design. The specific implementation that SotS used isn't really what I'm arguing about. The problem is that you're arguing against the SotS menaces like they were Stellaris end-game crises and they just... aren't. You're raising points that just plain do not apply to them. ate poo poo on live tv posted:This isn't a good thing. If a single event can completely "flip the script", then it trivializes everything beforehand. How is that a good thing? What? No. Just... do you even understand what that phrase means? Flipping the script means that your expectations for how the game is going to go gets changed suddenly. Zurai fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Feb 2, 2022 |
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Feb 2, 2022 21:15
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ate poo poo on live tv posted:This isn't a good thing. If a single event can completely "flip the script", then it trivializes everything beforehand. How is that a good thing? Okay you're going to need to explain to me how, specifically, it trivializes everything beforehand, because it absolutely 10000% does not at all in the slightest. Let's say player A has built a strong economy with intelligent research and a powerful fleet, and player B has gotten his expansion stuffed and is in a much weaker position. Here's the permutations of how a System Killer appearing can affect the situation between the two of them: -The System Killer draws a line through Player A's heartland. Player A, with his strong economy and powerful fleet, can feasibly fight the System Killer to protect his internal systems without leaving his frontline exposed to the point of danger. Worst case scenario, if the System Killer nabs a few planets, the fundamentals of Player A's economy and fleet can soak the shock. Player B might be able to pull a surprise offensive here, but it'll still be hard, because Player A's position is so much stronger. -The System Killer draws a line through Player B's heartland. Player B, with his weak economy and poo poo fleet, is now in a terrible position - they might be able to pull together the forces to stop the System Killer, but it will leave them dangerously vulnerable to a timely push from Player A. This is actually close to the "gg, go next" scenario you were talking about before; their only real shot is to throw everything they have at the SK and hope they can reconsolidate before Player A takes advantage. -The System Killer draws a line through unoccupied or contested planets. This might mess up hyperspace routes depending on the movement types of the players, and it might mess up future expansion plans, but it won't immediately affect the current military situation. This entire flipped script is based on everything the players have done up to that point in the game. It simply doesn't exist in a vacuum. Player A's preparation and success has put him in a strong position to either mitigate the effects of the SK or to take advantage of it, whereas Player B's lack of success up to that point has put him in a perilously weak position if the SK targets him, but also presents him with a narrow comeback opportunity that otherwise would not exist. The SK appearing doesn't suddenly reset the game state up to that point in any way and I don't know why you keep making the assertion that it renders everything that happened up until it appeared meaningless because it's completely nonsensical.
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Feb 2, 2022 21:30
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when a guy's this many posts in on railing about how lazy and terrible a game design decision is and still hasn't bothered look up what it is or how it works I think you just gotta give up on the idea there's any conversation to be had there. so uh, anyone have any recent game recs that do anything interesting on the exploration end of the Xes?
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Feb 2, 2022 21:45
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Kanos posted:Okay you're going to need to explain to me how, specifically, it trivializes everything beforehand, because it absolutely 10000% does not at all in the slightest. Let's say player A has built a strong economy with intelligent research and a powerful fleet, and player B has gotten his expansion stuffed and is in a much weaker position. Here's the permutations of how a System Killer appearing can affect the situation between the two of them: Ok. I agree with those three scenarios. But what I don't see is how it "flips the script." The only potential scenario flip is one where the System Killer causes enough damage to Player A that Player B can now win (This would be the coin-flip I was talking about). In the other two scenario's nothing different really happens. And if nothing different happens then what was the point? Don't get me wrong, changing up the topology of the map in the mid game through some kind of event is fine and cool, but it doesn't really "flip the script" except in an edge case.
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Feb 2, 2022 21:55
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A Wizard of Goatse posted:when a guy's this many posts in on railing about how lazy and terrible a game design decision is and still hasn't bothered look up what it is or how it works I think you just gotta give up on the idea there's any conversation to be had there. so uh, anyone have any recent game recs that do anything interesting on the exploration end of the Xes? I hear that Hero's Hour will be doing a Steam release soon. https://thingonitsown.itch.io/heros-hour https://store.steampowered.com/app/1656780/Heros_Hour/ As for the exploration aspects, I believe they tried implementing portals and seafaring elements in 1.1 to spice things up a bit. Some of the special sites you can find do pretty interesting stuff... including one that lets you force a battle between faction heroes, which could be a pretty interesting way to shake up a tedious endgame. And it looks like they added underground layers in 1.8 as well. Ahh, and I found the really interesting sounding special sites entry too, it was 1.5/1.6. Visiting the Dark Carnival allows you to fight a non-lethal battle against clowns. Entering costs 1000 gold. Winning earns you 2 artifacts. Visiting the Tower of Mages allows your hero to exchange part of their army for boosts to their spellcasting abilities Visiting the Forlorn Cloister allows your hero to give up their life and become an undead hero Visiting the Volcanic Cult allows your hero to transform part of their army into demons Visiting the Cloud Palace allows your hero to wish either for war or for peace. War brings all enemy heroes to the Cloud Temple. Peace sends them all back home to their towns.
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Feb 2, 2022 22:41
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