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Omi no Kami posted:I've been stuck in an infinite loop on X4 for like a year, where I go "This is incredibly overwhelming," spend 45 minutes on the controls tutorial, go "That was a lot, I wanna take a break before I start a campaign," then like six months later I go "...gently caress, I forgot everything I learned in the tutorial and also to start a game." Canon event, this is how I somehow have logged 20 hours in the game
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Oct 28, 2023 18:29
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Jabor posted:Of course, sometimes you get self-sabotaging players that just turn off the alternate victory conditions... I see someone is reading my Master of Orion III Let's Play 
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Oct 28, 2023 19:05
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Jabor posted:Of course, sometimes you get self-sabotaging players that just turn off the alternate victory conditions... I do both of these things but I also don't get mad when the game goes on and becomes micro-heavy or otherwise breaks because I understand that my brain worms are my problem. I do appreciate devs allowing me to feed them though.
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Oct 28, 2023 19:11
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you'll take my gigantic civ4 maps that literally break down from memory allocation failure before the end from my cold, dead hands. I'd rather play in a wide open world of whimsey and exploration than some tiny 200 tile rear end knifefight where one decent stack just wins you the game
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Oct 28, 2023 19:29
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4x games end when you want them to end. "i'm out, laterzzzzz"
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Oct 28, 2023 19:31
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ThatBasqueGuy posted:you'll take my gigantic civ4 maps that literally break down from memory allocation failure before the end from my cold, dead hands. I'd rather play in a wide open world of whimsey and exploration than some tiny 200 tile rear end knifefight where one decent stack just wins you the game 
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Oct 28, 2023 20:32
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I play max size maps without alternate victory conditions fairly often, but my actual victory condition is "having fun reaching the point where I get bored of it"
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Oct 28, 2023 20:36
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Same. I usually roleplay these things, often taking a suboptimal path if it fits my roleplay better.
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Oct 28, 2023 20:45
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Jabor posted:(Similar to the players that always choose the largest allowed map size and number of opponents, 
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Oct 28, 2023 20:50
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I would like there to be a 4x game where you can play on something like this. Of course I’d be a completely different game from what we’ve got in our MOOiverse. I imagine playing something like a Foundation-themed 4x spanning millennia 
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Oct 28, 2023 21:04
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Mokotow posted:I would like there to be a 4x game where you can play on something like this. Of course I’d be a completely different game from what we’ve got in our MOOiverse. I imagine playing something like a Foundation-themed 4x spanning millennia Free Orion allows up to 5000 systems, Distant Worlds 2 and Stellaris also go up to multiple k worth of stars. (DW2 takes the cake, because if you start a game of DW2, the starting system is already overwhelming you with tons of poo poo -there can be dozens of planets and moons waiting to be explored in any system in DW2) The true crown of course, is Star Ruler I. Star Ruler allowed you to take as many systems as your system could take. One time I tried something like 999999 systems but sadly, my ancient computer back at the time couldn't take it. It ran overnight for 8+ hours and then crashed. Some more experimenting showed I could get a maximum of approximately 5k systems before my old PC crashed. My newish rig could probably take ten times as much without crashing at start. Too bad the old game files didn't make the transition, and the service I downloaded the game from is now defunct. If I ever have some additional time, I'll probably drop some bucks on Steam just to test what my PC can handle.
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Oct 28, 2023 21:25
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Star Ruler 2 is even better: its diplomatic system is brilliant. It's a shame that such talented devs didn't find big financiers to develop more games. 
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Oct 30, 2023 13:09
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I really liked Star Ruler 2, shame it didn't sell better.
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Oct 30, 2023 16:03
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RandomBlue posted:I really liked Star Ruler 2, shame it didn't sell better. It was an abrupt change in game design from the first one, IMO, which probably caused issues in that regard.
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Oct 30, 2023 18:46
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90% of Star Ruler 2 is great. The planetary resource pyramid, the diplomacy, the different types of FTL. But the games core feature, the ship designer, always frustrates me. The hex based thing just doesn't do it for me. And it is real important for making decent ships. At the base tech level you might get away with the autodesign. But once things like antimatter cores get introduced you can forget about it.
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Oct 30, 2023 19:41
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habituallyred posted:90% of Star Ruler 2 is great. The planetary resource pyramid, the diplomacy, the different types of FTL. But the games core feature, the ship designer, always frustrates me. The hex based thing just doesn't do it for me. And it is real important for making decent ships. At the base tech level you might get away with the autodesign. But once things like antimatter cores get introduced you can forget about it. Yeah, that was the one part I didn't like. Ship designers look cool in screenshots or whatever but I don't like spending hours designing every ship. MoO2 or SMAC style designers are as complicated as I want to get in a 4X.
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Oct 30, 2023 21:02
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Tell me more about these alternative FTL systems. Stellaris killing theirs for the shittiest one wounded me deeply.
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Oct 30, 2023 21:11
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RandomBlue posted:Yeah, that was the one part I didn't like. Ship designers look cool in screenshots or whatever but I don't like spending hours designing every ship. Sword of the Stars had a decent ship design system, I think that's my upper bound of complexity. Don't make me place every chunk of armor and subsystem
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Oct 30, 2023 21:18
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Tarezax posted:Sword of the Stars had a decent ship design system, I think that's my upper bound of complexity. Don't make me place every chunk of armor and subsystem For me, ship designers can't be complex enough. I can spend endless amounts of times designing weird drone carriers in SEV and then see how well they fare in the real world. Makes me wish there were more free-form systems like in Star Ruler I or Aurora, where you can be the maniac you always wanted to be and design ships launching smaller ships launching missiles launching other missiles Too bad that's such a small niche inside a small niche. Hell, Aurora isn't even sold because there aren't enough people around who would buy it. Edit: I recently bought Rule the Waves 3 on a sale, and already had some fun designing bad ships for the Kaiser. On my first run, I made it through barely one year before the Kaiser fired me. Something about being constantly over budget and making us look like dumbasses worldwide. I dunno, history taught me that's how German naval ministers should work.  RTW3 is another game with a good, despite being complex, ship designer. Libluini fucked around with this message at 21:29 on Oct 30, 2023 |
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Oct 30, 2023 21:27
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RandomBlue posted:Yeah, that was the one part I didn't like. Ship designers look cool in screenshots or whatever but I don't like spending hours designing every ship. Ship design gameplay can be very interesting, but that then has to be part of the core, not just bolted on to the side because a 4x is supposed to have one. I'd happily play a space version of RTW, but I don't see much point having a "drag components onto a hull" style ship builder.
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Oct 30, 2023 22:07
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Veryslightlymad posted:Tell me more about these alternative FTL systems. Stellaris killing theirs for the shittiest one wounded me deeply. Standard warp drives which are all known (hyperdrives) nothing major but fairly fast. Standard ship drives (not slow honestly the game doesn't make things take forever between systems) Gates which are much more fun then you think because you can put engines on planets and move them through gates to a core system and steal everything to make mega systems. Tractor beams make this even easier. Only barrier is your ftl generation and enemies can't use them And the best The fling beacon Have an enemy you can't seem to get past? Fling your fleet behind them and attack the rear planets. Want to say gently caress you with a massive fortress dropped square into an enemies shipyard? Fling your fortress at them. Want that planet? Fling it to your core systems. Enemy pissing you off near your beacon? Fling them. Sky's the limit and your only limited by your imagination and ftl inventory. It's literally insane what you can do once you start thinking outside the box and decide that your gonna say gently caress it to conventional warfare. There are also skip drives which are basically teleport drives you can add to your ship.
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Oct 30, 2023 22:31
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you forgot hyper relays, which are like the Autobahn, but in space or that putting engines on planets only works if you have one specific mod, if you don't want to use that one, no planetary engines
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Oct 30, 2023 22:41
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Did anyone ever make anything out of the Star Ruler 2 code they made open source?
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Oct 31, 2023 00:20
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Libluini posted:For me, ship designers can't be complex enough. I can spend endless amounts of times designing weird drone carriers in SEV and then see how well they fare in the real world.
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Oct 31, 2023 01:33
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UCS Hellmaker posted:And the best The fling beacon is especially funny when you start flinging fling beacons
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Oct 31, 2023 01:36
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The other issue with 4x ship designers is that you tend to unlock new tech fairly frequently, which then means that you want to update your ships fairly frequently, but then that means that playing optimally is a pain in the rear end. As usual, MoO had an interesting way of dealing with this, though it was admittedly much more a memory constraint. You could only have a handful of ship designs at any time, colony ships included. If you wanted to replace a ship design, you had to destroy all active ships of that type. It made the decision of when to upgrade more impactful, as you ran the risk of needing to delete existing ships if you upgraded too frequently.
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Oct 31, 2023 06:27
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The other thing MoO (2+?) did was ‘miniaturization’, which iirc gave a reduction in cost and size as you exceeded the tech level of the ship part. Aside from the limited design count, the cost reduction gave an incentive not to update your design, while the size reduction gave you an incentive to do smaller overhauls instead of a total redesign every time a new tech came in.
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Oct 31, 2023 08:06
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Dirk the Average posted:The other issue with 4x ship designers is that you tend to unlock new tech fairly frequently, which then means that you want to update your ships fairly frequently, but then that means that playing optimally is a pain in the rear end. Unironically this was the secret sauce in MOO1. I'll admit its a lot of fun to have custom ships tailored to your ship leaders in MOO2. But the tradeoffs between having ships now and better ships was much more strategic. I'll also go to bat for the troops=pops decision. It made the ground combat bonus of the Bulrathi relevant, especially in combination with the fact that unescorted troop transports had a chance of landing.
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Oct 31, 2023 08:29
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I'm a fan of the auto-build button in ship designers.
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Oct 31, 2023 08:51
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Dirk the Average posted:The other issue with 4x ship designers is that you tend to unlock new tech fairly frequently, which then means that you want to update your ships fairly frequently, but then that means that playing optimally is a pain in the rear end.
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Oct 31, 2023 10:22
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Splicer posted:SotS1 made this part of the gameplay. You can't upgrade but you have a plethora of situations where you want to leave a bunch of old junkers around for event fodder or whatever, and you can also trash them for bonus production. The neatest thing was that hivers were the slowest travel time to new planets but also the heaviest on missiles, which were the sole exceptions to the upgrade mechanic in that speed and damage upgrades to missiles always applied automatically. Cannons also upgraded with adamantine rounds I thought!
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Oct 31, 2023 10:33
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Jarvisi posted:Cannons also upgraded with adamantine rounds I thought! Guess what else apart from missiles Hivers went HAM on? E: it's weird how good SotS1 was. Splicer fucked around with this message at 11:00 on Oct 31, 2023 |
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Oct 31, 2023 10:39
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Lum_ posted:I'm not sure whether it was either GalCiv 2 or 3 that had the completely broken economy because Wardell decided to make higher tax rates give you less money because lol libertarianism. It was all of them, but particularly 1 was the worst for it. The guy who had to write the manual couldn't figure out how the economy worked and had to make a best guess at it.
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Oct 31, 2023 10:58
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How is Age of History II? Not sure if it's an actual 4x, maybe it's more of a wargame. But it seems interesting. I may just buy it up when I get home from work as it's only 5 bucks.
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Oct 31, 2023 11:09
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Following the historical pattern of upgrading your second or third generation dreadnoughts in the 1930s works really well in Rule The Waves. You can usually save enough tonnage from installing new machinery to do the whole package - modern fire control, improved main gun elevation, better torpedo protection and an actual AAA suite. Sometimes if you build the original design with generous enough armor and some excess displacement you can keep an old 1920s battlewagon in service into the missile age.
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Oct 31, 2023 11:23
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Polikarpov posted:Following the historical pattern of upgrading your second or third generation dreadnoughts in the 1930s works really well in Rule The Waves. You can usually save enough tonnage from installing new machinery to do the whole package - modern fire control, improved main gun elevation, better torpedo protection and an actual AAA suite.
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Oct 31, 2023 11:29
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Splicer posted:I haven't played this game but yeah most games tend to go the route of either no retrofitting or almost unlimited retrofitting. I wish more were kind of half and half where retrofits are possible but within intuitive limits. Retrofitting in Space Empires V works a little bit like this. If the parts you're replacing go over a certain threshold, the game will tell you that it's not worth it to upgrade. So this leads to a situation where you can go full Ship-of-Theseus when doing small retrofits over time, but if a new class is too obviously different from an earlier one, you'll have to scrap the older ships and build the new class by yourself.
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Oct 31, 2023 11:57
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John F Bennett posted:I'm a fan of the auto-build button in ship designers. I always feel that a ship designer can/should be as complex as you can make it, but not be required to win a game. At least not until the higher difficulty levels. I’m a big fan of the one in Distant Worlds Universe and DW2. I’m also a big fan of the fact that in both games you can craft and save templates that can be imported into future games.
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Oct 31, 2023 12:57
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There's always Aurora 4X if you want to play with ship designers all day
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Oct 31, 2023 13:05
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Splicer posted:I haven't played this game but yeah most games tend to go the route of either no retrofitting or almost unlimited retrofitting. I wish more were kind of half and half where retrofits are possible but within intuitive limits. RTW mostly stays within historical limits, IMO. You can always change propulsion machinery out but it's expensive and takes a long time. Fire Control can be replaced relatively quickly, only a couple months is usually required. Turrets are limited by the size of their original barbettes so you can usually only replace guns with the same size but higher quality or go up one size if you go from a triple to a double turret. You can also convert old battleships and battle cruisers to carriers, which is fun. Naval technology moves so quickly from the 1910s on that there's a real pressure to always have some of your ships in refit to keep up and always keep building new and improved designs to stay ahead. When it starts to take 30 months to build a super dreadnought that'll slightly behind the technological cutting edge by the time it's keel hits the water a 6 month refit to refresh your older ships with the exact same model of fire control starts to look like a bargain.
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Oct 31, 2023 13:43
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