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I started playing some distant worlds after putting it off for years and I can't believe I'm about to say this, but it seems kind of shallow? Like its a complicated MOO but compared to paradox games or even board games it just seems, I don't know. Very samey? Am I missing something?
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Oct 17, 2020 12:04
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Snail Information posted:I started playing some distant worlds after putting it off for years and I can't believe I'm about to say this, but it seems kind of shallow? Like its a complicated MOO but compared to paradox games or even board games it just seems, I don't know. Very samey? Am I missing something? The deep dark secret of distant worlds is that the part you actually care about is very samey, there's just a bunch of tangled wires under the hood(civilian ships and patrols and pirates and black box economics)
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Oct 17, 2020 12:10
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Well I don't fully understand what's happening with the game, but the bits I tend to care about are diplomacy and fleets (and some nice lore if its going) but it just seems to be, make fleets, warp them around, refuel them, and the most barebones basic diplomacy. It actually reminds me a lot of the stardrive games.
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Oct 17, 2020 13:29
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Sid Meier mentioned in one of his talks that what you don't want to do is design a black box that just kind of plays itself - you want the player to be the one making decisions and having the fun, not the designer before it even gets played. Distant Worlds to me seems like Exhibit A for that.
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Oct 17, 2020 13:38
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There does seem to be an awful lot of popups that are like "hey this is automated, if you want to change something, the automation is going to stop, are you sure you want to do this?" It's not clear if turning off the automation will break the game though. Like if I stop letting it make its own bizarro fleet groupings will it stop making escorts for trade ships and then that will affect some modifer and then crash the economy etc etc. I'm not sure what is important or not. Like I really dislike how Stellaris turns into giant death stacks of a huge fleet trying to play cat and mouse, and I wish it was more semi-automated like how you can define a border for an army to go to, like in HOI4.
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Oct 17, 2020 14:46
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Most things would benefit from HoI4's frontline system.
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Oct 17, 2020 15:36
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I don't even need to have a fleet or army to move around, I'd rather military stuff be abstracted to vague frontlines or warzones. The idea that I should be the one micromanaging ships in a fleet to find and hunt other ships is kinda silly. I understand why games have this, because that's the fantasy that people want from 4x games. I just think it would be neat if all I got to do was influence and direct things abstractly. I feel the same way about ship builder modes in 4X games, let me decide some important stuff about what weapons or doctrines to use, don't make me have to balance the power output numbers and armor numbers with weight or other arbitrary restrictions.
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Oct 17, 2020 15:44
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Anyone tried the demo for Star Dynasties ? It looks like a cool version of CK in spaaaace. Knightsoul fucked around with this message at 10:59 on Oct 19, 2020 |
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Oct 19, 2020 10:03
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Knightsoul posted:Anyone tried the demo for Star Dynasties ? This sounds like what I hoped Stellaris would be before rather than the 100th attempt to recapture that MOO2 magic. I'll give the demo a whirl tonight and report back how much it sucks (hopefully in an interesting way at least).
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Oct 19, 2020 14:20
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Stellaris was going to be like ck2 in space originally. They were taking Dune as inspiration, and have all human noble houses in space everywhere. You'd start the game in an established galaxy. I remember when they did a dev blog saying they were going to instead go for a game full of aliens and discovery and add in an exploration phase to the game. Stellaris is fine, its good even, but thinking of what could have been just hurts.
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Oct 20, 2020 15:17
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Snail Information posted:Stellaris was going to be like ck2 in space originally. They were taking Dune as inspiration, and have all human noble houses in space everywhere. You'd start the game in an established galaxy. I remember when they did a dev blog saying they were going to instead go for a game full of aliens and discovery and add in an exploration phase to the game. Stellaris is fine, its good even, but thinking of what could have been just hurts. This post murdered a tiny piece of my soul from sheer lost potential.
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Oct 20, 2020 15:22
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Snail Information posted:Stellaris was going to be like ck2 in space originally. They were taking Dune as inspiration, and have all human noble houses in space everywhere. You'd start the game in an established galaxy. I remember when they did a dev blog saying they were going to instead go for a game full of aliens and discovery and add in an exploration phase to the game. Stellaris is fine, its good even, but thinking of what could have been just hurts. Y'know, they could have had both. Humanity starts off established in some isolated nook of the galaxy, lots of different feuding space dukes or whatever, and as the game goes on technological development makes longer range exploration feasible and brings them into contact with a broader galactic community. Like the arc of EU4 transplanted into space. Not that I was ever really sure why they were so committed to making an exploration phase a thing. It's not uninteresting as a concept but in the context of an empire building game it exists mostly as a speedbump.
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Oct 20, 2020 16:06
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KOGAHAZAN!! posted:Y'know, they could have had both. Humanity starts off established in some isolated nook of the galaxy, lots of different feuding space dukes or whatever, and as the game goes on technological development makes longer range exploration feasible and brings them into contact with a broader galactic community. Like the arc of EU4 transplanted into space. Star Trek. The problem is that you run out of stuff to explore in Stellaris, where in Star Trek they have lots and lots and lots of places to continue to explore, even when the Federation has already nominally settled the area. If science ships could effectively go off-map to explore, then exploration would continue to be something that could happen over time. Of course, to make that work, they'd need to limit science ships in some way, and write significantly more events.
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Oct 20, 2020 16:17
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Stellaris' big problem is that the early game when you're a small fish and the AI empires are either on par with you or scripted to be untouchable until later is the actually interesting part because you have to navigate at least some semblance of challenges, but that immediately and instantly goes away once you hit like 30,000 military power or whatever because you have a single fleet that can solo the entire galaxy while you pump out equal fleets from every planet, and everything you take gives you even more of that fleet. Once you have that single large enough fleet, your empire is unassailable, and once you get two (which takes a fraction of the time), you can now take your neighbor. Meanwhile the first one is upgraded to 60k, and so on. You snowball so fast and so effectively there's no chance to lose. Similarly, your influence goes from a dripfeed to irrelevant at the exact same time, so you're taking all the good stuff for yourself, and if somehow you're over your cap, you just spin it off into an ever-loyal vassal or let them rebel and bomb them again, since armies don't matter in the face of three dozen ships bombing the planet.
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Oct 20, 2020 16:22
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Dirk the Average posted:Star Trek. I don't even know if more events would help. When every wibbly space thing ends up flattening out to "+5 science production" there's not a lot you can do with that. Ultimately, pure fluff can only carry you so far- you need the system semantics to give players a tangible reason to care about this stuff.
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Oct 20, 2020 16:24
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Yeah, like I had an alternate universe portal on a planet that seemed like it'd be really cool (especially for my galaxy brain single mind race) except all it did was increase trade a bit. Have me get invaded by things from that portal or something! Let me pull my alternate universe guy through and have two weird planets or something! Hell, let me actually do something diplomatic at all, the AI steadfastly refuses outside of one bot each game.
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Oct 20, 2020 16:26
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KOGAHAZAN!! posted:Y'know, they could have had both. Humanity starts off established in some isolated nook of the galaxy, lots of different feuding space dukes or whatever, and as the game goes on technological development makes longer range exploration feasible and brings them into contact with a broader galactic community. Like the arc of EU4 transplanted into space. I think I asked a dev this once. Iirc, the answer is basically that they realised they would sell far more as a traditional 4x. This then prompted them to shoe horn in all the 4x laundry list that the fans demand (exploration, ship designer, tactical planetary battles), even though they knew it would make the game worse because fans wouldn't buy it without those things. As a market, 4x fans are incredibly intolerant of innovation in the genre. It's like the rogue like genre before Binding of Isaac and Spelunky showed the world you could do something radically different and great in that space (and even then, you get weird gatekeepers who despise those games).
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Oct 20, 2020 16:36
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RBA Starblade posted:Stellaris' big problem is that the early game when you're a small fish and the AI empires are either on par with you or scripted to be untouchable until later is the actually interesting part because you have to navigate at least some semblance of challenges, but that immediately and instantly goes away once you hit like 30,000 military power or whatever because you have a single fleet that can solo the entire galaxy while you pump out equal fleets from every planet, and everything you take gives you even more of that fleet. This is basically an endemic problem to 4x games in general. The critical mass snowball point.
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Oct 20, 2020 16:38
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Bug Squash posted:I think I asked a dev this once. Iirc, the answer is basically that they realised they would sell far more as a traditional 4x. This then prompted them to shoe horn in all the 4x laundry list that the fans demand (exploration, ship designer, tactical planetary battles), even though they knew it would make the game worse because fans wouldn't buy it without those things. Yeah, 4x is a genre that has a ton of really cool things it could do... but never happen because their core base keeps demanding everything just be another Civ or MOO. Which means that every 4x released keeps running into the same drat problems from having the same flaws - boring endgames where you've won but haven't "won", colony spam, tech spam, and a dependence on resource multipliers to make up for inadequate AI. You'd think after 30+ years of experience people would realize that no, this Newly Released Game will not in fact have magically solved these issues without changing the underlying rules somehow. It's just not possible, or else someone would have done it by now.
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Oct 20, 2020 17:33
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Rimusutera posted:This is basically an endemic problem to 4x games in general. The critical mass snowball point. True, but I think it's worse in Stellaris because there isn't really anything else in the game. The AI barely interacts with each other and you can barely interact with it.
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Oct 20, 2020 17:36
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I hope this doesnt destroy your soul too much, I found the original postmortem:quote:In 2013, we thought we should aim even higher, and I started writing design drafts for a space game, codenamed "Augustus." I was torn between making either a kind of Crusader Kings in space, with a rich written lore and various interesting empires and dynasties (think Frank Herbert’s "Dune"), or a more traditional 4X with special focus on exploration (which I hadn’t seen done before.) https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/274018/Postmortem_Paradox_Development_Studios_Stellaris.php
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Oct 20, 2020 18:40
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Bug Squash posted:As a market, 4x fans are incredibly intolerant of innovation in the genre. It's like the rogue like genre before Binding of Isaac and Spelunky showed the world you could do something radically different and great in that space (and even then, you get weird gatekeepers who despise those games). Tbh I think the problem lies more with developers. I can't think of even any attempts to make a 4x that really tries to break the mold. Nobody has ever tested whether fans would welcome or reject innovation. The genre feels like it's living out a perpetual self-fulfilling prophecy: "we're making a new 4x that is exactly the same as all the others before it" "why?" "because that's what 4x fans demand" "how do you know that?" "because that's how we've always made 4x games"
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Oct 20, 2020 20:42
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Reading that explanation makes the Paradox Devs sound like very reasonable people.
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Oct 20, 2020 20:43
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Bug Squash posted:As a market, 4x fans are incredibly intolerant of innovation in the genre. I'm probably an off-market customer, but I'm really tired of buy/play the 1238732th wannabe clone of MoO: I want innovation, new ideas on the table that stimulate my fantasy about star empires clashing, and witness attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion or C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate! That's why I like and encourage with my purchases games like Stellar Monarch or Star Dynasties.
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Oct 21, 2020 00:41
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I have two ideas that I'd like to see in 4xs. One: Some kind of infrastructure modeling. It'd be neat to have the focus be way less on "what is the highest level tech I can research" and more on "what can I poo poo out gobs of, and is it meaningfully expensive to field high tech poo poo." two: cycles. Three distinct game phases, exploration, empire, ascension. I want to see games where once you dominate the galaxy your pops grow bored as gently caress and start ascending to a higher plane. Leave behind relics and weird poo poo, reshape stars, and then the next game you play go discover them.
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Oct 21, 2020 17:33
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Honestly I feel like ck2 rpg-type elements do a disservice to the gameplay of games where it gets added in and I think the CK2-in-space was a profoundly bad idea.
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Oct 21, 2020 17:49
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no but hoi4/eu4 in space would be great
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Oct 21, 2020 17:50
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Panzeh posted:Honestly I feel like ck2 rpg-type elements do a disservice to the gameplay of games where it gets added in and I think the CK2-in-space was a profoundly bad idea. I mean, I think it's be a cool idea which I am sure would have its fans, but also I personally get absolutely zero enjoyment from Crusader Kings's actual gameplay and I don't consider it 4X.
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Oct 21, 2020 18:03
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Isn't Stellaris pretty much EU4 in space after the exploration phase? I feel Sword of the Stars, Sins of a Solar Empire, and Star Rulers are all interesting. I would buy a game similar to their vein with better production value and some new ideas. Sword of the Stars actually manage to make ship design interesting with RTS style battle where instead of the extremely boring laser countering shield and kinetic countering armor garbage you have actual positioning and more varied interaction (though yes...there's literally laser countering armor and kinetic countering shield in that game, but it's much more nuanced). Battle often devolve into a clusterfuck brawl or endless kiting, but with better design and polish it can be truly great.
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Oct 21, 2020 18:08
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pedro0930 posted:Isn't Stellaris pretty much EU4 in space after the exploration phase? I think if you're going to have a ship designer, you have to have tactical battles. It's kind of the only way in which that mechanic makes sense, and then that changes a lot about how the rest of the game plays out. Every sci-fi 4x having ship/unit designers is this really strange artifact. Personally, I think if you want to make Rule the Waves, go whole hog and make Rule the Waves, the Admiralty Simulator, rather than throwing ship design into a normal 4x.
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Oct 21, 2020 18:41
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pedro0930 posted:Isn't Stellaris pretty much EU4 in space after the exploration phase? They've been working on trying to make that the goal, and the diplomatic options and depth has improved a lot but I think it falls short. One of the main issues imo is that galaxies are too small. A Huge galaxy has 1000 stars. How many are habitable? how many uninhabitable ones are interesting enough for you to care about? EU4 has >3000 provinces and they all generally matter even if you probably only care about your continent and maybe the Americas if you're colonizing. The amount of uninteresting stars where you deposit 2-4 stations and forget in a Stellaris galaxy is another one of those genre conventions that should probably go away. Every un-abstracted star on the map should have a habitable planet, wormhole, space dragon nest or something. This also lets you cram more empires on the map, which would help the diplomacy game matter more.
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Oct 21, 2020 19:03
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Panzeh posted:I think if you're going to have a ship designer, you have to have tactical battles. It's kind of the only way in which that mechanic makes sense, and then that changes a lot about how the rest of the game plays out. Every sci-fi 4x having ship/unit designers is this really strange artifact. So... Aurora, then?
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Oct 21, 2020 19:23
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Panzeh posted:I think if you're going to have a ship designer, you have to have tactical battles. It's kind of the only way in which that mechanic makes sense, and then that changes a lot about how the rest of the game plays out. Every sci-fi 4x having ship/unit designers is this really strange artifact. This is another system semantics problem, I think. Damage output, rate of fire, weapon range, evasion, damage resistance, hitpoints- these are all, for the most part, tactically interesting variables. They are given meaning by systems that operate on the tactical level, and if the game doesn't have those systems or the player has limited interaction with the game at that level then they end up being dangling references in the language of the game. So, yeah, a ship designer that centres on manipulating those variables is going to work best when it has a tactical combat system to interoperate with. But! There are other variables you could centre in a ship designer! Strategically interesting ones. Like, cost. Time to build. Upkeep, reliability and downtime requirements. Strategic mobility and endurance. Strike range. Combat characteristics, but now with a focus on what type of mission a ship is suited for- scouting, raiding, assault, pitched battle, escort duty, search and destroy. That sort of ship designer could, I think, be meaningful and engaging in a strategy game without needing to bolt tactical combat on to the side of it. Though of course that might not need to be a ship designer per se. Might make more sense as some sort of "doctrine designer".
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Oct 21, 2020 20:23
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I think at that point you take it up a level and make it a fleet designer. What composition of scouts/gunners/artillery/battleships do you want? More battleships means more survivability but slower fleet and high costs. More scouts means more speed and maybe easier to disengage but higher attrition. That sort of thing.
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Oct 22, 2020 04:03
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Knightsoul posted:Anyone tried the demo for Star Dynasties ? So tried out the demo, and sorry to say it's very much an opaque mess with very little fun to be had. The UI is actively unpleasant to interact with, and even after going through the tutorial I wasn't able to interact with the moving parts in any meaningful way.
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Oct 24, 2020 13:27
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Why does every space 4x have a ship designer even though the main reason the ship designer was fun in moo2 was bc you could do wacky poo poo in tactical combat like make a pirate fleet with tractor beams or suicide bomb battleships with frigates and none of the other space 4x's include tactical combat so the ship designer ends up just being a feature that you can completely ignore bc everything is getting autoresolved or done in doomstacks anyways
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Oct 27, 2020 13:35
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I would give anything for a straight Space Empires V update that changed nothing besides making the UI actually usable by humans  What a game of infinite possibilities
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Oct 30, 2020 21:12
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Danaru posted:I would give anything for a straight Space Empires V update that changed nothing besides making the UI actually usable by humans Wanna get sadder? Years ago, I remember the developer saying that he was willing to do one last patch to do just this*, but Strategy First wouldn't let him * unless you're talking about a complete UI overhaul; he just wanted to make it not take ten minutes to open a menu
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Oct 30, 2020 21:23
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Danaru posted:I would give anything for a straight Space Empires V update that changed nothing besides making the UI actually usable by humans So many good ideas gone like (badly rendered) piss in the wind.
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Oct 30, 2020 21:54
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FrancisFukyomama posted:Why does every space 4x have a ship designer even though the main reason the ship designer was fun in moo2 was bc you could do wacky poo poo in tactical combat like make a pirate fleet with tractor beams or suicide bomb battleships with frigates and none of the other space 4x's include tactical combat so the ship designer ends up just being a feature that you can completely ignore bc everything is getting autoresolved or done in doomstacks anyways this represents very well the problem of design in 4x's like, 4x games have waaaaaaaay too much loving microdecisions at all times that feels cumbersome, instead of focusing on strong macro level tools and systems, as a consequence you deal with the mindboggling conceptual idiocy of tiny planets and space limits or w/e because the design requires for micro-level fiddling I remember seeing the galaxy map of elite (the latest) and was blown away about the scale of seeing that all the settled human space was like, not huge at all and thought how would that work for a strategy game? 4x convention has such horror to density and macro-oriented development that is no wonder is so derivative, and density is what makes viable lots of different scenarios and modes of play that are not contemplated at all like, "oh but we can't really allow players to get resources like in reality from an asteroid field because a bunch of large rocks has all the iron, nickel, zinc and tin that human civilization needs at peak capacity right now at more than 3000x", gently caress that noise, move past that precarious necessity for antiquated notions of balance and try new poo poo
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Oct 30, 2020 22:26
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