57 replies to this topic

[Moo4]

I'll call it MoO 1.5 for now.  As much as I'd like these to be viewed as suggestions for MoO4, I'm afraid WG is past that point.  Now just for fun and pet projects.  I won't get into the 'hot topics' of star lanes or combat for the time being.

 

Work in Progress.

 

 

MoO1 Staples

Planet growth and potential determined by BC's created by population and factories.

 Population create 0.5 BC waste-free (increased to 2.0 at planetology level 50) and factories produce 1 BC with waste.  Population level  is determined by terraforming and biome.  Factory growth is capped by k*pop where k starts at 2 and can be researched up to 7.  Early planets are measured in the dozens of BC.  Late game planets are measured in the thousands of BC.  

 

Slider system would allocate the planet's BCs into

     "Construction" (ships + defensive buildings).  

     "Infrastructure" (factories + buildings)

     "Ecology" (pollution management, terraforming, +population growth)

     "Research"  (self explanatory, converts BC into RP).  

 

Single planets per system (with option as multiple systems as a rich-like bonus)  See below.

 

Espionage as part of global tax burden (no build queue for spying...)

 

Population movement (and invading) handled by raw population (no build queue for transports)

 

Random research "tree" with small bonuses for researching multiple areas at a time.

 

Racial bonuses for strong/poor research in particular fields (ie bulrathi good at construction)

 

Incremental terraforming with +max pop as the primary result (terafforming accomplished through eco slider and not affected by rich/poor status)

 

For anyone looking to give MoO1 a shot, I highly recommend reading through this tutorial  http://sirian.warpco...1/tutorial.html

 

MoO2 Additions to keep

Space monsters (and more variety)

Planet bonuses (natives, etc) 

Universe events (Antarans, monsters, fluxes)

Multiplayer (hotseat/lan/internet)

Custom races

Fleet maintenance augmented by soft limits (command points potentially)
Alternative defense structures besides missile bases

More diplomatic options (research treaties)

Government bonuses

Leaders (see below)

 

 

Hybrids (the fun part!)

 

Expanded leaders and Reworked Buildings

 

MoO2 buildings were meant to diversify planets but they failed miserably.  They also hurt the pace of the game.  

 

Leaders in MoO2 were primarily there for flavor and a bit of RNG.  They were 'fun' but not exactly balanced or critical to the game.  To their credit though they were relatively easy to manage.

 

MoO 1.5 should expand the leader mechanic to augment the role of Moo2 buildings.  Ideally we will get the planet/system diversity and flavor without the pace-breaking build queue.  Buildings would still exist but their construction would be controlled by a smoother measure of 'infrastructure' rather than knit-picking every building.  There would also be a limited number available in your empire or steep drawbacks that only make sense on specialized planets (in combination with certain leaders).

 

 

Reworked buildings

 The mantra is pretty simple.  Fewer buildings but more decisions.  MoO2 had too many buildings and too few decisions.

 

Bye-Bye Queue,  Hello Checklist.

Building management would be abstracted out of a player defined queue and instead focus on a binary 'build it or not' selection system.  Besides the reduction in *number* of available buildings, there would also be a drastic decrease in the amount of time/resources to build a structure (basically 0 cost for the basic buildings, larger cost for the unique buildings/wonders).  The bigger concern in basic buildings would be maintenance costs rather than build time.

 

With a checklist, how do we know the order to build structures?  Can a brand new planet really just start with deep core mines?. The primary condition on order is that buildings would have a requirement based on the number of factories on the planet.  (Alternatively we could consider a requirement on the total BC production of planet, this would factor in population and existing buildings as well).

 

Hydroponic farms, for example, may require 100 factories before they can be built (for those not familiar with Moo1, 100 factories is achievable within a few turns on the home planet).  Biospheres may be 130 factories.  If both of these buildings are 'checked' then hydroponic farms would automatically be built by the Infrastructure slider (which normally builds regular factories) when 100 factories are present.  The 'cost' of farms would be trivial and finished in 1 turn.  The main hurdle is getting a planet to 100 factories.  After the farm finishes the Infrastructure slider would return to pumping out factories until 130.  Then biospheres would be built.  

 

If the planet already has 150 factories when farms and biospheres are 'checked' then the industry bar would build farms first and then biospheres (likely finish both on the same turn).  Order is determined by the factory requirement.   

 

Because buildings are so cheap to actually build (the bigger concern is maintenance!)  The lower factory requirement the better; the faster the planet can come up to par.  Leadership/racial/tech bonuses may reduce the number of factories needed in order to build the structure.  The very first version of research laboratories may require 200 factories (in the early game only the home planet would likely have this much infrastructure).  However, as part of minituraization/tech/leaders etc this may be reduced to ~50 factories by the mid-game.  Therefore new planets would be able to get a research lab much sooner on their growth curve.  

 

 

 

Example of new building progression

Automated Factories:

Produces +50 construction points per turn and increases the return of BC spent on construction by 10%.  (Construction applies to ship building and defensive structures).

Maximum of 3* Automated Factories per empire.

Requires 150** factories on the planet to be built. Build cost of 100 BC's.  (Approximately 1/4 of a turn)

 

Robo Mining Plant

Produces +100 construction units per turn and increases the return of BC spent on construction by 15%.

Maximum of 2* Robo Mining plants per empire.

Replaces Automated factory if it exists.

Requires 300** factories on the planet to be built.  Build cost of 1,000 BC's.  (Approximately 1 turn)

 

Deep core Mine

Produces +150 construction units per turn and increases the return of BC spent on construction by 20%

Maximum of 1* Deep Core Mine per empire.

Replaces Automated Factory and Robo Miner plant if present.

Requires 600** factories on the planet to be built.  Build cost of 10,0000 BC's.   (Approximately 5 turns).

 

* The base number of buildings available changes with size of galaxy.  

* Leader traits may allow a building on that particular planet without counting towards the empire max.

 

**The factory requirement of buildings may be influenced by racial/tech/leader traits.

 

 

 

 

Leadership Traits

 The standards would all be there.  production/ecology/research/morale/money/pollution/growth/spying/trading

 

Ones to add could be:

+max population

 % chance to change biome (or will change the biome to X in Y turns)

 Increase production to slider X where X could be construction, infrastructure, ecology, research. 

+BC per population

Increases number of factories per population

Decreases costs of factories

Doubles the effect of building X (where building X is something like automated factories or research labs).

Reduce the factory requirement in order to build building X on this planet (or across the empire)

Reduce the cost of building building X (on this plane or across the empire)

Provides a 'free' building X on this planet without counting towards the empire maximum

Increases the empire's maximum count of building X by 1 (this is more powerful than version above it because it does not require that building on the leader's particular planet).

 

However, not all leadership traits need to be positive.  There may be negative effects as well.  Obvious negative examples are the opposites of ones listed above.

 

 

 

Random tech tree but more exclusive choices

 I firmly believe that randomly generated research options from MoO1 is the superior of the 2 systems.  

 

It really is an amazing system.  The randomly generated choice-set.  The progression of levels based on highest-so-far + number of discoveries.  The % chance window of making a discovery.  The 'interest' gained from  having slow but consistent allocation.  The built-in miniaturization.  All of it is great.

 

However, there is something to be said for player choices.  I think a good mixture would be to rely on MoO1 style but have some techs exclude others.  For example, Improved Eco restoration makes it cheaper to clean up waste while "Reduced Industrial waste x%" makes it so there's less to clean up.  I believe choosing one should make the other much more expensive (in terms of RP) or non-researchable (but still able to trade, steal of course!).  This encourages other ways to acquire tech (looking at you psilons...) and increases replayability because available techs are created each game.   

 

These exclusions can vary by level.  Choosing one of terraforming +10/20/30/40 may exclude (or drastically increase RP cost of) improved robotic controls III and IV.  However, the choice between terraforming 50 (and above) and robotic controls V (and above) would be made again later in the game and can differ based on the previous choice and what you've been able to steal up to that point.

 

MoO1 had this very indirectly with races have strengths/weaknesses in the 6 areas.  Poor construction races would need to get their pollution reduction from planetology and vice versa.

 

 

Research-list Generation

 At the heart of MoO1 research is the randomly generated options each game.  I think this could be pushed slightly further in MoO1.5.

 

The first step would be to decrease the number of options generated by the traditional system.  This means the game is a bit stingier when initializing each player's unique tech options.

 

Next, we allow in-game options to add back some techs to the (now sparser) tech tree.  To be clear, these events do not give you the actual technology--they just add them to your list of available options to research later on.  In some cases, these techs may be included with a multiplicative bonus(or penalty) to their base research cost.

 

In-game research option(s) examples

First to explore a radiated planet?  +% chance of adding radiated base tech to your tree.

Hiring a leader can come with a researchable tech as opposed to giving the tech out-right.  

Artifact planet?  Perhaps it adds 2-3 options to your tech list instead of giving you 1 tech out-right.

Exchanging techs diplomatically may now include the exchange of tech-PLANS that let you share tree options instead of already-researched techs. 

 

Conventional research spying a bit too risky from a diplomatic point of view?  Allow option to still tech-PLANS that will add another race's available tech to your tech tree.  The other race may or may not have researched that tech yet!  A failed version of this may come with a 2-3x RP penalty instead of diplomatic losses.

 

Invading a colony will still reward with already-researched techs but higher chance to add UNresearched techs to your tree.

 

I'm sure there are many others

 

 

 

 

 

Multiple planets per system

 This feature of MoO2 was interesting for awhile.  However, the long term result were more chokepoints and fewer territory to cover.  I believe multiplanet systems are a precursor to starlanes (but that is another topic).  It also added to more micromanagement for the same 'size' of empire and made combat not as intuitive.  

 

In MoO 1.5 I propose multiple planets be a somewhat common bonus to a starsystem similar to the rich/artificats that currently exist.  To be clear, there would not actually be multiple planets.  The bonus would just influence population, factories, and costs.  Missile bases would still defend the entire system (just like solo planets).  Invasion would still happen like a solo system.  If the planet in a multisystem planet is taken over, the population/factories on the other ones just disappear.  The strength of the bonus bonus would  be determined by a single value: how much +population the extra satellites can sustain.

 

As an example, one rating of multiple planets in a system would add +25 population to the system total (non-terraformable).  Besides being non terraformable , their factories would be built last at a cost of 10x the base cost.  This makes multi-planet systems expensive investment but the +population and factories could result in some of the strongest output in the late game.  

 

All population and factories are grown on the primary planet first (just like solo planets) but then population continues to grow up to 25 per satellite.  Once the primary has finished factory construction a simple popup gives the option to continue factory production on the satellites at a steeper cost.  Once built, the factories on satellites produce BC and pollution just like a regular factory.  Only difference is the higher initial construction costs.  It is entirely possible to play a multi-planet system just like a regular system that has a small population bonus.

 

Speaking of population.  For simplicity population would follow some simple rules:

1)  When transferring TO a multiplanet system you cannot exceed the base population of the primary planet.  The satellites must grow organically (after primary is at max).

2)  When transferring FROM a mutiplanet system you cannot exceed half of the base population of the primary planet.  In other words you cannot remove people from sattelites.

3)  When defending from invasion, only the population on the primary planet is used.  If they lose, the population and factories on sattelites all disappear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Moo4, 08 April 2016 - 07:04 AM.

[RayFowler]

So, here's how it is going to be done in Remnants of the Precursors, a  MOO1 clone that is currently in work.

 

Things you will not see. None of these fit the MOO1 requirement of scalability:

-- multiple planets per system

-- colony buildings

-- ship combat with individual ships

 

Things you will see:

-- the 3 MOO2 races will be added

-- the Antarans will be a mid-game adversary that appears after Orion is colonized (by you or the AI)

-- wormholes will be added

-- various tweaks to planet and star types

-- increased discovery of in-game lore

-- the Borg as a space monster (MOO1 has always been a Star Trek themed game)

 

These MOO2 elements will  be added a little differently:

-- Leaders will appear periodically. Based on type, they will provide  a bonus to a colony (if assigned there), or empire-wide (if assigned as an advisor). Their bonus will increase in rank over time, but only while stationed at a colony. You can stack leaders at a colony as a form of system specialization. Promotion to advisor is a one-way trip, so players will have to use prudence. Smaller empires will add leaders at a greater rate than larger colonies, allowing tall empires to be more competitive with wide empires, and mitigating the runaway snowball effect

 

-- Governments will exist, but the player will not be in total control of them. It is a game mechanic that you have to deal with and exploit. I wrote up a brief description on this in the explorminate forums, which you can read here: http://steamcommunity.com/groups/explorminate/discussions/0/412448158143254081/#c412448792372955846

 

-- Research treaties will be replaced by a latent research bonus when you are researching techs already known by your trade  partners or those you have spy networks for. The more who know it, the bigger the bonus. This is specifically intended to mitigate the snowball effect.

 

Probably in the MOO2 version of the game as well:

 

-- Atmospheric Terraforming, Soil Enrichment and the high-end armors will be gated by a resource system. The Empire treasury will be expands to include these resources in addition to the BC it already tracks. Terraforming resources will be collected from Greenhouse and Ocean planets. Players without access to the terraaforming resources can still terraform, but much more slowly. With the resources, the terraforming will progress as quickly as in MOO1, which is really fast btw. Constructing ships with the armors will require the accumulation of ore from Rich/Ultra-Rich planets, or planets in Neutron star systems. These changes are intended to turn more of the planets into strategic resources to be protected.

 

-- There will be a food distribution mechanic that takes advantage of Fertile/Gaia planets and while making it a very bad idea to make every planet a Gaia planet. They will provide food for other planets (abstraccted by raising the max pop within 1-turn range), so players will need to strategically decide which planets in their empire should be breadbasket planets. Gaia terraforming will turn this into overdrive at the cost of eliminating all industry on the planet. Once again, it creates a additional strategic system.

 

 

-- Emperors will be able to give compose and give speeches to their empires, which can be timed with external events to maximize the effects of the speech. There is a cooldown on their effectiveness, so players need use them judiciously. Their net effect is to provide a temporary bonus to the empire, much like a "Golden Age" in Civ, but which effects specified by their speech composition.

 

-- The Orions... will show up in a post-MOO2 release due to artwork requirements. This is my favorite  "new" feature and is being kept internal until it gets closer.

 

 

That's about all I can think of for now

[Moo4]

Interesting stuff!

 

I completely understand the single planet per system.

 

Not all colony buildings are bad.  You could cut the MoO2 buildings down to about 1/5 of their current number and have a good system.  No queues though.  Think more like a checkbox system where you can check off the buildings (again I'm thinking like 10 possible buildings in the game) you want at a particular planet.  If you check automated factories then any resources spent on "Industry" will go to automated factory building before continuing on regular factories.  If you check terraform, any resources spent on ecology would apply to terafforming before population growth etc.  I've updated my post about how to minimize the number of buildings.  

 

If you have a sophisticated leader system than buildings can be ignored completely.  

 

You didn't mention research.  I'm hoping it follows MoO1 style of multiple levels of a single tech with randomly generated options each game.  

Edited by Moo4, 09 March 2016 - 07:59 AM.

[RayFowler]

Moo4, on 09 March 2016 - 01:58 AM, said:

Interesting stuff!

 

I completely understand the single planet per system.

 

Not all colony buildings are bad.  You could cut the MoO2 buildings down to about 1/5 of their current number and have a good system.  No queues though.  Think more like a checkbox system where you can check off the buildings (again I'm thinking like 10 possible buildings in the game) you want at a particular planet.  If you check automated factories then any resources spent on "Industry" will go to automated factory building before continuing on regular factories.  If you check terraform, any resources spent on ecology would apply to terafforming before population growth etc.  I've updated my post about how to minimize the number of buildings.  

 

If you have a sophisticated leader system than buildings can be ignored completely.  

 

You didn't mention research.  I'm hoping it follows MoO1 style of multiple levels of a single tech with randomly generated options each game.  

 

MOO1 already has colony "buildings", they are just abstracted into the sliders. You learn a tech, you spend money, and the colony is improved. Just like buildings. This how terraforming, missile bases, planetary shields, factory upgrades, and stargates all work. It is exactly the same function just implemented differently. Adding Civ-style buildings with a build queue would frankly be a poor design decision because it would disproportionately increase the level of micromanagement for no functional  gain.

 

The leader system doesn't really replace the function of buildings, but is intended scratch the same "itch" regarding the desire to specialize your colonies. You could send all of your scientists to your research colony deep in the empire, your engineers to your rich ship-building border system, and your archaeologists to the artifact planets. Combining leaders with the idea of a set of advisors is intended to get more strategic leverage out of the same mechanic. For example, if you know that your empire is about to shift into an oligarchy and want to stay on a war footing, you'd stuff your cabinet with aggressive and ruthless leaders.

 

With regards to multiple planets per system, they don't really add anything except more planets to manage. You can already get that by selecting a larger map size without the hassle of a more complicated UI navigation, so in that sense it would actually detract from the game.

 

 

The MOO1 tech tree is brilliant. It's not changing.

Edited by RayFowler, 09 March 2016 - 12:55 PM.

[Moo4]

EmP64213, on 09 March 2016 - 04:29 PM, said:

 Colony uniqueness? Then don't make it desirable to build everything everywhere.

This is my biggest focus on limiting the number of unique buildings per empire and # of total buildings per planet.  Essentially inspired by https://en.wikipedia...napsack_problem

 

It is possible that re-arranging leaders could get the same feel but with more randomness as the player wouldn't know which leaders will come along.

[Moo4]

RayFowler, on 09 March 2016 - 03:54 PM, said:

 

MOO1 already has colony "buildings", they are just abstracted into the sliders. You learn a tech, you spend money, and the colony is improved. Just like buildings. This how terraforming, missile bases, planetary shields, factory upgrades, and stargates all work. It is exactly the same function just implemented differently. Adding Civ-style buildings with a build queue would frankly be a poor design decision because it would disproportionately increase the level of micromanagement for no functional  gain.

 

Completely agree (just finished another MoO1 game last night).   Smoothing over the 'buildings' is something that MoO1's sliders is excellent at.  However, it is quite weak on diversity/uniqueness/flavor because the system, as elegant as it is, still promotes building the same buildings everywhere.  There's very little decision in which planets to upgrade to fertile or to implement better eco-spending.  

 

There was very little choice in MoO2 as well--they just made it an uglier system to get to the same result. 

 

Implementing that specialization feel can be done by either a limited number of leaders or a limited number of buildings or both.  Leaders are interesting from the idea of promotions.  Buildings have a tighter connection to research progression and represents more discrete jumps in a planet's potential.  Both have merits and is a fun discussion.  

 

The leader system doesn't really replace the function of buildings, but is intended scratch the same "itch" regarding the desire to specialize your colonies. You could send all of your scientists to your research colony deep in the empire, your engineers to your rich ship-building border system, and your archaeologists to the artifact planets. Combining leaders with the idea of a set of advisors is intended to get more strategic leverage out of the same mechanic. For example, if you know that your empire is about to shift into an oligarchy and want to stay on a war footing, you'd stuff your cabinet with aggressive and ruthless leaders.

 

 

It seems like there could be 3 tiers of leaders.

 

"Primes" which would be pulled from a list of pre-made leaders and possibly race-specific ones.  Looks like these would go straight to advisor-level and have empire wide implications and influence gameplay strategies depending on who you get early (in-game option to pre-select which prime leader you want to play with of course).

 

"Leaders" which would function similar to Moo2 leaders and work at the planet level with level ups increasing their effectiveness.  These can be turned into advisor-level as a one-way-trip as you said.  Custom races may have to rely on turning these leaders into advisors instead of the pre-made (possibly more powerful) race-specific Primes.

 

"Specialists" (to borrow from civ) which wouldn't need names and would be sent to a system for a specific purpose ( ie +production).  These could be stacked with varying levels of effectiveness and diminishing returns.

[RayFowler]

The plan is for leaders to have a skill which can level up over time, and a personality (ruthless, pacifist, etc).

 

The player will be given a choice between putting a leader on a colony for their skill at a colony level, or as an advisor for the same at an empire-wide level. The personalities will come into play during the oligarchy phase of the government, so the decision to promote is a little more involved since it's not just about the flat bonus.

 

I don't want to over-complicate the leaders because it is an additional mechanic and there's a risk of simply creating complexity without depth. There's a real tendency to "blue sky" new features and make them too confusing.

[Moo4]

I think we do agree on a lot of things.  Interested in following your work!

[RayFowler]

I'm trying to respect the "theory of seven" so as to avoid turning the game into a kitchen sink of ideas. Look at the things a MOO1 player needs to master to play the game:

 

1. How to expand in the galaxy

2. How to develop your colonies

3. How to focus your research

4. How to design your ships

5. How to interact with other races

6. How to do ship combat

 

Those are the basic ideas needed to run the game. That's 6 already, but some of them are more straightforward (developing) and one of them ends midway through the game (expanding). So there's room to add without weighing the game done.

 

I am adding:

 

7. How to manage leaders

8. How to manage trade resources

9. How to deal with the Orions

 

That makes 9, which is a lot of different gameplay elements to juggle. But since the Orions will be after the expansion phase is finished, it's actually never more than 8.

 

Remember, the more strategic elements you have in a game, the less important any one of them become. I'm guessing there is a "sweet spot" to hit probably somewhere around 7.

[Moo4]

RayFowler, on 10 March 2016 - 03:56 PM, said:

I'm trying to respect the "theory of seven" so as to avoid turning the game into a kitchen sink of ideas. Look at the things a MOO1 player needs to master to play the game:

 

1. How to expand in the galaxy

2. How to develop your colonies

3. How to focus your research

4. How to design your ships

5. How to interact with other races

6. How to do ship combat

 

Those are the basic ideas needed to run the game. That's 6 already, but some of them are more straightforward (developing) and one of them ends midway through the game (expanding). So there's room to add without weighing the game done.

 

I am adding:

 

7. How to manage leaders

8. How to manage trade resources

9. How to deal with the Orions

 

That makes 9, which is a lot of different gameplay elements to juggle. But since the Orions will be after the expansion phase is finished, it's actually never more than 8.

 

Remember, the more strategic elements you have in a game, the less important any one of them become. I'm guessing there is a "sweet spot" to hit probably somewhere around 7.

 

4 and 6 go hand in hand in my opinion.  Could/should easily be one (albeit important) topic. 

 

5 is pretty minimal if you are sticking with moo1 diplomacy options/AI. (fine by me).  

 

----------------------------------------------

 

Do you have any intentions on tweaking the numbers of moo1 mechanics?  In particular I think the costs of expanding factories through robotic controls could use some steeper numbers.  I'd like to get to a point where I should slow down on factory production because my BC's are better spent in ship/research (even though I could technically build more factories).

 

Consider these numbers for a 100 population planet and keeping factory cost constant at 10.

 

IRC 2 (start)

200 factories at 10 BC a piece.

2000 BC to max.

 

Now come the expansions.

 

IRC 3

New cost is 10 BC for new factory 

Refit cost is (10-10) = 0 BC for existing factories.

200x0 + 100*10

1000 BC to max (assuming starting from previous max)

 

IRC 4

new cost is 15 BC for new factory (50% increase)

Refit cost is (15-10) = 5 BC for existing factories

300x5 + 100*15

3000 BC to max.  (2000 more than before).

 

IRC 5

New cost is 20 BC per new factory (50% + 50%)

400*10 + 100*20 = 

6000 BC to max.  (3000 more than before)

 

IRC 6

500*15 + 100*25 =10,000 BC to max (4000 more than before)

 

IRC 7 

600 * 20 + 100*30 = 15,0000 to max. (5000 more than before)

 

 

Essentially it gets really cheap to expand those factories in the end game.  This doesn't factor in the ridiculousness of improved industrial tech and that your overall BC capacity is increasing.

 

In the very early game there are some interesting decisions about getting that early colony ship or popping a critical tech faster than maxing factories (or doing them simultaneously of course)  However, as the game progresses it almost always pays to max factories first (also assuming you are spamming new colonists in from existing planets).

 

I think the MoO1 mechanic is awesome, but the numbers should be tweaked.  Perhaps with a concept of the 'last mile'.  If you have IRC level k, that k'th factory (per population) should be drastically more expensive than the k-1th factory.  This keeps a "well I *could* get more factories but maybe I should put more into research for abit?" tension.

 

[RayFowler]

With regards to colony development, the only internal numbers I am tweaking are to fix known exploits. A notable one is the reserve-ultrarich exploit.

 

With regards to diplomacy, I am not using the internal logic of the original game as the whole thing is too expoitable. I am developing the AI from scratch for that.

 

 

Also, remember that "interacting with other races" is not just diplomacy, but espionage and sabotage

[Zeraan]

Ray's game is one of the two games in development that's based off of MoO 1.  The other one is Dominus Galaxia, and it's being developed by my team (I linked to a thread because our website needs some loving and don't have as much details as covered in the thread).  I don't generally plug my game in other games' forums, but felt that this thread is good fit to explain what I'd do, since I'm literally doing it.

 

I wanted to expand on the "eXplore" aspect.  The thrill of land-based 4X games is discovering the terrain that you're playing on.  This is often lost in space 4X games because you instantly see the whole galaxy from the first turn.  So I implemented fog of war that's pushed back when you colonize planets or research larger logistics range.  I also added different kinds of nebulas, the most significant one is the anti-matter nebulas, which blocks any travel through it (think of mountains or oceans in land-based games).  The end result is that it significantly added to the "eXplore" aspect!  I don't know where in the galaxy I started in, until a lot of exploring later on!  The terrain of the galaxy forces me to expand in certain directions, instead of expanding anywhere.  Nor do I know how many other empires are in the game, and even when contact is established, it will not reveal their empire.  I felt that it has re-captured that wonder of exploring when starting a new game!

 

Another negative feature to handle is colony ships.  We discussed different ideas, and actually had MoO 1's colonization approach, but the limited design slots means it forces the player to scrap 1/6 of designs just to build one or two colony ships.  We hit on the idea of using transports to colonize (like Star Lords, or MoO 0), but to limit expansion, a planet needs to build a Starport before it can send transports, build ships, or propagate logistics range.  It has worked pretty well so far!

 

We're trying to reduce the clicks that it take to do things.  For example, instead of having all sliders add up to 100, we use weighted distribution.  So if a colony has a slider at 50%, and another at 25%, it means the 50% gets 66% of the production allocated to it, and the 25% gets 33%.  So no more "One more... one more click... Crap, I need to nudge the ENVIRONMENT back, then lock it, then nudge other sliders again".

 

Space combat is turn-based, but instead of square based and 1v1, it's now hex based and allows up to 7 sides (1 defender and 6 attackers).  This has made combat really intense at times, as you try to have the other sides fight each other first before you get involved.

 

Those are the major features that I really liked in Dominus Galaxia.

[RayFowler]

Just want to make clear to everyone that I am not hyping my game. It will be free, anyway. I just like talking about MOO1, and 4X game design in general, and found this thread after being msg'd by the OP.

 

Also, I will debate all day about why MOO1 > MOO2, lol,  so I gravitate towards  MOO1 threads.

[Zeraan]

RayFowler, on 12 March 2016 - 12:09 AM, said:

Just want to make clear to everyone that I am not hyping my game. It will be free, anyway. I just like talking about MOO1, and 4X game design in general, and found this thread after being msg'd by the OP.

 

Also, I will debate all day about why MOO1 > MOO2, lol,  so I gravitate towards  MOO1 threads.

 

Sorry, I didn't meant to imply that you were hyping.  I was just commenting that normally I'm reluctant about hyping up my game on other forums, but figured this thread is a good place to talk about certain mechanisms that I want to see.

 

Debate?  There's no debate.  MoO 1 > MoO 2.  That's a fact.  

[RayFowler]

When are we going to see a gameplay video of your game? I'm very close to breaking down and making one of mine.

[JosEPh_II]

I posted in another thread if Ray was still doing his "java moO" and here's the answer in this thread.

 

All 3 of you have good ideas for making a better MoO. Now I have to remember to keep track of you all's progress in that regards.

 

And for the record I Like ALL 3 moOs (now 4). And any game that can expound upon any of them also has my interest.

 

Hey Zeraan and Ray, I'd Love to see a vid play, 1 from each of you , if possible. That would be very nice.

 

JosEPh

Edited by JosEPh_II, 12 March 2016 - 03:06 PM.

[Zeraan]

RayFowler, on 12 March 2016 - 01:58 PM, said:

When are we going to see a gameplay video of your game? I'm very close to breaking down and making one of mine.

 

Jeff calls our current UI "eyesores".  As soon as he's done updating the UI to the new style, either AiL (our AI guy) or Jeff or both will start making gameplay videos.  AiL would probably focus on videos about AI in action.  We're aiming to have a polished Alpha by end of month (I keep saying that for past half year!) so hopefully around that time.

[vmxa]

HI Zeraan, JosePH_II and I think I know Ray as well. It is hard to track all the possible version status for me. I hope this can be the place to try to follow the progress, if any.

 

For me I always had Moo1 as one of my very favorite games. In the last 5-10 years MooII has tied it for me and now I cannot say which I like better. Hoping the Reboot will eventually make it to that level, but way too soon to know. As JosePH knows I also played a lot of Moo3, but Moo1 and II are games you can play in a reasonable amount of time and Moo3 is not.

 

I am always looking for reboots of games that are not well received by the latest Windows and Blizzard actually made a patch to let Diablo II LoD run with no hassle on Win10. Who would have expected that? 

[RayFowler]

vmxa, on 12 March 2016 - 09:59 PM, said:

For me I always had Moo1 as one of my very favorite games. In the last 5-10 years MooII has tied it for me and now I cannot say which I like better.

 

I will bring you back from the dark side!!!  :P

[Moo4]

I understand where you are coming from on the pollution mechanic in MoO1.  Arguably the interface did *too* good of job controlling pollution levels by setting the slider at 'clean'.

 

A subtle but critical issue of pollution tech in MoO1 is that they came from different areas (planetology made cheaper to clean up and construction made less to begin with).  This allowed races with special strengths/weaknesses in certain fields (another awesome aspect lost in 2) to have options.  It also made the psilons quite strong because they could get both.  Also, races like the klackons (and anyone pushing high into planetology) got a pretty big chunk of production just from population which didnt pollute.  This made the late game proportion of eco spending smaller still.

 

A second issue is that (arguably) population levels grew quite fast.  This made extra eco spending for +pop not all that important.  If a mod of either one of these new games would allow for slower baseline population growth then I think players would pay more attention to getting the sliders high enough for +pop.  Then we'd see how annoying pollution is.

 

What I do like about the pollution mechanic of moo1 is that because it was based at the factory level, it affected all areas of growth (eco and research included).  Whereas moo2 it only affected production.  This made moo1 techs stronger, but arguably too strong.

 

Through some sort of limited buildings, it would be interesting if industrial waste elimination was limited to only a few planets. 

Edited by Moo4, 13 March 2016 - 02:42 PM.