Ship Design?????

Uhm I checked out some sites, and I figured out that we cant design ships. Too bad. That was my fav part in Spave Empires 4.

We cant design ships so we wont have techs like shields, armors etc at all?

The game will rock, but I wont buy it this way.

Chris,

If you are looking for a game that is nothing more than a "shoot-em up", then don't bother with GalCiv. It is so much more than that.

Ship design: There is an approach in GC that allows you to design your own ships, but it is static, not dynamic. You put your designs in files that have to be available when you start a game. You can also design social improvements, government types, events, and much more in the same way.

Besides, why do you want another game just like SE IV? Didn't you already pay for that?

Ships in GalCiv are more like units in the Civilization games. They have various attributes (Hit Points, Attack, Defense, Speed, Range, and maybe Sensors), and once you research the relevent tech you can build them.

There are also techs that increase your units attributes such as increasing them by 10%, and there are also various "Wonders" and "Trade Goods" that can do similar things (Tri-tanium Steel, for instance, increases HP by 50%).

So for units, it's basically an advanced Civilization in space, just not exactly.

Aha I see. Oh well....
Lucky Jack if you know Space Empires, than why you think that Im a shoot em up fan? Its the most complex space strategy ever.

Anyways yes the ship design part is really awesome there, you can make any ship what you want. No limits.

However its clear to me that this is like a Civilization game in the space so its totally acceptable that the game wont have that feature.

Chris:

Our ship definitions are all text files, so players will be able to create their own ships. We're also planning on providing a toolset so that you can make your own ship models to go with the definitions. So it won't be an in game design, but you can still make your own ships.

Chris,

I tried the demo (100 turn limit) and found it too single dimensioned. It was almost all warfare with little of the other aspects of GalCiv. Yes, you had to research techs, you had the ability to negotiate peace or alliances, but it all seemed to be geared to warfare. Compared to GalCiv, there just wasn't much depth. Trade and diplomacy feel like afterthoughts, influence is non-existant, etc.. Project management (the planet build queues) also required a huge amount of micro-management. The effort of constantly redesigning ships distracted from other game elements in a big way, because not only did you have to work the design screens, but then you had to go through all of the planets' build queues to change each and every occurance of the old design to the new one. All in all, too much distraction from the main goal of the game.

I really think you are going to have to try GalCiv before you can understand how I came away from SE with these impressions. Comparing them is like comparing apples and oranges. You have to see, feel, smell, and taste both before you can grasp the differences.

you know, "depth" and "warfare" can go together. A complex combat system with unit management can have a lot of depth too. It's wrong to think that in order to create a game with "depth" one has to have only a primitive combat system.

ML,

I was speaking dimensionally. A game that puts a huge amount of its emphasis on only one kind of play (as in warfare, diplomacy, what ever), leaves me feeling it is single dimensioned (what I mean when I say it "lacks depth"). To say that that SE's coombat system has depth may be valid, but the overall game itself is shallow. It all depends on what view point you choose to view it from.

Right, it's all a matter of point of view. Majority of players prefer games with a emphasis on combat.

Not so Master Lame. Some of us perfer a "thing" game vs. "shoot-em up!"

Sigh. That was "thinking". That's what I get for playing so late. :notsure:

hlesser, I said MAJORITY of players, not ALL of them

Well, I still think you are wrong there,Master Lame, at least in regards towards this targetgroup. We don't like combat emphasised games. We like to build slowly, research stuff, think it over, spy a bit on the enemy, until we are completely and absolutely sure, that we have the biggest, meanest and most destructive gun in the universe.
THEN we like combat

/Flemming Madsen
VP Lidium
www.lidiumonline.com

I will buy this game. Also I like this idea to make own ships after txt files.
Anyways Space Empires 4 gold is really neat, all things improved there. The demo is very old.

The majority of gamers like FPS too. Doesn't change the fact that they suck.

Except Metroid Prime. That game kicks booty.

It comes down to where you want to put your "depth".

Writing a game is a lot like playing a strategy game.

Imagine a screen with a bunch of sliders on them for different areas of the game you want to devote attention to.

Allowing for the design of ships means you should allow them to fight. If you want them to fight and still be a AAA game you need to do it as a 3D engine so that it looks cool. Then you need to do another level of AI for the tactical combat.

So which features would be good to cut? I'd rather focus on the general AI, events, technologies, star base modules, diplomacy, etc.

I think down the line we should think about designing ships, Maybe for GalCiv2. We should do it in such a way that it doesn't detract from the real focus of the game, building a empire. The problem is doing it right, I for one don't think we need 3D tactical battles, now that would be a major waste of time for this type of game. I may watch them early in the game but image having like 10 to 15 battles in one turn, is anyone actually going to sit there and command the battles? Really I also don't care if I have 5 trillion lasers instead of 1 micron phases because I don't have enough room on the damn ship. So how would we do this?

When you select a ship to be built say a Defender. You have the OPTION to Click on the details [?]. There would be different options like of the type of Defender it would be. You would get 4 new options, (this will be different per type of ship, like a colony ship wouldn't get anything) each one will give you different bonuses and negatives. That way there will be a degree of ship designing but nothing over the top. IMHO

Recon +1 sensor -1 Att (basically more room for sensors since you removed some weapons)
Defender +1 Def -1 Att (Less weaponry more shielding)
Attacker +1 Att -1 Def (Less shielding more weapons)
Raider +1 Movement -1 Def (Less amour bigger engine)
Standerd - N/A - (The good old defender)

That would be enough for me.

AlexG said "... but image having like 10 to 15 battles in one turn, ..."

I have done that, on GC/OS2, MOO2, and CIV2. Of course, in the process, I went from peace with that race to annihilating them in one turn. I wasn't able to do this often, but when I did I found it very satisfying.

I think you can define "game depth" in different ways. It has mostly nothing to do with the rule complexity of agame. Eg "go" is a game with a very deep gameplay. But it has only few simple rules.

I am really looking forward to Galciv. But I think the designers did not pay enough attention to a very important thing in 4x games. The ships and combat.

On one side the designers say that they dont like to have a better ship combat system, because this detracts from the goal of the game. I would like to ask WHY? Even some slight modifications like stacking and having some strategic modifiers would do it in this case. But not so in galciv.
Everybody understands that galciv is NOT SEIV. And I dont ask to introduce any of the fine sophisticated strategic and tactical ship combat procedures SEIV has. Also I would hate if any graphical changes are made in galcivs ship units (please no 3D tactical combat - I dont know why frogboy thinks that 3D graphics are necessary in any game, except a FPS or some mainstream RT games)
All I would like to suggest is, some few little things to support a better combat system and to improve the current rules. (eg building fleet stacks, composition of different ships in fleet stacks do have some impact in combat etc.)

I mean in 80%+ of the galciv games strategic combat will be important or very important or at least one of the political options. To claim combat is NOT important is surely more wishful fantasy than truth about the nature of galciv.

Just look at the huge amount of different combat units the game already offers. If combat is so unimportant, why not abstracting the whole thing, (fleet points or whatever?) so that I dont lose valuable playing time with moving around hundreds of ships and conducting countless CiV like combats?

NO, the truth is, that combat and ship movement is one of the several important parts of the game. And for this the combat system is not good enough to get my applause.

I quit playing Civ I und II because of the unsatisfying combat system. And if I heard that CiV III has no improvement in combat mechnism, I did not even buy it. But I did buy Civ-like CTP because of its real improvement in combat (and economy) mechanism.

In Galciv I mean just because the current combat system is working this means not that it is good. IMO a lot of TB-Fans do think that old Civ combat style has overcome its time and has to be modified to meet their higher expectations.
I hope the designers will see this too and give the combat system a new twitch.

KlausD

Brad has already stated a few times that combat will get a bit deeper with weapon types and fleet bonuses due to Flagships. These just arn't going to make it into 1.0, but some future update.

Klaus1416 said "... in 80%+ of the galciv games strategic combat will be important or very important or at least one of the political options. "

I don't see how anyone can argue with that. It is just like saying "At least 80% of the people in the world have doubts about something at some time." Of course its true. It is stated in a way that FORCES it to be unarguable.

But why do you claim anyone is saying combat is NOT important? I have yet to see anyone say it wasn't important. Just not AS important as all of the other strategy games for the PC seems to think. This is where GC shines. It puts a more balanced effort across ALL of the aspects of empire building. Does the combat system suffer for this? In the first release, yes, to some extent. But I think the sacrifice is well justified. And don't forget, there is 1.1, 1.2, 1.x, 2.0, .... GC is going to fill an empty nitch, one where empire building is not one dimensioned, one where the other aspects of empire building are given as much attention as combat, which is much more than in any other game. This should draw a NEW crowd into gaming, and even make converts of a lot of the old crowd.