Monsters oh my!

Are they corporeal things you can track down and kill or are they just undefined "dangers" that cause damage and death? That is, would sending a squadron of Avatars through a dangerous sector leave it less dangerous or would you just end up with a couple of "mysteriously" damaged Avatars?

-Robert

Right...like, once your race has advanced to that point where they can deal with it, can you go out and "hunt it down", to make that sector safe?

Also, and maybe this is a stupid question, but is the monster going to be tied to morale at all? As in, will you get any sort of bonus (to morale or whatever) for killing it? How will it react to populated planets in that sector?

Just doing some out-loud thinking.

--Mark

Right now they're just space creatures that are units that act as agents of chaos. But yea, it woudl be kind of cool if killing it gave some sort of prize.

I am not crazy about dealing with Space Monsters.

It sound almost like Masters of Orion idea.

If the monster where is can impede the Alien races that is fine but likely since Aliens already know where all the planets are, they would know where all the monsters are.
It can only harm humanity.

Yeah, but he said it WOULD kill aliens ships... I think it would be cool if there was a event that was sort of like a monster migration, that had 5 or so monsters in a group sweep once through the galaxy causing havoc!

I'm thinking of more questions...what about visibility? Will it be unseen until it attacks a ship? That would go well with the idea that the other races don't already know where to avoid them...it would also help to level the playing field a bit.

It sort of makes me think of early exploration, back in Magellan and Vespucci's day. These guys set sail on treacherous waters, while many people around them filled their heads with legends of terrible sea creatures, serpents and sirens. It lends a neat "explorer" feel to the game, enhancing the fact that Humanity is really venturing out into unknown territories, for the most part. Unknown to us, that is.

--Mark

This has me thinking of all sorts of neat ideas... are pirates or something like them ever going to appear? I think that would be cool... a small fleet of space pirates gathers to prey on the trade routes!

space monsters? hmmmmmmm.

s

Space monsters...sounds yummy!
It would be nice if the chance of space monsters being in the game was an option. It would also be nice to have more than one monster in a game.
Maybe two options:
Max number of monsters: 0 - N
Probability of monsters: 0 - 100.

When creating the galaxy, just do:

for (iPossibleMonster = 0; iPossibleMonster < MaxMonsters; ++iPossibleMonster)
{
if (rand() < MonsterProbability)
{
++iNumMonsters;
// create a new monster
}
}

That way people can leave it very random how many monsters appear, or by setting the probability to 100% they can force exactly how many monsters they want. Just as you are currently using Max=1, Probability=100 to force 1 monster in each of your games.

I like Wyrenn's idea of a monster (or swarm) appearing on one end of the galaxy and moving towards the opposite side, attacking anything it sees along the way.

I like the idea of having them randomly in a small percentage of games. Beta 3 sounds like it's going to be a pretty large jump from Beta 2.

During some games, for no reason, all my ships in transit (not in orbit) suffers 33% damage. Space stations included. this happens thoughtout the galaxy!.
could the alt-tab key cause this?

Sounds like you just built that one trade good that increases ship HP by 50% (can't remember the name right now). It only changes max hp, so it'll appear that all your ships have 33% damage.

The trade good is "Tri-Strontium Steel". Many people have seen the effect of this without knowing the cause and been similarly confused.

I have wondered, why doesn't the increase in max HP just increase the HP on all ships to match. On ships that currently are at max HP it should just increase the ship's HP to the new max. On ships with damage the increase should be proportional to the damage, that is, if a ship has 8 hit points of 16 left and the HP is increased by 50%, the ships HP should be increased to 12/24.

Hmmm not keen about space monsters is'nt it cheesy enough with civ3 style huts in every sector.

"I have wondered, why doesn't the increase in max HP just increase the HP on all ships to match. On ships that currently are at max HP it should just increase the ship's HP to the new max."

It makes sense the way it's done now, at least from an in-game perspective. The installation of the new armor isn't automatic, all the ships are stuck with the old armor (with whatever holes in it) while they gradually replace it with the new tri-strontium steel.

They should do a poll are space monsters cheesy.

Actually, my thought was that "real" space monsters would be boring, but "monsters" as localizable areas that could cause damage would add interest to the game in a long-term sort of way instead of the short-term sort of way that "real" monsters would provide, especially if, as suggested, they shifted around over periods of years so you had to keep alert to keep your freighters out of danger.

For the real monster fan, however, perhaps they would be something that could only be defeated by multiple races cooperating--two or more races allied and both "at war" with the monster. They would spread chaos at first but lead to cooperation.

Or more simply real monsters could be given some very large but finite number of hit points so that over time, they are worn down by ships that occasionally get the chance to shoot back before they mysteriously disappear.

-Robert

i vote for an are space monsters cheesy poll.

Maybe we should have a poll on whether to have a space monsters cheesy poll.

nice one Brandon.

been on this forum long? Not seen an example of rabid pointless unconstructive sarcasm before. welcome aboard

(sorry guys)

I like the idea of adding localized problems......monsters, pirates, localized nebulae, black holes all would be great fun.

In one of the old games a friend of mine helped make they made a monster that would land on a planet, eat all the ships and reduce the planet quality by 1. You would have a 1 turn warning, however which means that all your ships had to be off planet for that 1 turn leaving your planets unprotected. That made strategies very interesting.

Good god some of you need to get things in perspective.

In the actual game, the odds of even seeing a space monster during the course ofa given game is like 1 in 20 (i.e. 1 in 20 games). We plan to include all sorts of things that won't show up in most games that add spice to it.

Given virtually every sci-fi show has had some sort of space creature, I guess we'll have to risk having that "Cheese" in there.

Space monsters eh I could get used to em'
LOL

Alright, so monsters are in... a small step away from Pirate Fleets!! oh yes...

The more the merrier.........add tons of stuff!