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random events - 2/27/2003 8:34:13 AM

startrekdork

Posts: 41
Joined: 11/2/2002
Status: offline

the random event feature is nice to have in there i just wish they were more exciting random events. for example one game i played in where i was doing really well i had a stock market crash where i lost twenty percent of my cash. so instead of having 60000 i dropped to like 40000 so it wasnt too much of a loss because i got the money back real fast. or 20% of the population on all my planets died didnt really make a difference because i got them all back too.

most of the things id want added for starships unlimited seem to fit into more of an expansion pack concept rather than a patch. i mean for these random events i wish they were more interactive in that we had more of a part in it to prevent what was happening.

for example:
1. you have a colony that detects an astroid heading towards it and you have to send a ship their in time to destroy the asteroid or intercept the asteroid and if you dont make it the planet loses a whole bunch of its population and some buildings.

2.a planet has a virus on it killing off the population and you have to stop your research and find the cure for it or you lose the planet. its just a more of a hands on type of random event.

3. new races that pop up mid game that have superior technology. like say its the end of the game its your federation with two planets in it versus an empire with two people in it and you two face off fighting when all of a sudden another race pops up that is signifcantly advanced far beyond your race and you have to lay down your arms to defeat them.

or say a planet pops up with a pirate base on it. like a colony with ships attacking all the local systems except its just a rogue pirate base with no affilation to any empires or federations so you have to destroy it. or perhaps you provided so much funding to enemy pirates that they could finally afford their own pirate base deep within your enemies terroties and now they have to fend off the pirates.

right now the interactive random event people have to deal with is pirates because they attack randomly and you have to destroy them which is great way to build up your ships experience. i wish exploring built it up too, just simply flying around would make the engines better or defending attacks makes your shields work more efficiently.

another thing would be to find random empty ships that later in the game with tractor beams you can capture, or perhaps inside the ships or artifacts you can use. i mean think about it a random ship floating in the middle of space and you stop to explore it.

basically if you watch a couple episodes of star trek you could come up with a whole bunch of ideas that could be added into any 4x game....

Post #: 1

Re: random events - 2/27/2003 9:43:33 AM

dragoniv

Posts: 60
Joined: 1/10/2003
From: Albany, NY
Status: offline

[QUOTE]Originally posted by startrekdork
[B]
for example:
1. you have a colony that detects an astroid heading towards it and you have to send a ship their in time to destroy the asteroid or intercept the asteroid and if you dont make it the planet loses a whole bunch of its population and some buildings.

2.a planet has a virus on it killing off the population and you have to stop your research and find the cure for it or you lose the planet. its just a more of a hands on type of random event.

[/B][/QUOTE]

Ummm....did you ever play MOO1? Moo1 did something similar to the asteroid thing (think it was a comet) and also did something similar with "monsters" like TNG's Crystalline Entity that was attacking worlds and you had to send a fleet to meet and destroy it.

The virus thing is practically identical to Moo1's virus random event, too.

They had the stock market crash, and a couple of other cute ones (radiation leak comes to mind), but they were mostly just distractions.

Random events are kind of kooky, IMHO. This game does a good job with fog of war (absolute necessity in a strategy game)...that can provide some "random" surprises from time to time. :) Combat also appears to have some randomness built in--while the better ship "usually" wins, there is enough play in the simulator to make the battles interesting.

Stars! had an interesting item--the Mystery Trader. It would zoom through space at speeds far exceeding your own, broadcasting a message ("willing to trade for a zillion cubic feet of barconium"). If you managed to intersect its route with the cargo load (not an easy feat with a slow, pondering fleet of freighters), you got a stupendous new technology that often radically shifted the balance of play. Not sure what could be done in SUDG that would be in that vein...

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Post #: 2

- 2/27/2003 10:53:38 AM

startrekdork

Posts: 41
Joined: 11/2/2002
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first of all, ive never played moo1 very far. i know its supposed to be a great game and i recently got an edition in pc gamer of the full game so i tried it out but i couldnt get the sound to play and the graphics were so old and i had no idea what was going on because i had no manual and no reference material.

despite all that i was hooked. i played for an hour its still on my computer but i didnt get very far.

although i did play star trek birth of the federation which is a moo clone. it had some of the worst random events. like an asteroid hit your planet and kills everyone. that really ticked me off. here i am the mighty federation and i cant stop an asteroid from damaging one of my planets. it had a virus one too. and the crystalline creature and a bunch of other creatures that would attack your planets and youd have to kill them or theyed wipe you out quickly.

but by far the coolest random event in that game was the BORG. i remember one game i played till like i had a huge federation and i had this brief skirmish war with the klingons and i had to rally my ships to attack the klingons and i sent a squad of cruisers into the klingon system to attack them and i detected this unidentified ship and so i went to investigate and it was a borg cube and in one shot it took out all my ships. like 4 regular cruisers and five heavy cruisers gone they didnt even get a shot out.

then the borg cube went and destroyed the klingon empire and any planets i had there too. so i started developement on the sovereign type ships, the enterprise e, i was building the second most powerful ship in the game and amassing them into huge fleets for a counterstrike so i went in and there was five borg cubes and all the planets had been destroyed and they wiped my fleet out then they started to go my way and i realized it was game over.

the borg were cool but there was no way for the klingons and me to set aside our differences to fight the borg off and stuff.
itd be cool if in stun they had a super uber race appear late in the game and you had to team up with your enemies to fight it off or something. or maybe thats just me.

and on a side note, i read that in a future episode of enterprise theyre bringing back the borg........just when you thought youd seen it all.

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Post #: 3

- 2/27/2003 11:05:44 AM

dragoniv

Posts: 60
Joined: 1/10/2003
From: Albany, NY
Status: offline

you're kidding! let me guess...the borg failed to wipe out the guy who invented warp drive, so instead of working to cause an all-out nu-clu-lar (thanks, "W") war in the 1970s, they go after the very first enterprise. Hmmm...

Moo1 was a great game--but is was a DOS game...thus the sound issues. I play it now in win2k without sound--still mucho fun and challenging. The manual is of limited help--you can find FAQs on the web that explain the game thoroughly.

moo2 was a huge disappointment...so much so, I'm not even going to bother with moo3. sudg, stars, spaceward ho and moo1 do me just fine, depending on my mood.

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Post #: 4

- 2/27/2003 1:29:26 PM

startrekdork

Posts: 41
Joined: 11/2/2002
Status: offline

eh i was considering buying the cheapo version of moo2 to see what it was like but ive heard enough bad things about it i decided not to. and ive read sooooo many bad reviews of moo3. its like they take these classic games add some sorta new graphics and then hype it up as being the next thing then release a dud. first roller coaster tycoon now moo3.

my personal favorites stun by far and birth of the federation was um compelling and sometimes fun but overall very bad. imperium galactica 2 was great ok plot pretty good graphics but sort of bad gameplay. all races had the same technology and whoever has the more advanced ships and superior numbers would win which is always the case but it was more evident here. the gameplay was just very lacking.

imperium galactica 2 had great random events. a planet was about to explode so you would have to capture this scientist and make him develope this thing to save the planet. or terrorists threatened to release a virus on your key planet unless you pay them a huge sum of money. either you pay them or you dont. if you dont pay them you can intercept their ship before it releases the virus.

for stun, well......its hard to add on to such a great game. i wonder if theyll release a sequal or expansion pack at this point. ive seen a lot of people that complain about things in the game, like the ai isnt smart, or ships attack funny and stuff like that. my wishlist is composed of more options and things to do.

the reason i love this game is because it has such a star trek feel to it, you know? i mean when andrew made the original shareware version that was obviously the feeling he was going for. that sense of going out into the unknown and exploring with a rickety old ship powered by a rocket drive armed with some cheap missiles being held together by spit and gum and luck.

i play it to experience that feeling of starting off on the bottom with nothing but a rock and a dream than advancing to the point where you have shields that black holes couldnt damage and laser cannons that blow up entire planets.

of course neither of those are in stun, but wouldnt they be cool?

i never understood why andrew didnt let you finally research a weapon that blew up planets. maybe because it would unbalance the game or something but it would be super cool. say it took a huge amount of energy to power up and once you built it everyoen hated you because you were such a horrible person.

right now the things i want for this game are more gameplay features. i know thats hard but some of them arent even that big just little things.

for example, when you research replicators youd think theyed be on your ships so you could replicate more ammo for your missiles or create a new component to replace a damaged one. it could cost you money or energy to do it. its a very small and simple gameplay addition that would be easily to implement. you make it so all of your ships become like docks. so basically docks could repair things really fast and reload quick but ships on the other side of the galaxy who cant get to a dock can reload and repair on their own.

as for the borg.......they find a space ship in the north pole with three aliens on it frozen solid so these earth scientists take them back to their outpost and the borg come back to life and starfleet goes to stop them and the borg send some transport ship to get the borg survivors and enterprise meets up with it or something. somehow trektoday got a tip that this was an upcoming episode. wouldnt surprise me after the stuff they pulled with the ferengis......

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Post #: 5

- 3/24/2003 11:08:48 AM

gunny

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Joined: 3/1/2003
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[QUOTE]Originally posted by startrekdork
[B]
and on a side note, i read that in a future episode of enterprise theyre bringing back the borg........just when you thought youd seen it all. [/B][/QUOTE]

OMG. Don't mean to Shanghai the thread but...I hate enterprise. They have so severely bastardized the timeline Gene Roddenberry must be rolling over in his grave by now.

Shouldn't be nothin but Orion pirates, exploited primitive klingons, and mystery Romulans nobody has seen up close.

I hate Enterprise.:mad:

Thanks I feel better now:rolleyes:

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Post #: 6

- 3/24/2003 1:42:13 PM

gren99

Posts: 6
Joined: 12/26/2002
From: Portland, OR
Status: offline

[QUOTE]Originally posted by gunny
[B]OMG. Don't mean to Shanghai the thread but...I hate enterprise. They have so severely bastardized the timeline Gene Roddenberry must be rolling over in his grave by now.

Shouldn't be nothin but Orion pirates, exploited primitive klingons, and mystery Romulans nobody has seen up close.

I hate Enterprise.:mad:

Thanks I feel better now:rolleyes: [/B][/QUOTE]

honestly, it's nowhere near a sbad as you all make it out to be. as i hear it the story centers around some of the borg that came back in time during 'first contact' and how they have impacted the continuity by being 'back in time'.

i had my druthers about the 'borg on enterprise' concept, but frankly, this idea makes an awful lot of sense, continuity wise, since it ties up a loose end left over by the movie.

as for bastardizing the roddenberry timeline -- please. if you watch the show and are well versed in trek lore, you would realize they are doing no such thing. if anyhting they are rather faithful to their interaction with TOS and the like (well, that stupid ferengi episode nonewithstanding). what kinda makes enterprise less-tan-pleasant is the simple fact that it tends to be kinda lame and boring at times (though at least it's not down int he voyager level of utter crappiness).

more arc-stories a la DS9 sure wouldn't hurt either.

_____________________________

gren99

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Post #: 7

Enterprise down the drain - 3/24/2003 11:04:59 PM

EricLarsen

Posts: 458
Joined: 7/9/2002
From: Salinas, CA Raider Nation
Status: offline

Originally posted by gren99
[B]what kinda makes enterprise less-tan-pleasant is the simple fact that it tends to be kinda lame and boring at times (though at least it's not down int he voyager level of utter crappiness). [/B]

gren99,
The whole Star Trek franchise seems to be going down the tubes, not just Enterprise. I gave up watching the show after 1.5 seasons as the shows are just too boring and the cast too bland. It was fun for a while the first season, especially with the Suliban, but I also agree they're screwed up the Star Trek timeline and story. They also have better looking tech at an earlier age that just doesn't jive with the original ST. I think that Berman has gotten off the Roddenberry track and is ruining ST with his lack fo vision. I was glad when they put Voyager out to pasture and I'll be glad when Enterprise is put to rest. Maybe they can come up with something better like making a series out of New Frontier by Peter David.

But what really peeves me is the books. They used to be really good stories and now the stories are tedious and boring and the proof reading is entirely incompetent. I remember back a few years on the ST book website they said they only took scripts from well-known authros as they put out about 1 book per month. Now they're puking out 2-3 books per month that are pathetic attempts at sucking up money for poorly written boring stories. I've now stopped buying ST story books because the stories suck and the quality is poor. I'll stick with the Star Wars books which are infrequent but worth the wait and money.

So sad to see such a great franchise go down the tubes. I still enjoy the original ST on the SciFi channel but won't watch STNG on The Moron's Network (TNN but really TMN).
Eric Larsen

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Post #: 8

- 3/26/2003 2:24:57 PM

startrekdork

Posts: 41
Joined: 11/2/2002
Status: offline

its funny how this became a star trek forum. any minute andrew will come in and voice his oppinion.

i agree this season has been pretty lame with enterprise and there are all sorts of questions left looming in the air, and that borg episode makes more sense now that theyve explained it plus they said they made the episode without any continuity snafoos.

but just bear with me people. i read about how the season finale ends. SPOILER:

read on the [url]www.trektoday.com[/url] site what the season finale is. the klingons go to kill archer because he did something to offend them archer gets saved by some earth ships and they race back to earth because its under attack by klingons but its already too late. they blow up florida and cuba! ha. and archer meets some old flame of his. plus theres some twist at the end. plus berman keeps saying that the enterprise mission is about to change. so right now the mission is to boldly explore and make friends and stuff and somehow i get the feeling its about to become an all out war with either the klingons or the romulans.

so finally. a big war is about to break out i can feel it. just like starships unlimited! now if only someone could make a star trek mod for sudg!

as for the random events. ya. more random events.

or on another side side note. i bought moo3. the best buy guy said it was good so i bought it on ebay. ha. waited for that game for so long finally got it and its a total dud. bad interface bad graphics bad gameplay bad everything. even with mods and patching i doubt they could save this game. galactic civilizations came out too and thats getting good reviews at least better than moo3. but in the end we all come back to sudg. just wish it had some new patches and stuff added in to spicen things up. a way to edit ship technology! oh but on another nother side note. i got the jurassic park project genesis game. now there is one heck of a game. i recomend it if you like jp and sim games.

but now that the dust is falling and the four games out there are moo3, galciv,sudg and seiv im starting to look on the horizons for the next revolutionary state of the art amazing turn based space game. imperium galactica three anyone??? ya probably not....

maybe sudg 2: Even More Unlimited Starships:eek:

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Post #: 9