AmmoSgt
Posts: 1002
Joined: 10/21/2000
From: Redstone Arsenal Al
Status: offline
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Tomb I'm in the same boat ...I don't know what to tell you ..and I play 4x'ers alot ...this one seems to really hit some nerves ..but maybe i have been worrying about technical accuracy and stuff to much from being around SPWAW to much ..
But anyway, in what I am sure will be a vain attempt, some of my pet peeves about 4x games in general and this one in particular ...
Planetary populations and the money units yikes .. ok ok abstract units like 50 dollars and 4 million total pop is a minor point ... but think about it .. maybe a rethink of the values could be made to sorta make these at least sound right..
Ship dynamics and combat formations weapons arrangements .... anybody ever seen an Apollo /LEM docking ??... you can have a fixed cannon that can shoot in any direction independant of direction of travel with just a tap on the control jets ..that arc of fire stuff either needs some serious rethink or the restraints on manevuvering need to be tied into the null grav (whatever) system to explain why a ship can't freely rotate thru 3 axis { ok everybody knows no null grav means ya gotta change out the crews every month and three crews cost more ..but damn that maneuverbilty sure makes it worthwhile in a fight .. conversly if a ship did have only fwd firing cannon and shields ..a second enemy ship could cook up the unprotected rear ..making formations revelvant if the second ship could maneuver to expliot such a unidirectional weakness .. turrets are sort superflurious when spining the whole ship is so easy ...
Technology invarabley makes every rock worth colonizing in every game I have played .. even Gas Giants and every planet is instantly adjudicated useful or not with just having a ship in the system ..(ok i am being real general here and kinda bitching about ALL 4x'ers ..but i kinda expect matrix to be better than the rest )
It would be nice if it took some determination to sort thru a systems planets, moons and asteroid belts and if there were some "unforseen events" that would make a heavan a hell after a year or two ... some games colonization is so dang easy that you can accually afford not to worry about defenses and make buffer colonies ... geeze louise I would think the local population might get antsy under those circumstances ..
Take a hard look at good ol' Sol and the surrounding planets ..even at this stage of development right now folks are speculating on the economic viability of asteroid mining for rare elements , even water.. to supplement shortages of rare stuff on earth .. Once upon a time on a computer in the 6502 Galaixy I played a game called Cosmic Balance ..you had to organize planets into economicly interdependant groups using population from some minerals from others organics or something from a third type in a particular ratio supported by frieghters to get a positive cash flow .. and then you had to defend not only the planets but the ecomonic structure against raids that could knock out the commerce as well as the planets ..that meant back up frieghters patrols panetary defense or any economic gain from them went strictly to rebuilding the economic system and you empire got squat until things were back up and running .. and as equally varied modes of attack , actually it was even more complex IIRC than i describe ..
Why are technology levels usually similar and only need research and never seem to need an abundance of some rare and exotic resource before then can either be discovered or expolited and why are alien technologies so easily reversed engineered... don't get me wrong , I Like Alien Technologies .. but i like a little side puzzel or maybe something as simple as need some resources to unravel it or maybe needing to find some supporting resources to implement them I don't know ..
I am kinda more brainstorming here more than bitching, but some of this stuff could /might/ just make a difference
Interstellar Travel should not be both easy and cheap .. just dashing around the galaxy should carry a penality .. and colonies should be hard enough to come by to make them worth defending ..and some colonies should fail for unforseen reasons ..not all colonies should be money makers after a turn or two sources of rare neutroium (or whatever) should maybe be an economic drain but worth it in return for the capability to support exotic technology of some sort ... Maybe "Spice" a la Dune ( or neutromium /whatever) .. somebody else controls the resource you don't have the capability to support the allied technology unless you can obtain it either diplomatically or thru warfare .. maybe captureing a supply ship who knows ?? maybe make some resources abundant but useless to one faction and rare but vital to other races .. maybe alien technology that works sorta/sometimes but is subject to unplaned and ununderstood breakdowns until maybe 5 ,10, 50 turns have passed with research and resources expended ... maybe not all systems are connected by wormholes and some real gems are off the beaten path hard to get to hard to find hard to attack but rich beyond the dreams of avrice ..who knows .. something that would make a pattern search system by system unwise making some planets easy to get to early (wormholes if you want) but some systems hard enough to get to, so bypassing them makes sense early .. maybe a frozen methane moon makes for cheap chemical engines in one system while solarpowered ion engines and all their draw backs limits the exploration in others, especally way out in the outer planets where their obviously isn't solar energy to run them , and those nasty unrelable nuke engines which everybody knows you can't use due to core instablity when you get to close to a star due to radiation... Not every ship can have warp drives you know how expensive that is and using them too close to a large mass ( like a large sun or gas giant ) wreaks havoc everybody knows that .. so where you gonna put the starbase so the dang warpships can tranfer cargo to system ships or launch the attack ships ( look, the bad guys brought Ion ships to a red dwarf star.. get those methane engines reved up, we got thier butts now .. those aliens sure must be stupid ) ect ect ect ..
Anyway I gotta go deploy the solar shields.. those dang aliens can't manuever in the shade with ion engines .. good luck good hunting ... i hear the struck gold on that small rogue asteriod and i am going to get me some before i retire... I bet ya research back on earth drops 40% when word of this gold strike gets out .. every dang engineer that thinks they know how to fly will be out there staking a claim..so i gotta run
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"For Americans war is almost all of the time a nuisance, and military skill is a luxury like Mah-jongg. But when the issue is brought home to them, war becomes as important, for the necessary periods, as business or sport. And it is hard to decide which
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Can someone walk me through what it is about this game ... - 
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