RE: Parting Thoughts (Full Version)

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Aurelian -> RE: Parting Thoughts (12/9/2009 6:47:02 PM)

It is beyond bad. Having played it, I do know what I'm talking about. The fact that you need 3rd party patches to play it speaks for itself.

But hey, different strokes and all that.



Tom_Holsinger -> RE: Parting Thoughts (12/9/2009 7:22:16 PM)

Ryvan's most recent post in another thread indicates that the unrest and population systems are more of a problem than I had thought:

quote:

Not counting time spent in tactical combat, dealing with population issues takes about roughly 70% of my game time. It can be more or less depending on which race you play. The game doesn't have much micromanagement, but population is the exception ... In fact, expansion becomes impossible for most races as the game moves into it's later stages and warfare is generally only useful as a method to control your own population. (At one point I would say that 80% of my shipbuilding was trying to construct enough transports and fill them with enough of my people that I could suicide them at enemy fleets as a population control method.)

It is just deadly for a space 4x game to force players into such ridiculous gambits.  This terribly harms the role-playing side of such games, and Armada starts with a major role-playing weakness due to the absence of ship design.

Fiixes for the unrest & overpopulation problems so dramatically described by Ryvan should have a fairly high priority, but I am concerned that playtesting the fixes for balance might take excessive time.  It might be faster to use my proposed Emigration Structures as an easier & faster stop-gap solution, by simply bleeding population increases into the "ready pool" of population points in space.  They wouldn't go anywhere without newly colonized planets to immigrate to, but at least they wouldn't be causing overpopulation problems and unrest on existing colonies.

I.e., my proposed solution to the Population transport problem which honks me off so much (again, I'd be surprised if anybody else is as upset about that as I am) might merit doing sooner than I first recommmend as it can serve as a stop-gap fix for the much higher-priority overpopulation & unrest problems.



SireChaos -> RE: Parting Thoughts (12/9/2009 7:40:23 PM)

Okay, you´ve done it. You´ve convinced me that you simply completely ignore anything anyone writes that doesn´t confirm your opinions.



06 Maestro -> RE: Parting Thoughts (12/9/2009 7:51:54 PM)

Wow-crisis driven emergency management technique. All courtesy from the same guy-how lucky can you get. Now, where have I seen this method used before-oh yea, but best not mention that here.



Aurelian -> RE: Parting Thoughts (12/9/2009 8:03:44 PM)

I'm convinced. A2526 is a complete and utter failure. The fun I've been having is for naught. The AAR I started writing is now cancelled. The program is now deleted from the drive.

Now I got the time to play Ageod's WW1.

(The first sentence is sarcasm.................... Or is it.)[:'(]



Aroddo -> RE: Parting Thoughts (12/9/2009 8:44:58 PM)

Despite all the different opinions, this is all valuable feedback for the devs.

And since it's a simple fact that you can't make anything right for everyone, Ntronium simply has to decide whose bitching to ignore ... erm, I mean: Whose criticism to take to heart.

Bureaucracy was intended to be a mechanic to balance large empires versus smaller ones - and it sounds like it's doing it's job well (although some don't like the way it ruins their usual carefree playing style).
Admitted, having bureaucracy cause your planets to riot seems a tiny bit excessive ... and it's certainly disrupting. But it serves to drive the lesson home.

Transports, well, personally I like how they are. I even draw a certain amount of satisfaction out of scheduling an efficient colony population plan, but maybe I'm just weird ... I liked playing sid meiers railroads in the past. Should automatization be added? Sure, it really makes sense in very large and long games ... and what's the point in allowing gigantic maps if you don't support gigantic empires?

I'm sure Ntronium is willing to do it, but I'm giving them time to put things on their TODO list.

I can understand Tom, though.
It was the same with me and Master of Orion 3. When that game disappointed me on about every level, I became downright hostile and also did my very best in various posts to keep potential customers from buying it. I felt it was a social responsibility.
Perhaps Tom feels similiar disappointed in Armada, in which he placed so many hopes?





kafka -> RE: Parting Thoughts (12/9/2009 9:07:00 PM)

quote:

I don't see any hostile attitude in Tom's attempts to point out the main problems of the game, namely the population and the bureaucracy concept. Indeed these are the very reason why I stopped playing the game. Attacking Tom doesn't certainly make the game better.


I don't see any hostile attitude in Tom's attempts to point out the main problems of the game, namely the population and the bureaucracy concept. Indeed these are the very reason why I stopped playing the game. Attacking Tom doesn't certainly make the game better.



Grandpoobah -> RE: Parting Thoughts (12/9/2009 9:24:51 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Tom_Holsinger

Fixes for the unrest & overpopulation problems so dramatically described by Ryvan should have a fairly high priority, but I am concerned that playtesting the fixes for balance might take excessive time. 




Actually I fixed most of my over population issues by requiring population be used for the building of ground units and the construction of large ships. It took me less than ten minutes to make the changes to two XML files. It eliminated my need to build "sacrifical population" transports for my battlefleets. It pretty much cleared up the issues that Ryvan describes.



BletchleyGeek -> RE: Parting Thoughts (12/9/2009 9:26:55 PM)

I think we're getting all here a bit too over the top. I don't agree with Tom in most of his points but I think I can contribute something constructive.

Tom, it's very simple to add a little faction to the game, which would fit better your playstyle and anthropocentric concerns. It boils down to adding a faction to the Factions.xml document, whose capabilities alleviate your two main concerns: bureaucracy and over-population (BTW, the latter is also a concern for me).

The full list of race capabilities hasn't been documented yet on Aroddo's fine wiki, though. I will try to document some of the capabilities and the victory conditions tonight (this basically means to copy the in-game text explaining them, brrr, no fancy xml for those texts).



BletchleyGeek -> RE: Parting Thoughts (12/9/2009 9:28:08 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Grandpoobah
Actually I fixed most of my over population issues by requiring population be used for the building of ground units and the construction of large ships. It took me less than ten minutes to make the changes to two XML files. It eliminated my need to build "sacrifical population" transports for my battlefleets. It pretty much cleared up the issues that Ryvan describes.


That's neat! Would you mind sharing your modded XMLs on the forum?



SireChaos -> RE: Parting Thoughts (12/9/2009 9:58:31 PM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: kafka

quote:

I don't see any hostile attitude in Tom's attempts to point out the main problems of the game, namely the population and the bureaucracy concept. Indeed these are the very reason why I stopped playing the game. Attacking Tom doesn't certainly make the game better.


I don't see any hostile attitude in Tom's attempts to point out the main problems of the game, namely the population and the bureaucracy concept. Indeed these are the very reason why I stopped playing the game. Attacking Tom doesn't certainly make the game better.




Well, I thought his "anyone who disagrees with me completely destroys his own credibility by doing so" approach to discussion to be quite hostile. I like the people I have a discussion with to at least pretend to think that it is possible for them to be wrong.



Tom_Holsinger -> RE: Parting Thoughts (12/9/2009 10:09:41 PM)

Grandpoobah's post No. 38 is very welcome news.

It hadn't occurred to me, when I wrote the first post in this thread, that the overpopulation & unrest problems might be so great those wouldn't be fixed by moving bureaucracy out of the popularity system.  Rvyan's colorful post indicated that the whole system needed fixing ASAP, which was scary as revision of a complete major game system generally takes time to do right.

So if having troop and big ship construction consume population points significantly alleviates the population & unrest problems Rvyan describes, Ntronium should definitely go that way for now.  It's far quicker & easier to make such spreadsheet changes than to add the new code required for my proposed Emigration Structure, which should be considered on its own merits.  Changes to the popularity, unrest and population management/transportation systems should be done slowly and carefully, and after taking plenty of time to think things through.

Grandpoobah, please create a new thread on this subject in the modding forum, and upload the spreadsheet changes you've tested as a zipped file as an attachment to your first post.  That will let players, hopefully including Rvyan, test those to see how well they work.



Grandpoobah -> RE: Parting Thoughts (12/9/2009 10:30:32 PM)

I created a zip file of the two XML files that I changed. I uploaded the zip file as an attachment to my post in the Mod Section.

It turns population into an asset if you want to build big ships and create large armies.

It made things better for me.



Erik Rutins -> RE: Parting Thoughts (12/10/2009 5:27:39 PM)

Tom,

What you may not be aware of is that you're following a pattern many of us have seen on internet forums before. While I appreciate your interest and suggestions for the game, you do seem a bit too sure of yourself at times and too quick to reach conclusions based on limited experience. In any case, all constructive criticism is accepted and welcome and I hope you'll continue to play Armada 2526 and also explore ways to put your own ideas into the game through modding, as Bob made the game very accessible in that regard.

Grandpoobah, et. al.,

Thanks, some very interesting ideas here overall and we'll give your mods a look too.

No date on the second update yet (first one was actually synchronous with the online release) but Bob is working on it and we hope to at least have a public beta out before Christmas.

Regards,

- Erik




Tom_Holsinger -> RE: Parting Thoughts (12/10/2009 7:55:48 PM)

Erik,

Armada is fundamentally sound.  I doubt anyone else uses population transport to the degree I do - as of about Turn 230 in my final game, I had never experienced any overpopulation problems whatever, on any colony.  One world briefly got over 80 population and I brought it down to 70 using a Teleport Structure to quickly funnel colonists to a new colony.  It's no wonder that I found myself spending far more time on colony management (eXploitation) in the endgame than on eXtermination.

While I liked Space Empires a lot, it uses the same population transport model as Armada, and similarly has major colony expansion in its endgames.  I gave up on SE because of its endgame population micromanagement system, and know the same will happen with your game.  Everything else I could live with because Armada is so easily modded.  It has much faster pacing than SE, and SE's is acceptable save in the endgame.

I do not see Armada achieving market success unless you address the learning curve & frustration issues for newbies.  It must be easy for them to win playing the humans at the easy level in the 12 Races scenario.  Beyond that it's mostly a matter of spiffing it up, and there are lots of good ideas here on that.



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