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Evil Steve -> RE: Expansion Discussion - Faction/Species characteristics/abilities (6/16/2011 5:23:49 AM)
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Distant Worlds and ROTS was my personal game of the year for 2010. With this in mind, here are some critiques and thoughts for the future:
Some original gaming decisions were superseded by IMO weaker decisions, so
Reintroduce planet colonisation as a racial type,taking colonisation out of the tech tree and, perhaps, replacing it with terraforming techs (ie the ability to terraform planets close to your racial type). Planet quality would then be a specific racial construct, and something that can be improved with terraforming (planet quality itself needs to be looked at – the $ penalties for colonising a low quality planet need to be punative or not allowed). The addition of other races to your empire now has a more strategic purpose. (also let migration reflect racial planet preferences). As a mitigation, colonisation can only happen if the mining station has been destroyed first (ie mining stations now claim colonisation rights)
Find another 'deterrent' mechanism for trading apart from $. The introduction of ridiculous $ amounts skews the game to the benefit of the player. It would be better if trading was dictated by racial traits and perceptions. It's important to keep the $ in the game realistic.
The previous research base system felt better. The current one (multiple sites easily defended at home planet, starports etc) skews to the player. Suggest a return to research bases only being built at research points that are strategically vulnerable (and make research stations expensive to avoid spamming) . The capital planet of each race could start as a %research point that reflects their racial and government outlook (ie a % +/- bonus to the 3 lines of research that reflects specific culture)
As a 4x, DW has a great first eXplore and eXpand, but is notionally narratively weaker in eXploit and eXterminate. Suggest that resources become more strategic – my initial thought was to have a resource slider, but now i've moved onto resource/tech/racial traits, and a distribution of resources on the basis of planet types. The philosophy would be you can only research a tech if you already possess the required resources – whilst this may sound skewed, it simply means that you think timber if you live next to a forest. Thus races will have techs predicated on the resources of their planet type, and in order to research other areas that are not within their culture, they have to source the resources first. At the end point, something like Korrabian Spice is not just valuable in and of itself, it is valuable as a key component in a rare tech (let's say in engines that fold space), and you need to have some for research before you can research the tech: better tech require rarer resources that force you to compete for these resources. How this pans out with the tech tree etc is probably beyond me and this discussion, but you could conceivably have a general tech tree which is racially biased via resources. It will also make tech trading more interesting as races will have different techs (possibly that may do the same thing better or worse eg wooden javelin, aluminium javelin)
The game could have less battle ships, and I'm thinking that they should be more expensive to build and maintain. I'm also thinking that the storyline has wrecks, but the player can't create them, so wondering whether player battles leave wrecks that can be salvaged (some kind of system whereby ships types can only be destroyed by the next higher type). This would be good for the scavenger racial type. In terms of balance, it might be good if you can only fix a hull for which you have technology for? Towing large wrecks to your home planet till such time as you can repair them (or go for a research points in that hull tech for scrapping it).
There's more, I'm sure, but brain has ceased to function.
Stevil
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