Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (Full Version)

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solops -> Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 2:42:13 AM)

As of Beta 1702 the sphere of influence seems vastly overdone. I have tried playing bigger maps to restore fluidity and a sense of the vastness of space but the blasted thing seems to scale up. This is not a plus, Matrix. I very much would like to see a slider in the game set-up for "sphere of influence" because it now feels more like a land war than a space game. The whole blasted map gets colored PDQ, which makes no sense at all. Hell, sensors don't even cover much of the space that will generate a diplomatic warning. This feature is not well done at the moment.



Erik Rutins -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 2:55:00 AM)

Hi Solops,

Thank you for the feedback. This is part of why it's a public beta. [8D]

Could you post an example in the form of a screenshot or upload a saved game showing what you feel is excessive?

Regards,

- Erik



MasterChief -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 2:56:31 AM)

Intersting perspective. I am enjoying the sphere of influence and actualy would love to have more associated diplomatic options. For example, I would love to be able to "plant the flag and declare this system in the name of (you supply the race)" even if it is outside your sphere. Or be able able to diplomaticaly challenge a race for a system they have placed squatters rights on.



solops -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 3:22:24 AM)

Erik, the screenshot is too big to post, 1.2MB. The save game is 17 MB.



2ndACR -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 3:24:07 AM)

Save games need to be zipped and uploaded to support forum. Screenshots can be uploaded here.



Erik Rutins -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 3:26:32 AM)

Hi Solops,

Please see this thread on how to upload a saved game:

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=2415085

For screenshots, if you convert them to JPG format, they should be fine in terms of size. If you don't have anything that can do that, try this:

http://www.getpaint.net/

Regards,

- Erik



solops -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 3:27:11 AM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: 2ndACR

Save games need to be zipped and uploaded to support forum. Screenshots can be uploaded here.

Don't know anything about zipping and the upload box tells me the screenshot file is too big, (500K max). It is a 1.2MB jpg file.

Opened it with Paint and re-saved as a jpg...now it is 591K, still too big to post.



solops -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 3:43:18 AM)

OK, re-saved the original jpg and got it down to 591kb. Edited that down it by trimming the edges. Here it is. Crowded. Claiming systems and trying to make the claim stick is fine, but all that unmonitored space? Uh-uh... turns the war into the Eastern Front.

[image]local://upfiles/5558/18EC2A727BB84B4D82F1A50DBA0E6CF8.jpg[/image]



blastpop -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 3:46:40 AM)

Well you kind of know where you stand....



solops -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 3:49:42 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: blastpop

Well you kind of know where you stand....

LOL! Yeah, but still, on a 15x15 of interstellar space...really now. This is silly!



feelotraveller -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 3:52:56 AM)

That does seem rather excessive. [:)]

By the way what year is it?



solops -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 3:56:35 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: feelotraveller

That does seem rather excessive. [:)]

By the way what year is it?


2868.12.19
Vast war is imminent. Silvermists have turned a large region into a dead zone (off map to the lower right). Too bad the whole map did not show.



dawilko -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 4:08:46 AM)

Hi Solops, email me the file, dawilko @ gmail com, i'll wack it up on my webserver so we can see the file(s) in their full glory. This way Erric can also get your save.



feelotraveller -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 4:11:31 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: solops


quote:

ORIGINAL: feelotraveller

That does seem rather excessive. [:)]

By the way what year is it?


2868.12.19
Vast war is imminent. Silvermists have turned a large region into a dead zone (off map to the lower right). Too bad the whole map did not show.


Well letting them breed up should create some regions without influence!



HectorOfTroy -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 4:40:32 AM)

It looks messy, but there are quite a few empires there and they all have their spheres of influence. Solops what do you think they should do about it?

I guess you need to get rid of few empires and expand yours by increasing your power.



Baleur -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 5:08:14 AM)

That is why i usually play with that filter OFF... It looks far more natural to just have the owned systems have that tiny circle in the empire color, rather than a huge blob covering the empty space in between.
After all it is the systems where stuff happens, the space around is always "no-mans land" regardless of who's color it is painted in :)
I mean, there is no way you're gonna cover all of that empty space with monitoring stations, just focus on your colonies.

But YES i definetly agree about the request for diplomatic options regarding the territory. Much like the planned features in Sword of The Stars 2.
Options to like, hand over ownership of systems (even if not colonized) would be awesome, and would obviously have a massive value attached (say, idk, 5 mil value for an average system requiring alot of tech traded in return to buy it).
Or simply more states than peace, war and trade. Like declaring closed borders or even territorial sharing. Personal unions, succession wars, OH god sorry this is not Europa Univeralis 3, i keep forgetting [:D]

Overall, i love the system influence, but yeah i also dislike the general overlay. I do love the lil colored dots over each system when it is turned off though.
Perhaps in a sequel the influence could be drawn with splines, forming smooth curves between your colonies, rather than blob after blob occasionally intersecting.



Gelatinous Cube -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 5:12:03 AM)

I, for one, think the new influence is just right. I mean, spot on perfect. Ever since the original DW I would think to myself "Gosh.. just gimme some real BORDERS!"

Now, I have real borders. I am happy. Best feature of the expansion, and if they are going to be toned down from 1702, I hope it's not by very much.



HectorOfTroy -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 5:12:28 AM)

Baleur, good point which we all forgot [:D]. You can always toggle off spheres of influence and turn it back on when we want to check which colonies belong to which empire.



Gelatinous Cube -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 5:17:23 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: HectorOfTroy

Baleur, good point which we all forgot [:D]. You can always toggle off spheres of influence and turn it back on when we want to check which colonies belong to which empire.


Not even that. If you turn it off, each system will have a distinct halo of color for the empire it belongs to, even if there is no colony there. Pretty neat, actually.



HectorOfTroy -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 5:21:00 AM)


quote:

ORIGINAL: Gelatinous Cube


quote:

ORIGINAL: HectorOfTroy

Baleur, good point which we all forgot [:D]. You can always toggle off spheres of influence and turn it back on when we want to check which colonies belong to which empire.


Not even that. If you turn it off, each system will have a distinct halo of color for the empire it belongs to, even if there is no colony there. Pretty neat, actually.


Yeah I love that halo effect.

Well when you play with another 19 empires in the game you have to expect that borders might look messy. Just turn them off if they are an eye sore.

But they do work as intended and we have been asking for them for a long time [;)]



Gelatinous Cube -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 5:37:11 AM)

I don't know how you could think they are an eye-sore. The borders are wind up with a lot of straight edges, sweeping curves, and a generally tie-dye look. Much more fun to look at than empty space.

But.. I suppose there is no accounting for taste! [sm=love0028.gif]



Malevolence -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 6:19:02 AM)

My personal feelings aside about how the sphere is actually calculated, I think looking at the issue from a purely military standpoint is a bit off.  It's not, in my mind, the eastern front. I think it has more to do with hegemony. The idea of a sphere of influence comes from an extension of power (coercive, institutional, ideological) and not specifically a military frontline like an "Eastern Front".

The United States doesn't occupy Canada, Mexico, Central America or South America, but I think U.S. power is certainly felt there.  Someone coined the term "Finlandization" once a while back.  For example, some years back (2008) Russian warships decided to make a port call and conduct a brief naval exercise with Venezuela.  I think we can all agree the U.S. and Russia are on fairly good terms, however, I think you might also be surprised (even alarmed) at the U.S. Navy's reception and escort of the Russian ships... an event that was eventually down-played and not repeated by either nation.

I also think this why scaling with the size of the map is wholly justified. On a large map, if the sphere's don't cover more than the "center" system then what's the point of a sphere at all? Are you simply influencing empty space?

NOTE: as of the latest patch I'm testing, you can ignore the sphere in terms of colonization if you are at war with the faction. I personally never liked the actual game rule restrictions given the spheres, and expressed an interest in more of a consequence-based reaction.



Cauldyth -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 12:28:11 PM)

So far, at least in Huge/Huge/EvenClusters games, I like the size of the spheres. Cool tip about the halos when the spheres aren't explicitly shown, I didn't know about that!



BletchleyGeek -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 12:53:29 PM)

What Solops shows in his screenshot looks to me actually awesome (not so much the graphics themselves, but its meaning).

Man, you're sitting on top of a beautiful powder keg. I wonder what kind of conflagration would come out of that situation. Evokes world politics on July 1914 ;-)



ASHBERY76 -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 12:59:28 PM)

Borders are working much better now and gameplay elements like mining rights have meaning.



Bingeling -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 1:12:53 PM)

This is the galaxy map of my somewhat mature game in the year 2840. It was started in beta 1, and is converted to beta 2.

It starts looking like a rather expensive painting, and I think some of this would not have been possible if all the game was in the latest beta. If you look at the far right edge, I got my default blue little area. The upper of those is the a spice colony, and I was able to colonize it just outside the range of the colony SW of it (which is now also blue). You can easily see how much the range of influence of that large colony has been buffed since then, as the current sphere is easily twice that radius.

Some empires have rather nice areas. My blue zenox. The right brown gizureans. And the upper left camouflage green Atuuk. Some are more shattered like the powerful red Dhayut and the northern-ish large, purple Naxxillians. And the left edge Ackadrians never left their home region and got a cozy little empire.

A long lasting share of system is in the yellow area, where the Dhayut got a colony in the secodnary gizurean home system. It manages to just make a tiny red blob in a sea of yellow.


[image]local://upfiles/35851/E36E71D9805A4DF3BEC330AAA9D39857.jpg[/image]



solops -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 1:51:09 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Gelatinous Cube

I don't know how you could think they are an eye-sore. The borders are wind up with a lot of straight edges, sweeping curves, and a generally tie-dye look. Much more fun to look at than empty space.

But.. I suppose there is no accounting for taste! [sm=love0028.gif]


My objection to the current SOI has nothing to do with visual effect. I think it is absurd for the SoI to cover such huge regions of space beween scattered systems. It would be like ALL of the oceans of earth being claimed instead of a 3-mile limit. I think that the SoI should include a modest sphere around each colonised system, resulting in isolated islands and a few large globs where colonised systems are clustered. ESPECIALLY on a 15x15 map where colonies are sparse. I went to a bigger map hoping for this result but the blasted SoI seems to scale up, foiling my desire. I know that others like it the way it is. I think those that do are just fighting a land war in space, but fine for them if that is what they want. I don't. I'll play EUIII for that. In DW I'd like this feature scaled back, or even better, supply sliders in the game set-up so that we can each choose the potential magnitude of the Spheres of Influence.



Bingeling -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 2:02:45 PM)

I hazard a guess that the range is a simple parameter stored in some class. Like for research speed, any other parameters like these would benefit from being exposed to the user in some advanced galaxy settings at game start. The research slider is brilliant - some preset levels, and the ability to set a fully customized value if you want even slower.



Baleur -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 2:32:34 PM)

But that screenshot is also of a galaxy with very few stars, it will always look scattered as empires travel far to find colonies.

But another thing great about the "halos", you can even see what empire a system belongs to BEFORE you discovered their closest colony!
And if you turn ON the system overlay without having discovered their colony, the system you previously saw in their halo color is now appearing as a normal neutral system.
In many ways having that overlay turned off actually gives you More info, although in a more scattered plop by plop basis.



cmdrnarrain -> RE: Smothering Sphere of Influence Overdone (12/1/2011 2:34:11 PM)

I think it looks great.  It tells you exactly what you need to know at a half second glance.   This game needs as many user interaction enhancements as it can get.   If you don't like it turn it off. 





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