I think it mostly comes down to the fact that customising armies and stuff in 4x usually devolves into busy work.
Also I'd actually find it super cool if your internal factions were the ones who came up with the designs, not you. Reduces busy work and adds more flavour to the characters.
I don't like ship customization in these kind of games. A) because I always feel there is some min-max formula I am blind to and in games like galatic civilizations you end up updating your ship designs every couple of turns as new tech rolls out. Congrats, you now have Laser V, which means all ship plans with Laser IV need to go back to the drawing board.
I don't like ship customization in these kind of games. A) because I always feel there is some min-max formula I am blind to and in games like galatic civilizations you end up updating your ship designs every couple of turns as new tech rolls out. Congrats, you now have Laser V, which means all ship plans with Laser IV need to go back to the drawing board.
My ideal Space Opera Simulator 20XX would be this:
Your empire has an overall GDP budget, and you can allocate that budget as you wish between different sectors - include ship building. Your happy citizens go about their business building procedural ships based some sliders that you set & the sort of government / cultural attitudes you've espoused throughout the session. You don't have to manage build queues or spend hours in a design lab; you just set the overall tone (and, optionally, maybe set-up an aesthetic that will be used as the basis for your empire's ships).
Your ships & stations should be part of the cohesive whole that is your empire. People in a utopian United Federation of Planets will be mad and send you angry space telegrams telling you how mad they are if you keep building iterations of the Roflstomp Class Battleship U.S.S. Eat My Shit You Alien Scum instead of research & exploration vessels, while people under the heel of the God Emperor His Own Self will build ships that are almost entirely made out of guns... but maybe not so competently, and maybe while sometimes forgetting where all that gosh darned gold pressed latinum you told them to spend on new hyperdrive technology went off to (Feh! Commoners!)
Aging fleets can perhaps be mothballed and turned into museum exhibits, or kept around as frontier mission relics that persons whom you've grown tired of can be assigned to, Boldly Going Where Nobody Is Likely to Ever Come Back From.
Given how weird & semi-random tech seems to be in this game, I'm not really expecting long trails of "Gun +1" / "Armor +1" type filler upgrades. Hopefully most techs will be exciting enough that you'll want to go make a new ship to play with it.
Triptycho: A card-and-dice tabletop indie RPG currently in development and playtesting
Paradox has been significantly moving away from straight numerical buffs from increased tech. It sounds like the availability of techs is (kinda) random, but the tech effects themselves are not. So, I imagine it might work like event triggers in EUIV and CK2, where you have a base mean time to have a tech available to research that is super long, but is significantly reduced by your policies/situation/techs.
If it was literally any other studio making this I'd be cautiously optimistic, but it's Paradox, so this game is going to be amazing.
I'm ambivalent about design labs. I usually love tinkering in them, but I've learned through many a 4x space sim that you do not upgrade every ship as new tech comes out.
Usually I have a baseline ship and every 50 turns ill go to the lab and design a newer tougher ship. When I meet someone or get in a fight, the ships I have are a stopgate for the 20 turns I need to build a custom tailored armada to wreck said faction's shit with
Paradox has been significantly moving away from straight numerical buffs from increased tech. It sounds like the availability of techs is (kinda) random, but the tech effects themselves are not. So, I imagine it might work like event triggers in EUIV and CK2, where you have a base mean time to have a tech available to research that is super long, but is significantly reduced by your policies/situation/techs.
If it was literally any other studio making this I'd be cautiously optimistic, but it's Paradox, so this game is going to be amazing.
Paradox is a great small studio, but they aren't perfect. The UIX for all of their games are mediocre at best (CK2 is basically a series of tables, and yet there is way too much clicking between them and hunting to find specific information). And while King Arthur was an amazing first iteration, King Arthur 2 somehow took 2 steps back across the board, as everything from the RTS battles to the strategic layer to the MUD text adventures were somehow worse in both content and execution (again, going back to that UIX issue). And when it first came out, Magicka was pretty much raked across the coals, IIRC.
I'm really hopeful that this game will be awesome, but I'm also trying to temper my expectations, because every time I get hype for a Paradox game I end up being disappointed, but every time it just happens to show up on my radar I get pleasantly surprised. But maybe that's just me.
Paradox has been significantly moving away from straight numerical buffs from increased tech. It sounds like the availability of techs is (kinda) random, but the tech effects themselves are not. So, I imagine it might work like event triggers in EUIV and CK2, where you have a base mean time to have a tech available to research that is super long, but is significantly reduced by your policies/situation/techs.
If it was literally any other studio making this I'd be cautiously optimistic, but it's Paradox, so this game is going to be amazing.
Paradox is a great small studio, but they aren't perfect. The UIX for all of their games are mediocre at best (CK2 is basically a series of tables, and yet there is way too much clicking between them and hunting to find specific information). And while King Arthur was an amazing first iteration, King Arthur 2 somehow took 2 steps back across the board, as everything from the RTS battles to the strategic layer to the MUD text adventures were somehow worse in both content and execution (again, going back to that UIX issue). And when it first came out, Magicka was pretty much raked across the coals, IIRC.
I'm really hopeful that this game will be awesome, but I'm also trying to temper my expectations, because every time I get hype for a Paradox game I end up being disappointed, but every time it just happens to show up on my radar I get pleasantly surprised. But maybe that's just me.
TBH I don't really mind the tables in CK2 because it would otherwise be difficult to ever access the wide variety of information and options made available. And because the game allows you to set your own goals and pursue them in a lot of different ways I don't know how they'd be expected to make "important" things more accessible. Almost anything could be important in any particular game.
I mean yeah, Paradox Studios interfaces are pretty bad. They're getting better with each iteration; it's something they're aware of and focusing on intently. During their Gamescom briefing where they announced this game, the designer straight-up said they were focusing on making this game one where you didn't need a PhD in Arcane Interfaces to play (that was his actual phrasing).
That said, I still expect the interface to be cumbersome. But I have acquired my PhD in Paradox Interfaces, so that's not going to keep me from getting everything out of this game
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
I mean yeah, Paradox Studios interfaces are pretty bad. They're getting better with each iteration; it's something they're aware of and focusing on intently. During their Gamescom briefing where they announced this game, the designer straight-up said they were focusing on making this game one where you didn't need a PhD in Arcane Interfaces to play (that was his actual phrasing).
That said, I still expect the interface to be cumbersome. But I have acquired my PhD in Paradox Interfaces, so that's not going to keep me from getting everything out of this game
That's really good to hear. I love their game concepts and the overall design, so really it's just the UIX part that ends up wrecking their games for me.
Like Crusader Kings 2 or Europa Universalis 4 Stellaris runs in pausable/accelerable real time.
At the start of a game we tinker our own race via a populace editor. We can choose bonuses and penalties like production or research bonus or traits like"xenophobic", "religious" or pacifistic" which determine the further course of the game considerably. Then we choose one of 100 portraits and with it the appearance of our people - and there you go!
Johan: Its 6 phenotypes, human and mammalian is the same.
While there are also prefabricated races they are only intended for quick start - for people who don't want to edit. In the game itself you will not meet these races.
After all, the properties of all adversaries are completely randomly generated in every game! So you never know in advance if you'll meet fanatically religious squid researchers, xenophobic mushroom creatures or isolationist cyborgs in the vastness of space. While this could limit the uniqueness of the races it can increase the replayability. There should be thousands of combinations of the diverse traits.
The galaxies of Stellaris are randomly generated from a chosen size. At the presenation the developers zoomed seamless from individual suns and planets up to the whole galaxy. Which looks big. Bloody big. Johan: Max is 1000 star systems.
Each of the up to 32 adjustable enemy races starts with only one planet and must expand. In addition to these 32 "upstarts" are other inhabitants of the galaxy in different stages of development. More about that in "Phase 1: Exploration". Zoft: They just happened to play with 16 during the demonstration, we regular play multiplayer with 32 players. We do however suggest a number of empires from the start, but that is constantly being tweaked and no limit for the amount of empires that could appear during a session.
Spaceships move freely through space and not on predetermined paths. In order to safeguard important flight corridors, one can build starbases or lay minefields. LordMune: How your ships move between systems is determined by your chosen/randomly assigned FTL tech, each with distinct advantages and disadvantages. RPS: There are three forms of faster-than-light travel and each species chooses one at the beginning of the game. Hyperlanes connect systems directly but those who use them are tied to the existing layout, turning the map into a series of nodes. Travelling through the warp is slower but provides freedom of movement. Wormholes require stations, constructed at the edge of systems, but allow for long jumps.
Battles between fleets take place directly in the game view, there are no separate tactical maps. You can't control the battles yourself, they run automatically - just like Europa Universalis or Crusader Kings.
There will be an editor in which we equip our ships with weapons, reactors, engines, etc and thus can design our own models.
Obsolete Ships can be upgraded at home to the current state of the art, but this takes some time and costs money.
Multiplayer Johan:we regular play multiplayer with 32 players
Colonies & Heroes
Each colonized Planet offers several grounds slots on which we can build one building each. Several similar buildings (for example factories) side by side enjoy synergy bonuses and produce more.
The tiles have different properties with advantages and disadvantages. Alien Ruins for example increase the research output; food farms should be on fertile fields rather than in ice deserts. And areas that are inhabited by dangerous animals must be purged first - which in turn requires the appropriate technology. Thus the planets are likely to greatly stand out from each other, a desert world will never be the food basket of the empire.
In order for a tile to produce something we need to assign workers on it. Per population point we have a "workers unit" available. But beware: Just like a roleplaying character each population unit has individual qualities that Stellaris generates based on the initially selected national characteristics - for example "industrious" (good!) or "xenophobic" (bad if other races live on the planet) .
RPG-like characters play an important role, as in Master of Orion special heroes (Leaders) are available in Stellaris. Namely governors (lead colonies), admirals (command fleets), generals (commanding ground forces) and scientists (fly research vessels, more on that later). LordMune: Leaders is the catch-all term for these characters, at the moment. Planet/colony leaders are Governors.
Each character has certain advantages and disadvantages and levels up by successes. Thus you should distribute your subordinates wisely. This reminds pleasantly to the often illustrious princes, bishops, etc from Crusader Kings 2.
Phase 1: Exploration & nonlinear research
In the first phase of the game you explore the universe with research vessels on which you assign a scientist as a commander. They then naturally bring individual abilities (and maybe disadvantages) with them.
The research vessels can, among other things, scan planets to find out their properties.
In the vastness of space the research vessels can make special discoveries which lead to various follow-up tasks. For example one finds an asteroid on which a temple stands, which is oddly enough dedicated to an ancient human deity. Now one should find out what it's all about.
Depending on the characteristics of their own people and the scientist involved you can choose different decisions. Religious researchers could simply blow up the asteroid as blasphemous and experience a completely different sequence of events than non-religious scientists who could search for more shrines and unravel the mysteries behind it.
Each event can succeed but also end in disaster. When an incompetent researchers examines the aforementioned asteroid there is a risk that the boulders leaves its orbit and is on a collision course with an inhabited world. Then our fleet needs to intercept it.
A quest log (called"Situation Log") lists our open events.
The asteroid is just one example of many. Paradox promises varied events. In addition there are your usual monsters waiting in space like interstellar giant jellyfish.
The regular research extends nonlinearly in Stellaris, there is no fixed research tree!
How does it work? First of all we have the three areas of research for which each a scientist-hero is responsible. The three areas are "Physics", "Engineering" and "Society". At certain intervals these researchers make new discoveries from which we have to choose one out of 3 technologies. For example improved laser cannons, shields or ground forces weapons.
The highlight: the discovered technologies are not predetermined but are drawn randomly from a pool. Here Stellaris also uses the character level and the characteristics of the researcher employed, our national characteristics and the previously selected technologies.
If we, for example, use an experienced laser scientist and have previously developed energy weapons, the chance increases to research high-tech blasters. A "mad scientist" however, produces more experimental technologies. The system should help the individualization of our race and at the same time ensure that the progress feels natural so we don't discover Death-Star technology at the start of the game.
Phase 2: Conflict & Contact
Eventually in the course of the game we meet one of up to 16 rivals. The diplomacy system is similar to Europa Universalis 4: We can build alliances and non-aggression pacts, make trade deals and even make inferior nations our vassals.
If you get along particularly well with one or more neighbors you can even set up a federation à la Star Trek, an alliance of semi-sovereign members comparable to the European Union. With the difference that a leader of a member nation rules this Federation as president and therefore determines its foreign policy. Every few years there are elections in which a new president gets elected. Depending on the characteristics of each nation the Federation as a whole will act differently: If pacifists come to power, diplomacy is in the foreground; if an aggressive faction wins the race, expansion is announced.
To start a war in Stellaris we should also have a reason for war (casus belli). For example by falsifying the claim of our people on a solar system. Without official reason for war our reputation suffers and we'll soon see a powerful enemy alliance against us. However this can also happen if we expand too quickly.
Wars are not simply just won or lost, instead there is a "War Score" ie. a points value which indicates how much the enemy would give us in a peace treaty. For example we can demand nothing or just some money, annex whole solar systems or even completely vassalize small states and make them our puppets.
In the galaxy of Stellaris we not only meet starfaring races, but also those which may be scientifically advanced but can't reach into space yet (Poland for example). How we deal with these neutral planets depends on the properties of our people. Pacifists can watch them from hiding to collect research points. More radical scientists can abduct people and subject them to studies; warlike races just conquer the planet. And of course we can give the residents the spaceflight technology to include them as a member of the galactic community. Or add them in our own federation, of course completely altruistic.
Apart from such advanced races some planets are also inhabited by races that have not yet developed self awareness. As a ruthless ruler we can intervene in the evolution of these aliens to tailor us a slave race of our own design. If our own people have problems with surviving on a desert planet - no problem then we simply tinker our own Fremen (Dune, of course). And if we have weak troops we just breed us a race of willing soldiers - the Jem'Hadar from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine send greetings.
And there is a third type of neutral nations: the fallen empires. This great star empires had once powerful technologies but lost all their knowledge - just as the human Imperium of Warhammer 40K. They can still use their high-tech ships and weapons still operating but can no longer repair or rebuild. The fallen empires therefore don't expand and start any wars, but doggedly defend their borders - with very advanced fleets. Whoever attacks them must reckon with hard resistance but also has the chance to get particularly valuable technologies that can't be gained otherwise.
MrNibbles: I'll keep it short by simply saying.. yes, minor powers can become a major player.
Destroyed fleets leave behind debris which can be studied by research vessels to extract technologies. Anyone who has always envied their neighbors because of their bigger laser cannons can therefore easily steal them. Assuming he defeats one of its fleets.
Phase 3: Endgame & major disasters
Typically the endgame of a space strategy game always develops the same: At some point you're so big and powerful that you simply wipe away the remaining competitors. Stellaris wants to do it differently. When your empire grows it also increases the risk of a galactic catastrophes that makes the endgame particularly demanding.
There are several types of galactic disasters that are always based on the current state of the game itself. For example when somebody intensively researches about wormhole technology it may happen that a portal opens into another dimension inviting as powerful as evil aliens in our universe.
Another example: When we have discovered the appropriate technology we can build robot-workers for our colonies who toil very effective and are never unhappy. Anyone who has seen Battlestar Galactica knows: This can backfire! The robot can in fact develop awareness and establish their own machine state. And eventually decide to extinguish the meat bags that contaminate the rest of the galaxy.
If such a disaster occurs we have two choices. Either we unite all the races of the galaxy and fight the enemies together. Or we lean back, strengthen our fleet and wait while our competitors fight - only to all intervene at the end and mop up what remains.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
Oh cool; if they're handling battles the same as EU or HoI, I bet the ship builder is basically the equivalent of editing your divisions (which should keep everyone happy, because that was a thing you could go as deep into as you wanted or leave entirely automated).
With Love and Courage
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited August 2015
Like I posted on the last page, my penis can only get so erect Paradox!
Seriously though, this all sounds like what I've wanted for years.
My current favorite space 4x game is Distant Worlds. I love it and play it all the time. However, I always wished it was more, uh, "Paradox-y". Now it seems my wish is coming true!
edit- And since it is a Paradox game I'd expect it to be super modable, which means plenty of choice mods later on!
Axen on
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
If it's anything like most Paradox mods, all the decent ones are made by history fetishists who love to lock you into playing exactly and only the way that history actually played out.
Since this game is all essentially procedurally generated, I don't know how they'll manage it, but I'm confident that they will find a way to suck all joy out of the game.
It sounds so awesome. Im loving how they are taking parts from all the major sci-fi series and incorporating them into the game without making it seem to fanboy like.
I can't wait to start designing custom races and seeing how they develop. It looks like you could make any race from a wide variety of sci-fi sources and roleplay them accurately. Its a dream come true!
It sounds so awesome. Im loving how they are taking parts from all the major sci-fi series and incorporating them into the game without making it seem to fanboy like.
I can't wait to start designing custom races and seeing how they develop. It looks like you could make any race from a wide variety of sci-fi sources and roleplay them accurately. Its a dream come true!
Good thing that the flexibility regarding race design is at least somewhat limited. Otherwise we'd be seeing the Spore effect of hundreds of varieties of walking wangs.
Still, it's a super cool idea that you might get a whole bunch of scifi trope races in your own space opera.
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Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
Like I posted on the last page, my penis can only get so erect Paradox!
Seriously though, this all sounds like what I've wanted for years.
My current favorite space 4x game is Distant Worlds. I love it and play it all the time. However, I always wished it was more, uh, "Paradox-y". Now it seems my wish is coming true!
edit- And since it is a Paradox game I'd expect it to be super modable, which means plenty of choice mods later on!
Oh man I love Distant Worlds too, when I was reading about the games features a lot of it jumped out to me as like "this seems a lot like what's in Distant Worlds but like, more in depth" (though to be fair, Distant Worlds is more in depth in a few ways this game might not be)
One thing in Distant Worlds that is a bit frustrating from an RP standpoint is that unless you're playing the Haakonish there's basically no reason not to assimilate. Enslaving is a vastly inferior choice (slave populations work harder but a race you've enslaved in DW has no population growth which... doesn't really make sense, and makes it non-viable). So I'm looking forward to playing all sorts of different races with different ideas about how to approach aliens and research and the galactic community.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
If it's anything like most Paradox mods, all the decent ones are made by history fetishists who love to lock you into playing exactly and only the way that history actually played out.
Since this game is all essentially procedurally generated, I don't know how they'll manage it, but I'm confident that they will find a way to suck all joy out of the game.
I'm guessing a Star Trek mod that "chronicles" everything that happened from First Contact to whatever the last movie/show chronologically was (Nemesis?)
Your insight into the ineffable Juffo-Wup is encouraging.
Perhaps, if we were to plant spore sacs in your brain organ
and let its tendrils spread through your flesh
then you would truly understand Juffo-Wup... become part of Juffo-Wup.
You WOULD be happier and more fulfilled. Consider our offer.
(It's from the Mycon in Star Control 2 (and my profile pic). They're not a bad match for what KetBra described.)
Something like them might also be a nice fit for one of those galactic disaster type events. Since they're essentially living self-modifying terraforming tools, which ran amok, converting Earthlike worlds into worlds more habitable for themselves (high temperature volcanic/lava type worlds).
In the dark they grow, the deep fire feeds the Children.
Their birth breathes warmth across a cold world.
One day I will get to my backlog of not-Paradox grand strategy titles...
I still can't figure out how to Hoi or Vicky. I can barely EU, and usually I fall behind in tech as England.
I personally find EU to be the simplest of the Paradox games, but oddly enough I find CK to be the easiest for me.
HoI probably has the most straight forward "nation running" aspect out of all the games, but it's mind boggling complexity comes from managing your military and waging war (which is super, super indepth). HoI is probably the hardest Paradox game for me to play. I am not very good at it at all. It is also my least favorite Paradox title since, far more so than the others, you are really hamstrung by history. Though from all indications HoI IV is going to fix that. :biggrin:
Vicky I'd say is probably the most overall complex. IMHO no single system in Vicky is super complex, it just has a lot of somewhat complex systems that form the whole. Vicky is all about industry, trade, politics and population demographics. You spend a lot of time looking at tabs within tabs within tabs. I actually really love it. :razz:
I hope they make a new Vicky. Last word I heard on it said not until after HoI IV. When/If it does come out then I will finally be able to take a nation from CK all the way to HoI IV with one save. WEEEEE!
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
I hope they make a new Vicky. Last word I heard on it said not until after HoI IV. When/If it does come out then I will finally be able to take a nation from CK all the way to HoI IV with one save. WEEEEE!
This is what I've always wanted, but I've still never been able to get a game of CK2 past about 1000, let alone to where I can convert to EUIV.
I hope they make a new Vicky. Last word I heard on it said not until after HoI IV. When/If it does come out then I will finally be able to take a nation from CK all the way to HoI IV with one save. WEEEEE!
And then go into space since your nation will certainly own the world by then
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Lord_AsmodeusgoeticSobriquet:Here is your magical cryptic riddle-tumour: I AM A TIME MACHINERegistered Userregular
I hope they make a new Vicky. Last word I heard on it said not until after HoI IV. When/If it does come out then I will finally be able to take a nation from CK all the way to HoI IV with one save. WEEEEE!
And then go into space since your nation will certainly own the world by then
Or maybe not! I hope there's at least some sort of national coalition/united nations style government where you leave your world with still distinct nation states and not a single unified one world government, and it affects how your race expands and faces challenges in space.
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
I hope they make a new Vicky. Last word I heard on it said not until after HoI IV. When/If it does come out then I will finally be able to take a nation from CK all the way to HoI IV with one save. WEEEEE!
And then go into space since your nation will certainly own the world by then
Owning the world is such a pain. What you want is a super optimized empire, and a bunch of vassal states surrounding you as a buffer. Then the rest of the world can be whatever horrible consequences your messing around with foreign politics and nations have produced.
So from what I read, a non-space nation (Poland) could shoot down a scout, reverse enginer FTL tech, then build a star empire. Neat.
Gotta love that war score mechanic, one issue though is gonna be retreating forces once the war is over.
He's a shy overambitious dog-catcher on the wrong side of the law. She's an orphaned psychic mercenary with the power to bend men's minds. They fight crime!
Mostly stuff we already knew, but a few tidbits extra there. Each planet will have a governor with traits and skills, sort of like CK2. Planet terrain maps for buildings include "special" tiles that can do weird things... like massive sinkholes that spawn hordes of creatures later in the game. There will be 0-2 late game catastrophes, so you might have some games where none fire and others where everything just goes nuts.
Info from the Stellaris forums:
Each species has a preferred planet type. When you create your custom species, whatever you select your homeworld to be is what your preferred planet type is for that game.
Preferred planet types are modeled in game, though it's unclear exactly how. A specific example is that a Desert species will not be thrilled at the prospect of trying to live on an Ocean planet.
When setting up your galaxy, some options can be tweaked directly in-game while others require modding to adjust (the latter for balance reasons). Features that can be changed using at least one of these methods include (but are not limited to): ratio of habitable to uninhabitable planets, ratio of planet types, number & size of ancient NPC civilizations, number of young NPC civilizations, frequency of anomalies, galaxy age, galaxy type, frequency of Precursor Gates, distance between starting points of the upstarts, research speed, likelihood of natural catastrophes, & likelihood of "manmade" catastrophes
Moons behave the same as planets (in terms of use / exploitation in-game), they just tend to be smaller & orbit another planet instead of a star
Planetary bodies have orbits illustrated, but they don't actually move in-game (except to spin)
While combat itself is hands-off, there are a number of choices you can make to tip the battle in your favor; also combat is pretty / fun to watch (compared to other Paradox games)
Devs suspiciously silent on the topic of whether you can put thrusters on comets / disguise your ships as comets and fly them over primitive planets to impose a loss of stability on nations there
Fleur de Alys on
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Also I'd actually find it super cool if your internal factions were the ones who came up with the designs, not you. Reduces busy work and adds more flavour to the characters.
Civ 5 and?
I don't like ship customization in these kind of games. A) because I always feel there is some min-max formula I am blind to and in games like galatic civilizations you end up updating your ship designs every couple of turns as new tech rolls out. Congrats, you now have Laser V, which means all ship plans with Laser IV need to go back to the drawing board.
My ideal Space Opera Simulator 20XX would be this:
Your empire has an overall GDP budget, and you can allocate that budget as you wish between different sectors - include ship building. Your happy citizens go about their business building procedural ships based some sliders that you set & the sort of government / cultural attitudes you've espoused throughout the session. You don't have to manage build queues or spend hours in a design lab; you just set the overall tone (and, optionally, maybe set-up an aesthetic that will be used as the basis for your empire's ships).
Your ships & stations should be part of the cohesive whole that is your empire. People in a utopian United Federation of Planets will be mad and send you angry space telegrams telling you how mad they are if you keep building iterations of the Roflstomp Class Battleship U.S.S. Eat My Shit You Alien Scum instead of research & exploration vessels, while people under the heel of the God Emperor His Own Self will build ships that are almost entirely made out of guns... but maybe not so competently, and maybe while sometimes forgetting where all that gosh darned gold pressed latinum you told them to spend on new hyperdrive technology went off to (Feh! Commoners!)
Aging fleets can perhaps be mothballed and turned into museum exhibits, or kept around as frontier mission relics that persons whom you've grown tired of can be assigned to, Boldly Going Where Nobody Is Likely to Ever Come Back From.
If it was literally any other studio making this I'd be cautiously optimistic, but it's Paradox, so this game is going to be amazing.
Usually I have a baseline ship and every 50 turns ill go to the lab and design a newer tougher ship. When I meet someone or get in a fight, the ships I have are a stopgate for the 20 turns I need to build a custom tailored armada to wreck said faction's shit with
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Paradox is a great small studio, but they aren't perfect. The UIX for all of their games are mediocre at best (CK2 is basically a series of tables, and yet there is way too much clicking between them and hunting to find specific information). And while King Arthur was an amazing first iteration, King Arthur 2 somehow took 2 steps back across the board, as everything from the RTS battles to the strategic layer to the MUD text adventures were somehow worse in both content and execution (again, going back to that UIX issue). And when it first came out, Magicka was pretty much raked across the coals, IIRC.
I'm really hopeful that this game will be awesome, but I'm also trying to temper my expectations, because every time I get hype for a Paradox game I end up being disappointed, but every time it just happens to show up on my radar I get pleasantly surprised. But maybe that's just me.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
TBH I don't really mind the tables in CK2 because it would otherwise be difficult to ever access the wide variety of information and options made available. And because the game allows you to set your own goals and pursue them in a lot of different ways I don't know how they'd be expected to make "important" things more accessible. Almost anything could be important in any particular game.
That said, I still expect the interface to be cumbersome. But I have acquired my PhD in Paradox Interfaces, so that's not going to keep me from getting everything out of this game
Oh, I didn't realize they published other studios' games. Thanks for the info!
That's really good to hear. I love their game concepts and the overall design, so really it's just the UIX part that ends up wrecking their games for me.
Booooo (I love Victoria 2)
I want to play racist theocratic intelligent space mushrooms
Seriously though, this all sounds like what I've wanted for years.
My current favorite space 4x game is Distant Worlds. I love it and play it all the time. However, I always wished it was more, uh, "Paradox-y". Now it seems my wish is coming true!
edit- And since it is a Paradox game I'd expect it to be super modable, which means plenty of choice mods later on!
Since this game is all essentially procedurally generated, I don't know how they'll manage it, but I'm confident that they will find a way to suck all joy out of the game.
I can't wait to start designing custom races and seeing how they develop. It looks like you could make any race from a wide variety of sci-fi sources and roleplay them accurately. Its a dream come true!
Good thing that the flexibility regarding race design is at least somewhat limited. Otherwise we'd be seeing the Spore effect of hundreds of varieties of walking wangs.
Still, it's a super cool idea that you might get a whole bunch of scifi trope races in your own space opera.
Oh man I love Distant Worlds too, when I was reading about the games features a lot of it jumped out to me as like "this seems a lot like what's in Distant Worlds but like, more in depth" (though to be fair, Distant Worlds is more in depth in a few ways this game might not be)
One thing in Distant Worlds that is a bit frustrating from an RP standpoint is that unless you're playing the Haakonish there's basically no reason not to assimilate. Enslaving is a vastly inferior choice (slave populations work harder but a race you've enslaved in DW has no population growth which... doesn't really make sense, and makes it non-viable). So I'm looking forward to playing all sorts of different races with different ideas about how to approach aliens and research and the galactic community.
You are the Non, who must become Juffo-Wup or Void.
This feels played too close to the chest. Hah...
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
One day I will get to my backlog of not-Paradox grand strategy titles...
Your next dog will now be named Juffo-Pup.
I still can't figure out how to Hoi or Vicky. I can barely EU, and usually I fall behind in tech as England.
I'm guessing a Star Trek mod that "chronicles" everything that happened from First Contact to whatever the last movie/show chronologically was (Nemesis?)
Perhaps, if we were to plant spore sacs in your brain organ
and let its tendrils spread through your flesh
then you would truly understand Juffo-Wup... become part of Juffo-Wup.
You WOULD be happier and more fulfilled. Consider our offer.
(It's from the Mycon in Star Control 2 (and my profile pic). They're not a bad match for what KetBra described.)
Something like them might also be a nice fit for one of those galactic disaster type events. Since they're essentially living self-modifying terraforming tools, which ran amok, converting Earthlike worlds into worlds more habitable for themselves (high temperature volcanic/lava type worlds).
I personally find EU to be the simplest of the Paradox games, but oddly enough I find CK to be the easiest for me.
HoI probably has the most straight forward "nation running" aspect out of all the games, but it's mind boggling complexity comes from managing your military and waging war (which is super, super indepth). HoI is probably the hardest Paradox game for me to play. I am not very good at it at all. It is also my least favorite Paradox title since, far more so than the others, you are really hamstrung by history. Though from all indications HoI IV is going to fix that. :biggrin:
Vicky I'd say is probably the most overall complex. IMHO no single system in Vicky is super complex, it just has a lot of somewhat complex systems that form the whole. Vicky is all about industry, trade, politics and population demographics. You spend a lot of time looking at tabs within tabs within tabs. I actually really love it. :razz:
I hope they make a new Vicky. Last word I heard on it said not until after HoI IV. When/If it does come out then I will finally be able to take a nation from CK all the way to HoI IV with one save. WEEEEE!
This is what I've always wanted, but I've still never been able to get a game of CK2 past about 1000, let alone to where I can convert to EUIV.
Or maybe not! I hope there's at least some sort of national coalition/united nations style government where you leave your world with still distinct nation states and not a single unified one world government, and it affects how your race expands and faces challenges in space.
Owning the world is such a pain. What you want is a super optimized empire, and a bunch of vassal states surrounding you as a buffer. Then the rest of the world can be whatever horrible consequences your messing around with foreign politics and nations have produced.
Gotta love that war score mechanic, one issue though is gonna be retreating forces once the war is over.
Mostly stuff we already knew, but a few tidbits extra there. Each planet will have a governor with traits and skills, sort of like CK2. Planet terrain maps for buildings include "special" tiles that can do weird things... like massive sinkholes that spawn hordes of creatures later in the game. There will be 0-2 late game catastrophes, so you might have some games where none fire and others where everything just goes nuts.
Info from the Stellaris forums: