Anyway, what exactly are you looking for in terms of scale range? Starting with 1 planet? And how many turns on average before colonizing a second one? And how many planets (or stars, if that's a better measure) in the end-game, and how many turns on average to get there?
I actually want in terms of range of scale something like this
# Start -> Homeworld, first FTL drive, public opinion towards expansion
# Colonizing the first planets in the sol system is thus the first stage, decisions you make here define your core system, how people view space exploration, implements the race diversity triggers. Once you expand to other stars they will have to be colonies and thus, the system should change, you no longer handle minute detail of your 4th or 5th colony.
It shifts to galactic empire expansion now .. all stars on the map are free-game.. there doesn't have to be a limit of stars, but it'd need to be at least 300 ;P
The last shift of scale is for the end-game. You don't build ships in particular shipyards, they are build everywhere and arrive in fleets automatically. Redesign costs go through the roof (you want to change this design you build 60k ships of?). The focus is absolutely on YOU vs WHOEVER ELSE IS LEFT vs the END GAME TREAT (Which is an optional, randomly chosen galaxy plot). A plot that actually makes all that empire prowess you build up matter. And a plot you can LOSE (or tackle with your allies together).
Winning the end-game treat gives you unique things for your persistence system ;P
Winning can sometimes just mean being friendly with everyone (your mid-game choices are taken into account) or being only one left.
Essentially, yes.. I want 1 planet with colonies to 60 controlled star-systems in one game ;p
And no no... I don't think MOO2 sucked, it was just inferior to Ascendancy ;P I just think all those 4x wanna be's lately suck. SOTS1 has the same problem in the end-game (well, it doesn't have any, but even if it did, it'd be a terrible mess).
I don't mind having "eRe4s3r's take on the 4x genre" to be honest. As long as others input their own ideas as well.
Your idea how to prevent abstraction nearly sounds like an entire different take on how empires expand... mhh... that may be well worth to think about ;P
It's true that we could forget abstraction layers if you coded a changing interface (fun fact, no 4x game has changing interface to accomodate for shifts in scale...)
The example you gave with building upgrades is imo a perfect example (And why I think all these games suck) Imagine this, you are empire of a 500 colony empire, have thousands of ships, can blast planets away. But if you research the fancy tradeport extension BLUB you have not the pleasure of either manually putting it on planets everywhere or use some form of colony manager (The only one where I even understood what I was doing was funnily in Star Ruler). The governor / planet classification system in that was a good idea.
-------------------Something else that bugs me is that games like Space Empires or really, any 4x game. You build ships locally, you can automate the building part (in SOTS2 this means you now have to manually create fleets... in worst case half a dozen of them). But if you have hundreds of vessels built it now becomes a cluster-frack of micro management. What I envision with abstraction is that only your first and second fleet are handled this way, later on "Your fleets become worthy of your size" fleets consist of dozens or hundreds of vessels. You assign construction directly to fleet and where and who builts what is abstracted (Admiral / Governor traits play into this) and Admirals like or complain to you if you forget reinforcing THEIR fleet. Again, this could even include loyalty and rebellious attitudes.
IN a sense, this is something Total War Shogun 2 started (You build "to" an army" however, because they couldn't have magically units appearing it was still a pain in the backside..)
If I had to put my game idea to 1 sentence it'd be "Total War in Galactic Space" ;p
Also, my 4x game will never be turn based like that. (It will have turns to advance production) but movement during turn is done via movement points/action points. Like Total War. This is also why I am unsure whether MP is possible or not. And this is also where the border/DMZ system comes from. IN a real-time within turn movement system areas of force projection need to be relatively stable.
