Author Topic: Questions about, and feedback on game going forward (Era of Discovery)  (Read 9803 times)

Offline RocketAssistedPuffin

  • Arcen Volunteer
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 260
I've read the notes for Era of Discovery a few times over. There is something I'm personally concerned about, regarding the games enjoyment factor for myself, that ties in a bit with previous personal issues. I have a feeling I'm one of a tiny group in this though, judging by what I've read so far.

First question: Will it ever be possible for unit tooltips to show damage x shot count, and reload speed separately like Classic did? This was often useful for me to know, in situations like transport ambushes (time to fire from unloading), if the unit is particularly vulnerable to firing at chaff (Zombards), etc. Just saying DPS isn't...very interesting to me.

Second: I've noticed in discussions that...things like Shield Bearers, Munitions Boosters, etc are going away due to performance issues. Additionally, hull bonus types seem to be heading towards being rather...limited. I worry this'll start to hurt units having any interesting things on them, like Acid Sprayers being an unusual counter unit, or pairing a damage buffing unit (Flagship) with a particular ship type. Again I did actually use things like this a fair bit, and I'll elaborate on this more. Is the game going to get much of anything like this? I think units like Etherjets are still in, and Riots now fully take over the shieldbearer role...but I also haven't seen Plasma Siege bolts interacting with forcefields, or any sign of anything like minefields making it in, etc.

Third: I've seen this mentioned occasionally, but I'd like to ask myself...will Spire, Neinzul and Zenith ever return in a form that you can have a themed game with them? I loved an all Neinzul game, just throwing thousands of disposable ships around. The common traits of Spire being immune to Reclaimation, etc was also interesting, as well as Zeniths general wackiness. I know you can now mod in extra bonus starting ship slots (as I've tried), and thus could select them all...but that's if they exist. Admittedly, could always mod the ships back in too.

Feedback time! What drew me to the first game was the talk of the AI: an AI that's actually decent? Then in the tutorial finding all the traits ships have, damage bonuses, engine health/damage, reclaimation, tractors, etc. That was really cool! All the settings too, like auto-kite. It felt pretty indepth, and I had no issues with the UI myself (though I hear it's a common complaint). Having all the menus on different ships wasn't a problem at all, as I'm used to hotkeys for this kind of thing anyway. Even things like the alternate endings (I especially liked Showdown, doing that vanilla required some units and abilities I've ignored (Fortresses and Armour Rotters, specifically)).

My point there is...AIW2 feels like it's lacking in this! I look at Spiders and see Engine Damage - how much? How fast do they fire? How much engine health do these units have anyway? I've no idea how useful this ship actually is and can't decide between it or something else beyond health, range, and DPS. Plasma Siege bolts were a cool alternative answer to forcefields, but don't seem to do it anymore. To me it feels like the game went up in terms of Factions, and the AI doing stuff, but in terms of what I, the player have...it went down. I don't think of any particular tactic or strategy, I just fleetball in because I don't know what else I can do, test or experiment with. Units just mostly say damage and health, there's nothing interesting about any of them except Spiders, which even then seem to lack any synergy (since their targets flat out die, so the stalled engines do nothing).

I know the game is still early on, but this thought occurred to me recently and got me really down about the game...so I figure I should bring it up, if it helps at all. I admit I did notice that human fleetships at least are getting new abilities, so that has me hopeful for that aspect.

Currently I...only really play the game when an update comes out, to prod it. Once some initial bug testing is done, and each feature looked at, I...then don't bother. Each time I try to play a full game I'm easily bored. Even the factions don't draw me in, as I don't get far enough in to actually encounter them in any meaningful way.

Well, hope that's...useful, even if again I imagine I'm an outlier in much of this.

(EDIT: Not saying the game is bad...occurred to me it might sound that way. Just some things that I find detract a large amount).
« Last Edit: August 08, 2018, 07:09:46 pm by RocketAssistedPuffin »
Autistic, so apologies for any communication difficulties!

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: Questions about, and feedback on game going forward (Era of Discovery)
« Reply #1 on: August 08, 2018, 08:41:49 pm »
Thanks for writing all this!  It's definitely a helpful set of insights.

One thing I'll say is that right now you're seeing about half of the initial push into the Age of Discovery.  There's a lot of stuff where I share your frustrations with where things are and where they have been.  I haven't been inspired to do more than prod at it, myself, either.  I haven't had any sense of discovery or scale (in sense of type of things I might encounter, not number of units, which is fine), which is what this new section is all about.

A change from the past is that I'm no longer concerned about area-of-effect things like munitions boosters.  I have a new idea for how to draw those, and to show which units have those bonuses at any given time.  The actual calculation of who is in bonus range is something that is a lot easier to do now, because Keith has everything so wonderfully segmented on the background threads.  So performance should be something this laughs at, which is good.

I'm still not interested in a ton of shield bearers for the simple fact that it looks incredibly ugly (and the forcefield drawing is performance-intensive, too).  But things that have a similar effect will definitely be something I want to have in there, now.

When it comes to all the hull bonuses and whatnot, I'm planning on stripping all that away really really soon.  Next couple of days.  The first game got really clogged up with a lot of "this does something SUPER specific, and these other guys have like 10 different immunities and bonuses to read through."  It was all very multiplier-sy.  In a very... non-organic sense, I suppose I'll say.

I'm not even sure we'll have hull types at all, coming up soon, to be frank.  I'm still on the fence on that.

Instead, there are things that I'm focusing on that are individual stats on a ship: general hull thickness, engine armor, personal shields/deflectors/whatever for each ship as in TLF, and a few other stats.  These things take the place of all those crazy multipliers and immunities that the other game had to do, and make it way more organic instead.

With something like snipers, as one example, they'll do a ton of damage to the personal shields, but less to hulls.  So they're for softening up targets more than anything else.  Fighters are going to be getting a rename, and will have tougher hulls as well as a new slowing effect on their shots so that you can kind of trap enemies with them.  Bombers will hit through personal shields without damaging them at all, but also not being blocked by them.  Structures will in general have high shielding, but low hull health, and THAT'S why bombers will be good against them -- not because bombers have an arbitrary bonus against the structure hull type.

I plan on bringing in a variety of other abilities for ships, too.  Things that are boosting their neighbors -- this would be starship-level only, and guard posts on the AI side -- and things that get bonuses for shooting from further away from the center of the gravity well, things that have the implosion ability that does more damage to high-energy-consuming targets.  Things that hit with plasma charges that actually slow the firing rate of targets they hit.  Compression damage that absolutely crumples thinner hulls, but doesn't do as much against other types.  Etc.

My goal is that instead of reading dozens of immunities and weaknesses on a TARGET ship, there's just a half-dozen or so constant stats that are always there.  Then on a given attacker, they have one or two particular strengths (I crush thin-hulled ships, or shoot through personal shields, or both, or whatever).  So it's something where you can look at the attacker and know what is going on with less text being thrown at you, and look at a target and understand what is happening based on one set of stats that have a lot of implications per stat rather than looking at a ton of flags that each do one thing.

With that sort of thing, plus I'm sure adding more abilities and such as we head towards and into EA, I think that this will be just as rich or richer of a strategic experience as the first game, but vastly easier to understand.  Part of the problem with the first game was you had to know too many things to know anything.  Here, if I look at a ship and see that it does extra compression damage against hulls that are 10mm thick or thinner than that, then I just glance at the targets and see which ones are most ripe for being hit with it.  Boom, I now understand that one part of the game without requiring any extra context.  In the first game, I might have a ship of my own that says it has like 12 different immunities, and as a new player I would think... what do I do with this ship, then?  It's immune to all these things, but what has those things?  Should I be cross-referencing that now?  Etc.

Obviously you'll still have those "what do I do with these ships" moments here, and that's a good thing, but it shouldn't feel like you need to learn an encyclopedia's worth of info in order to get there.  Chess can be explained to someone pretty fast, but the implications of what all those pieces do is something that takes a long time to fully pick up.  I'm going more for that feel here.

This also plays into the procedural ships.  For most of the fleetships and starships, and all of the guardians and guard posts, I'm going to be having those be so heavily procedural that you're never running into the same ones in two different campaigns, and thus have to figure out how best to use those ships in the context of the game you're in.  What is the AI using over here, some of which you've never seen before even if you've played 100 hours, and what do you have available to you this time, again some of which you've never seen even after 100 hours.  That way that "figure out how to use a given ship line" experience is part of it for everyone in every game, versus just something for newbies and other people fall back on their tried-and-true favorites.

Things like EtherJet Tractors and Parasites won't be making a return, but instead will be showing up as all sorts of other ships.  You might be running into a Gravitic Raid Starship that you get to use, which bends space around itself and goes super fast and so on.  Or you have Reinforced Tachyon Space Tanks, which are slowish but super tough space tanks with the EtherJet-Tractor-style tractor beams.  How do you deal with that, either playing with or against those?  Etc.

That's part of what interests me about playing, and what has me excited about the things coming up.  It's why I called this the Era of Discovery, because the idea is that there will be more things for all of us to discover in every campaign, and thus to feel excited about exploring and exploiting.

Regarding the spire, neinzul, and zenith, those are just out of scope for the game right now, in the main.  There are spire ships that are third party factions, and you can get a couple of spire ships by capturing them like you do the zenith golems.  But none of the fleetships or starships are going to be of alien origin pre-1.0 in this game.  There's just only so much room in the scope.  That is something I want to get to in expansions and post-release content, but that's a job for another day.

Oh, and to your question about tooltips, my intent is that they get more explicit, while still being brief because of the new way things will be working.  So you can see the exact stats, but only so many stats are relevant on any given ship.  You don't have to worry about engine health on EVERY ship, just on the engine armor, probably.  And for the engine damage, you'll likely see that as more of a "how long does this disable engines on the target at baseline engine armor."  Rather than it being something where the engines get permanently damaged only after a lot of shooting, it's more tactically interesting to have them get immediately disabled but not forever, I think.  It keeps the number of stats down, too -- engine damage is just one of many mechanics, and shouldn't have so much interface room all on its own.  Based on engine armor levels, other mechanics than just engine damage should be possible for us to think up, too.

And... I have a long list of other things I want to get done in this same sort of vein for ships and structures.  I want that feeling back, personally, of it being this big unknown universe where I don't know what's waiting for me or what what's waiting for me can do to me.  I want the thrill of finding brand new units for the first time.

Hopefully this gets both of us over the hump of just playing it to test it out. :)
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline RocketAssistedPuffin

  • Arcen Volunteer
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 260
Re: Questions about, and feedback on game going forward (Era of Discovery)
« Reply #2 on: August 09, 2018, 09:30:40 am »
Half of the initial push? This almost feels like an expansion pack in a way.

Glad to hear things like Munitions Boosters are still possible. Speed Boosters will be...very useful this time around. At least until transports are a thing. A tangent question here: Can a neutral faction unit affect all other factions with a boost?

Agreed on the Shield Bearers...Riots are a better way of doing that. Always things like Armour Boosters to take up that role, coupled with the above mentioned performance increase.

No hull bonuses...it's intriguing. A lot of strategy games do have armour and weapon types, but are never clear and yet not often relevant either, so I'm...optimistic for it. Maybe it'd be too much coupled with the later method, of hull thickness and crumpling, etc. Way too much to consider, and the latter is more interesting so far.

I've never played The Last Federation, though maybe it'd be a good idea to...seen someone play it. So a few defense types, with their own unique defenses and weaknesses, with consistent interactions? I do like the sound of that...seems it'd work well with procedural units.

Sounds like it'll be better for the fleet blobbing situation as well - right now everything is just more damage. Am I right in that you could say this is like Classic had each unit with its own custom paint job tank and gun, but in AIW2 they all draw from the same armoury, with consistent hull and armour interactions, then "mutated" traits like having a Tachyon beam, or just more health? Occurs to me this'll interact well with Arks being a Champion type unit.

I do have to admit there is a very good point in making it easier to understand as you say. With too many things to read and remember you miss some...like a Mass Driver being unable to target Galactic Control Ships. Or said GCS being immune to Black Hole Machines...(yeah, that wasn't fun...)

Didn't expect Alien ships. I just asked because of some of their unique traits, Neinzul being the most obvious.

I take it if a unit is totally unable to be affected by engine damage, that the tooltip just won't mention that stat? I seem to recall they still mention it in Classic, just as "Inf". Suppose if you did that, only had the actually relevant stuff mentioned, you could trim the tooltips a little. Means they have to change with the procedural generation though, but then again I imagine you'd have to do that anyway with Tachyons, etc.

Last bit, for the Discovery factor...almost sounds like you want it to feel like it's a new game you just got each time? Or a just installed expansion, where you know the general mechanics but things have been added in? I do recall enjoying some games much more when they were new, just for the discovery factor...it's an interesting thing to have in a strategy game like this.

Well thanks for answering! Feel better about the game now due to that.
Autistic, so apologies for any communication difficulties!

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: Questions about, and feedback on game going forward (Era of Discovery)
« Reply #3 on: August 09, 2018, 09:52:45 am »
Half of the initial push? This almost feels like an expansion pack in a way.

Good! :)  It's felt lacking up until now, for me, and I want this to feel really substantial to folks on launch of even EA.

Glad to hear things like Munitions Boosters are still possible. Speed Boosters will be...very useful this time around. At least until transports are a thing. A tangent question here: Can a neutral faction unit affect all other factions with a boost?

I'll have to add specific options for permutations like that, but yes it's not too big a deal.  Right now the only speed boosts I've added are ones that are planet-wide for all allies and yourself.  These are held by your command stations.

If there are specific ideas for things you want ships to be able to do, then I'm always interested to hear that sort of thing.  One thing I forgot to mention before that I'm excited about is a sort of... spawn camping, I suppose we should call it.  Basically where certain ships and turrets would get a bonus against any ship that just came out of a wormhole or otherwise spawned.  I find the prospect of that really fun in a makes-me-giggle sort of way.

No hull bonuses...it's intriguing. A lot of strategy games do have armour and weapon types, but are never clear and yet not often relevant either, so I'm...optimistic for it. Maybe it'd be too much coupled with the later method, of hull thickness and crumpling, etc. Way too much to consider, and the latter is more interesting so far.

Awesome, sounds good.

I've never played The Last Federation, though maybe it'd be a good idea to...seen someone play it.

It's a very very different game, but I quite enjoy it.

So a few defense types, with their own unique defenses and weaknesses, with consistent interactions? I do like the sound of that...seems it'd work well with procedural units.

Yeah, basically just making things so that they are kind of... "physically based," so to speak.  Not based around abstract concepts so much.  There will be a large number of non-procedural units mixed in with the procedural ones, incidentally, so there's a mix of hand-designed stuff that is familiar every game along with the procedural ones.

Sounds like it'll be better for the fleet blobbing situation as well - right now everything is just more damage.

My hope is that it will, yes.  We never could crack that in Classic, either.  But with things like the slowing fighter-type units that you have, coupled with the glass cannons with long range, someone who just blobs will have a very inferior performance to someone who simply moves the fighter-types forward to slow down the enemy while the glass cannons pound things into oblivion.

Am I right in that you could say this is like Classic had each unit with its own custom paint job tank and gun, but in AIW2 they all draw from the same armoury, with consistent hull and armour interactions, then "mutated" traits like having a Tachyon beam, or just more health? Occurs to me this'll interact well with Arks being a Champion type unit.

It's... a mixture.  Not every ship will be procedural (the Arks for instance will not be).  It's mostly the main combat units that are procedural; all the unique supporting combat units (ion cannons, Arks, whatever) are not.  The nice thing is that "what is procedural and what is not" is all just going to be a matter of xml setup.  So minor factions can choose to use it or not, for example.  But otherwise you're essentially correct.

I do have to admit there is a very good point in making it easier to understand as you say. With too many things to read and remember you miss some...like a Mass Driver being unable to target Galactic Control Ships. Or said GCS being immune to Black Hole Machines...(yeah, that wasn't fun...)

Yep, exactly.  If the black hole machine says "works on anything with engines less strong than 'amazing'" or whatever, then you'll have your eyes out for any ships with 'amazing' engines.  If you see the GCS do, then you immediately know what's up.  Much easier than remembering to scan through every freaking unit for "immune to black hole machines."  As part of seeing a new unit, now, you'd generally scan their six or so stat types and hopefully that triggers thoughts of specific things they might be immune to, etc.

Didn't expect Alien ships. I just asked because of some of their unique traits, Neinzul being the most obvious.

10-4, makes sense.  If there are any unique traits in particular you'd like me to see about adding, then feel free to bring any up.

I take it if a unit is totally unable to be affected by engine damage, that the tooltip just won't mention that stat? I seem to recall they still mention it in Classic, just as "Inf". Suppose if you did that, only had the actually relevant stuff mentioned, you could trim the tooltips a little. Means they have to change with the procedural generation though, but then again I imagine you'd have to do that anyway with Tachyons, etc.

Well, for the core "physical stats" so to speak, I want those to be consistently displayed on every unit.  Even if something has the equivalent of infinite engines from AIWC, there might be some unit that specifically gets a bonus against units of that sort, for example.  So there will be some context in which it's relevant (and in particular, that sort of thing will tell you that spiders and black hole machines are useless against it).

One reason for the changes to some of the mechanics like engine damage is that there were a lot of mechanics in AIWC where we realized "if this is applied to larger ships, this breaks the game."  I'm trying to move away from that here, without having to give a shedload of immunities to the larger units.  And that in turn gives some opportunities for the larger ships to have their strengths turned against them in a few cases.

Last bit, for the Discovery factor...almost sounds like you want it to feel like it's a new game you just got each time? Or a just installed expansion, where you know the general mechanics but things have been added in? I do recall enjoying some games much more when they were new, just for the discovery factor...it's an interesting thing to have in a strategy game like this.

That's exactly it -- like you just installed a new expansion.  That's a great way to describe it.  Probably 50% of the units are the same every time, most of those not in combat roles (but some of them in those roles), and then the other half are making up the bulk of everyone's fleets and like they came from a new expansion.

Well thanks for answering! Feel better about the game now due to that.

Excellent!  Now the proof will be in the pudding, so fingers crossed that comes across well.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline RocketAssistedPuffin

  • Arcen Volunteer
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 260
Re: Questions about, and feedback on game going forward (Era of Discovery)
« Reply #4 on: August 09, 2018, 11:03:27 am »
Humm...a spawn camp bonus...I like that as a kind of counteract against pure "Kahuna Style", as the only name I've seen it called. Y'know, the station way at the grav well edge, with all the tractor turrets, grav turrets, mines etc. If it was applied to only shorter range turrets like Flak or Lightning, then it gives a reason for them to be near Wormholes and...more useful than what I had them do a lot of the time, especially Flak. It'd help counteract units being split up for each wormhole too. I like it but I think it'd require some tuning, maybe. Also would be good for those situations where a capturable is in a horrendous location, like right next to a wormhole.

Zenith Hydras were always an interesting mechanic, if...very simple in just being more damage, yet being weaker to insta-kill than normal was neat. Not sure if it's worth bothering with though, it's so specific and minor. What we didn't really have in Classic was a unit with an area-of-effect durability debuff. We had the Zenith Trader goodie to do this on a planet wide scale (disabling armour and doubling forcefield damage taken), but not on a unit I think, other than armour rotters, etc. It's not super different from just buffing your own units though.

 Occured to me that the...Zenith Reprocessor would be kinda cool to have, even as a trait. I think with zombification and reclaimation, you could potentially have a playstyle emerge based on stealing *everything* from the AI - as I saw mentioned on here on a years old post..."Grand Theft Cosmos". Much like turrets could be your offense, here your offense'd be your economy.

Yeah, basically just making things so that they are kind of... "physically based," so to speak.  Not based around abstract concepts so much.  There will be a large number of non-procedural units mixed in with the procedural ones, incidentally, so there's a mix of hand-designed stuff that is familiar every game along with the procedural ones.

I thought the same, with it being physics like. Much more intuitive. Some complete consistency is good.

My hope is that it will, yes.  We never could crack that in Classic, either.  But with things like the slowing fighter-type units that you have, coupled with the glass cannons with long range, someone who just blobs will have a very inferior performance to someone who simply moves the fighter-types forward to slow down the enemy while the glass cannons pound things into oblivion.

Exactly the kind of thing I missed, and wanted here. This should help with Factions too, as you obviously don't want the Nanocaust to be anywhere remotely near you, or the Devourer. Or anyone who shoots at you.

It's... a mixture.  Not every ship will be procedural (the Arks for instance will not be).  It's mostly the main combat units that are procedural; all the unique supporting combat units (ion cannons, Arks, whatever) are not.  The nice thing is that "what is procedural and what is not" is all just going to be a matter of xml setup.  So minor factions can choose to use it or not, for example.  But otherwise you're essentially correct.

Ah, there I meant that units having mutations is like the Ark upgrading, not that the Ark itself is procedural - my error. Essentially, any new traits or abilities added opens up the possibility of an Ark getting them as well.

Well, for the core "physical stats" so to speak, I want those to be consistently displayed on every unit.  Even if something has the equivalent of infinite engines from AIWC, there might be some unit that specifically gets a bonus against units of that sort, for example.  So there will be some context in which it's relevant (and in particular, that sort of thing will tell you that spiders and black hole machines are useless against it).

One reason for the changes to some of the mechanics like engine damage is that there were a lot of mechanics in AIWC where we realized "if this is applied to larger ships, this breaks the game."  I'm trying to move away from that here, without having to give a shedload of immunities to the larger units.  And that in turn gives some opportunities for the larger ships to have their strengths turned against them in a few cases.

Makes sense actually, future proofs it too. It might be weird that some units just...mention engines, but then another similar unit doesn't. Or game one it does, and game two it rolls a mutation to be immune, but the stat disappears! I seem to recall that...larger units needed to be given a lot of immunities as new mechanics came in via expansions, so you'd future proof that too.

Is there anything that hasn't been brought up here that feedback'd be good on? I will of course test the update when it comes, though it seems a while from the sheer size! The XML and modding changes though have a good prognosis I think already.
Autistic, so apologies for any communication difficulties!

Offline x4000

  • Chris McElligott Park, Arcen Founder and Lead Dev
  • Arcen Staff
  • Zenith Council Member Mark III
  • *****
  • Posts: 31,651
Re: Questions about, and feedback on game going forward (Era of Discovery)
« Reply #5 on: August 09, 2018, 12:06:42 pm »
I've just finished putting together this:

=== An Entirely New System of Units of Measurement ===

* A new system of units of measurement for statistics on every craft has been created: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=AI_War_2:_Units_of_Measurement
** As a player, you don't even need to read that page, nor do you need to understand each unit of measurement.
** However, as a modder or developer it helps you to come up with appropriate values for each field for each ship so that they will behave as expected in-game.
** For our more science-minded players, this page also provides a handy reference with real-world numbers behind it that properly addresses any lore questions that would otherwise be glossed over or seem inconsistent if you didn't know that the mass scale was logarithmic, for example.

=========

That shows the fields that all ships will have, and you can see how all of that will fit together in a nice physical fashion.  There are 8 total fields that will be in an upper section for each ship (metal is only if you're building it, not shown during gameplay).  All of those 8 fields -- hull points, shield points, armor, energy usage, speed, engine, albedo, and mass -- are the sole things that are turning on or off bonuses, penalties, or immunities to various things.  So a black hole machine would affect everything with an energy less than 20gx, let's say.  Spiders can only get anything with less than... maybe 10gx.  And so on.

Quote
Humm...a spawn camp bonus...I like that as a kind of counteract against pure "Kahuna Style", as the only name I've seen it called. Y'know, the station way at the grav well edge, with all the tractor turrets, grav turrets, mines etc. If it was applied to only shorter range turrets like Flak or Lightning, then it gives a reason for them to be near Wormholes and...more useful than what I had them do a lot of the time, especially Flak. It'd help counteract units being split up for each wormhole too. I like it but I think it'd require some tuning, maybe. Also would be good for those situations where a capturable is in a horrendous location, like right next to a wormhole.

Yep, those are all among my goals for usage of this. :)

Quote
Zenith Hydras were always an interesting mechanic, if...very simple in just being more damage, yet being weaker to insta-kill than normal was neat. Not sure if it's worth bothering with though, it's so specific and minor.

I think it's cool, and it's one that's easy to implement, so I've added it to my list of special things that could be rolled.

Quote
What we didn't really have in Classic was a unit with an area-of-effect durability debuff.

I will... have to think on this.  I think that a lot of the mechanics will now play well with this concept in general, though.  Things that specifically eat higher-armor ships, or that fire through personal shields or do extra damage to personal shields.  We'll see where we can go with this, though.  I've put it on my list to think about how to best do in various ways.

Quote
Occured to me that the...Zenith Reprocessor would be kinda cool to have, even as a trait.

Good thought!  I've added that to the list of traits. :)  Grand Theft Cosmos, I love it.

Quote
Ah, there I meant that units having mutations is like the Ark upgrading, not that the Ark itself is procedural - my error. Essentially, any new traits or abilities added opens up the possibility of an Ark getting them as well.

Oh sure, absolutely!  One of the goals here is to make it so that the non-procedural ships have a richer set of stats and abilities to choose from, too.  And the Arks are already able to gain certain abilities only at upper mark levels, which is good.

Quote
Makes sense actually, future proofs it too. It might be weird that some units just...mention engines, but then another similar unit doesn't. Or game one it does, and game two it rolls a mutation to be immune, but the stat disappears! I seem to recall that...larger units needed to be given a lot of immunities as new mechanics came in via expansions, so you'd future proof that too.

Bingo, there were literally almost two dozen by the end, IIRC.

Quote
Is there anything that hasn't been brought up here that feedback'd be good on? I will of course test the update when it comes, though it seems a while from the sheer size! The XML and modding changes though have a good prognosis I think already.

I think we're okay at the moment, for once.  :D  The new systems and randomization and such should be something I can finish by the end of next week.  I hadn't wanted the whole process to take that long, but the randomization isn't the slow part; it's all this general work and planning and new stats, etc.
Have ideas or bug reports for one of our games?  Mantis for Suggestions and Bug Reports. Thanks for helping to make our games better!

Offline RocketAssistedPuffin

  • Arcen Volunteer
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 260
Re: Questions about, and feedback on game going forward (Era of Discovery)
« Reply #6 on: August 09, 2018, 12:51:53 pm »
Read through that measurement page and bookmarked it for any tinkering. It's really, *really* interesting what that style allows...

I haven't got anything else to add now, other than just like the "Spawn Camper" trait, kind of the..."Bunker Buster" unit counter trait of sorts. Gains damage resistance of some form when entering a wormhole, to act as a kind of shield unit, or just to make it safer to send in more valuable units right away. Imagine that'd be very good on an actual forcefield unit.

Looking forward to this update now!
Autistic, so apologies for any communication difficulties!

Offline chemical_art

  • Core Member Mark IV
  • *****
  • Posts: 3,952
  • Fabulous
Re: Questions about, and feedback on game going forward (Era of Discovery)
« Reply #7 on: August 13, 2018, 11:05:14 pm »
It is cliche but "show, don't tell" can also be interpreted as "implicit, not explicit" which is what you are proposing. Rather then make it black and white, if/or/and logic you are presenting broad concepts and letting the inferences explain things. It makes things much neater, you can explain much more advanced concepts at glance if a player can understand the data. Great games explain it, but it is still a better concept if a player has to be explained it out of game, since the alternative method is not any better at best.

I still, in a way, express what I said about if you still want ships to have random attributes. Have a good, better, best models of ships and have each level of ship greater adjectives which provide further flavors of the superior ship. These still keeps data simple, so a player has a baseline knowledge of what might be a boring ship being a one of a kind model, or that a better then average ship has a really cool benefit. Rather then have 6 ships have a 0 - 100% range of power with an average of 55.33 and 1.83 attributes , make it so that there is one ship with 100% and four attributes, two ships with 66% and two attributes, and three ships with 33% and one attribute.
Life is short. Have fun.