a couple of questions regarding the peltians and acutions in stars within reach.

[crazyroosterman]

question 1 since the peltians are balanced to be fantastic at bombing in the last federation what's that going to be replaced with in swr? 2 are the acutions a playable faction? 3 can you planet cracker the planet it self that your on for shits and giggles?.

[x4000]

Sure thing!

1. There are a couple of different kinds of combat in this game.  Firstly, there's ground combat.  Secondly, air.  Third, naval.  Fourth, ranged attacks.  Which can be missiles or lasers fired from afar, and they are un-interceptable unlike the other three kinds of combat (but there are other drawbacks).  The Peltians are excellent at this fourth kind of combat.

2. Nope, the Acutians, Andors, Thoraxians, Yali, Spire, and Neinzul are the non-playable races.  They all have really different mechanics from the player races, and it would be really hard to try to make a player version of those make sense at all.  Plus those guys all bring a sort of interesting balance to the game by existing in it every time.

3. Not a planet cracker per se -- no moon involved, and you can't get off the planet anyhow to get a moon if there was one -- but you can destroy the planet as a sort of scorched-earth victory condition.  That likely won't be in the initial beta, but it is absolutely planned for 1.0.   It's actually a very thematically-appropriate option, given some of the story stuff.

Cheers!

[crazyroosterman]

okay thanks for the super fast a little bit sad that you cant play as the acutions but playing as the evuks will be awesome sauce(was sad when I found out you couldn't play as the thoraxian but they'd be super hard to balance any way) looking forward to fighting for my life against the thoraxian horde (:.

[x4000]

You never know, in future expansions it might be something that we can extend to playing some of the unplayable races.  It's something that would really take a huge amount of thought and a lot of extra work to really get them balanced right and even functioning in a sane way if you were them as a player.

BUT.  On the plus side, as it stands now you get to interact with them plenty.   Part of them being AI-only races is that I get to design in really unusual ways of interacting with each of them that none of the other races share.

[crazyroosterman]

hey its all awesome sauce now I'm really curious what acutions are going to be like in the game(don't tell me it'll be funner if I find out when the game releases) and the thoraxians are going to be really interesting.(if I were to guess sporadic behaviour changes op as hell early game land units and those lovely tunnels you mentioned)

[x4000]

One of the most fun things for me about this game is that these are an entirely different group of individuals from each race, separated from their TLF counterparts by millennia.  That gives me some license to take some license with them and bring them in some different ways.  You'll still recognize every race, but for instance the political structures are different thanks to it being a time period.  Think about humans -- we've had every kind of political structure there is, by definition. 

These races aren't suddenly switching so that the Acutians are communist pacifists or anything.  But I have been having fun with having some Andor leaders be substantially less helpful than others, for instance.  Being able to have this vary by the individual leader makes things a bit less monolithic, so you not only care which race you're dealing with in a given game, but which leader of that race in the game.

[crazyroosterman]

okay I'm quite curious as to what time line these races are going to be coming from(for example in the betrayal time were the hydral lost his shit and started killing everyone for instance these guys could be refuges that managed to escape) but that's something to discover when the game it self comes only other question I've got is since the planets meant to be sentient does that mean its going to doing things in the same way your doing things.(for example if this ends up being turn based after you end its turn and it becomes the planet turns does that mean the planet will do such and such and then end its turn)

[x4000]

The TLF stuff is far enough in the deep past that it's not really important which storyline there feeds into this one.  Suffice it to say, in this storyline there are some surviving -- and present -- members of each of the TLF races except for the Hydrals and the Obscura.  Those two latter races aren't necessarily dead, they just aren't present.  What exactly happened way back in the past is less clear to them than what happened in Mesopotamia is to us.

This is a turn based game, yes.  The human players take their turns simultaneously, then hit end turn, and then the AIs all take their turns.  That includes the AI-controlled alien factions, plus any non-factional "barbarians" (in the Civ 4/5 sense) and... whatnot.  I'll leave it at that for now.

[crazyroosterman]

okay thanks for letting me info mine you! XD

[x4000]

Np!

[crazyroosterman]

just a tiny little question are the guys who did the soundtrack to tlf going to be doing the soundtrack to this game?.(tlf soundtrack is so awesome sauce its one of my favourite soundtracks ever)

[x4000]

All one guy -- Pablo Vega. He's composed every Arcen title ever, and will continue to do so indefinitely! He's full time on staff and works only for us.

[crazyroosterman]

sweetness!

[x4000]

There are actually a number of tracks from TLF that have been remastered and which are returning as race-specific songs for when you're in political negotiations.  All 14 of those tracks are actually remasters from older games, in a lot of cases our lesser-known ones like Shattered Haven and Bionic Dues. 

It makes it so that each race has a lot of personality aurally to them when you're in negotiations, but that's like 45 minutes of music that Pablo doesn't have to try and rush to compose.  Plus it's basically in my opinion something of a greatest hits collection.  Minus all the awesome vocal tracks from other games, of course, and a variety of other favorites of mine that are well beyond 14 in number.

Anyway, that lets him really put all his energies into the main while-you're-playing music, as well as the title music.

[DrFranknfurter]

I'm glad you're talking about Pablo Vega, I haven't seen many posts from him and in some ways he's Arcen's unsung hero. Also it's a good opportunity for me to ask a few questions on behalf of someone about to start studying musical composition for games at uni. (A mini-Vega in training).

So, How did you and Pablo Vega meet?
What would you look/listen for when you're hiring a composer?
What made Pablo Vega a permanent member of the team?
Musically, what matters most to you?
Any advice for a (surprisingly tall) mini-Vega with a dream of getting his name on the credits of a game? (volunteering? Having samples of his work ready?)

Oh and lastly. Steam has the music library section and the ability to buy soundtracks as DLC, is that something you've considered?

...I assume it's just a matter of them being mp3s rather than .ogg files. Whatever the case I can imagine a few people picking up a soundtrack if it was offered when you next release a game on steam (hopefully food for thought). Personally I like the voiced tracks best, like Bionic Dues Title Theme and TLF Voice files... but I do appreciate the voices would be quite distracting for the general background ambiance and transitions would be more jarring (with combat music interrupting a long song).

Oh and I absolutely love the female voice in TLF (Bronnie?). Heart-warming and adorably cute... I was just looking at the voice folder. Overwhelmingly cute. I find sound and voice-overs is an under-appreciated element in 4x games. I imagine many devs work detached from the music in a busy office and forget how important sound will be to the player. I go back to Alpha Centauri and think of how *real* the game became upon hearing the faction leaders' quotes all memorable and in-character.

So, will we have a TLF-style advisor with little comments about the races? (I hope so)

As always, I apologise for the number of questions. I know you take the time to read them even if you're a bit rushed at the moment so thank you for reading and good luck with the game.