Author Topic: What does the big picture look like?  (Read 21031 times)

Offline x4000

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Re: What does the big picture look like?
« Reply #15 on: December 19, 2014, 08:43:20 am »
Sorry but I have another question. :) Will there be asymmetry in this game and how will it wok? Will it be done the way shogun 2 did it, as in while you conquered everything around you, another empire did the same thing on the other side of the map so when you got to late game it was an epic battle between the empires, or are you going to do it ai war style?

It's more extreme than AI War and certainly more than Shogun or similar.  I'm not sure if I can think of a counterpart, really.  In AI War, the AI used at least... I don't know, 70% or 80% the same ships as you, depending on how you count it.  Then it had its own unique guard posts, etc.  And while the AI worked on a completely different premise from you in how its economy and rules for macro AI worked, it still plays by exactly the same rules as you when it came to the unit level and duking it out that way.

This game is a whole other beast, really.  There is 0% overlap between the buildings that you have versus those that the AI players have.  Many of theirs have similar or the same functions, but usually combined or condensed or something else appropriate for their specific race.  There is also 0% overlap between the buildings that AI races have with one another.  Human players always have pretty much the same (large) set of buildings, regardless of what faction they play as.  See my last post.

Let's see, some specific examples of what is the same and what is not:

1. Buildings.  Each AI race has their own set, and then there's a set for human players.

2. Economies.  The way that the AIs internally handle their economies is very different from how you handle yours.  They are much more established.

3. City sizes.  Overall the AI cities will seem smaller, because they will be on the surface.  But they have large underground facilities that you can also find.  You are new and make less efficient use of land.

4. Fighting.  This works the same for everyone, although everyone has their own specific buildings and stats for launching stuff.

5. Special-resource gathering.  This works pretty well the same for everyone.

6. Market competition for special resources.  Same for everyone.

7. Terraforming and atmospheric competition.  Same for most everyone, except robots and underwater.

8. Tech tree.  Only players use this at all, because the AIs are already more advanced than you, for story reasons.  Their technological needs are on a different level than yours.

9. Social progress (like culture in Civ, sort of).  The AIs do not use this at all.  It's irrelevant for most, and the Thoraxians in some ways are considered to have already "won" this.  Oops, that might be a spoiler.  Anyway, you can progress in this, and even choose a victory path along these lines, but if you do so then you have to face off against the Thoraxians in a really major way.  Yikes.

10. Linguistics.  The other races all have been around long enough that they know how to speak to one another.  None of them are too fussed about learning to speak to you, so the burden is all on you in this regard.

11. Pollution.  This has different effects on different AI races, and also different effects on some different human-controlled races, too.

12. Diplomacy.  That's pretty different per race that is being negotiated with.

13. Other stuff on the AI side.  Behaviorally and strength-wise and so forth, they act differently.  Think of TLF, in some respects.  Except more unbalanced in a lot of cases, because here there isn't much care who survives and who does not.  And things don't come to direct warfare quite so immediately, either.  So there's a lot less equality here, which I really love.  It helps to give even more personality to the races when they don't all have to be able to resist military incursions as their sole form of defense.

13. Other stuff on the player side.  Different races are intrinsically harder or easier, and are marked as such in the GUI.  The Fenyn are really sensitive to pollution, and have to do some things based on that.  The Burlusts have Crime out the wazoo based on population size, and that's a challenge that is extra for them.  The Boarines hate being in close proximity to one another, so it informs how you build your residences if you want to maximize SP production.  Etc.  Each player race also has their own unique Social Progress category that none of the other races have, and a different one of the core 8 SP categories is replaced with that depending on the race.

And... so on.

This game isn't trying to simulate a balanced and even war any more than the world is balanced and even between nations.  All nations are different, they have their own strengths and weaknesses, and in some regards some are frankly just "weaker" than others.  If you want to go for world domination, you don't pick a tiny third-world island nation.  It just ain't going to happen with that. ;)  But there are other ways to win the game with them, if that makes sense.
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Offline Cyborg

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Re: What does the big picture look like?
« Reply #16 on: December 19, 2014, 10:50:34 am »
Different races need different ones.  The underwater and robots don't care. 


Acutians ? Can they wreck the planet? >D


Because really, that's why we play. :P
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Offline Draco18s

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Re: What does the big picture look like?
« Reply #17 on: December 19, 2014, 12:39:50 pm »
Different races need different ones.  The underwater and robots don't care. 


Acutians ? Can they wreck the planet? >D

I do believe "blowing up the planet" was a "victory" condition, yes.

Offline x4000

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Re: What does the big picture look like?
« Reply #18 on: December 19, 2014, 01:42:54 pm »
Different races need different ones.  The underwater and robots don't care. 


Acutians ? Can they wreck the planet? >D

I do believe "blowing up the planet" was a "victory" condition, yes.

It is indeed a way to win (Pyrrhic victory, but still), although I'm not sure how involved the Acutians will be.  I haven't fully mapped out the mechanics for that victory condition just yet, as it involves some resources and wonders that I haven't fully designed yet.
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Offline Cyborg

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Re: What does the big picture look like?
« Reply #19 on: December 19, 2014, 02:11:04 pm »
Different races need different ones.  The underwater and robots don't care. 


Acutians ? Can they wreck the planet? >D

I do believe "blowing up the planet" was a "victory" condition, yes.

It is indeed a way to win (Pyrrhic victory, but still), although I'm not sure how involved the Acutians will be.  I haven't fully mapped out the mechanics for that victory condition just yet, as it involves some resources and wonders that I haven't fully designed yet.


I always roll robots, so I was just hoping. :-)
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Offline x4000

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Re: What does the big picture look like?
« Reply #20 on: December 19, 2014, 03:58:48 pm »
Haha, I know.  Unfortunately you can't play as the robots in this game, as you know I think -- but you can ally with them, so there is that. :)
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Offline Teal_Blue

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Re: What does the big picture look like?
« Reply #21 on: December 19, 2014, 10:47:51 pm »
Huh.  This is completely new to me -- any links handy about this?  I can't really speculate without knowing more what this is, both from a back-end standpoint and from a consumer standpoint.  Encouraging players to get into a bidding war for the early versions of the game is... something I'm not super keen on, though.  While the money would be nice, I'd feel like I was gouging the biggest fans.

Check out the Steam front page, it is on there now. I am trying to figure it out right now, but the bid amounts people are putting up are crazy!

Are you Topper from the Sins of a Solar Empire site? My oh my it is a small universe!   :)  Good to see you, or hear you, or something like that, haha.  :)  How have things been? Still into the modding scene? 
Anyway, good to hear you,

-Teal


Offline Draco18s

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Re: What does the big picture look like?
« Reply #22 on: December 20, 2014, 11:33:48 am »
Are you Topper from the Sins of a Solar Empire site? My oh my it is a small universe!   :)

Reminds me of the last time I ran into a Slee that wasn't the Slee I knew.  The first Slee made a comment about there being two Slees in the world was a terrifying concept.

Offline topper

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Re: What does the big picture look like?
« Reply #23 on: December 21, 2014, 11:41:15 am »
Huh.  This is completely new to me -- any links handy about this?  I can't really speculate without knowing more what this is, both from a back-end standpoint and from a consumer standpoint.  Encouraging players to get into a bidding war for the early versions of the game is... something I'm not super keen on, though.  While the money would be nice, I'd feel like I was gouging the biggest fans.

Check out the Steam front page, it is on there now. I am trying to figure it out right now, but the bid amounts people are putting up are crazy!

Are you Topper from the Sins of a Solar Empire site? My oh my it is a small universe!   :)  Good to see you, or hear you, or something like that, haha.  :)  How have things been? Still into the modding scene? 
Anyway, good to hear you,

-Teal

Sorry to confuse. Must be a different person. Though I have noticed members of this forum active on other forums too. Sins is on my steam wishlist for this year, so maybe I will get over there some time. :-P

Offline Zebeast46

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Re: What does the big picture look like?
« Reply #24 on: December 21, 2014, 09:48:38 pm »
I wonder if there are 45 other zebeasts on the Internet? Anyways, thinking about people with the same username as me makes me want to go snooping around other forums to find "clones" of myself.
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Offline x4000

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Re: What does the big picture look like?
« Reply #25 on: December 22, 2014, 10:46:32 am »
I'm pretty sure I'm the only x4000 or x-4000 around, but one can never be sure.  Good lord there are a million variants of chrispark or cpark or cmpark or christopherpark or whatever out there, though.
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Offline Draco18s

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Re: What does the big picture look like?
« Reply #26 on: December 22, 2014, 11:29:16 am »
Only one of me though.  NO ONE puts a letter after the number.

The only time I haven't gotten my user name is when I'd already registered and forgotten.  Oh, and Twitch because they're a bunch of morons who put a deadline on their user migration from Justin.tv over to Twitch.tv when they shut down the former.  There is no ability to migrate an account currently and account "deletion" doesn't free up your user name.

Offline Coppermantis

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Re: What does the big picture look like?
« Reply #27 on: December 22, 2014, 03:00:42 pm »
The only time my username has been taken was by myself--I played the free version of Minecraft on their website for a while back when that was still a thing and made an account for that. Fast forward to sometime in mid-Alpha, I bought the full version and forgot that I had already registered the account name. Was quite a shock; Coppermantis isn't exactly a common name.
I can already tell this is going to be a roller coaster ride of disappointment.

Offline Teal_Blue

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Re: What does the big picture look like?
« Reply #28 on: December 22, 2014, 08:54:29 pm »
Are you Topper from the Sins of a Solar Empire site? My oh my it is a small universe!   :)

Reminds me of the last time I ran into a Slee that wasn't the Slee I knew.  The first Slee made a comment about there being two Slees in the world was a terrifying concept.

:)  you are probably right, haha. I hadn't thought of it until you mentioned it. But I wouldn't be surprised if I got it wrong. I have seen, on occassion other Teal's (Heaven Help Us!)  :)


Offline Draco18s

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Re: What does the big picture look like?
« Reply #29 on: December 23, 2014, 10:16:11 am »
Reminds me of the last time I ran into a Slee that wasn't the Slee I knew.  The first Slee made a comment about there being two Slees in the world was a terrifying concept.

:)  you are probably right, haha. I hadn't thought of it until you mentioned it. But I wouldn't be surprised if I got it wrong. I have seen, on occassion other Teal's (Heaven Help Us!)  :)

Two Slees (the first one) is a terrifying concept because Slee can eat anything, has a limited concept of ownership, and is pretty much immortal.
(Sorry, GURPS game)
Here's the quote when another Slee showed up.

Quote from: Draco18s
...Slee?  Is that you?  Do I need to get the forge tongs before you eat all of the things (particularly XCW's things on your feet)?