Home » Stars! Clones, Extensions, Modding » FreeStars » Thoughts on a next gen Stars
| Re: Thoughts on a next gen Stars |
Wed, 02 February 2011 15:43   |
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A few random thoughts on the above.
1) 1 turn per 'year' is an abstraction. 19% PGR doesn't seem so weird if you consider that one 'game year' might be equivalent to say, six 'earth years' (the highest national growth rate in the world at the moment is somewhere around 3%, over 6 years that'd be over 19%)
2) Star density. Again, an abstraction. Maybe not all stars are suitable for colonisation by ANYONE. Regardless, just select our arbitary unit of distance to give whatever density is good for gameplay. Bonus points if you reduce the distances low enough that ships don't need to move FTL (and don't forget you get to choose how long each turn is,) thus reducing any pesky issues with scanning.
(1+2) My point, is that the decisions on things like growth rate, planet density, can be made from a gameplay perspective. You can make them 'realistic' afterwards, by choosing the distance/time scales of your game appropriately.
3) 3D. EEEEEEEEEW. Our 2D displays make it too hard to visualise, if there is more than a handful of stars. Even worse, going 3D makes choke points almost vanish from the map, reducing strategic depth. The more '3D' you are, the less interesting the terrain is. If you go 3D, you're almost forced into putting 'space lanes' into your game, routes that ships have to move along (or travel much slower,) just to stamp some terrain onto the map. You don't need this kludge so badly if you stick with 2D.
SOTS did 3D with space lanes. It was ok, until you tried to play sphere galaxies with 100+ stars. Then it got ridiculously messy.
MOO3 also did 3D with space lanes, but was *much* flatter. In practice, I found this played out much like it was 2D but with some routes between stars being 'slower' than others (because there was more of an elevation change.) It didn't add much to the strategy.
SINS did 3D, but with very low planet counts (played on the scale of solar systems.) This was OK, but really it was rare for it to matter.
[Updated on: Wed, 02 February 2011 15:50] Report message to a moderator
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Thoughts on a next gen Stars
By: Steve on Tue, 01 February 2011 20:14 |
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Re: Thoughts on a next gen Stars
By: Coyote on Tue, 01 February 2011 20:58 |
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Re: Thoughts on a next gen Stars
By: Steve on Wed, 02 February 2011 08:21 |
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Re: Thoughts on a next gen Stars
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Re: Thoughts on a next gen Stars
By: Steve on Wed, 02 February 2011 08:26 |
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Re: Thoughts on a next gen Stars
By: Coyote on Wed, 02 February 2011 14:36 |
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Re: Thoughts on a next gen Stars
By: mlaub on Wed, 02 February 2011 15:23 |
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Re: Thoughts on a next gen Stars
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Re: Thoughts on a next gen Stars
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Re: Thoughts on a next gen Stars
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Re: Thoughts on a next gen Stars
By: Chazarus on Thu, 10 February 2011 10:21 |
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Re: Thoughts on a next gen Stars
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Re: Thoughts on a next gen Stars
By: Steve on Sun, 13 February 2011 19:08 |
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Re: Thoughts on a next gen Stars
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Re: Thoughts on a next gen Stars
By: Coyote on Sun, 13 February 2011 21:01 |
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Re: Thoughts on a next gen Stars
By: Chazarus on Mon, 14 February 2011 05:05 |
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Re: Thoughts on a next gen Stars
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Re: Thoughts on a next gen Stars
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Re: Thoughts on a next gen Stars
By: Chazarus on Mon, 14 February 2011 10:14 |
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Re: Thoughts on a next gen Stars
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Re: Thoughts on a next gen Stars
By: Chazarus on Tue, 15 February 2011 11:50 |
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Re: Thoughts on a next gen Stars
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