Rob Zacny

Episode 216: Lost in Space

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I registered just to comment on this episode. I love, love, love space games and 4X games, and I am getting tired of all of these mediocre 4X games that try too much to be space lego playgrounds or focus too much on combat and make the other Xs boring. Thank you so much for this episode, it's glad to know there are others who are annoyed with the genre as I am.

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(This post is also a reply to some of hexgrid’s earlier comments. I didn’t want to write two epic posts - I have, you know, a game to make after all!)

 
 

Not a chess guy I take it? I often don't really care about theme (or actively dislike theme) but am still capable of appreciating good game design. Some of my favorite strategy games are euro-style boardgames (Agricola and Puerto Rico in particular), which are generally quite light on theme but heavy on mechanics and interesting decisions. I also like a lot of abstract strategy computer games, "Slay" being a good example. I don't think theme is necessarily a good metric for success in strategy games.


I'll admit my wording in the block you quoted there was a bit strong. In fact, I really failed to convey the actual point I was trying to make. So let me step back and define some terms so that we're all on the same page.

As for chess - guilty as charged! I don't really enjoy playing chess, as the strategic side of my brain works better when the situation's at least a little fuzzy and I don't have to plan eight moves ahead. (Three moves ahead is fine, however.) However, as a designer I have a great deal of admiration for the elegance and strategy chess features, and I could say the same about many other "abstract" games.

In fact, all games I really get into are those with solid mechanics, and once I'm out of the honeymoon stage the "theme" is almost irrelevant. I might be a "theme first" designer, but only in the sense that I believe you need a strong, unified scaffolding upon which mechanics are laid. Just as with scaffolding surrounding a building, without mechanics you have nothing. A structure without scaffolding can still be built, but it's going to be a lot harder and you need to be more than a little bit lucky.

Theme is more than just, "Is it history, fantasy or scifi? How many names and dates does it explain in detail?" In my book, "good theme" simply means having a cohesive vision for the design. What is this game about? How does it make you feel? What priorities do players need to have in order to build successful strategies and win?

In this sense, the theme of chess is caution, positioning and planning. It roughly simulates medieval warfare (slow, weak pawns in the front, mobile horsemen in the back) along with a few wrinkles that were introduced later (a super-powerful queen that is to be feared and protected). It’s not a bloated, mish-mash of mechanics and details, but instead a streamlined design that expresses itself beautifully.

I would say the same thing about Agricola (a game I too happen to love), which, in the traditional sense does have a very weak "theme." However, by my definition its theme is superb, and exactly the sort of approach I’m advocating. There’s no “rich backstory,” but the game feels like you are doing the sorts of things that would make sense if you were running a small farm: you have a limited amount of space to work with, you must carefully plan your layout, you acquire resources and goods from a variety of places, you’re slowly improving your facilities, etc.

Are you deciding which tool should be used to hoe your fields or deciding which of four strains of wheat to plant? No, but you are making decisions that make sense given the universe you’re playing within. That is what I mean by “good theme.” Ironically, being fast and loose with the details can be more thematically evocative than pure realism. This is a topic near and dear to my heart, and one I’ve written at length about in the past.
 
Anyways, I hope it’s now clear that we’re basically advocating the same thing. I do think having a concrete theme (like the fall of Rome, or Star Wars) is helpful, as this serves as a powerful guide that helps keep you on track. “Is this something that makes sense in late antiquity? No? Okay, throw it out.” More detailed themes like this are easy because there’s a ton of material to work with, and people have fairly clear expectations. Scifi is quite a bit harder because there’s no collective record or agreed-upon conventions.

One might argue that “vision” is a better term for describing what I’m talking about, but I don’t think it’s a good fit because it emphasizes process rather than results. If someone sits down to play chess for the first time they wouldn’t inquire, “What’s the vision for this game?” … almost nobody really cares. But they might very well ask “What’s the theme of this game?” And if you replied, “It’s a strategy game that rewards caution, positioning and planning” everyone would immediately understand what you mean. We’re accustomed to a more specific use of the word “theme,” but there’s more to it than that!

 
 

The problem with 4X games isn't really a problem of theme integration, it's a problem relating to the basic game design. You're presented with so many tiny incremental decisions to make, most of which have only marginal importance. As was said in the podcast: there's a lot of accounting going on. In view, it's a lot more interesting (and more fun) to be presented with fewer but more meaningful decisions.


I agree that is a big issue, although not one I’d say is as crucial as theme. At the end of the day mechanics are far more important than theme, but if players don’t buy in to begin with then the details don’t even matter. Additionally, theme helps direct the number, frequency, type and importance of decisions that are to be made...

Is this a space strategy game where combat is the #1 focus? Are you concerned with political schisms and backroom dealing? Are you serving as part-time economist and bean-counter, ensuring that trade the trade ships are arriving on time and local allocation of construction materials is efficient?

What feelings do people have as they play? How are they spending their time? The high-level collective answer to these questions is your theme. Your target might be feeling like you’re a viceroy in the Star Wars universe - or it might be serving as fleet admiral and architect, pimping out your armada and watching from afar as it and an enemy fleet blast the hell out of one another, not concerning yourself with production meters ticking up. If you use the traditional definition for “theme,” Gratuitous Space Battles is historically bad. But if you use mine, it’s clear why the game one of the best space games ever made.

Don’t get me wrong, coming up with a good theme and working towards it isn’t a silver bullet that automatically leads to good mechanics - but it’s almost always the starting point.

Everything in a 4X game is intricately woven together. For one to be good it needs to be crafted from the top down, ensuring every hole is filled and every bit of excess is removed. But if you don’t have that guide, it’s easy to fall into the trap of copying every other similar game that’s been made before.

 

- Jon 

 

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What feelings do people have as they play? How are they spending their time? The high-level collective answer to these questions is your theme. Your target might be feeling like you’re a viceroy in the Star Wars universe - or it might be serving as fleet admiral and architect, pimping out your armada and watching from afar as it and an enemy fleet blast the hell out of one another, not concerning yourself with production meters ticking up. If you use the traditional definition for “theme,” Gratuitous Space Battles is historically bad. But if you use mine, it’s clear why the game one of the best space games ever made.

 

I think this is the core of the problem with traditional 4X; the scope of the game changes so much during the course of play that the answer should be evolving depending on what stage your empire is at.

 

At the beginning, you're playing (metaphorically) the mayor of a small town.  Then the mayor of a city.  Then the head of a municipal/prefectural government.  Then the head of a province/principality.  Then the head of a major power, and then a superpower.  Those roles all have different expectations and different scopes for micromanagement, and as you move up the chain what you ought to be focusing on changes completely.  Your friendly local head of state doesn't spend his/her time appointing school board trustees and negotiating garbage collection contracts.  Your local mayor may dabble a bit in diplomacy (especially business diplomacy, if you live in a large city), but that's ancillary to most of what they spend their time doing.

 

I can't offhand think of any 4X that actually acknowledges this.  You can be emperor of a million suns, and you're still expected to lay out every new fiddling little colony, design every last ship, direct every last battle, answer the civiphone when all the AIs decide it's been gosh several turns since they last asked for open borders so they could go sightseeing in your countryside with their tanks...

 

By the end of a 4X game, if anything you should be spending time fighting fires that your subordinates lit.  Someone on your team got too ambitious and annexed a system they shouldn't have, and now you've got Lord LLw'dwd of the 'Xw'Dw'hhzl threatening to roust up an armada to deal with your effrontery.  The research team on Cygnus-V has accidentally infected themselves with rogue AI implants and you have a civil war on your hands.  The new Star Crusher is massively over budget and looking distinctly like it's going to be a total lemon if it ever reaches production, but there's a senate lobby trying to keep it going because it's employing half their voters and they won't approve your new secretary of war.  The discovery that the core of an ancient supernova remnant is solid gold causes the gold market to collapse and several of your major banks are completely insolvent...

 

Instead, you're still this protean authority figure, dealing with every crisis from the smallest to the largest, and the threats you face are just bigger versions of the threats you faced at the beginning.  If there's a cat stuck in a tree or an enemy invasion, you're the one who deals with it, and there's probably never going to be a problem that couldn't have happened in the first 10% of the game.  There will be no bureaucratic crisis, no diplomatic crisis (unless you goof somewhere), no private sector crisis like a bubble market collapsing or war profiteering.  No interlocking alliances blowing up in everyone's face when some minor player goes off the script.  No analysis failure crisis like the one that caused the Soviet Union to crash, where they thought they were spending a reasonable percentage of GDP on defense until someone checked and found that the numbers were being fudged and refudged as they passed up through the hierarchy, and that defense spending was breaking them.

 

So, I don't think it's enough to ask if the player is (for example) playing admiral/architect in a 4X game.  It's necessary, but not sufficient.  How the player's role changes as the game changes scope is a critical component of the equation, and it's one that has largely been ignored.

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The problem of sameness is not just a space 4x game issue.  It's a symptom of the games industry in general.  How many of the big premieres of 2012 were simply flat out sequals? Mass Effect 3, Diablo 3, Borderlands 2, Planetside 2, a remake of X-COM, etc.

 

Most genres have a sameness about them: how much difference is there between military FPSs? How many RTSs are a blatant attempt to "not" copy Starcraft?

 

When innovation is attempted, whether within a franchise or a genre, if the differences are not executed perfectly the backlash can be astounding.

 

Among major developers where is the incentive to explore (Unless you're Valve)?  It's the indy realms and modders that brought us roguelikes and Lords Managements, changes to existing genres so prfound they created new ones.

 

At least there are still some deveopers trying to mine the space 4x genre.  The real world/historical one has been abandoned entirely to Civ.  It may be that it follows historical turn based wargaming into the realm where only specialized devs (Matrix Games) create them anymore.  Or someone pulls a Paradox and creates an engine that appeals to just enough of the space 4x audience that they mine it over and over, gradually simplifying in one line, gradually adding complexity in another, emphasizing diffrent aspects in another.  Or it falls into the same hole as Wing Commander/X-Wing space sims.

 

Or maybe someone will reinvigorate the genre (possibly with an existing entertainment IP) and other devs will copycat and gradually innovate like what happened after Doom, Warcraft/C&C, and Diablo.

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The problem of sameness is not just a space 4x game issue.  It's a symptom of the games industry in general.  How many of the big premieres of 2012 were simply flat out sequals? Mass Effect 3, Diablo 3, Borderlands 2, Planetside 2, a remake of X-COM, etc.

 

I'm far more hopeful about this than I used to be.  Check out the podcast on early access and the ensuing thread for lots of people's thoughts on the subject.  I know I'm now working on projects I'd never have even considered before non-publisher funding became a viable option.

 

The AAA funding model is broken, and it's not doing anyone any good; not the publishers, and certainly not the developers or the players.  Early access and crowdfunding are a way out of the trap, at least for the developers and the players.

 

At least there are still some deveopers trying to mine the space 4x genre.  The real world/historical one has been abandoned entirely to Civ.  It may be that it follows historical turn based wargaming into the realm where only specialized devs (Matrix Games) create them anymore.  Or someone pulls a Paradox and creates an engine that appeals to just enough of the space 4x audience that they mine it over and over, gradually simplifying in one line, gradually adding complexity in another, emphasizing diffrent aspects in another.  Or it falls into the same hole as Wing Commander/X-Wing space sims.

 

I'm perhaps a bit of a heretic on this, but I think the stone-age-to-interstellar-travel 4X has been left to Civilization because it's really kind of boring as a story, and it forces abstractions that either over-complicate the early game or (as in Civilization) hamstring the late game.

 

Consider how the tech tree works in Civ.  Early in the game, you're working on technology that took thousands of years to develop; pottery, metalworking, animal husbandry, and so forth.  Some of these were extremely long-scale projects; domesticating wildlife into farm animals isn't something that just happens, even once you've decided it might be a good idea.

 

My grandmother died a few months back.  She was born in 1911, less than a decade after the first powered flight.  Industry and agriculture in the world she was born into was still dominated by steam power and horses.  By the time she died, we had stood on another celestial body and had a space probe on the verge of leaving the solar system.  We went from Nobel thinking that the invention of dynamite would end all wars to being able to end all vertibrate life in world on half an hour's notice.

 

The change in the rate of technological development in the last few hundred years is unbelievable.  Your phone probably has more computing power and more storage than the entire world had in 1970.  My first computer ran at 500KHz and had 3K of RAM, and it ran rings around the punchcard-fed room computer that my dad used in university.

 

Civilization is stuck modelling this exponential curve with the same mechanism it used to model the development of pottery, and it really doesn't work very well.

 

It also assumes a very rigid track for technological development.  There are solid "must have researched all available tech to cross this line" points in the Civ tech tree, which means that (for example) everyone from the Aztecs to the Zulus are going to develop mounted knights before they figure out what a bank is, even if they never actually see a horse.

 

A similar problem applies to the military simulation.  Of necessity, it models all military units the same way, which means there's no way of modelling all sorts of very interesting military developments.  We know guerrilla war dates at least back to Julius Caesar's time (since he fell afoul of it and didn't much like it), but there's no good way to model it in Civ.  It's just 2nd generation armies bashing into each other.  There's no model for all sorts of interesting military developments, and there *can't* be, because it would make the game too complicated to play and develop.

 

Civilization's scope is too big for its own good; it's hoeing its own row because nobody else wants it.  I'd far rather play a game that covers a tighter chunk of history (maybe Philip of Macedon's reign, or something set in the Water Margin, for example) where the game mechanics and the story don't fight so much.  That's not to say I don't play Civ and enjoy it, but as an idea it has fundamental flaws that make it a bad series to copy.

 

In my opinion, that's why so many 4X games are fantasy or science fiction.  It lets the designer limit the change in scope of the game, and frees the game from the shackles of historical development.  When your technologies are made up and your conflicts are all of the same tech era, you don't have to bend things to make them fit.

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Registered just to reply to this podcast, because 4x space games are pretty much my favorite genre ever. I think Rob was a little hard on Stardrive in the podcast as well as in his review.. But I'm not going to rant and rave about it, it's his opinion. And after listening to the podcast he's pretty certain in his ways. Though it was a pretty boneheaded move on the Stardrive guy to release his game in such a state! It's obviously not finished, and he went ahead and declared it finished anyway to get some more money incoming.

 

I also see Rob's point in that so many games are just obviously copying Master of Orion. Though my problem is that no 4x game has ever gotten it completely right. I'd be perfectly happy with just a quality of life upgrade to MOO2, myself. But every 4x game seems to leave out something important from it! Endless Space almost got it right, but then made the combat this sort of ridiculous card combat thing that got very tiresome very quickly. It would also be nice to see things done differently though. The idea for a warhammer 40k management game almost made me drool, for example.

 

I do kind of see his point about the whole planets not being unique thing. Probably a way to fix this would be to make more unique features about each planet that made each one completely different to colonize. Obviously theres never going to be another planet like your home system in space, and each should require unique adaptations about it. But otherwise..well, I thought it was a bit frustrating to hear him list a complaint about space 4x games, but then he said it was perfectly fine when Civilization did it because somehow it was all right with real world geography in it or the like.

 

Also I was a bit confused to not hear anyone talking about Sword of the Stars in this podcast. Am I the only guy that actually likes that game? Not the horrible piece of garbage that is 2, the original one!

 

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All that talk and nary a mention of Sword of the Stars?

 

Broadly speaking however, I do agree with the thrust of Rob and Paul's points about the 4x space genre. However I have also banged on about this in other threads for other episodes so repeating myself seems a bit redundant. However considering my arguments where made in the "Building better worlds" episode thread (http://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/7904-episode-176-were-building-a-better-world/?p=198181) I think that SotS in particular would address many of Rob's issues with the genre, with Kerberos managing to create a living, breathing galaxy full of genuinely different alien races, and then adding weird artefacts and gaming changing galactic menaces into the game  as well.

 

My issues with the MOO template is that it gets very dry very quickly,  a criticism that I would level at Endless Space which ends up feeling like the gaming equivalent of a Hollywood film made by accountants (i.e. a film that makes money by just stealing bits from other films. "Olympus has fallen" probably being the best current example)  In the end, as nicely put together as ES is, its a blank, flat board with chits that turn your colour and might have a +1 modification associated with them. There is an iOS remake of MOO called Starbase Orion and to be honest it's almost an identical game to Endless Space, only without the over enlarged "everything" that Rob was talking about with the scaling problem most 4x games have. 

 

SotS is without doubt the best Space 4x game I have played. It tries to address Rob's issues with the genre, and by and large it does so. It's not perfect by a long shot - shoddy UI, completely unintuitive and goes out of it's way not to help the player, but if you can invest some time in it and get to know it a little better it pays back in spades. 

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Rob,

 

I'd be curious to read your thoughts on Star Wars Rebellion since you got distracted from that topic and never got back to it. The thread Jon linked to earlier actually addressed the game in the original post:

 

in the theme department Star Wars Rebellion also did an outstanding job of carrying that through. The sides were asymmetric and you really did see the clash of Empire versus Rebel Alliance in the way the game played out. The mission system of sending prominent characters and special forces on missions aiding the overall conflict really hit that Star Wars vibe.

 

That pretty much describes how I feel about the game as well. I was disappointed in the game at the time because I thought I was buying a Star Wars themed MOO-type 4x. What I got was something far more focused on characters and character interaction than what you'd see in a typical space 4x. In a lot of ways, I'd compare it as much to something like CK2 as I would to MOO. I wasn't a huge fan at the time, but I think it actually holds up better in retrospect because it was so different.

 

And, if I remember correctly, the game avoided some of the pitfalls you mentioned in the podcast. Specifically, you were dumped into an established universe, both as far as the fiction was concerned (obviously), and in the sense that your task wasn't to search blindly and colonize a bunch of empty planets but rather to get systems on your side (I guess that's really the same thing, but it feels different for some reason) and eventually take over systems controlled by the other side (thus having a central goal for your 'civ').

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I'd be curious to read your thoughts on Star Wars Rebellion since you got distracted from that topic and never got back to it. The thread Jon linked to earlier actually addressed the game in the original post:

 

I thought Rebellion actually did a pretty bad job.

 

At the low level, the fleet battles were mostly a numbers game with the illusion of tactics; I never found it made any difference how I attacked; the fleet that looked best on paper was usually the one that won.

 

The game also really felt wrong to me; it seemed like the developers were making a game set in its own fiction, and then the chance for a Star Wars license dropped out of the sky and they spent six or eight weeks frantically replacing assets.  Most of the ships available to the rebels looked like nothing from Star Wars, and (more tellingly) IIRC the available equipment for the sides were balanced; as the rebel player you were cranking out dreadnoughts that were every bit as powerful as the largest ships the imperial side could field.

 

What I wanted from the game personally was something akin to what we later got from AI War; a game where you're running a rebellion against a mighty empire that could obliterate you in a moment if it could only find you.  Where you start out with no assets except a few key people and maybe a far-flung base, the ignorance of the power you're fighting, and pockets of sympathetic populace here and there.

 

What I got instead was pretty obviously a 1v1 clash of empires in space game with Darth Vader jammed into it at the last minute.

 

It's an interesting game; there are certainly some things about it that kept me playing, though I think some of that may have been a bloody minded determination not to let the game beat me.  Ultimately, though, I found the flaws outweighed the good qualities.

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I don't want to get the thread too focused on Sword of the Stars, since it's not a part of the podcast, but I did want to come back to one relevant thing. No text walls, promise.

 

While ship customisation on SotS does suffer a few of the problems discussed in the episode, I think there a couple of reasons it works here more than it doesn't. Firstly, it's quick and easy to make the ship you want to make. Pick your mission and command sections, and stick the best engine on that you have. Then stick on the guns that fit the role you're trying to fill. Want a brawler? Armour mission, Hammerhead command, your best close range weapons. Missile boat? Perhaps a War mission and a command with some torpedo slots. Fill up on missiles. Quick. Easy. Minimum of clicks, no awkwardness.

 

Secondly, the diversity of tech and range of options including hard and soft counters make your choices meaningful. Powerful enemies can be defeated by smart choices, even when disadvantaged by numbers or overall tech. An important factor that really hangs this together: the AI can use the tech tree and the ship builder effectively. Expect to see specific counters to your designs filtering into AI fleets. While the AI is still no match for a human, especially in the expansion phase and in the tactical combat, it manages its fleets well, and you'll face some unexpected defeats due to being smartly countered.

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(Just created an account, as well.  I found this podcast via spacegamejunkie.)

 

This is a really interesting topic.  I completely agree with the problems of scaling empires - managing a few planets isn't too bad, but once you scale-up to 20 planets, it starts to get really tedious.  To be fair, the civilization games had this problem, as well.  I usually get to a place where I try to gauge how many planets/cities I really need to manage in order to win the game (e.g. I only need to build on 5-10 planets in order to secure victory in the game) and ignore giving orders to the rest.  Some sort of governor system would be helpful - though that opens up the possibility that players will enjoy micromanaging a small number of planets, but don't like the transition to using governors (while also not enjoying micromanaging a larger number of planets).

 

I've been thinking about this topic for some time because I was hoping a while back to create a space-empire game.  I really haven't been that happy with any of the games that have come out since MOO2 (which was great for it's time, but it's a bit dated at this point).  I agree that developers have been doing minor enhancements to the formula (or worse, they don't have the budget to actually carry-out their ambitious plans).  I kept waiting for somebody to hit on the right formula to really push the genre forward within the past decade, but, to my surprise, that hasn't really happened.

 

The point about your population being just "workers" was spot-on.  I was actually going to say "robots" - they produce things for your empire, but seem to have no needs or desires other than food.

 

BTW, I'm the developer behind "Empires of Steel", which came out back in 2009, but wasn't a financial success - which killed my ambitions for a space-empire game.  I suppose there's Kickstarter, but I'm an unknown, so I don't have much faith that I could attract much attention.

 

One other thing I was going to say was that terrain and boundaries are different in terrestrial games like civilization.  There's really no boundaries in space - your enemies can travel from any star to any star.  This makes it difficult to do things with borders, like you can with earth-bound strategy games.  You can setup choke-points.  And if someone wants to attack a city in the middle of your empire, they have to travel through the rest of your territory.  In space that becomes a lot harder, unless you can intercept fleets.  But even then, there isn't any such thing as choke-points or terrain advantages.

 

As far as a 3d map, I'm not surprised so few games use that system.  It's hard to visualize and wrap your mind around a 3d-map.  It also makes the borders problem even worse because everything is closer together in a 3d world.

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But otherwise..well, I thought it was a bit frustrating to hear him list a complaint about space 4x games, but then he said it was perfectly fine when Civilization did it because somehow it was all right with real world geography in it or the like.

 

Also I was a bit confused to not hear anyone talking about Sword of the Stars in this podcast. Am I the only guy that actually likes that game? Not the horrible piece of garbage that is 2, the original one!

So I think we have a tendency to elide thoughts when it comes to Civ because we talk it so much on the cast. But I should have been clear: Civ's management of settlements is way, way more involved and varied than what you find in a lot of space 4Xs because the geography is more varied. And that's become even more true since natural resources became a part of the series.

 

If you really want to wring every last efficiency from your empire in Civ, you really have to start hand-placing a lot of the improvements and workers. And you're rewarded for that. If you really know how to develop a frontier mountain city for both border defense and military production, you've got to fight a lot of pushback from growth penalties and a lack of arable land. Even my ideal city location (a on a river emptying into an ocean bay surrounded by flatland, then a ring of hills) is probably going to be stronger if you specialize it and train it in a certain direction.

 

By comparison, I think the majority of space 4X games have much thinner colonization and development mechanics that leaves things feeling "samey" much faster. That's not to say every game should be doing what Civ does. But I think it's a problem when a game forces you to continually engage with a task that is too simplistic.

 

So Sword of the Stars 2 was my first SotS game and... well, you know. If you say it's worth checking out, though, I'll take a look.

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You won't find your colony management with SotS. It really is just a slider that you mostly leave alone anyway. It's focused on constructing and moving fleets of space ships which then engage in highly detailed real time battles. The hooks come from the diversity across the races, the tech tree, and a galaxy full of interesting dangers.

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Rob's point about colony management is a good one. One thing I really like about Fallen Enchantress, whatever its other flaws may be, is I really like the city development model in that game. The way cities level up in the same way a RPG character might is really a fantastic idea, and helps make city management feel less like a choir, and helps locations develop character. That goes to show that there are a lot of interesting mechanics to explore if game designers are willing to abandon the old sort of models that have existed forever.

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Really enjoyed this podcast and the discussion. It was a small relief to hear some of these criticisms. These things have been bothering me about 4X's in general for years:

  • Every new space 4X seems content to redo everything that MoO did, but with space bears or some other shallow internet-idiot-friendly gimmick. Just ticking requirements boxes without mining new concepts in the genre, or even bothering to throw tiresome bits away.
  • AI. Sweet merciful crap, AI. If your game can't be played competently by the AI, you don't have a game, you have a pretty map with neat things on it. Either design your game rules and mechanics around the capabilities and weaknesses of the AI, or find a fun and believable way to let the AI play by a different ruleset.
  • Here is something really compelling about a huge tangled strategic mess for you to rule over and tame, but for some reason, once I get there, all I want to do is turn the game off. Is there a way to make the Gordian Knot of 4X games compelling?

  • More of a gripe, but does everyone in space have to start with one colony somewhere, at exactly the same time, with exactly the same level of tech?

I'm not a developer, I can't even really call myself a competent strategy player, so my advice is probably dumb: Don't call your game a 4X. Don't sell it as a 4X. Call it something else, free yourself up to do something twisted and weird. I look at what Blendo did with Atom Zombie Smasher, how he had this whole strategy layer that he scrapped because he realized it just wasn't fun, and it was getting in the way of the really fun bit.

 

Last horribly ignorant thing I'm going to say here: I would love to see the first Jagged Alliance set in space somehow.

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Last horribly ignorant thing I'm going to say here: I would love to see the first Jagged Alliance set in space somehow.

It already exists and is called Traveller.  However, it can only be played with pencils.

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It already exists and is called Traveller.  However, it can only be played with pencils.

Stars Without Number (http://www.sinenomine-pub.com/) might also work for the old school space sensibilities of Traveller/Jagged Alliance. Again with the pencils though.

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I thought this was a great episode; I found myself saying "Yes! Yes!!! YES!!!" a lot and also wondering if people had been listening to my own spacegame-related rantings. It is always good to have one's own opinions reflected.

 

I was writing an (increasingly lengthy) expansion on the themes in the podcast but I thought I would spare you. Instead I thought about these dot points which mix "yeah me toos!" and further thinking that was inspired by the podcast:

 

Bigger isn't better: micromanagement isn't fun (even if you are a bureaucrat like I am) - focus on consequential, gameplay/narrative changing decisions.

There isn't Only War: emphasis on the social (political and economic) aspects of a future space-based society; plug into social sci-fi ideas; make not-choosing an interesting choice; let government and/or society drive the game more. 

Wants and Needs: people want stuff; even space people. Wants should be complex and make narrative sense (or "Why Do My Space Locusts Love The Internet?" - thanks Endless Space). Wants could also be negative: people don't want cloning, don't want alien ideas, or don't want aliens living near them. 

Victory is bunk: no society "wins" (SMAC transcend aside...) replace "winning" with more complex achievements; and self-imposed goals, ala-Paradox Interactives grand strats.

Space terrain: more interesting terrain which allows geographical metaphor to be used; rather than a glorified graph (nodes and edges).

Storied ships: rather than three hundred Cruiser MkIII have fewer and more important ships, with meaningful character, so that the refit cycle is important and so you can feel bad when the USS Enterprise explodes or good when it scrapes through.

Technology that is important: techs which change the game, not just give incrementally bigger guns. Technological impact is one of the themes of sci-fi and it should have the power to tremendously change the civ's society and the game mechanics. (I like the background to Downbelow Station and Spock's speech about the Earth-Romulan War in The Balance of Terror for examples of this kind of thing).

More, but better, bureaucracy: take away choice, force leaders to act like leaders (The PM doesn't design the new warships).  Make a lot of the influence indirect: research funding, "tendering" processes for new ship designs, more of what Victoria 2 does with POPs and capitalists, governors, military doctrines and fleet composition being limited based on funding or technology... basically a lot of the stuff that was in the MoO3 design docs that didn't get in to the game or wasn't made to work.

Characters: all those admirals, capitalists, governors, and researchers could become interesting characters in their own rights (more Crusader Kings 2, less Victoria 2). Opposition parties, military factions, conspiring businessmen can all become part of the mix. No need to go an RPG route here (Just Say No To Levels!) but people do invest in characters - and you can then have the Enterprise but make the choice between Kirk vs. Picard and deal with the outcomes of that decision.

 

Does this sort of stuff take us far away from the 4X genre? No, I don't think so.

Does it take us further away from what MoO was? Yes, probably, and (as many have said) about time too!

 

I'd be happy to expand on any of these if people fancy a chat!

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Trithemius

I agree with a lot if what you say there. Picking up on wants or needs, this is one of my major bugbears with space 4x games (something I've said before) and that ultimately all the alien races are just facsimiles of humans. Some might be slightly better at fighting, or spying (which I've never seen well implanted in any game!) or doing research or whatever, but their goals are still "expand empire and win". Generally by blowing people up.

Genuinely alien races are most likely going to have completely different wants and needs to humans. You'd hope. OK, obviously you need to give human players a point of reference (after all if you don't want to do something then you aren't going to want your empire building space bears to do it either, probably) but them you just get a bunch of aliens all doing the same thing.

Having them all aiming for different goals would be tactically challenging to say the least, but it could be very interesting. Quite how or what though probably needs a better strategic mind than my own!

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You mention liking Galactic Civ2 in discussion of 4x space strategy games. I thought that game was terrible. The controls were awful or non-existent. You had no control of spaceship fights, etc. Could someone explain what was appeal? MOO2 is much older but much better. Another Space Empire building game I liked a lot was Pax Imperium which I think no one else played or remembers? It was much like MOO2 but better graphics and the space battles were fantastic. For instance when your fleet attacked a planet or you defended a planet with your orbitals it had the greatest pyrotechniques I have ever seen in game. It was a wild light show that really conveyed the sense of unleashed power...It made Galactic Civ battles look pathetic.

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You mention liking Galactic Civ2 in discussion of 4x space strategy games. I thought that game was terrible. The controls were awful or non-existent. You had no control of spaceship fights, etc. Could someone explain what was appeal? MOO2 is much older but much better. Another Space Empire building game I liked a lot was Pax Imperium which I think no one else played or remembers? It was much like MOO2 but better graphics and the space battles were fantastic. For instance when your fleet attacked a planet or you defended a planet with your orbitals it had the greatest pyrotechniques I have ever seen in game. It was a wild light show that really conveyed the sense of unleashed power...It made Galactic Civ battles look pathetic.

 

it is higher quality if you look at it like an abstract 4X game that happens to be set in outer space

 

things like risk-reward equations make or break games from a strategy perspective

also the AI is lightyears ahead of other 4X games (that doesn't mean it's competent, but it's good in relative terms)

 

 

it's just a matter of perspective...

 

there are people who play 4X games without having a clue about the cost/benefit equations

people have fun seeing an archer fight a warrior, even after they have seen it 1000 times

people want to build the Pyramids, and enjoy how they look

people want to customize spaceships and make "cool stuff"

 

there are people who play 4X games to engage in tough decision-making

people don't care if it's archer vs. warrior and turn off the combat animations - they just see a unit with some stats and some cost

people don't care about the Pyramids or how they look - they just see a unit with some stats and some cost

people don't care about how their ships look, but find depth when economy, technology, and ship design tradeoffs come together

 

 

it just comes down to what you consider the "game" to be.

the "theme" has absolutely nothing to do with the game in terms of actual strategy

 

it's just important to remember that the player's overall eXperience is not one of the 4 X's

it's important to consider, especially for developers who want to make money, but it's not completely relevant

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Hiya Sorbicol,

 

 

 

Trithemius

I agree with a lot if what you say there. Picking up on wants or needs, this is one of my major bugbears with space 4x games (something I've said before) and that ultimately all the alien races are just facsimiles of humans. Some might be slightly better at fighting, or spying (which I've never seen well implanted in any game!) or doing research or whatever, but their goals are still "expand empire and win". Generally by blowing people up.

Genuinely alien races are most likely going to have completely different wants and needs to humans. You'd hope. OK, obviously you need to give human players a point of reference (after all if you don't want to do something then you aren't going to want your empire building space bears to do it either, probably) but them you just get a bunch of aliens all doing the same thing.

Having them all aiming for different goals would be tactically challenging to say the least, but it could be very interesting. Quite how or what though probably needs a better strategic mind than my own!

 

 

I absolutely agree. I found it kind of bizarre in Endless Space that Infinite Information Highways (a happiness building) would make my Hivers (horrible hungry space locust dudes) happier. I could imagine it would make the Sophons pleased, as they are arch-nerds, but it was odd for me that it'd do the same thing for Hivers. 

 

I imagine a lot of the reason of lack of unique gear for non-humans is because the investment isn't worth it on the part of the developer - people who don't play as that race/civ/whatever won't ever see those things so why invest a lot of time?

 

I think the winning thing needs to be kicked around a bit more too. Winning, for a society, isn't something that really happens. Totally dominant cultures, militaries, and governments are mythological things - survival is really the only "win" and that is only able to be assessed over time and in reference to the challenges faced. This is sort of what I meant by replacing "victory" with achievements. If your pluralistic society manages to survive a war against a militaristic society perhaps that is more interesting than your totally-militarised society defeating their totally-militarised society?

 

"Racial" victory conditions are really mostly stereotypical manifestations of the "unique" or "specialist" attributes of non-human societies - they might be less needed if those societies could be modelled in a more interesting way?

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I really liked this episode, 4x Space Empire Builders being one of my favorite genres.

 

I played the crap out of SOTS 1 and it still ranks right near the top in this genre IMO.  SOTS 2 ... I still shed tears at the abysmal failure of what I had hoped would be my new favorite 4x Space game. 

 

Distant Worlds is currently my favorite.  It has the depth and scale I am looking for and I do believe addresses many of the concerns raised in the podcast.  I think the thing that really nabbed me was the feel and immersion present in the game.  The mechanic where you have an active AI 'Corporate / Public' element busily moving about doing their thing while you control military and expansion aspects gives the game a lot of flavor.  The universe feels much more alive.  Certainly moreso than star systems connected by jump points. 

 

Another thing I like about Distant Worlds is that the Galaxy has a lot more than going on than planet colonization.  There are all kinds of things to stumble across as a result of exploration .... aritifacts, minor races, ancient ship boneyards, etc...  Anyway, I found the immersion factor in DW second to none.  Pretty good meta story as well ....The depth, scope, and some of the innovative mechanics make for a pretty steep learning curve, but once you get it, it is a joy.  One other thing here ... options for wining other than total dominiation are actually viable.

 

Someone asked about Gal CIV II.  Sure the combat was rock paper scissors and you did not have control of it, but it is still one of my favs.  I like it better than MOO2.  I think the things I most liked about Gal Civ was that the AI was very good.  It knew how to expand, design and field ships, and attempt domination.  Secondly, the ship building was pretty awsome if you are in to that.  What other game can you create ships that look like Battlestar Galatica, the Enterprise, or a Cabbage Patch kid?  The tech trees where deep and diverse.  You had to make choices that had impact.

 

So off topic ... good to see John S. here and I have been watching Enemy at the Gates from a distance and wish you the best of success with it.  I should probably throw some cash at that :)

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I thought this was a great episode; I found myself saying "Yes! Yes!!! YES!!!" a lot and also wondering if people had been listening to my own spacegame-related rantings. It is always good to have one's own opinions reflected.

 

I was writing an (increasingly lengthy) expansion on the themes in the podcast but I thought I would spare you. Instead I thought about these dot points which mix "yeah me toos!" and further thinking that was inspired by the podcast:

 

Bigger isn't better: micromanagement isn't fun (even if you are a bureaucrat like I am) - focus on consequential, gameplay/narrative changing decisions.

There isn't Only War: emphasis on the social (political and economic) aspects of a future space-based society; plug into social sci-fi ideas; make not-choosing an interesting choice; let government and/or society drive the game more. 

Wants and Needs: people want stuff; even space people. Wants should be complex and make narrative sense (or "Why Do My Space Locusts Love The Internet?" - thanks Endless Space). Wants could also be negative: people don't want cloning, don't want alien ideas, or don't want aliens living near them. 

Victory is bunk: no society "wins" (SMAC transcend aside...) replace "winning" with more complex achievements; and self-imposed goals, ala-Paradox Interactives grand strats.

Space terrain: more interesting terrain which allows geographical metaphor to be used; rather than a glorified graph (nodes and edges).

Storied ships: rather than three hundred Cruiser MkIII have fewer and more important ships, with meaningful character, so that the refit cycle is important and so you can feel bad when the USS Enterprise explodes or good when it scrapes through.

Technology that is important: techs which change the game, not just give incrementally bigger guns. Technological impact is one of the themes of sci-fi and it should have the power to tremendously change the civ's society and the game mechanics. (I like the background to Downbelow Station and Spock's speech about the Earth-Romulan War in The Balance of Terror for examples of this kind of thing).

More, but better, bureaucracy: take away choice, force leaders to act like leaders (The PM doesn't design the new warships).  Make a lot of the influence indirect: research funding, "tendering" processes for new ship designs, more of what Victoria 2 does with POPs and capitalists, governors, military doctrines and fleet composition being limited based on funding or technology... basically a lot of the stuff that was in the MoO3 design docs that didn't get in to the game or wasn't made to work.

Characters: all those admirals, capitalists, governors, and researchers could become interesting characters in their own rights (more Crusader Kings 2, less Victoria 2). Opposition parties, military factions, conspiring businessmen can all become part of the mix. No need to go an RPG route here (Just Say No To Levels!) but people do invest in characters - and you can then have the Enterprise but make the choice between Kirk vs. Picard and deal with the outcomes of that decision.

 

Does this sort of stuff take us far away from the 4X genre? No, I don't think so.

Does it take us further away from what MoO was? Yes, probably, and (as many have said) about time too!

 

I'd be happy to expand on any of these if people fancy a chat!

 

Some thoughts:

 

1. I think that keeping the game from being too complicated conflicts with a lot of ideas you've outlined.

 

2. War is Fun . Even outside of space, non-war related strategy is few and far between. A Crusader Kings in Spaaaace might work, but what would setting it in space really add? Sci-fi models of space societies have generally been just copies of historical ones, so you'd need a lot of original thought to make this interesting and still intuitive.

 

3. Needs and wants are hard to do in a simple way. Maybe something like Shogun 2's clan missions? In particular, I think that individualisation of races needs to be used carefully. This is because interaction with other races requires the player, and the AI, to understand intimately both their own priorities and those of other races. It would enormously suck to unknowingly hand victory on a platter to an enemy because you forgot that he only needs to capture Red planets that are useless to you. Having too different a tech tree would also add an obfuscatory layer before the player - if Hivers don't like the internet, what happiness boosting tech do they want? How do we encourage tech trading if techs are unique?

 

4.

 

5. Hard to do without erasing the point of doing it in space altogether. I'd say, embrace nodes and edges, but more it easier to navigate, and perhaps manipulate. If you want the player to run an empire of bazillions of worlds, then suppress the complexity of a bunch of them. The minor worlds they don't care about can be just dots that change colour, like the resource points on Company of Heroes. Let me draw a selection box around fifty worlds and tell them to build ships. Focus on making interesting core worlds, worlds with ancient ruins and stories.

 

6. I think the thing is, people want ships to blow up. A ship blowing up when you only have a few ships SUCKS. The Enterprise is great and storied, but what about all the ships the enterprise fought? If individual ships were so precious, the game would probably devolve into a WWI style situation where opposing fleets sit in dry dock, staring at each other, afraid to be committed, running instantly for home the moment shields dip below 80%. And that'd be no fun. Probably a Total War style compromise would be better - fleets and squadrons get characteristics, but individual ships can just die. Also, I don't like refit cycles - sending a ship back home again and again feels like the definition of busywork.

 

7.+8. I don't think significant tech interacts well with indirect research. People don't want to be handed a massive advantage, or miss out on one, due to the vagarities of a system they do not directly control and understand. I overall prefer choices that are direct and chunky, in any case. Carapace or Laser weapons? Click, bam. If the game calculated whether to give me carapace or laser weapons based on some complicated formula based on who I promoted and what I fought with, then it'd either feel unfairly random, or worse, could lead to the player doing perverse things to min-max results.

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