Parting Thoughts

[SireChaos]

ORIGINAL: kafka

I don't see any hostile attitude in Tom's attempts to point out the main problems of the game, namely the population and the bureaucracy concept. Indeed these are the very reason why I stopped playing the game. Attacking Tom doesn't certainly make the game better.

I don't see any hostile attitude in Tom's attempts to point out the main problems of the game, namely the population and the bureaucracy concept. Indeed these are the very reason why I stopped playing the game. Attacking Tom doesn't certainly make the game better.

Well, I thought his "anyone who disagrees with me completely destroys his own credibility by doing so" approach to discussion to be quite hostile. I like the people I have a discussion with to at least pretend to think that it is possible for them to be wrong.

[Tom_Holsinger]

Grandpoobah's post No. 38 is very welcome news.
 
It hadn't occurred to me, when I wrote the first post in this thread, that the overpopulation & unrest problems might be so great those wouldn't be fixed by moving bureaucracy out of the popularity system.  Rvyan's colorful post indicated that the whole system needed fixing ASAP, which was scary as revision of a complete major game system generally takes time to do right.
 
So if having troop and big ship construction consume population points significantly alleviates the population & unrest problems Rvyan describes, Ntronium should definitely go that way for now.  It's far quicker & easier to make such spreadsheet changes than to add the new code required for my proposed Emigration Structure, which should be considered on its own merits.  Changes to the popularity, unrest and population management/transportation systems should be done slowly and carefully, and after taking plenty of time to think things through.
 
Grandpoobah, please create a new thread on this subject in the modding forum, and upload the spreadsheet changes you've tested as a zipped file as an attachment to your first post.  That will let players, hopefully including Rvyan, test those to see how well they work.

[Grandpoobah]

I created a zip file of the two XML files that I changed. I uploaded the zip file as an attachment to my post in the Mod Section.

It turns population into an asset if you want to build big ships and create large armies.

It made things better for me.

[Erik Rutins]

Tom,

What you may not be aware of is that you're following a pattern many of us have seen on internet forums before. While I appreciate your interest and suggestions for the game, you do seem a bit too sure of yourself at times and too quick to reach conclusions based on limited experience. In any case, all constructive criticism is accepted and welcome and I hope you'll continue to play Armada 2526 and also explore ways to put your own ideas into the game through modding, as Bob made the game very accessible in that regard.

Grandpoobah, et. al.,

Thanks, some very interesting ideas here overall and we'll give your mods a look too.

No date on the second update yet (first one was actually synchronous with the online release) but Bob is working on it and we hope to at least have a public beta out before Christmas.

Regards,

- Erik

[Tom_Holsinger]

Erik,
 
Armada is fundamentally sound.  I doubt anyone else uses population transport to the degree I do - as of about Turn 230 in my final game, I had never experienced any overpopulation problems whatever, on any colony.  One world briefly got over 80 population and I brought it down to 70 using a Teleport Structure to quickly funnel colonists to a new colony.  It's no wonder that I found myself spending far more time on colony management (eXploitation) in the endgame than on eXtermination.
 
While I liked Space Empires a lot, it uses the same population transport model as Armada, and similarly has major colony expansion in its endgames.  I gave up on SE because of its endgame population micromanagement system, and know the same will happen with your game.  Everything else I could live with because Armada is so easily modded.  It has much faster pacing than SE, and SE's is acceptable save in the endgame.
 
I do not see Armada achieving market success unless you address the learning curve & frustration issues for newbies.  It must be easy for them to win playing the humans at the easy level in the 12 Races scenario.  Beyond that it's mostly a matter of spiffing it up, and there are lots of good ideas here on that.