I'm tired of 4x

[thiosk]

Distant Worlds is a great game, as I've posted before, and the designers are to be commended.
However, theres something I really want; a niche that has never, to my knowledge, been filled. (note: i havn't had time to play through the expansion yet, waiting for some time then i'm buying it)

Distant worlds falls into one trap that every space-epic game falls into: the colony rush. Honestly, I hate the colony rush. We have discovered FTL travel! OH, um, so have 10 other bloodsucking alien races which happen to live here too. QUICK TAKE ALL THE PLANETS YOU CAN! FASTER! FAAAAASTER!!! DECLARE WAR ON ANYONE WHO GETS TOO CLOSE!!!!! This breeds conflict, and makes for a nice 4x game. But, its not really the space-epic game I want to play.

What I want is more of a management game; a building game. A true Simcity->simSpace. The galactic game we were promised when Spore was announced back in 2006. At its heart, this is what I think DW is; an outer-space economic simulation, that happens to have space battles and a colony rush.

My favorite thing to do in DW? Economic expansion. I love to see the private fleets buzzing around, sucking ore off various planets and transporting it elsewhere. I love to seek out the mineral-rich worlds and plant factories on them, slurping metal and shipping it back to the homeworld for exploitation; drawing gas from the hot cores of gas giants. My problem is, what do you do with all this glorious material? Planets take care of themselves; theres no demand for anything other than luxuries. So you take those materials, stockpile them massively, and you build more ships. And then you take those ships to enemy planets, and you pew pew.

There are so many things to do with material. Dyson spheres. How about artifical planets? ringworlds? Neutron star mining? Towing stars? An empire that spans the cosmos should be able to attain godlike power, and it should require a lot of special projects to get all the way there. OH, none of this fits with a 4x game, you say! You don't need all that when the goal is focused on the 4x's! Well, I say, I'm tired of 4x! I've been 4xing it since I was 7!

So what do I really want? I want the best of Spore merged with the best of DW. How would I envision this happening?

Spore allowed a free-wheeling empire building. Functionally limitless space; there were so many stars and planets that even in a fairly crowded area it felt like enough "space." Second, there was no real "time" axis; you had to go in and fiddle with things to get stuff to happen-- plopping down cities and terraforming and what not. If you wanted to really work on one planet for hours and get it just the way you wanted, great! More or less, mostly everything else will take care of itself, except spore had the terrible "oh help us in 2 minutes or less!" warnings every five seconds that got realllly annoying. But the rest of it, nonlinear time axis, procedural simulation, the way planets appear as you find them rather than uncover preexisting ones-- there is so much potential power for a 4x sim that is squandered for cuteness.


Heres another way to think about what I want: a sort of Dungeon Keeper meets Dwarven Fortress in Spaaaaace.

SO, matrix and codeforce, ball is in your court. You can keep the same game, same races, same system, just retool the idea, focus, and economy of the game, wrap it up, and sell it as a standalone game. Hell, what I want is basically a glorified mod. Look what Stardock is doing with Elemental War of Magic-- they are continuing with expansions for war of magic, but are taking the engine and concept in a totally different direction with Fallen Enchantress-- the expansion pack that isn't.

I'm bored of 4x, i'm ready for SimX.

[Data]

That is something that I think we all want....for me it would be kinda Caesar4 in space; that was a truly maginificent game for building an economy, trade and taking care of your subjects.

Also we all dream about "Dyson spheres. How about artifical planets? ringworlds? Neutron star mining? Towing stars?...." and here you indeed want spore or age of empires models: to go from the first warp drive vessel to doing all the godlike power stuff

It's a complex task for even large developer teams and we have only Elliot; but we do have a private sector outside our control and also an universe that makes you feel like you're in space....maybe the rest will come in time

I fully agree with you and want the same things but I'm not yet tired of 4x as it is now and when I want to get the experience you seek I go to Space Rangers 2 for example.

[hewwo]

completely agree! This game is very close I think. All we need is better resource & fuel mechanics and this game would be it. Maybe next expansion

[gwgardner]

Could you achieve what you want by using the largest galaxy, with only one alien race? I haven't played the game, so I'm asking. I too would prefer that kind of mode.

[ASHBERY76]

I want a 4x galaxy simulation game too like MOO3 was going to be before it was lobotomized before release.Leaders,government systems,realistic diplomacy,internal factions.Chains of command,ethos..

I would also like Emperor of the fading suns with modern graphics and UI.

I expect neither.

[Data]

yes, that would be closer to the experience but still light years away from our dreams; don't forget the pivotal question

"My problem is, what do you do with all this glorious material?"

this problem would still remain. The game thiosk (and I as well) dreams about is a game for explorers, peacefull builders and scientists....I'll bet it's even outside the 4x realm as it is atm; the extermination would need to be kept to a minimal and it would need to be secondary to exploration and expansion.

Hard to see how we would pack all our dreams in one single game...it would be huuuge.

[Erik Rutins]

Distant Worlds supports this playstyle to a degree depending on your choices in galactic aggressiveness and race and government types in the galaxy. We'd like to allow it to support this more, along with many other playstyles. There are many, many areas where we can do a lot more. [8D]

Regards,

- Erik

[Igard]

I think it's all about creating more options for players. We need more to do and then, maybe we can start thinking about a game where war and colony rushing are only optional ways of playing. Each race should get a unique tech tree that reflects their characteristics. Tractor beams, so we can move valuable asteroids closer to the mining base and move space creatures to safe locations.

One question I've been asking since the games release is, Why do I need to kill all the space creatures I encounter? I've considered that some races might try to harvest the creatures for food (building a Kaltor farm), or they might simply take them to somewhere out of sight where they can live in peace (the starfleet way), or they can still just shoot them (that's probably what the galactic empire would do).

Another point I'd like to bring up is a border system. It's a highly debatable subject, but I'd like to see something put in place. It would probably be best to make it optional as well since I know alot of players like the game the way it is. If we had a border system we could go about our business more freely safe in the knowledge that we have control over our region without another empire moving in next to our home system. However we would need more to do inside our empire if this were the case.

[Bingeling]

For me space creature farms would be a waste of time.

When it comes to more control/fun with the private sector, it would be nice with a bit more info about their doings. For instance, where it goes to/from could be printed when you open up details like cargo (or even in the mission statement on the info box when the ship is selected "transporting caslon from xxx to yyy").

When it comes to borders, I am a bit torn. I like the map best when it is "my area", "your area", at the same time placing a distant colony could become too powerful, and something the player surely will outclass the AI at. One could maybe include some exclusion zones around the capital. A fun idea could be that such a zone could be declared, at the expense of lowered reputation and a risk for others to declare war. Another possibility could be a realm of influence. Massive colonies influence systems nearby, making it likely that smaller (or unhappy) colonies there switch side. Such a zone should be visible as long as you are aware of the major colony. The capital could have an influence boost, but something would have to be done to avoid the capital status being moved around.

Edit: Wrong reply button, it was supposed to be for Igard of course.

[Igard]

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

For me space creature farms would be a waste of time.

Then don't build them. Like I said, it's about giving more options to the player for things to do in their empire. Once you have your creature farm, you can either begin extracting resources from it, or you could begin performing experiments to enhance your research. To fight the bugs, we must first understand the bugs.

Finding space creatures no longer means killing on sight, but instead is a new opportunity to study a new life form.

[thiosk]

For me, the spammyness of the colony rush can be rectified in a simple, but not always fun, way.

Material upkeep.

As a planet develops, it requires large amounts of steel, polymer, carbon fibre, etcetera. Enormous quantities. Putting a colony on a planet should be more than letting population grow and bringing in luxuries; it should require gigatons of strategic resources per point of population and per point of development. How many tons of building material are required to build a small city? Scale that up to 5 billion screaming peasants.

Further, it should require a certain amount of resource "flow" to keep those development levels. In this way, strategic resources will actually require strategy and development, and would need to be monitored and invested in. Question: has ANYONE EVER run out of steel? If not, whats the point of the resource again?

A massive colonization spree would drive demand for simple resources through the roof. Such demand would squelch resources from upkeep, causing development to deteriorate. Too many developed worlds would have too high an upkeep to allow for a rapid pace of colonization, without the industrial and research base to support it. Stars containing only asteroids would suddenly be worth fighting over in a long game, and pirate raids on base resource extractors would suddenly actually hit the pocket.

Would this kind of economy be "fun" in a traditional 4x sense? No, i'm not sure it would be, too complicated to beginners, especially. Is it the kind of thing I want? YES IT TOTALLY IS. A properly balanced system would SOLVE colony spam outright. An epic game would become truly epic.

DO IT. Or, someone, mod it-- i can help with the design principles but I'm no coder

Edit: Now take the requirement for constant shipments and upkeep flow, and add that to the fuel extraction and conversion cost, and you have real functional limit to the true range of your colonization. All those freighters carting trillions of tons of metal and carbon to a world require a lot of fuel. You may have to mothball a planet that is too far away to support. And suddenly dumping research and investment into improved cargo holds and extractor rates becomes a real pressing issue for the burgeoning empire.

edit edit: As for kraltor farms, i think thats a fun idea. I'd tame them and use them as autonomous patrol units; maybe a herd of them could wander with a couple ships in system to hunt pirates or other undesirables.

[WoodMan]

Anything that slows down the game and makes things more Epic (but not overly and pointlessly complex) gets my vote.  As long as the AI can keep up of course.  This is just a general statement, not solely aimed at Distant Worlds, but all games in general [:)]

[Noble713]

thiosk I really like your material upkeep idea. It adds to the gameplay (creating decision-making points for the player is always a plus) and is realistic.

[hal9000]

kaltor farms, nice... I like the idea of sending my people on space safari

I also like the maintenance idea, some system to slow down expansion would be great, maybe new colonies could have a negative income. And a range limit for colonization would be great, I just hate it when the empires left of me send their colony ships across my empire to settle some worlds right of me and the empires on the right vice versa, so I end up with lots of colored trade routes obscuring my empire

As for more uniqueness, it would be great if the tech tree would encourage more specialization. Starships unlimited had a nice system, where researching one type of weapon would make all the other weapon types more expensive. I also liked the space empires approach where you had to research some really expensive techs that would unlock new special paths of research.

the backstory could use a few twists too. would be great if you would never know who will turn out to be the bad guys. so maybe the ancient guardians reveal them as the shakturi or the ancients get reprogrammed and team up with them or one of the weaker empires in the game transforms into them.

[Igard]

Material Upkeep. Big thumbs up from me. I think along with a little bit more trasparency in terms of where material is and where it's going, this would be truly epic. In terms of modding it, I think it would be a nightmare for someone like me. I can read most code, but writing it is another matter. And I don't think we'll be seeing any source code any time soon either. [:(]

I think taming creatures is a brilliant idea too. I can imagine the Securans doing this and turning them into miners, freighters or whatever (obviously just for interplanetary). I can also imagine the Haakonish setting up resort bases around creature 'safari' zones so they can go hunting. Kiadians would build research bases around them so they can perform perverse experiments. Mortalen or Dhayuut would turn them into ferocious planetary defense monsters. It opens up lots of new features that could be specifically for certain races.

[thiosk]

You know, igard, this whole time i thought you were actually employed by Matrix. I think it had to do with the way you did your "modding wishlist" thread

[Data]

no, he's not employed by Matrix....only highly effective at what he does [:)]

[J HG T]

Material upkeep and creature farms both sound like great ideas. The creatures are part of DW world so it would be great to give them even bigger role gameplay wise.
The only thing that worries me about material upkeep is that it could once again rise the importance of the mighty Homeworld. Also, it would be neat if there would be small icons next to transports, planets and bases showing what materials and how much of them they are holding. This could be toggleable of course so you could check it when you need.

[thiosk]

This is how I imagine a game of Thio's Ideal DW would start:

A species doesn't go to space for any reason other than necessity. So, the almighty homeworld, while responsible for all the production and the wealth, should really be in quite a depression when we first step into the stars. Overpopulation, natural resources stretched to the limit, damaged development value, terrible shortages of... everything.

Colony ships are huge, and shouldn't be the first object produced. Ever. I'm anti-colony-rush.

Maybe the slider for starting tech should just have another notch-- dawn of the space age, before even the hyperdrive is in production. The early mining ships should start getting produced, should be a little tough to actually get going. Forget a constructor. You need private corporate mining before you can even start building proper mining stations. Anything to placate the homeworld and get the economy established. Work in the initial star system to get your nugget established, start heading outside the solar system to pick up some material on the outskirts. Hell, maybe you'd even have to build enough really crappy vessels to bonk a couple kraltors guarding a derelict starship, and THATS how you get your hyperdrive.

I'll wait patiently. Someone make me this game.

[Data]

you know the Gate series by Frederik Pohl? there were some games made after this where you didn't even discover hyperdrive but hyperdrive capable ships which you'd use; but those games were not 4x
MOO2 on the other hand had the pre-warp setting but it also did not have the other features you desire
I'm more and more convinced that this game you envision will never be a 4x...the expansion rush is too strong in 4x gaming. Can't say I don't like it.