Armada 2526:updates,expansions,and sequels.Tell the company your wish list.

[Tom_Holsinger]

My priority fixes are to humans and bureaucracy.

the Humans

I very much disagree with Bob's version of the Humans in the introductory scenarios. While I agree it is necessary to use the Humans as the default empire for those, his saddling of the humans with major unrest penalties is counterproductive. Playing humans with such penalties is just no fun, and seriously impairs pacing.

The constant money and unrest problems in playing humans is flat out annoying, plus it dramatically inhibits players from doing anything risky, and therefore interesting. The money and unrest woes which plague human empires force a crabbed, cautious and slow style of play in the very introductory scenarios which are critical to winning players' interest in the game.

My beef here concerns marketing. The introductory scenarios are supposed to convince new players to continue playing as well as ease them over the learning curve. All new players absolutely, positively, will start turn-based space 4x games playing as the humans.

It is just deadly to use the single most frustrating to play race in the game as the vehicle to convince newbies to continue with the game. Just about any other selection of a negative to balance the humans' positives would have been better.

I repeat, this is about marketing. Good marketing means catering to the wishes and preconceptions of the customers. Customers want to have a good time. If they have a good time playing the game's introductory scenarios, they will want to play more, and will recommend the game to their friends. If they don't, they won't.

Successful marketing here requires "catering to the wishes and preconceptions of the customers", WHATEVER THOSE ARE, good bad or indifferent. Players aren't bad because they dislike being frustrated and annoyed. A game is unsuccessful if it frustrates and annoys players, particularly its initial players.

It is essential in marketing these games to not unnecessarily frustrate and annoy customers in the introductory scenarios. Armada 2526 hits them in the face with the single most frustrating and annoying race in the whole game as the race which is their first empire in the game.

That has to change, and the sooner the better. I cannot urge strongly enough that the present unrest penalty for humans be reduced or, better, entirely eliminated in the next patch. What other penalty is imposed on them, to balance their positive attributes, is far less important than that the unrest penalty be eliminated.

I also suggest a new bonus for the humans which caters to the preconceptions of this game’s market, who are almost entirely Americans and members of the British Commonwealth. I suggest humans be given a new bonus for ease in assimilating the populations of other races, including those taken by conquest. The Anglosphere justly prides itself on its unique assimilative ability relative to non-Anglo states. Play that up in this game, even if most humans on this world are more xenophobic. Wave the flag a bit.

Bureaucracy

It is insane to punish players for being successful, but that is what the present implementation of bureaucracy does. Bureaucracy goes up as empire size increases. This increased bureaucracy makes populations increasingly unhappy. Seriously unhappy populations suffer significant unrest, and angry ones revolt. The more successful a player is, the larger his empire tends to grow. The more it grows, the greater the bureaucracy level goes up, the unhappier the population gets, etc., until an empire falls apart from getting too big and successful. This is nuts.

Master of Orion III had bureaucracy increase all construction costs, including those of buildings on colonies. This was highly effective in giving smaller empires relative advantages and keeping bigger ones from easily overwhelming the game. It was wildly successful at extending duration of the “sweet spot” of relative power parity between player and AI empires during which interesting wars could be waged. Its only disadvantage was that it made it almost impossible to develop small colonies into big ones once an empire reached a given size, because the cost of constructing new buildings on new (and therefore poor) colonies was so high.

I would change the implementation of bureaucracy in Armada 2526 to be more like that in MOO3. It should not affect happiness. It should instead act as a multiplier of ship & military construction costs, but not Structure costs.

[kafka]

very good insights, Tom, I agree, these design aspects really need some improvement, while I'm not sure what the best approach would be, as it must fit the whole system including the code basis, I think that the current implementation does simply not work for larger maps very well.
What about introducing a new tech area, political and administration, and tying expansion to the level you have currently reached, so that you can only continue to expand if you have researched the corresponding tech level reflecting the race's ability to deal with the administration and integration issues due to a growing empire. This would not add to micromanagement, you could give some races bonuses and penalties in this area too

[Warspite3]

I got a simple one, how about a couple more types of ground units? Also maybe a defensive structure strictly for ground defense such as a bunker. It could reduct the amount of damage ground forces take from bombarding ships and also give additional defense against the attacking units.

[Flaviusx]

Shields (which come in 2 flavors) are pretty darn effective, no need for bunkers. It's an end game tech and pricey to build and maintain, mind you...
 
 
 
 

[siRkid]

How about finding stuff on planets like in GC.

[Iceman]

I would change the implementation of bureaucracy in Armada 2526 to be more like that in MOO3. It should not affect happiness. It should instead act as a multiplier of ship & military construction costs, but not Structure costs.

Ahmm, no. Late game, if you suffer a large defeat, you're screwed. You basically can't rebuild your fleet. Or any system.
Besides, it makes no sense at all.

[Tom_Holsinger]

Iceman, shifting bureaucracy from happiness to direct effect does not necessarily increase or decrease its adverse effects on production.  Unrest reduces production too, so making bureaucracy a direct affect only means that an empire won't suffer the really nasty unrest effects of buildings being trashed and maybe a colony rebelling to create a new empire.

[Iceman]

I didn't mean production, but available cash. In the game, nothing affects production (times). All that's ever affected is costs - due to the way the game is built.
By not making sense I meant that it only applies to military production, structures are not affected. That's what I was refering to, rebuilding your fleets.
I think it'd be easier to decrease the colony's money production by a certain %, which would be capped. It'd be easy to control and manipulate the cap to balance the whole thing. And it wouldn't affect costs - it'd attack the problem from the other side, money generation.

[Tom_Holsinger]

Iceman, I would use bureaucracy as a multiplier of ship costs and ship maintenance.  A bureaucracy "level" of 2.38 would result in all ship construction & maintenance costs being increased by 2.38.  I even talked about increasing ship maintenance costs above what they are now (say 30% of construction cost as opposed to 20-25%) while reducing Structure maintenance costs.  My objective here is to make ship maintenance a really staggering expense in wartime when ships are out fighting as opposed to being parked at worlds with Naval Bases.

This necessarily means that the wipeout of an empire's entire fleet will result in that empire sudddenly having most of its budget freed up to build new shlips.

Edit:

IMO players are being blindsided by the effects on maintenance expenses on their budgets, so I'd reduce Structure maintenance costs while making a really dramatic deal about ship maintenance expense. It's easier to get players' attention about One Big Thing than several small ones.

If ship maintenance expenses go up with bureaucracy, and Naval Base Structures significantly reduce maintenance expenses, even the most obtuse players will "grok" the concept of maintenance expenses real fast.

[siRkid]

Entertainment and Security centers are very expensive to maintain. I would like to have Tec levels on these that can be researched to bring down the maintenance cost. This would be one way to increase tax revenue through research that would fit within the current game system.

[Tom_Holsinger]

You can mod them right now to be that way.

ORIGINAL: Kid

Entertainment and Security centers are very expensive to maintain. I would like to have Tec levels on these that can be researched to bring down the maintenance cost. This would be one way to increase tax revenue through research that would fit within the current game system.

[siRkid]

ORIGINAL: Tom_Holsinger

You can mod them right now to be that way.

ORIGINAL: Kid

Entertainment and Security centers are very expensive to maintain. I would like to have Tec levels on these that can be researched to bring down the maintenance cost. This would be one way to increase tax revenue through research that would fit within the current game system.

Ya I know but the research tree is kind of short and I jst thought this might be a way of adding to it.

[Iceman]

Well, I did - halve their costs and upkeeps that is.
I even suggested creating additional structures, cheaper and lower level (Level zero ability, since the current ones are Level 1). Entertainment Arena and Security Stations, or something like that. Makre them similar to research structures, 4 max, one Center per system.

[ool]

Definitely the ability to custom design ships. Your list of ships is extensive but I would really prefer to come up with my own through trial and error. By not having this feature you have stifled peoples creativity and the scope of enjoyment a person can experience playing this game.
Also the ability to play against other human players over the internet would be a nice feature. Who has time these days to gather at one location for a night to spend lots of time twiddling your fingers waiting your turn to do your moves?

[ShotmanMaslo]

"Definitely the ability to custom design ships. Your list of ships is extensive but I would really prefer to come up with my own through trial and error. By not having this feature you have stifled peoples creativity and the scope of enjoyment a person can experience playing this game."

I agree. By custom designing I would mean just customizing weapons, defenses, sensors, fighterbays, special modules.. Not ship 3D models like in GC2, thats not needed and would be hard to do. Ships equipment would be enough..[:)]

[Tom_Holsinger]

IMO the Teleporter tech is too powerful.  I'd make it much more difficult to research, if it isn't eliminated outright, and replace it with more interesting but limited features & techs:
 
Wormhole Builder and Wormhole Destroyer as one-use ships which are expended in the process.  You'd need one ship on each end of a proposed new wormhole to create it, and one on each end of an existing wormhole to destroy it.  You could also have mulitiple ascending techs (Wormhole Builder/Destroyer I, II, III, etc.) of these which can build, and destroy, longer and longer wormholes.
 
Space Empires has something like this.  Wormholes can be used by anybody so building one with a terminus near your core systems is not necessarily a good thing, but you can also keep them a secret from other races by ceasing to give them map information once you've built some of the puppies.  Of course, though, other empires could discover newly built wormholes through exploration and surveys.
 
BTW, I'd like some techs to change wormhole discovery and use so that not every ship can discover and use them the first time.  I'd expand the existing Survey ship for this purpose, by having degrees of Survey ship (I, II, III).  A Survey I ship would just have the Sensor capability of the planetary sensor you start the game with, and each additional step in Survey ship tech would add a level to the sensor.
 
But a Survey II ship would replace the Detect Large Wormhole tech and be effective at the range of a Survey I ship's sensor tech, a Survey III ship would replace the Detect Medium Wormhole tech at the range of a Survey I ship's sensor tech, but be able to detect Large Wormholes at the range of a Survey II ship's sensor tech, etc.
 
And only Survey ships could explore, and chart wormholes, and then only the wormholes they can detect.  I.e., a Survey II ship could only explore large wormholes because it can only detect large wormholes.
 
Once a wormhole is charted, however, any ship can use it, and this information is also provided to any empire you give Map Information to.

[ShotmanMaslo]

{ OMG..that was my littles brother idea of a joke... sorry for spam }

[Tom_Holsinger]

I'd settle for being able to add new ship designs through a feature which makes modding easier, sort of like the Map Creator.

[PDiFolco]

Agreed, I don't want to have to design ships, it's an open door to mm hell with 100s of heterogeneous ship types... I like the "strategic" feel of the game, kind of what had MoO1 and BotF, and was never able to play more than 40 turns of SE due to the huge mm load.
But I'd be ok for more ship types -specialized ships, race- or tech-specific, and I hope some coder will soon develop an easy GUI for editing/adding ships in the xml data files.

Re the map creator, why aren't the random game maps saved in map format to be edited ? It'll be faster than having to input everything...

[Tom_Holsinger]

WhooBoy, that could be a problem! I haven't tried to use the Map Creator and just assumed that it would work on existing games, such as newly created games.

Bob, can we edit the maps of newly created random scenarios?

Hoping I'm wrong, and fearing PDiFalco is right.

ORIGINAL: PDiFolco

Re the map creator, why aren't the random game maps saved in map format to be edited ? It'll be faster than having to input everything...