Addon Discussion

[Wade1000]

Yeah, also "god techs" like he says.

ORIGINAL: Baleur

I want diplomacy to be basically ripped straight from Civ4, with all the options and such

I also want as you mentioned, super techs, but i want them to be researchable so an empire could focus all its efforts on discovering that elusive "wunderwaffen".
What kinds of supertech? Well, rip em straight from Space Empires! I want to blow up a solar system, i want to ignite a gas cloud into a new starsystem, i want to collapse a red giant into a black hole.
Think of the gameplay implications, all those redundant gas clouds in nebulae (there are SO many of them) could finally turn into something useful at the endgame.
Dont need that 54'th hydrogen cloud? Compress and ignite it with your super device to form a new star system, with random planets and goodies (lets use our long term imagination here, no reason to expect all races to operate on 24hr cycles )
And either collapse the red giant independent system near you to a black hole to make a research outpost, or just do it to your enemies homeworld just for lols, but beware the future as they will now have easy access to that 600% research bonus.. (possibly increase it even further for these new black holes, to incentivize investing in this mad hard to reach tech and give consequences for wiping out an enemy solar system. basically giving him huge tech bonuses)

Bottom line, i want god techs. The ultimate new tech line, call it Astro Engineering or something lol, have it suck points from High Tech, Industry, Energy and Weapons, making it progress very slowly.
The first few techs could be something like, compressing a gas cloud, just making it shrink in size (gameplaywise), later on requiring the "ignite" device.
This could all tie in with the planet destroyer "lore" =D


If the proper code for this went into the expansion (it can already be done by entering the galaxy editor, remove the gas cloud, add a new starsystem, etc, this could open up another type of galaxy for generation as well, "living" galaxy! A galaxy option that sets a random timer on all red giants, from too-long-to-ever-notice like 90 hours to something more imminent like 1 hour, where it collapses. And a possibly linked timer on some of the gas clouds, making it compress into a new starsystem as you lose the red giant, keeping the star system balance in the game so as to not have a blackout near endgame XD
Birthing and killing stars, thats what i've wanted since Spore had me hooked on their lie-hype.

[b0mber]

ORIGINAL: WoodMan

b0mber! Is that the same b0mber who worked on the New Wave Reloaded with me? If so, welcome dude!

Hi WoodMan, yes I'm that guy.

I saw a post at bloodbowl forums talking about this game and the developers and I thought "If WoodMan like it it should be a good one" ^^

[Baleur]

ORIGINAL: Wade1000

Wish list:population centers beyond planetary(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture):Ships,Ring Orbitals,Sphere Orbitals,Ringworlds,Sphereworlds;ability to create & destroy planets,population centers,stars;AI competently using all advances & features.

Also, if an advance/technology can be found in the game then I believe that it should eventually be able to be researched, without first finding it.

Too many space games focus on the "cheap" aspects of space. A space station, a few ships, a planet here and there with a generic random-noise star background.
I desperatly agree, i so badly want another space game that realizes space and sci-fi for what it is, and depicts it as such.

Ringworlds, dyson spheres, aging stars, forming stars, neutron stars (i was surprised to see them included in this game), proper good sci-fi.

[WoodMan]

I'm quite hesitant about these god techs!  I'm not against them, but can't decide if I'm for them either.  If they are implemented in a way that they are extremely hard to get, i.e. they cost a lot and take an age to research, I think they'll make a good addition to the game.  But, if ringworlds are as common as normal colonies, it would both ruin the immersion for me and the gameplay, making normal colonization pointless.  However, a Ringworld built in the system with Zentabian Fluid because you had no other way of colonizing anything in that system, that would be a pretty good addition to the game, as long as it is late game and not mid or early game.

As for forming stars, it takes hundreds of millions of years for a solar system to form, so unsure about that one tbh.

[Gertjan]

I agree with woodman, not too easy god like techs, and also the option to turn them off.

[tornnight]

Ring Worlds and Dyson Spheres are impractical silly sci-fi.

If you can create an ecosystem anywhere like that, why not teraform the numerous worlds out there.

[Brainsucker]

First of all, please don't limit the weight of any ship type in the designer. I don't care about the others who create only a destroyer and make it a mega destroyer, but for me, the designation or type of starship is not about the weight or size, but more about the type of starship that I want to design. Unfortunately for DW, there are only two types. Fast Ship, and star fortress with a lot of weaponary.

What if my destroyer has bigger size than my capital ships? Who care? That's me, the player and the leader of the race of I play who decide it, not other people. So please don't limit the weight of any starship type. But make the techs that give the players more choice to implement their fantasies and ideas.

Add on Ideas :
- A race that capable to produce space monsters. Just want to play DW version of Zerg (maybe even able to design it )
- Privateer. A command to create your own pirate base in the enemy space. You know the function.
- Give the modder capability to create a race with special government at the start of the game
- escort command : Well, in battlefield, I want my destroyer to protect my other ships. Maybe it has been implemented but I don't know.
- better and more user friendly interface.

[Wade1000]

Todays tall buildings and other technologies would seem silly or impossible to many people of the far past. I think technology will continue to progress exponentially ionto our far future to advances that we can't even imagine. We can imagine alot right now.
 
In 'The Culture' series novels Orbitals(huge rings that orbit stars) are the most common habitat for The Culture. Ringworlds and Sphere worlds are spread here and there. Even planets are barely populated. Planets are treated as nature preserves with scientific study or backwoods type colonies with small populations.
 
The Culture passes on terraforming every little ball around because forming their own Orbital and Ringworlds and Sphereworlds is possible and provides HUGE amounts of custom tailored land. Maybe much like today we can choose to build upwards instead of spreading across flat land taking up all nature and agriculture.

[Gertjan]

Interesting thoughts Wade.

[2guncohen]

1.More moddability. [8D]

[WoodMan]

1.More moddability.

Well I was kind of hoping the modders patch would be in the next month or so, seeing as it was announced before the addon was [:D]

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: WoodMan

1.More moddability.

Well I was kind of hoping the modders patch would be in the next month or so, seeing as it was announced before the addon was [:D]

I'm betting that the modders patch will be a part of the addon, just because Elliotg will probably have to make some code changes to allow the additional modability.

[Webbco]

ORIGINAL: Wade1000

The Culture passes on terraforming every little ball around because forming their own Orbital and Ringworlds and Sphereworlds is possible and provides HUGE amounts of custom tailored land.

I know it's fictional, but this doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I also haven't read the novels so apologies if it's answered in there...but why spend unthinkably massive quantities of resources on creating worlds from scratch when planets are present that provide a base on which to build?

Surely it would be totally inefficient to synthesise an entire world from scratch.

[WoodMan]

Hehe, I read one of those novels, the one where the ring world is dying, and that guy finds out the hard way that his anti-grav pack won't work on a ring world, because its not "real" gravity [:D]

[Baleur]

ORIGINAL: WoodMan

As for forming stars, it takes hundreds of millions of years for a solar system to form, so unsure about that one tbh.

So? [:)] This is a game, who's to say it doesnt take millions of years for the civs we play to expand across the entire galaxy (the current year-display is silly and inaccurate in any realism-terms anyway). [8|]

And I agree with Wade about the ringworlds etc.
The thing is, planets are great, they are already here and so forth. But when your civilization is so advanced that everything revolves around technology and energy (as we already begin seeing in our own civilization irl), a nice planet with the alien equivalent of forests and liquids could be little more than a holiday resort.

Sure it would take incredibly much resources to build these things around stars, but again, you'd get nearly limitless energy from a star that likely will last a few billions years more (or if we are talking dwarf stars, could potentially outlast your entire civilization). So while colonizing planets are sure to be the focus of all civilizations for some time, when technology (or rather power) reaches a certain plateau to the point of being able to construct anything effortlessly, while many of its inhabitants surely live on colonies, there's no reason why not to tap all that power just laying there waiting in space.

Keep in mind the "real" dyson sphere idea involves building and placing a huge number of satellites (or, space stations large as cities) close around the star, not an actual solid complete sphere around it Much like the satellites around our planets, except they'd be orbitally locked and so numerous that the star would appear dimmer to observers such as ourselves. (astronomers are even looking for signs of this while observing distant stars as we speak) [:)]

[Brainsucker]

In game term, sphere world and ring world can be useful for the player if... the player is so unlucky that there is no habitable planets around his homeworld. But of course it should has limitation that make the player wants to colonize planets more than make the ring.

Teraforming is a good tech idea, but it should be given at the end game

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Baleur

ORIGINAL: WoodMan

As for forming stars, it takes hundreds of millions of years for a solar system to form, so unsure about that one tbh.

So? [:)] This is a game, who's to say it doesnt take millions of years for the civs we play to expand across the entire galaxy (the current year-display is silly and inaccurate in any realism-terms anyway). [8|]

And I agree with Wade about the ringworlds etc.
The thing is, planets are great, they are already here and so forth. But when your civilization is so advanced that everything revolves around technology and energy (as we already begin seeing in our own civilization irl), a nice planet with the alien equivalent of forests and liquids could be little more than a holiday resort.

Sure it would take incredibly much resources to build these things around stars, but again, you'd get nearly limitless energy from a star that likely will last a few billions years more (or if we are talking dwarf stars, could potentially outlast your entire civilization). So while colonizing planets are sure to be the focus of all civilizations for some time, when technology (or rather power) reaches a certain plateau to the point of being able to construct anything effortlessly, while many of its inhabitants surely live on colonies, there's no reason why not to tap all that power just laying there waiting in space.

Keep in mind the "real" dyson sphere idea involves building and placing a huge number of satellites (or, space stations large as cities) close around the star, not an actual solid complete sphere around it Much like the satellites around our planets, except they'd be orbitally locked and so numerous that the star would appear dimmer to observers such as ourselves. (astronomers are even looking for signs of this while observing distant stars as we speak) [:)]

Have to agree there. The year/day display is more just a way for you to track that time is passing. A 'galactic cycle' clock might be better, since we're probably talking months or years to cross the vast emptiness of space...plus the 'galactic cycle' is so generic it can mean anything.

[Gertjan]

Any nice links to pictures to get a better visual sense about these ringworlds?

[WoodMan]

Look at Wades avatar on the first page of this thread, that is a ringworld.

and to those who disgree with me over my hesitancy on the god techs, remember I say if implemented correctly I think they are okay. I play with tech set to the slowest speed and I so far have never reached the highest tech levels in this game. So if I did stick around and play for longer, I wouldn't mind using these god techs, kind of a reward for sticking so long. I would prefer though that they are a major technological achievement, much like a Wonder rather than a standard feature of your Empire.

If however these god techs are in, the high level techs I suggested at first post in this thread should be one tech level lowers as they are not quite as nutty as these [:D] (cloaking device, stargate instant travel between two gates, planetary shields etc).

[n01487477]

Well having been a Matrix supporter for more than a little while, I'd like to suggest that the existing game be fixed more thoroughly before there was any mention of an add-on.

I know and support Matrix because they have a great track record with the games I've purchased from them and go out of there way to keep working on projects to give the gamer the best support and experience they can...

Is it just me or was D.W not released as most Matrix games are ... a work in progress (a good work mind you) & undergone a number of patches already ... now only a few months later there is talk of an add-on[8|]

Now, It might be that an add-on is desired by many for a variety of modding reasons, which IMO should have been included F.O.C from the beginning. My fear is that an add-on be released which fixes the existing issues, while people like myself are caught out or even worse, that time is being devoted to this by Elliot, when the game still has a pretty long list of tech issues. Maybe I'm greedy cause I've never had to pay for an add-on from Matrix to enjoy my purchase fully ... and this is real testament to the company.

Matrix has been good over the years adding options to a number of games I play through patches - but that is when the game is "stable".

Sorry for derailing your discussion ... please continue...