The biggest problem with Distant Worlds

[ehsumrell1]

ORIGINAL: Data

500 cookie troopers you say....oh no, it's crack. So they're stoned? Ah, never mind

That 'logic' chip of yours needs a diagnostic Data! [:D]

[Erik Rutins]

Cookie Monster,

Which species/government combo was that? Some of them are hyper-aggressive by design.

Regards,

- Erik

[cookie monster]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Cookie Monster,

Which species/government combo was that? Some of them are hyper-aggressive by design.

Regards,

- Erik

Haakonish with Mercantile Guild. With diabolical reputation on unstable aggression setting.

[Apheirox]

lol, the hyper-aggressive Haakonish... Arrogant species, alright! [:)]

Anyway, returning to topic and in response to Data:

I don't think this is a matter of 'we all have different ideas about what should be worked on'. The solution I'm requesting to the problem is a 'need to have', not a 'nice to have'. That war is the only way to win breaks the logical consistency of the game premise and as such is a major flaw. It is a huge problem that ultimately, it doesn't matter if you're psychotic Boskara or peaceful, laid-back Sekuran because regardless of your specific faction's traits, you MUST war to win. Understand? It is logically inconsistent for a game to have peaceful-based factions when war is the only option.

To explain the problem from a different angle: When war is the only way to win, it means that every special trait of each species boils down to the ability to wage war:

** You are the Boskara? You have low war weariness and a special weapon. This sets up up to wage war. <--- this one makes sense

** You are Teekans? You have strong economy bonuses. However, because you can't win economically and must wage war, you are converting your strong economy into the ability to field more warships. <--- this one doesn't make sense

** You are Sekurans? You have excellent happiness and fast growth. However, because you can't win by having a large and happy population (even if it is large, it can't become that large without conquest), you are converting your happiness and growth (income) into the ability to field more warships. <-- practically same as Teekans obviously - and doesn't make sense.

Peaceful species, you say? Sorry - there is no such thing as 'peaceful' in this game under the current rule set.

Of course, you can circumvent this issue: You can setup games with ridiculous settings, such as 'GNP must reach 5% of galaxy total'. Then it will be possible to win without going to war - but a such game will undoubtedly last less than 10 years game time, and where is the fun in that? An example along the same lines could be made for the '% population' victory condition. But, of course, this would bar you from playing any 'real' games with sensible settings - such as the entire 'quick start' option set - because these use identical % control victory conditions for GNP/colonies/population (example: 38%/38%/38%, for the 'epic' quick start scenario). In these scenarios, the only way to reach that magical 38% of either of the three condtions is conquest.

When the AI can't play a game, that game has a major problem. But when the basic rules of a game themselves are flawed, that game has a giant problem.

[Foraven]

ORIGINAL: Apheirox

I don't think this is a matter of 'we all have different ideas about what should be worked on'. The solution I'm requesting to the problem is a 'need to have', not a 'nice to have'. That war is the only way to win breaks the logical consistency of the game premise and as such is a major flaw. It is a huge problem that ultimately, it doesn't matter if you're psychotic Boskara or peaceful, laid-back Sekuran because regardless of your specific faction's traits, you MUST war to win. Understand? It is logically inconsistent for a game to have peaceful-based factions when war is the only option.

Not what i'm experiencing while playing. I play Human Republic and hardly ever need to wage war, i eventually get filthy rich, have the most populated, best developped planets and an economy to boot (and colonies keep adding to my empire from defection). The only thing waging war does for me is speed up the victory i will eventually have by just outgrowing everyone. Personally i feel the war option is more tedious and annoying; unless your foes are fairly small and easy to blitz, you have to swallow them in several wars...

[MartialDoctor]

ORIGINAL: Foraven
Not what i'm experiencing while playing. I play Human Republic and hardly ever need to wage war, i eventually get filthy rich, have the most populated, best developped planets and an economy to boot (and colonies keep adding to my empire from defection). The only thing waging war does for me is speed up the victory i will eventually have by just outgrowing everyone. Personally i feel the war option is more tedious and annoying; unless your foes are fairly small and easy to blitz, you have to swallow them in several wars...

You are most likely doing what Apheirox mentioned before which was rushing colony techs and / or aggressive colonization. This he mentioned above.

And what you are doing would not be able to be done if you made the game difficult (i.e. made all of the races bigger and more advanced than you).

[Foraven]

ORIGINAL: MartialDoctor
You are most likely doing what Apheirox mentioned before which was rushing colony techs and / or aggressive colonization. This he mentioned above.

Early game i do oversee the colonization and do rush for independents, but later on mostly focus on building up my empire and making sure i have the right stuff where it's needed. I don't particularily rush colonization tech unless i have worlds i need badly.

And what you are doing would not be able to be done if you made the game difficult (i.e. made all of the races bigger and more advanced than you).

The AI won't play much differently than it does at default setting; it's just a stepper hill to climb but not much more difficult once you start catching on. And one thing the AI can't prevent you from doing is making your worlds more valuable by making sure they develop, and you can become a trade mogul despite being the smaller nation (just need well placed space stations and good diplomacy).

[Chet Guiles]

I agree -- it would be great to have a set of conditions under which two empires could join together voluntarily. Maybe after so many years of joint defense, free trade agreements, similarity in governments, etc. When that includes the human player of course they would join under the human player's umbrella, but the AI could use this, too as appropriate.

That was possible in Starships Unlimited 3, though I much prefer the DW game to SSU3. Of course in SSU3 you ultimately had to squash the last remaining bugs to "win" the game, where in DW RotS you can set economic criteria, play for the heck of it, and not use the Shakturi options at all. (And a whole lot of other good things like ship design, etc., etc.)

[Wade1000]

ORIGINAL: Apheirox

lol, the hyper-aggressive Haakonish... Arrogant species, alright! [:)]

Anyway, returning to topic and in response to Data:

I don't think this is a matter of 'we all have different ideas about what should be worked on'. The solution I'm requesting to the problem is a 'need to have', not a 'nice to have'. That war is the only way to win breaks the logical consistency of the game premise and as such is a major flaw. It is a huge problem that ultimately, it doesn't matter if you're psychotic Boskara or peaceful, laid-back Sekuran because regardless of your specific faction's traits, you MUST war to win. Understand? It is logically inconsistent for a game to have peaceful-based factions when war is the only option.

To explain the problem from a different angle: When war is the only way to win, it means that every special trait of each species boils down to the ability to wage war:

** You are the Boskara? You have low war weariness and a special weapon. This sets up up to wage war. <--- this one makes sense

** You are Teekans? You have strong economy bonuses. However, because you can't win economically and must wage war, you are converting your strong economy into the ability to field more warships. <--- this one doesn't make sense

** You are Sekurans? You have excellent happiness and fast growth. However, because you can't win by having a large and happy population (even if it is large, it can't become that large without conquest), you are converting your happiness and growth (income) into the ability to field more warships. <-- practically same as Teekans obviously - and doesn't make sense.

Peaceful species, you say? Sorry - there is no such thing as 'peaceful' in this game under the current rule set.

Of course, you can circumvent this issue: You can setup games with ridiculous settings, such as 'GNP must reach 5% of galaxy total'. Then it will be possible to win without going to war - but a such game will undoubtedly last less than 10 years game time, and where is the fun in that? An example along the same lines could be made for the '% population' victory condition. But, of course, this would bar you from playing any 'real' games with sensible settings - such as the entire 'quick start' option set - because these use identical % control victory conditions for GNP/colonies/population (example: 38%/38%/38%, for the 'epic' quick start scenario). In these scenarios, the only way to reach that magical 38% of either of the three condtions is conquest.

When the AI can't play a game, that game has a major problem. But when the basic rules of a game themselves are flawed, that game has a giant problem.

So. I don't see a problem with having many paths to a single or a few victory conditions. Each race has it's unique bonuses that helps them get to the victory condition their own way. Maybe that was the designers idea and you might be viewing it a different way.

Also, I've always been hesitant accepting, for role playing/lore considerations, unique or varying victory conditions and unique, race specific technologies. If your empire is great and powerful and suddenly some smaller empire mines a certain amount of minerals, reaches a certain happiness, or gains much diplomatic approval then it doesn't make sense that your empire suddenly loses and the game is over.
Thus, back to the war victory condition; unless all AI's accept your rule, which would be a good design.

Of course, if the PLAYER wins in one of those ways we often think it is just and well deserved. If an AI wins in one of those ways we might start to feel the game is not proper. Again, a design where you can choose to oppose the victory condition or require the other empire to request you submit is a good design.
Thus, if you refuse, the other empire can choose to continue competing with you or to war against you. It makes sense if your empire is comparable to them. If it is not you might just accept the loss and start over.

Apply a diplomatic victory to real life Earth. There never can be one as long as there are comparable sovereign nations competing in many ways, that refuse to submit to another authority.
Any United Nations type organization and leader will only be to help keep an extended peace among sovereign nations. Nations on Earth will continue to prepare and research for war and defense until an ultimate war confined here where some future technologies lesson nuclear weapons; or the ultimate war will be out among our stars. One possible way to avoid the ultimate war would be for one nation to race to the pie in the sky(asteroid and other planet minerals and real estate) and become so mega awesome that nations still confined on earth submit peacefully.
Wow, that could be a peaceful victory, if they ALL accept your rule. (Bee lining research and expansion. Heh) I suppose you would have to request that they each submit to you.
The other nations will still have the choices of accepting or opposing your rule. If one refuses then you have the choice to continue on competing with them having a chance to catch up or just war against them.

Similiar thoughts on unique technologies. My mega awesome empire with mega awesome research should be able to, eventually, research any advance that any other race can. Especially if it's just some other sort of missile, beam weapon, or engine.
True that some alien races could have biologies or cultures that let them have their special technology but any thing can be examined, studied, and understood with enough effort and time.
I can accept special racial bonuses to speed up research of certain technologies but not accept total restrictions to certain technologies.

I think I'm writing much of philosophy in this...heh.

[adecoy95]

global difficulty settings could go a long way to solve some problems with the ai.

sins of a solar empire is a good example of an ai that is fun to play against when its getting cheaty. i myself love playing "hold the line" games against 9 allied max difficulty ai.

something like:
hard=50% income increase
very hard= 100% income increase
insane= 100% income, ship maintenance -50%
crazy= 250% income, ship maintenance -50%, war weariness -100%, 50% increased research speed.
impossible= 300% income, ship maintenance -50%, war weariness -100%, no size restrictions, 50% increased research speed.
no, just no= 80% increased ship construction speed, no resource requirements, unlimited size restrictions, no economy demands of any kind, planets colonize with an automatic large space port.

of course, these settings should not be capturable by the player, like the shakturi homeworld bonus is

[diablo1]

Nor Galactic Civilizations II (another prime example of multiple victory conditions, although I positively hate that game and don't understand how people can possibly be impressed by it).

because it's the 2nd best 4x space empire game out there and has the best ai of them all to prove it. (X3:Terran Conflict being #1). If you don't understand why it's so popular then I don't think you have played it very long or much. How you can not be impressed by a superior AI to all the others shows it.

[Data]

What a surprise to have your input here. And look, the totally unexpected X3 reference. One wonders when you get the time to update on forums for games that you don't like [:D]

[J HG T]

Also, diablo1, for the Xth time: X3 is not 4X game.

Wiki about X series

Read the very first line in the Wiki and get a grip of yourself man.

[diablo1]

You don't determine what a 4x game is to me bud. If you live by what stupid wiki's say that can be changed on a daily basis by anyone then you surely have issues of what is the truth. Wiki's are just internet toys for children to play with. Encyclopedia's on the other hand are not.

[ASHBERY76]

[J HG T]

So? Ask anybody, other than yourself of course, is the X3 (or X series in general) a 4X game and I'll bet that easily over 95% says it is not. By your logic Freelancer, EVE online, Elites and Space Rangers could all be considered 4Xs, which they clearly are not.
Anyway, I'll read only one more of your posts, and if that doesn't make any damn sense I'll just green-button you moi friend.&nbsp;

[Data]

J only provided a link for you to read, none of us expect you to understand 4x or the game you so praise and imagine it's 4x.
I've played X3 and that wiki page is correct, it is a simulator not 4x.
I'm sure that there are rpg or adventure forums outhere where you claim X3 is the best rpg and adventure game as well [:)].
Arcade also? Why not.

[ehsumrell1]

ORIGINAL: Data

I've played X3 and that wiki page is correct, it is a simulator not 4x.

12 demerits on your StarFleet record Data for admitting you played X3!
SHAME ON YOU! [:-]

[J HG T]

Easy there! X3 ain't the best space game around but it sure ain't the worst either. It just takes certain type of person to enjoy it. Clearly, I am not that type of person.

[Data]

Aye, we approve. I tried it because I've read somewhere the X series tries to continue the spirit of Elite...and also it promised to be the next SR2 (SR3 so to speak).
I'll neither bash it or praise it, it's a solid game but it's not for me either. Actually, diablo does it a great deal of harm by continuously praising it while bashing DW.