Role-Playing in Armada 2526

[Tom_Holsinger]

Erik,

These are the first of my thoughts about compensating for the dreadful marketing hole created by the absence of ship design from the game. It isn’t merely that ship design is expected in turn-based space 4x games, and fun by itself. Role-playing of one’s own empire is critical to enjoyment of turn-based 4x games, and ship design is the leading way to get players of turn-based space 4x games to identify with their empires.

I have much experience here, having had a significant role in all three Master of Orion games, plus I’ve been around since about forever. My name credits include the first edition of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons – thirty years ago Gary Gygax sent me a gorgeously colored lead dragon he had painted himself to put on top of my wedding cake. I first playtested board wargames for Jim Dunnigan in 1966, with my friend Jack Greene of Quarterdeck games (Ironbottom Sound, etc.), when we were juniors in high school.

Armada 2526 desperately needs beefing up of its role-playing aspects to compensate for the absence of ship design. I recommend you add more races, both drastically different ones and (as in MOO3) related ones. Your selection of scripts for AI empires, with greatly different objectives, is important here – we can have two empires with the same starting race but quite different objectives which will result in different behavior.

Having AI empires behave in significantly different, but consistent and characteristic, fashions is crucial in fostering role-playing, so grossly exaggerate the differences between races, and in ways not limited to the presently devised scripts.

I first recommend you borrow, in a patch or expansion (aka planned product improvement) a feature from MOO3 – “base” diplomatic relations between races, particularly racial animosities, i.e., have some races always hate specific other races (not all other races). This must of course be moddable. All these games have some means of reflecting the diplomatic attitudes of AI empires towards other AI and player empires, which are largely based on events which occur during the game. MOO3’s “base relations” concept (there is a file labeled BaseRelations.txt) applies modifiers to the opinion of specific races to specific other races. Events in the game modify this, but the modifiers for game events slowly expire with relations between empires drifting back over time to their “base relations”. I believe the effects of game event negative modifiers are magnified if base relations between two empires are negative, etc. And the base relations are not always mutual, it is possible that one race absolutely hates a second race, while the second race either does not hate the first quite so much, or might even like them.

What is really important, though, is that major differences in base relations between two AI empires can really impact players. As an example, all Ancient Race of Machines empires might hate all Hoon Yon empires, and vice versa (though vice versa is not guaranteed) such that peaceful diplomatic relations between them will be difficult but, more importantly, your empire having an alliance with an A.R.O.M. empire will pretty much guarantee that all Hoon Yon empires will be at least hostile towards you. And, if and when a pair of A.R.O.M. and Hoon Yon empires are at war and you refuse your A.R.O.M. ally’s demand that you declare war on the Hoon Yon, your relations with that particular A.R.O.M. empire will tube a lot more than if you refused your A.R.O.M. ally’s demand that you declare war on a human empire it happens to be at war with. Plus, maybe, no other A.R.O.M. empire will ever again ally with you, or even make any treaty with you.

If you buy this, try to create some plausible-sounding background reason for the animosities (and preferences if there are any). You don’t need anything as remotely elaborate as MOO3’s. You can vaguely allude to a common ancestor, or that one race was created by a long-gone empire & race to destroy an enemy race of the long-gone one, and both those races are still in the game and hate each other. As an example, I have my MOO3 humans hate the Klackon insectoid race simply because humans innately hate & fear big hairy spiders. The Klackons don’t reciprocate the hate, but they don’t like humans because humans have been so nasty towards them. I have all my MOO3 races without a group mind hate all races with a group mind, plus nobody organic gets along with the Silicoids, but the three races in my Axis of Evil (Klackons, Meklars & Silicoids) get along well with each other.

I’d also expand the script concept, and make some of them race-specific, i.e., that only one race might be able to have a given script. As an example, the XSpectrada might have a script specific to them, perhaps with a special tech or racial ability associated with that particular script.

A possible example of such a script is Necromancy or Life Leech – that they get some sort of fantastic power if they eliminate all life on a heavily populated non-XSpectrada world in a single turn with some horrific weapon (say an asteroid smash). Plus that, if that XSpectrada empire does this several times, it gets mental control over all sentient beings in the galaxy (automatically wins the game), and all other empires lose. So, once a player determines that the current game includes an XSpectrada empire with that script/Life Leech objective, he knows that he must keep it from obliterating whole worlds if he wants to win. I.e., a sudden and higher priority objective (than achieving his own empire’s objectives) appears of stopping that particular XSpectrada empire.

It is probably too late to add “tags” to scripts which limit them to certain races in the game as first released, but please consider adding this in a patch. It will significantly expand the role-playing possibilities of the game.

My third suggestion is that you have the diplomatic requests and behavior of AI empires (perhaps also the phrasing of their diplomatic messages), towards player empires at least, tend to more obviously reflect the scripts applicable to a given AI empire. An AI with an expansion objective could place more weight on possession of colony worlds in diplomatic trades, and be far more impressed by gifts of colony worlds. An AI with a research or “mastery of the secrets of the universe” objective would have tech trades and gifts be more important for it. If espionage/theft of tech by spies is in the game, such AI empires would be more incensed about it. Having AI diplomacy reflect their scripts might already be present in Armada 2526 but, if it is, consider exaggerating it.

A thousand words is enough for lunch today. I’ll get back to this later.

[Terminus]

Probably not going to do this now, when the game is already close to release.

[Iceman]

Zzzzzzzzz...

[:D]

[Aroddo]

I think it's funny that anyone would mention MoO3 as a good example on how to do 4x games.

But honestly, I can live without ship design the same way I can live in games like Starcraft without ship design. Or Civilization. Or Sins of a Solar Empire.

[Tom_Holsinger]

Aroddo,

I'm talking about parts of MOO3 that work, and its diplomacy engine works both as a role-playing feature and as code. I was delighted earlier to learn that THE most successful turn-based 4x game innovation in MOO3 has been adopted for Armada 2526 - it's called "bureaucracy" in Armada and Heavy Foot of Government in MOO3. They're not the same thing - Heavy Foot of Government was applied directly as a production modifier in MOO3, while Armada's bureaucracy is a component of another feature called "popularity", but both are used as a means of inhibiting the production of the larger empires, to keep the latter from overrunning the game too fast when they get big. And both are moddable so, as players become more skillful, they can increase this effect and so extend the duration of the period of relative parity between player and AI empires. This is crucial.

Here I advocate incorporation into Armada of another successful MOO3 feature, plus expansion of some things which are already in Armada. IMO it is possible to add code "tags" to races, before the game's first release, which will speed up the addition, in a patch, of a feature which lets players create scripts which only particular races can use.

[Terminus]

I think ship design is a good bit of chrome, but based on my experiences with Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, where you can design your own units too, not something I'd spend much time with.

[elmo3]

I've had a lot of fun with ship design in GC II.  Not only making great looking ships but outguessing the AI, or getting outguessed, on what types of weapons and armor/shields to bring to the battle makes the game more challenging.  Hopefully it can be considered for a future expansion.

[bartholimew]

Uh this is Armada 2526, I would expect it to be called such because it retains some of the attributes from its predecessor Armada 2525. Which did not have all of the superfulous fluff like ship design and ship building and extreme diplomacy. Not a bad thing to concentrate your efforts and time on minimal building and race advancement. I don't know what this game is like, but I do know 2525 was about fleet interdiction, maneuver, and large battles, lots of them.

Galciv II is fine but some games aren't about micromanagement, complicated diplomacy, and ship redesigning everytime a tech breakthrough occurs. Sometimes its just fun to have a massive fleet show up at the right system for a meeting engagment.

[elmo3]

ORIGINAL: bartholimew

...Which did not have all of the superfulous fluff like ship design and ship building ....

One mans superfluous fluff is another mans meat. [8D]

[Aroddo]

ORIGINAL: Tom_Holsinger

Aroddo,

I'm talking about parts of MOO3 that work, and its diplomacy engine works both as a role-playing feature and as code.

I didn't stay around to look for the good parts of MoO3 ... as MoO2 fan I naturally stalked the developer forums and eagerly participated there ... and when it finally came out I got the shock of my life.
So I scratched that title pretty fast.

I was delighted earlier to learn that THE most successful turn-based 4x game innovation in MOO3 has been adopted for Armada 2526 - it's called "bureaucracy"

Well, since Matrix Staff is talking about it I guess I can leave a sentence here without violating the NDA: Yes, it's inside and oh boy, it works as intended.

Here I advocate incorporation into Armada of another successful MOO3 feature, plus expansion of some things which are already in Armada. IMO it is possible to add code "tags" to races, before the game's first release, which will speed up the addition, in a patch, of a feature which lets players create scripts which only particular races can use.

I think you lost me there. What tags`?

ORIGINAL: bartholimew

Uh this is Armada 2526, I would expect it to be called such because it retains some of the attributes from its predecessor Armada 2525. Which did not have all of the superfulous fluff like ship design and ship building and extreme diplomacy.

Hehe, I wrote to Bob (chief of Ntronium) that I liked the complete lack of diplomacy in 2525 because that made the gameplay so fast. He suggested I go to marketing for managing to sell "no diplomacy" as a feature instead of a shortcoming.


Anyway, the lack of ship design makes the gameplay more streamlined. It's probably one of the fastest and sleekest 4x games ever!

Never had so much fun since Master of Orion 2.

[Tom_Holsinger]

Arodoo, a "tag" is a programming term used by a Canadian programmer named Bhruic, who rescued MOO3 from unplayability with patches he developed based on a discovery that the complete MOO3 code documentation appeared on the Mac version CD.  He "tagged" each MOO3 race so players could use his patches to create racial-specific technology, and determine how many empires of each different race they want to have in a given game.  An example of the latter is having three of the twelve starting empires in a game be of the human race, with the other nine being chosen randomly.
 
As a programming matter, it would be somewhat easier for Ntronium to attach "tags" to each Armada 2526 race before the game is released, as opposed even though features which make use of such tags won't appear until later patches.  Ntronium might choose not to attach such tags at this point so as to better focus on more immediate, gotta-make-it-work before release problems, and delay here won't make it that much more difficult to attach tags in a patch, as well as features making use of the tags.

[Ntronium]

Tom, you can already choose what races you want in the game, and how many how many players of each. For modding, you can easily add race specific technologies and ships. Indeed, the game has many of these already.

[Tom_Holsinger]

Ntronium,

Can we have scripts limited to particular races? That will make a HUGE difference for role-playing.