Matrix Games Forums

The DW galaxy is alive. But the life in the galaxy is boring.

Theres a smattering of races, some of them can live on desert worlds or ocean moons, even a couple that can handle volcanics. But every race is functionally identical-- they have populations, build cities, etcetera.

One thing that would be interesting for an expansion, especially in the mold of a so-called living galaxy, would be different KINDS of civilizations. This was the absolute best thing about sword of the stars-- i could care less about that game EXCEPT for the hivers. Totally different method of interstellar travel, and a strategy that fits my playstyle very well.

Imagine a world that has been entirely taken over by a single plant organism, feeding both off the heat from the core, the water of the oceans, and the light of the nearby star. Such a world could spawn fleets of ships to take its seed to the stars. Not much need for trade or entertainment when your primary concern is decomposing all other forms of life down to nutrients.

Theres some bug races out there in the galaxy, but they're all pretty much good ol' Klackon clones. They get bonuses to reflect their species, but theres nothing really different about them. How about making them run a little differently too-- make em REALLY hungry such that invading a planet with BILLIONS of enemy souls would enable a feeding frenzy, where one can gain large bonuses while stripping the world devoid of life.

Finally, looking again to previous games for inspiration, how about something like the old Star Control 2 Mycon-- a species that focuses on terraforming--well, shattering-- worlds to enable their growth. A fungal species that causes apocalyptic conditions and rends the crust of a warm, sunny planet, then goes in and basks in the thermal warmth.

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Theres thousands of worlds in the large galaxy. Theres no reason a game like DW has to remain fettered to the classic mold of 4x-- colony rush, tech barter, military buildup, whack a mole. It would be possible to introduce some real scourges to the galaxy, and make it much harder for the standard style races to wipe eachother out.

A good suggestion, i will make sure i am ready with some Round Up.

This is the reason the modders like myself want the ability to mod in new species and family types.

Imagine:

-A robotic race who has no use for 'organic meatbags'. They need minerals to 'reproduce' and solar power to keep running.
-Silicon based life forms that need minerals as food, and will wipe out any other species that gets in their way.
-'Gas Bags' that float in the upper atmosphere of gas giants filtering out the nutrients they need (yes borrowing from MoO here).

Each one of these is different, unique, and would be competing with the other races not just to build and expand, but need those resources for their very survival. One can imagine the reaction when your food source is used as fuel for a human's starship...it threatens your very existance.

A game that is flexible enough to let people use their imaginations and enable great gameplay as a result would be grand. I am hoping DW is up to the challenge to provide that framework. I myself am tired of the cookie cutter 4x games with the standard terran, insect, avian, silicon, reptile and aquatic looking species to populate a map.

Here I can only emphasise on my vague suggestions in the topic thread tm.asp?m=2505556&mpage=1&key=&#2508478

To summ up my thoughts on this: a huge tech tree enabling different gameplay approaches weighted on preferencies of different races/cultures. A key might be to come out of a races psychology. Say an insectoid race would think in hives, mothers, queens, eggs, and so on, while crystalline race may think in regular space constructions, patternizing everything... like space structures build in a special spatial relation(order) to each other give some bonuses.. just like crystals... other races like avians may have fast but not exact jump-engines and so on..

I am NOT telling that the same trivial classes (humans, crystal, insect, avian, water, gas.. etc) are to be presented as they usually are, but there is much space for fantasy. Just using imagination, thousands of interesting ideas and combinations can be acheived. All in all.. such games are just sets of dynamic mathematical equations tied with real-world minds gestalt system... so to invent a race, you may take a real world concept..

Say we take 'conduction'. So here we get that for interstellar travel some kind of conducts (there may be resistance depending on connected planets properties or in-way stars or blackholes and stuff) are to be used, and that during a battle, special type ships can conduct enemy blaster fire energy, say, dissipating it, or even retranslating it to other special ships floating in some distance which convert the energy into fuel and then can resupply ships... while the main fleet is actually attacking the enemy..

Take 'escalation' concept.. here we can make a special component which overload weapons or temporary copy enemy's ship component but of a higher grade... or a component that in case of the ships destruction, instantly teleports another [pre-built and pre-set existing] ship in its location.. just imagine this way of protected exploration... (balancing can be acheived by, say, limiting the mass of the transported ship and costs..) WHAT A CHANGE OF GAMEPLAY!!!

Literally, imagination can go on eternally... just think of 'inversion', 'coherence', 'timing', 'mirroring' and so on... all you have to wory about is the maths... i mean, when imagination turns into computer calculations, all you have to care about is balancing the equations..

I too think these are wonderful suggestions.

Armada 2526 moves in the direction of totally different motivations for different races. Some are complete Xenophobes that get victory points for killing enemy population, some are peace loving trees that give VP for happy population, whatever the type. Other races only get VP for their own race, no matter the population happiness/unhappiness. Some races are pirates roaming without a homeworld, they plunder planets and move on. Other races get P for tech levels only, etc. Pretty interesting system, but I prefer Distant Worlds, more action and a "living" galaxy, ship design, spies, etc. Would be nice if DW took some hints from Armada along the lines of its race-variable VP system and tech based wormhole system.