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[Hoverdog]

Hey guys, thanks for the comments! Really great brainstorming.

I have to admit that when creating a race I focus on gameplay effect more than realism or scientific plausibility (we're talking about FTL travel, living rocks and sentient AIs after all). However, making it completely ridiculous and implausible is far from our goals. I'll take your ideas into consideration (I liked the radioactive waste the best), and edit Krom description a bit.


:salute:

[Neonivek]

We have then a problem as there will be races too advanced, and in these kind of games the more advanced you are, the faster is your progress so we would never be able to keep up with them unless they don't advance at all (would be boring if only you had progress) or they would do it very slowly so you could reach and surpass them (feels like cheating).

While somewhat unrelated to the topic, as I doubt it leads to interesting dialog. While sometimes I like to apply to this situation is what I call the technological supperiority plateau which is something you see very strongly in Xcom.

For example in Xcom you are fighting against a space faring and much more technologically advanced alien threat. Yet all your weapons are somewhat effective against it (albiet you are shooting down mostly non-warships with warships) because super advances weapons and armor can only do so much. In Starcraft the Protoss are much more advanced then the Terran, but their conservationist tendencies (making things to last), overdeveloped garbage, and very static society is what allows the Terran to fight them on somewhat equal grounds, because the Terran are willing to dump huge amounts of resources into weapons that are unsustainable and are utilitarian in their designs.

There is an idea of being "Super advanced" but not "Super supperior", as well as ideas of being Supperior in some areas but not others.

Oddly enough it would be interesting if there were multiple technology tracks for each kind of technology type race. With a "Super track" for those super intelligent genius species and even a "Slow track" for dumb ones, they are equal in terms of utility but are drastically different in terms of what they end up with and what they develop along the way. It doesn't even have to be based on intelligence it could even be based off of their society.

A bit of a silly idea but it is the sort of things I think of when talking about ways that "Super advanced races" arn't always extremely advanced.

[Majestic7]

I like the concept of Laziness.

To extrapolate, if we look at history, the real killer of empires has been corruption. I'm not talking about just officials being bribed, I'm talking about institutional corruption, where friends give high positions to friends and rob the state together. Without a political system that is self-cleaning, empires become corrupt, it eventually ruins the infrastructure and military. Then they either fall to an outside invader or a great reformer comes and reverses the process, at least for a while.

The Byzantine Empire is a great example. It fell to corruption and invasions several times, but there were great leaders who managed to get it back together, before the final fall to Turks. Without the decadence and corruption, who knows how long Byzantines had lasted.

It would be interesting to portray this decadence and corruption somehow, so as the empire grows, you have meaningful internal politics and conflicts. As a fictional example, look at Ziru Sirka in Traveller, one of the oldest roleplaying games.

Edit: Maybe the rock-eating guys could have a special technology, which degrades the damage they do to the planets? Perhaps eventually eliminating it completely at some high cost - for example, they'd have to devote a portion of production to making synthetic whatever-they-eat. That would solve the problem of them eating themselves to death by destroying all viable planets.

[Hoverdog]

Icons!

[tiagocc0]

Neonivek, it is a good idea. But somehow difficult to portray in a game. I will keep it in mind.

Majestic7, corruption is a good indicator, but we already use it to split empires.
As the empire grows bigger, the corruption arises and then people revolt and the empire splits.
But maybe they can be used in conjunction.

[ScriptWolf]

Just checking out the home page is the evolution thing a joke ? ( not making a snarky comment ) it just seems so out of place, I thought I was looking at spore for a moment there.

Also I tech research will be more than just +1 speed or stuff like that I hope we have meaningful tech research, I'm still reading through the main page so I might answer my own question.

And in terms of late game research will there be really cool stuff like what you would expect off a super advanced race ? Like ability to create or destroy planets, great life forms, jump gates yada yada yada

Anyway really looking forward to this.

[Hoverdog]

Just checking out the home page is the evolution thing a joke ? ( not making a snarky comment ) it just seems so out of play, I thought I was looking at spore for a moment there.

Not a joke, just a early feature that we've decided to drop - I'm editing the writing on our webpage, so it'll disappear soon enough.

Also I tech research will be more than just +1 speed or stuff like that I hope we have meaningful tech research, I'm still reading through the main page so I might answer my own question.

Definitely. GalCiv's hundreds of thousands of small-scope technologies are simply BOOO-HH-RIIIING.

And in terms of late game research will there be really cool stuff like what you would expect off a super advanced race ? Like ability to create or destroy planets, great life forms, jump gates yada yada yada

Oh yeah!

[ScriptWolf]

How long till a kick start ? Really want to throw money at you

[Hoverdog]

How long till a kick start ? Really want to throw money at you

April, as soon as we have our demo ready. Tiago is working his ass off to integrate game mechanics into the build, so he can give a better estimate than me.

[tiagocc0]

Just checking out the home page is the evolution thing a joke ? ( not making a snarky comment ) it just seems so out of place, I thought I was looking at spore for a moment there.

Also I tech research will be more than just +1 speed or stuff like that I hope we have meaningful tech research, I'm still reading through the main page so I might answer my own question.

And in terms of late game research will there be really cool stuff like what you would expect off a super advanced race ? Like ability to create or destroy planets, great life forms, jump gates yada yada yada

Anyway really looking forward to this.

Evolution is a very old dream of mine.
With it you can create custom races that could have more or less than the amount of points you get from the normal custom race creation screen.
I imagine it as a fun way to create custom races. I will do it anyway as a free expansion after the game is released.
Ah, it would play much more like sim earth than spore. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/38/SimEarth_IBM_PC.png

[Kaje]

I adore the evolution idea, to be honest.

[Neonivek]

Neonivek, it is a good idea. But somehow difficult to portray in a game. I will keep it in mind.

What does this mean? Must put all resources into understanding! 

I said so many things. Though the only dirrect idea was about multiple technology tracks.

[tiagocc0]

Thanks Kaje!

Neonivek, it is a good idea. But somehow difficult to portray in a game. I will keep it in mind.

What does this mean? Must put all resources into understanding! 

I said so many things. Though the only dirrect idea was about multiple technology tracks.

To have advanced races that are advanced in different ways.
Races already have different traits, one is good at close combat, another at research, another at production, another at espionage.
While they are different they must be about the same level or the game is unbalanced.

To have an advanced race that competes on the same level as not advanced races however is very difficult because when a race reaches a certain level of technology it means that it already have everything in place, size of population, number of researchers, buildings and etc
So a race is not powerful because of their techs but the potential to research and manufacture ships.
Even with different traits it just means that each will take a different course of actions to reach the same goal.

In your case they would have completely different goals, completely different techs, completely different buildings. (Starcraft case)
For a game to work this way it needs to have 2 or 3 races (that's why they didn't make another race for starcraft)
Its very difficult to balance the game, each race is a completely different separated game and for a game with 10 races it becomes a nightmare. =D

One of our goals is to make completely different aliens, but we will do so with radically different traits. They will have different mechanics for some things while the same mechanics for others.
If we could however make them as different as starcraft then it would be great but also there is a great possibility we would spend years just to come up and balance those races.

Edit: One thing that makes it easier for starcraft is that the race is almost always the same over the course of the game while in a 4x it goes from just launched it's first ship to space to reached the ultimate knowledge. So I think we would have even more work than in an RTS.

[Neonivek]

I see (Had a longer response but I don't think it was condusive to the flow of the topic, even though it kills me not to post alternates AHH!)

I understand.

Edit: I mean AHHH!!! I am one of those people who feels tortured not saying something

[tiagocc0]

I see (Had a longer response but I don't think it was condusive to the flow of the topic, even though it kills me not to post alternates AHH!)

I understand.

Edit: I mean AHHH!!! I am one of those people who feels tortured not saying something

Feel free to tell us what you think, don't think of my post as harsh.. I was just pointing up my thoughts from a developer point of view.
It just happens that I spent lots and lots of time thinking of doing it like that.