I've actually been waiting for a game like this for some time. ever since i read Foundation by Issac Asimov (i am guesing we wont have phycohistory).
and what i've seen so far looks just awesome good luck.
out of interest how stable will the starting empire be or will there be some way off deciding this?
will there be aliens or other foreign powers?
what kind of pops are we looking at ?
how will combat work(i hope its not a major focus )?
in general i am intrigued
Hey Sackhead,
I promised you a longer answer but I've been super busy this weekend. Here it is:
As far as ship combat and design, as an Emperor you won't be blueprinting your Empire's latest lethal designs ala Space Empires. Here's how it will work for the most part. First, you need to decide as the player what kind of Navy you want: small and fast? Large and ponderous fleets? Missile heavy? Beam and gauss dependent? Stealth capable?
You will then designate a research focus, say Fleet Protocol, and allocate research priority to that and maybe Missile Theory. You will eventually receive a breakthrough, but it will be a generated technology, so your missile technology might be a ASM-72 "Shrike" with long-range capability but with a small warhead, but a very high pK. You can then review the proposed weapon system for further development or scrap the project at this point, which keeps half the research in the area for potential additional ideas.
So if you like the basic idea of the weapon system, you can then designate the weapon system for Refinement status: higher range, higher pK, higher warhead? Higher stealth? You will have some more 'micro' control at that point, but you won't know exactly what improvement will occur until your research makes a breakthrough. Of course, all this takes time, money, and data (generated from labs). From there, you will have ship classes and the ability to designate roles, i.e missile fleet, beam fleet, carrier task force, etc. and your War Prime will create and deploy the fleets as he interprets your wishes.
To use a modern-day example, think of the President of the US saying to the Chairman of the JCOS, "We need fighter jets with better stealth technology that can put a missile in a bunker from 80 miles". Your design and science teams will take that general request and create the platform and weapons system from your request! Thus, you will have some control over the type of military without having to micromanage each design - and you won't quite know how each platform will turn out since they will be procedurally generated every game from your choices!
Ship combat will be very abstract for now. Think EU4/Victoria combat. As the Emperor, you can travel with your battle fleet for morale and inspiration, but you won't have direct control over the battle, nor will you manually move your fleets around the quadrant - that's what your admirals are for! You will instead issue War Plan Edicts.
War Plan Edicts are where basically you will be able to say, "Draw up a major fleet action in the Saragon Sector and execute within 6 months" - and your War Prime will create a battle plan based on your request and the amount of resources (read:ships and money) you allocate to his plan. The more time you give your War Prime to create and refine the war plan, the better your fleet will operate and the more ships he will be able to allocate.
War Plan Edicts can scope from a planet invasion to a sector assault, but failure to give your War Prime enough time or allocate enough ships to do the job properly could result in disaster (and your PoSup not looking too great) and if you repeatedly try to cut corners with your War Prime they can resign in protest at best - or simply plot to kill you at worst!
So that's Imperia's battle/ship system in a nutshell. Hope that helps!
-Steve