Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[EuchreJack]

Anything more than a minute feels like forever.

I can probably accept a turn that takes up to 60 seconds.

[E. Albright]

However, I don't see AI helicopters or planes (yet).

IIRC, each major makes an initial decision to either make aircraft or ignore them in favor of nothing but AA countermeasures. I'm tempted to say it favors the latter.

[axiomsofdominion]

Anything more than a minute feels like forever.

I can probably accept a turn that takes up to 60 seconds.

I've always been curious if there was a way to let the player keep doing read only stuff during the AI turns. I think that would help people deal with longer times. I agree though that a minute or so is the limit for an enjoyable experience. Which is why I can't understand people who do PBEM and other stuff, like in Illwinter games.

[Salmeuk]

Anything more than a minute feels like forever.

I can probably accept a turn that takes up to 60 seconds.

I've always been curious if there was a way to let the player keep doing read only stuff during the AI turns. I think that would help people deal with longer times. I agree though that a minute or so is the limit for an enjoyable experience. Which is why I can't understand people who do PBEM and other stuff, like in Illwinter games.

this is a lovely idea, if you could say catch up with some of the bookkeeping while the A.I. took their turns. Setting up moves to then deploy once the game is finished with the calculations of the previous turn.

so I'm not the only one with rather lengthy and un-rewarding load times in this game? I suppose I am playing on planets that are large. It's frustrating when you cannot click through turns in a game, rapidly. It cheapens the experience of a turn based game when individual turns feel irrelevant compared to, say, chunks of 10 turns. But for many reasons it is tough to shift that around. Looking at Aurora 4x, with the choice of time segements as opposed to traditional single-turns, you can see the challenges of implementing such a granular system.

[axiomsofdominion]

In my own project I have 10 day "weeks" as turns, 40 a year. Which is a very short turn time. Part of that is to enable the social simulation for the characters. Part of it is combined with an "Attention Point" system. I'm still fiddling the numbers but my goal is like ~20 average cost actions per turn, so like simulating 2 "chunks" of a day. Something like you see in Academagia or other slice of life sim rpgs. But applied to a fantasy map and menu game with a world simulation like a strategy game.

There are social sim actions, strategy actions, management actions, and rpg actions, plus in rare cases adventuring or magical ability actions. The idea is to smooth things out so each turn has at least a few important decisions and then sometimes you do relationship upkeep actions or w/e.

With games like Civ and somewhat SE and also with Paradox games, though is is long stretches of speed 5 rather than empty turns, I feel like you are so often in the position of waiting for "yearly" actions like a new building during the pre-modern era or training an infantry unit properly, or 10 years of research on a new tech or w/e. Even on "significant" turns you are often doing maybe 1 or 2 major actions which then require multi turn waits. Usually this is filled with workers or military units doing pretty boring mindless actions. Especially worker units. Talk about alienation from labor jeez. It just doesn't feel good. Not only do characters add some framework for historical events but they add "immediate", "personal", "human-scale" actions for players. A worker unit building a railroad of obviously not "John Henry" doing it all alone, it is a large corp of faceless mooks represented by a boardgame style "token".

I'm not sure how much a truly character centered method of making turns feel meaningful on average could be transfered to something like SE but I think there's a decent amount you can do.

My one criticism of Shadows Of Forbidden Gods is how often you literally mash end turn 10 times doing absolutely nothing. And Shadow Empires improves on that somewhat since unlike SoFG you can have more than 5 "entities" to manage/control but you still end up with the Civ-esque dead turn issue.

For me "one more turn" always seemed a bit empty as an advertisement for 4X games because it was really like "in only 10 more turns I'll get to an interesting turn.

[Radsoc]

Probably 1-2 minutes per turn a bit into the game. Enough to make you want do other non-game things in the meantime. It could be alright for a one turn a day MP-setups though, like Illwinter does it.

[Culise]

However, I don't see AI helicopters or planes (yet).

IIRC, each major makes an initial decision to either make aircraft or ignore them in favor of nothing but AA countermeasures. I'm tempted to say it favors the latter.

Interesting. I wonder if the decision is weighted based on the planet's overall characteristics: air design is harder when you have lower atmospheric pressure, higher gravity/bigger maps, or both.  If it is, and if people regularly play on larger maps (as I do) or end up with relatively sparse atmosphere in the pre-game random generation, that might also play into how much they see AI air units - the AI might be looking at it and deciding it's just not cost-effective enough on this planet. 

[E. Albright]

Not sure but I'd lean towards no. I only play gigantic maps, so take this FWIW, but I've seen AI field aircraft on planets where you need thopters to get over 10 hex operational range, and multiple AA-only regimes on maps where turboprop can get you out to 25 hexes...

[EuchreJack]

Anything more than a minute feels like forever.

I can probably accept a turn that takes up to 60 seconds.

I've always been curious if there was a way to let the player keep doing read only stuff during the AI turns. I think that would help people deal with longer times. I agree though that a minute or so is the limit for an enjoyable experience. Which is why I can't understand people who do PBEM and other stuff, like in Illwinter games.

this is a lovely idea, if you could say catch up with some of the bookkeeping while the A.I. took their turns. Setting up moves to then deploy once the game is finished with the calculations of the previous turn.

so I'm not the only one with rather lengthy and un-rewarding load times in this game? I suppose I am playing on planets that are large. It's frustrating when you cannot click through turns in a game, rapidly. It cheapens the experience of a turn based game when individual turns feel irrelevant compared to, say, chunks of 10 turns. But for many reasons it is tough to shift that around. Looking at Aurora 4x, with the choice of time segements as opposed to traditional single-turns, you can see the challenges of implementing such a granular system.

...technically, you can read the reports as the turn processes (so in a turn with 3 battles, you can read about the first 2 while the third processes). 
If you don't mind risking the game breaking down on you mid-turn, which it will definitely do.

[Vivalas]

So the new naval stuff seems really interesting, but I can't help but notice that Vic is doing everything short of actually just implementing naval combat.

I'm obviously very grateful, it's a great game and he could have stopped before air forces and I would have still loved it, but i can't help but think it's a very strange design decision. I mean he's basically implementing naval combat at this point, but just keeping it out of the direct hands of the players, if I understand correctly.

[EuchreJack]

Wow, I didn't realize there was a naval update!

[Karlito]

It's not out yet, but there have been some posts on his blog.

[EuchreJack]

Thanks for the explanation and link!

[LoSboccacc]

It's not out yet, but there have been some posts on his blog.

What a weird decision, you get to tell which soldier goes in combat with boots tied and whom not, but everything sea is maritime guilds

[( Tchey )]

I think it’s a smart move, so you don’t do just the same for sea, or air, or land, but something slightly or completely different.
I don’t like if sea (or air) is simply another land but more wet.