Covenant wrote:There was no Sim Empire, sorry to be confusing, I was referencing a thing I had said earlier when I nodded to Tropico. If you can imagine your empire growing similar to how your city grows in Sim City 2000 or whatever (that was the last one I played), I think that would be a good model for making everything feel tied together and actually modeling a little of how interdependent things are. It'd also be nice to see the 50% slum, 35% middle class, 15% gleaming towers ratio of those Sim City games applied to an interplanetary empire.
As well as having there be plenty of work trying to keep everyone happy.
Ah I see, that sounds like an interesting idea. You'd have a 'core' worlds or systems, with the homeworld and your earliest colonies that have grown prosperous and become capital worlds. Then you'd have the next ring, which would be colonies that have just grown to the point where they're starting to make contributions to the civilisation as a whole, and then you have an outer rim which consists of planets that are newly colonised and haven't broke even yet, to chronically underfunded, underdeveloped and underpopulated backwaters. Also, to carry that idea to other areas, some large colonies might be heavily populated but because of a lack of development and funding, have become slums.
You could probably do a lot of exploration in modern games. Something that I think is waaaaay overdone is colonization. If colonies are a serious long-term investment and highly expensive (not just a colony ship) then you have a real good reason to explore thoroughly for a good world.
Well the hilarious thing is how you just buy a Colony Ship and send it to a planet and boom, that's 'colonisation'. When really, you'd be sending colony ships filled with people every week or month to settle a planet (and those colony ships would be less one-use vessels, but actually civilian transport and cargo vehicles). A colony would need supplies as well, it would take years if not decades for it develop enough infrastructure to be self-sufficient. These transports being delayed or destroyed due to space pirates (it's a cliche but its a good reason to build a military to not just whack uppity aliens but also protect your internal trade and infrastructure) would have a ripple effect, as colonies starve and then grow disaffected and start getting rebellious. Having your other colonies react can also be an interesting thing. Say you put down one rebellion harshly, that might cow some systems into line or it might tip other systems further toward rebellion.
The 'interconnectedness' of civilisation should really be a focus for these games. Say that some colonies break away and form a rival if minor empire in your backyard, do you go to war with them and bring them to heel (which will cost heaps of money and might leave you vulnerable to say any alien neighbours you have) or do you leave them alone and try to deal with them diplomatically (and based on the success or failure of this, can either become an ally or an enemy that strives to destabilise you). Things like law & order, space crime and so on, could be addressed in the game as well. Results differ based on whether you're playing as a dictator or as a federation or republic. (Galciv2 kinda had this but in a vague sort of way, if you choose anything other than Empire as your political system you get better economic bonuses but you also have to work harder to keep your civilisation aligned and happy with itself, the problem there is the assumption that people who are unhappy will tend to rebel or 'disappear' from paying tax which is one of those bizarre things Galciv2 had)
Diplomacy is another thing that needs heaps of work. These games sort of make a mockery of diplomacy by having them just be avenues to fob off crappy techs you've researched and to get some quick cash or good will as a result. I am thinking of a diplomacy model that involves characters you 'recruit' so to speak, who have different values and opinions and attitudes and temperaments - say this was a Star Trek game, you've got two diplomats who you can send to the Klingons, one is a logical Vulcan, the other is a hot-headed Andorian, maybe the Andorian would be better because the Klingons respect feisty people at the bargaining table, while the Vulcan would be better to send to the Romulans, who are more calculating. It's a similar concept to how some games deal with personalities in your military, like you have an Admiral who's background was a space fighter pilot, so put him in charge of a fleet and you get options available for using space fighters. Put a General in charge of a ground assault, but if his background was in tanks or infantry, you'd get different results based on what equipment and personnel he has available.
And if you had most surveying done by cheap probes, which were then slowly scouted by actual ships, you might have a bit more sense of "uncovering the mysteries of space" than you do now, while not actually slowing the game any.
I like the idea that you come into a system, and there could be a dozen planets in it, you're not going to know anything other than basic astronomical information (ie how many terrestrial planets there are, how many gas giants, how many moons etc) but to actually see what you have in a system requires survey teams and follow-up expeditions. That's a great way to 'keep exploring' even after you've gotten a good look at the territory of the map and have started planting your flag on various planets. Even into the middle or late game, follow-up expeditions could still be possible.
Hell, even after you've colonised a planet, you can still 'explore it' because really, you'd only have selected a couple spots for a colony centre, while the rest of the planet would be an unknown jungle. Or tundra or here's a though, actual varied terrain. Of course you could also colonise vacuum worlds or asteroids as well, which should be the easiest/default method IMO. Actual life-bearing planets should be rare, especially without extensive terraforming. 4X games take colonisation for granted, planets are either Class M or Class Nearly-M, or Class-Lol don't even think about landing here, the atmosphere is acid. You can't even look at it without your eyes hurting.
It occurs to me that a lot of these ideas are very ambitious, since they challenge the preconceptions of traditional 4X games.
Stark wrote:And holy shit, the Space UN not being an actual usable Space UN is fucking retarded. Even giving one turn heads-up on issue would have allowed some actual scheming.
Yeah, I know. It would be nice actually if the game doesn't even have a Space UN at the start, and instead it gets formed when there is a critical mass of civilisations that have met each other (let's say 4 or 5 minimum before someone, doesn't even have to be the player, opens the idea of having a neutral forum where every race can be heard and discuss things that affect everyone). The best part would be how the High Council that gets formed would turn into something like the P5, and then you have minor races or breakaways get up and say 'lol what about us', and they either get brought into the fold or they go off and make their own rival forum.
I have no idea how you would even implement that, but it would be awesome.
