04-08-2001 21:13									#61
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

You may get some Unnecesary game design details in games,
but it is the details and hidden rules that make a game last so long.. if you keep finding new things in a game each month your more likely to play it for many more months.

I'm working on a big 'epic' game, with a few others off and on,
and I think the best way to add lots of details (as I am intending to) like units with varying fuel and ammo amounts, needing resupply.. is to make it easily manageable by the player, like a transparent interface where , for example, the unit AI would automatically take itself back to base for refueling and the player would be responsible for building/arranging bases and supply outposts (land/sea/air based tankers etc) to refuel the units sufficiently to maximise their offensive abilities.

I guess the devil is in the detail - i think the saying is, meaning we won't know wether games like moo3 or civ3 are good till we can play them for a few months and analyse and look at the details which make up the whole game.

Admiral Pete
continuing author of the game Mantra (details to come someday)

	04-08-2001 23:23									#62
	Support Apolyton

Well, assuming good reviews and few bugs, I'll pick up MOO3. Civ3 I'll probably wait on, I know it will get good reviews no matter what, but just how "conservative" it is will determine how long I wait to get it.

As for the person who said IPF's could be the big stumbling block, well, perhaps, but I find it brillant. All along these games have played out slightly like chess; you're expected to make the best possible "move." Which I can generally do, I'm pretty good at micromanagement. This means that nobody beyond a certain skill level uses AI automation. It is, after all, inefficient since you can generally manage better than the AI.

Quicksilver has got the brillant idea that your advisors and lower-downs will all make ACCURATE decisions, not neccesarily the best ones, based on your culture, religions prevalent, etc. I think this is GREAT. It makes your culture matter, and it stops you from micromanaging, but you can feel good about it because you have no choice. Since when it's neccesary, nobody does it.

IPF's are a major stumbling block, but if they get it right, it will rule.

I quit on my game when I realized that the rules to determine the hunger level of your character were over fifteen pages long. Pleh.

What kind of bizarre psychotic rampage were you on when you wrote those 15 pages up? Unless this is a game on the Planet of the Grapes or something where hunger is dramatically important and the game revolves around eating...

I'd actually be interested in seeing these 15 pages, if you still have them around (So, if it's been two hours or less since you last sucked somebody's blood OR you have an astck-lal, see Table 5-A. If it has been between two hours and four hours, check Table 5-B. If...).

P.S. All you ship designers... the pre-patch Plasma Cannon simply ruled. You could certainly stick them on your ships long before you got Achilles Targeting Systems or the space to do X-piercing Phasers, and they were automatically enveloping. Stick 10 of them on a battleship and watch it crush everything.

My complaint about ship design in MOO2 was that the special systems were always based on size, which made no sense a lot of the time, like the Warp Interdictor. So it only requires 1 unit of space in a Frigate, and works just as well as a huge one in a Doom Star...? It would have been nicer to be able to load more specials onto the bigger ships, but I usually passed in favor of lots of weapons. I'd just take Battle Pods, Reinforced Hull, and perhaps Heavy Armor if I had it. Very occasionally an Inertial Stabilizer, and sometimes I'd make a Troop ship with Transporters and Troop Pods (usually only done when playing a Telepathic race).