Thread: Wishlist High level design thoughts
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Old January 5th, 2011, 04:15 PM

Skavian Skavian is offline
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Default Re: High level design thoughts

So, in reference to my post above, here is my actual post with actual thoughts!

Space fiction vs. space science
I haven't seen many games in the vein of Emperor of the Fading Suns in quite some time. Maybe I'm ignorant of the games out there like it, but for those of you who aren't aware EoFS is a PC strategy game from the 90's. It has a bizarre baroque and dark-aged flavored sci-fi setting, and was nominally about playing a faction in a shattered empire seeking to control a galactic throne. I see this more as a "space fiction" game based on the flavor and tone, whereas most games I have played recently (and this is just my feeling) tend to be more "space science." There is more focus on ship building, and less about the flavor of the universe.

I've played Sword of the Stars, Space Empires, Armada, Hegemonia, Galactic Civ 2, MOO2, Homeworld series, Gratuitous Space Battles and even Sins of a Solar Empire and I think by and large a lot of them have some focus more on building large fleets, sliding sliders around for perfect economies on mostly cut and copy worlds, and usually have some sort of combat system simulating realistic space battles. Not all of them have it, but there is a general theme around those things. There are elements of all of these games I like, but I started to think about what I wanted in a game derived from Dominions 3. I want the fiction. Dominions 3 is wildly creative and I am hoping for a space themed game very similar to it. The idea of creating a race and developing some sort of customized planetary theme is vastly interesting, and less so than landing on some "suitable habitable" planet just to have another place to build more ships or crank research. I am unaware, as of yet, of a sci-fi strategy game that does just that, but there are a fair number of fantasy themed games that handle it more intensely.

Stylistics are a big thing I think with a game, especially sci-fi. I think offering different looks and flavors would be a huge bonus to the game's appeal. Most space games tend to have an almost cookie-cutter modern sci-fi look to them, but I enjoy the mixture of Gothic architecture with space ships, or perhaps a sleek retro-Golden Age rocket feel. That is part of that fiction element that I mentioned. I tend to play a game like Dominions 3 because of the ridiculous stories that come with creating a god and slotting him into a race. It's much more of an "RPG" take to things, but with a larger than life scaling that you just don't get with an RPG. If a space game worked in those elements I think it would be really unique in the milieu of 4X's.

Combat!
The above being said as to the stylistic elements that are interesting, combat is the next big thing. I would say that out of the games I've played, Hegemonia was the most interesting. The development of crew, the hiring of special characters to man the ships, and the targetable areas of the ship were all pretty fascinating. I prefer turn-based over RTS, and I think Dominions 3 is a pretty good model for where a space based game could go. Setting up your fleets intimately might be more interesting in a space game provided there is not a unit overload. I am in favor of fewer ships, but the mention of scalability is appropriate I think, with possibly massive space battles and intimate smaller ones represented in the game. I'll branch out to something like the Warhammer 40K universe with its massive Gothic battleships when I think of the sort of combat that would be interesting. To have titanic battleships with hundreds of thousands of people on them floating about doing port side barrages: that's interesting stuff I think.

Then there's another portion that often gets left out: planetary invasions. To have the invasions actually play a factor in the combat system would be pretty fun as well. Maybe you play a race that specializes in guerilla take-overs of planets, sneaking a ship onto the surface so that commandos can run wild. Or maybe you're just about brute force, or incredible defense on a barricaded planet. Planetary combat should be interesting, involved, and as much of a part of the game as anything else. Maybe it could even take into account that worlds are big places and that a planet could have more than one faction on it battling it out on different continents (assuming there are only so many habitable worlds out there, therefore making every habitable planet a thing to covet).



Hope this was helpful, and maybe could offer some additional perspective! Excited to see what comes of this in any case since I love Shrapnel Games
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