Some development Questions
from 
GalCiv2 Forums
GalCiv2 Forums
First off let me say that I've been waiting for a good 4x engine (contemplated writing my own and still am, but webbased) with a high degree of flexibility for a long time and I think I may have found it.
a shameless plug to my previous and current work is http://warlords.swrebellion.com and I have plans
In fact I'll simply outline them...
the original 'Warlords' concept was of the events surrounding the imperial civil war in StarWars (6 years after the movies) and the destruction the Warlords did when fighting each other. Now this game engine is capable of about 90% of what I want to do on the strategic level, there are a few things I wish were included (see below) but the ship building concept really got me thinking...
essentially Tie fighters are all based around standard components, you can break them down to 4 hulls and multiple different weapons and wing configurations (along with other abilities), this takes care of 90% of the fighter sized craft
corellian vessels are by design ugly, custom and modular, no further explanation
some frigates like the strike cruiser are modular vessels
capital warships like star destroyers show great variety during this time period, and there are LOTS of hardpoints (though need a way to limit big hard points.
I think the rest is self explainitory
A few features I'd love to see for modding (or the ability to expose functionality that already exists)
carrier modules, allows ships with 0 psc movement speed to be carried in a fleet (tell me if I'm wrong on this) other wise ships with 0 movement can only engage in battle in thier sphere of influence (around where they are built)
are modifiers integer or can they be float?
email based gameplay, this sounds stupid to some, but since the game doesn't have any multiplayer... but really if you write out an XML of all of a players orders you can submit that to another game and treat it as AI? in fact if you take the concept one step further, someone can make a webapp that reads the XML.. the possibilities are excellent (many people play turned based webgames....
Energy stats on ships. Providing another limiting factor to ship growth, one thing I want to do is have ships with limited hull designs but the ability to stick lots of small modules on them, essentially limiting the total 'size' of the addons and limiting the total power they can use, adding a reactor module type works, right now the only option is to make a hull with 0 size and then have people buy reactors that award negative size to them to allow them to build additional stuff worth lookign into, but it sounds code intensive
Long shot on this, but Characters. If you ever played star wars Rebellion/supremacy you know how much it can add to the game, and honestly modders go apeshit insane over this (our website has 1000's of characters from many modders) the basic essentials is that characters
A) can be assigned to planets and fleets
either provide stat boosts to where they are (admirals, generals, diplomats, etc) and/or provide global modifiers (+1 research)
C) they can be one of a kind or generic (think of it as a admiral module) if they are one of a kind they can die or be captured
D) they are recruited on planets or show up randomly as events
E) they can go on missions, sabotage, espionage, diplomatic, rebel rousing
I strongly suggest looking into this as a 'future feature' I know it will be used to an amazing extent by modders
I'll have more ideas later
a shameless plug to my previous and current work is http://warlords.swrebellion.com and I have plans
In fact I'll simply outline them...
the original 'Warlords' concept was of the events surrounding the imperial civil war in StarWars (6 years after the movies) and the destruction the Warlords did when fighting each other. Now this game engine is capable of about 90% of what I want to do on the strategic level, there are a few things I wish were included (see below) but the ship building concept really got me thinking...
essentially Tie fighters are all based around standard components, you can break them down to 4 hulls and multiple different weapons and wing configurations (along with other abilities), this takes care of 90% of the fighter sized craft
corellian vessels are by design ugly, custom and modular, no further explanation
some frigates like the strike cruiser are modular vessels
capital warships like star destroyers show great variety during this time period, and there are LOTS of hardpoints (though need a way to limit big hard points.
I think the rest is self explainitory
A few features I'd love to see for modding (or the ability to expose functionality that already exists)
carrier modules, allows ships with 0 psc movement speed to be carried in a fleet (tell me if I'm wrong on this) other wise ships with 0 movement can only engage in battle in thier sphere of influence (around where they are built)
are modifiers integer or can they be float?
email based gameplay, this sounds stupid to some, but since the game doesn't have any multiplayer... but really if you write out an XML of all of a players orders you can submit that to another game and treat it as AI? in fact if you take the concept one step further, someone can make a webapp that reads the XML.. the possibilities are excellent (many people play turned based webgames....
Energy stats on ships. Providing another limiting factor to ship growth, one thing I want to do is have ships with limited hull designs but the ability to stick lots of small modules on them, essentially limiting the total 'size' of the addons and limiting the total power they can use, adding a reactor module type works, right now the only option is to make a hull with 0 size and then have people buy reactors that award negative size to them to allow them to build additional stuff worth lookign into, but it sounds code intensive
Long shot on this, but Characters. If you ever played star wars Rebellion/supremacy you know how much it can add to the game, and honestly modders go apeshit insane over this (our website has 1000's of characters from many modders) the basic essentials is that characters
A) can be assigned to planets and fleets
either provide stat boosts to where they are (admirals, generals, diplomats, etc) and/or provide global modifiers (+1 research) C) they can be one of a kind or generic (think of it as a admiral module) if they are one of a kind they can die or be captured
D) they are recruited on planets or show up randomly as events
E) they can go on missions, sabotage, espionage, diplomatic, rebel rousing
I strongly suggest looking into this as a 'future feature' I know it will be used to an amazing extent by modders
I'll have more ideas later
