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The New "Prototype Feedback" in the Vault!

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The New "Prototype Feedback" in the Vault!

My opinions; yours?

from GalCiv3 Forums

ERMAGERD! IT'S SO BEAUTIFUL! Well, metaphorically at least, lol.

This is by far the most substantial thing released to us so far, and honestly Stardock guys, you may as well have dangled a raw steak in front of a pack of rabid wolves. I ate that stuff right up... after reading one or ten times more. It's looking good, damn good, especially considering the current ETA of the release. 

For those that have seen it; what thoughts do you have on the screens and commentary? I have some feedback to offer myself based purely on what was seen:

(In no particular order...)

 

- On the planet management screen, I would like if the actual map of the planet was actually "filled" with hexes. I noticed that much of the pacific ocean as well as some of Indonesia and Hawaii and most of the poles were missing on the picture of Earth. As I said, it would be better if the currently unused space was used to display the remainder of the planet.

-The planets, aside from Earth and Drengi, don't have clouds (including Mars, Kona and the other habitable planets)

-I noticed that Mars is a class 10 planet, Earth is class 16 and Drengi is class 18. Are the planets in this game simply better? Is there some sort of starting option that tweaks this? Perhaps the value of individual tiles has gone down? Personally, I would like if there wasn't a superabundance of tile with correspondingly weak improvements, unless this adjacency bonus mechanic is pretty significant.

-The star textures are really badly distorted at their poles.

-The sector demarcation lines are a little too visible; it adds unnecessary visual clutter where a much thinner/duller line, perhaps of a different colour, would suffice.

-The tooltip on a planetary improvement has 'values' for mass driver, beam and missile weapons. Possibly some sort of planet auto-defense? How would that work with invasion transports? Can ships bomb these?

-I'd like if I could have a bottom-oriented UI; is there an option for this?

-Are those coloured polygons galactic resources?

-There's a picture with a huge nebula! More of these please! (Preferably with an abundance setting)

-The tile description 'arable land' has two pretty significant spelling/grammar errors; "Colonie" and "required to make a colony a valuable part of a growing civilizations"

-I disagree with point 12 on the list; don't get rid of the "BC" and "B" units at the end of numbers, it adds to immersion in my opinion by knowing the details of my planets. This is akin to planets in Sins of a Solar Empire having a few hundred inhabitants, instead of explicitly giving units.

-Planets should have an appearance and attributes that one would expect from a planet in their particular orbit around their particular star; planets one tile away around yellow, blue, purple stars should be hostile and volcanic, while one-tile orbits around red or white stars should have habitable planets and cool rocks. Extrapolate for other orbits and planet types.

-I noticed there's much more stellar size variation, given that there's a very small white dwarf star. Will there be multi-tile stars akin to supergiants?

 

That's all I can think of for now, what about you guys? Are any of my questions answerable Stardock guys?

:3

 

99,507 views 105 replies
Reply #101 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

If we are talking about exploits I would like to stay. Quiver at my feet or and tremble cause I'm researching planetary improvements or something else. The reason why I like this is because it did not matter if I had met them. The Thalans are my favorite when they are across the galaxy, and they have planetary adaption which is a tech no one else has. The thalans would make this very expensive, so no one else had this. Please keep this exploit.

Reply #102 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Re billions etc.:

Guys, I believe units just need to stay where they are :) It's not rocket science to make it visually appealing and present at the same time...

I support opinion that having units would feel more real (well, science part in SF). Using plain numbers feels like simplified tablet game.

Don't spoil the fun for people that like to have better immersion in the world and make it usable an friendly for people that don't care. It's doable.

 

Re Planetary conquest:

IMHO we could have two types of weapons for "bombing" purposes - mass destruction and tactical destruction.

Mass destruction - irreversible PQ loss. Kills more population. Used with intention to cripple enemy, not to take over the planet.

Tactical destruction - brings no or little PQ loss. Less powerful, kills less population. Used with intention of having planet as a prize.

This would bring more depth, more options and more realism without spoiling the fun I think.

 

Star Control: Origins
Reply #103 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I think a fun planetary conquest system could be something like a mix of Endless space for planetary siege and bombardment and the expeditiousness of GalCiv when time comes to invade.

 

It could go as follow.

1.Besiege planet: You regular fleet can besiege a planet. This cuts any trade route from it and prevents it from making new ships. It should probably also give it some productivity malus considering we are probably broadcasting horrible things to the inhabitants and destroying satellites.

2a. Invade planet: At this point you can invade the planet Good old GalCiv style with your transports.

2b. Bombard planet. Alternatively you can use specialized ships to bombard the planet to soften its defense prior to invasion. This is where you would use the special attack styles like mass driver or tidal surge or whatever. The Damage would take time to come in full effect so you would need to keep the siege going for a few turn to reap the full benefits. The most aggressive methods would yield permanent damage to PQ or infrastructure.

3. Next: Once the planet is conquered you move on to the Next one. You can reuse your transports and bombard fleet but the Transports would need to be "refitted". That means you need enough population and it would take a few turns to refit them.

 

Such a system would prevent Transport ship spam by reusing the ship but at the same time doing stuff takes a bit of time so if you want to conquer faster you need more ships. It would also give you a strategical choice between doing a Very fast 1 turn conquest, but at a high soldier cost, Vs. Doing a cleaner job but at the cost of more time.

 

Reply #104 from Elemental Forums Top

I wouldn't mind seeing a planetary invasion take multiple turns. First it would be more reasonable for conquering. It would allow allies or your civilization to counter invasions within their troop transports. But this might lead to a population system that identifies the military strength (armed citizens / military personnel) on the planet, so when one invades with 250 million troops on a planet with 3 billion people, not everybody is a soldier, and so the 3 billion people might have a military strength of 200 million or so. Then the battle is slowly calculated each turn as a series of casualties / planetary control on either end. Easily identified the progress by looking at the local hexes and seeing which hexes your troops have conquered vs. what needs to be conquered.

In summary, I'm for multiple turn invasions.

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Reply #105 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I think here we Stardock could take couple pages from MOO3 book. Even though land combat in it was incredibly limited and I never really got feel that any decisions I made had relevant impact, they did do pretty well multiple turn conquest of planet.

 

Perhaps SD could add selecting landing point for planetary invasion, with more important locations having higher defences so that you could pick either going for high value target to cripple enemy forces or softer beachhead. And then battle would flow over the colony map.