DLC Ship Packs - Pros and Cons

Over my dead body  . Unless of course they are free.

DLCs are just because developers could not finish the game and thought it would be a smart idea to sell those parts as DLCs.

So you plan in making a game with A, B, C, D, E, F, G, but budget and time only allowed for A to D. So you wrap it up and announce E, F, G, as DLCs and charge for it.

Depending on what SC: Reboot ends up being would determine what kind of DLC would be allowable.

But Ship Packs... maybe Stardock later on got permission from Paul and Fred and so they made the SC1 and SC2 ships for SC: Reboot then yes I could consider that as a DLC Ship Pack.

Well... The alternative is that the developer does not get paid. At the end of SC2 (which went over budget and took 2 years rather than 14-18 months), Paul and Fred weren't being paid. According to the GDC postmortem, Fred had to dip into his savings to help pay his and Paul's bills.

I'm willing to pay extra for E-G if E-G are canon but did not make it into the main game. To put things in perspective using today's environment, I'd have paid extra for Chenjesu, Mmrnmhrm, and Androsynth ships for SuperMelee if it meant that Paul and Fred would have had an extra week's worth of paychecks.

Well the truth is all the $99 founders don't have worry about it because if we do any of that you guys get it for free. :) 

Ehhhh, I would rather see them adding whole races as DLC rather than just ships. Kind of like what Firaxis has done with extra civilizations for Civilization V. We don't know yet how the game will be played, but I'm hoping for a semi-random galaxy so that each game is unique while maintaining a core story for you to explore. Slotting new races into the game as DLC should be no big deal in that case and that would be much more marketable since it would appeal most players, not just SuperMelee fans.

I think DLCs should simply add more... of everything - more music. more art, new areas/dimensions, new quests, may be even races. Just don`t make them... semi mandatory for best experience of the initial release. Like ME3 did with Prothean. I hope you get the point. If artwork, ideas. writing are great - people will buy DLCs. Just don`t make them - green-red skin for the ships or smth. along this line.

DLCs should expand the universe, perhaps open up new galaxies (with other stars/quests/aliens/ships/whole shebang) for the player to explore.  

If a DLC is a ship pack or anything else that may alter melee or multiplayer play, then it shouldn't be allowed for use in multiplayer unless all participating players have it.

Quoting Vaelzad, reply 3

Well the truth is all the $99 founders don't have worry about it because if we do any of that you guys get it for free.  

I'm looking out for the nonfounders!

I agree with you, but I think DLC races should be more epic than a few ships. They are expansion level content. When a new alien gets added (and you can talk to them, etc), you need a backstory, an outcome, and quests. They need to be more than a pretty/ugly face and a new ship.

I agree with this 100%. DLC ships should only be playable via network multiplayer if everybody has access to them. This is doubly true when the DLC ship is the best counter to a non-DLC ship or if the DLC ship is best-in-class overall. It isn't fair to the player without DLC access.

Not sure how modular the new SC is going to be (I assume fairly so), but one type of DLC that seems under utilized is for mechanics/framework. Often see interviews where devs had cool ideas for a system that had to be cut, due to time or complexity constraints. Would add to the longevity/building of additional universes by the community, as well. Though might need to throw in some assets to avoid controversy, since there's trouble with perceptions of time needed to create "background" elements.

Agree with the player segments for DLC versus non-DLC ships too. Not often a good idea to divide up the audience, but here that definitely makes sense.

And not sure if it's true for the general public, but for me, the nickle-and-dime DLC generally prevent me from buying games. Opening Steam and seeing 20+ tiny packs of indeterminate worth means I wait for the complete bundle to get the game itself, if it ever has one (as it's not worth trying to sift through it all). 

Back to the question from the OP: If I wasn't a founder, I wouldn't shell a dime for a new ships DLC.

To me, Supermelee is not such an attraction.  I'm in for the exploration part, the dialogues part, the humor and the aliens.  

Combat during exploration?  YAY!

Combat for the sake of combat? Meh.

What about combat for the sake of playing with friends and family?

Honestly, the idea of dlc packs being introduced like Civ 5 civ packs is very appealing. especially if my interpretation of Stardock's vision is correct. That is to say, you download the pack, and now suddenly your single player campaign has new territory procedurally added to your galaxy that includes all content associated with that pack.

Facing my GF, mother or cousin in combat?  Assuming THEY would be interested, still Meh.  

When I want to play with friends, we have a D&D session, play Vampire:TM or play Carcassone or another board game.

So Meh, Meh and re-meh.

That's too bad, but I understand.  SC2 was predominantly a single player RPG. Yet SuperMelee plays to the crowd that likes to play video games in a social setting. It's one of those games that you can quickly pick up the rules to and start playing.

Did you ever play SuperMelee with another human?

Yup.  With my late sister. We had some fun, but we immensely preferred playing the campaign together, coop mode.  We fought together, one person manning the fire and secondary ability, while the other one was the pilot, steering the ship.

Breaks my heart, sorry to hear about your sister dude.

Oh, that was a great way to play. I'm hoping for a co-op campaign.

Specifically addressing DLC ship packs, I would be ok with paying for liscensed ships / cross promotions / etc that were tweaked for supermelee balance. Say there was a cross promotion done with the Endless Space ships available, or so on, as a pack made to work in SC2. If it was a reasonable price, I'd be happy to see that kind of collaboration.

Not sure how it would work in the main campaign at all, but could see things like that being made available to modders and campaign builders as something useful. 

For DLCs I could imagine an "alternate reality pack".

Where the game plays as normal but somewhere in the middle of the game there is an interdimensional invasion from the ones you cannot UNSEE and you have to fight them at the same time as the original baddies (or you momentarily become allies with your enemy to fight the interdimensional aliens), of which when the interdimensional aliens are defeated the game ends with the original enemy becoming part of the alliance or something. Or a truce/peace treaty is made with them to last 100s of years.

The thing for me is, I hated the combat.  I would usually take one of every races ship in my fleet (just because)... but for combat I would just use my main overpowered ship.   If this was a universe where SC2 had DLC, I wouldn't bother with it for that reason alone.

If the combat is fixed in this version... I would want them all!

What did you feel was broken?