Genre of Star Control

Paul and Fred wanted a hybrid game, and that's what they liked to deliver.

Archon was boardgame strategy and action.

SC1 was 4E strategy and action.

SC2 was adventure and action (with RP elements).

I would expect SCR to be adventure and action (with RP elements).

This is why you see a great deal of division from some of us. I liked the action elements more than I liked the RPG elements. That puts me on Team SuperMelee. We are a minority here, but that's okay... Vaelzad's got my back!

SC2 was RP and action? There's not nearly enough RP elements to call it RP.

It's an obvious adventure/action hybrid.

That's exactly what I expect the new SC to be. None of that leveling up and crafting nonsense.

Quoting Hunam_, reply 2

SC2 was RP and action? There's not nearly enough RP elements to call it RP.

It's an obvious adventure/action hybrid.
That's exactly what I expect the new SC to be. None of that leveling up and crafting nonsense.

You are right. I was using Roleplay and Adventure synonymously, when I should not have.

I will update my post. SC2 was an adventure /action hybrid with RP elements. (RP elements = upgrading your main ship)

EDIT: Done... But an FYI: The game needs some RP elements. Harvesting RUs drove me to explore.

RP elements in terms of mechanics? Not Really.

RP elements in terms of significant choices & consequences? A little bit.

Amusingly, I think the Thraddash were the only part of SC2 that allowed for different outcomes based on player choice. You could "conquer" them and establish a new culture (get their ships), trick them by sending them to fight the Kohr-Ah, or have the Ilwrath destroy them.

Oh, and the Pkunk, too, in a limited way. Merged with Yehat, or not.

The other races could be dealt with in only one specific way, or with only small variations. You could be hostile, or not, but that was mostly it. Needless to say, I'd want to see more choices in SCR, as with the Thraddash.

This is why I took the lead from Hunam_ and split the definition in my post. When I use "RP" or "RPG", I'm talking about level-up / power-up mechanics.

There needs to be SOME sort of RP mechanic in place, though, to encourage further combat and exploration. SC2's RU/credit system was too basic and topped out a specific point. Combat an exploration became a chore once you bought everything you could. (Vaelzad agreed and said that SCR was going to address this.)

I agree.

I wouldn't even call it a chore tbh. At that point there was nothing relevant to explore left. Once I had everything, bought all the Melnorme intel, and followed every rumor, that still left large areas of unexplored space. No reason to explore them, cause you basically knew nothing interesting could be left there.

I think of Star Control 2 as an adventure game that uses two different arcade action mini-games to represent travel/combat in space and exploration on planets.  There really aren't any RPG elements in it.  I would like to see SC2 remain a very simple game, that is great for what it is.  This is the hardest type of game to make into a great game.  Like checkers, chess, and backgammon... these are the hardest types of games to design.  Something that is inherently simple and yet endlessly complex in its actual play.  I think the best version of Star Control they could make would be a game that remained simple enough for any 12 year old to just pick up a gamepad and start playing, and yet complex enough in its actual play to satisfy a hardcore gamer like me... with a timeless graphic look like Team Fortress or Buggs Bunny.

Because of this, I am really against adding RPG elements, tech trees, or any of the things designers use to make the design of the game complex because the actual gameplay isn't.  Star Control should be more like chess than Star Fleet Battles.

 I also think of Star Control as unique, and not really in any of the known genres.  It's like the Rush or Pink Floyd of computer games.  What kind of music is Rush?  It's not metal, it's not 70's rock.  It's just Rush.

EDIT:  I'll add another example.  While I have played a lot of the galactic strategy games that have been made, like Master of Orion, Galactic Civilizations, and Sword of the Stars... I don't actually like them much as a "Grand Strategy Galactic Wargame", I just like them for what they are.  Civilization in space.  The legacy of Master of Orion (which I am actually partially responsible for in a very small way, but we won't go into any conspiracies among the SFB staff that may or may not have occurred:-) has caused this.  So nobody has ever actually made a grand strategy game in space, they have just made Civilization in space over and over again and they are all ultimately the same.  No strategy wargame at all, just a single massive fleet of death easily crushing whatever it chooses to crush.  There is a lot too these games, but none of it is in the gameplay it's all in the game design.  So they have tons and tons of "stuff" piled on to make the game seem large and complex when, in reality, there is almost no strategy wargame there at all.  These games are the exact opposite of what I think SC should be... all game design and no game.

Star Control 2 to me, was the first game for me that fully realized the vision of being a commander in space, in a huge open universe where you can make a difference.

It is a stew of a bunch of genres:

• an arcade space shooter
• an exploration game
• rpg-esque dialogues

But, at the end of the day it transcended all of those things and let us live out the childhood dreams of being a spaceship captain in a large hostile universe, that we can affect and save or doom.  That over-archiving design transcends any of the ingredients in the stew in my opinion.  As long as they keep that concept right the new Star Control will be awesome.

I'm a sucker for these sorts of things.  After all, I'm in this founder program and I'm so plugged in to Star Citizen development I could spew esoteric details for hours.

Thing only tangible outcomes that affected gameplay (that I could see) with the Thraddash seemed to be that either you could use their ships or not.  If you got them to fight the Kohr-Ah or if you sent the Ilwrath on them, it really had no other effect on gameplay.  It would make sense that, for example, each side somehow got weaker over time as they were at war with each other.  And I'm not talking about the spheres of influence getting smaller, I mean that there should be noticeable concentrations of ships in conflict areas and far less ships everywhere else in their territory so travelling through them was less risky, or encounters with ships of either side were with damaged or derelict ships making your job easier if you had to deal with them, etc.  Things that highlighted the fact that a war was going on that changed how you proceeded.

I agree that SCR should not become an RPG, but there are some elements of RPG gameplay that make sense here (I'm a pro-crafting, pro-unique-foe, pro-unique-loot guy).  But my two cents to the OP's topic: I think SCR is an action/adventure arcade game.  Generally speaking, I'd like to see SCR be more like R-Type than Eve, more like Diablo than Skyrim. 

... and, nothing at all like SC3!!!

If you got them to fight the Kohr-Ah or sent the Ilwrath on them, their part of the Ultron was left unguarded, so you could pick it up with no resistance. If you befriended them, they allowed you to land near the holy shrine to the same end. Yeah, the effects on gameplay were very limited, but at least the game offered you a couple of different ways to influence the fate of the Thraddash within the narrative. That was already more than what was possible to do with many other races.

Anyway, no need to convince me that it would be cool to have events with more impact on actual gameplay. I'm all for that.

Not a fan of too much crafting. I don't want to keep spending my time trying to develop tech when I have science geeks at the starbase to do that. I do believe we shoule be able to capture and reverse engineer alien tech.