GalCiv IV: Supernova Dev Journal #1 - The 2023 plan

nice! and improve the custom race creator to support animated photos or gifs so you can create much better looking civz

With respect to the "Totally new combat system" I have the following suggestions:

1. Whatever you decide to do with weapons, defenses, etc. give clear and complete descriptions of:
   1. how each one works
   2. their relative strengths and weaknesses vs. each other.
2. When you describe how the new combat system works, make sure combat actually works that way!  The fact that the current combat system does not work as advertised is very annoying.  Fixing this issue will go a long way to making the game more satisfying.
3. Assuming you are going to continue to have fleet combat, I would really like to have the ability to specify which of my ships will attack each of the ships in the enemy fleet.  I hate reviewing the "after action" report and seeing that all of my ships attacked one ship in the enemy fleet which was killed with the first shot resulting in all of the shots from my other ships resulting in a "miss".  I am fine with having an automated combat choice since it will save a lot of time in obvious, one-sided combat, but I think having the option of being more involved in making choices during combat would be a valuable improvement.

The reason for #1 above is that, while I recognize that a certain amount of trial and error cannot be avoided when learning which weapons fit our preferred playing style, we should have the facts about each choice in hand as a starting point.

The reason for #2 and #3 above is that, when we review the "after action" reports on combat, we should be able to see that the results were "fair".

With respect to the "New ship design system" I have the following suggestions:

1. Larger ships should have weapons and/or defenses against smaller ships.  While I currently take advantage of the fact that a fleet of a large number of small ships that have "Predictive Targeting" (extends weapon range) can destroy a larger ship before the larger ship gets off a shot, I don't think this is "fair". For example:
   1. the range of weapons on a larger ship should be greater than the range of weapons on a smaller ship 
   2. if a larger ship has multiple weapons, players should have the option of targeting each weapon at a specific enemy ship.  Having all weapons on a large ship target a single small ship is not only wasteful, it is incredibly ignorant!
2. Larger ships should have weapons and/or defenses available to them that are not available to smaller ships.  For example:
   1. I can put a "Carrier Module" on a tiny hull ship effectively giving me multiple tiny ships on a tiny ship!
   2. In real life,
      1. a 16 inch gun on a battleship would not fit on a PT boat
      2. a destroyer could not launch a fighter jet

Yea, I think the fixed slot thing was an interesting, but failed, experiment.  A carrier module's mass should be too big for a tiny hull.

With respect to the "New invasion system", I am very much in favor of having the new system determine whether or not a specific fleet can invade a specific planet by looking at the makeup of the fleet and the defenses of the planet.  However, I would like for you to consider the following:

1. I believe that players should be able to invade a planet with multiple fleets at one time with their combined strength being used to calculate the time to complete the invasion.
2. I believe that fleets should be able to reduce the time to complete the invasion by "bombarding" the planet either before the invasion or during the invasion.
3. I hope you fix the issue where a planet that has "Guardian Drones" cannot be invaded successfully because, after you destroy the drones and start the invasion, the drones regenerate after 3 turns causing the game to terminate the invasion due to the planet now being defended.

I also have suggestions related to a couple of really annoying quirks in the movement logic that I have posted about before and hope you are looking at.

1. When you are zoomed-in to where the actual ship design is shown, you are able to right-click on neighboring cells to move your ship to that cell, but when you are zoomed-out to where the ship display changes to an icon you cannot.  You can only move your ship if you click at least 2 cells away.
2. If you are zoomed-out and you right-click on a cell next to a cell that contains an object (like a planet) the game decides that you really wanted to go to that object.  Stop it!  I am quite capable of deciding where I want to go.

Both of these quirks require me to zoom in to move where I want, then zoom back out.  This is very annoying.

By the way, when I refer to the appearance of a ship when zoomed-in I mean something like this:

When I refer to the appearance of a ship when zoomed-out I mean something like this:

Both of those screen snapshots are of the same ship.

I think we'll see some QoL updates before the big expansion.  We are hiring engineers and others as fast as we can this past year.  It's been a manpower deficit (which is ironic since most of the engineers on GC4 are women).

I regret buying GalCiv4 at launch. I've barely played it because it's an Epic exclusive and the only reason I even have to have Epic installed on my hard drive. Now it's getting a "major revamp of the entire game." It just feels like a never ending beta test. GalCiv3 was much the same. GalCiv2 was amazing because it didn't fundamentally change any major aspects of the gameplay, but added incremental improvements and content through expansions. 4X games are complex and can require poring through the manual and develepor forums, reading online guides and watching let's play videos and tutorials just to understand basic concepts. Then a "major revamp" comes along and you have to re-learn everything. 

I'll probably check the game out once GalCiv5 is announced. That way I'll know it's pretty much a finished game. 

I think the issue is the nature of digital distribution.  People now expect big updates between expansions and consider the game "abandoned".   During GC2, it was basically just me doing the updates so the updates were obviously pretty small but that was for a game that was largely sold at retail.

I don't think many people will dislike the changes we're making to GC4.  For example, the way sieges work are just frustrating at times and tedious.  We're not getting rid of them but instead we'll be making it so that there's a minimum threshold between the colony (or capital world) ability of the attacker and the planet's defense before a siege is possible.  And some of that is likely to show up as part of a free update.

If it weren't for the people who bought GC4 at launch, we wouldn't have their feedback to go on in improving the game.  With GC2, we couldn't do much because you're talking about a retail game where people didn't expect any updates to the game after it is released. 

Now, we can listen to your ideas, criticisms, suggestions and do something about it.

It may be of value to you to brainstorm the changes you are thinking about here on this forum before you start spending coder time on them.  There have been a number of design flaws that made it into the game that I believe could have been avoided by letting some "fresh eyeballs" take a look at what you are thinking of doing.

I say this as a retired programmer who has made the humbling mistake of believing that I had thought of everything when I started coding only to have an end user point out an unintended side effect that I hadn't thought of.

Story of my life, my friend.

In my experience, the biggest issue comes down to people assuming that the thing they don't like is "obvious" and not reporting it.

For instance, we just released GC3 4.5 and that was the result of a months long thread on "what would you like improved" and incorporating a giant chunk of things from that thread in.  Immediately following release we get a bunch of "why didn't you fix X,Y,Z" where none of those things were mentioned in that thread or any other discussion we could find.

GC4 itself was in beta for a long time and the things I find annoying (the sieges) didn't seem annoying until the AI got a lot better late in development.  

Glad to hear we are moving away from the rock, papers, scissors combat. I really want to see this succeed.

I agree with PaulLach that the most important thing you can do is write detailed descriptions of how ship classes operate in combat, and make sure they act in that way as much as possible.  

My suggestions for combat based on what you've written are:

1. Run hundreds of battles between single ship classes and/or fleet types to gather statistical data how well they perform against each other.  Then share some of this data in developer logs, or in other places.  The average player can't run thousands of battles, but if they can veiw statistical data, it will help inform their choices in game when choosing ships.  You could even gather player data to see how players are using the combat system and make adjustments from there.

2. For me, Gal Civ is just as much about the customization tools, as it is the game.  In Gal Civ, I can create any civilization I want found in media or of my own design.  I really want ship classes to feel unique, whether that be through special abilities and\or how they function in combat.

An example of this is a class for high end fighters like the X-wing, Starfury, or Gunstar.  While these ships are small and costly, they had higher survivability and firepower than their counterparts.  This class would make building fighters late game viable, and help the faction feel more unique.  The class would unlock late game, and/or only be available to certain factions.

Another example is a class solely focused on destroying fighters/bombers on that can act as crowd control for larger ships.

My other non-combat suggestion is the use of the A.I. generated images.  I don't know if there's a way to give players access to a limited version of one to help us generate new alien races, but that would be an incredible addition for the race creator.

I noticed the A.I images you've been posting to Twitter.  It's awesome to see how far A.I has come

I have played this game a lot since it came out and I would like to give you a different point of view:

1. GalCiv4 is not a game that you play for 4 hours, beat the final big monster, and then you go buy another game to play.  It is designed so that you have almost infinite control over how the game is setup each time you play, the characteristics of the civilization you choose to play what the criteria is for winning, and the strategy you choose to play.  This means that each game you play will be different which, for me at least, makes the game very interesting and addicting.
2. The complexity of the game (i.e. all of the options) means that there is a steep learning curve before you can play at a high level, but the game is playable right at the beginning with the default options.
3. As you may have seen from many of my posts, there are a number of significant bugs and design flaws in the current version of the game.  However, I think it is important to point out a couple of things:
   1. The things they have gotten right far outweigh the things they have gotten wrong.
   2. They have been making improvements to the game on an ongoing basis.
   3. I am in the camp that believes that continual improvement is better than infrequent releases that contain large batches of changes.

Yes, GalCiv4 requires a large investment of time but, if you are looking for a game that you can play for a long, long time without getting bored, I believe it is an excellent choice.

Just one person's opinion.

Thanks and I agree.   This is the way we get the kind of fleet combat we want.  Getting away from ahem, "medium" hulls and instead into classes (Eventually, lots of classes) that have very specific behaviors (nothing fancy just very specific) will solve so many frustrations.

So let me use this opportunity to opine my thoughts on this: (and as a reminder you guys asked for this so if anything, I'm the victim here <g>)

We'll be putting in additional types but you can look at the "rules" and as long as they are simple we can look at putting them in.  

So excited for the changes Draginol ... 2023 can't come soon enough!

I've played through a couple of very long games, and love the experience so far ... I haven't got any good suggestions except for the fact that you could focus on trying to maintain the "fun factor" of the game by having more exciting and fun things to do, especially in the late game.   Loving the music (especially the Star Control flavour music) but after countless hours it can be a little repetitive.  

• Random galactic events like a Dreadlord invasion? (make Dreadlords actually scary?)
• More missions from non-human players (that can be completed by AI also?)
• Fluctuations of the galactic economy?
• Galactic phenonema e.g. black holes appearing and swallowing portions of space? 
• New species appearing out of nowhere?
• Make minor races more dynamic and fun? 

Is there any chance we will see GalCiv IV support for Nividia's GeForce NOW in 2023? My computer sucks, and I can't afford a new one. If I want to play great games, I have to stream them through GeForce Now. I can currently stream GalCiv III and other Stardock games linked to my Epic account on Geforce, just not IV. I would gladly buy GalCiv IV in the Epic Game Store at the full price if I could stream it through GeForce Now. 

Document, document, document.  As mentioned, you have a number of people prioritizing, coding, and testing and all the other stuff those tech wizards do.  However, a document/wiki/web page/coded hologram explaining fully the all the changes goes a loooong way. No sense in making cool changes if the target audience doesn't understand. I've done enough of these to know they're tedious as haggling with Jawas but it'll help reduce follow up questions/explanations.

Love the game 

Thanks and I totally agree.  Any volunteers who want to put our documentation up on the Wiki or Confluence?

Looking at where fighters would target the largest ship first, but there's value in having your fighters take out their fighters first.  What about adding an "order of battle" to the ship designer?  E.G., you end up with fighters and attackers.   You could also build Capital ships whose role is basically anti-fighter (The Imperial Lancer-class Frigate).

One thing that might actually both enhance and nerf the carriers:  Don't make carriers build their own fighters.  They can repair them, but new ones would have to be built and sent to the carriers.  The enhancement is designing your own style of air wing (space wing?) and the nerf would be that a carrier that blows it's load in a single battle won't be immediately effective the next turn.  Instead of using tiny hulls, a carrier fighter type could be created that is limited in range and dependent on larger ships to move anywhere......or just hard cap the range on tiny hulls?

Not no, but heck no on needing a Citizen for a survey ship.

Population comes much to slow as is.

Increase pop growth by 500% then we can revisit this conversation.

Already hate the Constructor for this very reason. 

Also, IMHO the only realistic use for railguns as unless all combat is fought at less than a few light seconds they are going to be very inaccurate. Like rifles fired at supersonic fighter inaccurate. Rapid fire railguns fired at incoming missiles and eggshell fighter/bombers should hit 25% if not more of them per combat turn. Coupled with counter missiles and fast firing lasers and fighters get back to being what they would be in Space distractions.

Neither of those weapon types would stand a snowball's chance in Pheonix of surviving more than a pass or two.

I guess you can tell I would not lose a second of sleep if Railguns were taken of the Space Combat list, now for a target that moves in a predictable pattern at super slow speeds like a planet or Space Station. 

I believe that, before you can talk about ships and their capabilities, you have to determine how combat works.  The following are some basic factors that have to be decided on:

1. Distance
   1. how far apart are ships when combat starts?
      1. are they all the same distance apart or are some types of ships closer and others farther away?
   2. at what range can the various weapons begin to be used?
      1. will all types of weapons have the same maximum range?
      2. is there going to be an accuracy penalty that is inversely proportional to the distance at which a weapon is fired?
   3. how fast do ships move in combat?
      1. to move closer
      2. to move farther away
      3. to maintain their current distance
      4. to zig-zag (dodge) to make harder to hit
2. Rate of fire
   1. how long does it take before each type of weapon can fire again?
   2. should weapons have a maximum ammunition load or infinite ammunition?
3. Passage of time
   1. there has to be a mechanism for determining which weapon on which ship fires next
   2. there should be a mechanism for determining when the ammunition that was fired arrives at the target
      1. should the target be able to fire a weapon after an enemy fires at it, but before it arrives?
   3. given the speed and trajectory of each ship, where are they when the next ship fires?
4. Effect of a shot
   1. did the shot hit the target?
      1. how will you determine hit or miss?
      2. if the shot hit the target, what damage was done?
         1. did it lower defenses?
            1. by how much?
         2. did it damage weapons?
            1. by how much?
         3. did it reduce hit points?
            1. by how much?

In short, there are a lot of decisions that need to be made about how combat works before you can start designing weapons and the ships that will carry those weapons.

That looks like a great start to ship classes Draginol. When you start running the simulations, I'm sure some numbers will change for balancing, but I like the overall ideas shown here.

Why do ships target things that they aren't strong against first?  I.e. Fighters target larger ships first.

Thanks for listening to us, I really hope to see this work.

Other ship class ideas:

Interdictor-Large-Slows enemy fleets nearby

Superweapon- Huge- increased damage against larger enemy ship classes

Wraith\Shade\Predator- Medium\Small\tiny - Ships in these classes would be hidden on the main map if the fleet is made up only of these ships.  They only show up if they are within 2 spaces from an enemy fleet.  They deal increased damage to cargo hulls like freighters.  They could even spawn behind the enemy fleet.  These could be exclusive to certain races/ideologies.

Pathfinder- Medium/large - This ship has 200% range and increased movement, but lacks in mass compared to ships of similar size.  Used for long range scout and warfare missions.

Skyguard - large - Dedicated to removing fighters, bombers, and other small craft, this ship has high fire rate, but low damage against anything larger.

Raptor- tiny - improved high end fighter that has more mass than it should, increased damage to tiny and small classes.

Heavy assault ship- small- Improves seige rating, weak against smaller ship classes 

Raider/marauder/tracker - Large/medium/small - these ships have 1.5X the normal ship movement acting as hit and run to destroy enemy fleets, starbases, and shipyards.  They do have reduced mass however.  They have a negative siege rating to prevent them from conquering planets alone.  When enemy ships are destroyed these ships give credits to their civ based on the ship sizes destroyed.  Each class does better against a different ship sizes.  This could be exclusive to Xeloxi, and other pirate races.

The possibilities are nearly endless if this is set up and balanced correctly.

I'm pretty sure they fixed that. I made sure they fixed it.

I happen to like the rock paper scissors system for weapons and defense that we had since GalCiv 2. I'm a little sad you are trying to replace it. However, I'll try to keep an open mind for the new system that develops.

Some thoughts.

I don't think you should allow one weapon type to get a range advantage and get to kill the enemy before they get to fire back. That just encourages stacking that weapon type. I'm a known offender.

Another factor to consider is whether all hull types or just some get a maintenance cost. It determines whether you can have an infinitely large navy. In GalCiv 3, tiny hulls and cargo hulls had no maintenance, so I would make large fleets of tiny hulls for combat, and use cargo hulls for carriers. GalCiv 4 increased it to cover small and medium hulls, so I favor medium hulls. In GalCiv 2, any hull that had weapons or constructor modules had maintenance, so there really wasn't any exploits for this. Mind you you had a lot more cash to throw around. It is quite common for the maintenance costs of your military to grow to 1000s of bc.