Kavik_Kang

Cuorebrave, What they mean by different classes is different size ships of the same race. So, for example, the Mukay might have three different ships in the game. A big slow one like an Ur Quan Dreadnought, a medium one like the Vux or Yehat, and a small one like a Suphuxti. They will all have the same type of technology, and look, etc. But type of technology is a theme, not necessarily the same weapon and device on all three ships. And the Mukay

I think if you are going to allow custom ships in there should really be a "pure" mode where they are not allowed. It could even just be a check box on the set-up screen. I realize that this splits the audience, but this is always desired by many players in games like this. There are always "purists" who just like the stock setup and don't want to wind up in a game with custom stuff. This was true even in the very first online game community for Front Page Sports: Foot

Xenove's idea is actually very realistic. I don't know how it fits in with the current combat environment, but what he is describing is called "Dial-A-Nuke" and has been how real US warheads have worked for decades. The yield is set as a part of the targeting procedure.

I wasn't necessarily referring to Fallout 4. I haven't actually played that so I wouldn't know. But I have seen games like that before, where they just never really made a game and left it up to the players to finish it for them with tools. I have a reputation for criticizing the modern game industry, but that doesn't mean that I think they are all idiots. MicroProse, Looking Glass, early Blizzard, Stardock... There are plenty of computer game developers that I think

[quote who="cuorebrave" reply="18" id="3683392"] @Xiaorai - You are so correct. I feel like Fallout 4 fell into this trap, making a million tools for building. Forgot they still needed to make a compelling game around it... [/quote] I think this is a product of an age-old issue in game design. A game is always much farther away from being finished than you imagine it too be. If you think you are 50%, then you are probably actually only 25% done. This leads

This is all getting pretty detailed for a top down arcade game. If you want to be realistic about it... Ships in sci-fi are based on the wet navy ships of WWII. This evolved from early sci-fi and was solidified by Star Trek. But the ships of WWII moved very slowly. That bridge command structure you see in sci-fi works at 33 knots, even 60. But at "space ship speed" by the time the captain might have the thought to say fire the enemy ship is already 1,000,00

[quote who="HenriHakl" reply="13" id="3683259"] @Xiaorai - you actually hit on something that I tangentially have a pet peeve with. There is a tremendous desire in the industry to make everything first-person (Fallout 3+), or at least over-the-shoulder third-person (Dark Souls). In both cases I think the games would've benefited from being isometric. They can keep the underlying 3D engine; just present it in isometric perspective. If they want add rotating camera. Clarity and

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." - Douglas Adams

A simple "barrier shield" doesn't really add much, it is just another layer of defense. The simple shields used in most games are essentially just extra hit points that self-regenerate while the actual hit points don't. Realistic shields are far more complicated than would be appropriate for Star Control... and really have never been seen in any game that I can think of... except for three that don't actually exist;-) Unless they want the shields to add some simple addit

A ship with a teleport ability isn't necessary, but I like them a lot and would love to see one. If there won't be one, that's no big deal. There are far more fun ship designs than will exist as "stock" SCO ships, so they have to pick and choose in the end. If they want one but think the Beacon Warp was too powerful... it kind of is. If, as I assume, it was as simple as "drop warp point, it has a duration, warp back unless it has been too long and expired" that really

Sounds like I'd have to actually use that version of The Measured to see what it even is. But this discussion led me to write this... *** Offensive Rocket Boosters *** The “fireball/rocket booster” ability really isn't useful for The Measured, but what Stardock appears to be wanting there is a ship that uses a rocket booster like ability offensively. Just rammin

I have been thinking about what you guys were saying about The Measured currently being too weak. I was confused at first because I was thinking about the Androsynth's "bubbles" but I realize now that you mean it has something like the Androsynth's "fireball" ability. That makes it make perfect sense too me that it would be weak. While this is not a hard rule and there could certainly be an exception for the right type of weapon/device, in general every ship should have a pr

It's been done well before, Subspace. It works if the combat environment supports it. In Subspace they made it work with a single fix to the only big problem they had in making it work. Every ship had a single "Repel" ability to fling everything away from them, so if six players converged you could just Repel them all away and save yourself. That's more of a "band aid and string" fix to that problem, there are other ways around that as well. Winding up with

One last thing I noticed in this last update is that Brad seems to be saying that building the mothership is going to be like a Rogue-like game. You won't be picking and choosing what mothership to build as much as you are having to work with what you happen to find along the way like in Nethack or Faster Than Light. That is a perfect solution to the remaining problems, and adds an awesome quality to the game that SC2 didn't have. In addition to that, it will almost inevitab

I also agree with Brad's idea of what Star Control is and isn't. I thought I'd add what I think SC is and isn't from a different perspective. "Game design as art" is not a $10 million fully random endlessly massive game universe that is a realistic map of the galaxy, game design as art is Chess and Acquire. In game design less is more. Game design as art was SVC's original "Pocket Games" that originally jump started TFG. "Robots" was a classic. SFB starte

Thanks to IBN I finally got to see this update, lots of great information. I just couldn't resist pointing out the genius of the brevity of it... no matter how hard you try, you'll never rival Douglas Adam's explanation of how big space is. But Don't Panic! He really hit the nail right on the head with that one, haha...

There is no formula for determining the point value, or BPV. There can't be, because the "combat value" of any ship is based more on the tactical situation than the composition of the ship. In the end, a human needs to simply evaluate the ship and assign it a point value in relation to the other ships. A point system for the components of the ship can provide an initial value to put in in the ball park, but in the end an expert in the tactics of this type of combat must eval

There are aspects of a "Proving Grounds" that I didn't mention. This is one way that ADB has created the extreme loyalty of their fans over the years. If you had something like this, ships accepted by Stardock and added to the game would also begin to appear in the full/story game as a part of that "living universe" that Brad mentioned. Only a few of what I call the "Stellar Nations" of Star Control are actually in the story. There are, obviously, many others out there

... and along those lines:-) It had been bothering me that I had left this part of that last discussion out. In the end, SFB's version of ship customization was ultimately removed due to an overwhelming player sentiment that there were so many restrictions required to achieve a balanced system that there was no reason for the system to exist. Within that game system, about 80% or so of what you might do needed to be restricted in the name of balance. SC ships are f

Thank you IBN. Not sure what NPD means, probably due to being social network challenged:-) I'll probably come back to the chat when us regular people get access to the game. I'm really not very compatible with it. I'd like to explain how things function when issues come up, so those making the decisions have an understanding of the true nature of the issue from which to make their decisions. I can't really do that in chat... in fact in chat anything more

Remember the original example of Photon Torpedoes and a Displacement Device... Ur Quan weapon = Photon Torpedo, Beacon Warp = Displacement Device. There is nothing in any space combat game anywhere that we didn't do first. I don't have to play the current supermelee, I already knew how this worked 30 years ago. The point was, actually, not about weapon combinations or ship designs. From the example you should have realized that the point was that weapon combina

Yes, it was similar in a way to how trekkies have come up with actual Klingon and Romulan languages, except Star Control used "thematic English" instead of a fake foreign language. The Orz is, of course, memorable to everyone and a great example. But something about SC2 that has always stuck in my head was the Ilwrath. I've always remembered how you could command them to say "warship" from now on whenever then meant to say "worship", and then they did for the rest of the gam

I agree that there should be an option to play only with the original ships, with some type of flag to allow custom ones. I have actually pretty much already done this somewhere else, so I know that Brad's idea can be made to work... but there really is a lot too it. Most likely, this isn't going to work out too well and is going to have a lot of problems. For example, certain combinations of balanced things are, when combined, stupidly powerful. "Photon Torpedoes" are

I guess I should give my opinion on the actual issue IBN had brought up, too. Missiles are actually really easy to deal with, there are so many ways of dealing with point defense that I can't even really cover it here in any comprehensive way. You could literally write a book on this subject. You can either make the missles weaker, slower, or less accurate... or you can give the ship some means of destroying incoming missles, or "jamming" them through Electronic Warfare. &nb

But there is a major issue, that also existed in SC2. SC uses "champion combat". One unit represents each side in the fight no matter how much force is actually present. Only the mothership and bosses are "capital ships", the vast majority of ships in the game are "destroyers". The game is balanced for the "destroyers", and yet you allow the player to use their "capital ship" whenever they want. This is a serious problem, which you saw in SC2... using the mothers