Kavik_Kang

I agree with you about current culture references, few of them are relevant or remembered for long. Something black and spikey that shrieks and fires a sustained beam weapon at you would be great. Or any similar references from any sci-fi I think BELONG in a game like this. As many good ones as you can think up. But current ones, especially political ones, are a really bad idea. Not only are they soon dated and irrelevant, you also alienate half the audience

Al Gore actually sold me on his "carbon footprint" concept. I'm a true believer. So I had a great idea about how to follow Al's advice, and more than lower my carbon footprint, but to create a black hole of a carbon footprint for myself. I live in a small apartment. Al Gore has several mansions, each of which uses more electricity in a single month than my apartment uses in an entire year. So, if I were to burn down one of Al Gore's mansions... that w

I think in general you make the primary bad guys serious, and the primary good guys too. But you also have "comedy" aliens like SC is known for, like the Orz or the Shofixti. In fact, a race that can shoot themselves like I mentioned above would make a good Shofixti-like race. They could be pretty funny, suicidal. Ready to shoot themselves at the slightest transgression (whatever that is for them). You are always having to talk them out of shooting themselves whe

All this talk of aliens has made me think of a race that might be kind-of cool in Star Control. This is based on an old joke among SFB players that would take too long to explain here, but the short version is that the Orions (pirates with optional weapon mounts) able to use a particularly bad combination of systems that results in the Orion "shooting itself" if it uses those two systems in the wrong order at the wrong time. It is the only way in the game that a ship can "shoot it

Ok... maybe this is going to be an exception to the normal rule. After looking at Civ6 and reading about some of the things they are doing... I am liking the look and sound of this a lot. I don't think it looks cartoony, I wouldn't want to see Civ with a photo-realistic look. It looks like a computer game, like it should, to my eyes. Also, often when game makers are touting new ideas in their games the ideas they are talking about are ultimately meaningless and

I thought Civ2 was terrible, but Civ3 was good. I thought Civ4 was the worst Civ, and Civ5 is the best. I was actually behind one of the changes in the first patch of Civ1. I met Sid Meier at the ORIGINS convention where the SFB National Championships were held just a few months after the first Civ was released. I had been playing it constantly since it had come out. We talked for about an hour about 3 different games. When Civ came up he asked what my be

I'm not ignoring Civ6 because of how it looks, I haven't even seen it. I honestly believe in the even-numbered Civ/odd-numbered Star Trek thing. [e digicons]|-)[/e] Star Control II was definitely a mix of "realistic" looking things like the planets and "cartoony" looking things because of the low resolution and color count of EGA graphics. So it really is accurate to claim it being both, which is what is happening. I am led in the same direction as the

I'm telling you, it's like Star Trek but the opposite. Just ignore the even-numbered Civ games and odd-numbered Star Trek movies and you will save yourself a whole lot of disappointment. [e digicons]:|[/e]

I wouldn't want to see "cartoony" in Civilization, either. I just recently heard of a Civ6 and immediately decided to ignore it. I think of Civilization in the opposite way of Star Trek. With Star Trek movies the even numbered ones are good and the odd numbered ones are average at best. Civilization is the opposite, the odd numbered ones are good and the even numbered ones are average at best. So I was already planning on ignoring Civ6:-)

I agree that Star Control's "cartoony" look probably wasn't intentional and was more a result of the EGA graphics of the day. But that's the impression that it gives today, and something of a signature look for the series. It might not have been intentional, but that is what it looks like. And it is the same path I would have been led down, so I think it's great. I can see how some would prefer a "realistic" look to space, but that's how almost all

I still like the example of Team Fortress II as a "timeless cartoony" look. What I have seen of SC matches this, with more of a looney toons look than TFII. I'm in my late 40's, so I love looney toons:-)

That all sounds great, Vaelzad, I would just point out that the number of landers you could carry was the primary thing creating a need to return to base. Once you had more than 3 only fuel and crew required you to return to base. The game feels more dynamic at the strategic level if there are at least 3 things that might require you to return to base. So you must juggle multiple resources to maintain "loiter time", in other words stay operational in space without the need t

I had been "retired" from game design for the last 8 years or so, but participating in this forum has drawn me back into it a little bit. The thread I started here about the Star Fleet Universe inspired me to take some of those ideas to a more appropriate forum and I now have a blog on Gamasutra. The editors like my articles so far and will be posting them at the end of the week so they stay at the top of the member blogs for the the entire weekend which also means most of Friday

This is probably the best board game of the 21st century so far, now newly available on the PC! Practice against the AI, play for real against people online. A whole game only takes about an hour. It's exactly the board game on PC. I just found this, I will be playing this for a while:-) http://store.steampowered.com/app/406290

I know I am probably in the minority on this, but I like the idea of marking the solar systems that have anything of interest in them with system defenses. You might still have minor side quests or other things other than just resources in "unmarked" systems, but nothing necessary. Anything you might find in an unmarked system (marked by the fact that any level of system defense anywhere in a system marks a solar system as defended on the hyperspace transit map) is not necessary t

I miss Microsoft Sidewinder gamepads... best gamepad I ever used. For some reason Microsoft stopped supporting them after Windows 98, I still have like 6 of them in my closet, haha.

One of the ways system defenses could be used would be to kind of, mostly, do that for you IB. If they wanted too, they could highlight all (or most) of the solar systems that have something significant in them. If all solar systems with anything other than randomly generated planets had at least 1 location with any type of system defenses, and then any type of system defenses anywhere in a solar system where indicated on the galactic navigational map, then you would always know w

That's what I meant, an early teaser trailer. The two things I think of for that are showing some of the unique types of attacks or ship abilities these type of ships/lander have as opposed to what most gamers today are used too. For example, a flamethrower is a WHOLE lot cooler in an arcade view than it is in a FPS game. Show some weapons/devices that are a lot cooler looking in this genre then modern gamers are accustomed to seeing them in first person 3D. Then

On the Intro... are you willing to show abilities/weapons in this early video? A few scenes of weapons/devices in action that are totally unlike the types of things you see in a FPS game could get people's attention. One of the advantages of this kind of game is that there are a lot of cool weapons/devices you can do that don't really work well in the FPS games most gamers are used to. You probably have a few of those, you could use those. Of course, obviousl

I was saying earlier the they could possibly having different drive systems that would force a carrier configuration and the player to use the sat ships in combat when using quasispace to travel far distances. I realized that I was assuming something in that that I didn't mention. For that to work, you would need a "network of bases" like the earth base in Star Control II. "Your base" for doing all the things you did at the earth base in SCII. For example, any race

It seems to me that Vaelzad was saying that part of what they are going to make available for modders to make their own galaxies is the random map generator they are using to create their map. The easiest way to "create a galaxy" is to randomly generate something decent, and then choose the locations where you "hand craft" locations, everything else is already done... whatever the random generator had done for them. Like that artist's saying, I can't remember which one,

Quasispace, or any level of maps, could have their own places to explore, by using the "hyerspace rifts" (at least what I called them) we mentioned before, like HoMM. "Subspace Rifts" in Star Control. I wouldn't put them in quasispace because in my mind that should be the "always clear of terrain" map, but they could be there as well. I should also add that after thinking of the idea I had in the edit note I've realized there their is only one way that actually wor

It really just enlarges what you can do if you want to. It is also a good way to think of it conceptually. This idea is only hinted at from SFU knowledge, it is more of an idea I have inspired by Star Control, so I don't know exactly how big of an impact you might get out of it. But I imagine with "4 levels of zoom" you could have a huge galaxy that was still simple for the player to understand and move around quickly. It seems like it would more than work well, it

"How great of an effect does Quasispace have? I would think the more it shortens the trip the bigger the map can be without players being overwhelmed. Quasispace can be thought of as a magnifying glass in this regard." I made this post earlier in the thread and, now that I have my life back (Haha...), I can take the time to explain what I meant by this in more detail. One of the things Star Control II already has that is very useful is the concept of

I'd be more likely to form a little group that would be capable of making a simple version of space hockey if that winds up being possible:-)