RT4X - understanding what it means

Frogboy

Join Date 03/2001

+2419

RT4X - understanding what it means

A discussion

I've seen people who argue that Sins of a Solar Empire is not a "real 4X" but is really a conventional RTS.

I suspect most people are of the same mind as I on this topic: Sins of a Solar Empire is a game that combines 4X depth with real-time gameplay. That is what the game promises and I think that is what it delivers.

Here are some of the game mechanics of Sins that I think make it quite unique for a game that operates in real-time:

#1 Each race has about 100 different technologies to research. I just counted them up and if you count the military and civilian technologies plus the fleet supply technologies you end up with about 100. And that does not count the fact that many technologies have multiple levels to them.

#2 Players can win through multiple paths. I won a game on-line with culture on Saturday for instance.

#3 The pacing of the game is unlike any other RTS I've ever played. It's not about reflexes. It's not about how fast you click things. It's not about mastering hot keys to access special powers. It's about your ability to build a coherent, effective strategy to obtain specific objectives. OODA. Observe. Orient. Decide. Act. That is the essence of STRATEGY.

I could list many other elements but these 3 elements I think make Sins stand out from other real time strategy games. That is why people have compared it to a Kohan in space or Master of Orion in real time.

Certainly the game does not have the depth of say Space Empires V. But then again, neither does Galactic Civilizations. But the fact the game does not require manipulating a spread sheet or what have you does not make the game a non-4X game. Explore. Expand. Exploit. Exterminate. Sins of a Solar Emprie most certainly satisfies that.

The reason the game has become so popular with players is because there are a ton of people, people like me and I suspect like most of you reading this, that have waited a logn time for a game that is about STRATEGY. That lets us observe the strategic situation of a given map, figure out a strategy and execute on it.

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I'm just calling it a Stretegy game myself. I think that fits best to what I feel it is. In fact, a slower paced Strategy game. If I'd gone into the game knowing this I think my initial reaction would have been totally more positive than it was.

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Okay I'll chime in by throwing around some thoughts after reading the thread.
1) I agree that much of this discussion comes from a lack of clear definition of what exactly 4x is. I think everybody would call games like MoO , GalCiv and Space Empires 4x. But what do they have in common (apart from the space theme that is)?
The most relevant features I woudl list are:
-TechTree whitch grants you new features of gameplay Here MoO 2 really excells: Not very much is an "update" like "your + 4 bonus now is + 8" but a new building/weapon/ability.
-customizability: in those games you can create your own Race/Starship/Galaxy and thusly need a somewhat customized strategy.
-For lack of better terms: Crossroads, Descision points, Situations in which there is no one obviously/apparent best strategy: Do i start a war ( a thing Sins does not let you do since everybody is already shooting from the start) do i find allies first, do i expand AND for what reason? Is it the production capacity, the range i need, or just the dough? Now without wanting to ramble those crossroads are somewhat limited in Sins due to the lack of real "turtling ability" (Hello Starbases anyone?
As a rather bold point i would also add that 4x is strongly linked to being turn-based. You are supposed to rather be an armchair general that a field commander. The one exception to that would be the paradox Games: Europa Universalis, Hearts of Iron etc... But then one could argue that those are at heart so slow-paced that I feel so much closer to MoO than say... Age of Empires. That being due to the ability to command while in pause and an extremely low speed setting being avaible

2)Some things I would probably change are

Ship upkeep Yes i know its a long shot but this might encourage building more of an empire. It could be linked to the number of planets and starbases similar to MoO. Right now there is no penalty to keeping a huge blob of good-looking ships around

Capitol ships As someone mentioned before, them being avaible from the start lessens flavor and gameplay value. One might choose one at the beginning as it is atm ( i rather like that) but after that i feel that there should be some research towards them to make it more 4x-ish

System Defenses I want Starbases *whines and kicks the floor*. No seriously I'd really like to be able to fortify my planets a wee bit more. Again i'd borrow/steal from MoO: A battle Station (and similar planetary buildings) could usually hold of raiders, scouts and a small task force and even the occasional Antarans. But without fleet support it would not stand a chance against a concentrated effort. Again this would add another (if balanced correctly) type of strategy and allow the player to make choices.

After all this ranting i do want to end my first post on a positive note and say that i do enjoy the game and I really enjoyed B]this awesome (and civilized) thread so far.[/B]

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I still don't understand why SoaSE isn't 4X. You still eXplore new planets, eXpand into said planets, eXploit the resources on planets, black market, and pirates, and eXterminate. The argument is flimsy at best. If you seriously think some one make Galactic Civilizations run real time without it collapsing into anarchy, then your kidding yourself.

I can make this clear. In a true 4x game you find that each of these four phases are similarly equal in importantance to each other. You would also find that the explore and expand part of the game would have some strategy and take a while. For instance, should i settle this volcano world or wait to see if there is a terrain nearby, In most 4x games you would not immediately colonize the closest thing to you as your 100% first choice... In a good 4x game the explore and expand part of the game builds to the exploit and then builds to the climatic exterminate.

In Sins explore is done in a couple of minutes (assuming you put out a few scouts), expand is basically take every planet and astroid nearby as fast is possible, exploit is all cash based since 90% of resources comes from unlimited pool of blackmarket, and exterminate is fast and done easily since you can not fortify chokepoints (there are few of them, and if fortified the enemy will just quickly jump past to your homeworld) and as mentioned, "he who has the biggest fleet and knows how to focus fire, wins".

Now I play nothing but 3v3, 4v4 but I am hard pressed to find a recorded game that last more than 30 minutes before one side is wiped. About 10 minutes of buildup followed by 20 minutes of the economy boomers being wiped off the map by the ship spammers.

Actually, I think this game would play more like a 4x game if one simply had to destroy the nuetrals at a given planet before you could use the jumpgates other than the one you came from. that might slow the pace down and make explore much more interesting.

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I don't think the difference between RTS and 4X is just 'victory conditions'. It's systematic differences in approach: in an RTS you resource and tech to get x unit and win, whereas in a '4X' game (christ, can't we just call it a goddamn strategy game instead of using a 15yo marketing term) you have to 'manage' an 'empire' that is more complex than 'need more vespene gas'. In an RTS if you tech to fast you die: in a strategy game if you tech too fast you have to manage the economic and social consequences, not just the military ones.

In this way, Sins is 'just' an RTS. There's no social modelling, no industrial management, just 'build research base, get tech, build ships, win'. It's SLOW, and it's BIG, and it's FUN, but it's not much more complex than a regular RTS. This isn't a bad thing, and I can see where they tried to make it more sophisticated with trade, the research system, etc, but they have a ways to go before they get there.

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Of everything mentionned here the point I agree most strongly with is: yes, Sins diplomacy needs serious work and we will be re-doing it (probably for the expansion).

I've read just as many 'energetic' threads like this where the majority of people feel its more 4X than an RTS. It really just depends on the crowd. Hard core micro / tactics RTS players are particularly vehement that Sins isn't an RTS by their standards but there are just as many people who claim RTS games aren't really strategy games at all but really Real-Time-Tactical (RTT) games so who knows.

But here is what I have to say about the whole RTS/4X/RT4X thing. Definitions and classifications are so gray. I just made up the word RT4X 3 years ago to describe the game we were making because it felt so different than anything we'd ever played or heard of before. In that sense it doesn't matter what RTS or 4X really is - RT4X is its own classification and because I made up the word I can put whatever I want into its meaning. If you want a definition just play Sins because RT4X is whatever Sins is.

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Excerpt from post #80, by Blair Fraser of IRONCLAD :

Of everything mentionned here the point I agree most strongly with is : yes, Sins diplomacy needs serious work and we will be re-doing it (probably for the expansion).

It's official, then : « they » are working on an expansion !

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Heck, these guys are great aren't they? Anyway, I don't think you get the full feel of the game's 4x aspects until you get into the bigger maps. It took me a while to get there, but I've been playing the biggest maps either with 1 or 3 stars (100+ planets). These games take about 8 hours to play against the AI. Compare that to a gigantic GC2 game with a many as 750 habitable planets and that's still a very short game. With the 3 star systems especially, you do get into the eXplore aspect more heavily. I'm hard pressed to critisize this game much, I enjoy it so much, but if I had to, I would have to agree with the point about light frigates being able to kill hardened capitol ships and heavy cruisers. That just shouldn't happen. The other critisizm I could make is regarding diplomacy, sometimes it's downright ridiculous, but as stated above, it's going to get some work.

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I'm sorry if that was the impression I'd given with my thoughts: I'd simply meant that SOASE is an incredible step forward in this genre, in fact, in the creation of a new genre, it's just that it also has MASSIVE potential, even more so than what it is.

What I think I'm trying to say is that SOASE is currently an Ironclad warship to everyone else's wooden hulls, but it's got room to expand to a nuclear powered, railgun armed, 80knot trimaran with a CNT infused ultralight composite hull.

SOASE can only go up, and there is no limit to its heights.

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Sins is a good game but I am disappointed with the diplomacy and the research aspects. Diplomacy in single player is impossible to keep up with effectively and research just doesn't seem to make a significant difference. My carriers with every upgrade still fall to a handful of light frigates if I'm not careful. Yes, there is an element of strategy that one must have but there is an expectation of significant improvement with expensive upgrades.

I like the game so far, but I will be looking for meaningful changes and improvements when deciding whether to purchase a new Ironclad or Sin's game.

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I think HuntingX's assessment is spot on.

This game is entirely RTS in my eyes. The tech tree is easily ignored, for the most part. Micromanagement wins the day in all the battles I've fought. You can get away with only building 1 or 2 types of units, even against hard AI. The Best strategy is generally to use your entire fleet as 1 unit, and not bother to split it up into sub fleets, in most cases. You acquire a planet, click 3 or 4 times, and then can largely ignore it until either the end of the game or it is attacked.

Some of my posts may sound biting, but I feel as if I've been deceived by the devs.

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Of everything mentionned here the point I agree most strongly with is: yes, Sins diplomacy needs serious work and we will be re-doing it (probably for the expansion).
I've read just as many 'energetic' threads like this where the majority of people feel its more 4X than an RTS. It really just depends on the crowd. Hard core micro / tactics RTS players are particularly vehement that Sins isn't an RTS by their standards but there are just as many people who claim RTS games aren't really strategy games at all but really Real-Time-Tactical (RTT) games so who knows.
But here is what I have to say about the whole RTS/4X/RT4X thing. Definitions and classifications are so gray. I just made up the word RT4X 3 years ago to describe the game we were making because it felt so different than anything we'd ever played or heard of before. In that sense it doesn't matter what RTS or 4X really is - RT4X is its own classification and because I made up the word I can put whatever I want into its meaning. If you want a definition just play Sins because RT4X is whatever Sins is.

That people can see in the game what they want (ie, it's 4X enough for the slow TBS players and RTS enough for the micro RTS guys) is a triumph by itself. I think it's mendacious in the extreme to say it's not an RTS *as well* as whatever '4X' elements it has, but you guys certainly managed to please both sides of that particular fence.

Any work on diplomacy is doubleplusgood. While it's complicated, look at the dip for Space Empires V - far too complex and slow for Sins, but the idea of many separate options for things like 'x resources/s for 10 minutes' and 'you can use my repair bases/extractors' and other 'concessions' like 'we are at peace but I agree not to enter x system' make the dip game between humans very interesting. War coming due to territorial/culture disputes? Set a dip contract for money or other concessions over time that can be broken, ignored or bartered with. The only problem would be letting the AI have a clue what it's about - but even just for multi it'd make the human vs human thing very awesome indeed. Anything with actual 'negotiation' would be good, and pulling someone away from a battle to 'negotiate' would add something to the game.

Oh, and at the VERY least, but in GalCiv2 style attitude modifiers. If I've steamrolled someone's entire empire and say 'hey want ceasefire', they should say yes. Saying no is suicide, and that's retarded - but the way it works now, 0% means 'refuse everything regardless of circumstances'. They can hate you all they want, but refusing a ceasefire with someone who's about to exterminate their entire race is ridiculous. The -- and ++ things in Sins would work, and for the AI to have 'race flavour' attitudes would be cool, as the factions would 'like' different things (trading with TEC AI etc).

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That people can see in the game what they want (ie, it's 4X enough for the slow TBS players and RTS enough for the micro RTS guys) is a triumph by itself.

Indeed! The fact that this conversation can even take place, IMHO, is a feat in itself. I couldn't have this conversation about StarCraft or Age of Empires (clearly RTS games) nor could I have it about MOO2 or GalCivII (clearly 4X games).

Is it 4X? Yes and no. Is it RTS? Yes and no. Is it RT4X? Obviously since Blair says so

Is it good? C'mon, would we be debating this so much if we didn't love the game?

BTW, Kruelgor, sorry for calling you out. Your original response, while a bit harsh, was in fact the proper response to the hatin' that was going on in that post

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Is it 4X? Yes and no. Is it RTS? Yes and no.

My gut says... maybe

Agreed

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If someone were to claim that Starcraft or Age of Empires were 4X hybrid games, I could have just as easily had this conversation. If Blizzard wants to call its next Warcraft RTS a 'tactical Ork-smasher,' that'd be fine and all but if it looks and plays like an RTS, I'm still going to wonder why (beyond simple marketing) they bothered to make the distinction.

Especially when someone makes a thread that's supposed to be explaining that distinction.

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From a 4x perspective, the exceedingly limited tech tree, especially the lack of branching, the fact that your getting incremental upgrades to existing ship types instead of being able to mix and match - live or die, by the research choices you have made, etc (other have said stuff better than I could) makes this feel much more like an RTS than a 4x. It is a good game, but from my perspective it is missing something, whether that is on the RTS side or the 4x side, I am not sure. There are excellent concepts in the game and for what I hope is the first in the IP, it is darn good. The bigger question in everyone's mind, seemingly including the producers, is in what the next step is, good luck with that and no sarcasm intended or implied.

If you want diplomacy - you should try an FFA game with some folks you know, it is realpolitiks at it's dealiest

The AI needs to be improved enough so that it is at least not crushed by pirate raids. I might just be getting unlucky in my hard random AI opponents, but so far they seem to fizzle early game and I am playing on random medium sized galaxies with a minimum of two opponents. I am just alternating who gets hit by the initial pirate raids and they don't seem to handle it well. I am going to start playing without the pirates and see what happens.

You guys might think of the capitol ship more as a Hero unit than a technological achievement. That seems to be the designed role of it and once you think of it that way you will realize that it suits that role very well - something from the RTS side of the fence.

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Lord Reliant

Join Date 03/2006

+39

Of everything mentionned here the point I agree most strongly with is: yes, Sins diplomacy needs serious work and we will be re-doing it (probably for the expansion).

Blair-

Diplomacy won't be overhauled until the Expansion? I got the impression that it would be re-worked in patch 1.1. Or are there going to be two phases to the diplomacy improvements?

Also, thanks for your thoughts as one of the creators on the game's role. That's cool you created the RT4X label- it seems to fit the game well.

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BTW, Kruelgor, sorry for calling you out. Your original response, while a bit harsh, was in fact the proper response to the hatin' that was going on in that post

No worries ob1_shinobi. Everyone loves to hate Kruelgor. It's my trademark.

Peace!

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It's nice to hear from Blair, shows that the Devs are actually listenning to player concerns.

But something is off here, rather then fixing something, we are going to have to purchace an expantion pack which will fix something which was promised in the first place?

I understand that you are part of a business and you need to make money, but how about giving players an incentive to further invest in the development of the game rather then making us pay for something which was intended to be there in the first place?

I'm sorry if this sounds scathing but I'm feeling pretty cheated.

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Heavily arguable. Most RTSes definitely require faster fingers, but most (good) RTSes aren't about speed. CoH, Supcom, etc...are good examples of this.

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RT4X is its own classification and because I made up the word I can put whatever I want into its meaning. If you want a definition just play Sins because RT4X is whatever Sins is.

LOL! Awesome! You da man!

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It's pretty early to be announcing or at the very least suggesting an Expantion when there still things to be done.

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It's pretty early to be announcing or at the very least suggesting an Expantion when there still things to be done.

This game is going to have a very long life expectancy. If you get bored of the game playing as one faction, then it's time to learn how to play as another faction.

One thing they could do to really extend the life expectancy of the game is to allow user-created maps (galaxy forge) to be easily downloaded/hosted in the game.

Fireglow's Suddenstrike RTS games were great at allowing user-created maps to be hosted.

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One thing they could do to really extend the life expectancy of the game is to allow user-created maps (galaxy forge) to be easily downloaded/hosted in the game.

I agree. This is absolutely necessary. All battle.net games do this and you've seen the phenomenal success they've had with custom games.

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It's nice to hear from Blair, shows that the Devs are actually listenning to player concerns.But something is off here, rather then fixing something, we are going to have to purchace an expantion pack which will fix something which was promised in the first place?I understand that you are part of a business and you need to make money, but how about giving players an incentive to further invest in the development of the game rather then making us pay for something which was intended to be there in the first place?I'm sorry if this sounds scathing but I'm feeling pretty cheated.

Wow, I would never have expected this type of comment. The rest of the world has been shocked at how much extra material we've already put out and Frogboy just outlined a whole bunch of new stuff. It's even been making news on some of the major sites... I don't think this is a fair statement at all and if anything we are near the top of the heap in terms of providing new material and incentives to stick around. (We've had 3 major updates in just under 1.5 months with much more to come)

If you check out my latest podcast you'll get a break down of how we decide if things are expansion material or not but it basically comes down to how many man hours it would take to implement unless its so broken that the game is unplayable. Diplomacy went out the way it is because we liked it and hardly anyone complained about it - it is NOT broken, it is working as intended. Obviously, post-release we have a much bigger sample set and the overall concensus is people want it changed - so it will be. This is the type of support you get from Ironclad and we've been doing it from the start: we listen to what people have to say and actually make fundamental changes in the game based on their input.

P.S Yes, we are looking into simplifying the map sharing process

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Well, the Military Alliance of Gog (MAGOG) gives SINS 5 stars out of 5 stars, Two thumbs up, an Oscar, Golden Globe Award, an Academy Award, and most importantly Gog's Stamp of Approval.

I'm still trying to get my 200 members over at WiC (World in Conflict) to get their behinds over here and buy the game because Sins is better!

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