On Diplomacy and Game Mechanics in general.

from Sins Forums

The following opinions are based on hundreds of hours played, all versions of the game, modded and unmodded, online and single player.

When I first bought it, I was very excited about this game. And in a sense I still am. The "awesome" factor is definitely the iron engine. Impressive to say the least. Ironclad succeeded where much bigger names have failed miserably.

Unfortunately that's about the only awesome factor as I feel the developers have failed to capitalize on an engine that promises so much. Let's start: with the lack of campaign: I'm sorry, but this is not another online shootter, this is a strategy game... they do go together, strategy and campaign, that is. And if your hillariously embarassing excuse that "we offered extensive mod tools for players to create their own content" were indeed true, then I must ask: why the story telling in the intro of the game? It felt way out of place.

Almost all games nowadays are easily modable, and that is more or less something the devs cannot avoid as most extensive software projects (which most games are) are "modular". They need to be so in order to support many coders, artists etc. working together. Being easily modable is at most a bonus not something that can be exchanged for content. After all I don't spend my money buying your game so I can spend hours upon hours creating content for myself or worse, downloading and crash testing content from other people. I'm sorry, but I don't want to buy a game engine. I want to buy games to have fun, not to get a second job creating "user content"; or wait for your numerous patch fixes and "content patches", content that should have been there in the first place.

I am not even going to mention the lack of mod tools, unexcusable for a game that presumably truncates content for flexibility. You want to know how mod tools look like? Check out TES construction set for Oblivion or Morrowind. It took the devs 3 patches to fix needing to transfer over 1gig of meshes and textures to the mods folder in order to mod game textures. Lol. Not very adroit, my dear devs. Should I mention AI modding? Hurrrm

Also, claiming that multiplayer was factored into the initial release package is ridiculous at best, as the first month the online play was riddled with bugs and exploits, not to mention balance problems, all easily avoidable through testing (these were issues players picked up in the first week of play). Learn to beta test or demo if needed. Don't release the demo months after the game release... that's ridiculous. Demo stands for demonstration. Bah.

The diplomacy. It's ridiculous at best. I don't know whether dimplomacy was implemented in such a simplistic way because of game engine constraints, but either way it sucks atm. There is a short period (40-50) mins at the start of the game when you run the risk of all AI players ganging up on you. That is until you manage to establish some cease fire treaties. After you managed to build your alliances the game is won. You can take one or two players out at a time, untill all of them are gone. There's nothing dynamic, no backstabing (since if you have the correct approval percentage the AI player will never break already existing alliances), no forced or bought alliances out of necessity, no temporary ceasefires, no tricks, no research trade, no ship trade, no tributes etc. Also, unrelated to diplomacy, there is no espionage.

This trully renders the game stale. Why bother having hundreds of planets and 6+ stars with up to 10 players if all you do is blitz research followed by automatic spamming of favorite frigate/cruiser/battleship and a seemingly unending process of nuking and then colonizing planet after planet until you reach the home planet where you, at last, get to fight one big battle. There are few strategies as for example there is no serious way one could outtech another's fleet and thus fight numbers with quality.

On top of that the AI sucks bad. So tired of fleets of percherons and robotic cruisers. With such a simple game... I can't help but wonder why?

Anyways, going to go read a book or watch some TV. Will give this game a few months for the devs to get some sense and crank out the content that was supposed to come with the original game. I feel like I was given a lollypop stick without the lollypop.

 

16,225 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Well, I don't agree with most of that. I'll refrain from arguing details on things that are a matter of opinion, but there are a couple of points I would like to make.

I'm particularly surprised that you'd say you've played hundreds of hours and never seen the AI break an alliance. The diplomacy model in this game is unique, won't be to everyone's taste and may well have room for more development... but it absolutely definitely allows AI to break alliances and that is not at all an infrequent event.

The second point is that the AI build strategy in the release versions of the game does not spam robotic cruisers. The impression I get from your post is that you might have played a long time with the pre-release versions of the game, but not with the release version.

I can quite understand anyone playing almost any computer game thinking it is pretty stale after "hundreds of hours". Even the biggest and best loved titles I play generally get put away after twenty to two hundred hours depending on the genre so if you've played that much of the beta you probably should take a long break. SoaSE is good and a lot of what you said isn't really fair to the game, but I don't think it will have a playing lifespan of several hundred hours for me and I think quite highly of it.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
I like soase for one simple reason, it is the latest space RTS game, or the closist to it.
all other points are moot points to me.
Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
I like soase for one simple reason, it is the latest space RTS game, or the closest to it. all other points are moot points to me.
End of quote


Yeah, that's a pretty good point... and SoaSE had enough novel features to earn a place in my collection even if it had turned out worse than it did.
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
a seemingly unending process of nuking and then colonizing planet after planet until you reach the home planet where you, at last, get to fight one big battle. There are few strategies as for example there is no serious way one could outtech another's fleet and thus fight numbers with quality.

On top of that the AI sucks bad. So tired of fleets of percherons and robotic cruisers.
End of quote


This alone has made the game stale for me after just tens of hours.

Astatine:
The second point is that the AI build strategy in the release versions of the game does not spam robotic cruisers. The impression I get from your post is that you might have played a long time with the pre-release versions of the game, but not with the release version.
End of quote


Actually he's talking about 1.03 I think. I saw the very same thing in a game I played just yesterday... A fleet with a Marza and about 40 of each percherons and robotics cruisers.

On top of that, there is some type of glitch with percherons and robotics cruisers in large quantities trying to jump out of a system, because they bunch up in an unorganized blob and some of them cannot even initiate a phase jump. This leads to watching a bunch of ships that have no offensive weapons what soever popping like baloons, sitting there like a bunch of lemmings.




Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Fair enough, if you say you've seen it. Doesn't seem to happen to me though. Maybe you should send your replays in and see if they can work out what's happening.

As for staleness... really, if $40 spent on entertainment lasts for tens of hours it's a bit mean to say "mere" tens of hours. Most ways we could spend $40 on fun wouldn't keep us entertained anything like so long; concerts, movies, sports tickets, food and booze, even books would struggle.

It's one of the things that makes the gaming market difficult, for tabletop games as well as computers and consoles. Digital entertainment at least gets the advantage of low costs to produce each additional copy of the product... very low indeed for direct download, but it's still a struggle. Not that I don't like things the way they are... it's good that customers are in a reasonably strong position. The other entertainment industries sometimes go much too far in exploiting their quasi-monopoly privileges at the customer's expense. That's probably a topic for a different forum though :)
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
As for staleness... really, if $40 spent on entertainment lasts for tens of hours it's a bit mean to say "mere" tens of hours. Most ways we could spend $40 on fun wouldn't keep us entertained anything like so long; concerts, movies, sports tickets, food and booze, even books would struggle.
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I only said "mere tens of hours" because I was comparing it to his hundreds of hours. I'm at maybe 40 and I bought the game on release day, so, I was saying he played the game a lot longer than I did before getting bored of it, to his credit.

Also, I wasn't at all insinuating I thought I had wasted my 40 dollars. If not for Stardock and Ironclad it could have very well been 60. I only come on these forums and post criticisms in the hope that one of the devs will see the problems I'm having with the game and maybe use it in some way to improve the game. Most of the problems I have (primarily with the AI) are echoed by many other people on these forums, so maybe if there are enough voices they will listen.

Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
Fair enough. I didn't mean to give or take any offence. It's just something I think about... usually when it's time to balance my budget :)
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
Well, I don't agree with most of that. I'll refrain from arguing details on things that are a matter of opinion, but there are a couple of points I would like to make.I'm particularly surprised that you'd say you've played hundreds of hours and never seen the AI break an alliance. The diplomacy model in this game is unique, won't be to everyone's taste and may well have room for more development... but it absolutely definitely allows AI to break alliances and that is not at all an infrequent event.The second point is that the AI build strategy in the release versions of the game does not spam robotic cruisers. The impression I get from your post is that you might have played a long time with the pre-release versions of the game, but not with the release version.I can quite understand anyone playing almost any computer game thinking it is pretty stale after "hundreds of hours".
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Are you serious?
The AI scripting is very simple. It will not break alliances unless it suddenly became the only player left (i.e. you just nuked the other players) or it went bellowed their ascribed friendliness percentile (I think it goes something like 35% for ceasefire - but you need at least 50% to establish it - and 90% for peace treaty - and you need 100% to establish it).

In regards to the percheron and especially robotic cruiser fleets: again, are you serious? Depending on which AI you use (defensive, offensive, researcher, economist), on hard the TEC AI always builds far too many percherons/robotic cruisers/cielo command vessels. This gets worse as I usually destroy his damage dealing ships first (as in I take out his LRMs/Kodiaks/etc. first), since they actually do damage, everytime I chase them in a well - which is to say all the time. Thus, next time I catch them they have even more support vessels and less damage dealing ships (since by the time they managed to run away from me the first time, only the support vessels were left).

This brings me to why I play Vasari: marauder's sprint + evacuator's mass phase inhibitor + marauder's pahse out (to keep the capitals out of the business untill I am done butchering their stupid fleet) + the destoyer's nanites AOE explosion to anihillate their frigates when they are bunched up at phase lane + heavy cruiser's slow down ability (100% acceleration and speed slow down) etc. The thing is this game sucks again as by the time you kill their planet and infrastructure and colonize and build some defenses in order to deal with the annoying siege frigates they rebuild their entire fleet (and they only have one capital ship factory and 2-3 frigate factories). Ship build time should be a lot slower. Losing a fleet in a decisive battle should equal loss of many planets etc. Not some modest loss of credits.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
Are you serious?
End of quote


Yes. And you?

Actually, let's not get into that at all. You gave your opinions and I gave mine and we're not going to profit from starting to argue the toss.