Does anyone here remember a really old game called 'Imperium' which was released for the Atari ST in 1990. This had a 3D galaxy that was really quite large. It was also quite easy to navigate around. I think it was also released for the amiga. It was one of my favourite games at the time, right up there with Sim City. (Okay, I'm showing my age, I don't care, I already posted it on another thread and was told 29-31 is average around here...)

It also had basic ship design (nothing complex, you just had to balance weapons, armour and hyperdrive, and the bigger the ship the more in total you could have.)

I for one would welcome this kind of approach to a future version of GC.

If the stardock team have never played Imperium (or haven't done so for a while), I strongly suggest they do so as 'research'. Its a bit old now, but in some ways it was ahead of its time...

im still having trouble imagining a 3D galactic map thats easy to navigate -does anyone have any links to some pics of the user interface of these games? trying to plot all the ships in such a map would seem pretty difficult.

i can imagine a solar system map thats 3D however. since solar systems are pretty much flat anyways, so mapping and navigating such a map shouldnt be too difficult.

I really like the idea of #2, in particular, but I'd like it even better if the starbase's area of influence expanded with the appropriate tech, possibly speed based. The better the standard engine, the greater the ability of a given starbase to project power, influence, whatever.

im assuming this is for GalCiv2, right? or will this be for a different game?

By changing starbase's influence from sector wide to a certain range, how is that going to affect the culture victory condition? Are there going to be pockets of "no dominance" which people must make constructors and starbases to cover? Are you going to update the influence map to appropriately show the circle of influence a star system has (and what about trade route's influence? As a line?)

And people can already make starlanes with starbases and upgrades to ship speed...

I think the asteroids will "look cool". However, I don't see how it will improve the game, and it's certainly not astronomically correct: there just isn't enough mass to make the kinds of dense fields of rocks you see in movies.

Since, except for terror stars, the stars don't change, why do you need a 3D engine? You could just compute one big image made of the sum of all small ones, and clip it when showing it on the screen. That would be efficient I believe.
Now if you want to add zooming in the main screen, that's a different issue.

Area of influence for a starbase sounds good. In fact, if the ai realized that culture bombs are built in neighbouring systems, it would make cultural conquest much harder.

Seeing the planets on the main map is less important than being shown each planet build screen when you conquer a system. I regularly end up building colony ships because that's what the ai was building on the second planet of the system I conquered (and why do they build colony ships in late game is a mystery).

That brings up the question of whether invasions (and defensive systems) should be worked out system-wide, or on a planet by planet basis.

Ascendency had a pretty good 3d map. You could rotate it. Now I realize that they used star lanes for travel, but the rotation principal could still remain. There would have to be a way to recenter the map back to a default setting in case the user got turned around.

B

I for one don't want a 3D map that you can rotate around. Most galaxies are mostly flat anyway. A 3D map would just make it hard to see which star is close to which one since we'd only see a projection.

with so many ships going inbetween starsytems, it would be very difficult to see who is going to what, and from where. with a 2D, its easy to track the ships, but with a 3D map, and trying to plot 100's of ships?

And ....? LOL

B

"Roads and railroad tracks?? Hello!!!! This suppose to be the 22 century"

Oh come now! Didn't you see the 3rd "Back to the Future" wherein, at the end of the movie, Doc's steam locamotive flies and time travels?

bpleshek is right on--a really 3D galaxy is only really viable if you use starlanes (like in Ascendancy... I actually still have that game :)). Without those, you'd have ships strewn all over the place and you'd have no way of telling where the heck they really are.

Of course, this isn't a problem anyways since Brad already said GC2 will just be a 2D galaxy renered in a 3D engine...
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#1. As someone mentioned clicking on planets is really a minor inconvience compared to the end game click fest of a constructor rush. Sure it would be nice to have but nothing that, IMO, really adds depth to the game.

#2. Simply great idea. Someone mentioned, well how would we culture bomb then? I don't think its all that much of a strech to say that culture/influence comes from planets, and the SBs boost the planets in range outputs. You want to culture bomb just increase the planets culture points so it spreads out further.

#3. Good and bad in this idea. The bad, from a realistic point of view, the idea of using astorides in system defense is silly, mines or no, they really don't work as terrian. The good, replace those abstract resources in GC1 with tangable resourse in GC2, mined from astroids. You get a bonus to Defense, it must be from those extoic minerals your mining, and think of the profit to be made from selling your excess stores. Then of course there are the objects in deep space that can have more detail, dust storms, black holes, ect. This would be the terrain you talked about, I'm sure with a little creativity they can be used to great effect.

Last point, and I know it has nothing to do with a 3D engine, but I want to bump the railroad idea. If you can travel fast through a star gate, and you can travel fast with hyperdrive, why can't you travel really fast with a hyperdrive and a stargate? Also give you some more control over shipbuilding, use space for hyperdrive or no?

Summary: 3D engine good when used to turn current abstracted ideas (SB control & resources) into more concreate tangable objects

-Mo

P.S. Though I've posted before, I'm a lurker and scared of you forum people, please don't hurt me . I just like the game alot and want to help.

Do post more, Mo, your comments are appreciated.

~SDC~

Yes, please continue to post. And then join the G.R.O.S.S. empire. We have plenty more swords in the armory.

B

Why take some run-of-the-mill sword (probably last used by a pirate recruit who was last seen swinging from a rope on an ANZAC vessle yardarm), when you can have a custom made lightsaber from the Jedi Republic?

I'm sure that Qui-Gon has a few Ewok spaces left open for you I suppose I you turn down our sabers. LOL

B

Brad,

All three of the proposed changes sound interesting - but you'd have to be careful to avoid a "tactical" aspect to in-system combat with asteroid fields. One of GalCiv's strengths is a complete absence of tactical combat, letting you get right back to the action. Maybe a simple defensive modifier?

I do like the idea of "terrain." How about nebulas?

Solitair has a nifty idea about being able to SEE your improvements at a glance. Sort of like the current starbase buildup, but with better detail, as you expand each planet's infrastructure. If you can get this to work, it would be terrific eye candy - perhaps the weakest area of the current game.

If you are going to make the solar systems a 3D map, would it then also be possible to share control of a solar system with another race. I could control 3 out of the 5 planets, and the alien the other 2. The border between our empires would then run through the solar system.

Another idea, maybe a concept of borders? I now I don't like enemy ships crossing through my space. Ally or not, they have no business there. You could then also have the border violation event where you would have to try and resolve it diplomaticly, escort the ship back or just blow it up and hope noone noticed. Also new possibilities would be spy ships, an actual use of cloaking, detection module on a starbase, seeing how the AI response if you claim a piece of space as your own. The possibilities are huge, but you would have to make the borders so that the human player cannot exploit it too much.

Just my two cents

G-Force

Yes, I do remember the game Imperium Freaking hard game to play. I am glad I am not the only one who has ever played that game. And it was very good game that made you feel like you were realy that leader. All future 4x games should take some lessons from it.

Ascendancy is a good game and the 3D part of it very well used IMO. If there could be something similar would be great, but perhaps that is not what the majority of the people would prefer. I would.


About the 3 suggestions, I like all 3. One thing that I would also like would be more options about how your ships look like, like in Space Empires IV. You want to "force" us to play humans, fine with me, but more options on the ship's looks!



~SDC~

All I have is one question..

Will there be a time limit on tomarrows live chat because I could see it going into the early hours of the next day EST with this and all the other topics on the mind of us folk.

Alakh
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How about some kind of bidding process where someone could put up a decent tech and all races could bid on it.Say one or two turn limit for bidding and then to highest bidder it goes.Then this particular tech would have to wait six months before it could be put up for bid again.You could do this with techs and trade goods.

I've just looked at the new 3-D style map layout linked off the main Galciv page (the map editor). I think it looks quite groovy. I was going to suggest that an isomorphic projection (I think that's the word) would allow you to have prettiers stars, planets etc. but you beat me to the idea.