Although the random option is cool, it's currently impossible to force alliances at the start. I can't use the difficulty randomness (anyhting below incredible is cakewalk to me), so I'm stuck with the alignment changes. Mostly an all-evil/all-good galaxy will make for a different game (all evil means less alliances). Still, since I'm a peaceful fellow, alignment doesn't affect the game too much.
Economics is really not a problem late game. I think it wouldn't have changed my last game had starbases cost 100 to upkeep each. I would have lowered spendings, or increased military prod vs. research which is a sinkhole, and voila. I miss the point of fixing the 'wasted money' thing for the same reason. Late game I just don't have anything to build on any planets. Constructors everywhere, social imps are set to 0 because I've got all those I want and it's faster to rush buy the occasi
[quote]How can it work? Similar to starbases modules.[/quote] Now that's an idea. Ship design could be done in space rather than in the docks: You would assemble constructors to build a ship instead of building a starbase. Modules would give +defense as they currently do, and also provide +attack/+speed. Of course, you would have to declare that the starbase is of ship-class, or influence-class or whatever. It would basically allow to develop a specific ship into a super ship, and only
[quote]In my past couple of games I've experimented with Stellar Cartography. [/quote] I tried that a bit just to see. I found it a VERY BAD idea. I was busy researching the tech when a lot of arcean colony ships flew by my planets. I'd have been much better off building colony ships myself and sending them blindly as I usually do. I also think that following an ai colony ship with an armed survey ship is one of the best tactics ever. You find the planet, kill the ship(s) and send y
I don't assume any kind of cheat flag. No cheat key whatsoever. I'm just saying that a simple game is worth nothing to someone who could beat an incredible ai. I saw that the minors can give you some money, even though the incredibles don't. This would indeed make the game simpler. Starting position would be very important in this type of game. I checked once and the Drengins had 10 stars when I could reach 5, then on the second game the Carinoids were in my home sector, which helped
[quote]Also, I think speed picks are way too expensive. After the first two dozen turns what good are they? [/quote] I disagree. Speed picks are balanced enough. On tight clusters, they don't matter much, but on loose or scattered, the initial rush makes a huge difference, and speed allows more exploration. Don't forget that +1speed also gices you a 50% more efficient survey ship, which means it can pop half more +25% research anomalies in the opening, which can make a difference too.<br
I've tried a game against a single opponent. The saintly incredible Drengin. This is rated as 'simple' game. Ouch! I believe it's harder than maso. The rats expanded so fast I could barely move. Did anyone else try to beat a single incredible ai? Considering the trick is to pit incredible at wars against one another, it sounds like the hardest challenge for me. Of course it must be worth about 0 Metaverse points if you win, but then what?
I think the gameplay would be better if you were restricted to techs you can research, based on your alignment and prerequired techs. For instance, I often never research Deflectors, but buy Shields. That's weird. I also can't start thinking how a good civ would use advanced slavery.
You should pick diplomacy and influence bonuses. Social/Military Production will not be very useful as you will have no military worth anything on maso. Social might be useful to get the wonders built. Economy bonus will be useless because you will get more money from trade if you've got a single system. The key is to get allied with whoever is stronger, and bride the ai's to go at war against each other. Research victory seems hard so you will need an alliance victory. You will nee
I have no idea. I'm sure that a game against a single incredible ai would be the hardest of all, but on lower level settings it's hard to say.
I feel the sharks don't have much effect on my games. They are too slow to disrupt anything, vaguely annoy the ai, and the ai doesn't even shepherd them. If it did, since the player would do the same, hte beasts would be quite useless. I wish they were able to deal damage to planets instead of just ships, and targeted the nearest planet, forgetting ships totally. Now you would have to do something about them.
[quote]2) Ability to build starbase that increase range? build starbase and improvement to extend the range of ships (having the starbase act as a planet for range...)[/quote] This is already the case. Except the ai doesn't know how to use it. If the ai did, then it would be cool.
On huge/gigantic maps, the ai is too far away from you to cause problems early on. On medium maps, ai is aggressive when you meet them because you don't have the time to set up trade routes with them when they start bullying. Additionnally, on a gigantic map, you can be at war with someone in the other corner and ignore them entirely. On medium, that's too dangerous. I don't think scouts change anything to the equation, and personnally almost never build them on any map size (the su
One thing that was suggested for the Xpack: [quote]New Galactic Resource: Life force. Improves your diplomatic ability. [/quote] I feel this one stinks. Diplomacy as it is is over powered. If you could mine your diplomacy ability up, it would be impossible for the ai to follow. On the other hand, start game might be harder if the ai picked 2 of these. It will only make starbases more powerful for the player. Diplo is the player's strength already. There will always be 2 or 3 ai
[quote]All you really have to remember, though, is one set of 6 icon positions: StarMap/Planets/Ships/Economy/Diplomacy/Tech. They never move around.[/quote] Yes but remembering positions would be easier with a figure inside than changing icons. 6 is too big a number for my working memory. 5 is the high limit to find somethign at first glance (though some people can get as much as 9, a limit of 3 to 5 choices is considered better ergonomics). It's particularly hard since I mostly use 3
[quote]Perhaps aliens should only be willing to attack another race if you attack as well.[/quote] Definitely a good idea.
They may have been mining a military resource and have built some shipyards. Maybe they found some techs too, or got the TriStrontium TG. Or they got the event 'They are doing funny things and growing stronger everyday'. This last one is the ony you as a player can't get, but you're warned when it happens.
user friendly, I suggest you mod the ship stats (range/speed mostly). You can also LEAVE THE UP (I wonder what this gives when you issued a law prohibiting more than 2 modules per starbase - can you get as many as you want at the cost of not trading with other civs?) [quote]One of the things I'd like to see us do is put together a scenario editor where you could create a game with a gazillion special settings.The reason we don't have more game setup options is the cost of doing the
I'd like the minors beedef up too. Currently they help whoever extorts tehir money and whoever kills them(usually me in both cases). They should definitely start with more population and one or two good ships in orbit. As for techs, they could start with the lowest common denominator plus a fixed number of techs based on the minor race. For instance, the Klingonite minor race would have all techs everyone has plus 2 red techs and one blue tech, while the OtherExample minors would have 3
They usually provide you with an explanation as to where they must go (mostly in the data folder). Just dump the (unzipped if needs be) files there and you're set.
[quote]Not to sound silly, but the red is kind of annoying on the eyes. I like the white overlay that comes from being good.[/quote] I agree I find it ugly too. I actually prefer the neutral UI, and I am always confused as to what icon is what after the icons changed. Imagine if you has 9 alignments (lawful/chaotic + good/evil), you'd get 9 sets of icons to remember. Totally impossible for any human. Changing the overall color and the robot advisor is cool, but I don't like the chan
On maso, I used +60 diplo +20 from the party and won a lot. I decided to change that to only +10 diplo, just to see, and still have to win. If I go that way, it looks like I would have to build a military :(, and tech trading is much harder witout the bonuses (except for minors of course, but they don't matter long).
Yes, teh scoring system is obscure. I think most powerful ship is still the ship with the biggest attack rating (thus I see AMMs very often there). I think all scores are based on the amount of production you used in the particular area, but I'm not sure. I understand that you can get fond of ships. I usuallt like my survey ship, but it's rarely strong enough to survive battles from frigate age.
[quote]that is, if you think you still need a healer?[/quote] If we do it wrong, we may need one soon.
I feel all scoring issues shouldn't prevent developping good concepts. There will be cheese, anyway. Look at people now submitting tiny maso games and getting 20k+ points. Tiny maso is easy, it's rewarded too much. Should tiny be removed from the game? No. Let us mod the game! I can cheese the game to get huge scores by changing 1 figure in one file and the metaverse wouldn't realize what I did (it didn't give anomalous score for the one I submitted to test). So, please, forget about the metaver
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