Could there just be one star system?

Kuciwalker · December 13, 2002, 22:05

I had an idea: could there just be a single star system, and you're fighting the other factions for control?

The game starts out on Earth. Whatever calamity is going to happen will happen soon( This disaster will wipe out the entire solar system, so you can't just move to Mars.), so you need to finish construction on your flagship. There would be different strategies even now; you could spend time building the largest ship you can, so you can take as much stuff with you as possible, or you can quickly build a small, fast ship, so that you get first dibs on the land in the new star system. You can even go to war on Earth while you are building your colony ship, trying to slow down or halt construction on theirs, or maybe even trying to destroy them. Finally, you load as much as you can onto your flagship (you can move troops, equipment, resources, and civilians, in whatever proportions you desire) and take off in your ship for the new star system.

This journey only takes a few turns, depending on the speed of your flagship. This allows people to keep playing on Earth after you've left. In fact, until the calamity, Earth continues to be simulated.

Finally, you reach the star system. You now set your ship on course for one of the planets and land wherever you want. You use your civilians to found a city or two, and begin on the new planet.

Michiel · December 14, 2002, 06:18

You mean two game-parts? One part that only takes a few turns, the other part that takes the rest of the game?

I don't agree. Such a beginning could give one of the factions an amazingly fast advantage over the others. I think each faction should have a certain time in the beginning of the game without contact with others, so they can peacefully build up a basic civilization. Also, if there are gonna be aliens in the game, even player-controlled aliens, where do they come from? If you start in earths solar system, there can only be humans, right?

Blake · December 14, 2002, 06:49

That would definitely be a possible scenerio, start all the factions on earth with lots of cities and stuff, and script an event to blow up the earth...

I'm not sure if multi-planet systems are a good idea or not... they can be crudely simulated by putting planets close together (good if the scenerio is centered in a single system), having true multi-planet systems make the interface a lot more difficult to design, because basically you need a whole different interface for choosing which planet...

Kuciwalker · December 15, 2002, 12:18

A multi-planet system would be easy to simulate in this case, because there would just be one system. There wouldn't be travel to other systems. There would be the star, planets, moons, and asteroids. Everything except the star would be in motion. Planets would have an orbit, a rotation, everything. You could even have combat on the night side operate differently (the night side would move, of course). Ships could move into different orbits around the planet; when in orbit, they would be above a specific tile on the planet. The planets would be three-dimensional, so the tiles wouldn't be square.

If the first part on Earth would be too unbalancing, then just have people start off with their flagship somewhere at the edge of the system, and let them choose which planet to start out on. If you want aliens, make one of the planets inhabited by a race of aliens with twentieth or twenty-first century technology, somewhat behind the humans (to explain why they don't have everything the humans do). They would not be united, of course; there would be seperate nations of them. It would be wonderful.

targon · December 17, 2002, 04:58

In fact, such game exists (or more precise, existed). It's called Malkari or something equally silly. In short: it's boring. If you want some story in the game, it must be epic story, not just a struggle for survival, there is to much of this in "real life". Or game may be completely plot-less, just multiplayer skirmish with some "historical" and technological outline.

Kuciwalker · December 21, 2002, 10:14

The first part of the game is short, and not hard to survive through. It could even be a tutorial. It's not the focus of my idea. What I really think would be good would be a single star system. There are several planets in it, and you have to destroy everyone (there could be alternative wins, of course). You don't leave the star system because you can't travel faster than light.

Jeremy Buloch · December 24, 2002, 21:21

In gateways story there is, I think more than one star System. So it would have to be able to fit his story.
-J.B.-

targon · December 25, 2002, 04:33

Maybe, but even largest solar system can't include more that single really habitable planet, and most of planets _must_ be simple junk (Jupiter and Saturns, for example, are impressive things to watch, but how useful they are?).

Mark123jansen · December 25, 2002, 06:28

first of all targon this is a SCIEMCE FICTION game, if we want a single solar system with 20 planets of wicht 10 are inhabiteble then thats what we will program.
(besides, you don't know whats out there, NASA hasn't seen all stars yet)

Second, I like the start on earth idea, but instead of having it take a few turns, make it part of the game setup screen, so you can cumtom design your ship, maybe take that extra scout patrol or a power satalite, or some extra databanks. larger ships=late arrival but stronger factions, hard to balance.

Mark123jansen · December 25, 2002, 06:30

pardon my spelling, I was in a hurry when I wrote that

targon · December 25, 2002, 06:42

SCIENCE FICTION, that is. Science is an keyword. We humans are designed to fit nicely into Earth conditions (most warm climates), and our civilization is also designed to work under the same condions (electonics in fact works only under "comfortable" conditions, so even unmanned spacecrafts are pressured and climatized), let alone agreculture. 10 habitable planets are simply unreal.

Mark123jansen · December 25, 2002, 06:47

well I was exaggerating of course, but 2 or 3 planets out of 20 could be done, if we gave them similar ecosystems that would be even more scientific (asteroid with spores theorie) since life origination on 3 planets in the same solar system is indeed very unlikely.

targon · December 25, 2002, 07:08

At last, you see, single solar system is a subtype of multi-system case. It may be implemented as game mod(e), e.g. "Skirmish"

I'm wondering why some people are so unwelcome to space travel. I know it's somewhat not realistic, but most games handle it and still appears to be playable.

Kuciwalker · December 26, 2002, 17:27

We could have domed settlements and such. Besides, I'm only imagining 10 planets TOTAL, of which three are habitable (and of those, the really earthlike one is inhabited by the aliens). There should also be some habitable moons around a few of the gas giants (for the fun of it), and the rest are just dead, airless rocks - great for mining and small outposts, but little else.

This would allow for great strategizing at the system level, whereas if we have more than one system it would be minimized or eliminated completely.

Jeremy Buloch · December 26, 2002, 23:52

Ok if Gateway sees this thread. Maybe good old Gateway could post his story. The unfinished or finished one. Its actually the "exodus". He has been busy so thats why there is none. I forgot to make a copy from the old "freeAC" site.
-J.B.- zzzzz....

Kuciwalker · December 27, 2002, 19:18

I'm actually not against interstellar travel. I think it makes a great basis for some games. However, I think this approach would be much more fun, in its own way.

Blake · December 28, 2002, 00:59

The problem with one star system is the planets are too close together.
What this means is that a turn length of prehaps 1 week would be required, altough you seem to be expecting a turn length of 1 day or less with things like speed of light making a difference to when messages arrive.
And I would ask, how with a turn length of 1 day could the game possibly have a realistic growth/economy/construction model and still be remotely realistic and playable.

The point of having interstellar travel is to keep movement rates sensible, while still having a fleshed out and realistic society models. (theres other reasons too, ofcourse)

Kuciwalker · December 28, 2002, 14:13

A week would work well, actually.

Blake · December 28, 2002, 15:53

For a wargame, maybe.

Kuciwalker · December 28, 2002, 19:04

This is a wargame, as are all of the civ games. There are other aspects of play, but war is a (the?) central theme.

Jeremy Buloch · December 28, 2002, 21:23

About the wargame topic:
I would like to use weeks but it would be easier to use years. Nothing is ever perfect so we cant set a perfect time of the turns. I go with the year turn. Even though it would seem more realistic to use week turns. It would be alien from other games. Civ. and SMAC were and are year turned based games so why not keep it that way to lessen the confusion?
-J.B.-

Blake · December 28, 2002, 23:03

No no no. It's nothing to do with confusion or tradition.

The problem with 1 week turns is the growth scale gets all muddled up.

Realistically, humans grow at around 4% per year. Growth rates as high as 8% are possible, that requires breeding like rabbits.

With a turn length of 1 year, and a growth rate of 4% per turn, it takes around 17 turns for population to double.
With a turn length of 1 week, and a growth rate of 0.08% per turn, it takes 870 turns for the population to double.

Even with a unreasonably short turn length in real time (10 seconds to play 1 turn) that is still way to slow building pace.

So clearly for a turn length of 1 week, we need to COMPLETELY disregard reality. We would need to take reality, turn it upside down, throw it out a window, and let an elephant take a dump on it so it's well and truly soiled, then deny we ever saw reality (that? thats just a big pile of elephant dung).

We wouldn't be able to have humans in our game, we would have to have hyperative breeding machines that live only to fuel the warmachine that goes to war 10 times a year against 10 different opponents..

Realtime strategy games can get away with grossly unrealistic build and expansion rates. Mainly because they completely avoid any mention of "real" time scales (reality? it's under that pile of dung, go have a dig, if you care), as an aside, in virtually all "city building" games, the major source of growth is immigration, which is how they handle the problem of keeping growth rates high enough to be interesting, as another aside, in StP the same thing will make new cities grow fast enough so you dont have to wait 1000 turns for them to become useful.

So anyway. StP will primarly be an Empire Building game. For some players, war will be the emphasis. For other players, war will only be for when diplomacy fails.

Now. I can tolerate some stretches of reality, some simplification of real processes, a bit of abstraction. So if the population is growing at 10%, then I'm aware that probably means 13 year olds having children, and that 80% of the population will be under 15. But atleast it's still close to reality.

And if we have to pretend that the speed of light is actually 6x10^8m/s, then sure, normally the speed of light is 800,000 times what I do in my car on the open road, so it's not like making it twice as fast as inconceivably fast is really going to matter. And if we have to make the game take place in a patch of universe that is so darn unlikely (all arranged in a plane, close together worlds, an unprobably high density of habitable worlds...) then so be it, the universe is so vast, I find it hard to believe there isn't some highly improbable stuff out there.

So in the name of gameplay reality can be bent and twisted. But it is my humble opinion that in a good empire building game, the rules of reality should not be flagrantly smashed to pieces and left on the ground under a pile of steaming elephant-doo.

So, the short of it is. When playing StP, I want to be able to believe I'm the leader of a nation of human beings, not fantastical creatures with unbelivable growth rates. If what you want is a good wargame, then go play one. Theres loads out there, especially in the RTS world (which is much better suited for most war games).

Kuciwalker · December 29, 2002, 09:51

For a turn length of one year, we also have to completely disregard reality.

Jeremy Buloch · December 29, 2002, 19:14

I agree with Blake on this subject. He has sufficient knowledge of what it should be. I think it should be 1 year. Making it more would be also un~realistic. Cause the time would be varied on each factions growth, would it not? So in order to have a precise amount of realistic time we would need to have random amounts of turns for example: for this part of time its 1 year another turn would be 1 1/2 year.
I hope I made my self clear, its a bit unorganised.'
-J.B.-

Blake · December 29, 2002, 19:46

Quote:

For a turn length of one year, we also have to completely disregard reality.

Please try to justify this. Prehaps you are thinking more realism than realistic?

targon · December 30, 2002, 07:26

Why we need some _fixed_ turn length?

Leland · December 30, 2002, 10:27

Because fixed turns are a lot easier to implement, and if you have enough of them (as microturns) the end result is a decent approximation of a continuum?

Kuciwalker · December 30, 2002, 14:39

Unit movement. That's how it's unrealistic.