2nd attempt; space armarda

[Smoking mirror]

An insect's potential maximum size is relative to the size of the world it lives on (because of the gravity). As I said, the Chitinoids live on a planet a little smaller than mars, so they can be as big as three times thier earth maximums. as to energy requirements, I don't see why an insect would require much more than say, a mammal or lizard also, on the chittin home world there are large, directly photosynthetising insect/plant hybrids, or some other bizare alien alien foodsource.

When it comes to the different races, I've been thinking of a way to differentiate the different aliens in game play, its difficult, but there are other costs than just resources in Civ III.

 

[Smoking mirror]

Say each race has a special kind of requirement for a resorce, that requirement would drive thier development. If they spread to a sysetm where that resource is abundant, they will flourish, if its not there their growth will be ********.

In space you have three general resources;
Lifesuport (gasses, foodstuff and power required to suport life)
Raw materials; (ore, rock, gemstones etc... all required for building)
and fuels (hydrogen, oxygen fossil fuels etc.. represent a form of energy that can be stored almost indefinately for required use).

In civ three these could be reresented by food, shields and trade.
You could set a requirment on each civ that it needs one more than the others because of its specialised nature. An industrial civ like a robot culture would need ore and raw material most, while a bioengineered race would need lifesuport more.

Originaly I thought of having three different specialisations, industrial, technological (or electrical) and biological, like this;

 

[Smoking mirror]

But that only gives you one requirement, theres no room for borderline growth (where the primary resource is scant, but a secondary resource is available as a substitute) or core growth (where both primary and secondary resorces are abundant). It also only gives three "flavours".

So I tried linking the pimary to a secondary resource shared by one of the other flavours, sure to cause certain conflicts as factions fight for a common resource.

So if industrial requires extra shields(ore), electrical reqires extra maintenance costs (fuel) and biological requires extra crew (pop points) to build thier ships, they can all be linked around the triangle like this;

 

[Tacit_Exit]

I think one of the main limitations on the size of 'real' insects is the partial pressure of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere and the resultant effectiveness of the insects' "lungs" (small openings in the exoskeleton, called spiracles, that lead to tubes that mingle with the organs).

The maximum penetration of O2 in this system is IIRC about 1cm, due largely to the relative insolubility of molecular oxygen in water.

Any number of situations could be envisaged to account for larger insectoids, including greater % atmospheric O2, a haemoglogin-like O2 scavenger in the tubules, different gaseous exchange organ etc.

Upshot is; if you want giant space insects you can have/justify them.

 

[Smoking mirror]

So industrial civs would need Ore and crew, Electrical civs would require Fuel and ore, while biological civs would need Crew and Fuel.

However, I already have four race ideas, and only three flavours. I felt that further refinement was needed to define each race and the factions within. SO I expanded the triangle to a square, though I'm still not sure of the extra resource, here are some sugestions for th value of N;

Extra tech-support, the civ requres either a higher tech to build its ships, or has a weak units at the start of an era that upgrade to stronger ones towards the end of an era, while those civs without this requirement start the era with the most powerfull ships for that era (requiring less upgrading, and less concentration on research).

Rare resources; The civ uses very rare metals and gasses in the construction of its ships, so it requires more strategic resources than other civs in order to build its best units.

 

[Smoking mirror]

In the end however, this doesn't real make sense as there is no real reason that any of them should have such an arbitrary secondary resource requirement, and I couldn't shift the letters around the square enough so that it made sense for all the different factions of all the races. Like for instance, the chitinoids whose main resource requirement is fuel to power thier technological electricaly advanced ships, but who have many different secondary resorces based on which faction youre talking about.

So I shift the square on end to form an arrow, and freed the letters so that they could be placed in to slots dependant on each faction.

slot one is the primary resource, this is what the civ uses the most. Slots two and three are secondary resources, they are requirements but not as urgent as the primary resource. Slot four is the unused or scarce resource requirement, this is the one resource that the civ can get by with low amounts of;

 

[Smoking mirror]

So when designing your own faction or race, you first pick a primary occupation (biological, electrical, Industrial or technological/rare resource) and then assign the secondary resources based on the traits of the civ.

Here is an example based on the chitionoids from the homeworld. Thier main resource is fuel, as all thier ships use high energy weapons and high drain advanced engines as well as the other various electrical gizmos the crew likes to cart around with them.

Secondly they need ore to build the large spaceships they prefer, and they also take a technological aproach to ship building, using prototypes and production models, and endless upgrades to perfect thier designs at minimal cost in other areas.

They have little requirement for crew on thier ships as thier high tech electrical systems are well complemented with artificial inteligence (at a high fuel cost).

 

[Smoking mirror]

In terms of game mechanics, here is a chart of the effects. They would need to be adjusted during playtesting and a fourth requirement would have to be found. I like the idea of extra upgrades, as I think it neatly reflects the fourth view point, instead of making one expensive, hard to maintain and heavily crewed one-off work of art, its cheaper and easier to make upgradable production models. However, because you need to wait for techniques to be perfected, extra components to be designed, and parts to be miniturized it means spending a lot of effort on your science regime.

Note; If tech upgrades were used as the fourth requirement, it would mean having twice the number of ships per era for a secondary requirement and triple for a primary requirement. This would be a good requirement for the humans, as it would allow me to cut the number of units needed for the other races (some would only need one or two ships per era).

 

[Smoking mirror]

Shields would actualy probably be +10/20 % rather than just plus number of shileds. This would have to be worked out and adjusted manualy.
For maintenance cost, each faction would have to have a faction specific government type (or two) in order to implement this. Though you could get away with less govs if some with the same fuel reqirements shared them. For instance, all the chitinoids require 3 trade per turn per ship, so you could make all the chitinoid govenments require that.

I have been thinking of giving out faction specific govenrments anyhow, using era zero techs to lock them to faction, and then using gov specif buildings to upgrade them later in the game (as era zero techs can only be given at the begining of the game, and have problems with linking in to the tech tree. Though I'm not sure if the flavour aproach to techs has completly replaced era, none techs. If someone could clear this up that would be great.

 

[Grey Fox]

Actually, I think I mixed up oxygen with energy in my post about the size of insects.

THat's the reason dinosaurs and insects at that time could grow so big, because there was a higher % of oxygen then (atleast I think that's one of the main reasons)...

 

[Celeborn]

In my terrain model the clear wetlands commad was just removed from the marsh terrain...

 

[Bluemofia]

Actually, I think I mixed up oxygen with energy in my post about the size of insects.

THat's the reason dinosaurs and insects at that time could grow so big, because there was a higher % of oxygen then (atleast I think that's one of the main reasons)...

plants were producing lots of oxygen back then, but back then oxygen was poisonous to most bacteria/animals back then, so they had to evolve something to do about the oxygen, or just go to oxygen devoid places. and insects were the first on land, but they were huge because of the lack of preditors and the abundance of food. and then the amphibians came, and the insects started to die and shrink in size overall.

 

[subbss]

What about barbarians in this mod, what species will they be and what units will they use? Maybe they could be called smugglers?

 

[Bluemofia]

or just primitives?

 

[Smoking mirror]

Theres lots of suspects for barbarians at this scale, rogue independant states, space pirates, smugglers, alien outcasts or banned political/religious movements etc.. Because of the amount of cash and resources needed for tech development these would all remain "primative".

Ive nearly finished a few units, so if someone can help me test em' I'll post em within a day or two.

 

[aaglo]

Hey, smokingm. That thing looks nice.

But if that's a space unit, then what about the shadow?

 

[Drift]

I have to admit that the attitude you guys take for this project is very respectable, taking physics into account and such.

SM's units look nice. (but please try to find time to finish the Giant Spider. )

 

[Smoking mirror]

Originally posted by aaglo
Hey, smokingm. That thing looks nice.

But if that's a space unit, then what about the shadow?

I did think about ditching the shadow, supose it would make it look more realistic, but I decided that if nececary it could be removed later (it would be much harder to add one if needed).

I wanted to get the impression of a gameboard or tactical display, a bit like the warhammer 40,000 games battle fleet gothic or man 0' war, with animated game pieces flaoting above the table, something like a futuristic version of the air comand tables used by the RAF during WWII. It would be "realistic" but because of the limits of CIV III its never going to be "Real", so why worry myself?

What I'm actualy thinking of doing long term is making a web based game, probably shareware, or freeware using some programs that I spotted on the web the other day. If I can make a working CIV III mod to drum up some interest it may be possible to get others to help with the programing etc..

There are three problems with web based games at the moment, 1 is that its hard to get advertising in with out anoying the players as it is either in pop-up or banner form which people just ignore. 2ndly the games tend to be almost totaly devoid of graphical interfaces, mostly being text or dot and line based and 3nd is the fact that most games work with real time hour long turns, so the winner is enevitaly the saddest guy who can devote 82 continous hours of his life to a game with no tangible rewards. Either that, or you are forced to make "clans" and work in shifts, and that all sounds too much like hard work. Team work is fine, but what you realy want is a proper diplomacy system, with temproray alliances and feuds, and the possibility of individual acheivement. You dont want to win just because you had the biggest gang, it also makes newcomers feel very unwelcome.

What I was thinking of is a orders based space game, with each turn being a day. Say before or after work, you set up or maintain your fleet, give them orders, manage thier cargos etc... and then wait untill tomorrow to see how your decisions have affected your fortunes. Things like trade and combat could be worked out by a host computer and updated in the game. You could even generate and record combats using a low tech bot powered graphic RTS program, where the units react acording to standing orders given to them by the owning player (retreat, attack, pincer movement, unload, artilery etc..) and then distribute the recordings to the players involved by email. I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to program.
A good way to include advertising to fund the venture would be to include it in the fabric of the game. If its a space game with lots of trading, why have the players ship "ore" around the system when they could be shipping a real world product like "mc donalds" or "pepsi". Players could even pick advertising for thier ships just like NASA and the european space agency does today, how about a dreadnought going in to battle with a massive "pizza hut" logo on the side? Of course it would take some working out, but I think businesses would love to feature at the core of the game, especialy if it became popular (however there would be restrictions, I doubt piza hut would be pleased if your dreadnought began commiting vitual genocide by destroying a planet)....

Anyway, all thats just dreaming for now, something for the future.

 

[Bobisback]

Originally posted by Smoking mirror
how about a dreadnought going in to battle with a massive "pizza hut" logo on the side? Of course it would take some working out, but I think businesses would love to feature at the core of the game, especialy if it became popular (however there would be restrictions, I doubt piza hut would be pleased if your dreadnought began commiting vitual genocide by destroying a planet)....

that is a interesting idea

 

[Bluemofia]

barbarians can be pirates of different extraterrestrial nationalities uunited togeather, so the ships can be a mix of human/alien ships.