Firaxis announces "Sid Meier's Starships"

[Gorbles]

OK. I realized my original post was unclear and I tried to make it more clear but you're still bothered. Well I guess you'll be bothered. I'll leave it at that.

They could. I just made an educated guess on what I know about Firaxis - they're a small studio and I didn't think they'd be able to handle more than a few large projects. Maybe I'm wrong or perhaps right. I was just posting an opinion. I'm not sure why that bothered you as well. I'm responding to your comments not so much that I care but I'm more curious why you are so annoyed by my posts I suppose.

I never said they were incompetent. I didn't really care for BE so I posted a personal opinion that I hoped they wouldn't be in charge of Civ VI because I would fear that they'd take it in a direction that I disliked. Again, this annoyed you.

Perhaps just stop reading my posts.

Despite what you may think, I enjoyed responding to you.

Take care.

You keep saying I'm annoyed, but that doesn't actually make me so Deal with someone disagreeing with you, I guess? I'm perfectly allowed to.

My point was that your guess wasn't educated. It was definitely an opinion, but that alone doesn't make it an educated one.

And finally, no, you didn't specifically use the word incompetence. However, would you mind detailing what direction BE went in (that wasn't present in CiV) that you didn't like? The tech web? Affinities? Um . . . maybe how they restructured Social Policies into Virtues?

You need to give reasons, instead of just saying "I don't like these developers". Nor did you in your response address my point that BE developers also most likely worked on CiV. And Civ 4. And any previous games. You single out the BE team like they're brand-new and had no impact on any other Civ game. Which is funny (not annoying)!

Moderator Action: The two of you need to stop derailing this thread by debating "who said or meant what". Please return to discussing the topic and stop directing your posts to each other.

 

[winddysphere]

Is it just me that it will be CivBE (Story part) + XCOM (tactical part and starship management?) + Ace patrol like some people said in this thread?

I also feel something like an indirect expansion like if you have BE then you will get special feature when you reach.... and so on? I don't think a standalone game or a casual game would work at all. I hope it will have much deeper connection for it.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

From 2K's page, here is the list of official features:

FEATURES
• Tactical space combat: Encounter unique tactical challenges in every mission, with dynamically generated maps, victory conditions, and foes.
• Fully customizable starships: Create an armada that fits your tactical plan with modular spaceship design.
• Diplomacy, strategy, and Exploration: Expand the influence of your Federation and gain the trust of the citizens of new planets. Use the unique abilities of the each planet to enhance your fleet and Federation, and keep your opponents in check. Build improvements on worlds to increase the capabilities and resources of your Federation.
• A galaxy of adventure: Explore the galaxy as you lead your fleet to distant worlds and complete missions to help the citizens of these planets. Fight pirates, protect colony ships, destroy rogue AI, and more.
• Multiple paths to victory: Will you win by conquering the greatest threat to the galaxy? Or will you unite a plurality of worlds in your Federation? Perhaps you will lead your people to push the frontiers of science. Each choice you make carries consequences on your path to victory

 

[SupremacyKing2]

New interview:
http://www.gamespot.com/articles/sid-meier-s-starships-going-beyond-beyond-earth/1100-6424735/

 

[CanaDutch]

By the look of it a planet takes up 7 tiles. Maybe for Civilization 6 they should have cities and resources take up 7 tiles as well so that units can maneuver better, allowing for better tactical combat and AI.

 

[edingess]

From 2K's page, here is the list of official features:

FEATURES
• Tactical space combat: Encounter unique tactical challenges in every mission, with dynamically generated maps, victory conditions, and foes.
• Fully customizable starships: Create an armada that fits your tactical plan with modular spaceship design.
• Diplomacy, strategy, and Exploration: Expand the influence of your Federation and gain the trust of the citizens of new planets. Use the unique abilities of the each planet to enhance your fleet and Federation, and keep your opponents in check. Build improvements on worlds to increase the capabilities and resources of your Federation.
• A galaxy of adventure: Explore the galaxy as you lead your fleet to distant worlds and complete missions to help the citizens of these planets. Fight pirates, protect colony ships, destroy rogue AI, and more.
• Multiple paths to victory: Will you win by conquering the greatest threat to the galaxy? Or will you unite a plurality of worlds in your Federation? Perhaps you will lead your people to push the frontiers of science. Each choice you make carries consequences on your path to victory

Gotta wonder if there's aliens...if the contact beacon...turns out to be NOT such a good idea....

 

[Fr33lanc3r]

There are a lot of different android phones and tablets and developers have had trouble making game that will run on every android device from every manufacturer. Apple products are all from Apple so they know exactly what everyone has.

Also, coming from some time working in the mobile market, you almost always release first on iOS, because that's the platform that people are most likely to shell out monies for a product on. Android is the market for cheap college students and techy nerds trying to "not conform". So once you've recouped dev costs through the iOS market, you push to Android. And then, if you hate yourself, you spend tons of time and effort pushing to the 3% of the population on Windows Phone.

 

[AriochIV]

By the look of it a planet takes up 7 tiles. Maybe for Civilization 6 they should have cities and resources take up 7 tiles as well so that units can maneuver better, allowing for better tactical combat and AI.

It seems pretty clear that there are separate strategic and tactical modes. In the strategic mode, each planet just takes one hex. The term "mission" may simply refer to tactical combat mode, or perhaps there's more to it than that.

It seems more like Pirates! than Civ or MOO... you have only a single fleet and have to worry about things like morale as you hop across your territory doing missions.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

It seems pretty clear that there are separate strategic and tactical modes. In the strategic mode, each planet just takes one hex. The term "mission" may simply refer to tactical combat mode, or perhaps there's more to it than that.

It seems more like Pirates! than Civ or MOO... you have only a single fleet and have to worry about things like morale as you hop across your territory doing missions.

Reminds me of Spore actually. The end stage at least, although with more depth because it's all about space.

 

[darkedone02]

I want them to announch an expansion for this game already... but this??? I personally don't know about this to be honest... there is nothing that makes me want to scream "I MUST HAVE THIS!" like Civilization 4 did to me.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Design starships is all I needed to hear.

 

[Traejun]

At first glance, it looks like Galactic Civilization, with a little more starship control/interface and less planetary management. I can't help but think this is an afterthought sort of game, but... I'm totally gonna buy it.

 

[bhavv]

I still want Railroad Tycoon IV

 

[kingsbury]

I would be really excited if it had a z axis. The whole idea of a space sim without a z axis in this day and age is somewhat dubious IMO. I blame casual gamers/stupid people for this because it seems games are being increasingly designed to cater to people who can't handle complicated game mechanics or "confusing things" like 3 dimensional movement.

 

[Gort]

Design starships is all I needed to hear.

Kerbal Space Project is that way.

 

[AriochIV]

I would be really excited if it had a z axis. The whole idea of a space sim without a z axis in this day and age is somewhat dubious IMO. I blame casual gamers/stupid people for this because it seems games are being increasingly designed to cater to people who can't handle complicated game mechanics or "confusing things" like 3 dimensional movement.

It's pretty clear from the screenshots that it doesn't have a z-axis, and in case you haven't noticed, Sid's own games recently tend to be lighter on complexity.

Frankly, in space games of this kind, three-dimensional movement adds very little in terms of gameplay, but adds a lot of difficulty in terms of being able to present a clean display and a straightforward movement/control UI. They're trying to do a lot with "terrain" in the tactical mode; you can see in the tactical screenshots that there's a significant clutter of asteroids. Now imagine that same asteroid density in a 3D representation. You wouldn't be able to see a damn thing.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

It's pretty clear from the screenshots that it doesn't have a z-axis, and in case you haven't noticed, Sid's own games recently tend to be lighter on complexity.

Frankly, in space games of this kind, three-dimensional movement adds very little in terms of gameplay, but adds a lot of difficulty in terms of being able to present a clean display and a straightforward movement/control UI. They're trying to do a lot with "terrain" in the tactical mode; you can see in the tactical screenshots that there's a significant clutter of asteroids. Now imagine that same asteroid density in a 3D representation. You wouldn't be able to see a damn thing.

Not to mention the difficulties with the AI. People complain about the AI not being able to handle 1upt in 2D, imagine the horror with 1upt in 3D. Yikes!

It may not be "realistic", but from a gameplay perspective, Firaxis is right to stick with 2D for Starships!

 

[Acken]

It's not even just the AI. Adding verticality in strategy games has been done in the past, like Homeworld, and while it feels more realistic the gameplay didn'T really improved as players ended up using a view trying to show everything at once which basically is the same as a projection on a plane.
That's why developers shy away from it. It complicates a lot of thing for very little result in gameplay.

 

[Teodosio]

I look forward for another juicy 50% discount GNU/Linux release!

 

[Minor Annoyance]

There's a space trading game that is in development that I played a build of. You flew the ship yourself but it was only 2D space, which seemed strange, but it also has realistic space physics. So you can fly in one direction then turn the ship around and be moving backwards. Less complexity one way and more in another.