MoO1 redesign project

[Arne]

Yeah, of course, but while MoO3 may have done it badly, there are other games which do it well and really come alive. But, like I said earlier, the player should not feel confined, like he's supposed to do 'A' but the game doesn't let him do what he's supposed to. Ideally the player should be able to do 'A', while the game does 'B' which is normally kind of boring, but the game makes all kind of funny things happen with 'B' which helps to animate the universe. Occasionally 'B' throws a curve ball at 'A'. The player should not have complete control of the game, because then it wouldn't be much of a game. There needs to be opponents who challenge the player's control, and in games with indirect control the opponent can also be on the player's team in a sense. In Dwarf Fortress you can't control the dwarves directly, and if they run off doing what they're not supposed to it still fun.

MoO1 does almost play itself on easier difficulties with the sliders managing themselves. The player just have to concentrate on the fleet construction and general logistics. Naturally the player has no control of the rebel events, plagues, pirates and enemy races, etc (curve balls, in a way). I wouldn't mind if the universe animated itself a bit more. What I mean by that is that the population and colonies could be a bit more than mere numbers which are under the precise control of the player at all times. For example, when a colony becomes a rebel colony it could have a richer behavior. Maybe you find yourself under attack by ships from the "People's Front Of Alkari Prime" because the rebel event hit the Alkari AI. Enemy spies could plant peace movement ideas on a colony, making it increasingly pacifistic, refusing to build ships and eventually becoming isolationist.


Anyways, I'm more likely to just use profiles / colony managers than NPC colony leaders who do a lot on their own. Basically they'd be a fast way to manipulate sliders. If a colony is at the front line you could assign a defensive profile (colony manager guy) to it, and you'd be able to see a little icon for it on the map view. It would give you a better overview of what each colony is up to (on the map view).

The player would have to do all fleet movement (except reloc), ship designing, and profile assigning. There wouldn't be a macro AI to help you.

Yeah, just some brain farts, A lot of the ideas I'm throwing out are just, well, ideas. I'm exploring territory.

[RefSteel]

Hmmm ... just to toss some of my ideas into the ring:

- The problem of one player (human or AI) running away in a large-scope universe is exactly the one of apes and angels you discuss on your page (just on a smaller scale). A certain amount of realism - and even what you refer to as plausibility - has to be sacrificed for game balance: In other words, for a game that will be both winnable and challenging consistently. Some level of parity, or some variable and interlocking sets of challenges, need to be re-established at every "quantum leap" of scale (from intra-system to interstellar etc.) - making it easy to "catch up" when you're behind, no matter by what means, is a dangerous road, as CIV3 vets can attest. You'd probably also need a lot more different factions than you've listed thus far if each player is meant to have one set of opponents at the interplanetary level, another set at the interstellar level, and so forth, without seeing the same guys in every game.

- I actually like your colony profile/manager idea. This is done incredibly badly by MoO3, in which you basically get the "realistic" joys of dealing with incompetent and unresponsive managers and employees, only instead of dealing with intransigent human beings as so many of us have to and hate to do in our real lives, we get to deal with unthinking, intransigent machines. That they're badly programmed almost doesn't matter; it's precisely what nobody wants to deal with in a game. CIV4 does it much better: You can tell your city "governor" to manage tiles for maximum commerce or production or whatever and he'll run the numbers and do exactly what you say, to the extent he's able. He won't be perfect (Spy Specialists!) but you can always take over for him anyway. Your idea sounds even better though! If the player can set up a profile: "Build factories until unemployment hits zero, then work on terraforming while keeping factories on pace with population, then build missile bases until..." and inform your colony manager, "Your colony uses this profile," and he just does it, that's great! Even fleet managers could be done if handled well: "Bob, you're my new Scout manager. Whenever a new Scout is completed, send it to the most distant planet without a Scout already present or en route. Sam, you're my new MegaBattleHulk manager. Whenever one of your ships is completed, send it to the world on the Psilon front with the fewest defenses yet present."

- Speaking as a lover of stories and narrative: Don't let the back story get in the way of the game. Lots of stories can be imagined into an enjoyable game, but a game that just tells one story doesn't have a lot of replayability - at least, not on the scale of MoO. This game was ancient when Imperium 1 opened, and we're now on Imperium 20, with over 20 succession games in between! Story and plausibility (everyone starting with colship +2 scouts in 2300) should always be secondary to gameplay.

- I've never built a defense platform such as you describe in MoO, but MoO2 has space stations that work kinda sorta that way. Basically, yeah, if I just want to defend one world, I'll build bases there. If I'm going to build a ship's hull and put retro rockets on it, I want my best engines instead so I can redeploy it rapidly. Doesn't mean my way is the only way though, and you can definitely fit a lot more stuff on a slower ship....

- The Greys: These seemed like the most-deeply considered of your new races (after all, you put one on the front screen!) so I thought I'd mention them especially. I like the overall concept (though the backstory - why slugs? - puzzles me) and could even imagine slotting them into MoO: Double chance to acquire tech from captured factories (4% per fac instead of 2%) and to teching on artifact worlds (RP = 4 x spending on ART worlds, 8 x spending on Orion). Tech: Good at computers, Poor at construction, Good at force fields, Poor at planetology, Good at propulsion, Good at Weapons. In addition, we'd want to change their tech tree probabilities: Scanners, fuel cells, streaming weapons, and Torps should have a better chance of showing up (~75% instead of ~50%) and everything else in those fields should have a smaller chance (~25% instead of ~50%) with the effective result that they have few choices in three of their best fields, but those choices almost always include their racial preferences. (It's actually a lot better than 75% since something has to appear; e.g. Deep Space Scanner would show up 48 times in 55 or about 87% of the time.) Relations: Uneasy toward Alkari, Uneasy toward Mrrshans, Relaxed toward Humans, Uneasy toward Klackons, Neutral toward Meklar, Neutral toward Psilons, Uneasy toward Darloks, Uneasy toward Sakkra, Neutral toward Silicoids, Neutral toward Bulrathi. Yeah, I just made all that stuff up on the spot on the basis of what sounds right to me from your description. (I like the picture too, except for one thing: They, um, need some better armor for their lower bodies.)

[Arne]

Thanks for the reply.

I just decided that the idea with indirect (un)control (as in NPCs with a sometimes uncontrollable personality) at a colony manager level was a rather bad idea so I deleted that paragraph. There's already indirect or at least abstracted control via the sliders. It's better to bring the population to life (uncontrol) by having more detailed events (good/bad) which challenges the player. It's more in line with what MoO1 is already doing with the events.

Of course, the colony manager / captain / profile idea will remain, but they'll do as they're told. They'll be programmable in some way, like RefSteel illustrated above. "Max out this, then go for that, but if this happens, change to that profile."

The Reloc system can be used to send ships away though. Perhaps it can be programmed too, so it can tell ships apart, or, like you suggested, the reloc system can simply be put into a profile / colony manager. It makes sense that an actual person is doing the relocations, rather than nothing in particular like in MoO1.


It's really hard to tell how the big scope idea will work without having a working prototype. The other day I tried to code fluid dynamics by using particles, but they grouped into little amoeba creatures which ate each other and changed shape and abilities. It's really strange what emergence can do. One thing is sure; there are more ways for something to turn out in a way you did not expect it to, and most of those ways are bad...


The story issue is tricky. I think the universe should come with some character in regards to the character of the species, but I also want to put in a custom species (player defined). The background story should support having a new story every time. I'm reluctant to add midgame story elements, but at the same time those can be incredibly effective if done right. Star Control had little independent stories you pursue or not. In a way MoO1 has one too; Orion. It could be interesting to have a background story which expands via random clues and events which pop up over the course of many games.

I wanted the Greys to be space elves (Elerians/Syreens), but there are already plenty of those. I went for antenna heads instead, and something out of the ordinary, so I used slugs. Star control has the worms, and Starflight has the goldfish and amoebas. Slugs weren't taken, afaik.

Yeah, it's one of the races which I have worked on the most, the Hatt and the Slimes aside. I tried to tie them together. Hmmm, there is no exploration race in MoO1 is there? The Alkari has propulsion I think. It's the tech I go for first because most of the time I play the game I do so to test an idea out, and need to get somewhere fast. Unfortunately the artifact finds are a bit rare in MoO1. They only come on artifact worlds, and with the derelict ship event, iirc.

Although I drew a battle suit for the Greys, perhaps they really prefer personal force fields. It seems to be more in character for them (they're based on Star Trek TOS where simple cloth and miniskirts were mandatory). They might even have claustrophobia, preferring to live in larger open environments along with other Grey (meaning, smaller ships are unlikely).

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If I've been silent it's because I've been cleaning up my Starflight project (although I'm not done yet). I do preemptive multitasking with my projects.

[RefSteel]

I entirely agree on your latest points about the Big Scope idea. Also, I know you dropped this one, but you got me thinking a bit more about the idea of governors with distinct personalities, and it occurred to me that if they're optional and cleverly designed, they might be fun to play with. For instance: Default governor gets normal yields in all fields, and always does exactly what he's told. Bob Beakerman later greets/arises-within your empire, and can be assigned as a governor in place of the default at some star, granting +10% tech but -5% for everything else. Ed Environmentalist might appear as well; he grants +20% to Eco projects in his system but always spends at least 50% of the system's BC on some combination of Eco and say planetology tech development. Todd Tortoise grants +5% net spending, but accepts orders to change spending ratios only incrementally or with a delay. ANY of these governors could then be fired, returning their star system to default mode. If done well, different governors would be loved and hated by different players like different CIV4 AIs. The trouble begins if they're a) not optional - e.g. can't be fired, b) necessary for optimal play due to too-strong bonuses over the default, or c) annoying to watch/micromanage/control (if Ed Environmentalist periodically increases ECO spending without telling you or Ted Tortoise has to be told three times before he does something instead of just being slow to do it ... that's annoying). It would be important to know in advance what the governors' advantages/limitations are though, I think.

I like the idea of mid-game story elements too, but with two caveats: 1) They shouldn't be overwhelming enough to prevent the player from telling his/her own story. Like the Guardian, let them be simple elements that can fit into whatever story the player is imagining into the game. This goes for the back-story too; lots of cool intro material is good, but don't let it get in the way of the game - leave room for the player to tell a different story. 2) They should be fun to do again and again and again. Star Control is a great game, but you can't play it a thousand times ... or a hundred ... or really ten ... in spite of the off-the-main-line subplots. One of Orion's (and well-designed 4X games' in general) strengths is near-infinite replayability.

Your explanation of the Greys/slugs thing makes sense; also, the context of the Progenitors makes it kind of neat. My notions about their bonuses if they were incorporated into MoO were way out of balance though (not surprising since I came up with them on the spot) - instead of what I listed, their racial bonus might just be +1 range for all ships. Also, my 75/25 tech idea was lame. (I get the Elyrean/Syreen connection, but it doesn't seem to me like it fits with the Greys' overall personality or the story presented. (Why would an asexual creature dress that way?) As with all the rest of these babblings of course, that's just my opinion.

[d0om]

I have also thought long and hard about re-creating a MoO game. MoO1 got a lot of things right in terms of game design compared to MoO2 and MoO3.

You are an emperor in charge of a mighty empire, not some bureaucrat trying to organise which factory to build first on a planet.

I think the idea of distinct personalities for (optional) governors would be good, with you able to issue commands along the simple lines of:

Maximise Output (IE full factories/Eco/pop building to max out the planet ASAP)
First Missile base (Builds factories/pop until switching to planetary shield/base is faster than carrying on building factories.)
First colony ship (ditto but for colony ship)
Second colony ship (fastest time to make two ships (ie slightly more industry than the other option)

If they have nothing else to do, they would do a combination of tech and missile bases (you could specifiy how many bases / planet size to build up to on the planet screen)

These would all be maximally efficient strategies. The named governors could get some bonus when following their favoured strategy, but penalties on all the others. (as a simply way of implementing it)

Or you could just manually adjust the sliders. (but that would be tedious, and most people wouldn't bother)

I quite like the idea of space combat following a similar pattern where you give orders to your fleet in advance, and watch it unfold. You would be able to re-assign orders mid battle a limited number of times a turn (so you could micro-manage one battle, or subtly alter several.) Named pilots would maybe have additional options for their orders, or just be better at executing one order.

If I was going to complicate ground combat, I would just allow battles to take several turns. Eg the loosing side turns guerilla-warfare-style when down to 20% of their starting force and from then on act in a similar way to spies in that they can sabotage bases/factories or fight people each turn. After a while the guerillas would all be wiped out but if more troops arrived in the mean-time then they would join the invading force in normal combat.

Would just mean that grounds battles had a little more flavour and lasted more than 1 round.

The best way out of the run-away AI is simply espionage I think. In MoO1 if an opponent was massively runaway you could often steal some valuable tech from them with a well-planned planet sacrifice followed by ground invasion, or spies and lots of computer tech research. In MoO2 espionage wasn't as effective as you had to steal a whole field of research before you could skip researching that level which effectively prevented you from using it to play catch-up and instead it just filled in the techs you didn't pick. If you were creative it was essentially worthless.

[SDragon]

I stumbled upon your website just today as I was searching for MOO mods and liked a lot of the design concepts you were throwing together. Two things that I wanted to throw out there for consideration.

Firstly, one of the great things I like about MOO is that games rarely last longer than a day or two. Usually if you start a game, it means you've dedicated time for the game and it has your undivided attention. Other games have so much micromanagement that it literally eats up your time and sucks the enjoyment out of the game experience. MOO doesn't fall into this trap as it has just enough micromanagement to allow the user to experience control of the game while leaving less consequential things to the rock/paper/scissor approach which some people find less realistic. But it's a trade off. Also, because games won't last longer than a couple of days, I don't have to come back at a game a week later after life throws some curve balls and try to figure out where I was in the game, what I was doing and the political environment I was in.

My other thought was instead of having 'Captains' or 'Avatars', have 'Legends' instead. The difference that I'm considering is that the C/A are top down, given to the player sort of like the Heroes are given to the player in MoM or Warlords IV. Legends on the other hand are the stuff of epics based on distinguished service. They can still be labelled as Admirals (fleet command), Generals (ground command), etc, and they can have battle modifiers that help units in their command. The way they get created would usually be based on a battle where they defy the odds of the battle. They then can be assigned to planets, fleet/transports to help the stack modifiers indirectly. If the stack dies, the Legend dies as well. While both ways of introducing Heroes to the game should be a bonus, I find myself more sentimental to the Legends approach as I'm not just given them, but actually earned them by beating the odds of some sort.