Interstellar Space: Genesis - a modern MOO2-inspired game

[haphazard1]

After finishing my recent nostalgia game of MOO2, I have been taking a look at Instellar Space: Genesis (ISG hereafter), a modern take on the MOO2 concept. The game has a lot of MOO2 elements, but with a lot of new systems and mechanics added. I have only begun playing and am still figuring out a lot of the new stuff, but I thought I would post a few screenshots and give a few initial thoughts.

ISG offers a lot of set up options and customization for a new game. Options for the galaxy, for how tech research works, difficulty level and start (boosted, normal, or poor), and more. One nice option is that difficulty level and start can be set individually for each AI as well as the player. This could allow some interesting galaxies for players looking for a real challenge, or wanting to shift the usual balance of power. I set pretty much everything to standard or average, since I have no real idea what I am doing yet. The game recommends using a non-randomized tech tree for your first game, to get familiar with what is available, before trying the options with random missing techs or limited research options. So I set that, pick the humans in a medium galaxy with standard number of opponents, and off we go.

One new mechanic that immediately pops up: remote exploration. Your scientists and astronomers can scan one section of the galaxy remotely at a time, with each scan taking some number of turns. (Tech and other factors can affect how long it takes.) Free exploration, basically. The remote scans tie into another new mechanic: there are degrees or levels of exploration in ISG. You start knowing nothing about a star system except the color of the star; an initial or basic scan (either remote or by sending a ship to the system) reveals any planets that are present and their general type (terran, desert, lava, etc.). But you need a more advanced scan to determine the mineral level of planets and the presence of certain things like wormholes, and a full scan to find specials on planets like resource deposits, alien ruins, minor civilizations, and other things. Getting a full scan apparently requires sending a special exploration ship to a system, and exloration ships are expensive (roughly similar to a colony ship).

The next new system that pops up is your empire's culture. Your citizens generate culture per turn, which can be boosted by various buildings and other things. You accumulate this culture, and every so often it allow you to choose an empire-wide perk. These perks are presented in pairs, with choosing one permanently locking out the other option for that game. My initial culture choice was between faster movement for all ships (a pretty nice perk ) or a free colony ship plus boosted col ship production from the home world. Given my recent nostalgia MOO2 game had my home world build every single colony ship, I decide on the col ship perk.

Here is my empire after 8 turns, after my starting col ship and the free one arrived in nearby systems and fortunately both found habitable worlds.

Note the list of my colonies on the left. You can see my two starting scouts (the green triangles) on their way to nearby systems to scout.

Here is the Sol system:

You can see Earth as an owned world and Mercury, Venus, and Mars as potentially colonizable worlds. Note the planet types listed for the non-earth planets -- Barren, Desert, and Acid. Unlike MOO2 where you could colonize any world you could reach from the start of the game (just with penalties to growth, production, and maintenance for hostile environments), in ISG you need specific tech to colonize each type of world that is not "ideal" for your species. Humans have terran for ideal, can tolerate swamp worlds, and consider all of these others as hostile until the appropriate tech is researched.

Note also that that the current scan level for the Sol System is shown at the upper right (advanced). The uncolonized worlds show a question mark for special resources; I will need to get a full scan of the system to identify if there are any specials present. Jupiter also shows a question mark for the presence of Helium-3, a special resource needed for certain construction projects and techs. A full scan will reveal whether there are exploitable deposits present. If so, I could later build an outpost there (once I have the right tech researched) to produce the resource. The asteroid belt can also be exploited with an outpost with the right tech.

Here is earth:

Note the sliders on the left: These are more like classic MOO, splitting the planet's production between infrastructure, ecology, and the main construction queue. (There is also a kind of triangle option for representing this split. I prefer the sliders.) Infrastructure seems to be sort of like industrializing your planet in MOO by building factories; increasing your infrastructure level multiplies production on the planet. However, you also get a choice of perks with each infrastructure level up. Unlike the empire culture perks, the infrastructure perks are not exclusive and you can pick the ones you skipped later if you keep increasing infrastructure. The perks give bonuses to spending on buildings, ecology/terraforming, or ships. So they help you specialize a planet for whatever role you intend it to serve in your empire.

Ecology spending can terraform a planet (once you have the appropriate tech) or boosts the eco level. This is apparently separate from terraforming; I do not really understand how this works yet.

The construction queue works like the MOO2 build queue, and can have buildings, ships, trade goods, and so forth.

Here is a newly explored star system:

A terran planet!  Note that I have only a basic scan of this system, so I do not know the mineral level of the planet or if there are other special present. There could even be undetected stuff like wormholes present in the system. More detailed scanning is needed.

Here is a look at the tech tree:

The purple tech is the one I just discovered -- Desert Colonization so I can colonize Mars in the Sol system with a colony base. Dark green techs I know; light blue techs can be researched. On the bottom left two "blocks" note that going back for another tech from the same block costs double. This "full tree" mode (which the game recommended for your first game) does this to encourage advancing through the tree. How research works has several possible options during game set up.

ISG also has events.

In this one, my newest colony has a splinter faction break away to found their own enclave. I have several choices for how to deal with them, with various costs and benefits. You can select the level of events you want during game set up, depending on how much randomness you prefer in your strategy games.

So there is an initial look at a few very early turns of ISG. I will update as I play the game. Overall I am liking it so far, although obviously I have not played much yet. The game looks good, and the interface has been decent. These screenshots do not show them, but the game has extensive tool tips for practically everything with much more detailed information. Production and cost items show a full breakdown of where your hammers and money come from or are going (depending on what you are hovering over). There are numerous data screens for more info on the state of things, along with an empire overview screen:

I have not played far enough into the game yet to see how diplomacy works, or spies, or combat. And I have not looked at ship design yet, as I have not researched any ship techs. You do start with a couple scouts, armed with basic single laser weapons. I suspect that like MOO2, they are not worth much in combat and are really mostly for exploring.

I will try to answer questions, but I am figuring this out as I go so I may not know.

[WingsofMemory]

I could swear I've watched Hadriex play this game before. Or maybe it was someone else, I don't remember?

The more explanation as to what is happening the better lol.

So what did you choose to do to your libertarian/objectivist break off colony? Did you let them die, or save them? How important is culture in the game?

[haphazard1]

Apologies for not having much narrative so far. I was trying to give an initial impression of the game and cover the basic screens and info. Future updates will hopefully be more "in the moment" as I play more turns.

For the breakaway colonists, I chose to help them out and take over for the +1 infrastructure level. (I also liked the bit about having the governor be smug about it. ) I am not sure if this was the right choice, as I do not fully understand how valuable infrastructure level is yet or how expensive it is to get the normal way. But the culture option seemed very weak; you can see at the top of the screen shot that my empire already produces 18 culture/turn (the purple bar to the right of the science bar). So an extra 10 culture is not even one turn's worth. More gold per colonist was tempting; if this is similar to MOO2 than more money is always useful to rush buy stuff. Paying 50 gold made a sizable hit to my current reserves, but I am making 10 gold/turn at the moment so it ia not too bad. Maybe once I have played more I will look back on this and think "What an idiot!" But the learning process is like that sometimes.

[WingsofMemory]

Apologies for not having much narrative so far. I was trying to give an initial impression of the game and cover the basic screens and info. Future updates will hopefully be more "in the moment" as I play more turns.

For the breakaway colonists, I chose to help them out and take over for the +1 infrastructure level. (I also liked the bit about having the governor be smug about it. ) I am not sure if this was the right choice, as I do not fully understand how valuable infrastructure level is yet or how expensive it is to get the normal way. But the culture option seemed very weak; you can see at the top of the screen shot that my empire already produces 18 culture/turn (the purple bar to the right of the science bar). So an extra 10 culture is not even one turn's worth. More gold per colonist was tempting; if this is similar to MOO2 than more money is always useful to rush buy stuff. Paying 50 gold made a sizable hit to my current reserves, but I am making 10 gold/turn at the moment so it ia not too bad. Maybe once I have played more I will look back on this and think "What an idiot!" But the learning process is like that sometimes.

lol fair enough.

When it comes to decisions like that I pick based off of either what I think I'd actually do in the situation if it were real life, or what makes sense for "person" I'm playing as (I tend to 'roleplay' too much lol.) If I do something for gameplay purposes alone at the expense of those, then I spend a lot of time agonising and justifying it to myself. If it ends up that it's detrimental to gameplay to do the 'roleplay' (I can't think of a better term) option, then gotta make up the difference somewhere else.

At least those colonists survived, even if they were being a bit silly. I wonder if choices like that have branching effects? Like maybe you'll get an event later on saying that the colony rebels because they've harboured resentment over the governors smugness and taught their children to consider themselves enslaved or something?

[haphazard1]

I tend to look at events more from the game play perspective than the role play aspect, at least for 4x games. Adventure or rogue type games I will role play more based on how I see my character. In this game, well take a look at the human leader in that screenshot from the empire overview. I have no idea who that guy is. What is up with that beard, for one thing?

I have no idea how complex the event system is in ISG. There may be multi-part events where choices influence later outcomes. I will have to see what happens. I did end up saving the break away faction, so I doubt I will get tagged with a name like "the Merciless" or anything. Each colony does have a morale rating, but the event did not affect that as far as I can tell.

[RefSteel]

Thanks for the reports, Haphazard! The MoO2 one was a great trip down memory lane as well, reminding me of the reasons I used to enjoy that game so much (and some of the reasons I stopped playing it). It'll be fun to see how this game of ISG plays out!

On events, I likewise basically always choose based on in-game effects when possible in a 4X game because I tend to reject any narratives the designers try to impose, and write my own. So in this instance, without really knowing the game economy, your choice feels like the right call from a gameplay perspective: "If you have the resources available, you can spend some up front for a significant benefit" rather than "take a free but small immediate benefit" or "take a free but small(...ish) benefit over time."

From a "roleplaying" perspective though (even to the extent of reading the text) this event says more about the prejudices of the game designers than about the nonsensical choices themselves - sort of like in Civ4 when the game claims a new city is "rightfully" asking to join an enemy empire on the basis of counting tiles between capitals. (And I love Civ 4; I just don't like in-game language that tries to intrude arbitrary "moral" judgment into computer games.) Strip away the motives the text wants to impute to your emperor instead of letting you decide on your own reasons, and you get this:

A bunch of your citizens tried to cut themselves off from your empire and build an independent colony. They mismanaged it, and are now about to die. Choose from these three benefits(!!) to your empire!

1) Nationalize the break-away colony's terrible, broken-down infrastructure and fix it for them. This is expensive but somehow results in improved infrastructure for the rest of the world because I don't know the designers thought their players would like good events but hate bad ones?

2) Leave the break-away faction and everyone in it to die, including children, janitors, dissenting parties within the faction who disagreed with the colony's policy-makers, and others who you're just lumping in with "them." This naturally gives your empire more cultural influence? It certainly doesn't affect population, so I guess the breakaway faction doesn't count as part of your empire.

3) Send continuous aid shipments to the failed colonists to keep them going in spite of their continuing mismanagement. But instead of costing money, this makes you money for each non-breakaway colonist on the planet ... somehow. Apparently this represents the failed-colonists paying for the supplies, which ... if they could afford this, what was stopping them from paying private merchants to bring them stuff without giving you the other two options? ... and I don't know, a fixed percentage of this specific colony's population always leaves to join the failed break-away colony-on-life-support and paying you for their food and medicine?

[WingsofMemory]

...On events, I likewise basically always choose based on in-game effects when possible in a 4X game because I tend to reject any narratives the designers try to impose, and write my own...

...From a "roleplaying" perspective though (even to the extent of reading the text) this event says more about the prejudices of the game designers than about the nonsensical choices themselves - sort of like in Civ4 when the game claims a new city is "rightfully" asking to join an enemy empire on the basis of counting tiles between capitals. (And I love Civ 4; I just don't like in-game language that tries to intrude arbitrary "moral" judgment into computer games.) ...

Yeah, the choices of an event and the flavour text surrounding them display the (probably unknowing) biases of the developer, and can sometimes be completely nonsensical. But sometimes things play out in ways we don't expect, so I can usually give leeway on that. People I disagree with, or people that are often wrong can be right about things, even if only occasionally (I of course am never wrong, right? : P ) So I can usually roll with the choices and effects of most things, even if it doesn't seem to make sense in either it's cause or it's effect to me.

One of the reasons that I like strategy games so much (of the '4x' variety) is that a story emerges naturally from the game. I often times find myself thinking what it's like to be living in the different empires, under the different tyrants. What's the average day look like for our emperor themselves? I imagine it's lonely at the top in a game like Master of Orion, although in MoO2 humans are stated to be democratic. Granted, in reality that's not the case as no one can vote us out, so 'democracy' appears to be a good cover for keeping people compliant by giving them the illusion of choice. Which of course begs the question, are we even playing the emperor themselves at that point, or just some kind of immortal adviser pulling their strings? In the case of the game "Stellaris" it's most certainly the latter, as we watch the emperors die of old age and get replaced, or in the case of democratic governments voted out. In MoM it feels like we are playing the wizard-king themselves, right down to having a 1st person pov to the diplomacy 'skype-call' mirrors.

For me that's where a lot of the fun is in strategy games. Kind of one of the reasons I'm not huge into Civ. Civ is a crazy theme-park setting of immortal historical figures acting wacky. Which creates a lot of funny things. But it's hard to ask "what it's like" to live in the Civ games setting, as it's too hard to take seriously lol. Which isn't to say that other games aren't funny, or have silly things in them, just that they are easier to treat as 'real.' MoM might have one of the settings easiest to wrap my head around, which makes it one of the most fun. Although I didn't play it until I was an adult, so MoO which I first played at like 5 or 6 years old holds a special place in my heart. And I remember first seeing MoO2 at my uncles, and playing it hotseat over their, sometimes when the music and gameplay hit juuust-right with MoO2 I am transported back to his old apartment for split second, smell of pizza in the air, and hum of a football game on in the backgrounds that the people awaiting their turn were watching.

That's enough of a rant from me though lol, hope to see more on this game!

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the thoughts and comments, RefSteel and WingsofMemory. I am glad you are enjoying these reports. And I agree that the events and choices do not make much sense sometimes. The +1 infrastructure level for 50 cash choice I guess represents the extra resources being put into the splinter group's failing infrastructure, making it useful to the colony. Or at least I can handwave the whole thing with that explanation.

I realized I have not zoomed out and shown the galaxy:

It does not feel all that large, but I chose a smaller map for my first game. There are three AIs out there somewhere. I do not know if races always start at yellow stars in ISG, so I have no idea where they might be located. Also note the various nebulas (nebulae?) -- the dark ones block movement entirely until you get more advanced drive tech. The others slow movement, similar to classic MOO.

Here is a look at the victory progress screen:

The "control 3 of 6 colonized systems" tells me the AIs have not expanded beyond their home systems yet. Do the AIs not start with a colony ship? Or did they (bizarrely) use it on a planet in their home system? No idea what is going on with that. Also, there is a 'capture all the capitals' style victory as well as a 'conquer eveything' victory, plus tech, time, and wonder victory conditions. Along with the galactic council. It is nice to have options. No idea yet how difficult some of these may be compared to others.

For my current plans, I am focusing on:

1) Improving my production, so that everything will happen faster
2) Colonizing more worlds
3) Explore more of the galaxy

Plus figuring out what I am doing with the game, of course. For the first goal I am building robo factories on my colonies. (The tech for them was my first research project.) These act similar to the automated factory in MOO2, adding a flat production boost to a world. But unlike MOO2 this amount varies based on the mineral richness of the planet. For the second goal I am building a colony base at my homeworld, and will eventually build a second one, to colonize Venus and Mars. I am researching Acid Colonization tech which will open Venus, plus there are acid worlds at a couple nearby systems. I already researched Desert Colonization for Mars.

Exploration will mostly be from the remote exploration process:

This new game mechanic represents your astronomers and scientists examining a region of space for basic info about what is there. An initial scan provides basic scan level info (what planets are present but not their mineral level or special resources). Repeated scans of the same sector take longer but can increase your scan level to advanced, revealing more data. The remote scan can also reveal hidden objects -- brown dwarf stars, black holes, worm holes, and more. So scanning can add entire star systems, potentially with colonizable planets, to the map. You can select scan targets yourself, or automate the process with several options to prioritize near scans, far scans, deep scans, etc. There are also both techs and culture choices that can speed up the remote scanning.

I will post another update once I have played some more turns.

[WingsofMemory]

Interesting. I think that the remote exploration is one of the more interesting and realistic mechanics. I'm not sure how I feel about those victory conditions, very "Civ"-y. One the one hand it probably keeps gameplay more interesting, and will keep you more on your toes, since you'd have to worry about any of the AIs reaching weird ones first.

I just don't think I personally like the idea of most of them. You built a wonder so now everyone else dies or something? You have lots of people allied together (nevermind their strength and punching power) so everyone else quivers in fear and surrenders? Not sure if they work like that or not, and maybe they're better than I give them credit for. I suppose it should help with late-game drag, but puts a bad taste in my mouth.

[RefSteel]

Thanks for the further reports, Haphazard! Do you know what the difference is (if any) between the different-colored nebulae, apart from the impassible-until-tech-unlocked black ones?

One of the reasons that I like strategy games so much (of the '4x' variety) is that a story emerges naturally from the game. I often times find myself thinking what it's like to be living in the different empires, under the different tyrants. What's the average day look like for our emperor themselves?

Likewise for me; that's actually what I was trying inadequately to convey above when I lost myself in the weeds of this specific event: When I play a 4X game, a thousand different narratives can emerge from the gameplay. But the more the game tries to tell you what the story is supposed to be, the more you have to (ignore it or) restrict your story to the same thing. It's a bit worse when it's nonsensical, but only a bit, really!

So when the game says, "Some rich maniacs ran off chanting, 'Down With Government, Individuals Uber Alles!' They seceded from your empire, tried to make their own space colony, and found out that oops, their uncompromising ideals don't work any better in practice than any other maniacs' uncompromising ideals because they equally ignore reality. They're all going to die because space doesn't give second chances and they refuse to compromise anyway." - I'm thinking, "Sure, makes sense," and I can work it into my story (as long as I'm not imagining my people as a hive mind or something) though it's already getting too specific to have much narrative replayability. And if the options said, "Nationalize their infrastructure and pay to fix it OR leave them to die without help in accordance with their proclaimed ideals OR rescue them, return them to your civilization, but fine them for the cost of saving their lives from their own blunders," I'd work within that and imagine the story, even coming up with twisted logic for what makes the rewards fit their relevant text. But as cute as the "smugly" line might be (the first time you see it) that and other text like it among the choices is telling you how to feel about the options, or how your in-game avatar is supposed to, which has no place in a 4X game and straitjackets the narrative into the event-writer's narrow worldview instead of letting a story emerge.

Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now. More importantly: If you're interested in reading a bunch of my emergent stories from old Master of Orion games ... I've got a bunch of them posted on my MoO site. In several, I imagine exactly what you described - what life is like under various governments or tyrants, and what it's like being one of the tyrants (not always my avatar!) themselves! I (and some of the other players) also did that during Succession Game turns, posted here on the forum!

I'm not sure how I feel about those victory conditions, very "Civ"-y. One the one hand it probably keeps gameplay more interesting, and will keep you more on your toes, since you'd have to worry about any of the AIs reaching weird ones first.

I just don't think I personally like the idea of most of them. You built a wonder so now everyone else dies or something? You have lots of people allied together (nevermind their strength and punching power) so everyone else quivers in fear and surrenders? Not sure if they work like that or not, and maybe they're better than I give them credit for. I suppose it should help with late-game drag, but puts a bad taste in my mouth.

I'm willing to give the designers the benefit of the doubt on this one; those victory conditions aren't hard to get right. Just to take the easiest, limiting case: If the Alliance victory requires you to ally yourself to literally other faction in the game, and there are a total of only 7 Galactic Wonders possible, some of them with late-game tech prerequisites, then neither victory is cheesy. Even with less than that, if the Alliance victory means building a big enough alliance to win the election, and just saves you the wait for the turns to roll over to the next one, I'm a fan, and the Wonders one might still make sense if you need seven out of (say) ten and at least four are decently-late on the tree. If it's anything like most 4X games, being able to achieve one of these victories would mean you could probably have won by military means already - and it's neat to have an option to win without doing so. (The science victory might sort of be an exception, where it could come down to a race where two equal empires strive to get there and one wins on basically turn order in spite of a virtual tie, but realistically, if you as the player get to (what I assume is) the end of the tree and haven't won a military victory already, it's probably because you don't feel like going through all the necessary fighting.)