Excellent summary, Keith. Thanks for the doing that. I would also concur that wrinkles like the situational bonuses can be left out until we see if/how the core idea works after some playtesting and balancing. - Ash
[quote who="Iztok Bitenc" reply="4" id="1935731"]Yes, obviously you don't hide.[/quote] For anyone who actually knows me, that nickname is just as good as my actual name at identifying me. It was given to me early in high school and I've used it in various contexts ever since. You also missed that my point was about being accountable across different internet communities, which is the only context in which I have any interest in knowing you or anyone on this site.
[quote who="Overheal1987" reply="13" id="1935647"]I think steam caught on to that trend ages ago when they started running their on-installation hardware survey. and if you look at the results some of their customers use some pretty ancient relics.[/quote] Thanks for that; I always forget that survey is out there when these kind of conversations come up. Some generally useful tidbits: - 25 % of Steam's users have less than 1GB of RAM. - 59
I like the first part of your idea, about having movement speed be varied by training (conditioning) and equipment. My gut reaction wast that it was unnecessarily complicated but then I remembered that the game won't have "standard" units, so the traditional preset movement rates for each unit of other 4X games won't apply. I'm not sure about the premise of your second part, however, that there are no "sensor equivalents". I don't know if this will be possible but, if we can equip uni
[quote who="CrazyC0330" reply="4" id="1925499"]It should also be mentioned that Impulse has an IRC client built right in. Fire it up and go to the "Community" tab, and then choose "Chat" at the bottom.[/quote] So help a interested poster out, here: I go to Impulse's Chat screen and I see a drop-down menu asking me to select a room to join. The following options are listed: #impulse #stardock #demigod #galciv #sins #polmachine #joeuser<
Oh, wait. That's actually only my second most wanted feature. My first most wanted feature: for the love of all things holy, please make my mouse's forward and back buttons work to navigate the Store or Community pages! Until that happens, there's a 0% chance that I'll even consider using Impulse to browse SD's various sites/forums. - Ash
I use the Impulse Dock on an everyday basis, so I'm quite keen to see by how much you've improved the performance. Here's my top feature request, by the way, that I don't think has been addressed yet: make it possible to hide the Dock icons of non-Stardock products. To elaborate: Stardock games can be listed on the Games tab but hidden from the Dock. If you add a non-Stardock game to the Games tab, though, it always shows up on the Dock and the only way to remove it from the Dock is t
Making the early part of the game challenging is, generally, a good thing. Heck, making any and every part of the game challenging is a good thing; both statements are so straightforward it shouldn't be possible to object to them. What I would mention as a caution, however, is that early-game challenges should not take the form of the possibility of random and unforeseeable death. If I lose early, I need to feel like it was because I made a sub-optimal decision, not because the game e
Well, the point of the article was that a lot of people would want that - specifically, copyright holders and anyone who works for them or owns stock in their companies. Reducing or eliminating internet anonymity would not eliminate piracy but it would bring it much closer to conventional (trackable and prosecutable) theft. Frankly, I wouldn't have a problem with that approach. I don't hide on the internet. I use the same nickname almost everywhere and even where my name is s
I'm indifferent regarding flying units. As long as there is plenty of variety to unit types/designs, I don't much care if any of them fly or not. - Ash
[quote who="landisaurus" reply="4" id="1934855"]@asharak - woah, I'm not saying duel-moniter is a requirement. Not at all! Being able to adapt to standard 4:3 PCs with 1 moniter is very important. It is just that there ARE dual-monitor setups on a lot of geek machines, so if it isn't a problem there should be the option for it.[/quote] Aside from Vanenburg's point about optional feature creep, my concern is that you're
[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="25" id="1934829"]my "bottom level" or Specific categories have no analogy in your/keith's model. The specific categories would be much smaller groupings of related technologies than the Broad categories - and these specific categories are independent of the Broad categories! And technologies could be part of multiple Specific categories if applicable.[/quote] Got it. Yeah, that bottom level doesn't have a corollary in the keith/Ash system. Anot
[quote quoting="post"]My first major idea is multi-screen support. Many powerful PC users have two monitors.[/quote] But far more people do not. Given that SD has talked a lot in the recent past about creating games that can be played on a wide variety of systems, I don't see it as likely that any major features of the game are going to rely on having two monitors. Dual monitor setups are still a badge of extreme geekdom. Heck, I don't even think we should count on
[quote who="keithLamothe" reply="23" id="1934798"]Sounds like a cool idea though like you I don't want feature creep. Your examples there are concrete enough that they could be implemented without great difficulty, and perhaps should; it's just a question of total tonnage of how many different places these modifiers can come from and whether it adds to the fun. There's also the question of game focus; whether a fantasy/magic 4X is the right game to go for a (to my knowledge)
[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="18" id="1934765"]It doesn't, however, completely solve the problem. If you're researching blindly or in a large category, then it would work pretty well because chances are there would be enough techs available that even if you estimate the cost based on how long it takes to get to "Hypothesizing", there will probably be numerous possibilities. If you're researching in a smaller category (ala my suggestion, for example), then unless the r
[quote who="pigeonpigeon" reply="16" id="1934744"]As many people have said, new advances are usually based on need, without a clear picture about what the solution would entail.[/quote] I don't know if the gameplay benefit would be worth it or it would just be feature creep but I think it would really... neat... to work in even a mild sort of situational/need-based bonus to research. Depending on the list of tech categories, something like: * +5% to Military research per Facti
[quote who="keithLamothe" reply="15" id="1934712"]Yea, the inference by tech cost problem occured to me which is why I wasn't sure if they should even get a progress indicator. It would be weird and kinda frustrating to not have something though, so it could display an estimate (e.g. "will be complete in 7-12 turns").[/quote] This is a very minor distinction but, for blind or focused research, what about giving qualitative, rather than quantitative, reports on research progress?
[quote who="keithLamothe" reply="13" id="1934668"]A general idea that came to mind is making the "natural" or "path of least resistance" progression of technology be more or less blind, and making it possible to focus more but at the cost of research efficiency, gold, magic, resources, etc, or some combination thereof. A simple implementation could be: - if you just pick a tech category, you get 100% of your research points towards the tech - if you pick a spe
[quote who="Ron Lugge" reply="11" id="1930261"]That actually makes a certain degree of sense -- a 'final strike' shows up on in a lot of different magic schemes as (basically): I'm going to die -- fine, I'm taking ou with me![/quote] "From hell's heart I stab at thee. For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee." - Herman Melville or, if you prefer, Khan Noonien Singh. --- Given the game premise, I'm also on board with the notion that death should be permanent
[quote who="keithLamothe" reply="11" id="1934563"]So what middle ground would work? What would please the control freaks, min/maxers, and those who want a form of blind research?[/quote] Just brainstorming... What about (and I think I'm going to invent a term here) a form of tech "clustering"? Here's what I mean by that: - Technology development would work off a conventional, explicit tree. - Most technologies would be present in the same one-tec
[quote who="Ron Lugge" reply="19" id="1934516"] I dunno... having multiple seperating 'branches' for various approaches you can take sounds fun. Want to be an uber-magical kingdom? Sure! Want to have the best economy around? Sure! Want to have the best military forces on the globe? Sure! Want all three? Nuh-uh, gotta pick one.[/quote] I always liked Civilization's approach to this. You can move ahead along a particular branch
Sure. :) Since you didn't ask for contact information, I assume you'd just be forwarding them our e-mail addresses from our profiles? - Ash
[quote who="keithLamothe" reply="9" id="1934467"]Do you think my estimate of what it would take is missing something? Or is it just a principled objection against having an option? I certainly sympathize with the latter.[/quote] I do have a principled objection against options (well, premature requests for them, at least) but I also think there are some nuts-and-bolts/balancing issues that you haven't considered there. For instance, how exactly would generic research work:
What about reversing the process? Rather than choosing a governor to define what type of town you want to have, what about having the type of town you develop choosing the governor? In other words, small, initial settlements start without governors (or highly bland and generic ones). As you build structures and train units in the city, those choices determine the likelihood of a specific sort of governor emerging in the city when it reaches a certain size. Build barracks and train man
[quote who="Skinner" reply="15" id="1934440"]I always liked the idea of a random tech tree, a la MOO3.[/quote] If it was in MOO3, it could not possibly be a good idea. ;) --- I'll echo the thoughts of those who have said: 1) No guns, please. 2) I would like some interdependence among the branches of the tech tree. - Ash