Moo2 was a great game but one of the not-so-great things about it was the way you had to manually queue up the same buildings, often in the exact same order over and over and over again for each colony. And then when the rather small queue ran dry, you had the "fun" of doing it all over again. What would be good is if the player could create a build queue and then save it as a template (science world, industrial world, research world....etc). Then when founding a new colony all the player would do is load up a specific build template which contains the entire build order that they previously used. Build queue templates have been discussed many times and would seem very easy to do from a development perspective, not to mention being a great "quality of life feature" but I've never actually seen them implemented. They'd be a very welcome and innovative feature for Project Space Sector.
Are Civ style buildings confirmed? If so then yes please. This was requested so many times on MoO:CtS forums. In MoO 2 once I get more then N₀ (5-10) colonies it gets more of a labor then fun to keep updating building queues. Either when colonizing N+1st world or unlocking new building which I'd like to have on all planets. Having only one customizable template which is followed by autobuild functionality would be a huge improvement. There are more esoteric things which can be done with buildings like turning them to achievements when enough of them are built. For instance once you build Automated Factories on 10 colonies all other and future colonies are get the benefits of auto factories without the need to build them.
Yes I remember, and like most fan suggestions it was completely ignored by the Cts devs who ended up churning out a mediocre, generic children's tablet game which has already been mostly forgotten.
And PLEEEASSSEE don't limit build queues to 5 or 6 items... Come to think about it, separate queue for planet and spaceship construction would be nice too. And for spaceship construction, having repeatable parallel and/or serial queues would be great too, especially later in the game when construction capacity allows it. For instance, if you develop tech for Big Ship size 4, you could build 2 ship size 3 or 4 ship size 2, during the same amount of turn, etc...
Starbase orion implemented something pretty close to this feature. Whilst I have nothing against it, I do think that is is applying a band-aid, rather than dealing with the fundamental problem. In the early game colony management is great fun, in the late game it becomes a chore. I think 4X gamers would mostly agree with that statement. Solutions such as automation and templates, look to reduce the chore. I think it would be better to focus on making late game colony management fun. I don't think this is simply due to having too much stuff to do. Doom doesn't get boring in later levels because you have more monsters to shoot. Shooting monsters is fun when there are a few and fun when there are a lot. I believe the more important issue is that in the early game the decision of what to build and when is very important to your empires future. In the late game you are just building everything everywhere. There are no longer important decisions to make. This is why it is a chore, rather than because you have too much to do. Adjusting the game mechanics, to make colony management fun in both the early and late game is the solution that is needed. How to do that, I don't know for sure, but there are ideas. One mechanic, tried in some games, is to limit the number of buildings at any colony. So you have to make the hard choice of what to build, not just building everything. Another, is to make buildings become obsolete. Having, for example, 10-15 possible buildings all providing a boost to science does not add any depth to gameplay.
I agree with micromanagement of colonies turning into a chore late game. It is definitely something I would like to see reduced to an absolute minimum here. Late game I want to focusing on combat, diplomacy, espionage, etc. not about queuing up a mining center at colony #14. I think a template system would be an ideal fit without taking colony development too far away from the MoO II model. I would prefer to build the template myself rather than rely on one of the governor systems I've seen where you simply select "Production" planet and it builds what it thinks it needs. I'd rather be able to create my own "Starter Pack" type templates for new colonies which is dependent on my plans for them. Other approaches are also possible as Neil mentions. I wouldn't mind seeing different approaches, for instance I'm in support of the sector system in Stellaris reducing player micromanagement, but I don't know that this project is the one to pioneer something new in that regard.
I cant over-stress how important I think this is. No build template will ever be as good or appropriate as the one the player creates themselves. Any AI generated build-order is almost certain to come up lacking, so if build queue templates are included in the game I think they absolutely must be player customizable in whatever build order the player desires. I certainly wouldn't be adverse to both options being available (custom and AI generated) but of course that means more dev work.
I second the need for templates. You can name them for whatever task you want, ie: Mining Colony. Industry Colony, etc. You can even set the parameters of the templates to be activated when a colony ship colonizes a new planet. So you could say something like "All planets with characteristic RICH will be Mining Colonies." "All planets with characteristic SOCIAL will be Social Colonies." and so on (I just used RICH and SOCIAL as simple to understand characteristics of a planet to demonstrate my point. This can obviously be expanded upon based on what is actually in the game! ). This way, as you enter late game, the burden of colonization and building up new colonies goes down. The player can then focus on what really matters - combat, diplomacy and research.
More MoO1 and less MoO2 when it comes to colony management. The lack of smart queues wasn't the problem of 2. It was the ridiculous number of repetitive uninspired buildings that were universally useful.
One thing that could keep things interesting is making early-stage buildings obsolete. No need to build an "Automatic Factory" if you have a "Robotic factory" - so if you want to build one it replaces the older type (and you can't build the older type once the new one is available). Since all colonies have only a limited number of characteristic building types, say for boosting production, income, research, defense, etc., newer buildings which replace older ones could help keep things interesting and managable even without a (complicated?) saveable building queue system. One could have a system instead where the colony is instructed to work on updating its buildings to their newest variants whenever there are no other tasks in the building queue. I mean, even today, if we want to build a modern car factory, we don't start with building a steam-powered one first...
In MOO2, Robo-Miners provided a bonus multiplier based on mineral richness, automated factories provided a bonus multiplier based on number of workers, some other provided fixed bonuses or percentage bonuses based on some other consideration such as morale or pollution. Unless you research all of them specifically,(or steal them), you will not always have access to all of them. I personnaly think that have different building providing bonuses based on certain condtions, adds some depth to the strategic layer invoving the decision making in spying or tech research instead of just researching building tech level X that provides X percent more production. If I want to build a car factory, in order to make it more productive, having a more efficient mine for providing cheaper metal and a pleasure dome for a happier workforce make sense in gameplay terms.
Yeah, one of the things I liked about Space Empires V was the custom queues and they could be as long as you liked. Nice touch. If I remember correctly, you could also queue up your research topics, but that was a somewhat shorter list.
I completely agree with you! Furthermore, I liked the system in Moo2 enough that I see little reason to alter it. Not only was it effective in-game but it was an enjoyable part of the overall experience. If anything, the only alteration I would countenance is the addition of some new buildings and or the modification of existing ones.
You two (Matthias and Bigmo) mixed Robo-Miners and Robotic Factories with each other . I'd take Autolab and other research buildings as better example because by the time you get Robotic Factories it's constant bonus is superseded by per worker bonuses of other sources. It makes about 10% difference. Autolab's constant bonus on the other hand doubles total research by the time you normally get it and competes well with Planetary Supercomputer and Research Lab per worker bonus. But the point of the quoted block stands, MoO 2 had mix of upgrades and side grades. The fact which many games ignore. For instance in some Civilization sequels you can't have research and build University without Library. MoO 2 research system is like a little NP problem in the middle of P problem systems.
