I've been advocating for more interesting leaders in 4X games for a long time. I may or may not have been in Adam's ear for awhile about this.
A leader or Hero should be ANY AI NPC that has attained a level of Expertise from both Experience an Training. It should be an Automatic thing that would happen to any NPC any where in the Universe. Not an Automatic "poof" your a leader thing, without an investment of time an experience, raising them to this level. There could be a set criterier that any AI Manager in the Universe could obtain at any time, depending on their level. Once promoted to "Leader" or "Hero", their importance in Game would rise. And you may wish to move them to better locations in order to take advantage of their skills. Replacing them with the best managers you can find. Of course this all takes time, which you may or maynot have. Again your Decisions count. But your AI Leaders, Managers, and Advisors take the load off.
This saddens me, this gives me the impression that this game will not be much more than what we have seen already. I know money always comes into play, why not have game play option levels, if a certain level of donation for an option is met, it gets in the game!
Is the combat not going to be turn-based? I think most MOO2 fans would want this (look at the hostility to the real-time combat in Nu-MOO). Of course, battles with 1000 ships won't work in turn-based unless you no longer command individual ships, but groups of ships. In my opinion, the command of individual ships was one of the most fun parts of MOO2. As the number of ships goes up, the ability to give detailed orders to them, to feel attached to them, the fear when one of your ships shields go down, the elation when an enemy ship has a warp core breech, these things all necessarily diminish. Small numbers of ships with detailed turn-based combat for me!
a propos. turn-based combat gives the oportunity to implement a modular damage system. I mean the system which removes these boring RTSque hull points. You should be able to damage or destroy a particular parts and modules of the targeted ship. Something similar to old naval battles especially from the WW2 times. So, imagine that heavily wounded capital ships drifting with damaged FTL-engine or fighting with a fire (some FTL flavour). The modular damage system also gives a more depth and importance to the ship designing concept. What do you think?
This really depends on the number of ships typically involved in battles. In FTL the combat was incredibly detailed, but then you only had two ships in any combat. Implementing a detailed modular damage system, if there are typically a hundred ships in a battle, would be a waste of time. Better to just use a basic hit point implementation, and spend your focus elsewhere.
Hit points mean that every ship is 100% functional regardless of 5% or 99% damage. The argument about hundred ships in a battle is a bit far fetched as that battle scope is the rather late game issue. Tactical battles need more depth and as military history shows the David-Goliath phenomen is quite common on the battlefield. Of course I am aware that hit/hull points system is far easier to implement and that factor could be decisive when it comes to choosing the final path in development.
There is no reason that hit points have to function in this manner. Many games with hit points give units a combat penalty based upon the amount of damage they have taken. The number of ships expected to be involved in battles is key to level of detail that should be given to individual ships in the games combat engine. Neither of us know what the plans are regarding this. Now, personally, I would prefer smaller battles and more detailed ships. I would even enjoy a space 4X with only 1-3 ships a side in each battle, but having an FTL level of combat detail. FTL is, for me, the best ship to ship space combat of any game (with MOO2 second).
Yes, we're currently implementing a solution regarding hull/systems damage similar with the MoO2 solution which avoids this 'non-common-sense' 5%Hull -> 100% functional possibility. There is the possibility, in each attack, that the damage aimed for general hull damage may hit an internal system like a specific weapon, the engine, the shields or others. So, it may happen that the hull is still in good shape but a weapon system is already broken, or the shields are broken and now they can´t recharge anymore... unless they have Scotty or Kaylee . We're not reinventing the wheel here, it will be more a less what MoO2 did with some balancing work. And yes, this opens the possibility to enrich the ship design adding new modifications or some specials. We will discuss this and other combat issues when the Space Combat dev diary is posted in the near future. Please show up there! Meanwhile, feel free to post more interesting ideas.
Random combat penalties caused by damage level (regarding engine, shield, accuracy or particular weapon) could be a reasonable trade-off. Of course it would be nicer to see these burning bulletholes and all that hull destruction porn.
