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| Apolyton: | Good we're set :) |
| Rantz Hoseley: | So, ask away |
| Rantz Hoseley: | And I'll try and have appropriately witty answers... |
| Apolyton: | Ok lets me first say that i havent been following moo3 as much as i would want, mostly due to civ3 :) |
| Rantz Hoseley: | That's ok, and understandable... |
| Rantz Hoseley: | Civ is one of the games that got me back into computer gaming |
| Rantz Hoseley: | That and castles, which ironically QSI was the developer for |
| Rantz Hoseley: | So everything comes full circle as it were |
| Apolyton: | Perhaps the most important idea in MoO3 is that you cant do everything all the time. You have a set amount of "focus points" that you can "spend" working on your empire |
| Rantz Hoseley: | Not anymore... |
| Rantz Hoseley: | The whole concept of IFP has been pretty much nuked from high orbit |
| * Apolyton shoots himself on the foot :) |
| Rantz Hoseley: | LOL |
| Rantz Hoseley: | We have incentives to not make the player dawdle... |
| Rantz Hoseley: | Giving them benefits for expediant actions, and we give them macromanagement level tools in order to make sure that the control is still there. |
| Rantz Hoseley: | But the feeling of penalty for actions is gone |
| Apolyton: | Ironically, i was reading previews that came out during e3 describing ifp :D |
| Apolyton: | Ok, so to the question I was aiming for, how much control do you have on your empire and is there a fear that you wont be able to do much at the end? |
| Apolyton: | e.g. will you be facing a huge amount of "bureucracy" |
| Apolyton: | Civ3 has been accused of having a tedious late end-game. much like almost all tbs i guess. how will moo3 be different with the macromanagment tools? |
| Rantz Hoseley: | you have a huge amount of control... |
| Rantz Hoseley: | In playing through the alpha build we came to the very stark realization that there needed to be a stronger sense of causality |
| Rantz Hoseley: | That the player's actions had a real and tangible effect. |
| Rantz Hoseley: | Which, while the player's action WERE casing things to happen, sometimes was too subtle to give the player timely feedback |
| Apolyton: | Did it feel like you were on auto-mode or something? |
| Rantz Hoseley: | Not so much auto mode as, not having enough force behind it... |
| Rantz Hoseley: | That some things had the "for every action there is.." feeling which is what you want |
| Rantz Hoseley: | But some things were giving you the feeling of "what the?!? did something just happen, oh yeah 20 tuens later I see the immigration policy on Rigel 5 was affected in this way by that..." |
| Rantz Hoseley: | Which is just frustrating as a player |
| Apolyton: | Yeah, most automation features end up disappointing people and forcing "perfectionists" to do everything by themselves |
| Rantz Hoseley: | In terms of the macromanagment tools |
| Rantz Hoseley: | One of the goals from day 1 with MOOIII was to keep the late/end game as interesting as the first 100 turns.
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| Rantz Hoseley: | So, we made sure that the controls you had weren't just at the planet level. |
| Rantz Hoseley: | But that you also had system level and empire level controls. |
| Rantz Hoseley: | To use an example I can categorize worlds |
| Rantz Hoseley: | So I can make a whole bunch of planets 'border worlds' for example, that's a designation and choice that's up to me.
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