Why no space?

[Slax]

Space seemed silly. Somehow these cities in space were highly productive, yet orbitted not far from the earth. What resources are they collecting? I can only think of space dust, meteors and solar radiation.

I like the direction Activision is taking: removing space cities, but leaving a space plane. I would also like to see satellites, but thats it.

Concentrate on land and sea. Its complicated enough (ie. no civ game has done a good job at naval attacks). With that improved, perhaps add space in some later (much later) release.

[Westergaard]

quote: Originally posted by Atahualpa on 10-05-2000 11:55 AMYou know nobody would like a feature like space if it wasnt properly implemented and you can have a look at CtP1 and see what features are not properly implemented and then tell me again that you want such features in CtP2!

In that case it's not space exploration that's rotten - It's the programming! And this is a new game with new programming, so I can't see why they just give it another shot. It seems like they should know how it shouldn't be done, by now :-).

I just think it's sad that one poor implementation completely rules space out of future versions. Since space is an important part of the future in the real world, it shoulnd't just be avoided for gameplay reasons.

But anyways, thanks for the links - won't be able to afford the game within the next months however

[Gedrin]

Couple of things.

I'm all confused about this talk of more turns...
My original files have 585 turns. Are my original files screwed up? When did CTP have 350 turns? I mean it's all right there in diffDB.txt... could someone set me straight about this?

On another note. I too wish space was still there. I mean why not give space cities an active_defense_range of say 2 and a big ranged attack factor. This would solve the attack from orbit problem since you could cover your empire with defensive cities in space and that would be that. The cities might fall but they couldn't just walk in and nail them.

I don't really think they bit off more than they could chew. I think they just didn't actually do enough chewing.

Now I have to admit I don't have a lot of experience with the space era in CTP. The only game I ever got there I was beating a horse so long dead... but I wanted to see all the units and stuff.

Gedrin

[lev]

I was annoyed when I first read that space would be left out of CtP2. I hate it when newer versions of games cut out cool features of older versions (like the timeline from Civ I!).

But then I got to thinking about it, and I never got much out of the space feature. If I got to space first, I would pretty much dominate it, and it would give me too much power to space-bomb and space-drop my enemies into submission. The game would no longer be a challenge, and I'd usually abandon it before achieving victory conditions.

The undersea features of CtP is what keeps me from going back to Civ II, so I'm glad Activision has enhanced that aspect of the game.

So I guess I agree with their decision to drop the space level. But an L-5 space colony would work well as a Wonder, maybe relieving population pressures in your cities...

[Dr Strangelove]

Well, come to think of it, wouldn't a nation able to completely dominate space, or as Ronald Reagan called it, "the high ground", have a decisive advantage over other nations? I mean, in CTP you can transfer armies via space! CTP left out 2 things 1) A nation militarizing space in such a fashion would automatically rally the rest of the world against them. (2)CTP left out "SDI". Shouldn't other nations have been able to develop long range weapons against the space vehicles?

[FreeChina]

The space cities have on major flaw though, game-wise, they are in fixed positions. Low orbit anything would not have a fixed position at all, it would orbit over every part of the world in a week or so. High orbit makes no sense.

Basically, the three dimensionality of space makes it impossible to implement without either a very confusing interface (anyone ever do polar coordinates in trignometry class?- now try 3D) or being unrealistic as it is in CTP1.

[Dr Strangelove]

How about the ability to build a "Mass Driver", i.e., a weapon that is able to drop really big rocks on your enemies, hitting the earth at speeds of over 25,000 miles per hour. This would be a much more devastating weapon than nuclear bombs. Instead of reducing the population of the hex it would leave a big uninhabitable crater. You'd have to watch how many you dropped or the game ends with all players being losers!

[Westergaard]

FreeChina:
Good points. Maybe the spacecities should just be assumed to be in the space i.e. "you have 21 cities in space" but without a specific location.

Of course that would make space-combat very abstract. On the other hand, I always thought that space marines were unrealistic - in real world you'd just send a missile against the spacestructure.

That could easily be implemented, but it would create a situation were space attacks were very hard to defend against. However I also think that it should be very hard to defend - it would in real life. The only real defense of space, should be the ability to strike back in sufficient force, in the case of an attack i.e. the "balance of power defense"

[3rdTrial]

I agree with the general voice when they state that space cities come to late in the game to make a difference.

But space has other uses. One of the silly thing of CTP that I always consider was the obsolecense of globesat. Do anybody really thinks that the first nation to build it, would really turn it off?

If stheat units don't show anymore, this would be only valid for such units....

Also, globesat if the singular most powerfull wonder in battle! That makes the game harder to balance after it has been built. Like the forcefiled wonder where other civ's can build them one by one on their cities, players should be able to build spy satelites and put them fixed in orbit or just have them move around automatically in patterns (21st century lightning posts?)

Those units could even have defense and bombard capabilites but have to be in space so that they can hover over enemy cities....

[Bartemans]

Hello,

Ever heard of the geostationary orbit?

In the real world, this is the orbit right above the equator, when the sattelite has an atltitude of about 36000 km. Then the angular speed of the sattelite is the same as the angular speed of the Earth itself.
(excuse me, I'm Dutch, so my scientific English might not be A-OK)

It is pretty real, espescially if there is one zone above the equator where space cities can be built. (For game comfort, I would love to drop some scientific arguments).

However, spacecities were fun, but it made the game real slow. I am playing it (CTPI) on a PIII-500 MHz and the game is going quite well, except when I'm working in space. Moving a spaceplane or so is going so slow that I've lost most of the fun of space.

Regards,

Bartemans
http://home.hccnet.nl/stolte.1