Speaking of time ...

[NeOmega]

Read this only if you are open to suggestions on the total make up of the game.

Instead of bulding colonies on planets like MOO, I'd like to see small maps, maybe no more than 20x20 in civ terms, or different sized maps for different sized planets, or......

a set of thousands of not square or hex tiled maps at all, but instead amorphous geographical regions,
Yes, after playing ten games, one could begon to pick out planetary maps he/she has seen before.

But instead of building a colony on a planet and it's is yours, or instead of building two or three colonies (civ III cities) on the planet and having it fill up, send "engineer" type units to occupy the one tile at a time, with orders to terraform, mine, colonize, what have you, and then have these squares, one at a time, become part of a nation, on the planet, usually sharing space with other nations, from other races. I would see the engineer units as melding, disappearing, settling, onto this square you sent them.

If you have ever played sim city, it would be nice if these nations developed kind of like sim city, not really in your control, but dependant on a host of your national, galactic, priorities.

If this scope is too large, it could be the first colonization for these races, or as in SMAC, factions, of a new solar system. This new system being way too far from this solar system to be heavily influenced by the politics of Earth.

Ahh, but the best part about these small maps would be starship and ground combat could be fused together to introduce some deep tactical aspects of interplanetary war, but still be fairly simple.

anyways, enough of this jibbuh jabbah for now ........

[NeOmega]

Perhaps requests for reinforcements.......

an interesting concept this, a dual diplomacy....
first you would have to try and maintain good diplomatic relations with those with whom you share your planet

and.... maintain good diplomatic relations with your superiors. Good relations means higher likelyhood of reinforcements arriving. Bad relations with your superiors and no reinforcements may come.

I have no clue what so ever the basic idea of this game yet, or what will make it unique... but in my current mod, I am planning on dumping the technology aspect of civ III and calling it "industrial capacity", basically the technologies are already known, (which explains the knowing future technology :P) but you can't just set up a nuclear power plant when yoiu first begin to start your colony on Mars.

Another way to look at this dual diplomacy model would be the current colonization of this planet is important to all involved races in this "sector", however it is a distant sector, and not too heavily involved with the politics of the more central galaxy.

However, discovery of certain vital resources may coax, (or even will, if you want to change discovery of vital resources to player controlled "building" of this discovery) or even will coax your far away capital, Empire to actually send a vital starship to your region. Of course it would take time to reach, and a backwords race on your planet who had not "discovered" this vital resource could have time to begin to set up interceptor groups, or missile bases, anti-space ship batteries, city shileds, etc.... in anticipation of the impending attack.
This may or may not be able to hold off your star ship until their mother country is finally convinced to send a precious star cruiser their way. (until they "discover" this precious resource).

[DeathByTheSword]

but there will be spaceflight and fights right?

[Rasbelin]

That's true, Leland. Currently it looks like there's only going to be 1 planet to colonise as that will fit into the background story better. But things might change.

[Leland]

If I am not grossly mistaken, Stella Polaris is going to be like SMAC in the regard that there's just one planet to colonize.

[Ozymandias]

What assumptions are going to be made about interstellar travel viz-a-viz communications?

Possibilities are (1) time delay is ignored entirely for gameplay, with both ships and communications being "simultaneous" (i.e., ignoring Einstein etc. -- which is fine!!) (2) a method, perhaps paired electron quantum spin, allows FTL communications but not FTL ship travel (3) "jump" technology (or whatever) allows FTL ship movement -- meaning the fastest communication point-to-point is via ship as opoosed to any "broadcast" medium (rather as in many of, e.g., C.J.Cherryh's books).

My hopefully intriguing point is as follows --

Any number of technology scenarios can be posited where orders should "realistically" be given to an interstellar unit N number of turns in advance, where N can be the distance from, say, a "stargate". It would also take N number of turns for new orders to reach that ship/fleet.

A premium would be placed on the stargate / nexus / whatever system,as these facilities would minimize orders' lag time.

Ships / fleets could also be given 1 of a limited menu of actions if the unexpected occurs -- attack; retreat to last position; etc.

Hopefully this isn't too abbreviated --

Oz