Multiple Worlds design

[Kurilka]

But i don't understand how we deal with these 2 modes in multiplayer situation when some people are in space mode and some in planetary...

[Rasbelin]

Well, it would mean would have 2 different multiplayer game modes (compare to e.g. FPS games with deathmatch, teamdeath, roundbased deathmatch and objective matches). Of course this sounds insane to someone, but it should be quite working, unless we settle for the second suggestion I came up with.

[Kurilka]

And what about singleplayer?
Will it be the same? Actually as i understand strategy games in singleplayer and multiplayer are almost the same, the main difference is that there are not real player but AI

[Rasbelin]

Well, as you run the server anyway for SP too, it would be available in both SP and MP. And that's if we decide to use the suggestion I made.

[DeathByTheSword]

ok thank you now i finally now what kind of game we are making an most of my units i suggested are usseles for one of the gamemodes

[Rasbelin]

Hey, hold your horses, DBTS. This was just a suggestion by me, not a final resolution. You can come up with other suggestions and have a different opinion.

[Michiel]

I was wondering if there is going to be a Single Player mode at all. The last thing I remember about that in the old freeAC forums, is that it wasn't a priority and the game would primarily be for online gaming. So, in my absence, did I miss the final decision about that?

BTW: I agree on the multi world thing you/Blake suggested.

[Blake]

DBTS, most of your units are still valid. Except maybe the ships (probably do what so many games seem to be doing, and replace ships with fliers and hovercrafts)

The planet level will still be important:
It will be possible to share a planet.
Cities have a definite location (so you can attack one city, rather than another), and there will be borders and stuff.
Armies will also have a definite location on the planet, meaning armies are still moved around, can target particular areas, etc.
Ground combat will still be important, orbital power will be about as effective as modern airpower, you can bomb the target all you want, but if you want to capture it, you have to send in the groundpounders.
Later in the game it will be possible to build weapons which allow for scorched earth strategies, but if you want something left of a planet to utilize, then you'd be best not saturate nuke it from space.

The problem with hands on, is it directely equates to micromanagment, it puts players that dont want to hands on at a disadvantage.

My vision is to have a game which is designed for interesting multiplayer, rather than 7 people playing introverted single player games, but in the same game, and occasionally attacking/obliterating one another.

I have nothing against hands on, but there is a place for such games, the "sims"/"tycoon" series. A good game about colony micromanagment on another planet would put you in command of a single colony in a nice valley or something, then you can build farms, housing, power plants, research labs, waterworks, entertainment and a hundred and one other things, it would be real time and designed for single player. (have I designed such a game already? Probably.)

What turn based is great for is strategy games, and especially diplomacy because there is time to think about diplomacy between turns, so I'm designing a game which will make for interesting multiplayer with lots of potentional for diplomacy and politics, but still with plenty to do, and yes, some hands on stuff, planetary invasions should be especially hands on, if you choose to lead the attack force you'll be targetting the orbital weapons to destroy ground based defenses (or economic targets), sending in drop ships, and moving the armies around conquering stuff.
You'll also have a fair amount of control over your cities, atleast when you are currentely at the planet.

[Blake]

In response to Michiel:
Yes, there will be a single player mode. Otherwise new players would be so darn newbie in multiplayer it wouldn't be funny

I lean towards a tutorial, and campaign. Possibly a sandbox mode if the AI can be made good enough. Also the game should be interesting enough to play just by yourself in a universe, if you want to play starship troopers (exterminating the native lifeforms) or just mess around with stuff, so that option too.

[Jeremy Buloch]

). However, the most mathematically efficient method to explore space is far less glamorous: to send fleets of "Von Neumann probes" throughout the galaxy (named after John Von Neumann, who established the mathematical laws of self-replicating systems).

A Von Neumann probe is a robot designed to reach distant star systems and create factories which will reproduce copies themselves by the thousands. A dead moon rather than a planet makes the ideal destination for Von Neumann probes, since they can easily land and take off from these moons, and also because these moons have no erosion. These probes would live off the land, using naturally occurring deposits of iron, nickel, etc. to create the raw ingredients to build a robot factory. They would create thousands of copies of themselves, which would then scatter and search for other star systems.

Similar to a virus colonizing a body many times its size, eventually there would be a sphere of trillions of Von Neumann probes expanding in all directions, increasing at a fraction of the speed of light. In this fashion, even a galaxy 100,000 light years across may be completely analyzed within, say, a half million years.
If a Von Neumann probe only finds evidence of primitive life (such as an unstable, savage Type 0 civilization) they might simply lie dormant on the moon, silently waiting for the Type 0 civilization to evolve into a stable Type I civilization. After waiting quietly for several millennia, they may be activated when the emerging Type I civilization is advanced enough to set up a lunar colony. Physicist Paul Davies of the University of Adelaide has even raised the possibility of a Von Neumann probe resting on our own moon, left over from a previous visitation in our system aeons ago.

(If this sounds a bit familiar, that's because it was the basis of the film, 2001. Originally, Stanley Kubrick began the film with a series of scientists explaining how probes like these would be the most efficient method of exploring outer space. Unfortunately, at the last minute, Kubrick cut the opening segment from his film, and these monoliths became almost mystical entities)

New Developments
Since Kardashev gave the original ranking of civilizations, there have been many scientific developments which refine and extend his original analysis, such as recent developments in nanotechnology, biotechnology, quantum physics, etc.
For example, nanotechnology may facilitate the development of Von Neumann probes. As physicist Richard Feynman observed in
his seminal essay, "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom," there is nothing in the laws of physics which prevents building armies of molecular-sized machines. At present, scientists have already built atomic-sized curiosities, such as an atomic abacus with Buckyballs and an atomic guitar with strings about 100 atoms across.

Paul Davies speculates that a space-faring civilization could use nanotechnology to build miniature probes to explore the galaxy, perhaps no bigger than your palm. Davies says, "The tiny probes I'm talking about will be so inconspicuous that it's no surprise that we haven't come across one. It's not the sort of thing that you're going to trip over in your back yard. So if that is the way technology develops, namely, smaller, faster, cheaper and if other civilizations have gone this route, then we could be surrounded by surveillance devices."
Furthermore, the development of biotechnology has opened entirely new possibilities. These probes may act as life-forms, reproducing their genetic information, mutating and evolving at each stage of reproduction to enhance their capabilities, and may have artificial intelligence to accelerate their search.

Also, information theory modifies the original Kardashev analysis. The current SETI project only scans a few frequencies of radio and TV emissions sent by a Type 0 civilization, but perhaps not an advanced civilization. Because of the enormous static found in deep space, broadcasting on a single frequency presents a serious source of error. Instead of putting all your eggs in one basket, a more efficient system is to break up the message and smear it out over all frequencies (e.g. via Fourier like transform) and then reassemble the signal only at the other end. In this way, even if certain frequencies are disrupted by static, enough of the message will survive to accurately reassemble the message via error correction routines. However, any Type 0 civilization listening in on the message on one frequency band would only hear nonsense. In other words, our galaxy could be teeming with messages from various Type II and III civilizations, but our Type 0 radio telescopes would only hear gibberish.

Lastly, there is also the possibility that a Type II or Type III civilization might be able to reach the fabled Planck energy with their machines (10^19 billion electron volts). This is energy is a quadrillion times larger than our most powerful atom smasher. This energy, as fantastic as it may seem, is (by definition) within the range of a Type II or III civilization.
The Planck energy only occurs at the center of black holes and the instant of the Big Bang. But with recent advances in quantum gravity and superstring theory, there is renewed interest among physicists about energies so vast that quantum effects rip apart the fabric of space and time. Although it is by no means certain that quantum physics allows for stable wormholes, this raises the remote possibility that a sufficiently advanced civilizations may be able to move via holes in space, like Alice's Looking Glass. And if these civilizations can successfully navigate through stable wormholes, then attaining a specific impulse of a million seconds is no longer a problem. They merely take a short-cut through the galaxy.

These "Von Neumann probes" would be great if we were to use multiple planets. They could start building a colony on a planet or moon and wait for the transport vessel to arrive. The physics are theoretical and not too "Star Treky".
-J.B.-

[Vultur]

I've read about a similar idea on a Michael Crichton's book: "Andromeda".
A strange plague affect a little village in the U.S. desertic region after the fall of a Weather Probe. The scientist called to solve the mistery discover a sort of bacterium that eat pure energy and use it to replicate itself...
--------------------------------
Immagine a "living" probe of this type: can explore and replicate itself pratically forever. Advanced genetics, nanite techs and matter/energy converversion will be required for this probe, but in a SCI-FI games this things can be considered "normal".

I've an off-topic question:
I'm still coding an isometric map designed to represent the map of a planet with 9 altitude levels (changing tile's aspect it will be possible to draw all types of rocky planets, from desolate moons to jungle worlds). I'm wasting my time? The game will remain Civ/CtP/SMAC like or it will become something of totally different?

[Rasbelin]

I lean towards a tutorial, and campaign.

I.e. that would mean...

SP

- tutorial
- campaign
- random maps
- scenarios

MP

- random maps
- scenarios