A space 4X game with a twist

[Sandman]

I posted this some time ago in the 'what games do you want to see made' thread.

I'd like to see a space 4X game with a twist; all the players start on the same planet, which eventually becomes a Coruscant-style city planet, with far more economic potential than any other world. Do you seek to explore the universe and gain riches that way, or build up your influence on the homeworld? An advanced system of colonization would also be used, involving claims, treaties, mandates, etc, that would end the all too common 'settler diarrhoea'.

I'm bored, so I'm going to expand on the idea. Space strategy is something of a lame duck, and could use some fresh ideas.

I like the idea of a common homeworld for a number of reasons. Firstly, the city-planet is a common (and cool) theme in sci-fi, so it should make its way into space strategy. Secondly, it provides an inherent balance to the gameplay: all players start out in the same place. Thirdly, it unbalances the economics of the game by giving it a very clear and unmistakable centre of gravity, unlike most other space strategy games where economic activity is spread relatively evenly across the universe.

You could play as a state or a corporation (each could make vassals of the other), and maybe another faction, like a religious order. There would be a number of ways to succeed in the game. You could go for all-out colonisation, and leave the homeworld behind entirely, starting out afresh on a new planet. Your only involvement with the homeworld would be to be threatened by it. Alternatively, you could form trading links between your colonies and the homeworld, succeeding via trade. The last main option would be to stay largely on the homeworld, building up your power and infrastructure there, attempting to gain control over more of it, and thus more power in the wider universe.

There would be an international organisation like the UN which would make wars on the homeworld difficult (if not impossible). But you'd need to gain approval from this organisation to get mandates for colonisation of new planets. Obviously, you could just ignore them and colonise a planet anyway, but other countries would hate you, and you'd suffer from pariah-hood and being fair game for attack by the aggrieved parties.

Suppose that the African Federation sends a probe to a star system, and discovers a colonisable planet. By finding the planet, their chances of getting a mandate for it improve. By agreeing not to seek any other mandates for a while, their chances further improve. By having good relationships with everyone else, their chances improve again.

But the Farflung corporation has been waiting for a chance like this. Without UN approval, they jet off to colonise the new planet, leaving only empty offices behind. Should the African Federation give in, or send troops to take back the planet which they should rightfully own?

Regarding war, technology and improvements, I think that a Europa Universalis 'less is more' strategy could be worth trying for a space 4X game. What do you think?

[General Ludd]

I really like this idea. It sort of reminds of Empire of the Fading Sun.

Something worth considering is that you could still have alien species, with a homeworld for each.

Regarding war, technology and improvements, I think that a Europa Universalis 'less is more' strategy could be worth trying for a space 4X game. What do you think?

I'm not sure about this, however. I think that one of the most attractive things to space strategies is the research and technology application (like being able to design space ships) I would really love to see a highly intricate research system that encourages factions to specialize in a certain area (without being completely handicapped in the others, of course) It gives alot of flavour to the game and allows the different factions to develope their own particular style and personality.

It's a common theme in sci-fi for each faction or race to have it's own trademark - like the dominion shields and federation torpedos in Star Trek, for instance.

[Boris Godunov]

Re: A space 4X game with a twist

Originally posted by Sandman
Space strategy is something of a lame duck,

I don't see how this can be, since nobody has ever gotten it just right!

[Sandman]

Something worth considering is that you could still have alien species, with a homeworld for each.

I dunno. That kinda dilutes the whole concept. I'd prefer aliens (if there are any) to be a growing menace on the fringes of civilised space.

I'm not sure about this, however. I think that one of the most attractive things to space strategies is the research and technology application (like being able to design space ships) I would really love to see a highly intricate research system that encourages factions to specialize in a certain area (without being completely handicapped in the others, of course) It gives alot of flavour to the game and allows the different factions to develope their own particular style and personality.

The domestic policy sliders did this in EU2, to an extent. I guess I'm trying to move away from the piling up of endless meaninglessly-named technologies like in SMAC and Galciv, to a more streamlined system.

Regarding ship design, my idea would be to outline your preferred specifications, and then have your scientists and engineers try to build a vessel which tries to match them. Demand a vessel that's beyond your current technical capability and you'll end up with an overpriced, endless project with dodgy prototypes. Although you might get lucky and get a revolutionary new ship. Alternatively, you could constantly refine an existing model, giving you a reliable and cheap workhorse which could be outclassed by revolutionary designs.

Your social system would determine the balance of revolution vs evolution, as well as the classes and characteristics of the ships themselves.

[Urban Ranger]

I don't see why a home planet is inherently better than other settled worlds. IOW, I can't see why a settled world can't surpass a home planet, given sufficient time. After all, each planet is only finite, and there's only so much you could do with it.

You could set up the universe in such a way that, a planet that is settled earlier has advantage over one that's settled latter, because you can't rush everything. Sometimes, you need time for things to finish.

[Sandman]

I don't see why a home planet is inherently better than other settled worlds. IOW, I can't see why a settled world can't surpass a home planet, given sufficient time. After all, each planet is only finite, and there's only so much you could do with it.

It is mostly a game mechanic. But given the cultural and political importance of the homeworld, I don't think that it's totally unreasonable.

[GePap]

In the foundation universe the home planet dies, we get an empire of millions of worlds, and yet there is still a lot of power in trantor, the city planet that became one planet city long after human speac colonization begins.


The big issue with such a game would be the tech level-the higher the tech level one can attain, the less plausible this becomes. If colonizing space is cheap and easy, and tech is such that large populations can be attained, then there is no inherent system why the home world should remain for so long as the primary pull of interest.

I think this sort of game would work well by taking the risky step of making it sort of a future simulator like EU is a history simulator. Have it be Earth colonizing the solar system in the next few centuries. The map remains the same (as in, same planet earth, same planets and moons and asteroid to colonize) while the idea of a singular home planet remains. By keeping the tech levels low the game is made more interesting- expeditions cost A lot- space warfare is expensive, at first very small scale, so an action might mean just sending a small band of armed men somewhere to take over somthing. BY keeping the map an known entity you can get into small details like space stations or mining locations- if the game makes the colonization of many foreign planets posssible you have to spend a lot of CPU power simulating those.

one can introduce variability by perhaps allowing the player to vary the opening players on earth: in game 1, there is such a thing as a singular strong EU maybe including Russia, while Japan and China are bitter rivals.. in game 2 Russia is independent, the EU never really took of and China and Japan are buddy buddy. Those things would mean very different games.

[Urban Ranger]

I agree with what GePap said. If you limit tech growth or somehow place limitations on it, e.g. there's no way to move FTL, and other tech improvements are expensive, then you get the sort of effects you want.

Sort of like the Battletech Universe.

[Bosh]

e.g. there's no way to move FTL

Or maybe you can only move FTL if you build an expensive building on two planets to open a FTL "road" (ie some kind of wormhole) between them, a building that requires tech that would take at least some time to get . This accomplishes a few things:

-Slows down colonization because nobody wants to move to a new planet until the "road" is open and with nobody wanting to move there its hard to gather enough resources on the new planet to get the building built. This could mean that it could take quite a few turns to get from discovery of a planet to connection to the "grid."

-Having to make buildings on both ends of every road encourages the construction of transports hubs. Since if you have planets A, B, C and D the cheapest way to allow for trade between all the planets is have roads from A to B, A to C and A to D (with no roads directly between B, C and D). For a loooong time it would be most effecient to have the hub be the shared Home Planet, since its rich enough to build one end of the "road" fairly easily and its centrally located.
This would ensure that the Home Planet is a MASSIVE center of trade and thus vastly richer and more populated than its competitors until WELL into the game.
This also gives people real consequencies from not playing by the rules and trying to break off from the UNish organization, since you'd be cut off from the common trade hub which would make it vastly more difficult to trade with your neighbors, until fairly late in the game.


-Finally there'd be several different stages of strategy, which would keep the game fresh and require you to approach war in different ways at different stages of the game:

Stage 1, Slower Than Light, No Scanners: Everyone would only have slower than light tech available which would make war and colonization slow, expensive and difficult. You'd have to send off attacking fleets years before they'd get there, but once they got there they'd have a great element of surprise as long as no important tech was developed while they were on their way.

Stage 2, Slower Than Light, Scanners: Everyone's still slow so colonization is almost as tough as before, but if someone sends a fleet at you, you know its coming at least sometime in advance and can get prepared. This gives the advantage to the defender and makes war and exercise of picking off the enemies isolated outposts that are far away enough that even if they know an enemey fleet is coming, reinforcements can't be gotten to them in time.

Stage 3, Expensive Wormhole "Roads": This would be an interesting stage. Colonization gets a bit easier since you can send an advance crew to work for a few years on a colony in order to set the wormhole set up and then pour in the colonists, as long as the wormhole connects to a hub. However the warfare is the interesting bit. You can still pick off the isolated outposts (ie the ones that aren't connected to the wormhole road net) but attacking established systems is tough since even if you take it, the counter-attack can come at you down the wormholes while you can't get reinforcements from your own planets until you build your own expensive and time-consuming building. This would make trying to get a future enemey to build a road that could be used as a bridgehead a vital piece of strategy (either that or route your fleets through the Homeworld hub, which would probably aggravate a lot of people politically), so there'd a lot of trade offs between building roads to other people's planets which would encourage trade and make you richer but at the same time allow both you and the trade partner to more easily attack you, which would make for interesting diplomacy.

Stage 4 Relatively Cheap Wormhole Roads: Colonizing gets quicker since you can send a colony ship out at STL speed with a wormhole assmebly kit on board and get a colony up and running faster. This also makes it possible get build up more dense wormhole road networks which makes the Homeworld less and less of a hub and thus less and less economically and poltically important. It also makes the job of the attacker easier since they can build a Quick and Easy (but possible expensive) wormhole construction kit over with the invasion fleet.

Stage 5: FTL. People finally figure out how to make ships that can go FTL w/o wormholes and the whole nature of warfare gets completely turned on its head.

And there'd be a couple of substates in which people figure out tech that would allow them to close wormholes (good scorched earth strategy) and then later tech which blocks wormhole closing and then tech which counters that etc. etc. Would be nice to have tech that changes the way you have to go about war rather than tech that just makes you incrementally richer and more powerful.

I also love the idea of a common homeworld that people are radiating out from. It feed into the whole thing about having strategy change over time since early in the game the homeworld is vital but over time it becomes less and less important as population grows elsewhere before finally becomming obsolete as an economic/political/cultural hub. It also makes expansion messy and more fun, since instead of just expanding outward until you start bumping into your neighbors you all start from the same place and are all competing over exactly the same planets from the very beginning, should make borders very messy and empires bizarrely pie-slice shaped.

[Urban Ranger]

Interesting ideas Boshko

Just one question: if I built a worm hole building on planets A, B, and C, can't B connect to C instead of going through A (B -> A then A -> C).

Or you could do something like Universe. FTL is possible - but only with an alien artifact called a Hyperspace Booster the size of a planet, and nobody knows how to build one. If the UN controls the Hyperspace Booster, other nations could only use it during their turn. This will make the Home Planet extremely important.

Of course, having one-way FTL travel also makes things quite interesting.

[Bosh]

Just one question: if I built a worm hole building on planets A, B, and C, can't B connect to C instead of going through A (B -> A then A -> C).

Well in my idea wormhole roads aren't general-purpose, they only connect two planets. So if you have planets A, B and C you can build A - B and A - C wormholes and travel from B to C via a. You can only travel from B directly to C if you build a third wormhole directly connecting B and C.

I like this idea since it gives you a lot of tradeoffs:

-Do you rely almost solely on a hub or do you make more of a web, the first is much cheaper but the second is more effecient in at least some ways (although harder to gather all of your forces together quickly in one place perhaps) and if you rely too much on a hub you're in a world of hurt if an enemey captures it.

-Do you rely on the Homeworld as your hub or try to build your own? Building lots of wormholes to connect you to the Homeworld hooks you in to the Interstella trade nexus and makes you richer (and the Homeworld's wealth probably makes it easier to build things there for the same reason that you usually build wonders in your big old cities in Civ), but then your own communications network is at the mercy of the UNish organization.

-Do you hook your network into the network of your neighbors. Integrating your road networks at least somewhat allows for more trade but also leaves you more vulnerable to invasion....

[Qilue]

Having all factions start on earth (or some other central homeworld) is a good idea. Especially if at some future date, you could attempt a total takeover and eject the other factions into space. With a central organization somewhat like the UN, your takeover would have to be political rather than military.

This would lead to insurgencies, espionage etc and you would have to make a choice as to whether it's ultimately worth the trouble. Factions could also voluntarily leave Earth by changing their capital to another planet.

Borrowing a Civ idea, such a move would mean less wealth, but having your capital closer to the frontier planets would lead to less lawlessness and easier access to new resources. Perhaps you could also return to Earth at some stage to reestablish a presence and perhaps attempt a takeover.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
I agree with what GePap said. If you limit tech growth or somehow place limitations on it, e.g. there's no way to move FTL, and other tech improvements are expensive, then you get the sort of effects you want.

Sort of like the Battletech Universe.

This is true. Tech stagnation can have a huge effect on how a game is played.


There is a mod for Space Empire IV that does this. It's goal was to produce a more 'realistic' model. It signifigantly slowed down the population growth (so that manpower became the valuable and limited resource it should be) along with increasing production and research costs. They also beefed up the homeworld with a number of "metropolis" improvements that gave huge bonuses (although it was possible for colonies to build similiar improvements, it would only be feasable on planets perfectly suited to get the best bonuses, and even then it'd take a century just to aproach the same level of infrastructure on the homeworld). The result was that every homeworld dwarfed any other colony in the galaxy. Colonies became huge investments that where rarely made with the intention of "building a new world" but usually focused on acting as outposts or mining colonies that supported the homeworld. It wasn't untill very late in the game when you start geting new technologies (like off-planet construction) that the homeworld starts losing it's importance.

[Sandman]

Really good ideas, guys. I especially like Boshko's well developed wormhole ideas. One additional possibility is a 'one-use' wormhole; a cheaper disposable version that burns out after one use; useless for trade, but handy for those that want to escape from Earth's clutches altogether or as a desperate military gamble.

GePap's idea for a solar system future history simulator is also interesting; would I be right in thinking that it would be played in pausable real-time, like EU? Watching the planets going round would be very cool. Although it would be even more radically different from standard space strategy than what I'm suggesting.

Another idea: the type of colonists you want to acquire. Do you take a wide selection of various pioneers who want to make the trip? Or do you pay through the nose for a lot of highly educated, healthy people? Do you accept payment from states to take convicts off their hands, or from deviant groups who want to escape persecution on Earth (and thus undermining the cohesion of your new colonies)?

[:) Smiley]

I made a Civ2 scenario on a similar central start pretext. Interesting play, as the central cities are important up until mid or late game, when players finally have the resources to try to take one of the opponents' capital.

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Frontier 1.0
In this game, all 6 players start with roughly equal positions- a very large city on the central island surrounded by very productive urban areas, and a settlement on a rivermouth on the the main continent ringing the island.

Special notes on capital cities:
1. Built on mountain
2. Surrounded by Urban tiles, food 4, production 2, trade 1.
3. Each comes with Aqueduct and Sewer System.


Rules are essentially those of standard CIV. Enjoy!