Quick MOO3 E-Mail from Alan Emrich (one of the primary designers)

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by Pythagoras
One of my big beefs with MOO-2 is the unbalanced command point system. I never found any point in building small ships. I like command pts, but the cp price should go up exponentially with ship size, so that

1- smallest (I dont even remember the name, corvette?)
2
4
8
16...
32 - darkstar

Pythagoras, I believe You got something wrong here. You will have 6-9 CPs per turn (1-2years), so I am totally sure You will be able to build an entire task force with one CP.

I think the CP system is an enormous improvement, because it will
-counter the game getting slower and slower when Your empire spreads out
-capture realistically the increasing friction the larger an empire gets.

So the CP system is great for both playability and realism.

[Stormhound]

Hi guys...first off, yes, I'm the Stormhound from the MOO3 Forum. I used to hang around the Apolyton forums quite a bit (back when CtP was being worked on, if memory serves) so I already had the name reserved. I'll drop by occasionally to take a peek, though I'm going to save most of my question-answering for the Forum.

As to Alan...he's not a coder, never has been. That's what we have engineers for, to handle all the coding and to make sure all the design ideas get translated. Alan (and I, and others) are designers.

The days of one guy doing everything from design to coding are passing, methinks, and just as well. There's just not time enough in life to be an expert in everything, and the way software is you really need coders who are sharp about that. That allows us designers to think up all the neat ideas. Ah, I love the smell of specialization in the morning.

Anyhow, see you folks around, and keep on gaming...

PS: Trib, he was talking about MOO2, not MOO3. And the MOO3 term is IFP (Imperial Focus Points).

[MarkG]

welcome (back) Stormhound

[tniem]

Stormhound, thanks for the reply. And thanks for joining us.

I know we all wish you the best in developement. It looks like you guys at Quicksilver are making an incredible product. One that has my attention and will be getting my gaming hours and money once it is released.


Mark, it looks like you have been busy. Preparing a new part of the site and trying to recruit developers to talk to us. Thanks, I really look forward to the game and hope that you guys find that the addition pays off for increased revenue and increased readership for the site.

[Zoetrope]

Urban Ranger: in important respects MOO3 will be more like MOO than MOO2. Its tech tree will be more complex, its planet management system may be even easier than MOO1's, its spying will be more in-depth, planetary environments will be handled better.

Also MOO3 won't have "cheeze" picks such as Telepathy, its ground combat will be something special, and fleets will have organization and doctrine not just a big line at one end of the screen.

Social factors will be very important: your empire will be a multicultural civilization comprising worlds and ethnic groups with lives of their own, from which generations of leaders will emerge.

It's very ambitious, and since Alan is a great fan of the first MOO that he wrote the widely acknowledged world's best strategy guide for it, you should be pleased with MOO3 in ways that you weren't with MOO2 or even MOO.

[Master Marcus]

Many MOOers out there seem to prefer the general finesse found in MOO1 over the MOO2's "destructive" micromanagement, but I am among the second school of gamers who stick with the addictive details provided by the latter.

One thing's for sure: upon the bits of info we have right now, MOO3 promises to be neither like the 2 others. It will be as different as MOO2 was next to the original. I see it as a deeper ( perhaps the most complex strat game ever made ) and richier building game, and if they can put all the additional enhancements within a clean engine where the player can easily use the gameplay mechanics - as easily and globally than MOO1, then we can expect a great masterpiece that will rejuvenate the TBS genre. In order to do that, M.Emrich and all the staff have to craft a stronger AI that can perform things almost as efficiently than a human player.....

[Comrade Tribune]

Welcome, Stormhound.

Agreed about specialization. Until now, it was mostly expected from You to be able to code, if You wanted to design a computer game. I always thought this was an artificial barrier. So this is progress. To know that Mr. Emrich designed a great boardgame is much more important for me than if I knew he had coded some extension for Windows!

Thanks for the note about IFPs; I misunderstood Pythagoras. Reading his post again, he has an important point: Smaller ships were too inefficient in both MOOs. Build-point-wise and CP-wise. In MOO3, I would like even the smallest ship class to be of use until the very end.

[Stormhound]

They will be; we're designing for that.

There is nothing at ALL like MOO2's CP system in MOO3. You build 'em, they're yours. So that bit of bother is gone, gone, gone. You'll have to maintain them, yes, but there's no artificial limit like the CPs were.

You should also (if you haven't) read up on some of the information and discussion about task forces on the main website and the forum. Far too much for me to easily condense, but another post I made here gets into it just a little and it's another key to seeing how things work in MOO3.

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by Stormhound
There is nothing at ALL like MOO2's CP system in MOO3. You build 'em, they're yours. So that bit of bother is gone, gone, gone. You'll have to maintain them, yes, but there's no artificial limit like the CPs were.

I believe what is difficult is getting the build point balance right, so that the smaller ships are neither too expensive nor too inexpensive. This is clearly tricky. The fine tuning of the costs of everything is, imo, critically important. For example, in Civ games, infrastructure was mostly too expensive and settlers too cheap, which lead to ICS. And this is only a trivial example. Much more subtle balancing mistakes are possible; probably You should get some beta-testers who dislike Moo and do their best to invent strategies that exploit loopholes in the system. Fans make bad beta-testers, I think.

[Master Marcus]

I couldn't agree more, CT. Hardcore fans, like mostly ourselves, are too commited to play for fun and talking like senators for having the neutral exertion required to test a Beta.

[Bleyn]

Hmm... I'm not sure I think the idea of beta testers who hate the game persay. I would suspect that they might get bored with it a little too easy and not really spend any time at it, or that they would be so malicious in their hate that they aren't effective in the beta testing.

What I would say would be better is people who are fans of one or both of the previous games, but who are more than just a little skeptical of the new incarnation. They would be interested enough in seeing the game to succede, but skeptics enough to really be honest about flaws that they see.


And as for the whole coder-designer question, I have no doubt that the lead designers on a video game these days do not have to be coders. Nor do they have to be graphic artists. Or musicians.

In fact, I would not be surprised if there might not be(or eventually be) a trend to having the lead designers be people with legal training of one sort or another. I know for a fact that at least one pen-and-paper game company, SJGames, has stated in the past that legal training can be a good thing in game design. Yes, they literally like real live lawyers writing the rules. (Probably helps to counterbalance the rules lawyers playing the games ;-)

[J.C.]

Alan Emrich is a nice guy.. & more importantly, he cares about quality. I do hope that MOO3 has a strong & workable Multiplayer suite.