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  • Recent update Q&A

    At delphi forums Cory Nelson answered some questions about recent update.

    Here is the raw list of Q&A in order of appearance:


    Q:
    Will the High Council leaders be corruptable as well as killable? Can you surround a rival emperor with a bunch of devious yes-men?

    Cory Nelson:
    Afraid not. They come about based on events and such.

    Q:
    Can you interact with the faceless leaders in any way, or are they more or less untouchable? Can they be targets for spies as well?

    Cory Nelson:
    They're untouchable and behind the scenes. It's assumed that someone is running the planet and that person is representative of your empire.

    Q:
    Do you guys have the design for the event system figured out yet?

    Cory Nelson:
    Event system is in and working. Events are created randomly based on your empire, size, cassus belli etc. A bunch of factors affect when they're introduced.

    Q:
    How is the Speech now affected with the loss if IFPs?

    Cory Nelson:
    Probably the speech will cost you money instead of IFP's (PR etc). We haven't looked at that one in detail yet but that would be my first assumption.

    Q:
    With the mods to the leaders, what does this mean for Fleet leaders? Will they all be bunched into the same 'High Council'?

    Cory Nelson:
    The high council will affect your entire empire. So one of them may be a rocking ship captain but he won't manually affect ship #2. Instead he would affect all your fleets due to his leadership. Think higher level, you don't see the grunts, you deal with the commanders.

    Q:
    So there is still fundimental and applied research, only applied research is automatically conducted by the AI rather than by a slider controled by the player? Just a little more clarification on this would be great!

    Cory Nelson:
    Yes. The applied part of the system has only changed by making the start of the projects automatic. All the rest of that system (including overruns etc) stays as is. The theoretical has only changed in that you control things on a grander scale (schools as opposed to individual fields). Tech's still show up randomly based on game, race etc just like before. The changes are just so that dealing with your technologies isn't a multi step process. It'll also give you a much clearer understanding of what's coming up through research.

    Q:
    What changes were made with the events system?

    Cory Nelson:
    Just answered this question in an earlier post in this thread. Check it and let me know if you have any other questions.

    Q:
    Doesn't say anything about changes to the strategic space battles though (as discussed in the thread with that name), about entering wide etc...

    Cory Nelson:
    I haven't read that thread yet although I plan to tonight. I've had a few folks ask me to go take a look. When I do I'll try to answer questions on that one as well although I don't *think* there are any changes that haven't been announced. Guess we'll see when I read it.

    Q:
    Does all of this mean that we can expect these High Council leaders to be "heroes" à la MOO2 (with fixed names etc.), or do they appear based on events but are still a "product of your society"?

    Cory Nelson:
    They'll be similiar to MOO2 leaders but are introduced through events. They'll be based on the backstory however and have much more of a story element to them. Some of their stats will be based on your society, some will be fixed because of their background. We're still working on the implementation for this one but the idea is a combination of our original leader design with the MOOII leaders. So you end up with all the cool stuff but have it in an area where the player doesn't have to hunt through screens to find the leaders that matter.

    Q:
    Again, I must ask, do monsters have any possibility?

    I read that A guardian might be guarding one of the X's? (Not THE guardian I assume) So... does this signify their return?

    Cory Nelson:
    There are no plans at the moment to bring space monsters back. The guardians of the relics are the only plans at this time.

    Q:
    The big difference is that the applied part of technology will now be automatic.

    This seems fine with me. However in the old research method there was the ability to keep certain theortical techs from becoming applied techs to decrease their chance of being stolen by someone else. Is this still in, or did it also go by the wayside with the applied becoming automatic?

    Cory Nelson:
    We do lose that ability but it was figured that the odds were pretty good that if you have a technology that you really don't want the other player to get it was probably juicy enough that you'd want to start using it right away. In MOOII for example how often did you research a building and then not immediately tell all your planets to start building it. The best defensee against spies is to keep security tight or to keep your tech levels high. Spies tend to go for the lower technology items first so they're not likely to get 'the good stuff' unless they already have the easier stuff.

    Q:
    But is their a (faint) possibility that any sugestion of ours be helpfull to the game design? I would not be amazed if all modifications now required complete involvement in the game, leading to an obvious no answer. But I suppose we can still try to give ideas, that could help maybe some of you.

    Cory Nelson:
    Idea's are always good. As with any project the closer to completion it gets the fewer ideas that will be included but you never know.

    Q:
    One major question that I do have regards the HFOG penalties for using macromanagement (broad policies) as opposed to micromanagement (running each planet individually). You say HFOG hasn't changed aside from the removal of IFPs. Are those penalties still in, then? Without IFPs, it seems as if such penalties would force the player to micromanage in an unnecessarily frustrating way, but perhaps I've missed something.

    Cory Nelson:
    We're currently deciding on those penalties. If they go away the problem is solved and the game really becomes play however you want to do. If those inefficiencies do stay in then they'll be most likely be less severe than I think you're thinking and we'll make sure that it's still more effective in the long run than it would be to micromanage. The jury is still out on the actual numbers but we're going to do everything in our power to make sure that you never feel forced to micromanage but still have the freedom to if you'd like.

    Q:
    So there's no way to choose to divide RP's between applied projects that are in the same 'school'? Or can there only be one project per school at a time, ala MOO1? Can I choose to cancel an applied project that I don't want to research, if, for example, I feel it's a waste of time, or I don't want it to contribute to the 'future shock' effect? BTW, is the future shock effect still in? Can we still make certain applied projects 'hidden', so that they're less likely to be stolen?

    Cory Nelson:
    Projects are always researched at 100% funding. If you end up with several projects becoming available through 1 school then they'll all become applied research projects. You can't stop projects from being completed, the shock effect therefore goes away. We'll still have different races which handle technology differently, through being more effective at research, having a better chance of not running into project overruns etc. Once items have been researched they can be stolen. The best defense against that is to have tight security or keep a technological advantage (spies tend to steal the easy stuff first).

    Q:
    Do the new changes mean that the primary way of establishing new colonies has again returned to player interaction? Or is it still going to be a feasable strategy to let population go its own way and colonise for us? If I missed something somewhere, please let me know, as I was most looking forward to not being forced to tell my people where to go.

    Cory Nelson:
    As your population grows their offspring will still move to other planets. That hasn't changed. The big change is that now your population won't go down for any reasons other than major events such as revolts etc. Your population will go up (and new planets colonized) more or less the same way it did before. The problem was that before there were alot of factors that could make your population go both up and down so it was harder to control and keep track of. We're also adding in a few other commands to make 'encouraging' population to move to specific planets easier.

    Q:
    So there is'nt a chain of command for leaders or army leaders,Fleet leaders,captains etc. I am dissapointed in this as i wanted leaders to work like real life not some leader who pops up and lives for 400 years like the #### moo2 leader system.

    Cory Nelson:
    And who said high council leaders live forever?

    Q:
    Another question, this one about the "run-of-the-mill" AI leaders. What do they do now? With IFPs gone, there's no point in assigning different AI to each leader--the player will just step in and micromanage any colony whose AI doesn't suit his/her tastes. Do they now give abstract bonuses like those of MoO2 leaders (albeit smaller)?

    Cory Nelson:
    In a nutshell what we've done is set all off the "run-of-the-mill" leaders to faceless leaders and setup the really interesting ones as your high council. The faceless leaders ability scores still affect things but they're more of a representation of your empire as a whole than an individual hotshot. To encourage your planets to build a certain way your best bet would be to tell all planets of type X to concentrate on research. That'll get you a better effect than micromanaging them and you can do it at the macrolevel.

    Q:
    In Moo2 if you found Orion - the guardian killed you. Will this occur in Moo3 for Guarded homeworlds? The reason I ask this is that with the starlanes system it would then be possible to be barricaded in to a dead-end starlane chain by one or more of these occurances. Unless of course - there are NO starlanes to these places.

    Cory Nelson:
    Hadn't thought about that but it would be pretty funny. Those systems do have starlanes, but when we create the galaxy we can make sure that doesn't happen.

    Q:
    So you can no longer influence the career of the leaders you like or don't like. How do you go about canning leaders?

    Cory Nelson:
    Sorry missed the second question on my first read through. The only leaders you really care about are the high council folks. The others exist but are of little concern so no need really to can them.

    Q:
    Since we can not "SEE" starlanes until we get to a system - can we trade star-lane maps with other empires in diplomacy. Can we learn about the starlanes through spying and trading fleets (ie - sigint and trader info).

    Cory Nelson:
    You can get them through trading. You can't currently through spying although that would be a cool effect I'll need to look into.

    Q:
    Leaders: It seems as there will be leaders for the very big issues. If there are no sector seats, there will of course be no sector leaders. But what is about the stellar systems and the planets? Will these kinds of Ai. be represented by a leader character or will it be abstract?

    Cory Nelson:
    Only the high council folks are represented. The others are now abstract.

    Q:
    Economics: An easy understanable modifier seemed to me the freighter system. I hope it will be considered. Another point in the economic system was the broade selection of "resources", like bioharvesting points, mineral units, manufactoring output (the so called cement), the testtube, the civil benefits, the military presence points, and some other like population units.

    Do you think that this very rich and well reflected modelling has a chance to be implemented? Allow me to say this, the "economic system" is something you can really be proud on it.

    Cory Nelson:
    Again. Economic system is currently being looked at. Odds are it'll stay the same with a UI change but we'll announce that when decided.

    Q:
    There were a huge number of civilian technologies annouced. I don`t remember the exact number (maybe about 400). Are there any changes what the number of technologies concerns? If I understood you right, then there is no big difference in the "techtree" between the former and the actual design besides the reductions of steps in the process.

    Cory Nelson:
    The only changes to the technologies available will be caused by the changes being made. It's likely to assume a few tech's will either change or be removed simply because they don't make any sense anymore. Other than that though there shouldn't be any big changes in that area.

    Q:
    So, is the introduction of leaders a scripted game event? If so, what keeps us from getting hte same leaders over and ove rin new games? It just seems like that to me if they all have backstories and are part of the plot.

    Cory Nelson:
    No. They're not scripted. Their story backgrounds aren't associated with the story right this minute but more of the story of what has occurred. For example you may find a Mrrshan pirate that escaped their destruction and has some story based on that etc. It's mostly things to make you feel more involved and to bring out the backstory more.

    Q:
    I did not see it mentioned and I can't remember if it has every been answered, but are borders in? (This seems like the place to ask, however I shall understand if you do not wish to answer at this time.)"

    Cory Nelson:
    Borders were taken out a while ago. Mostly due to the fact that our galaxy is in a 3d map. Borders in 3d... possible but ewww is it confusing.

    Q:
    Is there actually currently anything about MOO3 that eliminates even the possibility of micromangement? I've seen games that give you the option of allowing the computer to control so and so... this is not what I mean. When I am playing against my brother and his friends on our LAN at home, will it be impossible for them to micromanage to their heart's content in order to get that little bit ahead? And no, I don't mean time limits. That rewards quick reflexes.

    Cory Nelson:
    Interest on your turn will help with that financially. Other effects are being considered.

    Q:
    How much control do I have over what I'm researching? Will I be able to order my scientists not to research something I find useless?"

    Cory Nelson:
    Check this thread.. there are a few responses to this one. Common question.

    Q:
    Is there any way to influence a relative priority among the active applied projects? I don't know how often multiple will come online in the same turn, or how many in a single turn, but I'm sure, at various points, there will be multiple active projects and that I'd care more about a particular one than others...

    Cory Nelson:
    They all have the same priority but based on the system we're looking at right now it won't be a binary problem. You'll end up with multiple projects at a time all funded at 100%. The 'funding' is considered as part of the theoretical. The applied portion is in order to cause a delay between figuring out how to do something and actually getting it to your people and in order to give the opportunity to cause overruns and problems during the project.

    Q:
    Exactly what do you mean by "we have removed the sectors"?
    Do they still exist as an organisational layer, or did they disapera altogheter?

    Cory Nelson:
    Disappeared entirely.

    Q:
    I am worried about the "population advantage" a la "Birth of the federation" suggested in this thread. Can you make it not happen?

    Cory Nelson:
    I'll need to take a look at that thread. Been busy in this one most of the day.

    Q:
    About multiple buildings: if you remove this feat you will have to remove the zones too, right? I really hope you not to go for this otion.

    Cory Nelson:
    Not necessarily.

    Q:
    What about the races dependant on the cut features? Do you already have plans? (Evon, etc.)

    Cory Nelson:
    There are no races that have final stats. What's in there now are best guesses so we'll figure out some reasonable.

    Q:
    What do you mean by galactic pollution? Are we heading toward a CivIII-like pollution problem? I hope it is just an event. And in any case, production depend on how much money you pour into the funnel, so how do you control that? Can you still ovverride the funnel, or not?

    Cory Nelson:
    It was just an event example. In the current system you can override the funnel. But as mentioned the Economy system is still being looked into.

    Q:
    I still think the game will be excellent, but now I think it lost almost all the revolutionary features it was trying to show.
    Is this what you wanted?

    Cory Nelson:
    That kind of goes back to the features for the sake of features argument. You can create the greatest game feature known to man, if it's not fun it doesn't matter in the slightest. Our first and foremost goal was to make the game fun. If we can make something revolutionary (which I think we still are) then all the better. But the first and most important thing is fun. :-)

    Q:
    Actually would we still know if a project was upcoming in a field soon. (can we 'see' its possiblity)

    Cory Nelson:
    You'll see what's coming up just as before you just won't to worry about fields.

  • #2
    Q:
    I'm confused; are the' deployment centers' the only places where a task force can be created, or the only place where a task force can be created from the reserves?

    If I'm on a prolonged campaign I'd want the option to create a single task force out of 2-3 trashed ones. If creating a task force is so complex that I can't completely integrate two task forces on the fly, at least the option to control them like one task force in combat, even if the ships aren't working together as well as they would've been able to if organized by a deployment center.

    Cory Nelson:
    Deployment centers are the only places that you can create task forces at the moment. That's the same as it was before with Sectors. With the old system there were several problems with allowing you to combine task forces that were currently in existence. Not sure all those apply with these changes though so I'll need to look into that one.

    Q:
    I think it's for mobilizing forces out of the reserves. You can move ships once they're "on the map" as much as you want (I THINK) -- I'm not sure, but I'm guessing there's a "merge task force" order you give to an existing one, targeting another one, or something like that.

    Cory Nelson:
    That's kinda what I'm thinking. Wasn't doable before because your task force creation had no 'location' so you'd have multiple places that could manipulate them (which would be confusing). Now that we have a system set it might be doable now.

    Q:
    Since you didn't mention it, has there been / will there be a change in the way colonies are classified? I recall reading somewhere that a colony could be placed into a certain class, eg border colony, research colony, core world, etc..., and that each colony's AI leader would construct buildings appropriate to the colony's classification. Do you forsee this changing at all?

    Cory Nelson:
    That's still in. AI ignores it unless you have told all colony type X's to concentrate on research etc.

    Q:
    I love the idea of having a high council, but I'm left with some questions. Is there a size limit to this, maybe based on various factors of your empire? And where will the leaders themselves be located, on specific planets, or in a centralized place, or something in between?

    Cory Nelson:
    There will be a size limit based on government or race most likely. The leaders won't have a specific location, just specific things they affect based on skills, modifiers etc.

    Q:
    My concern is with the reserves. I believe I mentioned it briefly in chat the other night. Since sectors are no longer part of the game, will that affect how the abstracted reserves operate in any way?

    I remember bringing this up with Alan once. I discussed the potential problem where the reserves could be abused as a "magical ship teleporter." For example, let's say your empire is bisected by a successful enemy invasion with the starlanes cut off. The bulk of your fleet is stuck on only one side of your empire. No problem, either send a fleet off-road (hyperspace) to reinforce the cut-off colonies, or just stick half the fleet into the reserves and redeploy them to cut off part of the empire on the next few turns.

    Alan said this won't be a problem because there were several modifiers that will act as deployment limits and the time it would take to re-deploy ships would be as long as (or longer) if you'd have send them through hyperspace anyway. I think it's important that re-deployment from the abstracted reserves don't affect the strategy of positional advantage. Have these been considered? Thanks :-)

    Cory Nelson:
    The delays should be enough to stop that. That's the reason they were put in so we're expecting them to solve that problem.

    Comment


    • #3
      (Got a bit carried away there, sorry ^^; )
      Last edited by CharonX; April 11, 2002, 05:02.

      Comment


      • #4
        continuing...

        Q:
        Nothing to do with your previous post, but what about Strategic Resources? They weren't on the cut list, but for all we know they could've been gone a LONG time ago...can you say anything about that?

        Cory Nelson:
        They've been on the list of 'we'll do if we have time' for a while now.

        Q:
        What about a secondary 2d representation of starlanes that showed boarders. Would that be overly difficult to impliment at this stage? I think it would be really cool to be able to actually "see" your empire's boarders.

        Cory Nelson:
        We do have a way of coloring your star lanes based on owned territory. So you can see clearly what areas you own, it's just not a hard edge "border".

        Q:
        Will there still be a visual representation of the 'behind the scenes' leaders? Or have they been completely removed except for a few explanations in the manual?

        Cory Nelson:
        Completely removed.

        Q:
        With the new population model, is the concept of prisons still in? I mean the kind of user-deployed ones that volunteers were writing technobabble for eons ago.

        Cory Nelson:
        That would be part of the economic stuff and still needs to be decided.

        Q:
        Here's my question.
        If diplomacy is always handled by the player now, then will a races diplomacy bonus have any effect on an empire controled by a real Human player?

        Cory Nelson:
        Diplomacy bonus affects how other races respond to you so yes.

        Q:
        Would it be feasible to allocate the espionage budget to defend particular knowledge or persons?

        Cory Nelson:
        No. Trying to avoid things at quite that micro of a level.

        Q:
        Diseases and breakways to control large imperial populations, and pollution and depression to afflict high population density planets, might keep the Sakkras (et al) in check.

        Cory Nelson:
        Funny thing about having lots of people. You have to feed and defend them. Lots of ways (including some you've mentioned) to balance that.

        Q:
        The research is my only real area of concern. If you automatically research all applied techs, and you have no option to alter this in any way, why do you even bother to make it a 2 part system?

        Cory Nelson:
        The two part system allows us to do a couple of things. First off it causes a bit of natural delay from when you figure out how to make it and actually getting it into your factories. It also gives you the possibility of hitting project overruns (spies can cause even bigger problems with these) etc which add a bit more flavor and allow us one more way of balancing out various races.

        Q:
        It used to be that you could only build size 13 and 14 ships on a sector seat, how is it handled now youve got rid of sectors? Can you only build them on planets with deployment centres?

        Cory Nelson:
        That system has not changed. It's based on the infrastructure you had there, some of the infrastructure you could only build at a sector seat. We're just going to change where you build it.

        Q:
        Clearly sector seats are gone, are system seats still there?

        Cory Nelson:
        Yes.

        Q:
        How does this affect tax? You used to have imperial, sector, system and planet. Has sector just been removed or has there been bigger changes?

        Cory Nelson:
        Just sector removed.


        Q:
        Limiting the locations where task forces can be created sounds awfully restricting. I'd rather limit the locations where ships can appear from the reserves and let task forces be organized and reorganized anywhere.

        Cory Nelson:
        Star ships don't exist on the map unless in a task force. You (or more accurately the AI) builds ships, they go into the reserves. You then create task forces at rally points (deployment centers). We're also looking into ways of allowing you to combine task forces whereever.

        Q:
        Among other things, are you saying that system defense ships cannot be organized into task forces in systems without such DEA's? It doesn't sound reasonable that there must be scads of one-ship task forces. It defeats the concept.

        Cory Nelson:
        System ships are different. You create them and they stay in the system on their own, bypassing the reserves all together. They 'form' into task forces when they need to go into battle. The AI will deal with most of this since it falls under system defense.

        Q:
        What is the current status on the "Big Leader"

        Does he still have abilities?

        Cory Nelson:
        Yes.

        Q:
        Will he be story-introduced like your council members?

        Cory Nelson:
        Unknown at this time.

        Q:
        Will he be similar to the council members in any way?

        Cory Nelson:
        Not sure, working on making that decision. Probably he'll be a combination of the new and old ones.

        Q:
        The senate is one of the innovative features of the game. One of the functions of the senate feature was in the old design that of a balance during the game in progress (New Orion`s fleet, taxes, AU, exchange rates, embargo etc.). Another function has been that of an interface which allowed the player to modify values in the game (e.g. the exchange rates of currencys). Is there still the intention to keep such far reaching aspekts in, or belong these to the features, which are hold open for further implementation? - Thank you.

        Cory Nelson:
        The majority of it has stayed in there, just the implementation has changed a bit. The biggest change who proposes the laws. Most of the laws which affect modifications to values within the game are left to a senate vote but not necessarily propsed by a senate member. The more 'normal' laws are still proposed by members of the senate.

        Q:
        What are the current types of colony?

        Cory Nelson:
        This is part of the decision on Economy.

        Q:
        You said that the AI will take note of commands like 'core worlds - focus on research'.

        Can you set up macro build queues for groups of worlds? Or is 'focus on research' the best you can do without micromanaging?

        Cory Nelson:
        You tell tehm to focus on research. The AI knows far better than you what things should be built in what order once they know the area to concentrate on because they can run the numbers.

        Q:
        About DEAs - when and how are these assigned? Are they assigned in a build-queue-like system? Can I say "all research worlds assign 50% DEA to research, 20% manufacturing, 20% Government, 10% military"?

        Cory Nelson:
        This is part of the Economy system which we are evaluating.

        Q:
        I hope that theoretical research cannot be stolen so as to prevent leapfrogging?

        Cory Nelson:
        Theoretical can't be stolen. Technology is stolen at a bottom up approach though, spies are more likely to get the common or lower level stuff than they are the higher stuff so if you have a technology advantage the other empire isn't going to get your best stuff easily.

        Q:
        Will your High Council be all or at least mostly your own race?

        Cory Nelson:
        It's an equal opportunity council. But you can always dismiss em if you don't like a particular race. Not that I know anyone that would have anything against specific races.

        Q:
        BTW, is there any chance at all that allied victory might make a comeback? IMHO, this is would add a whole new dimension to the diplomatic side of the game.

        Cory Nelson:
        Not planned at this time but, you know how that goes.

        Q:
        This I have read in a reply by W.C.Fisher, although I can't recall the wording he used. Now, will there really only few events be implemented? I mean, there were so many events sent to you by the fan base, a vast richness of fresh ideas. I'm sure there are lots of cool events that would greatly add to the game experience. I, myself, have sent you 95 of 'em, which I (you won't be surprised) deemed rather good.

        Cory Nelson:
        There are a bunch of different ones in there. Not sure the number off hand but there are alot. Events can affect just about everything in the game.

        Q:
        Does this mean that the only way to defend your systems against colonization by other empires is to stay at war all the time? This is one of the things I really hate about SEIV - any level of alliance at all and they will totally ignore your claims and colonize anyplace they can reach and you haven't gotten to first. The only way to stop it is to never ally with anyone and park a fleet on every border warp point. This guts the diplomacy system, since you don't dare use it.

        Cory Nelson:
        No. If I'm not mistaken this has been solved by various levels of diplomacy, some which allow that and some which don't. I'll double check that though to make sure.

        Q:
        With the exclusion of borders is there a part of the diplomatic model (aka a treaty) that would prevent the civilian population of a neighboring empire from squatting on territory you consider yours.

        Cory Nelson:
        Yes.

        Q:
        I'm assuming that the level of system governer is still in effect as the next political layer after planetary governer? Assuming that how will things work if two or more empires have colonies within the same system?

        Cory Nelson:
        It's there, just behind the scenes. Not sure the specifics on that one off hand.

        Q:
        In turn, would you also be able to use these claims in diplomacy? i.e. "Keep your ships out of my space!" type of things?

        Cory Nelson:
        A few people have asked. There's a post on this thread about it.

        Q:
        :-)

        Cory Nelson:
        Like alot of things it all depends on what's fun. We made the adjustments to the current system. We'll try it and see if it plays the way we're expecting. If not we're always open to other possibilities and something along these lines would certainly be something we'd consider.

        Q:
        Task Force Creation/Reorganization

        Cory Nelson:
        System ships never go to the reserve, they form into task forces as needed. While you could do piles of 1 ship task forces it would be unwise to, too many to control both on the map and in combat. You're better off combining them for manageability. We are looking at allowing you to combine several task forces in areas other than the mobilization centers. As for casualties, your AI will automatically try to reinforce your task forces with ships from the reserves.

        Q:
        Ethnic Cleansing

        Cory Nelson:
        This is one of the things we're currently looking into.

        Q:
        Research

        Cory Nelson:
        Comments in this thread indicate it would be desirable if players could just forgo a particular #### tech advance and go on to the next one ASAP. This is minor.

        We'll see how the currently planned system works in testing. If it doesn't we'll change it. The way the tech system works now it's pretty flexible.

        Q:
        Is choosing the victory conditions still in? Or are we going to have all three victory conditions always on in every game now?

        Cory Nelson:
        You can still choose.

        Comment


        • #5
          Q:
          Does your empire's type of government (democratic, kin-based, etc.) have any bearing on the size or composition of your high council

          Cory Nelson:
          Yes.

          Q:
          You are saying that the AI can run a build queu better than a player can. No game I am aware of has come even close to the abilities of a smart 12 year old to manage this. I can't believe you just said this like it was no big deal!

          Cory Nelson:
          No. I said the AI can run the build queue with regards to the economy system better than a player can. The problem with AI's are that they never know whether to build a ship vs a mine. If you tell them to build stuff that makes mining more effeicient they tehy do that pretty easily.

          Q:
          There was an alarming passing remark somewhere (forgotten the thread) that non-player AI had not yet been programmed at all. This seems to me pretty unlikely, but obviously of concern if true, since really the only aspect of MOO2 which is notably below the standard of the rest of the game is AI competence. Are you able to comment?

          Cory Nelson:
          All the lower level AI's have been done (still need tuning/balancing etc). The overarching AI which handles setting their budgets properly has not been done yet. Military AI is probably a month out from being done. AI folks are going to stay on balancing etc until the end of the project.

          Q:
          Does the new population movement model affect the chances to get mixed species planets (e.g. on planet x houses in the region x1 a population point of specie A and in the region x2 a population point of specie B)?

          Cory Nelson:
          Nope. That doesn't change.

          Q:
          You say the AI keeps the reserve pool stocked with ships. But can you design all the ships the AI builds? And will it build the right mix of ships?

          Cory Nelson:
          Yes and hopefully. :-)

          Q:
          Creating Ground Forces: Works the same as Task Forces? Meaning ground units are now really units, that can be transported back and forth and gain experience? Can they be named? Do planets, regardless of whether or not you build ground forces there, have some kind of militia?

          Cory Nelson:
          You create them similiar to task forces and place them on a planet or on a task force for transportation.

          Q:
          Guardians on lost homeworlds of the dead races? So it's kind of like, space monsters are back?

          Cory Nelson:
          Thee guardian shown on the poster, not a space monster.

          Q:
          Population Migration: But the population WILL migrate automatically? You don't need to spend all your time building colony ships etc.? Why only a juicy planet? And only when their current one is filling up? I'd really like a more full and detailed explanation of how emigration and colonization works :-)

          Cory Nelson:
          Yes they'll move automatically under the circumstances I've mentioned so you don't have to build colony ships all the time. The reason for a juicy planet is that they look to see where they want to go and a good planet is much likely a place to go towards.

          Q:
          So heroes, for all intents and purpouses, are back too? :-)) Can they be of an alien race?

          Cory Nelson:
          Yes.

          Q:
          Once the TF organizational questions are answered... can we set internal thresholds for said TF's? For instance set the refit threashold level at 75%, which is any ship in the TF which receives damage in excess of 25% (75% remaining) would be sent back for repairs.

          Cory Nelson:
          We fit it out in the field and charge you for the repairs during turn process. Abstraction for simplicity.

          Q:
          As an unrelated topic fighters (and maybe missiles) are treated as non-hyper capable ships...how do they get to the front? Are transport carriers required or is all this under the table and some percentage 'n' of new fighters and missiles arrive each turn till full strength is achieved?

          Cory Nelson:
          Both are attached to starships.

          Comment


          • #6
            Player1
            Thanks for all the hard work to gather all the info. I started to read it yesterday on the forum but there were over 240 posts at that time.
            If you're interested in participating in the first Civ 5 Community Game then please visit: http://www.weplayciv.com/forums/forum.php

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by GodKing
              Player1
              Thanks for all the hard work to gather all the info. I started to read it yesterday on the forum but there were over 240 posts at that time.
              Yes, so many pages.

              It was most difficult for my first post, since QS guys started to have too much good PR, so Cory answered almost all (if not all) questions asked that fist day.

              Comment

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