Yeah whatever happened to those old forums Blair?

http://www.ironcladgames.com/sins/forums/

its offline though

Then why not make the solar systems less dense with planetary objects, make more solar systems, and spread the races out and change around the backstory a little bit.
It would make it a more immersive realistic space environment.

To be honest I have been thinking about this dilema for awhile now and I came to a fairly unhappy conclusion. Basically what everyone here is is looking for (and yes I am just going to say it cause we all know its true), is Homeworld with a strategic layer in addition to the tactical. And for that the full RTS model just doesn't work to allow the realism into the game. Essentially I think realism/immersion was sacrificed for multiplayer support.

Let me put it another way. From your earlier dev interview and the like, and from your own words about the direction of early development, this seemed to be what you were shooting for. You couldn't reconcile the gameplay with ecliptical orbits and realistic solar systems. So here's the unhappy conclusion. The fundamental design decision to go with an overall RTS mode for the entire game was wrong. If the goal was Homeworld with a strategic layer and realistic space environment it seems the answer is RTT/Turn based ala Totalwar.

Maybe this was debated and limited multiplayer to only the tactical layer, same problem totalwar has. My advice would have been to make the game we've all be waiting for as I listed above. Ever since we all played Homeworld and MOO1-2 we have been waiting for them to be merged, I really thought this was going to be it and unfortunatly it's not.

I really and truly like you guys as devs and community managers but in all honesty, unless there are some serious fundamental design changes, this is a cartoonish representation of space with the clasical skybox and almost no sentiment for realism with the gameplay mechanic being "Time of Defiance". I will buy and play this game, for maybe a couple of months. But it will do nothing but sit on the shelf from that point and I seriously suspect it will not have the long lifespan or serious modder support that I was truly hoping for.

Look at what Infinity "The quest for earth" is doing. Every developer used to say this was impossible to do in a space flight sim. It has such an insane amount of community involvement because their the first evelopment effort that I have seen that is truly shooting for a realistic space environment.

http://fl-tw.com/Infinity/

I mean look at these terrain details and corona/atmospheric effects when leaving a planet.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3744650885934024232

How come its perfectly ok for FPS fans to ask that "levels" look realistic but anytime a space gamer asks for realism he/she is immediatly shot down as someone who is "asking for orbiter or a simulator", "asking for the impossible", or "ruining the gameplay"?

I mean frankly I am tired of it. I DON'T WANT ORBITER, I DON'T WANT FULL SCALING. I just want a better attempt than the last 20 space empire games have done over and over and over again to try and suspend my disbelief that im playing a game and make me feel like im playing a game in SPACE!

i have a dumb question

is there any way to do away with the lanes in system and keep them between systems

that way you could move freely in systems and between systems ships would just pick the closest route represented by the lanes

The atypical game design problem - how to make a game realistic (without insulting their audience's intelligence) yet fun (and not dumbed-down). Because IMHO FUN is different for everyone.

I believe that if a game was true blue realistic, it would suffer in the long run. I do welcome elliptical orbits, gas-giants, asteriod fields, celestial phenomenon that will affect ships navigation or shielding, yet there must be balance. I think the biggest problem most gamers have is the size of the planet. Perhaps the devs might want to take a 2nd look into making 'size' or a sense of scale? But then again GalCiv had planets all fit nicely into 1 sectors so guess thats where the mind-stretching went

As for making bee-lines to destinations... what about restricting it using phase engine capability? That would at least place some restrictions to how far/fast a ship may travel from one gravity well to another. Forcing players to plan their attacks wisely.

Now if a game was too realistic, it might turn away the casual gamer, it might even turn away avid gamers like myself - especially if the gameplay *IS* affected by realism. If I was IronClad, I certainly won't want to make a game for a niche group of players, I want to make a game that is easy to get into, fun and enjoyed by MANY!

My personal view is that gameplay should be king and if it rules, most players are able to accept the game with some stretch of the imagination and enjoy it.

Have the planets like in GC2 with quality levels! The quality levels can be random, but then volcanics stay near sun and all that hoo-hah.

Games have to be realistic to be easily understandable.
We are used to reality. If something behaves realistically it behaves normal. When something behaves realistically we don't have to read up about in a manual, we already know how it works.
That's why realism makes a game easy to understand.

If you want to know what that means for SoaSE, just open up the game-design paper, look at a section that sums up game-rules (hopefully you have that ) and add to each of them a sensful reason why that is so. And no, you're not allowed to make up new physical effects, but you're allowed to theorize any effect that doesn't conflict with any major physical law or present observation.
If you can't find a proper explanation then remove that rule. You'll need to think of something different because that rule obviously doesn't make sense.
I'm already curious what you'll add to the point "Ships may at no time leave a gravity well by other means than a space lane".

Game designers often try to simplify the game, but they end up making it more complex. Realistic, 'normal', doesn't have to be explained. Simplifications do have to be explained. They don't come naturally to the player.

Thanks Blair for your response. It is very encouraging.

The reason why I opened a new thread on the topic is to try and consolidate much of the realism vs game play discussion in one location. Hopefully, it will be easier to try provide feedback and then for you guys at ironclad to absorb it.

I wouldn't mind providing some feedback on the specific example at hand. ie: realistic planets types around a sun. You had responded with:


I understood this as the problem however my suggested solution was to not populate solar systems so densely with players and spread them out to other solar systems. Realistically, I think a only a quick 1 vs 1 game would take place in a single solar system. With any more players you would likely need a solar system per player. Jam has also been thinking along these lines which I fully agree with.

There was a response elsewhere that such game play does not fit in with the back story. Why can't the back story be modified a bit to make it more believable? The story is great as a whole, but little tweaks for the sake of realism I think are well within reason.

To expand on this further, a player SHOULD be able to logically guess where the best habitable planets might be. This fits into the basic understanding of how things work that vain was eluding to. It also makes the player put a bit of thought into which planets to try and colonize first. Otherwise, every time a player reaches a new solar system, he/she will simply try to colonize the nearest planet first; most likely the outermost one. This also leads to all solar systems behaving in virtually the exact same way which makes for game play that will tend to get stale quickly. A little variety in the types of planets in a solar system would go a long way to alleviate this.

Almost all games are Role-Playing Games. In the sense that a space shooter simply expects you to "Imagine yourself as the guy sitting in the chair" or an FPS says "Imagine you this post apocalyptic doctor on a mission", "a Ninja in a magical ancient Japan on a quest for your fathers sword", etc. Even in fantastical settings there is an element of realism. Fantasy Japan would still have asian styled building streets and clothes. The fantasy weapons would still have a basis on the medieval weapons of Japan. In these types of game its not the developers job to create 100% photo-realism. Its like reading a good novel; the author isn't supposed to edscribe EVERYTHING for us he/she is supposed to create a story that allows us to "suspend our disbelief". We are no longer sitting in a chair with paper in our hands we are on a voyage with the characters in the book our mind takes over and immerses us into the environment that the author wants us to be in.

Computer games are very similar, were not expecting the developer to create a holodeck and put us into that environment, were expecting them to create and environment that allows us to suspend our disbelief that we are playing a game and that were actually that ninja, general, warrior hero, space combat pilot, etc. The goal of the developer should always be to write a game that works in concert with our own creative minds and allows us to suspend our disbelief that were just playing a game and actual immerse us into the environment of the game.

Most games these days do this fairly well. Even games of high fantasy. Things make enough sense that were not sitting around questioning them, "why is that chair hovering in the air"? It doesn't make sense to our brains, maybe if it fits into the magical element in the story we can suspend our disbelief and turn on that acceptance.

Space games on the other hand have failed MISERABLY suspending disbelief. To me that is the number 1 reason that space games have been failing for so long. And the argument has nothing to do with creating a 100% realistic holograhpic like simulation for players. It has to do with making the environment believable. If there was some good backstory we can buy alot of things and believe were in space. A good example of this in a recent sci-fi game would be advent rising. Pretty much the only space game recently that I would consider immersed me into its story and space environment (which was nothing but skyboxes and fps type levels, the story worked though).

So to the argument that gameplay is king, i'll agree but if it totally sacrifices immersion (not realism) then its going to kill the game. You can't do either, when making a game you have to do both.

Is this a difficult problem for empire builders? Considering, common abilities of code, common paradigms of how games work? Yes it's extremly difficult. And as much as I like Ironclad and the community focus there putting into this I have to be honest and tell them that they have fallen into the same pitfall as every other space game designer has fallen into. The inability to look past common gameplay paradigms and find a way to may a good game in an immersive space environment.

I am all for us as the beta testers trying to help them fix that as best as possible within the current game but the solar system layout, phase lanes, choice of included planetary objects, etc makes this a difficult proposition. I listed in a thread "Culture and Trade" what I thought were some neat ideas that completly fit into the gameplay model to make the game better and heck already 1 of those was introduced in a patch in a week (making the trade ship icons smaller on the map). So I hjave nothing but props for Ironclad in this effort.

I think right now we all need to accept this is the direction of this game and due to time and money constraints we should do whatever we can to help them make space more immersive. I would very much like to hear the opinion on planetary scale (thats a common request on the boards and have yet to hear if they like this idea).

Wow, this "realism" is a hot topic, I can barely find a thread where it isn't discussed in some fashion.

I guess I'm not understanding this claim of "realism" in a science
fiction game. The current explanation of weak areas in space which connect some planets is as realistic as the idea that they could have a jump drive that allows FTL travel. So than I guess we have to lose FTL travel (unless you have a realistic approach? Maybe Subspace, Hyperspace or an Alcubierre drive? I would hardly call those "realistic") and I mean, if were going to be realistic it should at least take afew real life days to get to another plant, maybe a month or so to get to another galaxy even with time acceleration.

I think the game should ship with Super Extra Strength Nyquil to simulate stasis, for that extra real feel. You order your fleet, pop the pill and wake up 19 hours later, your ships approaching the planet.

The concept of space lanes works just as well as any other, since realistically, there is no way to travel FTL.

I understand that some feel that its limiting, however there are plenty of us who disagree.

I see people complain that the planets are laid out wrong and that there is no orbiting and then later in their post, site GalCiv2 as a good example of how things were done "right" (right being a relative term). GalCiv2 as an amazing game, I loved it. Yet I would hardly call it realistic. The planets aren't always laid out logically. Solar systems are very close together in some cases only taking a week or two to travel between them. Planets are very close together requiring less than a week of travel. Planets closer to the sun are not always the proper type.


What matters though is that the developers have already proven to themselves that the proposed mechanic is flawed. I have seen them answer this in more than one thread.

Bottom Line = game play > (realism + graphics)

I agree, but not in its ficticious form, its typically a completely different method that leads to a similar result.

I don't doubt that we will figure something out. I just doubt it will be a current theory that is the breakthrough.