Learn from past space game mistakes!

Learn from history, Ironclad!

from Sins Forums
Hi. I consider myself to be a big 4E genre player. I play them for considerable amounts of time and I think i got a fair taste of what its all about. What i'm struggling with is what they are screwing up that past games already screwed up on in the first place!

1. Everything is stationary.

Every 4E game i've played kept the planets and stars in the same place. Now i'm not asking for much, I just want each planet and asteroid to orbit. I know that if they are at different speeds it would mortally screw up the fast travel system (i've discused this in other posts) so all i'm asking is to slooowly rotate the entire solar system... just a little. Slow enough to not be bothered by but fast enough to notice when you zoom out.

2. Moons and other space junk.

Star Wars: Empire at War did a great job of interactive environments (asteroid debris, gas clouds, starship wreckage, etc.) and don't mark it down just because its a star wars game. It was made brilliantly. It's also an RTS but much more slow paced and paused to paly each battle. In Sins your lucky if you get debris from destroyed research stations. Plus, you can shoot through pretty much everything. Fighters and bombers can even fly STRAIGHT through a planet (try it, I double clicked on the guys and zoomed in, its pretty funny). Throw in a solid Moon where you can hide behind from enemy fire. Ship debris should at least be avoided. I know its a game, but make it a little more realistic.

3. Stop and go spaceship battles.

I hate it when you move in a group of 20 kodiak cruisers and they just but on the brakes and stare at gauss cannons (don't worry, they fire). I want to see some evasive maneuvers! Missed shots! At least can you just make em' motorboat around, NOT looking like the engine guys took a coffee break? And how the hell do you decelerate in space with no reverse thrusters?!? Think about it.

4. Individuality of planets.

In Sins, if you've seen one asteroid, you've seen em all. Dead or no, they're boring and all the same. Learn from Star Wars, make each region have just a tweak of uniquness. Mkae the gravity ring in this planet have increased speed because of chemicals in the atmosphere! Make an asteroid have a lot of debris lowering your shield regeneration!

5. MORE TYPES OF PLANETS

Six types of regions just ain't enough. Throw in a gas giant, where population is low but high logistics and tactical. Hell, put in a few dust rings around it like Saturn. Im not talking little differences. No, that would be a pain in the a**. Just make a little more variety. Make a giant ocean planet like in Freelancer or dark planets (like muck and swamps, I guess). Sure, the artwork and detail on the planets are beautiful but I want a little more.

6. Detail the ships.

The kodiak is my weapon of choice. It's powerful, quick, and easy to upgrade. But if you zoom in, it's uuugly. Boring colors, 3 liitle cannons, and a whimpy dim glowing engine. Make the ships more bada** and exiting. You did great on captiols and fighters but don't neglect the backbone of your space fleets.

Well, that's basicly a rough outline of it. Hopefully they'll catch these before they release the legit version of the game. So far it's one of the most thrilling 4E i've played and it's only in Beta. I'm just putting in some history.

28,327 views 119 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Covering suggestion 2,4, and 5... I would love the idea of a Gas Giant having multiple colonizable moons. Perhaps compared to other planets it would have a high tactical and logistics cap for the gravity well, but require upgrading multiple locations to reach that higher cap.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
People seem to like that idea of multiple colonizable moons and planets in 1 gravity well. It has tons of pros but one big con: splitting it in 2 like a battlefield. It would be tremendously fun but it will eventually lead to 3 things: a stalemate of just small waves of wasted ships, an extremely cramped sector, or a massive (and boring) gravity well of space gaps and slow moving ships. Just passing through the well would take a while. Not to mention trade and refinary ships. Talk about space traffic...
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
quote]People seem to like that idea of multiple colonizable moons and planets in 1 gravity well. It has tons of pros but one big con: splitting it in 2 like a battlefield. It would be tremendously fun but it will eventually lead to 3 things: a stalemate of just small waves of wasted ships, an extremely cramped sector, or a massive (and boring) gravity well of space gaps and slow moving ships. Just passing through the well would take a while. Not to mention trade and refinary ships. Talk about space traffic... [/quote]

i smell an clickable option
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
lol niiice. That would be a good idea. A moon option. Damn. Right off the bat there is problems. If it orbits, how could you protect it? you'd have to designate shield generators as well as ones for the planet and then fortify those... Heheh maybe even put some weapons platforms on the surface. I dunno maybe there just should be moons that you can equip that aren't colonizable.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
who said anything about it orbiting... so far everything else doesnt orbit. if thats the standard, then why should the moons be the exception? anyway i just posted in the Gas Giants and Moons thread about the same convo i see happening in here... just an fyi  
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
Use the vertical space!! And make the Gas Giants have a bigger grav well too. Obviously, they should have bigger planet sizes. I also thing the normal planets should have a bigger well then asteroids.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
1. The devs have already stated that there will be no orbits.

2. Ship debris has already been stated as in the game, just not the beta yet (either due to it being incomplete or the devs want to limit the beta variables). The issue of fighters flying through planets has also been addressed and is being worked on I believe.

3. This has been mentioned in a previous thread, but I can't find it right now.

4. Having little (as in significant but not game breaking) planet bonuses or penalties would be pretty cool. Randomly generated stuff.

5. Gas giants already have a thread: WWW Link

But yes, more planet types would be nice, but I don't remember an official response on if the current planet types are the only ones they have planned.

6. TEC ships seem to be a love it or hate it thing. Some people love they way they look very bootstrapped, and some hate that look. We still have yet to see the other races' ships (although we can see some in screens and some look pretty cool).
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
Yeah in my fleet I use a combination of kodiaks, fighter carriers and capitol ships (I know I should use those repair bot ships but... well f*** em they look funny).

Oook so there won't be any orbiting. I was having an interesting conversation with a guy who had great ideas about orbiting gravity wells and wormhole shifting and we eventually thought of some strategies for our scenario (see Environment thoughts... and ramblings... the guy had good ideas).

Well, since orbiting got the boot I don't think they should expand on multiple colonies in one gravity well. I just typed a big reply on another thread on why it won't work (see Gas Giants and Moons). I think im the only nay-sayer actually... but I think backround detail is the most important. Although the orange backdrop in space is neat, i'm really looking forward to the blue cloudish look I see in the picture samples. The scenery is what really astonishes me. I had a great time playing my favorite space game Freelancer which has amazing details and still has great playtime.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
I'm actually quite partial to that deepspace skybox myself, the one that has a few blue clouds but most is just black with stars.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
Yeah in Freelancer each galaxy had a different color scheme, from a massive green rift to auras of blue. The game is a must have for space game lovers. Anyone would like it.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
There are new environmental elements in the works. I doubt you'll be disappointed
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top

There are new environmental elements in the works. I doubt you'll be disappointed


And would they be for beta 2?
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
Then how would we get in the space ponies?
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
I hate you and your pony teasing...
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
ok raise of hands how many of you want space ponies?
ok... ok.... get out   
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
will the ponies have wings
Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top
you guys forgot about the windows!
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top
I consider myself to be a big 4E genre player. I play them for considerable amounts of time and I think i got a fair taste of what its all about. What i'm struggling with is what they [= Ironclad and Stardock?] are screwing up that past games already screwed up on in the first place!


You sound like the Sakkra ambassador, in MoO 1 and 2, just when he was about to order me to give away one of my planets : humble and tactful finesse was not the Sakkra's forte.

Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
Hm... half those things have already been discussed some regected(like orbiting), others still to be seen.

Altough Ironclad is new and Stardock is misterious I trust them both to give us what we want, and if they dont to at least offer good reason that will be most likely trashed on these very forums.

Well Cheers
Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top

Use the vertical space!! And make the Gas Giants have a bigger grav well too. Obviously, they should have bigger planet sizes. I also thing the normal planets should have a bigger well then asteroids.


If by using vertical space you are talking about making it in true 3d, I think that that would get really messy pretty quickly.
Normal Planets do have a larger gravity well than asteroids. You can tell this when putting down a repair station, it covers nearly the entire asteroid well, but only about a third of a planetary well. The Sun's grav wells are much larger than both of them.

On the original suggestions of the thread:

1. The entire system is rotating very slowly silly, all fused together, the reason that you don't notice is that the devs made the camera rotate at the same rate so that it wouldn't be disorienting! Really though, having rotating planets is a neat idea, but if they all rotate at the same rate it will look like the devs couldn't handle the complexities of true rotation in a way that they thought added to the game, so they just added in a lame cop out that was equally unrealistic for.... no real reason. And that's exactly what it would be.

2. I think that the idea of colonizable moons is a neat one which deserves a closer look. As for other space junk, there is already minable asteroids, smaller asteroids in asteroid systems, debris left from destroyed stations and cap ships, so it seems like it's pretty much covered. Yes you can move through them, but I think the fact that fighters move through even planets (and suns) shows that the collision avoidance work simply hasn't been done yet.

3. I agree that a little bit more motion in the space battles would be nice, although you could have phrased it (as with everything else) much more tactfully.

4. I have no idea what you are talking about with this gravity ring, I was thinking it was the traffic between space elevators, but that would be in a lower planetary orbit and there would hardly be any atmosphere, and even if there was some (like in ours, a very tiny amount) it wouldn't affect orbit speed. The idea of certain areas having little quirks like slower shield regeneration, as well as your reasoning for it, is quite interesting, and I think that that's the sort of thing that could turn out really well if it was used here or there.

5. More planetary types would be nice

6. I like most of the ship models (especially the Akkan, although perhaps its military features could be made a little more prominent, but this is going to be a matter of taste that will vary for many people. It's also a matter of taste on the part of the TEC. It's not a military oriented race, so it makes sense that guns and things seem a little tacked on.
Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top
Yeah, your right about pretty much everything, Rognann. at the time i wrote this thread (1 week ago i just got back from a vacation about 2 hours ago) i was all worked up about how people just post random crap that covers very little ideas so i tried to mingle all my hot topics into one and have a moving discussion. I'm going to try and get back into the loop of feedback in the game and of course, play much more of the suprisingly addictive beta game.
Reply #24 from Stardock Forums Top
Why are all planets in science fiction SINGLE TERRAIN? the ICE planet, the DESERT planet, the FORREST planet, the WATER planet -_-



Planets terrain should be based on their position. I mean it's fine to have single terrain planets once in a while but they shouldn't dominate the galaxy. Or be in absurd places (I.E. A Ice planet near the sun, or a water planet in a remote reach)
Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top

Why are all planets in science fiction SINGLE TERRAIN? the ICE planet, the DESERT planet, the FORREST planet, the WATER planet -_-



Planets terrain should be based on their position. I mean it's fine to have single terrain planets once in a while but they shouldn't dominate the galaxy. Or be in absurd places (I.E. A Ice planet near the sun, or a water planet in a remote reach)



I definitely agree that a bit more consideration should be given to type of planet and distance from the sun.

As for why so many planets in science fiction are single terrain, well that would be because by and large Terran / earth esque planets are rare. Taking our own solar system as a sample. We don't expect to find much ice on volcanic Venus. Mercury is so close to the sun that it's just a barren wasteland. The moons of Saturn and Jupiter all seem to be either barren or frozen archetypes with some iced over watery ones for good measure. Getting that perfect position where things aren't too hot or too cold is tricky. A volcanic planet is a barren wasteland, just with volcanoes thrown in. Being as how even with the most recent findings scientists still have to guess what conditions on exo-planets would be like, the only thing we have to go on is our own solar system.