Movement: What do you guys think?

Hmmm..sounds good to me 'cept for the navbonus that seems a bit high. Or was that example if someone set's the game to easy and put all 10 points in nav? Cause having 6 moves when other have 3 seems too much to be fair.

I like the idea to have more difference in moves depending on shiptypes very much tho.

Those many moves will have a big impact on the smallest maps - good or not I dont know.

I know in MoOII and other games the movement of your ships depends on several different tech. researches. Nav., Fuels, and Engines. This seems to work pretty well.

It seems that hull size availibility determining which systems a ship can use is also an important factor in ship movement. I like the idea of acheiving certain levels of range based on what has been researched/found/stolen or the size of what I'm able to build based on facilities, civilization and certain tech levls.

Its something to think about when your enemy can reach out and touch you but your ships can't reach their planets. That increases your chances of being annihalated if you don't get creative/productive pretty quick. Hope the ability to carry less then more after research is considered for the transports as well.

The cargo planes of today have tremendous capacity over those of WWII. Not to mention speeds, navigation and all weather abilities.

You do have all sorts of technologies that affect movement, but they all do their modification to the base movement amount.

So if you research Hyperspace, it can give your ships a 15% movement bonus but that's 15% of 1 which is still 1. So over time you build enough bonuses to get that 1 movement to 2.

What i propose is to make the typical base movement 3 which moves things along and quite nicely.

BTW, the bonuses ARE powerful. Make no mistake, there are some crazy things you can do with them that really enhance gameplay.

So you put all 10 points into navigation and your ships can move 6 units instead of 3. Okay, well the Drengin may put all 10 into warfare (which is implemented in the latest internal build). So instead of its 5 attack 3 defense cruiser, it's a 10 attack 6 defense cruiser.

But wait, you say that makes it crazy? Well yes, as crazy as doubling your movement rate anyway right?

So what about giving all 10 to research. Now you can research at twice the speed of others. Or how about in influence, give all 10 to influence and now you can contorl the united planets.

The idea being, the 10 points can really make a dramatic gameplay difference which is what we wanted.

Which is better?
twice the movement?
twice as powerful ships?
twice as fast at researching?
twice as strong of an economy?
twice as fast at producing things?
twice as much influence?

All of them are very powerful. The challenge will be to make sure that they are all roughly balanced.

Going from 1 to 3 seems interesting but...
...you still develop slooowwwwwwlllllllllyyyyyyyyyy
To me this has been the real factor. I can build 1 colony every 50 turns. The same for research and so on...
If you speed up the ships, then somehow you should shorten all other components or you'll be going to the other part of the universe and still have to research impulse drive.
The scale of the universe is a factor to be considered when making a speed up.

Seems like a good point to me (still no alpha access ); however, I think that Stardock can be trusted to get the scale right, and I like the idea of the different ships being differentiated more. A freighter should be the slowest thing in known space...

How about two kinds of freighters, fast and slow. Not sure how the fast freight would be
tied into technology (what tech enables them), but they should be available later than
slow freighters and cost more (the rational being that they are more cost productive IF
you have the tech and resources to build them).

Cheers,
Jack

Are there going to be any range restrictions in GalCiv windows? I thought that range restrictions were an important part of GalCiv OS/2.

Cheers,

Frank

Brad said it slows down the AI and crushes the automovement routine. So not in first release at least.
Correct Brad?

I've never played the os/2 version so all I have to go on is from what I see on the site because if you are just going to build on top of what is already there then I will not add anymore input than this. Other wise if you are still in the phase of taking suggestions I have a list maybe it's to hard but it give great customize options espically in the area of ship movement and building. Are the ships pre designed like in BOTF or can we customize like in MOO and MOO2. What about the tech tree is it like in Moo where you can only research 1 thing at a time or is it like BOTF where you can have a pool of researcher points and have several things being researched at once. I like the second option personally for research it's more realistic. How is the map designed is it grid by grid movements or can we have way points? How big is the map is it going to be a 20 by 20 map for example that will only take a unit 4 turns to get accross the screen. I personally don't like fleet movements to be restricted to how fast you can go by your slowest unit. I like to be able to say ok you need to keep up push ur engines harder or the enemy is faster than you and you need to get there faster. I would like to have a more input I just hope you are all open to suggestions and want to make this a great game. :notsure:

I like the basic movement = 3.

As I mentioned in an earlier thread though, a doubling of the space involved could be needed to balance this. Or else you'll have ships nipping from planet to planet on their turns which you can never intercept in space. Certainly the current problem of a war ship being unable to catch a colony ship or transport is very annoying.

Paul.

I like that idea to base ship speed on the hull size and the engine tech . You start with simple engines, which gives medium ships a base movement of 3. Small ships move faster and big ships slower. This enables you to create fast scouts. If it becomes possible to design your own ships, then maybe speed can also be dependend on the number of engines you put in the ship.

I also like making the base movment of ships being 3 rather than 1. It just seems to take forever to move a ship from one spot to another. Or maybe start with 1 and when you get impulse drives that doubles it and then hyperspace makes it grow again.

While some have mentioned making planets more far apart -- I think it would be more important to make the sensor range of ships, planets, and drones larger so that you have a few turns of impending doom when you see a battleship and transport comming at you.

I haven't been able to decide how I feel about this. My biggest problem is that ship travel in space games like GalCiv
tends to be too linear to me. The views I have seen and heard seem to conflict about whether GTL travel will be
linear or not. I guess I will just have to "go with the flow" on this one.

Cheers,
Jack

I like the idea of large numbers over smaller ones. It allows finer tuning. Having 100 points to distribute insteas of ten means I have to really study how I am going to set up a design for different purposes. As to assigning numbers I think things like speed should be related to hull size capacity. For example using capacity could allow me to give scoute faster speed at the expense of attack or defense, or perhaps communication range. To design a fleet with very different types of ships, some single purpose, could be a real challange. I once designed a ship with nothing but photon torps that hid behind a ship that was all screen. Read the Lensman series by Doc Smith for some fleet ideas. GreyWolf.

I would also like to add that you only get "10 points" on the easiest level. I don't think I will ever play ANY game on the easiest level. So you are looking more at like 5 points to distribute normal. I also think putting all your points into nav, is a waste try putting them all into your economy or production and see what happens.
I really do like the idea of a base of 3 movement points for military ships like a star fighter but for massive ships like a colony or transports I think they should start at 1. This is something we can play with during the beta for sure..

"I like the basic movement = 3.

As I mentioned in an earlier thread though, a doubling of the space involved could be needed to balance this. Or else you'll have ships nipping from planet to planet on their turns which you can never intercept in space. Certainly the current problem of a war ship being unable to catch a colony ship or transport is very annoying.

Paul. "


Having colony/transports that slow (1) also adds another game play mechanic. We now HAVE to escort our ships. I really like the idea, I think it adds to the tactical side of the game.

I have to agree with it being a good idea and adding to the tactics. I played a demo of Starships Unlimited (I think it was) that had this type of ship speed varient. In it your ships also had a certain amount of cargo they could take on the trip too, so you had to pay attention to how far you could go with that ship. That was a little too much, but trying to run your little pathetic ship away from a huge enemy ship or trying to move your suped-upped colony ship to a planet first definitely adds something to a game.

I think that being able to double your nav points if you're playing on extreme easy isn't going to be a problem. If I play on extreme easy, I either wipe out the AI in short order or get bored after awhile because the AI doesn't mobilize quickly enough, depending on the size of the map. So I think that only raw beginners will use the Easy setting, and they'll appreciate the cushion. Of course, I was playing a game that was just under average difficulty (I checked in the debugger and it was 38%) and I got creamed because I was fooling around colonizing other planets, exploring, etc, and not building up my military, so all the aliens ganged up on me...I will be SOOO happy when Brad adds the ability for the human player to grovel into the game...:)

Speaking of having to use the debugger to find out you have your difficulty set at 38%, how about putting a
number field next to, or under the scroll bars in the startup settings window? I would like the precise values of
my difficulty, goodness/meannes, and populable planets settings.

Thanks,
Jack

From a mod point of view, it is far better to have large numbers than small, as this allows more freedom to do small tweeks and changes.

If you have a move of 1, you can't increase it to 1.15 as it will just round it to 1. if however you have a movement of 10, you could do a small tweek to change it to 1.1 or 1.2 to add that 15% you wanted. I would recomend increasing all abilities/distances/units/etc. by a factor of 10 just for that purpose.

As I have never played this game only heard what others have said and what I have read on the forums here, I can't say how changing speed will influence game play, but from a logical perspective I like the idea of different units having different movements. Just look at the current navies in the world as an example.

I agree with Ensign gherardo that the game develops very slowly. I am wondering if there might be a way to select a doubling or tripling of game speed in the sense that everything from research to building ships to moveing around the board goes faster. At the present pace and the time I seem to find right now to play (it is Spring and many things call for time), I am struggling to relearn the game from my old OS2 days. Speeding things up might be a way to get into the game much faster to learn which options are the more promising.

Until we get things like diplomacy, trade, The United Planets, etc. It may seem a bit fast paced because there isn't much to do, yet. Right now it's more of a conquest game, which is only a small part of what Gal Civ is, this is only the beginning.
One thing we have done with the help of your feedback is fix the "nothing to do at the start" with making anomalies more important early on in the game. You will see a huge improvement in the overall game flow of Gal Civ now. Soon as we finish alpha 5 you guys will get a taste of what I mean.

I am very happy with how the game is progressing, as a gamer I am starting to see this thing come together and it makes me feel great!

Gal Civ is evolving.