This could be brilliant if it works. I remember years ago being drawn into Steve Walmsley’s Aurora fiction…one of the things was the mystery when new aliens were encountered…just what are we dealing with? As opposed to mousing over a previously unknown ship and seeing its stats.
Stars! did this.
If you spotted a ship in radar, it just gives you a hull. You don’t learn what’s in the slots until you encounter it in battle. Then not only do you get the details, but also what the race that built the ship named the ship.
So the first time you see a ship, it might just say “Aceris Destroyer” but when you do battle, it will say Aceris Gnat where Aceris was the race name.
Stars! is a great game. I’m thinking of stealing the “metals” concept from there too.
Finished the final version of the trailer last night.
Now I’m just tying up some loose ends. Aiming at a 1-2PM MST launch.
I’ve played this all night, yesterday. I’m enjoying it a lot. Good job!
I had about half the galaxy, and the 3 other opponents had the rest. I couldn’t crush them, because they had too many missile bases, like each planet had 2000+. I’ve tried putting all resources in tech to get better guns,then switching to everyone building ship to overwhelm the defense. When I was lucky my fleet could drop a few bombs before getting annihilated. I finally won by using the tech that let ~25% of your troops to bypass defenses, then sync drop troops from all my planet onto the enemy’s capital.
I’ve got a few comments that could improve the flow of the game:
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I need to do some more test, but I didn’t feel building bigger ship was not worth it. My best cruiser had like 70 guns, but took 13 years to build, while I could pump 20 crappy ship per year with 1 gun each.
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Using the same button for selecting fleet and moving was a bit annoying. I was trying to move my fleet, but keep selecting orbiting/moving fleet at my destination. Ignoring fleet when trying to move fleet would be nice. Or right click to move?
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In combat after I move and shoot, I still need to press done (or space bar) to go to the next ship, even when there is nothing for me to do.
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I had to advance many turn to build a fleet, and I was constantly interrupted by Spy report. You have to move the mouse to the top right to press finish, then go back down to press end turn.
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Some hotkey to end turn would be nice, but having all those event not preventing me from pressing end turn would be better.
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Since everything is slider and kind of automated, I don’t really need to click to dismiss the message that I’m at my factory limit.
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I was thinking something like civ or endless space where notification are on the side of the screen and you can ignore them if you want.
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Is there a maintenance fee for missile bases? It should be way higher, we both had too many and was preventing everyone from fighting.
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Where can I see the stats of my ground troops and those of my enemies? In the beginning was getting mauled badly but couldn’t see why (like 10x casualties for me)
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There should be a way to move the slider for many planet at once. I was switching from Shipyard to research constantly, I had to move my shipyard slider to the left or right on many planet.
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Maybe something like Select x% for shipyard (relative/absolute) for all selected planet, like when you get a new tech.
Good luck on the Kickstarter, I want to play more of Dominus Galaxia!
I thought the trailer was pretty sweet. There were two sentences that made me wince however and it’s not because of you but because of Star Citizen:
“I’ve been working on the game for several years now and want to spend a few more developing this” implies that you’re going to be in forever beta.
You might consider rewording this to something like:
“I’ve been working on the game for several years now and feel a 1.0 version can be attained within a year. I’ve got tons of ideas to extend the core gameplay and envision free and paid DLC continuing to evolve for 5 or more years afterwards”
Don’t know how much you are wedded to MOO1 but one thing I would like is more involved planetary defense - something more than missile bases. I would like star bases brought into the game, along with some other planetary defense (maybe a “planetary defense network” which would represent satellite defenses). Planets are huge and if adequately defended, should be very tough nuts to crack.
PS, it would also be cool if ship types included carriers that would be required to carry/launch fighters.
Yeah, I think those are cool and I’d like to expand that area if I can find the time. If of course is the operative word.
I’m not really technically wedded to MoO 1 at all. I just really like the game. If I think there’s a better solution than a MoO 1 solution, then I’m all for it, assuming it makes sense from a development perspective.
Are you going to sell the game on Steam? If so, will KS backers be able to get a Steam key?
And if you are going to sell this on Steam, have you considered Early Access there? This game is a lot more complete than many EA games I have seen - EA would also raise more funds for your work.
A few KS questions:
You have a backer level with digital copies and access to all future expansions/DLC. Does this mean both copies have this or just the key of the purchaser? And why not a backer level for a single key with access to future content (mainly because I would like that :) )?
And what is the difference between “Early Bird” and “Super Early Bird”. Both provide digital copies and beta access down the road. Don’t really see any difference in them but maybe I am missing something.
Yes, yes, and yes. I want to wait awhile before doing EA. Especially, I want to up the production values first. There are exceptions, but EA is sort of like a launch nowadays, and a long drawn out EA period either works really good… or really bad.
Depends on the tier. If more than one copy includes future content, then you’ll see nX-Future Content.
As far as a tier with just a single key, maybe. I see the extra key as more of a bonus to the all future content part though.
No difference, just that one is cheaper for people who get there faster. Super early is limited to 300, early is 150.
I’m on board. This is my first Kick Starter go. Stick to your vision and best of luck to you!
Thanks @orald!
Welp, 10% in 12 hours. I’m not sure how exactly to quantify that, but it’s not nothing. Huge error bars in the first couple of days of course, so certainly premature to try to draw any inferences. Even though my brain will certainly try :P
Quick question about espionage. I’m in a hot war with one race and am buttering up another race to sign a non-aggression pact. My spies keep wanting to blow stuff up on planets owned by the friendly race, and I don’t see an option to initiate offensive spy missions against the warlike race unless I give them permission to take action against the friendlies. The choice of operation against the friendlies pops first and if I abort I don’t get to choose a mission against the warlike race. Only if I give my spies permission to take action against the friendlies do I then get to choose an operation against the aggressors.
I know that I can then go into diplomacy and cancel the op against the aggressors.
Am I missing something? Is there another site where you prefer to take questions about mechanics?
NM: I found the answers here.
Yup. For those who can’t be bothered to read a huge wall of text, basically you’re much more vulnerable to the spies of your friends (and treaties effect that in different ways) than the spies of your enemies. And vice versa of course. Spying is a very recent addition in general though, so it should see a few layers of polish in the coming months.
20% milestone reached. I’m going to try to look into getting the beta build up and running on OSX/Linux tonight.
Hey guys, I need people to help me test the OSX and Linux builds before making them public. If you can help out, hop onto the DG Discord and reach out :)
Is that for the demo and thus includes people who don’t Kickstart? It’s not that it doesn’t look good, it’s that I have enough on my backlog of 4x-like things, let alone every other genre.
Backed!
I think you’re asking if I’m working on getting the free beta build up and running on OSX and Linux? In that case, yes.
Thanks :)