5621

Um … yeah? Ohhhh, you think I’m somehow saying Elemental is like Sins.

I’m not.

I’m saying I’m expecting the expansions to be similar in scope and purpose.

5622

While I agree, you have to admit that it’s fairly unlikely that two real expansions could be produced from virtually any gaming studio inside 6 months.

The first expansion is really a patch and I’ll be impressed if they can successfully rework the magic, combat and tactical battle system in two months. It’d be generous to call that an expansion, but even reworking those systems would be a minor miracle.

And then to roll out a real expansion in 3-4 months’ time after that? That’s really pushing it.

5623

A big patch is what passes for a Paradox expansion pack these days.

It’s free so I don’t have a problem with it. If it goes well, they can always do another XP.

5624

I’m with you 100% on that. At the end of the day, though, I don’t care if they call them patches, expansions, or poodles - if they get the game into a fun, interesting, state then they’ve made good on their promise to fix the game for those who bought it.

In six months time we all might be back here crucifying Stardock again but I’m not quite ready to erect the cross until I see what it is they’ve delivered. That’s not to say I don’t have some, ah, suspicions as to how things will end up, but I guess we’ll all find out relatively soon enough.

5625

Understood. But to me, if someone promises me a free expansion and then delivered a patch, I’d be unhappy. Especially in light of the problems on the release. The last thing Stardock needs to do is to give the appearance of not delivering on their promises and I think they’ve just set themselves up again.

5626

I agree…

If Elemental manages to patch itself into something special and that doesn’t require buying more than the original game I will buy it.

If Stardock expects me to buy DLC on top of a 50 dollar beta, they can pound sand.

5627

Good point. I would say Stardock has a way of shooting themselves in the foot, but at this point I think everything below their knees is bloody meat.

5628

The good news is the release schedule shows that Stardock still has the budget for more ammunition. :)

5629

The end of November is a good time for that last content/fix patch. I’ll have some time over winter break to delve back into the game.

I noticed there were mentions of some sort of art updates planned too, anyone know what that is all about?

5630

Hard to guess at, and I don’t have any info on it. I know that Brad mentioned he was going to eventually make the magic flashier/nicer but the comment alludes to potentially more than that.

5631

Stardock was sitting on a pile of money- so they can afford to take a hit here to save their long-term rep, if that’s possible.

Count me in the camp of I don’t care what they call it, as long as it’s good.

The art updates from what I saw in Boogiebac’s dev post appear mostly to do with camera angles and maybe some touchup in other places. I don’t think art quality is a problem with Elemental though. I

5632

It can’t have been that much money, considering they had to let half their development team go, as well as ancillary people like sales and even their receptionist.

5633

the let-down of playing civ v makes this game’s failure even more painful, they basically had an open look at the basket here

5634

Its like the twiligt zone in here - I keep getting back to this post whenever I try to read the next page!

Help!

5635

Is a bug on the paging system that the forum use, it make some asumptions that are not true wen a post is deleted. You are not losing anything, so feel free to ignore the whole thing.

5636

Wardell defines “expansion”:

We released two expansions for Sins of a Solar Empire which were $10 apiece. The idea behind an expansion vs. a patch is that an expansion adds or changes a core game mechanic (Starbases in Sins: Entrenchment and Diplomacy in Sins: Diplomacy). It has nothing to do with the quantity of the content being added but rather the scope of the change.

… and the reasoning behind the term:

we have to call these changes “expansions” (to avoid the issue of people who like the current mechanics feeling baited and switched)

5637

Wardell talks about moving to specialists:

In v1.09, we will have specialists instead. So a merchant will use up a specialist slot. The number of specialist slots a Kingdom/Empire gets is the total population /10 (the idea is that 10% of the population are specialists of various kinds though historically it’s a bit less than that but this is a game not a historical simulator <g>).

So your village with 80 people will provide your Kingdom with 8 specialist slots. A merchant would use 1 slot. A Study would use another slot. You could build multiple such buildings as long as you have available specialist slots available. Similarly, a military unit would use a slot (not 1 per soldier but rather 1 per unit giving the advantage to those kingdoms that can field larger groups AND get us back towards a more epic feel because if a unit costs a specialist slot, the base training time of training ONE unit can be lowered and thus allow training of much larger groups to be much quicker getting players back to fielding much larger armies).

This is hardly an original idea of course. Sins of a Solar Empire has a supply level, GalCiv II has logistics (and incidentally, we do plan to introduce more logistics into Elemental to deal with singular super armies).

5638

Now, I’m a big stardock fan usually, but… they seem to be completely redoing how the game works…I wonder if they have a plan, or change things one a time, without planning for the big picture?

5639

I share your concern. Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled they’re redoing everything, because if ever a game needed that it’s Elemental. But it’s all too easy to get the impression that once again, the headless wonders are rushing of in ten different directions without even a single clear goal between them.

As for Brad’s latest idea, I like the population as a resource thing, but not the specialist slot thing. The latter could be accomplished better through heroes.

This isn’t a perfect idea or anything remotely like it, but assume heroes have both a strategy and an administration rating, each somewhere between 1 and 10.
The strategy rating signifies the maximum number of units in a stack the hero can lead.
The administration rating signifies how many specialists the hero can lead.
Assume further that stacks and cities can have leaders, and that without leaders both stacks and heroes have an administration and strategy rating of 1.

It would integrate the hero & 4X stuff at least a little bit, and it could potentially kill the citysplosion strategy dead.

5640

I just can’t imagine how Elemental is going to turn out at this point. They might as well be grabbing ideas out of a bag, as far as I can tell. What the heck is up with making a Study a “specialist?”

More importantly, is this just the beginning of a slide back toward GalCiv mechanics?

What frogboy needs, instead of piecemeal updates on this or that disparate mechanic, is a design doc (i.e., thread post, I guess) that addresses the game as a whole, and how the imagined subsystems are supposed to interact.