I feel that way about nearly every ship designer ever.
Here I am managing this sprawling Empire and then wham, I need to figure out the optimal thruster placement and fuel capacity…and then oh shit I have to recall and retrofit all of my 230 ships since I just got Ion Cannons Mk. 2 researched…and so on.
-Todd
Same with me, I don’t want to nitpick with building ships, and quickly found out skipping it is not an option. You severely limit yourself if you don’t tinker. Plus, as some one else mentioned above, movement quickly gets to be too much and you have ships zipping all over the place. Seems like a good game, just not for me.
Yep, I have no desire to fiddle with designing ships in most games. The only one I really enjoyed was Sword of the Stars, but that game felt like a tactical combat game with a TBS game that got built up around it over time. Plus the designer there was pretty quick to bang something out.
Agreed. It was the only game I actually spent time designing ships (and enjoying it) because it mattered so much on the tactical and strategic level.
You are all heathens. Ship design is the most holy act of playing a space 4x.
When you say ship design do you mean making it pretty or just double clicking on the components you want the ship to have? I don’t mind the latter and never bother with the former.
If you haven’t checked out the 1.7 betas, you will definitely want to. It makes a ton of improvements to the base game.
I have mixed feelings on GalCiv III. It’s the first GalCiv I didn’t design so I do enjoy being able to see someone else’s take. GalCiv III was designed partially by Jon Shafer (Civ V) and Paul Boyer (who was my second in command on GalCiv II).
It’s interesting to see how different people have different takes. Over in the Towson office, both Jon and Soren Johnson (Civ IV) are there (though Jon just recently moved back here to Michigan). So we’ve had lots of talks on the differences in philosophy between Civ IV and Civ V.
For me, GalCiv was never about being a war game. It’s about building (wait for it) a civilization in space. Whereas GalCiv III is probably a bit more about the war aspects than I’ve traditionally seen in the game.
Post GalCiv III 1.7 (which, like I said, you should definitely check out as it’s has a lot of UI improvement even in beta) we’ll be moving into GalCiv III: Year Two and I’ll be much more involved with the design of what will eventually become GalCiv III: Crusade. Then the debate will be whether that should be a separate product (which I would find confusing) or as an expansion to GalCiv III (even though it will dramatically change the game play).
Very interesting re: Crusade’s possible sweeping changes. Definitely count me interested in where this goes.
(Also count me interested in any further ways to give you lot money for Sorcerer King-related purposes, but that’s another thread…)
I am lucky to be a bad/unobservant enough gamer that a lot of the AI foibles that are bugging KevinC so much never really jumped out at me, so I definitely enjoyed my time with it in that regard (and was too afraid to ascend to really high difficulties because, well, I’d die immediately).
It’s the building a civilization in space aspect that I’m really wanting and I think that’s where a chunk of my frustration is coming from! The AI seems to be very, very aggressive and nearly every game thus far has become a brawl. I can understand that from the likes of the Drengin, but I don’t know why the trader race wants to to attack me instead of… trade. Especially when we don’t share borders and I’m not encroaching on their territory.
Looking forward to Year 2 and your take on it. :)
+1. As a result the game has a competely different feel from GalCiv2, and not in a good way.
I’ll be interested to see how/if GCIII:Crusades is influenced by other 4X games released in between then and now, e.g. NuMoo, Stellaris, etc
If it is very different from how the game plays now, but also includes improvements/changes that would be useful in the ‘base game’ would it be possible to have the option to enable/disable the dramatic game changes whilst still keeping all the other additions in an option – although i suppose it would make it more difficult to playtest etc depending on modularized the game code or rules script is?
Sort of like picking if you want to play using dungeons and dragons 3.5 or 1 rules (or w.e., dont really know ad&d too well :P )
This is the first I’m hearing about GalCiv III: Crusade. I like regular GalCiv III, so more is welcome.
I feel like I am missing something? So you are patching the current game to improve the UI and then there will be what is essentially such a drastic new revision of the game that it is like a whole new game? Why and what are you guys doing to change it?
Brad’s talked before about some things that he’d like to depart from. The planetary “wheel” was one of those that went out and then came back in the form of a racial trait after forum riots. Another thing he’s mentioned is limits on stuff so you can’t have custom ships that flit across the galaxy in a turn or can scan the whole universe. Do you do things like that in an expansion, or do you split it off into an expandalone so the torch and pitchfork folks can keep playing with their 46-move ships?
There’s precedent for an expansion/DLC dramatically changing gameplay - in fact, it happened recently with Stardrive 2.
Of course, you have a precedent of shipping radically improved games as separate products (Elemental, Fallen Enchantress, Legendary Heroes), so you could go that route too.
I’ll just say that I’m more likely to buy an expansion for GC3 than an expandalone.
There might be precedent for a whole new game, but I am not sure I like the idea. As I have said, I couldn’t really get into GalCiv 3, it just isn’t what I was looking for, but maybe the new and improved version would be more my style? Not sure I want to buy a whole new game (with the same title even) to see if it something I would like more. I can’t say I won’t check it out, but more than likely it will 3-4 years down the road when I can get it in a Steam sale for $2.
Oh never. I mean, I have never been inspired by ANY game when making my galactic CIVILIZATION game. The entire concept came to me in a dream… ;-D
I am inclined to do Crusade as a normal expansion onto GalCiv III just from a…cleanliness point of view.
When we did Fallen Enchantress: Legendary Heroes as a separate product rather than an expansion on Fallen Enchantress we had a lot of confusion as to what to buy.
On the other hand, it’s often hard to get coverage for expansions. FE:LH got more reviews than Fallen Enchantress did by contrast.
Lead Designer Paul Boyer has written a dev journal on what’s new in the 1.7 update for Galactic Civilizations which should be coming soon.