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Author Topic:   Time passage is too fast

SupaCow posted 02-13-99 12:14 PM ET
why is it that units and things can only move 1 or 2 spaces in a YEAR?? i think the units of time should be reduced to a week because its very unrealistic that it would take so long to move. especially when attacking; infantry can only attack once a year?! what do they do for the other 355 days of the year? a week would be a much better time period to base the game on
Khan Singh posted 02-13-99 12:38 PM ET
It makes no sense at all, it's just a game design decision that allows us to trace the rise of a new civilization in a wargame setting.
After all, if you reduce the time scale to, say, a week per turn, then how do you rationalize the fact that your (small) bases double in population every 12 weeks? If you slide the time scale one way it just screws something up at the other end.
This isn't Squad Leader, nor is it Second Front. It's just a game, you should really just relax.
SupaCow posted 02-13-99 01:31 PM ET
i didn't even know that pop doubles every 12 years ehhe just downloaded demo yesterday
I just know a year is much too long to take for a unit to move 1 or 2 squares
make infantry able to move 3-4 spaces a turn and rovers move like 10-12.
i was playing a game and on the distance from my base to the enemies base was about 17 inches at it took my team of Rovers like 14 years to get there. 14!! thats like my entire life time so if you took a new born baby in this group it would be combat ready by the time it got there.
DHE_X2 posted 02-13-99 01:53 PM ET
Smac is a resource management game, not a war-game. While the move rates are not realisitic, The tech research, population growth, and terraforming rates are. If rovers got 10 moves per turn, the game would be unbalanced, considering a rover could circle the world in 6 turns. You can obviously see how this would negatively effect gameplay. Again, while combat is integral to Smac, this game is not a war game, it focuses much more on resource management, etc.
SupaCow posted 02-13-99 02:44 PM ET
of course this is a war game. It's a conquest for the control of a new planet by different factions. Which means: 7 goups at WAR with eachother.
You dont win the game by managing yer resourses, you do it by extermintaion.
Corwin posted 02-13-99 03:35 PM ET
As I read from other comments, you can not win this game by coquest only. That is if you are playing on a higher difficulty level than beginner. You have to make treaties and/or alliance, otherwise they will just all gang up on you and there will not be enough left of your Empire to fill a milk carton.
Pudz posted 02-13-99 03:56 PM ET
i thought only certain factions were at war with each other. the belivers and uop, etc. besides you can get elected planetery govoner without taking a sigle enemy city by force.(of couse there are always probeteams and buying them )
Prerogative posted 02-13-99 04:00 PM ET
Untrue Supacow.
You can win the game five ways, not just by conquest. You can transcend, you can win by cornering the economic market, you can win by being elected supreme leader and you can just hang on to an ally and let them win.
Finally, realism isn't worth making things LESS real than they should be. Sure, Rovers take years to launch battles, but if you lowered the gaming par to a week, you'd have made it to transcendance (godhood of sorts) in 500 weeks. Which is around ten years. Sorry, Supacow, but the evolution of mankind from 21st to super-sci fi in 500 weeks is FAR less realistic than a rover taking a year to attack. Think about it.
mike100 posted 02-13-99 04:06 PM ET
Khan Singn- it's 1999. Shouldn't you be on a DY100 class sleep ship right about now?
WolfLord posted 02-13-99 04:35 PM ET

Thats odd, Ive never seen the year 2400 in any of my games.
WolfLord posted 02-13-99 04:39 PM ET
Oops! Wrong thread for the above post...sorry
Gergi posted 02-13-99 07:58 PM ET
I posted this in another thread but here it is again...
I don't understand the problem with units moving only once a year. Sure it isn't exactly realistic but I don't the game is trying to be realistic. I think it's going for an abstract model to maintain playability and play balance. Would you really want to move your units (365 * num_years_to_build_next_building * num_units)? I think that would be a very long and tedious game. What if you lost your rover on day 1 and had to wait thousands of turns to get the next one?
PersonaNonGrata posted 02-13-99 10:02 PM ET
It's not altogether unrealistic to have rovers and vehicles stuck for long periods of time (though 14 years is a tad too long).
Think of it this way. A whole new alien world. No modern industry. No handphone to call your AAA when your vechicles break down. Considering you can build rovers out of nothing (is there earth minerals like iron in Chiron? I think not, at least, not all) so quickly (building a fully functional automobile industry out of whole cloth!), it's actually quite amazing.
Vehicles might get mired and damaged in the wilderness. Vehicles get lost in the wilderness too. Vehicles suffer from rust. Human drivers may get stricken by fungi sickness in the middle of nowhere. You're not driving leisurely down your interstate highway, you realize, in SMAC
SupaCow posted 02-13-99 11:24 PM ET
But there is one important fact that you are all forgetting: This was a Planned Mission therefore they new what they were dealing with. They must have scaned it with some deap space sensores or something the mission was launched 60 years in the future and it only took 40 years to get there which means they had warp capability and if they have that in 60 years who knows what other things they have? probly inexpensive lightweight hovercraft.
NASA or whoever wouldn't just send a bunch of colony ships blindly twords a distant planet with no prior knowledge of its inhabitance with only a scout rover and a factory and let them fend for themselves
I find it highly unlikely that there would be know way to phone the base in need of help and they would have either build highly specialized vehicals either on earth or in the 40 years on the ship on the way there.
Anyone here listen to the news? you know how F***ing expensive it is to launch a space mission??? its a f***in lot! especially when its manned. obviously they would never ever send a mission that would have such bad chance of success.
we would have highly advanced vehicals that would fly around the world in like 4 hours and utalize the terrain and have some nanomachines or geticaly engineered bacteria that would kill mind worms.
essentially im saying that the plot RULEZ and the game RULEZ and pretty much everything about the game RULEZ but they dont quite fit together
lets face it: its a kick-ass game bcs the designers spent so much more time on the the actual game instead of the plot and the turn time periods.
(in totaly unrelated topic just to make myself feel good i got 107% rating on the demo)
-Supa
Prerogative posted 02-13-99 11:48 PM ET
Well, Supa, I disagree.
Sure you actually read the story? I believe they mention, quite a few times, that when the Unity was launched Earth was in the throes of endless warfare. And that no one really gave a flip about whether or not they made it. And, at one point, the story gives the suggestion that when The Unity reaches Planet, humans back home have gone extinct.
Quite frankly, things just didn't go the way they were s'posed to, unfortunate, sure, but otherwise the game would be boring
Also, if the mission really was the fate of mankind (as it winds up being) I believe costs would become irrelevant. Who cares if the ship costs 20 trillion, if the alternative is the end of humanity?
IkshahI posted 02-14-99 12:37 AM ET
Okay -- everyone it is all RELATIVE.
Since everyones units move 2 spaces in a year it makes no dif, only in your head.
And besides that point, would you really want to move one of your units across the world every turn?!
No, I didn't think so :-)
They could have possible done this :
most of your population [like 99%] consist of children, who have better metabolism so the guys at earth decided to bring `em along.
And then every turn is a week or day instead of year, your children pick-up skills every week and are able to function as full citizens, so that represents pop. growth.
but people also don't like playing games that would last a few years at max. they like huge galatic battles, and sh*t to the sort, so it wouldn't seem as great of a thing to do...
hellrazor posted 02-17-99 06:42 PM ET
If you are concerned about realism, think of you rover as representing a military force, not a single unit. It takes long periods of time for armies to move long distances in war, even years. It took years for the USA to move across the Pacific and defeat the Japanese. In WWI, the Germans, British and French spent several years just fighting over a few miles of territory on the Western front. It took months for the US to move forces into place for desert storm. So its not unreasonable for military forces to take long periods of time to move a short distance, especially early in the game when technology is primitive.
ThRiLL posted 02-17-99 09:18 PM ET
Okay.. like... WHAT EVUR!
Like.. omigod. We are being just WAY too nerdy.
'chah.

Goncyn posted 02-20-99 04:38 PM ET
I think that the current time units make perfect sense if you don't think about things in fundamental terms. View your units as abstract representations of troop movements over a period of time rather than an actual regiment of infantry that travels from here to there. It's impossible to make everything realistically fit the time units used (nods to Khan Singh). Firaxis had to call time something, and they chose years.
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Author	Topic: Time passage is too fast
SupaCow	posted 02-13-99 12:14 PM ET why is it that units and things can only move 1 or 2 spaces in a YEAR?? i think the units of time should be reduced to a week because its very unrealistic that it would take so long to move. especially when attacking; infantry can only attack once a year?! what do they do for the other 355 days of the year? a week would be a much better time period to base the game on
Khan Singh	posted 02-13-99 12:38 PM ET It makes no sense at all, it's just a game design decision that allows us to trace the rise of a new civilization in a wargame setting. After all, if you reduce the time scale to, say, a week per turn, then how do you rationalize the fact that your (small) bases double in population every 12 weeks? If you slide the time scale one way it just screws something up at the other end. This isn't Squad Leader, nor is it Second Front. It's just a game, you should really just relax.
SupaCow	posted 02-13-99 01:31 PM ET i didn't even know that pop doubles every 12 years ehhe just downloaded demo yesterday I just know a year is much too long to take for a unit to move 1 or 2 squares make infantry able to move 3-4 spaces a turn and rovers move like 10-12. i was playing a game and on the distance from my base to the enemies base was about 17 inches at it took my team of Rovers like 14 years to get there. 14!! thats like my entire life time so if you took a new born baby in this group it would be combat ready by the time it got there.
DHE_X2	posted 02-13-99 01:53 PM ET Smac is a resource management game, not a war-game. While the move rates are not realisitic, The tech research, population growth, and terraforming rates are. If rovers got 10 moves per turn, the game would be unbalanced, considering a rover could circle the world in 6 turns. You can obviously see how this would negatively effect gameplay. Again, while combat is integral to Smac, this game is not a war game, it focuses much more on resource management, etc.
SupaCow	posted 02-13-99 02:44 PM ET of course this is a war game. It's a conquest for the control of a new planet by different factions. Which means: 7 goups at WAR with eachother. You dont win the game by managing yer resourses, you do it by extermintaion.
Corwin	posted 02-13-99 03:35 PM ET As I read from other comments, you can not win this game by coquest only. That is if you are playing on a higher difficulty level than beginner. You have to make treaties and/or alliance, otherwise they will just all gang up on you and there will not be enough left of your Empire to fill a milk carton.
Pudz	posted 02-13-99 03:56 PM ET i thought only certain factions were at war with each other. the belivers and uop, etc. besides you can get elected planetery govoner without taking a sigle enemy city by force.(of couse there are always probeteams and buying them )
Prerogative	posted 02-13-99 04:00 PM ET Untrue Supacow. You can win the game five ways, not just by conquest. You can transcend, you can win by cornering the economic market, you can win by being elected supreme leader and you can just hang on to an ally and let them win. Finally, realism isn't worth making things LESS real than they should be. Sure, Rovers take years to launch battles, but if you lowered the gaming par to a week, you'd have made it to transcendance (godhood of sorts) in 500 weeks. Which is around ten years. Sorry, Supacow, but the evolution of mankind from 21st to super-sci fi in 500 weeks is FAR less realistic than a rover taking a year to attack. Think about it.
mike100	posted 02-13-99 04:06 PM ET Khan Singn- it's 1999. Shouldn't you be on a DY100 class sleep ship right about now?
WolfLord	posted 02-13-99 04:35 PM ET Thats odd, Ive never seen the year 2400 in any of my games.
WolfLord	posted 02-13-99 04:39 PM ET Oops! Wrong thread for the above post...sorry
Gergi	posted 02-13-99 07:58 PM ET I posted this in another thread but here it is again... I don't understand the problem with units moving only once a year. Sure it isn't exactly realistic but I don't the game is trying to be realistic. I think it's going for an abstract model to maintain playability and play balance. Would you really want to move your units (365 * num_years_to_build_next_building * num_units)? I think that would be a very long and tedious game. What if you lost your rover on day 1 and had to wait thousands of turns to get the next one?
PersonaNonGrata	posted 02-13-99 10:02 PM ET It's not altogether unrealistic to have rovers and vehicles stuck for long periods of time (though 14 years is a tad too long). Think of it this way. A whole new alien world. No modern industry. No handphone to call your AAA when your vechicles break down. Considering you can build rovers out of nothing (is there earth minerals like iron in Chiron? I think not, at least, not all) so quickly (building a fully functional automobile industry out of whole cloth!), it's actually quite amazing. Vehicles might get mired and damaged in the wilderness. Vehicles get lost in the wilderness too. Vehicles suffer from rust. Human drivers may get stricken by fungi sickness in the middle of nowhere. You're not driving leisurely down your interstate highway, you realize, in SMAC
SupaCow	posted 02-13-99 11:24 PM ET But there is one important fact that you are all forgetting: This was a Planned Mission therefore they new what they were dealing with. They must have scaned it with some deap space sensores or something the mission was launched 60 years in the future and it only took 40 years to get there which means they had warp capability and if they have that in 60 years who knows what other things they have? probly inexpensive lightweight hovercraft. NASA or whoever wouldn't just send a bunch of colony ships blindly twords a distant planet with no prior knowledge of its inhabitance with only a scout rover and a factory and let them fend for themselves I find it highly unlikely that there would be know way to phone the base in need of help and they would have either build highly specialized vehicals either on earth or in the 40 years on the ship on the way there. Anyone here listen to the news? you know how F*ing expensive it is to launch a space mission??? its a f*in lot! especially when its manned. obviously they would never ever send a mission that would have such bad chance of success. we would have highly advanced vehicals that would fly around the world in like 4 hours and utalize the terrain and have some nanomachines or geticaly engineered bacteria that would kill mind worms. essentially im saying that the plot RULEZ and the game RULEZ and pretty much everything about the game RULEZ but they dont quite fit together lets face it: its a kick-ass game bcs the designers spent so much more time on the the actual game instead of the plot and the turn time periods. (in totaly unrelated topic just to make myself feel good i got 107% rating on the demo) -Supa
Prerogative	posted 02-13-99 11:48 PM ET Well, Supa, I disagree. Sure you actually read the story? I believe they mention, quite a few times, that when the Unity was launched Earth was in the throes of endless warfare. And that no one really gave a flip about whether or not they made it. And, at one point, the story gives the suggestion that when The Unity reaches Planet, humans back home have gone extinct. Quite frankly, things just didn't go the way they were s'posed to, unfortunate, sure, but otherwise the game would be boring Also, if the mission really was the fate of mankind (as it winds up being) I believe costs would become irrelevant. Who cares if the ship costs 20 trillion, if the alternative is the end of humanity?
IkshahI	posted 02-14-99 12:37 AM ET Okay -- everyone it is all RELATIVE. Since everyones units move 2 spaces in a year it makes no dif, only in your head. And besides that point, would you really want to move one of your units across the world every turn?! No, I didn't think so :-) They could have possible done this : most of your population [like 99%] consist of children, who have better metabolism so the guys at earth decided to bring `em along. And then every turn is a week or day instead of year, your children pick-up skills every week and are able to function as full citizens, so that represents pop. growth. but people also don't like playing games that would last a few years at max. they like huge galatic battles, and sh*t to the sort, so it wouldn't seem as great of a thing to do...
hellrazor	posted 02-17-99 06:42 PM ET If you are concerned about realism, think of you rover as representing a military force, not a single unit. It takes long periods of time for armies to move long distances in war, even years. It took years for the USA to move across the Pacific and defeat the Japanese. In WWI, the Germans, British and French spent several years just fighting over a few miles of territory on the Western front. It took months for the US to move forces into place for desert storm. So its not unreasonable for military forces to take long periods of time to move a short distance, especially early in the game when technology is primitive.
ThRiLL	posted 02-17-99 09:18 PM ET Okay.. like... WHAT EVUR! Like.. omigod. We are being just WAY too nerdy. 'chah.
Goncyn	posted 02-20-99 04:38 PM ET I think that the current time units make perfect sense if you don't think about things in fundamental terms. View your units as abstract representations of troop movements over a period of time rather than an actual regiment of infantry that travels from here to there. It's impossible to make everything realistically fit the time units used (nods to Khan Singh). Firaxis had to call time something, and they chose years.