Sid, BREAK NEW GROUND (say it aint so)

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Author Topic:   Sid, BREAK NEW GROUND (say it aint so)

Richard posted 03-16-99 09:16 PM ET
Ok, I was challenged to spell out some ways that SMAC could have (and SHOULD have) been better. Well, I've been on vacation so it's taken me a while to get back to this. I strongly feel that SMAC is no more that Civ II with different graphics. If that is all I really wanted, I would have bought Civ II, Fantastic Worlds.
Diplomacy: Allow santions (trade, research, etc)and embargos. These would have mildly negative effects on the target country and little effect on the acting country. Strongly negative relations would result, but not generally enough to go to war over.
Allow specific relationships to develop, joint development agreements that would have mildly positive effects on both nations for resource, research, or food trade.
Allow trade of "surplus" food, mineral, energy for comodities, units, or break-thrus.
The previous post about the map orientation is dead on. Units passing over the top or bottom of the glob should re-appear exactly 1/2 'global unit' away.
Cities should automatically share resources. This is not 15th century Italy. The game continues the odious Civ tradtion of treating each city like a city state, not a population center of a nation.
The animations for the 'wounders' are really cool, why not write them for the supposidly more important story aspects instead of the bland text based cut-screens.
With the ability to modify units, quit creating generic unit types. They all SUCK. Everybody immdiatly creates a small number of specailized units that they use for everything (photon shielded, quark cannon, clean fusion, drop tanks)
Strategic movement!!!!! Navel units, not in a combat mode should be allowed to move to any previously explored hex that is not blockaded by enemies in one turn! same with Cruis missiles, push a button, they fly across the planet and blow something up. Even the movement rates of land assests should be greatly increased when they are not in a direct threat situation. Exxentially this would require either a "teleport" movement system or differing modes of "deployed - combat ready" and "transit" - combat vulnerable.
Drone riots are dumb, lame, and stupid. Another artificail hold over from Civ-land. Dump them. Use the efficiencty rating as a limiting growth and development factor.
Either dump the story or make it have some real effect on the game. I have used the same exact strategy to win with three differnt factions. The game should be very different for each faction, but it's not. If the story is so damn deep and enveloping, then why doesn't effect the outcome of the game?
Social engineering is cute, but too limiting. Allow players to directly influence things like moral or efficincy in addition to balancing artificial contratinas like green or free market...
Get a faster server! This BB is crawling on a T1!, I can only imagine how awful it must be with a dial up ISP.
Also, some people took personal pot-shots earlier about my technical back ground and capablities. For the record, I hold a Masters degree from a top 20 university in IS/IT. My computer is personally assembled (as were my last 6 or 7) and there is nothing lagging about it.
Travathian posted 03-17-99 01:07 AM ET
A masters in IS/IT, and this is suppose to mean what?
That you know anything about computer?
Please, it means you know how to set up a network and not much more. I'm not even A+ certified and I can put a computer together and troubleshoot most anything, blindfolded and with one hand.
You're just another monkey waving a degree.
Though some of your gameplay ideas do have merit, I will give you that.
Zoetrope posted 03-17-99 04:55 AM ET
Trade of surplus. That raises an interesting question: if I send a supply crawler to an ally's city, can it donate minerals, food or energy each turn?
Perhaps you can design your own social engineering options? But remember to balance pluses with minuses, otherwise everyone will take all the pluses and there will be no variety.
I agree that the factions should differ more in gameplay, and in their AI responses. For example, the oppressive Hive (if that's how Brian wants to represent Yang) should not react to human rights abuses in the same way as the democracy-loving Peacekeepers.
Also, philosophies should be able to infiltrate each other's populations in a more subtle way than by instantaneous probe team actions. Morgan's business interests should extend to other faction's cities, Miriam's religious advocates should be able to preach openly in the UN and covertly in the Hive, and similarly for the Gaians (Quakers and Greenpeace), Spartans (armed individualists who distrust the government), PKs (Amnesty International), the Hive (communists), and the University (rationalists).
Merely inciting drone activity lacks flavor: it's too bland and indistinct. At least let the probe teams have different effects, not just undermining a city, but persuading it to adopt social policies more in accord with the faction that sent the team. For instance, a Gaian probe team might persuade a city to slow its population growth and use nonpolluting industries, and use public pressure on a base Governor to change from building a factory to a nature preserve.
Making factions territory based loses a lot of the social tension, and in SMAC it has meant, that in order to win, each faction researches the same science, uses the same military units, and builds the same buildings, to compete for dominance.
To change the model as much as I suggest would require a bigger break from the practice and representation in the Empire family of games than SMAC has employed, and that would be a good thing.
It disappointed me that the wonderful images in Firaxis's Gallery have little or no presence in the game itself. Where is that looming `hovertank on the open road'?
I disagree with the strategic movement: if I could zip units around just because I'd been somewhere before, then we'd might as well have Orbital Insertion as a starting tech, and equip every unit automatically with free Drop Pods.
We just have to adjust to the incongruity of using the same timescale for showing the building of cities, research, and moving of units. Unless you really want Planet to start covered in magtubes.
agoraphobe posted 03-17-99 10:35 AM ET
No, Richards' suggestion concerning "navel" movement is the best of the bunch. Ironically, while ground units acquire the ability to drop pod anywhere in the world with the Space elevator, naval (and air!) units must continue to plod along with a fixed-radius movement rate. This is an old classical pre-PC era wargame problem, best resolved with a combination of Sea 'zones' and fixed-radius movement within each zone. Further, naval units could be put on zone-wide naval 'patrol', with a possibility (varying with morale, etc.) of intercepting enemy naval units moving through that zone.
The same could be done with certain strategic air units. Air to gound attack units could also be put on naval zone patrol.
Would certainly simplify a lot of 'patrol' issues. Anybody ever play "World in Flames"? (Australian Design Group, for all you ozzies out there).
I don't think the "Italian" city-state effect is necessarily 'odius'. With borders, each city now becomes the center of a "province", with real game effects that I like. I do agree that the provincial character of Civ-style resource production has always struck me as irrational at a certain level of technological development - a holdover from "ancient" times In SMAC, why does one crawler transfer only ONE resource between bases? Quite useless...
Finally, a reminder to posters: Please try to present criticisms in some minimally _respectful_ tone. After all, I don't see YOUR brilliant PC game out there in the market.
Blindman posted 03-17-99 11:11 AM ET
One of the incorrect assumptions that I think people are making about the North & South pole movement is that the respective poles are just above the map. We don't know exactly how far the North Pole is from the top of the map. Maybe, this planet has really large ice caps. All we know is that movement north & south above a certain point is restricted. I don't have a problem with that.
In regards to the city-state idea, I actually
feel that it is more plausible in this game than in Civ II. Afterall, everyone literally lives inside a small confined space due to the poisonous atmosphere. That doesn't mean that there couldn't be rapid transfer of supplies between bases, but I can see how it is non-trivial.
Not to be all negative, I do think that the game could have a better system for non-combat movement. I just don't see how it takes a several years for any modern ship to cross an ocean. However, although a new system might improve realism this is in fact a sci-fi game, and I don't know if realism would necessarily improve gameplay.
Jojo posted 03-17-99 12:58 PM ET
One of the difficulties with the whole North pole thing (assuming that the pole on AC is generally orthogonal to the plane of revolution, as is the case with Earth)... is that once it gets fixed (and the fix would be pretty easy, wouldn't it?). You guys will then ask for a better projection system for resources at bases, right?
I mean, up near the poles, each "square" should actually represent a smaller surface area. Either that, or the shape of the map ought not be rectangular. And that gets tricky.
As for "monkeys with papers"-- I read MS in IS/IT to mean, Master of Science, Information Systems, Information Technology-- or something like it. As for the personal attacks, methinks:
1. Someone just doesn't like people criticizing the game
2. Someone just doesn't like people with different opinions in general
As for the critique of the game itself-- I agree almost wholly with it. The diplomacy is still sorely lacking, and this was what expected to finally shine... Imagine a world where "economic war" can happen, or you team up with one or two other factions to make a joint project. Sanctions-- yes, and plenty of them. All sorts of trade status, or actions like expelling persona non grata. And yes, the factions should react differently to your actions. Miriam might promise some credits if you took that UoP town without overtly declaring vendetta against the Provost. What about rendering humanitarian aid to help your underdeveloped allies grow more quickly?
I'm not sure what exactly I expected from the diplomacy AI here-- something more, that's for sure-- but is that fair? I mean, we're running this thing on a desktop PC-- how much computing power does it take to have 6 active minds running and conspiring?
In general, though, I expected more-- I probably shouldn't have, but I did. Guess I got caught up in the hype.
Is this a bad game, though? No-- definitely not... This is an excellent game, despite the flaws. Right now I expect it to remain the only turn-based game to stick on my drive for a few years.
But it's far from perfect, and the diplomacy still blows.
Arcane posted 03-17-99 01:05 PM ET
Embargos would definately be a plus. I pretty much agree with everything stated here. The drone riots arent that bad. Annoying yes, but I think they are a decent part of the game. I totally agree with sharing resources. I try to set up supply crawlers to even things out but its a pain. If bases are so near eachother their resource boundary's touch and they are linked by mag-tube, theres no real reason why they shouldn't be able to transfer resources.
Xerxes314 posted 03-17-99 10:34 PM ET
Hey, as long as we're getting poles and map projections into the mix, why don't we do away with the whole quantized map grid system entirely? Then your ships can move hither and yon however they please. City "radii" become actual circles, the map becomes a little globe, etc...
Of course, then you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between SMAC and Warcraft...
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Author	Topic: Sid, BREAK NEW GROUND (say it aint so)
Richard	posted 03-16-99 09:16 PM ET Ok, I was challenged to spell out some ways that SMAC could have (and SHOULD have) been better. Well, I've been on vacation so it's taken me a while to get back to this. I strongly feel that SMAC is no more that Civ II with different graphics. If that is all I really wanted, I would have bought Civ II, Fantastic Worlds. Diplomacy: Allow santions (trade, research, etc)and embargos. These would have mildly negative effects on the target country and little effect on the acting country. Strongly negative relations would result, but not generally enough to go to war over. Allow specific relationships to develop, joint development agreements that would have mildly positive effects on both nations for resource, research, or food trade. Allow trade of "surplus" food, mineral, energy for comodities, units, or break-thrus. The previous post about the map orientation is dead on. Units passing over the top or bottom of the glob should re-appear exactly 1/2 'global unit' away. Cities should automatically share resources. This is not 15th century Italy. The game continues the odious Civ tradtion of treating each city like a city state, not a population center of a nation. The animations for the 'wounders' are really cool, why not write them for the supposidly more important story aspects instead of the bland text based cut-screens. With the ability to modify units, quit creating generic unit types. They all SUCK. Everybody immdiatly creates a small number of specailized units that they use for everything (photon shielded, quark cannon, clean fusion, drop tanks) Strategic movement!!!!! Navel units, not in a combat mode should be allowed to move to any previously explored hex that is not blockaded by enemies in one turn! same with Cruis missiles, push a button, they fly across the planet and blow something up. Even the movement rates of land assests should be greatly increased when they are not in a direct threat situation. Exxentially this would require either a "teleport" movement system or differing modes of "deployed - combat ready" and "transit" - combat vulnerable. Drone riots are dumb, lame, and stupid. Another artificail hold over from Civ-land. Dump them. Use the efficiencty rating as a limiting growth and development factor. Either dump the story or make it have some real effect on the game. I have used the same exact strategy to win with three differnt factions. The game should be very different for each faction, but it's not. If the story is so damn deep and enveloping, then why doesn't effect the outcome of the game? Social engineering is cute, but too limiting. Allow players to directly influence things like moral or efficincy in addition to balancing artificial contratinas like green or free market... Get a faster server! This BB is crawling on a T1!, I can only imagine how awful it must be with a dial up ISP. Also, some people took personal pot-shots earlier about my technical back ground and capablities. For the record, I hold a Masters degree from a top 20 university in IS/IT. My computer is personally assembled (as were my last 6 or 7) and there is nothing lagging about it.
Travathian	posted 03-17-99 01:07 AM ET A masters in IS/IT, and this is suppose to mean what? That you know anything about computer? Please, it means you know how to set up a network and not much more. I'm not even A+ certified and I can put a computer together and troubleshoot most anything, blindfolded and with one hand. You're just another monkey waving a degree. Though some of your gameplay ideas do have merit, I will give you that.
Zoetrope	posted 03-17-99 04:55 AM ET Trade of surplus. That raises an interesting question: if I send a supply crawler to an ally's city, can it donate minerals, food or energy each turn? Perhaps you can design your own social engineering options? But remember to balance pluses with minuses, otherwise everyone will take all the pluses and there will be no variety. I agree that the factions should differ more in gameplay, and in their AI responses. For example, the oppressive Hive (if that's how Brian wants to represent Yang) should not react to human rights abuses in the same way as the democracy-loving Peacekeepers. Also, philosophies should be able to infiltrate each other's populations in a more subtle way than by instantaneous probe team actions. Morgan's business interests should extend to other faction's cities, Miriam's religious advocates should be able to preach openly in the UN and covertly in the Hive, and similarly for the Gaians (Quakers and Greenpeace), Spartans (armed individualists who distrust the government), PKs (Amnesty International), the Hive (communists), and the University (rationalists). Merely inciting drone activity lacks flavor: it's too bland and indistinct. At least let the probe teams have different effects, not just undermining a city, but persuading it to adopt social policies more in accord with the faction that sent the team. For instance, a Gaian probe team might persuade a city to slow its population growth and use nonpolluting industries, and use public pressure on a base Governor to change from building a factory to a nature preserve. Making factions territory based loses a lot of the social tension, and in SMAC it has meant, that in order to win, each faction researches the same science, uses the same military units, and builds the same buildings, to compete for dominance. To change the model as much as I suggest would require a bigger break from the practice and representation in the Empire family of games than SMAC has employed, and that would be a good thing. It disappointed me that the wonderful images in Firaxis's Gallery have little or no presence in the game itself. Where is that looming `hovertank on the open road'? I disagree with the strategic movement: if I could zip units around just because I'd been somewhere before, then we'd might as well have Orbital Insertion as a starting tech, and equip every unit automatically with free Drop Pods. We just have to adjust to the incongruity of using the same timescale for showing the building of cities, research, and moving of units. Unless you really want Planet to start covered in magtubes.
agoraphobe	posted 03-17-99 10:35 AM ET No, Richards' suggestion concerning "navel" movement is the best of the bunch. Ironically, while ground units acquire the ability to drop pod anywhere in the world with the Space elevator, naval (and air!) units must continue to plod along with a fixed-radius movement rate. This is an old classical pre-PC era wargame problem, best resolved with a combination of Sea 'zones' and fixed-radius movement within each zone. Further, naval units could be put on zone-wide naval 'patrol', with a possibility (varying with morale, etc.) of intercepting enemy naval units moving through that zone. The same could be done with certain strategic air units. Air to gound attack units could also be put on naval zone patrol. Would certainly simplify a lot of 'patrol' issues. Anybody ever play "World in Flames"? (Australian Design Group, for all you ozzies out there). I don't think the "Italian" city-state effect is necessarily 'odius'. With borders, each city now becomes the center of a "province", with real game effects that I like. I do agree that the provincial character of Civ-style resource production has always struck me as irrational at a certain level of technological development - a holdover from "ancient" times In SMAC, why does one crawler transfer only ONE resource between bases? Quite useless... Finally, a reminder to posters: Please try to present criticisms in some minimally _respectful_ tone. After all, I don't see YOUR brilliant PC game out there in the market.
Blindman	posted 03-17-99 11:11 AM ET One of the incorrect assumptions that I think people are making about the North & South pole movement is that the respective poles are just above the map. We don't know exactly how far the North Pole is from the top of the map. Maybe, this planet has really large ice caps. All we know is that movement north & south above a certain point is restricted. I don't have a problem with that. In regards to the city-state idea, I actually feel that it is more plausible in this game than in Civ II. Afterall, everyone literally lives inside a small confined space due to the poisonous atmosphere. That doesn't mean that there couldn't be rapid transfer of supplies between bases, but I can see how it is non-trivial. Not to be all negative, I do think that the game could have a better system for non-combat movement. I just don't see how it takes a several years for any modern ship to cross an ocean. However, although a new system might improve realism this is in fact a sci-fi game, and I don't know if realism would necessarily improve gameplay.
Jojo	posted 03-17-99 12:58 PM ET One of the difficulties with the whole North pole thing (assuming that the pole on AC is generally orthogonal to the plane of revolution, as is the case with Earth)... is that once it gets fixed (and the fix would be pretty easy, wouldn't it?). You guys will then ask for a better projection system for resources at bases, right? I mean, up near the poles, each "square" should actually represent a smaller surface area. Either that, or the shape of the map ought not be rectangular. And that gets tricky. As for "monkeys with papers"-- I read MS in IS/IT to mean, Master of Science, Information Systems, Information Technology-- or something like it. As for the personal attacks, methinks: 1. Someone just doesn't like people criticizing the game 2. Someone just doesn't like people with different opinions in general As for the critique of the game itself-- I agree almost wholly with it. The diplomacy is still sorely lacking, and this was what expected to finally shine... Imagine a world where "economic war" can happen, or you team up with one or two other factions to make a joint project. Sanctions-- yes, and plenty of them. All sorts of trade status, or actions like expelling persona non grata. And yes, the factions should react differently to your actions. Miriam might promise some credits if you took that UoP town without overtly declaring vendetta against the Provost. What about rendering humanitarian aid to help your underdeveloped allies grow more quickly? I'm not sure what exactly I expected from the diplomacy AI here-- something more, that's for sure-- but is that fair? I mean, we're running this thing on a desktop PC-- how much computing power does it take to have 6 active minds running and conspiring? In general, though, I expected more-- I probably shouldn't have, but I did. Guess I got caught up in the hype. Is this a bad game, though? No-- definitely not... This is an excellent game, despite the flaws. Right now I expect it to remain the only turn-based game to stick on my drive for a few years. But it's far from perfect, and the diplomacy still blows.
Arcane	posted 03-17-99 01:05 PM ET Embargos would definately be a plus. I pretty much agree with everything stated here. The drone riots arent that bad. Annoying yes, but I think they are a decent part of the game. I totally agree with sharing resources. I try to set up supply crawlers to even things out but its a pain. If bases are so near eachother their resource boundary's touch and they are linked by mag-tube, theres no real reason why they shouldn't be able to transfer resources.
Xerxes314	posted 03-17-99 10:34 PM ET Hey, as long as we're getting poles and map projections into the mix, why don't we do away with the whole quantized map grid system entirely? Then your ships can move hither and yon however they please. City "radii" become actual circles, the map becomes a little globe, etc... Of course, then you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between SMAC and Warcraft...