Hello / Questions / Suggestions

[jeb]

Heya

I posted comments in the indiegamer forums, but I thought it would be better to continue the discussion here instead.

I asked why moving ships were hidden in the game, and you replied that you thought it was more fun that way. I've been thinking a lot about this, and I can't really understand how you've come to that conclusion? You said that it's an option in the custom game menu, but since I'm only on the demo version I haven't been able to test it.

Anyhow, I'm a big fan of strategy games, so that's why I'm writing here. This game is easy to compare to Galcon, with the big difference that Galcon is real-time instead of turn-based. Imagine playing Galcon without being able to see the opponents' ship movements. The strategy would become a guessing puzzle, not knowing who's attacking who, as it is in YAGSCG at the moment.

My suggestion is that all ship movements should be visible and ships should be delayed one turn (so you can see when a ship is leaving a planet). A more dramatical suggestion is that you change the game into a real-time game. Simply convert one turn into about 30 seconds, and move everything linearly in that time (ie, a factory upgrade takes 30 seconds to complete). I think it would make the game more fun... but also more like Galcon which maybe is a bad thing.

// Jeb

[Chris]

Hi Jeb,

Thanks for your interest!

The reason I came to that conclusion is that the game is much more predictable when you can see enemy ships. You can see the ships coming towards your planet, so it's a simple matter to shift all your ships in that area onto that one planet so that the attack will fail. Defending becomes quite easy. Against human players this can result in stalemates. Against AIs, it makes you completely unbeatable because they're not yet smart enough to take advantage of that knowledge themselves.   (They were built with the assumption that enemy ships are not visible.) The latter is fixable, but again you have the stalemate problem.

I haven't played Galcon, but I suspect it can get away with making enemies visible exactly because it's real-time and so you don't have lots of time to think.

I'll email you a link to a time-limited full version so you can judge for yourself.

Making it real-time is an interesting idea. I'm not sure the networking is quite set up for that, but I could try hacking it in to see what happens!

Cheers,
Inventive Dingo

[jeb]

Hello

Thanks for letting me try the full version!

You were right that disabling "fog of war" didn't really improve the game. I like how you are able to make counter-actions, but the game became way too easy as you said it would. However, I think a big reason for that is that you are able to see the ships that are landed on the planets (the opponents' defenses). A couple of times I was able to conquer a planet with just 1 ship, since I knew that the opponent didn't have any units there. My suggestion is that the fog of war rule only applies to ships in orbit, and let the defenses remain hidden.

The stalemate problem could maybe be solved by giving planets different quality values. This is how stalemates are solved in both Galcon (large planets are better than small ones) and Pax Galaxia (yellow stars are better than brown stars).

It would be fun to see if you are able to add a real-time hack, looking forward to it 

// Jeb

[Chris]

My suggestion is that the fog of war rule only applies to ships in orbit, and let the defenses remain hidden.

I assume you mean "ships in transit", since the orbiting ships are the defences.

I do like that idea, since it prevents lame situations like 1 ship being able to take over planets like you mentioned. It's possible that it could exacerbate the stalemate problem though, since it effectively makes attacking harder and defending easier. Still, it's worth a try.

The stalemate problem could maybe be solved by giving planets different quality values. This is how stalemates are solved in both Galcon (large planets are better than small ones) and Pax Galaxia (yellow stars are better than brown stars).

Giving planets different quality values (via production bonuses I suppose) is a good idea since it adds a bit more strategy. I'm not sure how it solves the stalemate problem though; could you elaborate?

It would be fun to see if you are able to add a real-time hack, looking forward to it 

Don't hold your breath, it'll probably be really buggy... 

[jeb]

Oh, I just meant that if there is a planet which gives more new ships than other planets, the player who conquers that planet will have time on her side.

[Chris]

True, though a similar effect is already achieved if you consider that each player will probably have different amounts of planets.

Still, I'll definitely implement that anyway.