[Freeciv-Dev] Re: The space race
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Andreas Røsdal wrote:
Hi everyone
Are there any plans on improving the space race part of the game?
It seems to have been unchanged for a very long time, and this strategy
doesn't
seem to be used at all in the games I've played so far. Here are some
suggestions.
There have been no such suggestions recently.
First of all, space race should be made a more viable way to win the game.
In my experience, the few times spaceships are used the game is already
decided,
because it's always the strongest player launching a spaceship.
So something could be done to introduce space race earlier in the game,
possibly by reducing the number of technology requirements for it.
I am reminded of a comment Per made about Command & Conquer once. In
that game, there are certain "super-weapons" which a leading faction may
use to hasten the end of the game and avoid micromanagement. These
weapons are all very expensive and may be thwarted by the opposing
factions, but at risk.
Such a concept could be applied to Freeciv as well, and the space race
is no doubt intended to function in this manner. The problem is, as you
point out, it does not add much excitement. It does provide incentive
for the opposing nations to conquer the space-faring nation's capital,
thus ending the race - but even if they do so, this does not generally
allow them to win the game. And nation capitals are rarely vulnerable
to attack of any means.
Nukes are another such super-weapon. They are similarly imbalanced in
that they provide little risk. Once you have nukes, you win.
In both cases however, there is the hurdle of the wonder needed before
either space parts or nukes can be produced. This is really the only
hurdle to overcome, yet it provides no element of risk - only a delay
before the super-weapon can be put into action. A nation with
sufficient technological and industrial advantage (including factories,
which are required for space parts IIRC) will have little difficulty
pumping out the needed wonders.
I would consider game balance issues of both these super-weapons to be
intertwined.
To make the space race more exciting, more could be done for players to
have competing
spaceships at the same time. Perhaps once the Apollo program has been
built, all
players can have a more even competition for building a spaceship. Such
as giving all players
access to researching spaceflight, plastics and superconductors once the
Apollo program has
been built. Or make it easier for spies to steal the space technologies.
That is interesting, but I don't think it would do much to liven up the
game. Even with such an advantage to the opposition, the space-faring
race would still have a huge advantage. The opponent would still have
to physically research the needed technologies, and physically build the
infrastructure (including factories) needed to pump out the expensive
space parts.
The question, I think, is how to make super-weapons speed up the end of
the game by providing an element of risk to the nation that employs
them. Currently the only risk provided by spaceships is that of the
resources needed to build them, that are potentially wasted if the
opponent conquers your capital.
My initial idea would be to provide concrete disadvantages to building
the wonders that are needed to initiate these super-weapons. Providing
automatic shared vision to all enemy factions, or automatically building
a gameloss unit for the constructing nation, would be possibilities.
There is also some usability issues with the space race dialog. First of
all, the spaceship
dialog should give all information needed to build a spaceship, guiding
the user to
building and launching the spaceship. Make it more intuitive to build
the actual spaceship,
and provide more (and better/more graphical) information about the
progress during construction
of the spaceship, and the progress after launching the spaceship until
it arrives.
Perhaps the spaceship could also be shown somewhere on the main map near
the capital during
construction. It would also be nice with some 3d rendered graphics of
something looking like a spaceship.
This is a screenshot of the current dialog:
http://www.freeciv.org/index.php/Image:Spaceship.png
Usability and graphics and gameplay issues are really all different.
Usability issues are basically a client/GUI problem; what's needed there
is for one person to sit down and just make a patch that improves the
interface. Graphics issues are probably something to bring up with the
art people; however, I don't know how the hard-coded "spaceship layout"
would relate to (for instance) having rendered 3d spaceship graphics.
I hope this can be a start for improving the space race in Freeciv...
Hopefully so.
-jason
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