[Freeciv-Dev] Re: The space race
[Top] [All Lists]
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index] [Thread Index]
Jason Dorje Short wrote:
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.
First of all, space race should be made a more viable way to win the
game.
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.
Yes, currently building a spaceship is only a way to hasten the end of a
game that the leading player had already in reality won.
I would have liked the space race to be an alternative strategy for
winning the game, as an alternative to military victory.
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.
Adding more risks to the super-weapons is probably a good thing to liven
up the game, and I think both of the disadvantages you suggested would
do that.
However, making the space race more risky would also make it less used,
which goes against the idea of making the space race used by more players.
So I think something would have to be done to counter balance those risks.
Would it be possible to easily find out how many games are won by space
race on the pubservers?
Then I could base this on something other than only my own experiences,
where extremely few games have involved the space race.
Andreas R.
|
|
