The road to beta 4..

So much..so much..

Published on September 28, 2005 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals

Holy cow are things going fast now. Up till now, it's been engine building. And even now, it's still engine building. But now we're starting to get into gameplay features which are far more fun.

Fleets are in. Totally in. Of course, at the AI guy, I have to get the AI to effectively use them. I just finished working on the AI's handling of the planetary improvements. The planet surface code is all done with STL which I'm a bit sketchy with. So my first crack at it was a bit weak. This time, it's better. Not great. But better. The AI doesn't know how to upgrade its planetary improvements yet. I will have to go through and do that. That's going to be interesting to do.

It's easy to write fast AI code. And it's easy to write really smart AI code. But it's really hard to write fast and smart AI code. And that's the conumdrum I always have. For instance, in GalCiv I, my biggest beef was that the AI didn't update its ship orders between turns. That is, if you moved your ship, the AI couldn't attack it because it "moved". That was because of the time it would take for the AI to "update" its ships. This time, I'm going to fix that. CPUs are faster and I'll use that extra processing power there.

Another thign I'm going to do is completely re-do the way the AI goes to war. Fleets change things a lot and make things potentially easier. I have my fears about the balancing of the weapons techs still but since I do that too, at least I can tweak that myself as I discover exploits.

The way the AI did war in GalCiv I was based on a military concept of projections of force. I would identify a sector I wanted to militarily control and then figure out how many ships I needed to control it and send them in there. The problem came in when trying to coordinate my groups of ships. In a tiny or small galaxy, the AI ships woudl come in groups quite nicely. Since I was running in the debugger (Which is much slower), I tended to play the game on very small galaxy sizes and the result was nice. But as you moved up in size, the ships had more and more of a problem getting to the target at the same time. As a result, ships would come in dribs which looked like, to me and our critics, as the usual "death march" of lame AI that we've seen for decades.

But with GalCiv II, I've got better tools. First, Altarian Prophecy introduced the Rally Point system. The AI, thanks to the "not cheating" design, can make use of the same stuff as humans and vice versa since the engine doesn't make a distinction between players. So the AI can set up rally points on ships to move together. And now with the fleet code, I can group them together more easily. I am also going to add in code so that even if I don't build fleets (due to lack of logistics units for instance) I will set a "slower" speed for ships that can't keep up so that when you're attacked, you know it. They come in waves of massive fleets.

I'm also going to put more work into having the AI clue the player in on what it's thinking. There's a lot of calculations the AI does that humans don't even know about that could make the game more exciting.

We're starting to move forware more on the tech tree. I hope people like our philosphy on it. In GalCiv I, it was based on the OS/2 version of the tech tree which was based on the tech tree not being tightly coordinated with the rest of the game. In GalCiv II, the techs tie into something in the game. So it's much more linear. You have techs called Plasma Weapons IV for instance (as opposed to "Advanced Phase Induction" or something like that). You research a technology because you want something specific out of it. So there's a lot fewer essoteric techs in there.

I sure hope people like the fleet battles. I think they're cool. But I think some people are going to think "Why can't I control my ships?". It's a playback of the battle, not a tactical battle element. I hate tactical battles in strategy games. Hate them. The reason is that they're so time consuming. I am the guy who always pressed "Auto" in Master of Orion. But I also knew that I wasn't playing the game optimally by doing that because the AI is never going to be as good as a skilled player at tactical combat. Our combat system is essentially like a forced "auto" of the MOO 2 thing except with 2005 3D graphics. If you watch a battle in cinematic view, it's a lot like watching a battle from Star Trek TNG.

Speaking of MOO, people who only played MOO need to remember -- GalCiv isn't Master of Orion. GalCiv for OS/2 was a contemporary of MOO 1 for DOS back years ago. GalCiv I was in public beta back in 1993. It's a different game. As much as I like the MOO series, I don't want GalCiv to be MOO.

There were 3 points from MOO1/2 that I particularly don't want to emulate (and bear in mind, I'm a huge MOO2 fan, I played MOO2 in the delivery room waiting for my first born -- true story):

MOO 1/2 always ended in a genocide race. Each side collected huge fleets and then just wiped out each other's planets so it was a race to see who killed off the other.
MOO 1/2 had tactical combat which I really don't like in a strategy game. If I want tactical combat (And sometimes I do) then I'll play Homeworld which does it very well.
MOO 1/2 had starlanes. I like free-form maps. It worked for MOO since you're parking fleets around. But in a free form map like GalCiv, you have to limit fleet sizes and distribute up military power.

So while I sympathize that many MOO 1/2 fans are looking for a MOO 4, GalCiv isn't designed to be it. It has its own set of strengths and weaknesses that make it a unique gaming experience.

Anyway, Beta 4 should be out before Halloween. It'll be still a beta (read: buggy and incomplete) but it'll be well on its way to final by then. It's not quite fun IMO yet, but it's getting there. Beta 4 will be open to those who pre-ordered the game.

Comments (Page 2)

GoatRider

on Sep 30, 2005

No tactical combat?

Nice for you since you obviously hate it.
You can say all you want about MOO, but it at least gave you (like you said yourself) the OPTION to auto-resolve combat, or dig it out yourself.

I don’t have the demo (and now I know I never will), so I don’t know how exactly fleets work. But I think a lot of people will at least miss the option to fight the battles for themselves.

Tell me, what’s the point of being able to design your own ships in detail without being able to actually use them to their advantage as you intended in their design?
Or: what’s the difference with the GALCIV 1 combat system apart from the aesthetic differences. For all I can see your fleets become mere placeholders (as in Galciv1) although you supposedly “designed” their contents (= ships). Also, playing a tactical battle is a waste of time but watching a replay isn’t?????

Please tell me I’m wrong about all this! I was really looking forward for Galciv2. Now I’m just not sure anymore.

Ugleb

on Sep 30, 2005

I don’t have the demo (and now I know I never will), so I don’t know how exactly fleets work. But I think a lot of people will at least miss the option to fight the battles for themselves.

Tell me, what’s the point of being able to design your own ships in detail without being able to actually use them to their advantage as you intended in their design?
Or: what’s the difference with the GALCIV 1 combat system apart from the aesthetic differences. For all I can see your fleets become mere placeholders (as in Galciv1) although you supposedly “designed” their contents (= ships). Also, playing a tactical battle is a waste of time but watching a replay isn’t?????

Please tell me I’m wrong about all this! I was really looking forward for Galciv2. Now I’m just not sure anymore.

Its a beta not a demo. Yeah some people will always prefer to fight the battles themselves. But compare the battles of Moo 1/2/3 to Homeworld 1/2. It doesn't compare, Homeworld is what a tactical space battle is all about. You have full 3D movement, formations, space terrain, sensors and lovely animation. Try to get that into a game like GC2 without doubling the budget and development time. Even then Homeworld 2 will probably do it better because the game is all about the battles. Now if you have a game that does it so well, is GC2 going to look good by doing a similiar thing half as well? Or will it look and feel second rate? After you poured all those resources into making good tactical combat, can you guarantee that the main strategic game hasn't suffered?

So, having ruled out a tactical mode, why design your own ships? Well for one its fun. For two you care about your own ships, whereas the ships in GC1 were just there. My Overlord Mk II (large hull battleship) "The Hyperion" has a history, it is the only ship of its class ever made, as soon after designing it I developed a new class 3 Laser so moved on to the Overlord MK III series. By comparison, I built a battleship in GC1 and later built more Battleships. They're all the same and I forgot what I did with the first one. Reason 3, with the new weapon type/counter defence system (laser/shield etc) I have to design my fleet to counter my enemies fleet. If they use missiles I need to build my new ships with point defence systems. If I don't I'm at a disadvantage. If I get it right the galaxy is mine.

The achilles heel of tactical battles comes down to AI. The AI will never be able to use your ships as well as you can. In the Moo series you had to set weapons into fire arcs, the AI would never use them as efficiently as you could. Fire the forward guns, turn just so and present the side guns or turn to present your strongest shields to the enemy. Every battle would go better if you commanded it personally, but do you want to? And what about those masive battles? They could take an age to move every last ship, but put it on auto and you just know its going to be slaughtered.

GC2 has taken the approch of avoiding that. When you design a ship it doesnt ask you to define weapon arcs, you simply select number and type of wepons, and put them on the ship to look good. When it comes down to calculating the battle the game simply compares values and rolls its digital dice to determine outcome. As in GC1. The major and significant difference is that your choice of wepons and defences will effect, if not determine the outcome. And instead of a stack of sprites going pop you will see a fully rendered battle going on with movement and stuff blowing up. We (beta testers) haven't seen it yet but it sounds promising.

Ultimately you just have to realise that GC2 is not Moo4 and it's not intended to be. You are the emperor of a galaxy spanning empire, not an admiral. If you still aren't sure if that is the game you want, you should probably wait for the demo in febuary/march to try before you buy.

Zoomba

on Sep 30, 2005

Another way of creating some natural boundaries would be to have impassable (is that a word?) space terrain such as dense debree fields, nebulae, black holes etc... These wouldn't be used to create walls or anything, but they could break up the map a bit or add some strategy (i.e. you could mass your assault fleet inside a nebula, hiding it from enemy sensors etc...)

IMO, the greatest failing of space games is how they usually fall short and don't exploit space itself for any strategic purposes. From that view, space 4X games end up being stripped-down Civ games where you only have certain tiles you can place cities on. The ships are your spearmen and it's all about who controls the most buildable tiles.

In reality, space is mind-bogglingly huge, and going on scale no space anomaly of any kind would seriously impede travel were it possible. Like others said with the Elite references, space combat etc would be impossible and so on and so forth... But for the sake of it being a strategy game to begin with, it would be nice to see the game board become a serious consideration when planning and executing your moves.

Ugleb

on Sep 30, 2005

Totally agree with you there Zoomba, more physical 'barriers' in space would be great to create some space routes and choke points, but still maintain the freedom to move around in 'deep space' away from colonies.

Frogboy

on Oct 01, 2005

I'm a long time MOO fan as most people know. But me thinks some people have a selective memory towards it.

Every MOO 1 game I ever played ended up the genocide race where both sides would race zip into an oppone'ts system, obliterate it, and move on. There wasn't a lot of "strategy" at the end.

GalCiv, being a singled player game, has to focus on having good AI. And tactical battles are just an AI sucker.

Meth

on Oct 04, 2005

I don't really understand the "starlanes" comment. I never played MoO 3 but if starlanes means "no direct flights" between some systems and instead you have to "take connecting flights" no matter what your ships range is then I don't like that idea AT ALL. Sure you might have to take several hops if your range is too low to go all the way in one hop but you should be able to go between any two systems if your ships have the range to do so (unless there's a black hole or something blocking you). On the other hand I'm not real fond of the TOTALLY freeform movement from GalCiv I either. I prefer a system where you can only move between two systems and not select arbitrary points out in deep space. This is how I recall MoO 2 at least being though it may very well be true that my memory is faulty on the issue. It doesn't matter if MoO 2 did it that way or not though the point is that totally free form just doesn't "feel" right to me, maybe it's just me though. As for the "What I mean is that you instantly traveled from system to system. You couldn't stop a fleet from getting to your system in the first place." If the "direct flight" flight paths between every system is the "starlanes" you speak of then I'm all for them and I don't see the weaknesses you point out (though they may exist in the MoO implentations). Specifically travel on these "starlanes" should NOT be "instant" unless your ships speed is such that it can get from A to B on one turn (a motion animation would still be nice though). I'd imagine that until late in the game though most trips will be multi-turn so I don't see an instant travel issue. As for stopping ships BEFORE they get to your system, you should be able to send your ships up the starlane the enemy is approaching on and intercept them well before they get to your system if you have decent sensors, range, and propulsion. I can maybe see starbases having free form motion allowing you to place them in deep space and then effectively creating a new set of "direct flights" between and every other system/starbase but that's about it. This isn't a showstopper for me though, I'll get the game either way but the whole totally free-form thing is a slight negative.

Oh and while I love TURN BASED tactical combat (Homeworld is REAL TIME is it not? If it is I don't see how it's even a relevent comparison) I don't really mind it being dropped as it IS a pretty big pain in the tail in multiplayer so as long as the game has multiplayer support I don't see a problem with dropping it. Sure an option would be nice but it's not a big deal.

Ugleb

on Oct 04, 2005

I don't really understand the "starlanes" comment.

In Moo 1 ships moved directly between solar systems and could not be intercepted en-route. in Moo2 they added individual planets so fleets moved to a planet within the system then could move between planets. In both systems battles always took place in orbit of a planet and if you were invaded you had to have a defence fleet in orbit of every world you thought the enemy would hit. If you didn't then they could bomb your colony flat before you knew they were coming.

Moo3 introduced starlanes, which meant that you could only effectively move between systems connected by a starlane. You could still move between unconnected systems but it was incredibly slow. That creted choke points as some systems became important junctions and as such strategically vital to own. But still, you had to fight in orbit of a planet and that usually means whoever loses is about to get bombed to death.

GC 1 and 2 use neither approach. You can move to any point in space and as such battles don't have to take place in orbit of a colony. You can stop an attack from ever reaching your world or if your first attempt fails scrambkle to get a second fleet out on an intercept. It's a more flexible and open system.

Oh and while I love TURN BASED tactical combat (Homeworld is REAL TIME is it not? If it is I don't see how it's even a relevent comparison) I don't really mind it being dropped as it IS a pretty big pain in the tail in multiplayer so as long as the game has multiplayer support I don't see a problem with dropping it. Sure an option would be nice but it's not a big deal.

The comparison is about tactical space combat. Homeworld does space battle brilliantly because that is all it does. If you put a tactical mode into GC2 then it will be compared to Homeworld even if it were turn based. A reviewer for example will feel the need to compare the battle element to the current best and most comparable game (as he would compare Doom3 and Half Life 2). As Moo3 is much derided and Moo2 ten years old, the comparison will be to Homeworld 2.

Lord_StarPilot

on Oct 06, 2005

I'm a long time MOO fan as most people know. But me thinks some people have a selective memory towards it.
Every MOO 1 game I ever played ended up the genocide race where both sides would race zip into an oppone'ts system, obliterate it, and move on. There wasn't a lot of "strategy" at the end.

Shannanigins!

MoO 1/2 both allowed you to win peacefully, go conqueror, or go xenocidal. Or any combo of the three. How you played was up to you.

Once sensor tech advanced, you knew where the enemy was headed. You had to keep a mobile defense force, ready to deploy where the enemy was headed. However, sucking up all the ships coming off the line to meet that big killer enemy fleet was a lot of fun. Of course, this did have the drawback that you'd have a good fleet together, and tempt you to send it out to smash your enemy. But thems the breaks when defending in a war. It's always better to be the attacker.

Tactical combat sucked in MoO1 because it was so small, and so easy to explot. In MoO2, unless you were doing something special (ie, capping enemy ships), it was boring because you just repeated the same thing, over and over and over. Took most of the fun right out of the game.

In MoO1, winning peacefully with the humans without ever firing a shot was trivial, Brad. Everyone loved them that much. Or go with a straight slash and burn technique. Or go with a full on, world by world conquest. Whatever you wanted to do, you could do. It was easiest to just bomb the enemy out of existance, but that's because it is the easiest answer in life. If you could just wipe out an entire world of enemy, and then build it with your own, that would be much simpler then having to invade a world. Or manage a captured populace. Most players are very lazy, so they take the path of least resistance. But in MoO 1, that path was the peaceful win or the xenophobes. It was easier to win peacefully in MoO then it was to win a war. But you didn't get to watch as many little lines drawn on the battle screen if you went for the peaceful win.

MoO2 doesn't retain the same balance as the original. Not on any level. It isn't nearly as good a strategic game as 1. It is, however, the equivalent of Civ2. And just as in civ2, the easiest path is to just take everything your enemy has. Build the biggest stack, send it around to smash your enemy and take his places, and you win. However, it could still be won by peace without much difficulty. And if you wanted, you could do the ole slash and burn and back fill the newly available worlds. Just what you preferred.

From how you talk about GC2, that seems to be the way GC2 is headed. That's not a bad thing, as it would help balance out the default Culture winning that happens if you don't do anything...

As for tactical... I think putting in a "replay" is generally a very bad thing, Brad. This is why. All us fanzers will be demanding a tactical layer in GC3! Also, a lot of customers will be complaining about not being able to control the ships in the replay in GC2. Unless you are going to go very trivial on the "battle" graphics, as in Spaceward Ho! does.

Space war games are typically the essence of war. Having the bigger club/guns. Remaining mobile. Going around your enemies hard points to destroy his soft points and deny him those resources and support. Real starlanes (such as Acsendancy or MoO3) remove that, as it then just a matter of leapfroging down the nodes until your enemy is no more. Not much strategy to that, but it is easy on the AI.

Ugleb

on Oct 08, 2005

That's what Frogboy is talking about. The AI would just, in the majority of cases at least, try to wipe you out with a big planet killer fleet. Ok if you kill their fleet then you can take your time to win by another route, or you can just kill them as you have military superiority. Point is the game is weighted to win by force.

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