Hi there!

For topics that do not fit in another sub-forum.

Moderator: Oberlus

Post Reply
Message
Author
Laryllan
Space Krill
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed May 30, 2007 8:12 am
Location: Germany

Hi there!

#1 Post by Laryllan »

My name is Laryllan and I'm very interested in contributing to to this project.

A few words words about myself.
As MoO3 was published, I loved this game from the start - unlike others, who condemned it for being like MoO2. Unfortunately, the game has been released unfinished - many things are (still) broken or don't work as intended (e.g. jobs, spy system, diplomacy, the empires funding policy, strategical descisions of AI players any many more things....). Despite that, I played the game and learnt to do it right (wich isn't easy at all) and convinced some friends to play against each other.
Soon it became obvious that MoO3 was heavily unbalanced, there are 'winning strategies', 'ubar' race picks, 'ubar' races.
So me and a friend of mine started working and modding the game. We called it iMod because of the hype with the letter 'i' these days. :)
We changed quite a lot to make the game more balanced in multiplayer and - more fun. We spent hours and hours testing, in single and multiplayer and made it (in our opinion) a better game. But still, after two years of work, the game is not perfect - it's too complex to be balanced if one does not know all the facts - and many things are hidden in MoO3.
So we stopped some day, mainly because of lack of time.
You can take a look at the mod here.

I registered a few days ago but am striving through this board for quite some time. There are many brilliant ideas and it will take time to go through all the design posts and suggestions...
But, as said, I'd like to help here. My experience and therefore my interest is mainly in multiplayer in terms of balance and the economic model, diplomacy and espionage system.
I spent hundreds of hours - if not days - playing an working on MoO3 and believe I can call myself 'experienced' player.

Unfortunately, my time is very limited at the moment, but I will do what I can.

If you are interested, I have some thoughts about FreeOrion. ;)

User avatar
eleazar
Design & Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 3858
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:09 pm
Location: USA — midwest

Re: Hi there!

#2 Post by eleazar »

Welcome :)

It certainly takes some time to get up to speed on development.
I recommend playing the beta, and reading the v.3 requirements and "introduction" on the main wiki page first.

Then understand the shape of our forums. The "brainstorming" category is not under serious consideration. Realize those areas may not be implemented for along time. The "game design" category contains the treads under serious consideration.


It's important to understand we aren't making an MoO clone, but a Galactic 4X game with some different foundational principles. Stuff like:

* The player should spend his time making interesting and significant decisions: i.e. no micromanagement.

* Realism = Irrelevant. It's not bad -- it's not a good reason to do something or not to do something (it's just as invalid to say 'we can't do that because it's realistic' as it is to say 'we should do this because it's realistic').

* Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS). Put another way, you should not need a computer to understand the rules. The computer may be able to do it faster, but you should be able to explain the basic rules to a reasonably clever child without difficulty. ** The second two quote our lead designer directly
Last edited by eleazar on Sat May 17, 2008 2:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Laryllan
Space Krill
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed May 30, 2007 8:12 am
Location: Germany

Re: Hi there!

#3 Post by Laryllan »

Thx for welcoming me!

I've read the links you provided and will try the beta version. As I recently switched from windows to Ubuntu, I've had some problems compiling the binary, but I'm confident that I'll manage to run FreeOrion some time soon.

And thanks you for the other hints. It is a good choice to keep micromanagement at a minimum, and realism is really not necessary in such a kind of game.

As for KISS, I believe you are right. But this is a very complex topic... ;)

Just some questions that came up reading the specs:
- Is there something like 'pollution'? i.e. too much industry lowers efficiency
- will there be a spy system?

User avatar
Geoff the Medio
Programming, Design, Admin
Posts: 13587
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:33 am
Location: Munich

Re: Hi there!

#4 Post by Geoff the Medio »

Laryllan wrote:- Is there something like 'pollution'? i.e. too much industry lowers efficiency
Not yet. This isn't specifically mentioned in the Roadmap, and wasn't included in the design for v0.2, which defined the initial version of planet environment stuff and the basic production model. However, once we have races defined (v0.8), we can make different races have different environmental preferences, and then can define how terraforming works. Once we have a way for planets to transition between environments intentionally, we can also have transitions happen unintentionally due to "pollution" or similar effects.

Alternatively, if we have a good design worked out for terraforming and environment transitions (including pollution-induced) before then, since it's not specifically scheduled, we can probably finalize the design and implement it before races.
- will there be a spy system?
Espionage is schedule for v0.7 in the RoadMap.

Tyreth
FreeOrion Lead Emeritus
Posts: 885
Joined: Thu Jun 26, 2003 6:23 am
Location: Australia

Re: Hi there!

#5 Post by Tyreth »

It was decided quite early to avoid things like pollution and unhappiness because they tended to detract from the game. Though the way that Civ IV implements them is much better than in older games. So it's not an issue that we're really too quick to worry about or implement.

User avatar
MikkoM
Space Dragon
Posts: 318
Joined: Fri Mar 10, 2006 12:32 pm
Location: Finland

Re: Hi there!

#6 Post by MikkoM »

Tyreth wrote:It was decided quite early to avoid things like pollution and unhappiness because they tended to detract from the game. Though the way that Civ IV implements them is much better than in older games. So it's not an issue that we're really too quick to worry about or implement.
Are you talking about unhappiness linked to pollution or about general unhappiness? Now at least I am hoping that there will eventually be some sort of a happiness/unrest system, since I think that the citizens of an empire should be more than just a bunch of numbers displayed to the player. They should have a voice.

There are a lot of interesting possibilities that an unrest system might bring to the game like, empires loosing strength because the citizens are rioting and refuse to work properly, using spies to cause unrest in other empires, civil wars etc. Eleazar`s Multi-Species idea might also include some additional uses for an unrest system, although I haven’t yet read that idea completely through. An unrest system might also encourage the player/ the AI to use its race like it was originally designed, so it wouldn`t be possible to pick a peace loving race for example and then wage endless offensive wars with it, without a (quite natural) penalty, although some flexibility should of course be allowed.

So in short, I am hoping that there will be some sort of an unrest system added to the game during the development process, since things like, citizens happily starving to death without any sort of protest, immediately ruin the illusion of a living star empire.

Post Reply