1st, 2nd and 3rd Impressions

Describe your experience with the latest version of FreeOrion to help us improve it.

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pizzaknight
Space Krill
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Feb 16, 2018 7:10 pm

1st, 2nd and 3rd Impressions

#1 Post by pizzaknight »

I discovered this game a few months ago while searching around for a new space 4x.

All of the different species and planet types is interesting. I like the interesting descriptions of the various species.
I am very pleased with the focus on expansion and war, rather than planet building and management.
The variety of tech, tech strategies, and customized ships is great.

The sound/music is satisfactory for hours of play (but could use a little more variety).

There are a couple of areas that I wish were handled better or differently:

The first is that the game doesn't seem to end and, on a related note, every after you have clearly won the game, it drags on for hours and hours.
I have an old DOS game that I really like, Armada 2525, which is similar to this game on a rudimentary level. One of the features that I like about the game is that once all of the enemies are defeated, you get a victory screen of an emperor looking out across the stars in triumph or something like that and a message about having conquered the galaxy. Another feature I recall is that after your production stats or something like that have far exceeded your opponents, they offer to surrender.

I'd like a feature in FreeOrion that causes the other species to surrender and become part of your empire or vassals or something like that after you have achieved a certain lead over their combined stats. Maybe once you have over 50% or 60% of the total production, research, military strength, etc, you get the option to claim victory (or keep playing). Otherwise, I find that in the game, I end up with a late game difficult-to-manage sprawling empire with long turns even know I have known for a very long time that I have already won. I end up just quitting the game at some point rather than attempt to clear out the remaining 20 or 30 systems scattered around the galaxy. I'd also like a victory screen for those that put in the extra mostly meaningless time in conquering the entire galaxy.

Second, I'm not sure if or how the AIs handle diplomacy. I don't really see any diplomacy elements to the game. I did read somewhere in the forums that players can ally and share supply and vision but I haven't seen it. It would be nice to have more diplomacy in the game, even on basic level. I'd like to see the AIs start allying when confronted with a large nasty enemy (usually me).

Anyway, those are just my impressions. I know you all put a lot of time and love into this game and it's great and I appreciate it very much.

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Oberlus
Cosmic Dragon
Posts: 5714
Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2017 4:25 pm

Re: 1st, 2nd and 3rd Impressions

#2 Post by Oberlus »

Diplomacy is on its way to be part of the game by 0.5 version, along with Influence, that will support spying, empires treaties and commerce, species-empires interactions, government, "military" and "social" upkeep (to control steamrolling), non-violent conquest of colonies, rebelions...

Hold on.

defaultuser
Juggernaut
Posts: 854
Joined: Wed Aug 26, 2015 6:15 pm

Re: 1st, 2nd and 3rd Impressions

#3 Post by defaultuser »

If you wipe all enemies from the game, you do get a victory indication. It's just a note in the Sit Rep, but it's there. You can win two other ways: defeat the Experimenters or research Singularity of Transcendence.

There are some technical issues with surrender that they've been looking into.

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Vezzra
Release Manager, Design
Posts: 6095
Joined: Wed Nov 16, 2011 12:56 pm
Location: Sol III

Re: 1st, 2nd and 3rd Impressions

#4 Post by Vezzra »

pizzaknight wrote:Second, I'm not sure if or how the AIs handle diplomacy. I don't really see any diplomacy elements to the game.
Diplomacy is a game mechanic that practically doesn't exist yet. Although there is some extremely rudimentary framework present in the codebase which allows for the basic war/peace/alliance thing, this is actually only usable in multiplayer. The AI doesn't do any diplomacy yet.

As Oberlus already mentioned, these things are planned of course. But it's still a long way until we get there. The first thing we're going to implement is the "Influence" resource and a basic framework where you need the new resource to pay some kind of "maintenance" for your colonies. Once that's in place, we're going to build upon this: Influence projects, species-species and species-empires relations, diplomacy, maybe espionage&sabotage, mechanics like governments etc.

However, given the pace of FO's development, all this will take a lot of time. We're talking years here.

defaultuser
Juggernaut
Posts: 854
Joined: Wed Aug 26, 2015 6:15 pm

Re: 1st, 2nd and 3rd Impressions

#5 Post by defaultuser »

When I first started playing, you could request an alliance. I think it only got positive responses in beginner mode. Is that not possible anymore?

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Dilvish
AI Lead and Programmer Emeritus
Posts: 4768
Joined: Sat Sep 22, 2012 6:25 pm

Re: 1st, 2nd and 3rd Impressions

#6 Post by Dilvish »

defaultuser wrote:When I first started playing, you could request an alliance. I think it only got positive responses in beginner mode. Is that not possible anymore?
There is a chance for them to accept anywhere up through Typical, though that chance goes down with increasing AI Aggression and if you have previously declared war on them or try proposing multiple times.
If I provided any code, scripts or other content here, it's released under GPL 2.0 and CC-BY-SA 3.0

xlightwavex
Space Kraken
Posts: 111
Joined: Mon Nov 16, 2015 5:57 am

Re: 1st, 2nd and 3rd Impressions

#7 Post by xlightwavex »

No he has a good point.

I think that point is that there needs to be a way for the game to open up a splash screen message window from a script.
That or play sound and video ect...

This could be used for custom scripts as well to toss up images for special events or very important ones ect.
That's also a vehicle for artists who want to contribute full images ect.
That's always nice to have a art gallery in the game... to attract artists.

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