FreeOrion

So rather than moving ships and giving them targets, you want to have the player tell an AI how to move his or her ships and what types of targets they should be given? Or is this meant just to suppliment standard RTS-like orders of move here and attack that? This is surprisingly similar to Stars!....

Going by what they say on their site, the new ship construction stuff is the most loved part of the new game. And the purpose of the new "shiny" battle engine is just that. To be shiny. As pointed out it's purpose is NOT interactivity, just like you couldn't interact with the ships in Stars!. It's t...

Building a dyson shell around a black hole would distinctly not work. At least the gravity issues would rip the poor thing apart. Plus BH's don't radiate in all directions like a star thus obviating a need for an entire dyson shell in the first plac. Some sort of construct along the two poles which ...

Best Sci-Fi hey? Hmmm - Stargate SG-1 has some nifty moments and a nice overall storyline (the new ori are nifty too). - Atlantis is boring and predictable - The solution to problem-of-the-week is usually so obvious even a cretin could see it (though not the characters apparently). - Babylon five ha...

And sins of a Solar Empire too. I think they're both out about the same time.
And Stars! Supernova Genesis should probably be removed from "in the making" as it seems to have died completely, unfortunately

I thought Blackhole harnessing was more of a Type 2 level, as it's certainly not giving off galactic amounts of power. Probably somewhere in between 2 and 3 really.

It's interesting to note not just what we like about these games, but what is necesary. I think one of the most important things, that for me can ruin the whole game if done wrong, is scale. People have different ideas of the scale they like, eg in Moo3 techs came too fast, offroad travel took too ...

Yes, but each of those four races is unique and different (i.e. in the way they move around). Go down the MOO route and all the races are fundamentally near-identical apart from a few performance modifiers in tech/manufacturing/whatever. I know it's a demo, but they boast 150 techs, that isn't reall...

There was already a thread about Sword of the Stars (now two) but none about this one.
I'll wait before deciding which is better (or if they're both bad/good). The races may look samey, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll all play the same.

Well that's one way to take my nice simple idea and add lots of bells and whistles. :) Thinking about it, I can't think of any really compelling reasons to have multiple galaxies. Everything you can do with many galaxies you can do with a single galaxy. Want to make it harder to get to enemy races? ...

I'm surprised no-one has posted about this one:
http://www.sinsofasolarempire.com/features.html

A 4x game due out some-time this year. Pretty graphics. We'll have to wait to see if the gameplay is any good though.

Definately the tech tree. No idea why though.
Generally once I've reached top-tech in a game I get bored. Strange but true.

You all remember the "Build spaceship and fly to alpha-centari" victory condition from Civ 2 right? Well could something similar work with FO? Specifically and with an Extra-Galactic destination (out of reach of your foes). Now this could be used a victory condition or maybe some form of "wonder". T...

Stars! using PHP? How ingenious. Most likely doable though I'm not sure how you'd get the star-map to work well (generting images dynamically is processor intensive). Maybe as part of the end-of-turn processing create an entire star-system map for each player and they could scroll around like google...

If memory serves Orions belt isn't any form of star "cluster" at all. The stars just look like they are together. They are hundreds of light years apart really (815 to 1,342 ly distant from Earth). I can't see why you're not allowed to use Orion. It's not trade-marked is it? Plus there is prior-art ...