Empire Types - "Origins"

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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Vezzra
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Re: Empire Types - "Origins"

#46 Post by Vezzra »

LienRag wrote: Sat Nov 27, 2021 11:20 pmI guess the philosophy divergence cannot be reconciled, but maybe a way out in game implementation would be to allow the player to see a little bit of the starting position before making the "Origin" choice ?
I guess that would be doable technically, but that strikes me as extremely counter-intuitive and immersion-breaking. Like the choice of species, this is something done "out of universe" (as something choosen before the game starts), while all the decision in-game are more or less "in-universe" decisions.

So, while we surely can make it possible to choose you're origin after game start, that feels bizarre - I mean, as a race I can't venture into space, look around and then decide what my origins, my past have been.

Anyway, I think you're worrying too much about how the choice of Origin would predetermine too much which could come into conflict with the situation you find yourself in at game start. Actually that mechanic wouldn't add really anything new - we currently already have that concept in the game, in a way. It's just baked into the species definition right now.

The main thing Origins are supposed to accomplish is to separate things that don't need to be species specific into a second set of choices. First, to give the player more flexibility at game setup, and second to better honor FO's species != empire philosophy.

In essence, your choice of Origin should not have a worse impact, regarding predetermination of things too much, as choosing your starting species already has.

I mean, we specifically designed a species (Sly) for the hidden empire gameplay. Decoupling such a choice from the species and creating a separate game setup option for that doesn't change that much, it basically just makes it possible (in this example) to enable the hidden empire gameplay for all species.

I get the feeling that we are (or will be) getting more "specialized" gameplay options (like the hidden empire one) down the road, and I'm not very fond of the idea to have to create a special species for all of them in order for players to be able to make use of these options, and these options only being viable when choosing the right species for it.

I want to have a hidden human empire too ;)

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Oberlus
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Re: Empire Types - "Origins"

#47 Post by Oberlus »

Vezzra wrote: Sun Aug 02, 2020 4:58 pmto introduce something akin to the "Origin" concept in Stellaris. There would be several "Origins" to choose from, and that choice would happen at the game setup, in addition to the selection of the starting species.

An "Origin" (or "Empire Type", or whatever we want to call it) would be some kind of "starting configuration" of your empire, which should/could include the following:
  • Size of homeworld
  • Maybe extra features present on your homeworld, e.g. certain specials (we could e.g. have an "Origin" where you start on a Gaia World - of course such an advantage needs to be balanced by certain disadvantages)
  • Starting buildings on your homeworld
  • Starting ships/fleets
  • Techs already researched at game start
  • Maybe certain special techs that you can only unlock by choosing a certain Origin, and would therefore be only available to empires/players that choose that Origin
  • Policies available and policies already adopted at game start
  • As with techs, there could be certain policies you can only unlock by selecting a certain Origin
  • How many/which of the nearby systems are already discovered
Not all Origins need to be compatible with all starting species and vice versa.
I finally bought Stellaris (a few days ago) and now I really see all this happening (not for 0.5 though).

BTW, I haven't played it yet. The UI right after starting a game was so overwhelmingly loaded of stuff that I just closed the game.

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