Multiple game modes (pseudo-KISS)

[angrygnome]

On the surface this flies in the face of the 'KISS' dogma, but if you harken back to the original Star Control you will recall the ability to have a quick brawl or a campaign through the galaxy.

While having absolute and granular control of how everything in your empire works may be appealing to some, juggling a bunch of details like type of government, currency, fleet maintanence, etc. (it's quite a list based on what I've read here) puts a pretty tough learning curve on the game.

Games like StarCraft have an exellent balance of variability and strategy within their multiple races and tech ladder, but maintain a simplicity and playability that is lost in games like Civilization. The original MOO had a fairly limited set of choices in the development progression and similarly had excellent playability.

Having the ability to play a simplified game where many of the aspects of a planet don't apply (taxation, happiness, maintenance, etc.) opens up the game to a new target group without requiring a complete forking of the project. As an added bonus, AIs are significantly easier to develop for games that have fewer play variables.

[Rapunzel]

This sounds somewhat like the "Stategic Battle" Option in MoO2. This would mean the things are still in the game, but hidden to the Player. The KI should be able to take over these abandoned parts of the UI, but this sounds like having to build a new UI for this Game-Option, so I would assume that this is not implemented bevore v1.0

[Impaler]

No I think he means certain portions of the game are just turned OFF entirely. He mentioned Happyness and thats a good example, if you turn off Happiness some AI dosn't come in and manage it for you, it ceases to exist as a game concept (in that game) and the player never has to worry about it.

P.S. I like this idea (sugjested it myself like a year ago)