Living Breathing WARRING Universe?

[Morkonan]

...
Never have Xenon or Khaak fleet wrecked large swathes of space as they theoretically could have. In essence, they always confined themself to "hostile space" and waited for the player to wreck them at his leisure.

Xenon migrations can certainly cause havoc, wrecking everything in a great swath across several sectors before they're stopped. Sometimes, they don't get stopped... However, they are moving from one sector to another, not actively trying to kill everything in their path. (They often do a great bit of crippling damage, though.)

There are also times when, in certain games, they can put a heck of a lot of pressure and damage on certain sectors. IIRC, in my longest game, many Split sectors near the Xenon core sectors were basically uninhabitable for commerce. The only thing that helped was that they were fairly large, with widely scattered stations.

The Khaak don't make an appearance, usually, in anything much more than a M6. While powerful, for what it is, it doesn't do much damage. Khaak fighter groups can harass merchant traffic, but that's about it.

[CorruptUser]

The best I can come up with to prevent a race from being completely annihilated is to create a homefield advantage of some form. I'm thinking that core sectors have HEAVILY fortified gates. Not the joke of orbital defense stations from X3AP that were just an M7 without engines, but something that would scare a fleet. It would double as a reason for players to create massive fleets, perhaps with missions involving a race asking for the player's support in an offensive.

[RAVEN.myst]

The best I can come up with to prevent a race from being completely annihilated is to create a homefield advantage of some form.

That's a nice idea, and easily enough implemented in an abstract yet transparent manner: apply a modifier/multiplier to, say, each of a faction's ships' damage dealt - the farther from own borders, the lower the damage dealt. This will create a self-righting equilibrium system with the equilibrium point being roughly around the territorial borders (when enemy factions share a border) - and it's not even really too contrived or artificial, as it in abstracted form simulates the fact that military forces generally ARE weaker the farther they are from home: not only in terms of simple "comfort" (less familiar with alien territory, while back home they know the terrain well, can use local features to own advantage), but also because the more extended the lines of supply, the more strain is placed on the expeditionary force (yes, I know that this becomes progressively less of an issue with advances in technology, but it never fully goes away.)

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

I like the concept of logistics impacting on performance but I don't think the typical X travel times make it believable. Ships don't tend to expend projectiles or need fuel for in-sector movement or need much time to do anything.

An alternative way to simulate logistics would be to have surviving attack fleets pull back to home sectors x hours after departure. They would fight while they are fresh and at some point, the call would be made to disengage before notional fuel reserves deplete.

Something I'd suggest perhaps either way would be to disallow the use of some form of local infrastructure like jump beacons as long as alternate, slow means of travel were available (like boosting between sectors in the same system). This would provide a bonus to manuvourability of defenders, which could be degraded as beacon-containing sectors were conquered, and probably reduce the frequencies of attacks when attack fleets are far from.

[Morkonan]

The best I can come up with to prevent a race from being completely annihilated is to create a homefield advantage of some form. .

I'm sure that's possible, but it's overly complicated. To keep a race/faction from being annihilated when you didn't want them to or without player interaction wouldn't be difficult.

The simplest mechanics rely on forbidding one faction from attacking an enemy core sector, like during simple "Raid" mechanics where one faction will attack another faction's assets in an outlying sector and will respond with overwhelming, defensive, force to similar incursions by an enemy by generating a defensive response fleet.

War and the destruction of a race can be limited to either something that can only be caused by the player's involvement, making it impossible for a race to vanish from the game without the player's direct assistance, or by something that can only ever happen after an event, again triggered by a player, so that races will always be available to the player up to a certain stage in the game's progress.

Lastly, "respawning" a destroyed race could also be possible, either randomly after xx time has passed or due to player intervention, like the completion of a quest/mission. The race will generate a "Rebel Fleet" somewhere in it's prior Core sector. It will attempt to take over the sector by destroying all enemy-held stations. If that happens, it "wins" and the sector returns to its possession. It will then treat all formerly held sectors as being invaded by hostile forces and generate fleets to attack these sectors, winning them back if all enemy-held stations are destroyed.

In short - In * sandbox games where the possibility of an AI war between NPC factions exist, there are several things that have to be done:

1) They must remain around long enough for the player to be able to interact with them in meaningful ways, else having them in the game at all is a waste of resources.

2) The player plays the game, not the AI, so significant events in the game, like the complete destruction of a faction, are usually tied directly to player interactions.

3) It is usually possible to retain critical faction assets that the player needs to acquire or to somehow "respawn" a previously defeated faction so the player may acquire them, usually requiring direct player interaction to do so. (ie: The player plays the game, not the AI.) This allows the player to correct mistakes, reintroduce certain faction mechanics, regain access to certain game assets, etc)

In all of these sorts of mechanics, it is imperative that "the player play the game." The most important variable in any game is player interaction, so any mechanic that can produce extreme results in gameplay must be limited to player interaction or be so unlikely without it that it will almost never occur.

* Games where an objective, or one of them, is to remove a faction from play do not usually have these mechanics, of course.

[sd_jasper]

One thing that might make war a bit more "realistic" is if there was cost to repair ships. In XR as long as you had an engineer on a cap ship, it was basically free to repair. Even if a ship had all surface elements destroyed, and had the hull taking down to 1%, you could just park it and wait till it was back to 100% (or whatever the maximum for the engineer's skill level is).

Part of me thinks how annoying it would be to cap a ship then have to pay a fortune to get it fixed (hopefully this would be less than the cost of buying a new ship!). But I also think that this would fix the issue (in XR) where capping ships is just easy money.

This would also make factions have to spend tons of money to fix ships if they go to war. Other war is "free" as long as they don't loose any ships. And with the AI improvements in XR, I'm seeing a lot fewer ships get destroyed because they know when to flee (somewhat offset by ships now targeting engines a bit more to prevent escape).

Anyway, I'm not sure how I feel about this myself... so the cost would need to be balanced vs player fun, but I still feel that free repairs creates a lot of issues.

[spankahontis]

@ RAVEN.myst ...Being one of the ..quote " general population" as in not being averse to "mods" ... is not and I quote

"So why naysay an *option* that could potentially enhance the experience by giving players more ways to customise the game to their own tastes"

the definition of a mod.....

Tricksy! But I wouldn't say so in my opinion, no - otherwise one would have to expand the definition to include the various gamestart scenarios, which customise the experience; likewise, then, the difficulty selection would also qualify as a "mod"; taken to its logical extreme, so would graphics and audio settings. I guess the lines are a bit blurry... I guess that I (admittedly arbitrarily) define anything that is in the official release and subsequent support, however tweakable, as "vanilla".

I would think of it more of a Civilizations 6, Master of Orion, pre-game seed generation option screen.
Before you start the game you choose how many ai factions you want in your game? the size of your map? To the harshness of Terrain?

Having a similar system to X4, from the aggression of Factions to how aggressive you want the Xenon and the Pirates to be? Would be a great edition to the Sandbox.
Everyone's image of their X Universe play-through is different.. I see what you've said, not as a mod but as catering to the tastes of the X Player.

Personally i'd love to see a slider in high aggression as i'd like to be kept constantly on my Toes to an ever changing climate of peace and war.

Heck you could even script in a 'safezones' option for those who want to build an empire in relative safety of being attacked so they can build their empire and massive fleets before deciding to move to a state of war.
Choose from the list of systems that you want to be always peaceful and start your campaign in those; set loose the dogs of war in the other systems.

[RAVEN.myst]

@spankahontis: Yes, I would very much like a 4X-style set of sliders in X4 (yes, it would be somehow "appropriate", name-wise ^^) - even despite some people's protestations that "this isn't a 4X game" - but sandboxes and 4Xs have a lot of overlap, actually... and there's no reason why their features should be mutually exclusive.

@sd_jasper: perhaps a way to balance repair cost against fun (or lack thereof) might be to have a checkbox on each capital ship's engineer's detail page (or equivalent) to allow/disallow automatic spending of credits. Sure, this would be a bit abstracted (ie. "how does the engineer magically convert the cash into materials etc?"), but I think it would be an adequate compromise. I agree that those repairs being free over time is rather "magical" already, too much so, while on the other hand, sending ships to shipyards to repair for some reason feels (to me) more awkward than in X3 (which I can't fully explain objectively) - so this may represent a convenient and viable middle ground.

Also, I think that shipyards ought to have separate construction and repair docks - much of the current awkwardness of shipyards stems from the fact that there is simply too much queuing going on even when they are fully stocked with materials. This would also provide the opportunity to even further enhance the looks of these structures that now look a lot more like what they represent, than they did in previous Xs, by adding additional, likely adjacent docks, perhaps a bit more open (ie. not completely surrounding the ship), but perhaps with some robotic arms or such.

[CorruptUser]

The X series has always been a 4X game in a first person point of view. Or, really, we all PLAYED them as a 4X game. Everyone would build an economic powerhouse with a fleet of traders and factories, conquering the economy, combat only existing to give us needed breaks.

[sd_jasper]

@sd_jasper: perhaps a way to balance repair cost against fun (or lack thereof) might be to have a checkbox on each capital ship's engineer's detail page (or equivalent) to allow/disallow automatic spending of credits. Sure, this would be a bit abstracted (ie. "how does the engineer magically convert the cash into materials etc?"), but I think it would be an adequate compromise. I agree that those repairs being free over time is rather "magical" already, too much so, while on the other hand, sending ships to shipyards to repair for some reason feels (to me) more awkward than in X3 (which I can't fully explain objectively) - so this may represent a convenient and viable middle ground.

After thinking about it a bit more, I thought one way this might work is if Construction/Repair Drones are REQUIRED and CONSUMABLE. This way the player could stock up with these drones in their favorite ships for capturing, then use them to repair the newly gained ship... but that they are used up after a certain amount of repairing.

This would also mean that a ship would have to be allowed to use repair drones on another ship (or that drone bays are no longer destroyable).

[RAVEN.myst]

The X series has always been a 4X game in a first person point of view. Or, really, we all PLAYED them as a 4X game. Everyone would build an economic powerhouse with a fleet of traders and factories, conquering the economy, combat only existing to give us needed breaks.

While I hesitate to use absolute terms such as "everyone", you've certainly described how *I* play these games

After thinking about it a bit more, I thought one way this might work is if Construction/Repair Drones are REQUIRED and CONSUMABLE. This way the player could stock up with these drones in their favorite ships for capturing, then use them to repair the newly gained ship... but that they are used up after a certain amount of repairing.

Oo, that's not bad - this eliminates a bit of the "cash-to-repairs magic" I mentioned. Another possible way might be (to borrow from another popular space-themed time-suc... I mean, game) to stock up on repair nanites, say in paste form or some similar bulk storage fashion. The bottom line is, it's certainly possible to combine the current convenience with the notion of repairs not being free.

[Morkonan]

....I would think of it more of a Civilizations 6, Master of Orion, pre-game seed generation option screen....
Having a similar system to X4, from the aggression of Factions to how aggressive you want the Xenon and the Pirates to be? Would be a great edition to the Sandbox....
Personally i'd love to see a slider in high aggression as i'd like to be kept constantly on my Toes to an ever changing climate of peace and war.
...

This is worth expanding on to tailor the ideas for such a campaign generator to the X games!

A really interesting, outside-of-the-box, idea you have, here.

This is something one finds in traditional 4x games. The X games are more of a "have an adventure in our sandbox universe" sort of game, where one is plopped down with a set of starting conditions that are centered on the player and what assets they have available to them. In previous versions, these sets of "generated options" were incorporated into "Starts."

"Starts" are, by and large, all about "roleplaying" opportunities. IMO, besides a set of starting conditions, they should be expanded by the addition of a tailored mission or two, just for that particular gamestart. That way, they're made even more unique. Perhaps a early-game mission, where the player can gain something of interest for that particular type of start, and a longer, late-game, mission, where the player does something that helps to "define" that game Start and helps to really flesh out its roleplaying opportunities. (Example: A "pirate" start would have an early mission to capture what will likely become the player's mid-game "pirate ship" and the late game mission would have the player become a "Pirate King" with a pirate base station. Merchant starts, military starts, etc, all would have similar missions associated with them.)

The reason I went into that was to set those aside as separate from your starting-conditions/options idea. Game "Starts" are extremely popular among players and much beloved generators of "After Action Reports/Fanfiction." So, whatever sort of extra starting setup that's proposed needs to preserve these and make them unique.

OK, how about taking your idea and turning it into a "Gamestart Generator?"

4X games tweak a lot of things, but some of those aren't sensible in an X Game. There's no terrain and there is no randomly generated universe engine to work with. Revamping the X game series to focus around "randomly generated universes" isn't possible. It's too much to ask. It would, perhaps, be desirable in an X6, perhaps, but not for now.

What conditions can we effect by choosing a game "Start?" What makes sense for a game "Start Generator" to tweak?

Ships - The player may have the option of a "point" system that determines their starting ships. In other words, the player doesn't know what they'll get, only that if they allocate more points, here, then they'll be more likely to get either one very expensive ship, partially outfitted, or several smaller ships, more fully outfitted.

Faction Reputation - The player can either start with a "default" set of reputation points or can use sliders to allocate these points among different factions in the game. Here, the player could, for instance, gain "Ally" status with ANY faction in the game. They could be allied with the Xenon, for instance... Or, they could be allied with no factions and hostile to all. They could max their reputation with Terra and be enemies will all other factions. Etc. Their starting rep with any faction will determine, of course, what assets they can have access to, where they can go, what they can buy from these factions, so it's pretty important in terms of one's starting capabilies.

Money - How much? We don't really know, but it's something that would have to be included. Whatever amount it would be, it would have to be the difference of just having enough to buy one's e-cells for the day or buy an entire cargo-hold full of microchips.


So, keeping in mind what unique Starts in the game actually do and what they have in them, what other "options" would make sense for the player to be able to control?

(Nice idea and it could be really interesting for players to be able to discuss/exchange their own unique set of starting conditions that take place in the same galaxy that everyone else plays in.)

[Nanook]

... Everyone would build an economic powerhouse with a fleet of traders and factories, conquering the economy, combat only existing to give us needed breaks.

No. While I have played that way, I've also had many a playthrough as a combat-oriented pilot, sometimes a good guy, sometimes not. I've also played as a 'scavenger', collecting and selling used ships, gathering loot from battlefields, etc., and never building a station. "Everyone" doesn't even come close to reality.

[spankahontis]

....I would think of it more of a Civilizations 6, Master of Orion, pre-game seed generation option screen....
Having a similar system to X4, from the aggression of Factions to how aggressive you want the Xenon and the Pirates to be? Would be a great edition to the Sandbox....
Personally i'd love to see a slider in high aggression as i'd like to be kept constantly on my Toes to an ever changing climate of peace and war.
...

This is worth expanding on to tailor the ideas for such a campaign generator to the X games!

A really interesting, outside-of-the-box, idea you have, here.

This is something one finds in traditional 4x games. The X games are more of a "have an adventure in our sandbox universe" sort of game, where one is plopped down with a set of starting conditions that are centered on the player and what assets they have available to them. In previous versions, these sets of "generated options" were incorporated into "Starts."

"Starts" are, by and large, all about "roleplaying" opportunities. IMO, besides a set of starting conditions, they should be expanded by the addition of a tailored mission or two, just for that particular gamestart. That way, they're made even more unique. Perhaps a early-game mission, where the player can gain something of interest for that particular type of start, and a longer, late-game, mission, where the player does something that helps to "define" that game Start and helps to really flesh out its roleplaying opportunities. (Example: A "pirate" start would have an early mission to capture what will likely become the player's mid-game "pirate ship" and the late game mission would have the player become a "Pirate King" with a pirate base station. Merchant starts, military starts, etc, all would have similar missions associated with them.)

The reason I went into that was to set those aside as separate from your starting-conditions/options idea. Game "Starts" are extremely popular among players and much beloved generators of "After Action Reports/Fanfiction." So, whatever sort of extra starting setup that's proposed needs to preserve these and make them unique.

OK, how about taking your idea and turning it into a "Gamestart Generator?"

4X games tweak a lot of things, but some of those aren't sensible in an X Game. There's no terrain and there is no randomly generated universe engine to work with. Revamping the X game series to focus around "randomly generated universes" isn't possible. It's too much to ask. It would, perhaps, be desirable in an X6, perhaps, but not for now.

What conditions can we effect by choosing a game "Start?" What makes sense for a game "Start Generator" to tweak?

Ships - The player may have the option of a "point" system that determines their starting ships. In other words, the player doesn't know what they'll get, only that if they allocate more points, here, then they'll be more likely to get either one very expensive ship, partially outfitted, or several smaller ships, more fully outfitted.

Faction Reputation - The player can either start with a "default" set of reputation points or can use sliders to allocate these points among different factions in the game. Here, the player could, for instance, gain "Ally" status with ANY faction in the game. They could be allied with the Xenon, for instance... Or, they could be allied with no factions and hostile to all. They could max their reputation with Terra and be enemies will all other factions. Etc. Their starting rep with any faction will determine, of course, what assets they can have access to, where they can go, what they can buy from these factions, so it's pretty important in terms of one's starting capabilies.

Money - How much? We don't really know, but it's something that would have to be included. Whatever amount it would be, it would have to be the difference of just having enough to buy one's e-cells for the day or buy an entire cargo-hold full of microchips.


So, keeping in mind what unique Starts in the game actually do and what they have in them, what other "options" would make sense for the player to be able to control?

(Nice idea and it could be really interesting for players to be able to discuss/exchange their own unique set of starting conditions that take place in the same galaxy that everyone else plays in.)

Of Course, X-4 games are entirely different to a space simulator.

But i'm thinking more of catering to specific X-Universe fans preferences.
- Some want an aggressive 'Hard' experience to combat, others want to be let in gently.
- Some might want to start in a safe area of space before getting stuck in with fleets and pirate battles, again others might want a war torn universe to scrimp in to achieve greatness.
- Pirate players might want to ease in, others might want to be fleeing sirens right from the start?
- You might want to live under constant threat of Pirate or Xenon attack, others might want only a small presence.

The idea is to create a Sandbox experience of the players choice right from the start. A more advanced difficulty settings option so to speak with a ton of separate choices to add spice to your game.
Even a "silence all NPC's" slider.
Something i've seen done really real well in X-4 style games.

You get this in a way with Custom game starts in all X titles.
But it covers only the persona of who you want to portray with a different number of ships per choice of character.

[Falcrack]

The best I can come up with to prevent a race from being completely annihilated is to create a homefield advantage of some form. I'm thinking that core sectors have HEAVILY fortified gates. Not the joke of orbital defense stations from X3AP that were just an M7 without engines, but something that would scare a fleet. It would double as a reason for players to create massive fleets, perhaps with missions involving a race asking for the player's support in an offensive.

No need for a home field advantage. One mechanic which would help to ensure balance is creating a threat level for each race. As they grow more powerful, the other factions increasingly turn their attention to the more powerful faction, until the more powerful faction is brought down to size again. It would be a positive feedback mechanism, to self-regulate the size and power of each faction.

[RodentofDoom]

Also, I think that shipyards ought to have separate construction and repair docks.

I like this.

No need for a home field advantage. One mechanic which would help to ensure balance is creating a threat level for each race. As they grow more powerful, the other factions increasingly turn their attention to the more powerful faction, until the more powerful faction is brought down to size again. It would be a positive feedback mechanism, to self-regulate the size and power of each faction.

This is fairly elegant as a concept too, retains dynanism and hopefully would prevent stagnation or npc dysfunctionality.

[vadiolive]

I still believe in 3 layer of war

1 - Race war
2 - Corporation War
3 - Freelancer acts

[RAVEN.myst]

One mechanic which would help to ensure balance is creating a threat level for each race. As they grow more powerful, the other factions increasingly turn their attention to the more powerful faction, until the more powerful faction is brought down to size again. It would be a positive feedback mechanism, to self-regulate the size and power of each faction.

I like this. Between this self-regulating feedback loop and (just to be extra sure) some sort of "elastically centering" strength affected by distance from home approach, the races could be kept in equilibrium even while not suppressing major conflagrations. There is, however, still at least one way for it to go 'boing' - given that the economies are being touted as being more "realistic" or what-not, it could still be possible for a faction's back to be broken beyond its ability to right itself without some deus ex machina intervention. However, I don't see this *necessarily* as a problem: such an event would likely be rare, and thus would result in a fairly unique subsequent game experience; thereafter the player could ignore that situation, or capitalise on it, or seek to help out in an effort to rescue that faction. Personally, I think this could lead to some interesting emergent developments.

[Beermachine]

A truly dynamic warring X universe with a good strategic AI layer for me would be fantastic.

As for placing artificial limits on the ability of a race to expand beyond a certain point, this seems to me to ruin the whole point of a truly dynamic universe. It would be dynamic up to a point and then become fairly static and lifeless.

Take the hugely successful Mount and Blade series. Factions can be destroyed with no player interaction. Each game is truly dynamic and completely unique. The end game often boils down to supporting the random strongest faction, maintaining a status quo by defending the weakest, or striking out with your own faction. It truly gives the impression of being part of a living world, one where events continue without the player. Unlike most games where nothing meaningful happens without the "hero" player being at the heart of the changes or by predetermined scripts (which become predictable).

The same could apply to X games. Obviously like mount and blade it would have to be a slow process, so the player has time to build up a fleet / wealth to have an impact on the game world before it evolves too much (a story line trigger could also be used, like the dissolution of an intergalactic peace treaty). There would also have to be numerous way to affect the outcome of wars, besides just direct fleet involvement. Supporting a races ship building efforts with masses of stations could be one such way for players who want to remain more neutral, or sponsoring pirates against factions. This adds an incentive to the late game, don't want to see a faction get wiped out and lose access to their ships / equipment, better support them either directly or indirectly before it's too late.

Personally I find it much more enjoyable having to react to the unknown circumstances of a truly dynamic sandbox than a static one, or dynamic to a certain point and then static / predictable.

[Falcrack]

Another way to limit factions being wiped out is for NPC factions to simply not attempt to completely wipe out a race. They will not declare wars or try to gain territory from factions which are too small, a relatively powerless rump state. They could also be coded as to not take over the home sectors of each race. Think of it as being a gentleman's agreement. If the player wipes out a race completely, then the diplomatic penalty could be for all races to align themselves against the player, as penalty for breaking this taboo.