One thing that has become clear recently is that Beta 6 will not be the same game at all; while Beta 5 was already very far from Beta 4, it still amounted to the same principles: build factories, research technologies, build more ships than your neighbour and then bomb him back to the stone age. Which is basically one big pissing contest. We are going to try and avoid that.
How, you say?…
The first thing is to make the new version about choices. Beta 5 was quite limited on this point – sure, you could choose to enact a law, or not, and you could decide to follow one strategy or another, that is either “fact-whoring” or “pop-whoring”. But that is far from enough.
One thing you should know about Beta 6 is that the amount of planets you’ll be controlling will be massive when compared to Beta 5 – probably up to a hundred, if not more, planets. You’ll also get to control star systems, not just because they contain planets, but as separate entities. There is already quite a variety of buildings, space stations and starbases available, and we are still in the process of adding more.
Technologies will change quite a bit as well. At the moment, a rough estimate would be around 600 or 700 technologies – we tried to write a list of technology categories, but stopped at 40 because we didn’t have all the elements. Some of these categories were quite generic, for example “Weapons” which we know will include at least 36 technologies.
Laws will work in a completely different way. In general, you’ll get to choose laws on a per-planet basis, and will have the choice between different options in different “classes” of regulations. The set of laws you enact will affect the direction your empire follows as a whole – which brings us to alignment.
Alignment describes the way your empire behaves in different domains, for example its attitude towards the different species that inhabit the planets it manages, or its attitude towards ecology … While this may seem trivial, being in an alignment or another will give you the ability to access completely separate branches of the tech graph, and more importantly, will allow you to reach an “achievement” in one of these alignments.
One of the problems we had with Beta 5 was the fact that money tended to accumulate, and “big” players would no longer find a way to use it. Well, Beta 6 will provide plenty of remedies to this. Many of the actions you’ll be able to perform will cost quite a bit of money; in addition, the fact that there are now 3 categories of weapons, which can only be blocked by a specific type of defense, will require you to adapt constantly to your enemy’s strategy when fighting a war … But then he might adapt to it … And you’ll need to adapt again … And so on.
Well, that’s all for now. Don’t expect us to post too often in here, but it will definitely happen on a regular basis.
Cheers,
TSeeker
I see so much potential for these changes! What I do fear, though, is the sheer activity that will be necessary to upkeep an empire of this scale.
Yes – that’s why the new version will allow you to automate most things except attacks.
That’s an issue we’ve been discussing a lot. We’re trying to define target audience in terms of activity and commitment in order to have a rough scale to compare with when we’ll reach the testing stage.
What we have in mind is about 2h in a row at evenings for casual players, with a possibility for more fine grain management for hardcore players.
2hours can really be a strain too, though. I know now that I’m more focused on my school work, I’ve had far less time to play. At times I can do the 2 hours or more, but other times I’m lucky if I get 15 minutes.
2h is a rough estimate. If we can make it you can live your life in game without getting online that long, we’ll do. The thing is, you might just “survive” and not get into the top ranks.
well, with minimal activity you shouldn’t be in the top ranks. It just wouldn’t make sense.
^^ Exactly. On the other hand, you shouldn’t be punished because you can’t spend your life in front of it.
Of course but you shouldn’t be too easily crushed either otherwise you lose interest in playing. In most games it’s the main problem: casual users are the easy targets of hardcore players and quit because they’re tired of restarting every two weeks. We intend to try and limit that.
The one problem with options is overloading the player with options. If I remember correctly, I read there was a study on companies offering pension plans. The companies that offered 10+ plans had about 50-60% people signing up for them, the companies that only offered 2 planets had about 70-80% people signing up for them.
In the same way, offering too many options without explaining them well will only bog down the player in information they can’t handle, and will lower the quality of the game. However, in games if you only have 2 options it will be very dull.
Quick correction, the companies were only offering 2 plans, not planets.
That’s wy we intend to set up:
1. scripting abilities which allow you to do the same things in batches in the same trend as the quick builder we have in Beta 5
2. adaptive help which at first makes suggestions when something new appears and progressively disappears when you’ve seen something several times already.
3. a progressive game where all features aren’t available at once but get available thanks to new technologies as you progress in the game. For instance you don’t know of terraforming possibilities until you get your first terraforming technology. When you get it you’re advanced enough in the game to have mastered other aspects.
I think I should explain a bit more.
I’m a new player, new to the game completely. B6 has been out for 3-4 months, and the best build orders have been found. Now I join a good alliance, and they provide me with a list of what to do with each planet. On that list it would give a step-by-step list of instructions on what to do with the planet. It would mention what technology to use, where to get technologies/how to get them, when to build certain things etc.
In effect, a step-by-step process to getting a kickstart, optimal builds, etc. It wouldn’t really matter fi you’re a newbie or not, the builds would be able to tell you what to do from any level.
question about the scripts (yes, I’m sure you’ll throw in a post about it later on somewhere, but I’m curious now
).
Will you be able to set aliases for the scripts so that instead of having to write out the whole script each time, you could just type in that one word?
Oh, and when you do make a blog about scriptable fleets, if you do, please remind me that I had something to say about buttons.
What we call “scripting” is actually not writing code – this would be a bit of a huge requirement for players. It would be more like an interface in which you specify conditions and reactions to these conditions, something visual anyways.
In any case, yes, you should be able to store some of these behaviours, and switch them at will.
It’s always like that. There are always kick start guides and such around each game. And I doubt we could ever prevent that.
However in Beta 5 we can already see several apparently successful strategies: rape your planets and move often or take good care of your planets and stay where you are. Given the amount of possibilities brought by Beta 6 I doubt there will ever be one single successful strategy. Moreover the differences between stellar systems should make it so that what is successful for player A might not be as good for player B.
The different sized planets should also work to prevent that.
That’s one of the elements I hid behind the “differences between stellar systems”, Cyliis.
I just want to throw a quick question out there, why do i have to wait so long to play this game. Here you get me all excited about all these things to come, and then you tell me i have to wait. ITS NOT FAIR! You guys should be working on this game every second of the day, forget about work, forget about family, forget about life in general, and just make this for me!
Heh-em… sorry about the random outburst, but this is going to a great game… I shouldn’t be so impatient, I mean, with how hard you’re working, i know this should be out in a few days, right?
Unfortunately not
It is still in the design phase …
So, speed it up!!
Speeding up is easier said than done
We all have a life out of LW and can’t spend as much time on it as one would like to. Moreover we don’t have enough people with development skills. Find us developers ready to code for free and we might speed up 
Lol, I’ll work on that…:)