Space 4X Conventions

[Ventessel]

I wanted to start a little debate on a few design conventions that crop up over and over again in 4X games, and see what people thought were the pros and cons of each.

First, starlanes. We saw them appear in Master of Orion 3 (was this the first appearance? I don't remember exactly, but I knew that the first two MoO games didn't use them), they were used again in the MoO reboot, and they will be featuring prominently once again in Endless Space 2 this year.

Personally, I feel that they might appear to give the map structure and form (which can be generally lacking in space games) but at the same time they impose very rigid constraints on movement and make invasions something of a bore.

Second, is the representation of star systems. At one extreme you have games like Master of Orion and Sword of the Stars where each system has exactly one significant planet. The upside is that it's easy to keep track of and doesn't require a ton of zooming into a smaller view. The downside of course seems to be that there isn't a lot of diversity in star systems.

The other extreme is a detailed tactical representation as seen in Space Empires 4/5, and more recently in Stellaris. Master of Orion 2/3 sit somewhere in the middle, where ships can freely transit between orbits within a system. Part of me really likes the exact representation of objects in the system, but at the same time it does seem to introduce sometimes needless micro into the game and can make tactical combat a little silly (looking at you, Stellaris).

Thoughts?

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

in moo3's late game you can travel without lanes, and about as fast. they're used to help shape borders but then nobody's safe.
also moo3 has multiple planets and moons per system with several possible modifiers.

you people keep bashing it, yet it has everything you ask for.

 

[laclongquan]

Star lanes based on some SF convention which is a shortcut to move between stars, either wormhole method or some similar constructs.

With star lanes you can have some strategy and tactic going for you, like fortify crossroads for examples.

Without it, you might as well assemble the stack of doom and move to your desired target system.

 

[Jeff Graw]

Without it, you might as well assemble the stack of doom and move to your desired target system.

Or you have terrain that accomplishes similar goals without the downsides of star lanes. Impassable terrain features, slow areas, stealth zones, the occasional wormhole, etc.

 

[Norfleet]

The thing is, if you clutter space with that much stuff, it ceases to be SPACE.

 

[laclongquan]

If you use star lanes, your map can be considered 3D with only a slight squint.

No star lanes? It's freaking 2D.

That's the second strategic consideration.

 

[Raapys]

I think starlanes work very well in MoO3 for creating strategic bottlenecks. However, it wouldn't work as well in any other 4x. In MoO3, the wars are wars of attrition, with a single star system being fought over for dozens of turns. You can win 50 battles in a row and still lose the war. In other 4x games, empires clash in one big battle between the two main fleets, then spend the next dozens of turns just invading/bombing colonies.

 

[Beowulf]

If you use star lanes, your map can be considered 3D with only a slight squint.

No star lanes? It's freaking 2D.

That's the second strategic consideration.

 

[Ventessel]

Has any game made realistic starlanes? I mean, you MAKE the star lanes by sending a stargate the slow way or something, or at least through slower FTL.

I can totally see it - you're doing whatever and then suddently a stargate escorted by a huge fleet going STL shows up. You have no fleets nearby so next turn they open it up and start sending all the enemy fleet.

That would be cool, and I think it would also address the main thing that bothers me about starlanes in most games, which is that they don't really make sense.

On the one hand, there are obviously somewhat predictable approach vectors for any two stellar objects, so it does make sense that there is a "best" route between two points (especially within a star system when you account for gravitational potential) but the part that really irritates me about most games' implementation is that there are arbitrary connections and you can ONLY follow those ones, instead of moving between adjacent systems more organically.

 

[MilesBeyond]

Thing about space 4Xs is that it's such a broad setting that you really need to choose a few aspects of it to focus on and do well. I guess if a company had an unlimited budget and unlimited amount of time they could make a space 4X that's great in every aspect, but...

Take a game like MoO. IMHO the focus there is on shipbuilding and combat. That's the meat of the game, that everything else more or less exists to serve. This is why, even though I prefer 2 to 1, I do think the second one suffered from the Civ-style colonies. Colonial management isn't really a strength or a focus or an exciting part of the MoO franchise, and by making it a lot more detailed, you're theoretically increasing the strategic complexity but in reality just pulling people away from the really good parts of the game.

Now take a game like Stellaris: Very much focused on the exploration and expansion end of things.

My point is that whether a convention is helpful or not depends on the type of space 4X you're trying to make. For example, in a game like MoO where colonial management isn't really the best part of the game, the one-planet-per-system convention is a pro, while the multiple-planets-per-system is a con. Meanwhile, in Stellaris, the reverse is true - each system has a lot of different possibilities, and that's a crucial part of the game's fun.

Also the more I think about it, the more I feel like objectively, MoO 1 may have been a better game than MoO 2. And yet I prefer MoO 2 by a landslide. Weird, huh?

 

[Raapys]

Not really. From where I'm standing at least, MoO2 has the best production values of all 4x games; great artwork, music and sound. It's pretty much perfect in that regard. And with the help of that, it also ends up having the best combat of any 4x(at least until fleets get absurdly big).

I prefer to play MoO1 though. Partially because I've played too much MoO2, and partially because it's faster and less micromanagey, making it less of an investment to just sit down with and enjoy for a couple of hours.

 

[Jeff Graw]

Not really. From where I'm standing at least, MoO2 has the best production values of all 4x games; great artwork, music and sound. It's pretty much perfect in that regard. And with the help of that, it also ends up having the best combat of any 4x(at least until fleets get absurdly big).

I prefer to play MoO1 though. Partially because I've played too much MoO2, and partially because it's faster and less micromanagey, making it less of an investment to just sit down with and enjoy for a couple of hours.

I agree with all of that (my opinion is that MoO 1 is a better designed 4X, while MoO 2 is the better overall game), although from what I've seen it's possible ES2 will finally dethrone MoO 2 as the space 4X with the best production values.

If you enjoy MoO 1 so much, you should participate in the Dominus Galaxia beta. PM me if you're interested.

 

[Norfleet]

Has any game made realistic starlanes? I mean, you MAKE the star lanes by sending a stargate the slow way or something, or at least through slower FTL.

I can totally see it - you're doing whatever and then suddently a stargate escorted by a huge fleet going STL shows up. You have no fleets nearby so next turn they open it up and start sending all the enemy fleet.

That's the Hiver method from Sword of Stars. But suffice it to say, anything showing up STL is not going to "suddenly" show, so the situation you describe never happens. Slowboating is very much the opposite of "sudden", and there ain't no stealth in space. Shitpiles of torch drives burning are going to be visible from a long ways off, and there's no way to hide this.

 

[Norfleet]

Not really. From where I'm standing at least, MoO2 has the best production values of all 4x games; great artwork, music and sound. It's pretty much perfect in that regard. And with the help of that, it also ends up having the best combat of any 4x(at least until fleets get absurdly big).

I can't think of any situation in MOO2 where your own fleet got "absurdly big". Enemy fleets could get absurdly big, but that just meant AWESOME 300-ship chain explosions in round 1.

 

[Ventessel]

That's the Hiver method from Sword of Stars. But suffice it to say, anything showing up STL is not going to "suddenly" show, so the situation you describe never happens. Slowboating is very much the opposite of "sudden", and there ain't no stealth in space. Shitpiles of torch drives burning are going to be visible from a long ways off, and there's no way to hide this.

Assuming you burn the drives all the way in. Space isn't really as empty as you'd think. A lot of stuff can be tough to detect and if you chose a good approach that had background radiation and cut your drives halfway through the journey so you coasted in, I think there are options for both passive and active stealth measures in space.

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[Destroid]

Why most 4X is always space opera?

I would love to see something less like space opera and more like, say, Hearts of Iron/Victoria with a space map. More mundane, hard sci-fi. Say, start in 2050 or something, administer your nation dealing with the problems of the time, research tech, deal with foreign affairs, politics, etc. The big aim, of course, is to get your country ready to get a sweet space program going on. Build a moonbase, a big orbital station, space docks, colonize the planets and asteroids of the solar system, obtain resources from Earth and space, fight space battles with Realistic (TM) tech, terraform planets, etc.

Play Aurora.

 

[Arrowgrab]

Has any game made realistic starlanes? I mean, you MAKE the star lanes by sending a stargate the slow way or something, or at least through slower FTL.

I can totally see it - you're doing whatever and then suddently a stargate escorted by a huge fleet going STL shows up. You have no fleets nearby so next turn they open it up and start sending all the enemy fleet.

That's the Hiver method from Sword of Stars. But suffice it to say, anything showing up STL is not going to "suddenly" show, so the situation you describe never happens. Slowboating is very much the opposite of "sudden", and there ain't no stealth in space. Shitpiles of torch drives burning are going to be visible from a long ways off, and there's no way to hide this.

Hivers FTL is not quite like starlanes, since there are no lanes involved. Once set up, any stargate can send ships to any other stargate. The Zuul would be more like described, they have a STL ship that creates a lane as it goes along, and once it reaches all the way to the destinations, other ships can travel down it at high FTL (but not instant) speeds, and like a proper lane it only takes you that place, not anywhere. It's also unstable and needs regular "dredging" by the same type of shit lest it collapses.

 

[Norfleet]

Assuming you burn the drives all the way in. Space isn't really as empty as you'd think. A lot of stuff can be tough to detect and if you chose a good approach that had background radiation and cut your drives halfway through the journey so you coasted in, I think there are options for both passive and active stealth measures in space.

If you're not burning the drives as you approach, you're burning them either A: As you leave, which means that you have a giant fusion torch blasting, or worse, and this is going to be REALLY obvious to anyone looking. Even if they don't notice that... B: How do you STOP? Is your plan simply to slam into the planet as a kinetic weapon? This isn't a ship. At some point you have to perform just as dramatic a burn to STOP as you did to get started, and if neither of these events was particularly dramatic...well, then, see you in a few thousand years.

Why space 4X always has to have space battles? Why not... space boardings?

Because it's impossible to board an enemy ship that isn't disabled and doesn't want you to board them, unless you can teleport over there like Star Trek. Any attempt to board a mobile enemy craft that is actively resisting boarding results in you colliding at decidedly unsafe speeds or shooting off into space on a wild miss. So if you want to board someone who won't cooperate, you have to either magically teleport onto their ship, or make them stop moving by shooting off all their engines.

- Instead, hostilities are solved by space ground combat. One ship sends dropships to the other full of soldiers, they fight to take over the ship and get the crew to surrender. Probably done by super-soldiers espartiers with some robots involved.

Again: See the obvious impossibility of boarding anything that doesn't want to be boarded.

- What happens when there's someone else out there NOT stuffing demons in bottles to get FTL?

Either they're absolutely horrified you would do such a thing and insist that you stop, or they don't KNOW that you would do such a horrifyingly stupid thing and blow you to bits thinking this is a perfectly safe thing to do, and hilarity ensues.

 

[rezaf]

Assuming you burn the drives all the way in. Space isn't really as empty as you'd think. A lot of stuff can be tough to detect and if you chose a good approach that had background radiation and cut your drives halfway through the journey so you coasted in, I think there are options for both passive and active stealth measures in space.

If you're not burning the drives as you approach, you're burning them either A: As you leave, which means that you have a giant fusion torch blasting, or worse, and this is going to be REALLY obvious to anyone looking. Even if they don't notice that... B: How do you STOP? Is your plan simply to slam into the planet as a kinetic weapon? This isn't a ship. At some point you have to perform just as dramatic a burn to STOP as you did to get started, and if neither of these events was particularly dramatic...well, then, see you in a few thousand years.

Just curious, but are you guys talking in strictly realistic terms or keeping 4x conventions in mind. Because while I'd imagine burning those engines to get the ships to FTL speed would make quite the fuzz, I'm not sure what good it'll do someone watching this years later, when said ships have long reached their destination.

 

[coldcrow]

For once I have to fully agree with Norfleet. The worst convention in 99% of sci-fi is improper treatment of movement in space. Multiple or lack of gravitational influences, no fixed plane in a constant gravity environment to relate your position to leads to huge difficulties in navigation. Navigating towards objects with static vectors is one thing, but once they move, it's just impossible.

 

[Ventessel]

For once I have to fully agree with Norfleet. The worst convention in 99% of sci-fi is improper treatment of movement in space. Multiple or lack of gravitational influences, no fixed plane in a constant gravity environment to relate your position to leads to huge difficulties in navigation. Navigating towards objects with static vectors is one thing, but once they move, it's just impossible.

I don't think it would be that big of an issue. Not to say it wouldn't be more difficult than terrestrial navigation but to say it's impossible is a bit silly.

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[Severian Silk]

Why space 4X always has to have space battles? Why not... space boardings?

Because it's impossible to board an enemy ship that isn't disabled and doesn't want you to board them, unless you can teleport over there like Star Trek. Any attempt to board a mobile enemy craft that is actively resisting boarding results in you colliding at decidedly unsafe speeds or shooting off into space on a wild miss. So if you want to board someone who won't cooperate, you have to either magically teleport onto their ship, or make them stop moving by shooting off all their engines.

The TV show The Expanse has space boardings in the beginning, doesn't it?

 

[RhodokMasterRaceOfficial]

The Donager was basically disabled at that point. The boarding in Season 2 was against a space station.

Play Aurora.

I dunno if Aurora really offers what he's looking for. It could, but he'd have to play a multifaction start on the same world. One of those with NPRs (because I can't for the life of me play multiple factions at once) would be !!!FUN!!! to say the least.

 

[Norfleet]

Navigating towards objects with static vectors is one thing, but once they move, it's just impossible.

And it's not just the movement, either. It's the frighteningly FAST and ABRUPT way in which they can move. You ever notice how there are no boarding actions against airplanes? Nobody ever attempts to board another airplane in flight, ESPECIALLY not one that is actively attempting to resist being boarded. This is because airplanes move at frighteningly fast speeds and if they're able to still move to try to throw you off, the attempt will end in a collision or you being violently thrown from the plane. Now imagine that you're trying this at orbital velocities with rocket thrusts. When you're dealing with thrusters capable of generating enough force to turn walls into floors, there's no way you're getting onto that no matter HOW good a rodeo clown you are.

There's also the fundamental futility of resistance in such a situation. If you ARE in a position where all your engines have been shot off and you are dead in space, not cooperating at this point means that you either blow yourself up with whatever thing you can blow yourself up with, or the enemy just has to wait for you to die. You're not able to go anywhere anymore, after all. Your options at that point are to either just surrender or for him to wait for you to simply die off on your own, there's no need for him to risk his own life to come over and kill you. Want to take over a ship the easy way? Just shoot off their life support radiators and they will all die.

 

[RhodokMasterRaceOfficial]

The main reason you'd want to board a ship is less about capturing the ships and more about capturing things the ships have on them. Such as the ship's CIC (which is a huge win if you get it) or any high ranking officers on-board.

There's also the case for law enforcement agencies having a marine corps to board criminal ships that are carrying hostages, because if you want to rescue them you can't just let them die from heat after blowing off the radiators.