Ventessel
Literate
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2017
- Messages
- 36
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?
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?