New 4x Space Strategy: Aphelion Phoenix Rising

gorgse · May 8, 2009

Update: As a small developer we are trying as many ways as possible to gain recognition and hopefully a publisher. An unique opportunity has recently appeared in the 2009 Intel level-up game demo Contest. Winning this contest would go along ways to gaining a publisher for our game, as some of the judges for this contest are: Sid Meier (Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, Pirates), Will Wright (Spore, Sims, Sim City), and Brad Wardell (Galactic Civilizations, Sins of a Solar Empire). Winners of any of the categories get a invite to the 2009 and 2010 Game developers Conferences to pitch their game.

Contest site: http://software.intel.com/en-us/contest ... yid=132353

Since i've recieved feedback that the intel site is hard to navigate, i'm adding a link for the registration.
http://software.intel.com/en-us/article ... in-id-faq/

Please take a moment of your time and register and vote for our game. All votes will be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time and have a great day.

Hey we are a independent developer making a new 4x space stategy game I believe everyone here would be interested in. Here is the lowdown on our game:

Aphelion is a 4X(eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate) turn based strategy based on a distant future. It features six distinct alien factions, pitted in a desperate battle for control of the galaxy. You can chose from six unique empires, each with their own distinct technologies, ships, units, strengths, and weaknesses. There are over 240 unique ships in the game. The game stays true to a pure turn based approach in all aspects, preventing the it from degrading into a reaction time based click fest when large forces meet. We use an unified system model, instead of managing each planet separately. This will help limit late game creep and keep micromanagement in check.. The game features a circular galaxy which has no corners and a black hole in the center. This will increase strategy, as player's can't hole up in the safety of corners, and results in more equal starting position for all.

Aphelion: Phoenix Rising features:
Engaging and complex storyline which unfolds as the game progresses.

Dynamic technology trees specific to your race that change every game for greater replayability.

Six distinct civilizations, complete with their own look, units, technology, and strategies.

Dynamic diplomacy systems, alloying the forging of alliances along with many other forms of treaties such as trade, friendship, war pacts and non-aggression treaties.

Engaging espionage system in which you can assassinate, sabotage, spy, and frame your enemy. This system is complete with repercussion in the event of disclosure of deeds.

Spectacular 3-D space battles in which the outcome can change in a second due to a reactor going critical, or a boarding party forcing their way to the ship's bridge.

We are a small developer, but that does not mean that we do not have big dreams. In order to get noticed, we need to make some noise in the game world. Please help by visiting our page on Gamespot so that we can be seen and attract the attention of a publisher. Thank you for you time, and feel free to visit our website or forums if you have more questions.

Gamespot page:
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/aph ... mary;title

http://wyvernstudios.net/

Jared O'Connor

Damned Registrations · May 9, 2009

Saw some promising screenshots in there. Lack of custom ships makes me sad, but if the races are differentiated enough I won't mind. The artifact found event thing looked interesting.

Nothing really impressive in and of itself though. Seems like a fairly solid Civ ripoff set in space. Hard to say much else about it without knowing anything about the depth of the tech trees or how war works.

gorgse · May 9, 2009

actually, we have verry little in common with Civ. But I did like the civ series alot. We were more influenced by Masters of Orion series (not 3 though) and game Birth of federation. There is much in our game that no one has tried before. such as the deverging tech tree. If you go one way, you can't research the other. To give you a better idea on the tech trees: There are 6 branches and they are 16 levels deep right now and are 3 wide, so about 260-280 tech per faction. Balancing will be kinda a headache... but i think its worth it.

Jason · May 9, 2009

Wow, we first posted about this two and a half years ago. Glad to see it's not dead. You might want to update the site, though.

Raapys · May 9, 2009

Looks rather neat, especially if you can really come through with 6 truly distinct civs. Just hope you don't make it too simple, like some other new 4x games( Sword of the Stars, GalCiv ).

How about ship design, do you plan to implement that? Or will new ships just automatically upgrade to the newest and best weapon(s) and equipment?

Jeff Graw · May 9, 2009

gorgse said:
We were more influenced by Masters of Orion series (not 3 though) and game Birth of federation.

That sounds good. MoO 1 was, in terms of pure design, the best 4X game ever made -- very deep yet exquisitely streamlined. MoO 2 and BoTF had some awesome ideas, but as a whole fell apart due to lack of balance and too much much micromanagement. I've never seen as many good ideas and crappy execution in any game as much as BoTF. What are your thoughts on Sword of The Stars. With the latest expansions it does a lot of things right (can't wait until I can play SoTS with a 3D-display), but the lack of risk taking leaves things feeling a bit bland for me. Also, skill testing question: Galciv 2,
Space Empires, and SoaSE?

gorgse · May 9, 2009

Jeff, I felt Sword of the stars was quite decent game, but for some reason it never seem to pull me in. Botf, thoug with all its probs, pulled me in alot better(especially in multiplayer)

Raspys,
We decided that because there were so many single distinct ships(240+) that customizing them was out. Pretty much you can customize by which research branch you take, there are alot of "either or" branches so you can play one way one game and another the next game. And yes u'll have some techs that upgrade ships, we havn't decided how we'll make that work, waiting to iron that out in beta. Either it will be to where all existing ships are upgraded or all ships from that point on are. Another interesting fact, when you research a ship class it cost resources, when the research is 3/4ths done, you get a protoype. If it is lost in combat, you must reinvest your resources and start near the middle again.

Baby arm, yes amoung other things we do need to update our website, that will be happening soon.

Damned Registrations · May 9, 2009

Well, now that I know you'll actually reply and aren't a spam bot, I get to assault you with questions. :twisted:

You might want to change the way screenshots are displayed on your site. Having to page through one by one is rather annoying. Is there a picture of the tech tree/research screen in there somewhere?

And when you say either/or branches, you mean the other branch is cut off for that game once you proceed, or that you simply don't need it to proceed?

The prototype thing sounds cool, especially if there is a way to find out where it is in an enemy empire through spying to attack it on purpose.

How is ship building tech split up? Are say, fighters and giant battleships on completely separate branches, or will every branch have a bit of every kind of ship? Or are there even significantly different classes of ships (Say, at least 10:1 ratio of production cost even at a similiar tech level)

On a similar vein, how do numbers play into this? Will you be able to produce hundreds of fighters per turn in the lategame, or does production ability not improve that much/costs scale up so your fleet always consists of say, under 100 ships.

How does conquest work? Do you need to burn the enemy base to the ground and resettle from scratch or can you capture? If you can capture, do you need special units or troops to do it? What do you gain from the capture aside from the territory itself, if anything (techs, infrastructure, resources)?

Will this be fairly easy to mod so people can set up their own races/ships/techs?

gorgse · May 9, 2009

no one said i'd Reply...

boy you asked some hard ones.. on the "either or" question, they branch out and then return back into the tech chain, in the naval chain they will allow you to have a certain set of ships, These ships will naturaly have a bonus verses 1 of your swarn enemies. There are several times it does this in the naval tech chain so if you can tailor your navy in the future a differernt direction later if you wish. on the other branches it could be the differnce between getting a terraformation tech vs a tech that increases your internal intelligence. By they way, you can do bad things to your own people to make them work harder (as long as your successful at covering it up).

yes it is possible to use your spys to uncover the protoype and destroy it, though u would proalby not know if it was a normal ship or a prototype, but if you know the game well enough you might guess that that ship was quite advanced an proalby a prototype.

The naval branch is fairly large, but there isn't seperate branches for fighters and then naval ships, its a bit of everything, and you don't know where they will be because the branches are made randomly each game. u'll have a good idea of what level they are but not what tech leads to the next tech.

Production does scale up as your able to have more sytems and therefor more shipyard. Ship production isn't speed up through building up a huge industry, it all about resources. Shipyard have a default build rate( you can build several levels that increase their speed, or techs) what limits you is your ability to mine alloys and raise gold. Also your empire must be large enough to support your navy.

Conquest simular to Fed, when you take over a system the inhabitants join you, but any race specific building are destroyed since each race has their own. Base bulding such as farms, foundries, factories and research labs stay. To capture you just need to overwelm the systems defences in a ground battle. We haven't decided but we may add a modifyer that if the planet you conquested is more advanced than you, you have a certain chance of gaining a one time reasearch point bonus.

Unfortunately our resources are limited, so it is unlikely at this time that our game will be easy to mod, we hope to add that in the future though.

Jeff Graw · May 9, 2009

gorgse said:
Jeff, I felt Sword of the stars was quite decent game, but for some reason it never seem to pull me in. Botf, thoug with all its probs, pulled me in alot better(especially in multiplayer)

Oh, BoTF has way more personality than SoTS for sure. And in the rare case where it actually works (both balance and stability wise) it can be marvelously fun, especially in multiplayer. The only problem is that the game is so obviously broken that much of the time it has you cursing and pulling out hairs. SoTS doesen't have the same highs as BoTF because it's basically soulless, but avoids the more common (for me at least) lows of BoTF through generally better design (2nd to MoO 1, in my opinion).

gorgse said:
no one said i'd Reply...
boy you asked some hard ones.. on the "either or" question, they branch out and then return back into the tech chain, in the naval chain they will allow you to have a certain set of ships, These ships will naturaly have a bonus verses 1 of your swarn enemies. There are several times it does this in the naval tech chain so if you can tailor your navy in the future a differernt direction later if you wish. on the other branches it could be the differnce between getting a terraformation tech vs a tech that increases your internal intelligence. By they way, you can do bad things to your own people to make them work harder (as long as your successful at covering it up).

yes it is possible to use your spys to uncover the protoype and destroy it, though u would proalby not know if it was a normal ship or a prototype, but if you know the game well enough you might guess that that ship was quite advanced an proalby a prototype.

The naval branch is fairly large, but there isn't seperate branches for fighters and then naval ships, its a bit of everything, and you don't know where they will be because the branches are made randomly each game. u'll have a good idea of what level they are but not what tech leads to the next tech.

Production does scale up as your able to have more sytems and therefor more shipyard. Ship production isn't speed up through building up a huge industry, it all about resources. Shipyard have a default build rate( you can build several levels that increase their speed, or techs) what limits you is your ability to mine alloys and raise gold. Also your empire must be large enough to support your navy.

This sounds good. Have you adopted the superior design from MoO 1 and BoTF where you research all branches at once, but are able to adjust resource allocation between each? Or are you using the 'single tech at a time' method everyone else uses? If it's the former, consider my interest level bumped up.

gorgse said:
Conquest simular to Fed, when you take over a system the inhabitants join you, but any race specific building are destroyed since each race has their own. Base bulding such as farms, foundries, factories and research labs stay. To capture you just need to overwelm the systems defences in a ground battle. We haven't decided but we may add a modifyer that if the planet you conquested is more advanced than you, you have a certain chance of gaining a one time reasearch point bonus.

Boooo. Hisssss. No 4X has ever been improved by making the user micromanage specific buildings. The thought that someone is going to want to make build ques for dozens of buildings on potentially hundreds of planets is mind boggling. This is the single greatest flaw of every 4X I can think of that uses this design. The annoying planetary building incured micro-management in MoO 2 single handedly killed the late game, turned Galciv 2 into an even more repugnant pile of crap, and significantly worsened BoTF. Avoid this like the plague or your game will suck. Follow MoO 1 here, and to a lesser degree SoTS. When you have hundreds of planets, the ability to adjust everything *from the main screen* with sliders is the only thing that can stop the player from devolving from Galactic Emperor into Galactic Janitor.

Raapys · May 9, 2009

Master of Orion 3 actually solved that superbly. All the planet- detail was still there so you could micromanage it, but it could also be left completely to the AI, or it could be macromanaged.

YourConscience · May 9, 2009

Yes. and that's why it has been so hugely successfull!

On a serious note: I always wonder why such categorial arguments are still being used, like, whether to have micromanagement of buildings, or not, as if there's nothing possible in between. I think, having no micromanagement can be as bad as having too much of it (the one feels too shallow, the other too much of a chore). There are many ideas about how to do something in-between, like in the total war series where you only micromanage cities which have a family member in city, or with focus points (one of the earlier builds of MOO3 had this) or intelligent build queues or an automatic mini-sim-city style like in Imperium Galactica 2.

As I said, I think the point is not to have it or skip it, but do it right, so that it has depth and is fun. The implementation in MOO3 was interesting, but was ultimately no fun at all. Partly, because it was so badly connected with the rest of the game. (in fact, it wasn't connected at all - for example the planet zones and their industrialization status could've been made use of in the ground battles)

Raapys · May 9, 2009

True, but MoO3 was a very unfinished and buggy game. I really think it has the best and most realistic idea of economy/colony management of any 4x I've played, it just needed some more polish. It's the rest of the game that is lacking, although I admit I rather enjoy it after installing one of the excellent modpacks.

Like you said though, there can quickly become *too little* micromanagement. I just recently tried Sword of the Stars with the expansions, and frankly I grew bored after only 3-4 hours simply because of the lack of things to do. So in that case I much prefer Space Empires, where micromanagement and detail pretty much *is* the game.

GarfunkeL · May 9, 2009

Building micromanagement is fucking stupid in any space 4X-game. The idea that your planet can run out of space for buildings or that the Galactic Emperor is worrying whether to build hydroponic farms or not... mind boggles. Sliders work well enough and make you feel like youre more than a governor.

Korgan · May 9, 2009

I'd love having focus points and possible degrees of micromanagement depending on your political system and leader. E.g. a cyborg dictator would be able to control many aspects of his empire personally and extremely well, but the rest would be left to inflexible bureaucrats terrified of initiative and responsibility. A democratic ruler would issue broad, efficiently implemented policies and perhaps command a large force in wartime. A feudal warlord would have to deal with intrigues and conspiracies, ignoring all the non-vital affairs, but kick ass on the battlefield and get a lot of support from loyal vassals.

Jeff Graw · May 9, 2009

Raapys said:
Like you said though, there can quickly become *too little* micromanagement. I just recently tried Sword of the Stars with the expansions, and frankly I grew bored after only 3-4 hours simply because of the lack of things to do. So in that case I much prefer Space Empires, where micromanagement and detail pretty much *is* the game.

SoTS (with expansion) actually has a lot of micromanagement of planets, but it's very much different from any other type of micromanagement I've seen and not really required to play. For example, you can actually go in and change the way your planet is terraformed in order to make it more or less hospitable to different species, and you can change the amount of each species that inhabits the planet (as well as the civilian/imperial ratios for each race). I usually leave that alone since it seems like a bit of a waste. The other way you can micromanage planets in SoTS, and this is pretty damn cool, you can pinpoint exactly where defensive fleet are deployed depending on where the enemy fleet/s come from, as well as change the defense satellite distribution between your planet and it's space stations. Besides that though, the tinkering you can do from that main screen is pretty basic, and I much prefer MoO 1 in that regard. Seriously, how is adjusting five different focuses via sliders (so that you can very easily tell a planet exactly what you want it to be doing) any "less deep" than clicking on dozens of buildings per planet? Just because something is more harder and time consuming doesn't make it better, and I would argue that MoO 1 has just as much micromanagement as most other 4Xes, but it doesn't seem that way because the micromanagement is done so quickly. The only way I can think of to improve the MoO 1 system is to add a little bit of 'ramp up' period whenever you change slider levels, as it's unrealistic that a planet can one second devote all of it's resources to building ships, turn on a dime, and then devote all of it's resources to research without any penalty.

gorgse · May 9, 2009

Wow, alot of reply's i'll try and address each one.

Jeff,

Research branches are neither, it could be said that ours is closer to the Hearts of Iron series. You start with 3-4 research slots and and research that many techs at the same time. Each tech has max amount of rps that can be attributed to it at any given time, but you can speed the process up by adding Galactic Credits to the research. There are techs in the game that increase the number of research slots avalable as well.

I think you missunderstood how our building and systems are set up. You don't micromanage each single building or each single planet. Instead our labor management is set up simular to Birth of the federation, where you build 4 base building types to house workers: " foundries" for alloy production, " Labs" for research, "factories" for Production, "Farms" for food. Once built you manage your sytems by assigning your population in through populations "tick"s . Besides for 4 main catigories of labor buildings there is a wide variaty of building and structures that you can make to help your system such as barracks to increase you defencive units or a starport to increase trade from that system. Also the makeup of planets in your system determine some of the structures a system can create. Say if you system has a astoid field, you can set up a asteriod mining station that would provide you with a set amount of alloy per turn.

Garfunkel,
I agree with you that the idea a planet/system can run out of room was bad. I believe you are refering to GC2's model. This tended to make it to were you had verry few options to do anything with systems created early in the game as the slots were already filled up. In APR, you will be able to continuously add new buildings throughout the game as you unlock them through research.

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Jeff Graw · May 9, 2009

gorgse said:
Research branches are neither, it could be said that ours is closer to the Hearts of Iron series. You start with 3-4 research slots and and research that many techs at the same time. Each tech has max amount of rps that can be attributed to it at any given time, but you can speed the process up by adding Galactic Credits to the research. There are techs in the game that increase the number of research slots avalable as well.

Sounds good.

gorgse said:
I think you missunderstood how our building and systems are set up. You don't micromanage each single building or each single planet. Instead our labor management is set up simular to Birth of the federation, where you build 4 base building types to house workers: " foundries" for alloy production, " Labs" for research, "factories" for Production, "Farms" for food.

I figured it would be similar to BoTF given your affinity for the game. Don't get me wrong, BoTF did do planetary management better than Galciv II and MoO 2 did, but it was still a bad design that was detrimental to the overall experience. Everything else being equal, sliders will almost always beat queues. Being able to control planets/systems from the main screen will almost always beat having to do it in a separate screen.

gorgse said:
Once built you manage your sytems by assigning your population in through populations "tick"s.

Come again?

gorgse said:
Besides for 4 main catigories of labor buildings there is a wide variaty of building and structures that you can make to help your system such as barracks to increase you defencive units or a starport to increase trade from that system. Also the makeup of planets in your system determine some of the structures a system can create. Say if you system has a astoid field, you can set up a asteriod mining station that would provide you with a set amount of alloy per turn

"Help your system"? Does that mean special buildings don't give bonuses only to the planets they are built on, but also to the entire system? That would be nice.

Here's some advice, you can take it if you want: Scrap the four main building types and replace them with sliders (including a ramp up period whenever resources are shifted). Make sure you can manage planets/systems from the main screen. This will make your game several times more streamlined without sacrificing any depth. No joke, that one change will make your game an order of magnitude better. If you don't adopt this design your game will suck progressively more the bigger the map becomes and the later into the game the player gets. Special buildings are fine, they are a good idea (just usually horribly executed) that help make systems feel and behave unique. This is one of the few places a build queue works well, since you don't want to be continually selecting new special builds to produce. For starship building, avoid queues like the plague -- rather, a MoO-like system where you select a starship type that gets continually built greatly reduces micromanagement. To preserve depth, you can incorporate a "slots" system similar to the research slots you talked about earlier, with several different ship production slots plus a slot reserved for special buildings. A macro management feature that can automatically change production from one starship type to another through your entire empire would work great here.

gorgse · May 9, 2009

To clarify "Ticks". In the system management screen there will be rows of "tick" marks on the bottom aligned in neet rows. For each produciton building in the 4 main catagories you get 1 tick. For each tick mark you can assign 15 population units to a given task, simualar to the way Birth of the Federation did it. Since the "ticks" are set up in a Row you can adjuest system production as is they were sliders. It is a very quick an effience way of assigning system's population to work. There will be a screen in the summer that will show all systems and their productions for your entire galaxy can be easily accessed from this point.

Since you manage on a system wide scale and not planatary scale, building are not exactly built on a specific planet, but more built in their system. Yes building either give you a systemwide bonus, or in some cases, there are building simular to the "wonders" of the Civ series that impact your entire galaxy.

Through the summery screen, you will be able to access a summery of all your shipyards and change your starship production as you wish.

Jeff Graw · May 9, 2009

Good to hear the buildings are tied to systems and not planets, but I still think you picked an inferior design to emulate and that transferring your four focus points over to sliders would make things better. At the very least you'll want an auto build feature if you stick with planetary buildings. Looking at the screenshot of the planetary management screen I think it's probably possible to compact it enough so it doesn't obscure the main map and can be thrown off to the side MoO 1 style. The main space waster here is the unit description box. mouse-over descriptions could accomplish the same thing and wouldn't take up space on the interface. I see you've implemented a build queue for starships, something I generally dislike. Is there a repeat function so a system can continually build the same ship? If yes, can you also repeat build multiple ship types at a time?

gorgse · May 10, 2009

Sorry, but we will follow the instant model, to be be fair, each turn covers several years of your empires existance. Sometime in making a game you must compromise between realism and what is fun and managable.

Planatary invasions will be rather hands off in the actual battles, it will be the choices that you make beforehand that determine the battles. There will be 6 "ground units" per side broken into 3 pairs, each pair is suported by a suport unit, suport units are bombers, fighers, artillary and anti aircraft. The sides will attach each other and as casualties mount reinforcements will be brought in to fill losses. Its a winner takes all affair, so who ever controls the battlefield in the end win. You pre battle you will be given 3 random choices and you get to chose one of them. These are based on your faction, if you are on the defence of offence, and the technologies available at the time. Examples of these could be a poison gas attack, minefield laying, or surgical orbital bombardment. The battles will happen fairly rapidly and reinforcement will fill in continously. Should offer quite a bit of eye candy. Battles should last 1-2 min per battle, we did this so turn don't grind to a standstill in the lategame. Hope I answered your questions, and if you would like me to expand in any area, just ask.

Jared

Jeff Graw · May 10, 2009

gorgse said:
Sorry, but we will follow the instant model, to be be fair, each turn covers several years of your empires existance. Sometime in making a game you must compromise between realism and what is fun and managable.

I'm not saying you're doing it wrong or anything, but what makes you think ground combat would stop being "fun" if it had the possibility of going on over multiple turns?

gorgse · May 10, 2009

Masters of orion 3 had this model and it was interesting, but im not sure if it added much to gameplay. I think sometimes you can make things more complex and its not bad, but it may also not add much to the "fun" factor and im not sure if mutiple turned battles would help increase the overall appeal for the game. Or focus was to make a fun battle simulation that didn't hold up the game to long and let the players feel that there choices actualy ment something, and at that task I believe we succeded.

YourConscience · May 10, 2009

Actually, adding the ability to place particular buildings on particular planets and so on is not just "to add depth" whatever that is. It is to increase player's attachment to things in the game. If you've played a sim-city style game you know what I mean. However, having that kind of depth for each and every planet is overkill and deters the player from being attached to particular planets.

Additionally, when designing such different levels of gameplay it is important to connect them properly. For example, if the placement of defences in accordance with the placement of other structures can have a large influence on how easy it is to defend the planet, then that motivates the player to do that better. For example in Imperium Galactica 2 if you placed your planetary defences in a clever way, attacking forces, even if in larger quantity and better quality, would suffer heavy losses. Alas, that was the only influence of placement.

I believe that a mixed approach, similar to crusader kings would be best. Your character, the imperator (or whatever) would have "authority" as a character treat and that would reign how many planets you can control directly, sim-city-style, including the corresponding land battles. All other planets you give to vassals or representatives and while you may view what they're doing there, you can't directly interfere, unless you give up "interference" on one of the other planets. This treat could begin as small as 1 and grow based on various factors with time. This would also automatically introduce what in other games is called "corruption", simply because the other representatives aren't as good at playing sim city on their planets as the player is. Hence, the larger the empire, the more wasted potential. But that's only one aspect out of many.

gorgse · Jun 8, 2009

Recent update, i'll put this on the top for the time being so people can more easly find the contest site.

update: As a small developer we are trying as many ways as possible to gain recognition and hopefully a publisher. An unique opportunity has recently appeared in the 2009 Intel level-up game demo Contest. Winning this contest would go along ways to gaining a publisher for our game, as some of the judges for this contest are: Sid Meier (Civilization, Railroad Tycoon, Pirates), Will Wright (Spore, Sims, Sim City), and Brad Wardell (Galactic Civilizations, Sins of a Solar Empire). Winners of any of the categories get a invite to the 2009 and 2010 Game developers Conferences to pitch their game.

Contest site:
http://software.intel.com/en-us/contest ... yid=132353

Please take a moment of your time and register and vote for our game. All votes will be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time and have a great day.

Jared O'Connor

New 4x Space Strategy: Aphelion Phoenix Rising

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