Read the latest blog. I was thinking rather than selecting galaxy size, etc. You chose from a list of scenarios. Each scenario has it's own story. For example, maybe in 4210 A.D. a lot of planets became uninhabitable and became extinct. Then in 5000 A.D. planets became habitable again. Maybe in 3000 A.D. the galaxy was a lot smaller due to black holes blocking expansion but in 3050 A.D. technology was invented that enabled black holes to be explored.



This option gives the feeling of more of a story to the Red Legion and Blue Army. The menu you have now could be part of an editor for future scenarios. Of course, you could add a story option for exposition to explain why the galaxy is the way it is.



So you'd have 4000A.D. year of the large galaxy. 5000A.D. year of the great war. etc.



However, an editor is what is increasing the longevity until the release of Tower of Destiny so perhaps it is best to hold off on scenarios until future upgrades.



There's no way you can get around having to code A.I. for battle mode but I'm curious as to whether you're planning to have AI in Simulation(Guns versus Butter) mode. You could just have random and set points for enemy expansion. The challenge of simulation mode would be managing your resources versus random events. Having a thinking opponent would be more interesting but is it worth extra code?

The scenarios idea is interesting, but as you said probably is better if I keep it as expansion pack. I have already lot of ideas right now about the game, but I'm deciding now what can be included in the main game and what is best kept as expansions.

An example is heroes: similarly to Master of Orion 2, or more recently, Civilization IV, you have some special heroes (that aren't only generals but also scientist, etc) that you can hire and place on certain star systems or planets to increase some values. For example a hero scientist could boost the science value of that planet/starsystem, and so on.



Regarding the A.I., I want to implement an interesting thing: a difficulty that automatically adjust based on player's skill. That is, if you play badly, the game becomes easier, while if you play well the game becomes tougher. This way I should be able to prevent too easy battles, which in the long run can be boring and reduce the gameplay value.



Since I'll be using for the map fog of war I'll be able to make some interesting A.I. choices like sneak attacks from the computer, and so on. The simulation/management part probably can be done in 1 month of work, what will be very hard is the battle itself, because I want to make a very good turn-based wargame

Regarding the A.I., I want to implement an interesting thing: a difficulty that automatically adjust based on player's skill. That is, if you play badly, the game becomes easier, while if you play well the game becomes tougher. This way I should be able to prevent too easy battles, which in the long run can be boring and reduce the gameplay value.

This sounds like the perfect A.I. for Tower of Destiny, as well.

Yes indeed. It's good because programming both games at same time, I'll be able to implement same common features like this one

I don't like the fog of war thing. I liked the whole idea of a space war board game. Sort of Warhammer 40000 in Space.



Basically what I'm saying that my ideal game would be AntWar meets Warhammer 40,000 in space.



I don't really want a Civ IV type game.



SuperNova started out with a board game idea. The board game was a good idea. Basically, this post is a plea for no fog of war and keeping the board game portion for battles.

I don't understand how you associate fog of war=civilization ??

By adding fog of war, I just mean that when you encounter enemy and you pass on the "board game" screen, you won't see completely the battlefield with all the units revealed. This will only help the difficulty that otherwise (I'm sure) someone would instantly complain "computer is too easy"

You would have some units (the classic scouts) to explore the map. I would make fog of war limited, I mean once you cleared a zone you can see it and the fog doesn't reform again. This would just help me to add some difficulty, because of course don't pretend to be able to make an AI that can be very challenging without some "tricks". Even the big games with 2-3 programmers that work only on A.I. use tricks like fog of war, higher number of units to the Pc, faster production, and so on.



Anyway I can always make it optional

i don't understand why knockout is being so critical of your games. i am sure i am not the only person that is finding this a bit much. i have to give you alot of credit for being so patient with the many commits knockout is saying about your ideas and games. keep up the good work and hopefully others members will follow suit and let you know how much we like your games.

Haha don't worry, it's fine. I understand his point of views. He seems a bit too much critic but he's honest about what he thinks of my games, so for me is ok. Of course I don't follow blindly what he asks, but I carefully thinks about each suggestions. Sometime he gives what I consider "bad" suggestions, but very often he gives interesting ideas, like the Supernova 2 one.

I never played ant war before so his suggestion about making a macro-management game is very very good, wouldn't have thought about it before if wasn't for him.

So no problems - as long as someone doesn't insult me in forums, is fine! lol

Look at it this way, I'm only harsh on having the game be turned into a stereotypical TBS game because I loved the board game idea so much from the first game. Fog of War and Board Games are not hostile to each other, stratego and battleship use sort of a fog of war.



I came to the conclusion of fog of war equals civilization because civilization uses fog of war and you mentioned civilization as one of your influences. I just got scared that you'd do the typical TBS and have players put power points and then make tank producers and then make missile producers and then resource producers, etc.. When you mention CivIV as one of your influences it scares me that Supernova II might end up like that!

No, beside the fact that I wouldn't be able to "clone" a game like Civ IV anyway

I'm more inclined to do a sort of "Advance Wars" in space. Don't know if you played it, but is very good example of board game IMHO. Every units has its own purpose in the game, and there's a good system of paper/rock/scissors (in other word each units has another "bane" unit that can kill it easily).

But - there's plenty of time before I am at the point of making the board-wargame part...

I just got a chance to play the one hour demo version of Master of Orion 3. They use sort of a percentage system. However, it's difficult to see how a change in percentage affects the game. The one thing I did like about the game was the spying. That was a lot of fun. In Ant War, when you change the number of nurse ants you can visibily see the change in the number of ants you get whereas when I adjusted the degree of technology percentage in MoO 3 it was hard to tell what happened.



In Space War, I think if you assign a larger percentage to scientists for example, you should just get technology points which you can spend as you chose.



I want to see clearly visible effects from where I put my percentages. In short, don't use anything from MoO 3 except for the spy system which is quite a great deal of fun. Just reading what my spies were doing brought a lot of enjoyment!



As for the board game portion, I read the GameFAQ for Advance Wars and it seems like the right idea however it is extremely complex. I tried looking for board games and computer board games to help suggest ideas to model the game on and I couldn't find any.



The elements to include of course are terrain(black holes, planets, etc.); rock, paper, scissors; movement rates; and unique units.



Other than that I'm out of ideas.

Well you picked MO3 that was a very controversial episode (even amongst the fan of the original serie too). It has too much details and too many menu-submenu :p

And indeed as you pointed out, you had the impression of wasting lot of time to change/adjust the various setting but no real/visible effect. This sux, is exactly how I don't want to make my game. It will have instant changes, once you adjust settings you'll see the effects in next turn.

About the board/wargame don't worry, I think I have some very good ideas on how to make it fun but at the same time not too much complex or based only to "who has more firepower will win"

It will have instant changes, once you adjust settings you'll see the effects in next turn.

I think you make yet another good point that could translate into Tower of Destiny, in terms of rewards.



Many games give lousy rewards even after a challenging fight. You enter a really big fight, not necessarily against the main boss, and you consume all your special skills, mana, nearly all your HP, and finally win a very tough battle. Then you are rewarded for a long and hard-fought victory with a +5% water elemental amulet.



Oh, Great! For all my efforts and practically depleting all my assets I receive such small compensation. Now, my next fight will give me 5% vs. 0% (on a 100% scale) against water damage. Big deal!



Now suppose I had received a 50% water elemental amulet I would be more happy because my hard efforts were justified by a great reward. Plus, that amulet's effect I will see its impact in helping me in the next fight. I won't see any benefit from the 5% one until many fights later down the line.



I think most gamers like to see some kind of instant effect (gratification) when they receive something, especilally when they worked hard to achieve it. Obviously, you don't want the reward to be too great but something that will be useful in the next few fights, not something that will be useful much later in the game. What's the point of equipping it if it can't help you now?

I was thinking about how I really enjoyed the spy element in MOO3 and how I really liked the opprosometer. Well, in your percentage of resource allocations you have two new options Intelligence Agencies and Counter Terrorism Measures. There's a lot of resources that go into highering an effective spy. Agent's Jack Bauer and 007 have a lot of resources and money behind them And the computer automatically picks the optimal amount of scientific, economic, etc. spies.



Counter Terrorism measures would be like invasions of privacy etc. They would reduce enemy spy rate success but they would also reduce resource and technology generation.



There's also this game called Balance of Power II by Chris Crawford which is overally complex but showed that playing Cold War's could be a lot of fun. You said in future expansion packs you wanted to introduce ground battles. Think of the Symmetry SuperNova II: Space War, :Ground War, and :Cold War.



There would be six other empires in the galaxy and there would be a galactic senate. The senate could force the blood legion and blue army into temporary peace. You would also try to ratify bills that would favor you, etc. And you would try to change the government to one that would support you by giving money and troops to rebel insurgents. And you would give money and troops to governments that supported you to prevent them being ousted. And, giving too much money and troops could cause problems for the senate.



Again, this is probably something for a expansion pack. But better to think and have it in mind when you're coding than to perhaps put some code in that would make such changes difficult in the future.

To Astral: I agree in part, even if there shouldn't always be the rule hard battle=big reward. Depends how the rpg is structured too. If you have to do a specific hard battle to pass a crucial point of the story, that is already the reward. Beside in RPG the real reward is XP, so tougher monsters=more XP.



To Knockout: yes spying would be another good idea for expansion packs. Also other factions as well. For now I have the player choose from only the classic red/blue but indeed I could structure the code already in a way that would be easy to add other factions (green, yellow, etc). Better prepare today the ground for future expansion, indeed

Well, I didn't mean other factions as in wars on other fronts. You wouldn't be able to fight the other empires. In fact their planets wouldn't be on the screen. You'd just be able to negotiate with their empires for science, trade, etc and try to sway their vote in the senate. I like the idea of a red versus blue holy war and the other empires don't want to get directly involved. However, trading some resources for their technology and ships is another thing entirely.

Ahh ok now I understand what you mean. Yes that could be interesting, having to trade some resources to get exlcusive technologies or weapons.

As I posted on the blog, I'm doing the resource screen now. Is taking long because that is the core of the game so must be careful to balance everything. I wrote I will have unlimited resources, but was wondering if I should have a population limit instead. Like with current starsystem you can have max 100 billion population - and if you want to increase it, you're forced to expand.

That could be ok - you could still produce units/research/etc, but you would have a population cap, this way would limit your progress speed until you conquer more planets.



Ahh tough decisions....

Remember, about starting simple and then gradually becoming more complex is to try to avoid the code becoming a mess. It's a common problem for a lot of games that patch and improve over time such as roguelike's etc. The source code eventually becomes a mess. As a corellary to your painting analogy you used, you want your painting to be as close to an open canvas as possible.



You want it to be easy to add new allocatable resources(such as spying funds, etc) to your science, resources, military, and population model. You want it to be easy to add new planets. You want it to be easy to add spying/diplomacy elements(Use Balance of Power II as the diplomacy model and add as spying as a percentage rather than a seperate tab). You want it to be easy to add new random events.



So remember when coding to think about how to streamline things to make adding future code easy for patches in the future.

Yes, I'm doing that indeed. I think I also found a good way to put the resources, but I'm going to experiment more next week. Meanwhile I am making the starmap with starsystems and the routes you can take to conquer it, a fun diversive