Okay, I'm going to do a better pitch for adding Diplomacy to the game as the better the pitch the more likely you are to implement it. Just saying implement a mix between MOO3 and Balance Of Power II may not be the most effective strategy.



Okay, there are six other empires in the galaxy. The green brigade and the yellow legionarres which are at war with each other. The purple agriculturalists. The orange scientists. The Gray Industrialists. The Pink Artisans.



These empires have no planets visible on the galaxy map because they are just too far away. In story terms, you have to jump through worm holes to get to each of the five sectors of the galaxy(green and yellow share the same sector hence why they are at war). So, trade and long term communication is possible but any sort of warfare is not practical.



The reason why I don't think there should be more than a 1v1 war is because adding more fronts makes the game take longer. Whereas, this way you get all the diplomatic benefits but not the downside of having a super empire and having to spend several turns mopping up the smaller empires.



Each empire has a relationship with all the other empires between -100 and 100.



Every 10 years of game time there is an intergalactic senate meeting where various bills can be passed. The number of votes everyone has depends on the population.



Bills can be passed like cease fire between blood legion and blue army, cease fire between green and yellow, pro-agricultural, pro-industry, etc.



How you vote affects your relations with other empires(The Pink Artisans like when you vote for peace, The Gray Industrialists like when you vote Pro-Industry) and the bills that are passed affect your empires economic system.



You can also trade with other empires. You can open trade routes which increases resources for both empires(You don't need to know that you're trading wool for fur, the player just needs to know that trade moves the supply curve to the right). You can send troops to both support the current government or troops to support any insurgencies.



When you hover your mouse over any empire it will show it's current population, it's political tendencies(pro-war), relationship with blood legion and blue army, and the strength of insurgent elements(and whether these rebels are pro-Blood Legion, pro-Blue Army, or both).



If you give too much military funding to government or insurgents or provide too much troops you can hurt your relationships with other empires.



You can also interact with the other governments via spies.



You can allocate resources to intelligence on the resource screen and then on the diplomatic screen you can determine how you spend these intelligence funds by percentages(counterintelligence, on blue, red, green gray, etc.)



You can check boxes next to the empires for what your spies do while they're there. The boxes include: Incite Rebellion, Damage Population Growth, Damage Resources, Damage Military, Damage Technology.



What needs to be done now to help prepare for this expansion pack:

-Other empires need to be able to gain and lose resources too

-It needs to be possible to add other empires

Nice summary of features... this could make really a good expansion pack

Don't worry about the requirements, I'm making the code such in a way that I'll be able to add new features/variables at will!

I've been playing a lot of 4X games recently and man I'm so glad this game is going to operate on a percentage system. Remembering where to send scout ships, colony ships, and military ships is a real pain.



As for scouting in Supernova II, scouting of course should be part of the percentage system. The Red Legion and Blue Army should both start with 50% of the galaxy. If it works like a 4X game where both races start with one little planet than it'll be more about the colony race and less about the board game portion. There shouldn't be so many starsystems that you won't be able to memorize them after a couple times at play.



Scouting in game terms should be sending scout ships through worm holes, you would randomly find new events and very rarely new viable colonies(If it was easy to find new solar systems to colonize why would the Blood Legion and Blue Army be at each other's throats?).



Since space is infinite there are always new things to find. What scouting is useful for is breaking stalemates(boom find a new colony and one race pulls ahead) and as a sort of general resource allacator for those who aren't sure where to put things in the percentile system(random events generate random amounts of a lot of the different in game resources).

Yes I find many 4X games too dispersive. There are too many things to remember that you go nuts

The game map, representing one single galaxy, will be about 800x800 pixels, so very small (you'll just need to scroll up and down a bit but not much). You can easily memorize it on each single match.

About the scouting, don't know - I want to emphasize the wargame aspect on the version 1.0, so for now I think I'll just finish it making all the percentages work in relationship of the battles themselves. I have the map almost working, next I'm doing some test battles and then the tech/build part.

Then I can have a better overview of what could be useful to add in the "percentage system" screen...

I had another idea for an expansion pack. In addition, to Supernova: Ground War, and Supernova: Cold War, how about Supernova: Civil War.



There would be different political factions within your empire. The factions would be like Workers, Warmongers, etc. Each faction would have a strength rating and happiness rating. As the strength rating of the faction increases certain bad things happen. At one threshold, the faction would go on strike decreasing productivity. At another, the faction would declare war and annex part of your empire.



You can change these thresholds by being different government types. In Democracy, the threshold might be lower. In Dictatorship, it would be higher.



In order, to please the factions you have to change the percentages. The worker faction might demand that you can't dedicate more than 10% of your resources torwards engineering or the unhappiness of that faction increases. The warmongers faction might demand that you have to use seventy percent of your resources torwards war.



You could also give resources to various factions to increase their happiness.

Hm very interesting indeed. Internal struggles, beside the normal fights. So each faction would "require" some values in resources allocation, and each one would have a strenght rating and also in particular stressful conditions a revolt could begin.

In this case would be great the combination with ground war, to fight your own troops in the civil war to sedate the rebellion

Yes definitely another good idea that will surely keep in mind for the future! even if the plan is to release Supernova, then finish TOD, and then start some expansion packs for both games (to appeal both wargame/startegy fans and roleplay fans).

Yes definitely another good idea that will surely keep in mind for the future! even if the plan is to release TOD, then finish Supernova, and then start some expansion packs for both games (to appeal both wargame/startegy fans and roleplay fans).

There jack I fixed it for you.

Haha well, the development is progressing good even for TOD, but honestly is much a complex game to program than Supernova. Also as I said another delaying factor is the integrated editor, even if I think in the end will be worth it!

I just played another 4X demo, Galactic Civilizations II: Gold Edition and it inspired me with some ideas for the game.



First, is that game balance is key. A game can have a lot of cool features but then you only want to play the game once to see all the cool features but not again because you used all the unbalanced tactics.



Maybe, there can be some sort of spreadsheet so that users can do some testing with various values to help test the resource allocation model.



Secondly, there shouldn't be a set way for you to manipulate the percentages all the time. There should be random events that increase/decrease the opportunity costs of certain "buildings"(not quite clear how you're doing this on the global level yet) and the opportunity cost of your percentage allocations. The tech tree could also be slightly random each game. Some techs may cost less or more. Some techs may be absent. This is of course, to prevent a user from just reading a FAQ and easily beating the game. Some events could also give certain ships bonuses. And there could be special squares on the game board to for the user to change his battle tactics.



Basically, it's very important for the game to be balanced. You are only one man. Therefore, you should employ some of your users so they can test the game via some spreadsheets to change some key values so they are better able to suggest changes.



Balance is so important in a game like this but why spend the time crunching numbers when you can spend the time coding?

Yes I have to think carefully how to do this. I have already the different battlefield types, so this can already influence a lot the outcome of the battles.

I agree with a random tech cost: this way there would be subset of tech but different costs. Like level 1 techs could be:

Pulse Laser: cost 10

Genetic Hospital: cost 20



etc, but in one match you could have the values completely swapped, or same, and so on. I will sum all tech values though and they must have same value. This way even if some costs less, other will cost more, and the final global research cost will be always the same in all match, it will just change the "research path".

Well, I just played Master of Orion I and it turns out the slider system isn't as inivative as I thought. Both Master of Orion I and Galactic Civlizations II have a slider system but it is very poorly executed. Galactic Civilzations II because of the all-labs and all-factories exploit and MOO I because of the ecosystem controller where you constantly have to fudge the ecosystem controller.



So a well-executed slider system would be innovative. Sad to read that you're updating the game for a higher resolution but if it makes the User Interface better than I'm all for it. Your games always have a good User Interface.



Anyways after playing moo I, I'm just going to say I'm so glad I don't have to manually use ships to explore. I'm so glad I manually don't have to send ships to attack my enemy rather something like click attack on an enemy planet and manually put ships on the game board.



Basically, I'm saying thank you for trying to rescue the genre.

Well luckily with my GUI system, this morning I already almost "ported" the game completely to 800x600. I was going to 1024x768 but I realized was too large (bigger VRAM requirements etc). at 800x600 looks very cool and there's even space for more buttons and info on the same screen

Well MOI is the oldest version, I think MO2 was the best one... you have to manually explore the new planets, but isn't too much frustrating IMHO what sucks instead are those automatic battles. MO2 for that rulez, has a turnbased combat that is very cool, with lot of different weapons etc.

Mine won't be so accurate in term of details but I think the boardgame will be interesting enough with different tactics based on the kind of enemy and type of starsystem (considering my game budget!).

I played MOO2 and it too sort of uses a percentage allocation system but on a planetary level. However, there's really only two choices: science and production as you only want barely enough food to live. One thing that was interesting, was the race picks. Certain picks changed your opportunity costs greatly for your percentage allocations: Cybernetic, Tolerant, Lithovore, governments, etc.



I think racial traits that greatly change the opportunity costs should be incorporated into Space War. Of course there is only the Blood Legion and The Blue Army but there could still be androids, etc. that all make up a part of the larger population. The more androids you have as part of the population the more engineers you need to make materials for them to eat but the less food you need. Productivity greatly increases but androids provide no contributions to research.



To change the racial composition you change your percentage allocations. If you want the androids to die off than have your engineers build less so the androids have nothing to eat. If you want less humans than produce less food. There would be a chart with arrows that shows the population change each turn.



If you want more slaves than simply capture more of the Blue Army. If you don't like slaves just use genocide...



There could be other races too. Say there's a bird race that's neutral to both the Blood Legion and Blue Army. The Bird Race are great workers. Whether the bird race is drawn more to your race or your opponents race is based on your global morale and what techs+global buildings you've produced.

Yeah, more races would surely help. In first version I don't plan to put that of course but could make another nice update. It would also revolution eveything a lot (like in your example, the same planet inhabitated by humans or android would change a lot the results in term of resources/research production).

Anyway, I'll try to "reserve a spot" in the source code so that you can have different races on the various planets, each one producing a different result

Wait you have to manage different planets now? I thought it was a macro percentile system?

Yes now is macro, but with your system I would have to go in micro-management no? or how can the different races influence the game? didn't understand what you mean maybe

Thought you mean that you could put on a planet race XX and get bonus YY out of it. Otherwise just mixing races with a slider would be the same as changing the general resource allocation slider, don't think it would work well...

Regarding your latest blogs: Production and Technologies mostly affecting only the wargame portion.



First, you can use statistics to enable technologies+production to enable these things on a macromanagement level, that is after all how it is done in macroeconomics.



For the terraforming example.



Each system has on average four planets.



Each planet has a 25% chance of being barren, 50% chance of being normal, 25% chance of being biologically diverse.



Biological diverse planets increase population growth by 10%. Normal by 5%.



Barren planets have to be terraformed twice, normal have to be terraformed once.



Each terraform costs 1000 Coin.



So per system on average you have to pay 4000 to fully terraform every planet in that system.



If you have four systems and spend 1000 out of 16000 possible. You increase population growth by 1/16th of 5%.

Well yes that could be a solution... however for now I'll just leave as it is, I put anyway a "general tech" category where I can put future expansion technologies that could affect whole planets like that. My main goal for now is finish the game with the wargame+macromanagement simulation part (and it will be already a great result for me!).

Then who knows, I could even make an expansion and introduce micromanagement for each planet (in case someone is inclined) or use your suggestion for macro one.

I think that planetary improvements can't prescind from some form of micromanagement , it would look too much automated that way. I think is better to left out that part and maybe make an add-on adding that micromanagement part that could be optional, so everyone (hardcore and more casual player) would be happy!

Your decision to make techs/production/etc. to all be focused on the wargame part is a good one. But I can't say I'm not a little dissapointed that it's not a macroeconomic SimGalaxy with a wargame component.



However...



Looking at the galaxy settings screen, if all the techs are going to be wargame oriented then how are you going to be able to do a technological victory. How is the number of habitable and mineral planets going to matter?



Well, I have some ideas...



For the kill leader, occassionally the leader will be in one of the star ships based on your sensor technology you might know which one. If you can kill the leader before the enemies army retreats you win.



For the technological victory, you can try to "capture" technological resources. Every time a ship captures a resource technology points are added to you or your enemies score.



Habital and mineral planets can affect the game board squares. The more habital planets on the game board the better the defending races defense is. The more mineral planets on a game board, the faster the defending race can move.



Of course, habital planets and mineral planets can also affect pop growth and mineral growth.



Terraforming technologies could increase the number of habital planets on the game board.



Starbase technologies could improve starbase game board pieces(starbase game pieces increase the power of your ships).



So really there's a way to make all the fun standard 4X technologies into the board game .