IMHO: This project has just lost its MoO feeling

[DeathAndPain]

Everything that could possibly make FreeOrion be fun has just been removed through a final, uncommented decision from high orbit.

The planets in FreeOrion will be different in natural attributes, but the infrastructure on them will be all the same. There will be no lots of buildings that make a planet colorful. The planets will only differ by the length of their "infrastructuremeter" and occasionally a few special buildings. A graphical planetary view will be pretty boring, because there will be only few buildings to display. Of course the empty space can be filled up with standard infrastructure graphics (skyscrapers or something), but that will not make a world special because every world of that infrastructure size will have it.

Where you have your planets and where you produce your stuff will also be of no importance. No matter how remote a planet will be, it will just fill its output into a large pot that pours its output at a place of the player's decision. As the consequence, there will not be any kind of "imperial infrastructure": your planets need not interact with each other, and lanes between them have only military importance. Your whole empire will work like one big planet, and you need not - and cannot - care about its inner functions.

As the consequence, the economy part of the game has been reduced to the absolute minimum. Full focus of this game goes to the military aspect. People wanted to avoid excessive micromanagement and actually cut away the whole fun part of the economy, forgetting that the importance of economy has always been a very important part of any MoO game.

This game will be for chess players who want to move their pieces and attack the enemy, but not wonder where these pieces come from.

My confidence in the success of this project has just suffered a very heavy blow. I believe that it is doomed to boredom, somewhat compensated only by military aspects that are to come. The economical part of the game is ruined.

[tzlaine]

Woe is me! The end is nigh! I want my mommy!

[Aquitaine]

If we'd gone the other way, there'd be people here saying 'you've doomed us to micromanagement hell, my confidence in this project has reached an all-time low.'

Welcome to FreeOrion.

I'll leave this thread here (since it's not technically inappropriate) but we've had 40+ pages of discussion on buildings already, so I'm really not sure what your point is besides 'I didn't get what I wanted and I think you're all wasting your time.'

If I ranted every time something didn't go my way around here, I'd have been shown the door months ago.

[snakechia]

Bold statement to say this game's economy is not like any MOO game, when in fact MOO 1 did not have ANY planet detail and very limited economic model. MOO 3 had VERY limited planet detail (at least that you controlled with any consistency). Maybe you meant that this game is unlike any MOO 2 you've ever played....there ain't nothin' wrong with that.

Let go of the past, the MOO's were fun, but some things need to change, hopefully for the better, otherwise you'd be playing the same game forever.

For the record, I personally found MOO1 to be the best of the MOO's, so I'm not really concerned with the economic model as it stands right now.

[Tyreth]

There will be no lots of buildings that make a planet colorful. The planets will only differ by the length of their "infrastructuremeter" and occasionally a few special buildings.

On the contrary, planets will be more unique. You have a limited number of slots, and the buildings that you fill these slots with are semi-wonders. So, unlike MoO and SMAC where any colony can and will build the same set of buildings ultimately (making their differences their stages in these developments), with FO you will have different stages of development AND different building combinations.
Not to mention the fact that planets with focuses in specific areas will be able to build buildings not available to other planets with different focusses.

Planets with high RP output in MoO/SMAC were known and important to me when I played the game, even though RP was globally pooled. I believe that the same will be true of high PP planets.

As for planet images, we are still having the common buildings, but they are placed automatically. So, you will see the same planet view as in MoO2 with all the common buildings (based on how far your research is), but this time also with that planet's semi-wonders/wonders that make it so unique.

Anyway, this is not a sudden decision. There has been much discussion on the topic for a long time, involving everyone in the community.

[drek]

As the consequence, there will not be any kind of "imperial infrastructure": your planets need not interact with each other, and lanes between them have only military importance. Your whole empire will work like one big planet, and you need not - and cannot - care about its inner functions.

If you have given up all hope, I suggest checking back in a month or three. I suspect once things are spelled out/working, micromanagers are going to be pleasantly surprised.

There is going to be an imperial infrastructure and interactions between planets. You will have to think about the inner workings of your empire to a much greater degree than previous moo games, if things work out as I hope. With a little imagination, you can see it starting to come together in the various Effect threads.

For the record, there's three really really bigs things I'd change about the current design. No one's going to be 100% happy with the results of the process.

[Aquitaine]

Which three?

Besides changing the name from FreeOrion to 'Drek T. Idiot'

[Ellestar]

As the consequence, the economy part of the game has been reduced to the absolute minimum.

Wrong. It will be "reduced" to ungodly number of calculations (of course, only if someone wants to be effective).

People wanted to avoid excessive micromanagement

But IMHO they failed in their task

[noelte]

If you have given up all hope, I suggest checking back in a month or three. I suspect once things are spelled out/working, micromanagers are going to be pleasantly surprised.

That's exactly what i hope for.

It's rather difficult to see the whole picture. Even if i 'feel' the way DeathAndPain does, i wouldn't judge about fo before i can see how things work out until v1.0 (hopefully before that time)

I found zachs responds a little bit harsh, but i can understand him. It's no fun reading such statements every other week.

[drek]

Which three?

Er, four. Or four and half maybe.

1: Multiplayer only. Ditch the AIs.
2: Real-time, like EU2
3: No tactical combat, like EU2
4: Everything scripted, to the same degree as HW2 and Far Cry.

Plus, I'd reduce the number of resources (combining mining with industry, ditching Food) and eliminate secondary focus as well---but that's a minor compared to the big three, er four.

Finally, I would indeed rename it "Drek T. Idiot", and replace the Spathi race with Folger's Crystals.

[Aquitaine]

1: Multiplayer only. Ditch the AIs.
2: Real-time, like EU2
3: No tactical combat, like EU2
4: Everything scripted, to the same degree as HW2 and Far Cry.

Well I know I'm sorry I asked.

[Geoff the Medio]

You have a limited number of slots

Has this been decided? The end of Public Review I doesn't seem conclusive... Did you or Aq make an executive call? Just wondering, thanks.

[Aquitaine]

I think it's going to go that way, yes. I will be writing production into the v0.3 doc over the next few days (so I can hopefully finish it before i go out of town from Sat-Wed). I'm trying to digest as much of the information as possible, but there's like 60 pages of it, so it's difficult.

[Ragnar]

I know limited build slots won over MoO2 style buildings, but what about wonder type buildings limited by other means than build slots? I know it was never an option on the review thread against the other two, but I recall some discusion somewhere that we could allow an option to put all your wonders on one planet if you wish. Limits were base on you could only build one of this building, etc. There were some convincing arguments that slots would force/encourage you to use them all creating more micro, and that the 'all your eggs in one basket' approach would be balanced by the fact that you could really hurt yourself strategically.

Did we miss this in the vote, or did I miss the idea being squashed/abandoned prior to the review?

[Aquitaine]

Wonders were never part of v0.3. They can have their own rules or not.

-Aq

EDIT: Whoops! I had the roadmap upside down and thought they were for, erm, v3.0. Yeah. that's it...

So we will have them. Let me deal with a bunch of other stuff first before I answer this. My tentative response is that we'll have three types of buildings:

- Automated or Infrastructure buildings: you get these everywhere and never have to explicitly build them. Basically just tech advances. Some might only exist on certain worlds or require pre-eqs (like foci) but this seems unlikely.

- Limited or 'build slot' buildings: You can have as many of these as you like, but they eat up precious build slots, so you can't build them everywhere. They also would have significant pre-reqs.

- Wonders: You can only have one of these in your whole Empire. Some Wonders may be 'one per game' so only one Empire can get them.

But that's not an official call until I spend more time on this.