Baby Space Monsters!

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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marhawkman
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Re: Baby Space Monsters!

#31 Post by marhawkman »

I like the idea of being able to upgrade the monsters you produce. But unlike ships you don't get to design them per se, but instead just make them generally better.

I'd also have several types of monsters, but each nest only produces one. So a nest you build in antares might produce big bruisers, while the one in Betelgeuse might produce monsters that are small and attack like a swarm of bees.
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MathGeek
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Re: Baby Space Monsters!

#32 Post by MathGeek »

Bigjoe5 wrote: My second concern is the introduction of complex rules for the control of space monsters. Do we expect the player to know this type of space monster will only defend blue stars or attack if there's a gas giant in the system?
...
I'm more than happy to accept/contribute to designing unique ways of controlling space monsters providing these ways are easily understandable and not overly dependent on chance, but that doesn't seem to be the case with the kind of thing you're discussing.
Yeah, you are probably right about this :| .
As an intermediate idea that would be easier to implement: what if monsters were strategically controllable, but in combat used their wild AI, (with a research tech that would make them fully controllable)? The wild AI would still have to be developed; it might not be too difficult to make monsters keep using it: just register the controlling player's ships as allies. Ostensibly the player would need to know something about how it behaves in the wild if she was able to capture one alive, so that she could still adapt her tactics to the monster, but not just use it however she feel like (at least until she researches the necessary tech :wink: )

That seems to be the simplest way to do it, but I am open to suggestions. If it comes down to implementation issues, I would be willing to sacrifice just about any trait we have discussed in order to get them in the game. The idea of capturing and building a fleet of killer space monsters is just too cool :twisted:
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Bigjoe5
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Re: Baby Space Monsters!

#33 Post by Bigjoe5 »

I might be open to a less precise way of controlling space monsters in combat, provided the element of randomness isn't too great... For example, they might automatically retreat after taking too much damage, or divide their firepower between the defined target and whatever ships are annoying it.

BTW, just a quick grammar tip: by using the pronoun "she" you're assuming that all players will be female, whereas if you use the pronoun "he" you would be referring to a player of undefined gender in this case. You can say "she" if you want, of course, or he/she to be really politically correct, but I'll still wince every time you do it. :x
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MathGeek
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Re: Baby Space Monsters!

#34 Post by MathGeek »

Bigjoe5 wrote:I might be open to a less precise way of controlling space monsters in combat, provided the element of randomness isn't too great... For example, they might automatically retreat after taking too much damage, or divide their firepower between the defined target and whatever ships are annoying it.
Both sound like really great ideas. I don't want monsters to be just another a normal ship with a monster graphic. I want them to be interesting, exciting, and different. They really have the potential to spice up the game. Automatically retreating is very intuitive, as is dividing firepower. It makes them interesting and believable without disrupting the determinism you are looking for.
Bigjoe5 wrote:BTW, just a quick grammar tip: by using the pronoun "she" you're assuming that all players will be female, whereas if you use the pronoun "he" you would be referring to a player of undefined gender in this case. You can say "she" if you want, of course, or he/she to be really politically correct, but I'll still wince every time you do it. :x
Actually I meant the exact opposite. I am male - as are many of the other posters on this board (I have not checked all the profiles) - and so it seemed me that using the pronoun: "he" would assume all players will be male. I know a few strategy game players that are female, so I felt it would have been an unwarranted assumption. By using: "she" I was suggesting girls can play too. However, I wouldn't want to make you wince every time you read one of my posts :P, so I will try use non-specific pronouns from now on. :mrgreen:
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Tortanick
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Re: Baby Space Monsters!

#35 Post by Tortanick »

Bigjoe5 wrote: and still retain the basic spirit of strategy, but when you have pieces that move with a certain element of randomness, this takes away from the players feeling of control over the game and his strategy.
Randomness isn't opposed to strategy, check out Wesnoth for a game with lots of randomness and lots of strategy.
Bigjoe5 wrote: Do we expect the player to know this type of space monster will only defend blue stars or attack if there's a gas giant in the system? I'd really like to keep the space monster thing as simple as possible.
If we keep the rules nice and simple (e.g. a space monsters behavior must be explanation in three sentences or less) then we can have a list of space monsters and their behavior in the cyclopedia / manual; problem solved :) P.S. you example with the gas giant is kinda silly, space monsters should make sense if you think about them like an animals. A better example would be they only attack if you go near there nests, or shoot first.
Bigjoe5 wrote:One way to distinguish space monsters from each other strategically and tactically is their abilities in combat and the type of special ship systems that can be built with that space monster resource.
While its important to make space monsters distinct from each other, its more important to make them distinct from normal ships. If they behave like normal ships from a UI point of view there really isn't much point to having them.
Bigjoe5 wrote:I know the idea is unappealing, but the fact is that if we can't bring ourselves to KISS space monsters, the higher-ups either won't include them or won't take our discussions into account when including them.
KISS allows complexity when its fun just not complexity for its own sake

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Robbie.Price
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Re: Baby Space Monsters!

#36 Post by Robbie.Price »

Bigjoe5 wrote: BTW, just a quick grammar tip: by using the pronoun "she" you're assuming that all players will be female, whereas if you use the pronoun "he" you would be referring to a player of undefined gender in this case. You can say "she" if you want, of course, or he/she to be really politically correct, but I'll still wince every time you do it. :x
Also Ce, and Cer are acceptible non gendered terms, if useing he, or she, or s/he, he/she bugs you. .

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Robbie.Price
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Re: Baby Space Monsters!

#37 Post by Robbie.Price »

Goodmorning all,

Been a while since i posted. I'd been thinking of Space monsters for a while thought i would post my thoughts.

I would prefer space monsters not be dirctly controlable. In battle or between systems.

I can think of 3 main types of monsters

Defencive herd monsters, which if you controle the breading grounds they see all your space as 'thier teritory' and acknoledge your ships as eithor neutral, in the least cases, friends, or even family/offspring. depending how 'good' your relationship to the monsters is they would be more prone to rush to your defence. if enemies invaid.

Herd monsters, If you pass a sufficently large fleet though the same system they will 'follow' your forces, as long as they want to. allowing you to guide them. better relationtions would mean that the monesters follow you longer, and will fight along side you longer before retreating.

and the third would be sentient and self aware monsters with language skills who would the players would 'negotiate' actions with. These would probably be very limited in number, and stronger, not having a breeding ground, or breeding young which are not nearly as powerful (and themselves be of the 1st or second type).
Monsters of this third type would be able to:
1.) Help you improve relations with a non sentient monster,
2.) Lead or follow an attack, provide a diversion.
3.) act like inter-planitary merchants / mercinaries. possibly having large hords from which you can purchace /trade for goods/ technologies.

By having a limited number of behavours, Guard, follow, trade/deal one still can predict thus make stratagies around them, but they would remain very much distint in behavour and attitude.

also this makes it possible to make the monsters ubiquous, they exist all over the place, most of the time, normally ignoring you, but if you build up a relation with one group, or manage to control a breading ground, they take on a new dimention. They could also become agressive against you if they begin to consider you a threat.


anyway enough for now, just wanted to share those ideas. take care all

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Robbie.Price
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Re: Baby Space Monsters!

#38 Post by Robbie.Price »

I've been thinking more of space monsters, and i came up with something of a system, thought i'd ask what you all thought.

1. Monsters would be fairly common, one herd or beast / every 20 planets, (or one every 3 or so systems, sometimes two in a system.)
Each herd / beast would be quant/quali-fied by 6 #'s

Breeding rate,
attack/defence
Disposition towards others.
Herd-instinct
Migratory-instinct
Intelegence

The attack/defence - and breading rate are obvious.

Disposition would be how friendly a species is, how easy it is to build a + relation with them, -1 would make it imposible, attack on sight, for monsters to perminently protect a location. (also take into account if the beasts feed on ships/crew)

Herd-instinct, both determines how many creatures form a pack between lone wolves or large herds. and effects what can be done with species.

Migratory-intinct how often and how far the animal will roam from it's nest
0 stays put,
1 can be found in neighbouring systems,
2 can be incuraged to define all your territory as 'it's' territory. (how well and how fast it updates it's idea of your bounderies depending on inteligence)
3 Can be incurraged to follow you into enemy teritory to attack / raid
4 Galaxy wanderers - no nest

Intelegence.
Most important term,

0 - un-sencient / uninteligent. beasts of this type can't be meaningfully communicated with. controling a nest can allow some form of mild domestication(not right word but...)
For high herding instinct beasts, ships can be build inside the herd once very good relations are established. are thought of and protected as a member, must obey the migratory rules of the herd. if 'sufficent' numbers of ships in the herd, can control where (within the bounderies of migration) to go, if ships leave the herd, they sease to be members.
Very short 'memory' can do bad things for the herd, then stop and 4-5 turns latter they will revert to natural 'Disposition'

1 - Semi sencient. same as above, Ships can re-enter herd if originally part of the herd. Longer memory, slower return to 'disposition'. For very good relations can be 'summoned' to a location inside their migration area by herd members.

3. Very rare, Intelegent sencient beasts, Space Dragons, Gardiean or orion, other. forms of limited trade / negotiations are possible, very long memories / grudges.


As far as game play is concerned all animals would be repesentable by just those 6 numbers, beasts with scores lower then 8 or 9 would be excluded from the map as they arn't worth really knowticing.


Anyway, best wishes all take care.
Robbie Price.

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Re: Baby Space Monsters!

#39 Post by MathGeek »

Robbie, I don't mean to be rude, but I think you should take a look a some of the earlier posts on this thread, because you seem to be dragging us back away from some of the ideas we almost agree on. For instance: space monsters as strategic resource, players controlling the frequency of space monsters, and even more seriously:
Intelegence.
Most important term,

0 - un-sencient / uninteligent. beasts of this type can't be meaningfully communicated with. controling a nest can allow some form of mild domestication(not right word but...)
For high herding instinct beasts, ships can be build inside the herd once very good relations are established. are thought of and protected as a member, must obey the migratory rules of the herd. if 'sufficent' numbers of ships in the herd, can control where (within the bounderies of migration) to go, if ships leave the herd, they sease to be members.
Very short 'memory' can do bad things for the herd, then stop and 4-5 turns latter they will revert to natural 'Disposition'

1 - Semi sencient. same as above, Ships can re-enter herd if originally part of the herd. Longer memory, slower return to 'disposition'. For very good relations can be 'summoned' to a location inside their migration area by herd members.

3. Very rare, Intelegent sencient beasts, Space Dragons, Gardiean or orion, other. forms of limited trade / negotiations are possible, very long memories / grudges.
All of the space monsters we have been discussing are your level 0 monsters. Implementing the different intelligence levels you describe would mean tripling the programming work to implement them. The system we have now requires very little added programming beyond a basic, customizable monster AI for the strategic map and tactical combat. To make a new monster you need to make a strategic resource, a breeding ground building with its prerequisite tech, a custom ship design, and appropriate graphics. You might throw in a few modifications to combat AI to make your monster unique, and you could make a new weapon type for good measure. These could basically be created or adjusted in a simple mod.
Your ideas for intelligent monsters would require vastly different AI scripts for all three levels of monsters. Modding or creating monsters would mean learning three different sets of rules. Additionally you would need a new interface for interacting with these monsters that has to be customizable for both 1 and 3. At best you might be able to tie it into the diplomacy screen but at that point monsters start to look like miniature empires. I suggested earlier that if you want to design a highly intelligent monster, make it a precursor race (at least from a programming perspective). This will make life easier on our coders. As Joe said earlier, if you can't keep them simple, you won't get them at all.

I am fine with the idea of monster attributes, and your list seems to encompass many of the attributes a monster should have. I would suggest that you change your disposition rating into a simple aggressiveness rating, to make it fit with the removal of intelligence.
  • High rating will attack anything that gets close (think: Aliens the movie)
    Medium rating might ignore, attack, or retreat based on conditions like terrestrial wild animals
    Low rating might be something like an elephant, generally ignores you, but don't make it mad.
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Re: Baby Space Monsters!

#40 Post by marhawkman »

Or Gomtuu! Hehe.... *thinks about how it fried the two romulan warbirds*

anyways.... what do you guys think about the idea of researching a technology that would allow you to alter them in some way?
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Tortanick
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Re: Baby Space Monsters!

#41 Post by Tortanick »

I oppose it, I like to keep them very separate from how you work with spaceships.

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Re: Baby Space Monsters!

#42 Post by marhawkman »

hm.... well, one interesting question is how to find "better" spacemonsters.
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Robbie.Price
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Re: Baby Space Monsters!

#43 Post by Robbie.Price »

MathGeek wrote:Robbie, I don't mean to be rude, but I think you should take a look a some of the earlier posts on this thread, because you seem to be dragging us back away from some of the ideas we almost agree on. For instance: space monsters as strategic resource, players controlling the frequency of space monsters, and even more seriously:
Unfortunately i had been away from the formum for a very long time, thus wanted to pitch in for some of the earlier matieral, but i should have appologiesed for raising earlier topics.
MathGeek wrote: All of the space monsters we have been discussing are your level 0 monsters. Implementing the different intelligence levels you describe would mean tripling the programming work to implement them.
The system we have now requires very little added programming beyond a basic, customizable monster AI for the strategic map and tactical combat. To make a new monster you need to make a strategic resource, a breeding ground building with its prerequisite tech, a custom ship design, and appropriate graphics. You might throw in a few modifications to combat AI to make your monster unique, and you could make a new weapon type for good measure. These could basically be created or adjusted in a simple mod.
I wouldn't go so far as to say trebbling
There isn't any real need for most of the things you quote
the first and second levels are nearly identical
Breeding grounds could/should a property of the planet or system, no building to create,
no tech to research unless it's desired
as for ship design i see no partiqulare need for anything more complex then a symbol over any other ship to
indicate it is a member of a herd, possibly which herd.

If you want to have more then one type of space monster youre going to need allmost all the same stuff, the only distinction is in how the users interact with the monsters.
MathGeek wrote: Your ideas for intelligent monsters would require vastly different AI scripts for all three levels of monsters. Modding or creating monsters would mean learning three different sets of rules. Additionally you would need a new interface for interacting with these monsters that has to be customizable for both 1 and 3.
vastly differnt is a very large stretch, the only real differnce between 1 and 2, is that ships can be returned to a herd, herd members outside the herd can call the herd one command, and the herd remembers transgressions against it longer. otherwise they are identical to 1.
MathGeek wrote: At best you might be able to tie it into the diplomacy screen but at that point monsters start to look like miniature empires. I suggested earlier that if you want to design a highly intelligent monster, make it a precursor race (at least from a programming perspective). This will make life easier on our coders. As Joe said earlier, if you can't keep them simple, you won't get them at all.
I understand and acknoledge that level three intelligence is differnt, but in the most simple case it is not infact difficult at all. consider MOO's space draggon, it pulled up to a planet, you got a message, pay or be attacked. As i see them Level three monsters would for the most part behave like that.
Monster drifts up to a colony, a dialoge opens, the creature has one, or max two abilities it can do {finish a tech, steal a tech, run off and rampage a colony, buy/sell food/minerals, ect. }, monster drifts off to a different colony. One COULD then extend thier behavour to preform more complex activities, but just the above would make them sufficently distinct.
MathGeek wrote: I am fine with the idea of monster attributes, and your list seems to encompass many of the attributes a monster should have. I would suggest that you change your disposition rating into a simple aggressiveness rating, to make it fit with the removal of intelligence.
  • High rating will attack anything that gets close (think: Aliens the movie)
    Medium rating might ignore, attack, or retreat based on conditions like terrestrial wild animals
    Low rating might be something like an elephant, generally ignores you, but don't make it mad.

In short i think i failed to present properly the idea, the goal would be simply to allow for a set of monsters with differing attributes, and to give this creatures a very different feal from the ships which users build and directly control.
and i would perfer a model which excludes the possibility of monsters being used as/or in parts of a ship built by empires.
I don't feal that monsters should be used as a special resourse to unlock technologies /construction options.

Monsters should be worked around and with, but not used, in my minds eye.


Hopefully i have made my intentions more clear, my appologies if these ideas have been already desided against, when reading the disscution i had felt that they had never been fully or addiquately explored in the first place.

best wishes all
Robbie Price

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