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Post by tbr on Dec 13, 2015 7:25:31 GMT -6
This post is about game experience and a way to give us more variability in that to further enhance the long term playability of the game. For this I suggest something which comes with a huge disconnect with "historical" gaming but may enhance the player experience.
At the moment the game does one thing very well, it depicts the frantic nature of the historic "dreadnought race" with unbelievably quick technology progress.
But sometimes I would like to have a more "relaxed" pace, with the speed of the strategic game layer slowed down so that factors like naval treaties, "lucky" draws in R&D etc. have more time to affect the game experience. At the moment the sheer speed of technological development and tension growth mean that some "lucky" R&D draws and naval treaties can have only low effects on the gameplay.
With "4X standard options" like "marathon play" (e.g. 2 or 3 times game length with R&D and Tension growth reduced to 1/2 respective 1/3 but build times staing the same) we could have more diversity in game experience. Of course games in this mode would depart strongly from any simulation of historic reality, but, hey, it's a game...
I want to have distinct "technological generations" in my fleet where there really is a need to mothball/scrap to make "budget space" for new designs. I want naval treaties that really hold for several years respectively hundreds of turns and not just serve as a cut-off for current build projects and are negated when war breaks out some 8-18 months/turns later. I want "width" and "duration" for the technological "stages" of my fleet designs when creativity in ship design really counts, that is more time to "play" with those "strange" designs like cross-deck etc. before technological progress allows the "ideal" configurations.
Since we already have four "game modes" where "budget size" is the variable could we get another four variables like "normal speed, half speed, third speed, quarter speed"? In the last case the game would last 100 years...
Alternatively, if it is easier to program because there are date-related aspects of the game engine, we could have more turns per year, with budget per turn and build times per turn staying the same but research time/effort being "per year" teh same as in "vanilla". Then we would have a slight "disconnect" in that with a turn per week a battleship could be built in half a year but that disconnect would be the same with a dreadnought game lasting 100 years.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Dec 13, 2015 13:23:51 GMT -6
I agree. I think a good implementation would be an alternate game pace that advances weekly rather than monthly per turn.
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Post by tbr on Dec 13, 2015 18:07:19 GMT -6
I agree. I think a good implementation would be an alternate game pace that advances weekly rather than monthly per turn. Yes, that would be a start, but for a real "marathon" experience the game also needs to be slowed down in the pace of technology as measured in ship build time so that you get full technology generations out, use tehm in battle and eventually mothball and/or scrap them to make "budget space" for a new generation (two or three "generations" more modern). At the moment the lifetime of a technological generation can be single digit months from state of the art to useful but obsoletes. But the press of the game pace is such that you almost never really reach that "hopelessly obsolete, must scrap" since the replacement time realtive to total game time is too long. That said, changing to weekly turns and keeping the build time in turns as well as the revenue in turns with everything else still taking the same amount of "game months" might work if tension gowth was curbed as well. That could be a workaround for easier implementation.
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kimmy
New Member
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Post by kimmy on Dec 13, 2015 19:14:09 GMT -6
I'm only a new player so I don't know for how much my words count, but I must admit that after my first campaign at 1925 I was sorta like "what, it's over already?". Maybe it's just cause I was having so much fun though, time flies when you're having fun!
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Post by bigb4486 on Dec 13, 2015 22:02:26 GMT -6
I agree. If it isn't too difficult, a slower pace option where technology doesn't move so fast would be very interesting. It's unfortunate that the dreadnought age goes by so quickly, I hardly ever get to experience the big capital fleet battles before battle-cruisers and then a few massive BBs reign king.
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Post by kyle on Dec 14, 2015 11:46:03 GMT -6
I'd like to see the game allow us to choose a start date (1908 or something) where the various countries have the tech they have historically at that date. In other words start the game with the kick-off of the Dreadnought race. Being able to choose a turn time of one week, two or one month - something like that would be good. Monthly changes are probably the way it actually worked though, and the frustration of seeing your great battleship design become obsolete before it's even built is realistic - it happened. Ships were usually designed some time before being laid down. The game has the design and build start together which is fine. I can imagine tearing up design after design as the months go by before you finally have to bight the bullet and lay down something before your fleet is too obsolete. I have already had that happen. I find the building/designing process fun and wars less fun. Probably realistic also - war is so damn inconvenient!
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jan 13, 2016 9:58:32 GMT -6
I find the building/designing process fun and wars less fun. Probably realistic also - war is so damn inconvenient! Now that's the truth.
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Post by klavohunter on Jan 13, 2016 15:27:59 GMT -6
I also like this idea. 25 years doesn't always seem like enough, especially when some technologies take forever to pop, or when you just can't start (or end!) a war at a convenient time... More time may also help with making arms limitation treaties stronger/more fun.
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Post by tillion on Jan 25, 2016 18:58:32 GMT -6
i to find the game abit fast a full game can be done in just a couple of hours if you have few wars due to RNG of events
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chz
Junior Member
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Post by chz on Jan 26, 2016 5:11:24 GMT -6
It may go against the "spirit" of the game, in that it's intended to show just how crazy the dreadnought race was, but it would certainly make a fun additional game mode for players to toy with. I'm all for it. We've already got an optional 1950 end date (alternate world has a thinner atmosphere?), so why not?
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Post by marcorossolini on Jan 26, 2016 17:43:22 GMT -6
I'd be interested in this, in particular if it allowed me to build my fleets up to the historical sizes of some of the first rate battlefleets of the era (Grand Fleet, High Seas Fleet). I'd want particular care to be taken though with how its balanced. Part of the fun is the absurd rate of technological change in the game. Keeping up must be just as important.
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Post by smacktoward on Feb 11, 2016 13:00:04 GMT -6
I find the building/designing process fun and wars less fun. Probably realistic also - war is so damn inconvenient! I think this is at least in part due to the "SAI" part of the game (the tactical battles) being less compelling than the "RTW" part of the game (everything else). Not because it's bad, particularly, but because while the SAI portion is at its most compelling depicting big battle-line clashes with dreadnoughts slugging it out, the design of the RTW part means that almost all of your time spent in tactical mode is going to be spent playing rinky-dink convoy defense and raider skirmishes. If you're lucky, maybe once or twice in a campaign you'll actually get an SAI engagement that rewards the micromanagement with a grand experience, but that's it. Considering how often you're dropped into SAI mode in the average campaign, that's a pretty low payoff ratio. The latest patches at least give you the option to auto-resolve battles involving raiders, which is a step forward in this regard. I'd suggest extending it further to let you auto-resolve any battle that doesn't involve at least a CA, or even auto-resolve all battles if you want to. When 99% of the battles are inconclusive, there's just not a lot of reward in micro-managing them all.
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Post by director on Feb 12, 2016 0:44:21 GMT -6
I tried running a whole game without ay wars and almost made it - my tensions with Russia blew up in 1922, I think.
The biggest problems with going to weekly turns are 1) It will take FOREVER to finish a battleship (30 months * 4 = 120 weeks) and 2) if we stick to 1 combat round per turn then that's a LOT of combat.
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Post by tbr on Feb 12, 2016 1:57:52 GMT -6
The idea is for an a-historical slow game mode. I do not care what the date counter says. Build time of ships should stay the same (in turns), research slowed down by a factor of 2-10 (ideally chooseable at game start) and the number of turns extended with the same factor.
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Post by absurdist on Feb 14, 2016 12:15:56 GMT -6
One thing I think you have to consider is benefit-cost. Of course this sounds cool, but will it really be worth having it worked on at the expense of say, other things? You have to remember that like building ships in game, the dev can only do so much at once. So while we want a new BC with no Armour and 15 inch guns. We really should replace our aging BB's.
That was a terrible analogy, but I hope my point comes across.
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