Adding a little more depth?

I do not know if some of these have already been discussed, I literally have over 100 ideas and now some need to come out. So these are my favourite or ones I think I believe will really benefit the game.

1. In 64 player games, corner empires are sometimes cut off. (map generation)

I have noticed that in these massive games, sometimes a player who starts in the corner of the map will be cut of from everybody else.

This is most likely because the map generates stars for corner empire towards the centre where there is already lots of players spawned?

Maybe a fix for this would be to have less stars per play when they spawn close, or just spawn further away. Obviously, its always better to improve the code and maybe force stars to spawn within 4ly so you can always expand somewhere.

2. Controlling choke points. (map generation)

In my experience for making well designed and fun strategy maps to play, a rule of thumb is to allow a minimum of 3 choke points per player. During this game I have spawned right on the edge of the map and there is only one choke point, meaning there is only one direction you can go… Until you research hyperspace, sometimes you need way to much hyperspace.

I would like to suggest spawning stars closer together for players on the edge so they have at least 3 choke points at the start of the game or are wide open. This could also work with number 1.

However, for players who start right in the centre a recommended amount of 3 I believe would be best.

3. Be able to make more precise custom maps. (expansion on custom co-ordinates for empires)

Obviously when making a custom game with the idea of setting your own map, it is more desirable to be able to choose the exact position of every star.

4. AI behaves a little…strangely. (AI development)

In many strategy games it is always fun to have really complex AI which at least seem to try to make decisions for themselves, Someday maybe we will see different AI personalities?

5. Make circular games standard? (fair should be standard)

In my opinion this is an important one, and probably also for those who are just trying the game for the first time.

This could attract more players to stay and play the game through when they first start. This is because new players just want to try the game, if they are thrown into the centre of everybody and realize its all about diplomacy, they will forget about actually playing the game and instead just talking to everybody in order to try to just enjoy the game…because they know they cant win if they do not.

The idea of luck doesn’t make for a fun game in general if that is all its about. Its not what people want to experience when they first start a strategy game. (most likely)

6. Warp gates should not use hyperspace range? (some realism)

It is well known that warp gates or black holes increase travel speed to the destination by folding the space in between the two points and so shortening the jump. So how come if I have 2 warp gates and I can not jump to the one far away just because of my hyperspace range?

7. Make carriers independent from ships? (some realism)

So every time you build a carrier one of your ships is immediately destroyed, I cant understand why this would be necessary… unless you are building a trojan horse like in the film “troy” in which case all my carriers will now be named trojan horse, and my star name will be beach of troy. I dont think I will get much trust from my neighbours if they have watched the film.

8. Unit veterancy (experience based reward)

This is not new to strategy games, so every time a carrier survives combat it will gain experience and rank up. As it ranks up it will gain additional benefits of which I have not decided as it requires balancing.

Maybe the ability to bring home credits even when it captures a star with no economy? or the ability to rebuilt lost ships straight after a battle but not constantly.

9. Multiple ship types (more depth)

Would love to see more options, like being able to build certain types of ships, these may include scout ships which you would start with. Scout ships maybe a little faster than the rest of your ships but lack the ability to participate in combat. (They have no weapons or very weak weapons, they can be destroyed easy)

Industry would have to be set which types of ships to build, but you could cue up different ship types much like you cue up your research. (if you cue up research I prefer to be online ready to change)

If it is to be implemented there its best to have ships which combat other types of ships. Maybe having at least 3 ships types. (carrier, scout, your normal ship)

10. Custom built technology during the game (depth, interesting diplomacy)

This one is a little crazy, Though its a fun conception I believe. So the idea is that each game you may pick one out of few technologies which are not already available on the game, and these can be researched also, but you can only research one.

So I will throw a few examples… Lets say there are only two of these custom techs (for simplicity atm) one might give you increased speed and one might allow you to choose a star to “black out” for a set amount of hours.

“black out” would work like this, you choose a star which is in range of your opponents scanning to black out, this gives the star the effect that it is out of scanning range. So basically if it is scanned you can reduce the opponents visibility to this star for a few hours.

There could be many different types of these special technologies but players may only research one of them during the game as well as all there other basic research.

This would mean each empire would be made more to your style of play or a character you are role playing. This will greatly add depth as you must use make full use of the tech you decide to research (there is no going back), and could make diplomacy a little more interesting due to having a different empire completely.

11. A new way of storing galactic credits (depth, could make more features from this)

So I also came up with an idea to make this a little more complex and may also make for some fun diplomacy.

Currently all you galactic credits get transferred to one place immediately they are generated allowing for quick and easy upgrading of any star you may have plans to upgrade.

What if, the credits you generate do not go to one place, say like if you have 10000 economy (kidding) more like 10 economy on a star, all the credits that this star generates will be stored on the star. This means, carriers will be able to pick up credits and store them in cargo, they will have to be transported to stars that you want to upgrade.(if its not making credits)

This could make diplomacy extremely fun as you wouldn’t just click the button to send your team some credits or a technology. You would have to put credits or a technology onto a carrier, the carrier can be put into a “peace mode” setting which would also be a new feature its fairly obvious what that would do.

The carrier carrying whatever it is carrying in its cargo will travel to the friendly empire and when it reaches a star of the empire it can drop of the goodies and then return home.

The peace mode function or possibly “do not engage function” will stop the carrier from attacking any players HOWEVER, this is were it gets interesting.

Players far away would have to wait for this carrier to arrive and it may have to travel through enemies territory, but enemies dont have to just let this carrier through… They could decide to attack the carrier on its trade mission and steal the credits or tech for themselves.

If scout ships are implemented they would be however pretty fast and maybe difficult to intercept or catch if not noticed early.

I believe its a fun idea but it would also mean trading far away could be difficult. This could be good or bad, close relations with nearby players would be more important making you choose enemies wisely, possibly making the centre a more valuable trade partner.

A ship has weapons but does not fly between the stars.

$ 25 will upgrade a ship to have the ability to fly between the stars and take many ships with it.
A carrier is the same as a ship, has weapons and fights, and is included in the ship count.
So a ship is not destroyed when you buy a carrier.

I see, it makes sense now. How about the other ideas? If they are not great I will probably come up with some new ideas which are a little less “codey”. And by that I mean I dont know how easy it will be for a developer to code those into his game. If I new how to program I would end up submitting code but I only know how to design strategy maps.

So I edited out some mistakes in my first post which didn’t come out in my first edit for some reason, and I realized the first point could be solved by just starting with level 2 hyperspace range. It was early morning.

Jay welcomes ideas.

However, at the moment, Jay is very busy working towards releasing Blight2 for the Steam Greenlight.

You can search this forum for topics old and new.

Jay also has this NP2 Trello board prioritizing his bugs and wishlist.

If you have premium membership, you can create user games with custom maps. Just enter the coordinates for empire home worlds.

@Dysp has a web site tool that allows you to view his map designs, or edit your own map designs.

You can search this forum about maps. Click on a few of these threads. There are many others.

You could download my MS Excel 2010 files and modify them to design your own maps.

NP2 does not yet allow you to enter every star position in the galaxy. Jay has his own star scatter algorithm, which removes stars that are too near each other. This explains the gaps that you see in some maps. I think this injects some variety into the terrain. You can not have every random map be fair. :stuck_out_tongue:

When Jay created NP1, there were four technologies available for research. Scanning, Hyperspace Range, carrier Speed, and Weapons. He discovered that players could lose their entire empire while sleeping.

So when Jay created NP2, Speed tech is not one of the 7 techs available for research.

Interesting to know Jay has same ideas already.

I will take a look, I am also interested in this stuff so nice to meet someone else who is. :slight_smile:

Maybe one day… I think even if it just added or removed maybe one star could prevent people from being cut off or add a few more possible routes to expand, it increases the amount of tactics and strategies you can possibly come up with which is what makes a strategy game interesting :stuck_out_tongue:

The star scatter does not have to be perfect in a random hex game as this were diplomacy becomes one of the most important things in overall strategy, maybe they could be called diplomatic games lol? I think the circular games are fine how they are however. I think you know what I mean, its good to be not limited to one possibility. As it might as well just be a straight line galaxy lol oh well

But there could be other techs which counter speed or deter it. These are just examples. Not to mention they are one of techs, you may only research one of possibility many different types of tech, and to stop them from overpowering in one area they will have to be level capped, meaning speed could be capped to a fair level. Some more examples of one of techs…

  • Boost (Increase carrier movement to x1.5 for 8 hours max when full research, there is a cooldown and only for one carrier.)
  • Black out (has the effect of not being in scanning range even if it is for a max of 8 hours when full research, may only be one star and there is a cool down timer)
  • Decoy (creates decoy ships at a select star for 8 hours max, may only be at one star and there is a cooldown. The amount of decoys would be the same as your total ship count but do not count towards the total amount, you should be able to move these ships but they can not capture stars nor do any damage.)
  • Emp (a select enemy carrier in scanning range gets an emp, this stops the carrier from moving for 8 hours max even if is it already attacking, can only be one carrier and there is cooldown)

They could be called “Empire Powers”. Maybe balanced a little better who knows, I know a similar idea already is the nova bomb, this is basically an expansion of this idea.

So there is many possibilities with empire powers it is not just limited to what I have mentioned already. So I want to encourage people to imagine themselves what fun they could have with these :stuck_out_tongue:

Hey @Firehawkz Thanks very much for the long feeback post.

Right now the map editor only allows you to place where a player’s starting stars are, but when I get back to NP I would like to modify it so you can place every star, then use it to carefully design some really good maps. Think carefully about every choke point and every star.

Absolutely. Infact this is my highest priority. My long term plan is to have a really fun and interesting AI fill the spot for every dropout so that the game gracefully degrades to be essentially an sp game.

The problem with the circular galaxies was that the diplomacy is not as interesting, You always only have two fronts. All you have to do is make a friend on one side and fight on the other.

I plan to have Wormholes as well that will link parts of the galaxy without any flying time.

I do plan to make the gates leveling so they will get faster and faster the more you build them. You will always travel at the lowest level of the two gates.

I do want to do this. We did experiment with it in the early games of NP2 and it did feel good to try and keep specific carriers alive and for them to start to develop personality.

Yes, I think I would like to expand the complexity of the game just a little bit and add these kinds of race specific abilities. I think it would be fun to come up with them.

I like your idea of the shield blockers.

Generally speaking I think I want to shift the game slowly towards having more “character” or more “flavor”

I think this is a fun interesting idea. I was thinking of having something a little simpler and introducing the idea of supply lines where upgrading a star that was out of supply was much more expensive. Perhaps ship building would be slower as well.

I think it would create interesting situations where you would try and cut off large chunks of players empires.

There is a small chance that NP would become the kind of game where you load money, ore, and even population on to carriers and ship them around from star to star before you could build new infrastructure at a star, but I think thats probably a complication we dont need.

Thanks again for your feedback.

Sorry for taking a while to get back!

NEW Players could have an easier time learning the game from this simpler circular map.
The New players could become better experienced veterans sooner.
This could reduce AFKs on the other maps in future games.

Exactly, the entire game doesn’t have to be circular, but if the new comer game was circular new players might have a more fun time, lets not forget new players dont know the game at all, so a circular map is still going to be pretty intense for them. They have to figure out how many carriers they need, if they should research banking or terraforming… or weapons… how many ships to put on each carrier at the start.

We already know all these things but new players will have a hard time, as it is atm they also have to make friends with pretty much everybody in the current standard games which they have to think about also… So for a new player it might be a little to much as it is for now…

It will just make it easier for them and they will get more confidence after the first game than normal, also if they lose the circular game since its pretty much equal on all sides, they may easily see why they lost and improve for the next game.

If they lose there first game on a hex its a little more complex to learn why they lost…

This is just my opinion I dont know if everybody thinks this way…