4X Dominus Galaxia - MoO 1 Spiritual Successor

[Ventessel]

So, I played a game today and it went fairly well. I started off easy: 50 star map, average number of opponents (turned out to be 3), AI set to dynamic "relaxed", with no production bonuses. I was Human.

I'll break this into two posts, one of my overall impressions fo the first game and another with some specific points I think could bear improvement (mostly UI related, some gameplay).

The game went fairly smoothly, I scouted aggressively and then scrapped my fleet. Not having to build colony ships was interesting, and honestly very enjoyable. I made expansion flexible and added an interesting layer when deciding where to move population. I enjoyed peace for a while with the Zero to my south west, and later on ran into the Reptar to my north west. Hostilities broke out with both roughly simultaneously, but using a combination of frigate gunboats and a small handful of shielded destroyers I was able to take one colony (a fertile artifacts world!) from the Zero and they sued for peace. Shortly thereafter the Reptar gave up after some inconclusive maneuvering (I don't think we ever actually fought, just moved fleets around some border worlds and maybe skirmished).

After that, the game was mostly just 200 turns of development and research. I think I had a moderate material advantage over both AI, and my industrial base grew exponentially. I stopped the game at 2572 after bombing the last Reptar colony into the stone age (they declared war, citing a need for more colonies). The Zero still exist, with a dozen or so colonies, but I have about 3 times that number and my industrial base is probably an order of magnitude larger (for reference, their homeworld has 703 factories and my average colony has something like 2000). The compounded tech advantage means that I think my fleets would be able to easily roll them up, if the Reptar were any indicator.

Given that I played on Relaxed, and a small map, I'm not too surprised at this outcome. For an intro game, it was very fun. I will try the next game on a larger galaxy with tougher settings, and try out the other playable species.

A few things I especially enjoyed:
1. The system of colony production allocation, and the option to automatically order terraforming and factory upgrades from the research screen.
2. The system of colonization, in particular the ability to order from multiple sources simultaneously. This is GREAT user-focused design, and I wish that whatever masochistic bastard at Paradox is making the Stellaris UI would take note of this kind of thing.
3. The AI was wonderful, and the ability to both auto resolve battles and to switch CPU control on and off during tactical combat was a huge relief.

 

[Ventessel]

Second Post: Some Constructive Criticism

As much as I enjoyed the game, there were a few things which I think could be fairly easily implemented that would make a huge difference (some of them might be a little trickier, but well worth it).

The notification system is fine early on, and sucks in the late game. Especially frustrating is not being able to change the type of ship being built while the notification is still focused on the colony. I think the game would benefit tremendously from a panel on the right hand side that displays all turn notifications as a list. Then you could right click to dismiss an individual notification, or left click to focus on the colony in question. Part of why I quit the first game rather than carry on to exterminate the last AI was because every other turn I had to click through 30+ notifications about completed terraforming or factory upgrades, essentially undoing the convenience of centralized upgrades from the tech screen.

On that note, it would also be nice to have some kind of overview screens. An empire summary screen, at the very least, to show you your population, production, etc. This could go on the right hand side of the screen, and be collapsible so that you could view a summary (ideally a table of your planetary production, to see maybe where to send population or what planets need to be fortified) while you scrolled around the map and moved fleets, set rally points, and so on.

Some way of seeing all the known resources of the enemy would also be nice. The diplomacy screen would be a good place for it, to compare your capabilities to the capabilities of all their planets (that you know of) and the fleets you have information on, as well as perhaps an indication if they have any enemies currently. And any known technologies they have, such as weapons/shields/armor/ground troop stuff that I would have "seen" in action or been able to scan if we encountered each other but didn't fight.

Another summary that would be especially nice is a ground troop summary. It's tough to remember what stacks with what, and whether I should be prioritizing rifles, shields, armor, or special equipment for maximum improvement of the ground forces. Again, a comparison to enemy tech levels would also be nice to see for planning purposes (i.e. should I bother invading or just bomb them down?).

A few points of frustration:
The nebula, especially the blue one, are nigh impossible to see against the background image of the galaxy. It looks nice, but one or the other needs to be adjusted to be more visible.

On the higher zoom levels, incoming ships can make it hard to click on a planet. Maybe have the icons enlarge slightly when the mouse hovers so I can tell what I am about to click on?

A confirmation popup when I go to scrap a design I think would be a good "safety feature". As it is, this hasn't happened to me, but if I were to accidentally click on 'SCRAP' for an important design, BAM - they're gone. That kind of thing has serious potential downsides, so I think an extra step would be warranted to prevent accidental suicide.

I would like to be able to see the pre-bombardment population of a colony, so I can tell how many turns until I should send transports, or if it's worth continuing the attack, etc. As it is, I'm going off memory of what was there before I started. Putting this in a notification tab would be good.

In ship design, show the cost/damage ratios and space/damage ratios of weapons when selecting them. Comparing against average damage, and potentially showing known enemy shield technology would make designing ships more of a "one stop shop" at the design screen rather than clicking around the map looking at planetary shields, fleets, etc. (obviously this would be based on "last known"/"last encountered" enemy warships).

Ability to adjust frequency and location of autosave would be nice, as well as hotkey for saving the game (was this in the input options in the launcher? I don't recall seeing it.)

Maybe split the design button into a "fleets" tab and the existing design tab, so that the fleet summary is available from the main screen rather than through clicking "Design" -> "Designs"

Some typos:
Planetary bombardment screen is labelled "Fleets in Oribt"
Mass driver tech description reads "hhalves the effectiveness..."

A few gameplay related changes that you might consider:

1. The ability for ships to "reserve fire", and shoot at enemy ships that enter their range on the enemy turn if they've already moved that round.
2. Some ability to shoot down missiles, I didn't see any point defense weapons or other option for that aside from flying behind asteroids.
3. Soil enrichment seems crazy strong. I didn't have it at all until I invaded a Reptar planet, and then I turned almost my entire empire into fertile worlds practically overnight. Maybe have artificially enriched planets only give +15% and +35% instead of 25% and 50%? This way fertile and gaia worlds still carry some value in the late game as well.

Just my two cents. Overall, really fun game with some elegant design decisions. It's clear you guys really understood what made MoO1 such a great game, and seeing you build on it is really exciting!

 

[Jeff Graw]

The notification system is fine early on, and sucks in the late game. Especially frustrating is not being able to change the type of ship being built while the notification is still focused on the colony. I think the game would benefit tremendously from a panel on the right hand side that displays all turn notifications as a list. Then you could right click to dismiss an individual notification, or left click to focus on the colony in question. Part of why I quit the first game rather than carry on to exterminate the last AI was because every other turn I had to click through 30+ notifications about completed terraforming or factory upgrades, essentially undoing the convenience of centralized upgrades from the tech screen.

Agreed. Having individual notifications is I think better than an overview list at the start of the game, but becomes pretty terrible towards the end when you have enough colonies. My plan here is to, after a certain threshold, change the notification system to an overview list where you can select from the various events. This threshold would be able to user set in the options, so you could switch after 12 elements, 20 elements, never switch, or just default to the overview list by setting it to 0.

On that note, it would also be nice to have some kind of overview screens. An empire summary screen, at the very least, to show you your population, production, etc. This could go on the right hand side of the screen, and be collapsible so that you could view a summary (ideally a table of your planetary production, to see maybe where to send population or what planets need to be fortified) while you scrolled around the map and moved fleets, set rally points, and so on.

Some way of seeing all the known resources of the enemy would also be nice. The diplomacy screen would be a good place for it, to compare your capabilities to the capabilities of all their planets (that you know of) and the fleets you have information on, as well as perhaps an indication if they have any enemies currently. And any known technologies they have, such as weapons/shields/armor/ground troop stuff that I would have "seen" in action or been able to scan if we encountered each other but didn't fight.

Another summary that would be especially nice is a ground troop summary. It's tough to remember what stacks with what, and whether I should be prioritizing rifles, shields, armor, or special equipment for maximum improvement of the ground forces. Again, a comparison to enemy tech levels would also be nice to see for planning purposes (i.e. should I bother invading or just bomb them down?).

I agree with all of that, and it's planned to add that stuff before launch.

A few points of frustration:
The nebula, especially the blue one, are nigh impossible to see against the background image of the galaxy. It looks nice, but one or the other needs to be adjusted to be more visible.

This is largely a function of the nebula graphics being static, and us having multiple backgrounds where one is randomly selected at the start of the game. We'll rework the nebula visuals in the future so that they have some form of animation and therefore stand out better.

On the higher zoom levels, incoming ships can make it hard to click on a planet. Maybe have the icons enlarge slightly when the mouse hovers so I can tell what I am about to click on?

Not a bad idea, although you can simply keep clicking to get at anything covered up by any other thing. If your mouse coordinates overlap five different selectable elements, each click will cycle through those in turn.

A confirmation popup when I go to scrap a design I think would be a good "safety feature". As it is, this hasn't happened to me, but if I were to accidentally click on 'SCRAP' for an important design, BAM - they're gone. That kind of thing has serious potential downsides, so I think an extra step would be warranted to prevent accidental suicide.

You're probably right. Would need to be paired with a "don't warn me again" toggle.

I would like to be able to see the pre-bombardment population of a colony, so I can tell how many turns until I should send transports, or if it's worth continuing the attack, etc. As it is, I'm going off memory of what was there before I started. Putting this in a notification tab would be good.

I'm pretty sure that population is readily available information anywhere it would be relevant. What's the context of this?

In ship design, show the cost/damage ratios and space/damage ratios of weapons when selecting them. Comparing against average damage, and potentially showing known enemy shield technology would make designing ships more of a "one stop shop" at the design screen rather than clicking around the map looking at planetary shields, fleets, etc. (obviously this would be based on "last known"/"last encountered" enemy warships).

This would eventually be nice, but sounds like a decent chunk of work. In any case, it would need to be after the "design intelligence" system is in place. (eg. you learn more about a design by fighting it)

Ability to adjust frequency and location of autosave would be nice, as well as hotkey for saving the game (was this in the input options in the launcher? I don't recall seeing it.)

I'm sure we'll have that as an option by launch, or we'll just save every turn and let you select any previous one. Quicksave is F5, quickload is F9.

We'll also have an ironman mode, which is what I feel is the best way to play DG, along with some form of carrot to encourage people to play this way. But while we're beta testing we want people to be able to supply us with save games for obvious reasons.

Maybe split the design button into a "fleets" tab and the existing design tab, so that the fleet summary is available from the main screen rather than through clicking "Design" -> "Designs"

A "Fleets UI" is planned in the future.

Some typos:
Planetary bombardment screen is labelled "Fleets in Oribt"
Mass driver tech description reads "hhalves the effectiveness..."

Noted, thanks!

A few gameplay related changes that you might consider:
1. The ability for ships to "reserve fire", and shoot at enemy ships that enter their range on the enemy turn if they've already moved that round.
2. Some ability to shoot down missiles, I didn't see any point defense weapons or other option for that aside from flying behind asteroids.

Space combat will see some major work in the next 2-4 months. I can't promise what will be added and changed, but I can say I'll be looking at ways to maximise depth.

3. Soil enrichment seems crazy strong. I didn't have it at all until I invaded a Reptar planet, and then I turned almost my entire empire into fertile worlds practically overnight. Maybe have artificially enriched planets only give +15% and +35% instead of 25% and 50%? This way fertile and gaia worlds still carry some value in the late game as well.

For sure. We might also just move those techs up on the tree, make the planetary improvement much more expensive, or both. I'm hesitant to treat artificially enriched planets differently for the sake of consistency.

Just my two cents. Overall, really fun game with some elegant design decisions. It's clear you guys really understood what made MoO1 such a great game, and seeing you build on it is really exciting!

Thank you for some very good feedback!

 

[Ventessel]

Oh yeah, I had this in my notes but it didn't make it into my earlier posts - being able to switch research projects partway through would be good. Sometimes you find yourself in a war and decide that you want to switch tech focuses. It can come with a penalty, no need to save all the progress, but the inability to make that decision is a bit limiting without really enhancing the strategic decisions.

 

[Jeff Graw]

OK, I'll add the ability to preempt a research focus. But I think the penalty will be very extreme, like you lose all your invested RP. Might not be totally realistic, but that kind of hard decision promises to be more strategic, and importantly, makes things easy to implement. This has some other good effects, like being able to stop research on a tech if you capture a more advanced version, or being able to go have a look around the turn after choosing a focus to double check you made the right choice. I don't know when I'll get to it, but I will. Maybe in the next month or two.

More ship designs at any time. 6 is definitely not enough

Keeping in mind that in MoO 1 you usually had to reserve a slot for a colony ship, which isn't the case in DG, this is a contentious and multi-faceted issue. On one hand, fewer design slots encourages more interesting strategic choices and compromises, and also helps keep combat reasonably sane. The downside to a low design limit is that some may find it overly restrictive, or have difficulty accepting the abstraction without being taken out of the experience a bit. Certainly, there's a sweet spot somewhere. I don't think it's lower than 6, or higher than 8.

A thing to note is that by default stacks are automatically split at the beginning of each encounter up to design slot cap. Significantly upping the cap would likely mean abandoning this, since it would slow down combat too much at that point. Even at the current cap of six, I'm not totally convinced that the current auto-split implementation is even worth the tradeoff given how much it slows things down already. It's been a matter of some debate among the team, by which I mean I personally don't like stack splitting, but everyone else does or is at least leaning in that direction.

I could probably force the issue, but I'd rather have some degree of consensus or, failing that, a mandate from testers telling us to get rid of stack splitting. For now though, I view keeping stack splitting and upping the design limit as mutually exclusive. One or the other.

Maybe I should RTFM but it felt like there weren't enough tooltips explaining the different world types and how they affected growth rate, waste etc. Mostly intuitive but it's nice to know whether Ocean is better than Desert etc.

In MoO 1 as well as DG, the various habitable environment types only really differ based on how good they're expected to roll. In the future, we want to add some more interesting dynamics, even if it's only as much as the aquatic race having a higher cap on ocean type worlds and so on.

 

[Ventessel]

I've been playing more this weekend, and combat is interesting but sometimes frustrating. Lack of point defense weapons is rather irksome, and it also appears that missiles don't keep flying after one side retreats or is destroyed, is that accurate?

Stacking is also frustrating. Isn't it meant to reduce micromanagement? As it is the automatic splitting ends up feeling frustrating, but due to the flanking mechanics you kind of need a long line of warships. I'm not a fan of the critical hits, they make combat a little too swingy.

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[Jeff Graw]

I've been playing more this weekend, and combat is interesting but sometimes frustrating. Lack of point defense weapons is rather irksome

Well..

I want to advise keeping expectations in check. The game is still in development, needs a lot of polish, and the combat system needs to be significantly fleshed out still.

Space combat will see some major work in the next 2-4 months. I can't promise what will be added and changed, but I can say I'll be looking at ways to maximise depth.

I'm not looking for much feedback in the area of space combat right now. I know some who love it, some who hate it, and I err towards the later to some degree. By and large I know what and where the issues are, but I haven't had time to get around to them yet. When I start reworking things, I'll be looking for a lot more feedback in the area, and the direction the design goes will largely be based on player criticism of the changes I make in as close to real time as possible.

My focus should swing back around to combat fairly soon.

it also appears that missiles don't keep flying after one side retreats or is destroyed, is that accurate?

That's mostly accurate. Projectiles don't count when it comes towards triggering the end of an encounter. So as long as two hostile sides still have non-projectile units left on the map, the event will continue. Projectiles used to count, but that was changed after play testing. It might come back eventually, but there would need to be more to guard against lame hit and run tactics.

Stacking is also frustrating. Isn't it meant to reduce micromanagement? As it is the automatic splitting ends up feeling frustrating, but due to the flanking mechanics you kind of need a long line of warships. I'm not a fan of the critical hits, they make combat a little too swingy.

Does anyone else playing the beta have any opinions for or against automatic stack splitting?

As far as criticals, I like them, but it's also possible I could change flanking to a pure +damage bonus. That said, one good thing about criticals is they create a lot of room for itemisation if we ever go fully procedural with weapon techs. That, and they have bigger emotional impact. Whether they make things too random, or improve gameplay, is a rather subjective question depending on individual philosophy. It's also worth considering that plugging in different values for critical chance and severity would change the overall impact and feeling.

 

[Ventessel]

Well, I've spent a lot of time designing weapons, mostly for tabletop systems but recently for a strategy game of my own, and I think that tieing critical hits to the weapons themselves and/or certain attributes like hit chance would prove more rewarding.

If a player knows that building high accuracy ships with specific weapons will lead to many criticals and thus better performance than might be expected, that represents an interesting strategic decision. If it just comes down to who can move around behind faster (especially given the lack of turning without movement).

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[Jeff Graw]

Absolutely agreed. That was my original intent, in fact there's even support internally, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

 

[Jeff Graw]

0.6.6.0 has been released. Lots of quality of life improvements! In you're in the beta, then full patch notes can be found in game or on the steam group.

 

[Ventessel]

Very nice to have the option to skip notifications, although getting some kind of a list would be ideal (I'm sure there are other development priorities, though).

I'm not sure how I feel about the missile behavior changes, though. Honestly, tactical combat feels promising but still very shallow. Special equipment will probably provide depth once implemented, but the system of initiative doesn't seem to fully balance out the significant advantages huge ships have over smaller ones in terms of survivability and cost effectiveness.

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[Jeff Graw]

There's still a lot more work to be done on tactical combat, this patch is just a taste. In the future we'll be looking at:

-Ship specials, and not just analogs of MoO 1's specials.
-Additional types of terrain
-Redo of retreat mechanics
-Battlefield conditions based upon location on strategic map (eg. inside of nebula)
-Ability to change activation order of units
-More differentation between ship sizes (eg. role warfare)
-More UI improvements, (eg. visual indication of firing ranges).
-More interesting interactions with missiles. Eg. fuel system, point defence, special missiles that have the capability of retargeting nearby units if the initial target is destroyed, etc.
-Probably some tweaks to flanking
-Possible implementation of firing arcs for certain weapons
-Possibility of some form of reaction fire
-Possibility of some degree of LOS
-Small possibility of some kind of fighter/bomber mechanic.

And a couple of improvements to the strategic sphere:

-Ship designs (and overall fleet composition) having some effect on fleet visibility
-Ship design "intelligence" system, so initially the attributes of enemy ship designs are unknown, and become better defined through either interaction with the design, or through espionage (although espionage is not currently implemented)
-Small possibility of ship specials that make fleets appear larger to others.

Some of these improvements are pretty far out, but there should be tangible changes to combat with each major patch now. Definitely aware that hitting combat out of the park has the ability to transform the finished product from good with small cult following to classic with huge following, so it's not something I'm taking lightly.

 

[Norfleet]

In MoO 1 as well as DG, the various habitable environment types only really differ based on how good they're expected to roll. In the future, we want to add some more interesting dynamics, even if it's only as much as the aquatic race having a higher cap on ocean type worlds and so on.

I think the concept of "single biome world" needs to die, really. Make them more interesting than that. Stars in Shadow did worlds that have multiple biomes on them, so that a planet is generally best inhabited by a mixture of species best suited for their respective biomes, but it's still a bit canned. You can do better!

Also, if blowing up planets is a thing, let us blow up any planet: Ours, uninhabited planets, anything. Stellar Converters aren't just for Alderaan, they're also for terraforming. The rest of the galaxy should probably care far less if we just use them to bulldoze unimportant planets to make way for hyperspace bypasses. Hyperspace bypasses should be a thing.

 

[Jeff Graw]

A heads up to those of you in the beta, because a few Codexers bugged me about this specifically, but you can now preempt a research focus at the cost of 1/2 of your currently invested RP in the new build that just went live.

 

[Lagi]

I was honored with early access to Dominius Galaxia.

During installation, I update to version 6.2.2, then auto-installer encounter error, and is not able to patch to newer version. 6.2.2 works, so below are my (probably obsolete) remarks. I have played recently Remnants of Predecessor - MoO1 clone so I compare DG with RoP few times.

Most of all, DG catch my attention with resign from colony ship. Intriguing approach. What is a colony ship? A big transport. Removing colony ships, liberate slots for more funny crafts. Exclusive military vessels give designing game-part a sharp, "unblurry" identity.

Colonized planet can not expand empire border further without Starport. Disbelief excuses for that are logical. Gravitation hinder whole logistic process (space-vehicles can not easily resupply fuel to continue exploration) and unable to create deep-space ships [as per analogy, nobody build navy-ships deep in land, to avoid transportation cost]. + its a very good gamey solution to limit immediate expansion.

I adore sending transport wherever I can. With habitation technology apply by default to all transports. I wish to see this idea in other clones.

There is lack of short-keys, not even End Turn button. No key access to research, nor design.

You can control planet sliders with WSAD keys. Idea is good, but when you adjust sliders, the map is not unlocked from scrolling map.

Sliders working very nice. I prefer DG slider solution over RoP sliders (I can max more than 1 slider and game divide resources accordingly).

No fleet panel. No way to manage movement of big amount of fleets. No rally points.

No colonies panel. No way to check what all my planets doing, without tedious one by one planet inspecting.

Stimulus function work very well. Easy to do planet boost for some period of time. Also smart mechanic of interest on reserves, make you double thing if you really need to faster finish that ships.

Design panel is very well though out. All information are visible on screen. Quick-slot ABC are handy.

BUG: why there is visible info, if you design ship with zero weapons? it cluttering window.

I adore combat screen. I can see effectivity of my fleet, instead of believe auto-resolve formula, saying that I suck. Battles are obvious part of strategy-games, but RoP is still lacking of it, so I'm astonish.

Sending population transport to other planet is good resolved. Instead of clicking donor planet, you click under-populated planet and decide from where to take the citizens surplus. Its more natural.

In MOO clones, migration management is a big part of the game (right after fleet and planet manage). Solving it right, with at best few, different ways to do it, has a significant impact on UI.

Nice info-bar at the top-right that show crucial information about empire research & BC economy.

Good thing are quick battle resolve option during encounter. So I can take a snap-look, and when get bored, quit - from yet another, asymmetrical battle.

Tech and weaponry, I have to think what to choose for a next research project which betoken well about balance. Ship equipment is also nice, and I create various ship. Or I dont figure out any exploits yet.

After expanding my reign to ~20 planets, the fleet clicking to wage wars, invading the same planet over again, UI was too arduous. RoP manage it better.

 

[Jeff Graw]

Hey there, somehow I missed this or I would have responded sooner, but thanks for the feedback.

If you have trouble patching simply delete all files except the launcher executable and the launcher data folder and that will do a fresh install. As soon as we're on steam the patching process will work a lot better, obviously.

As far as fleet and colonies panel, they'll come around eventually. Their absence isn't by design, they just haven't been designed yet

Rally points do exist. There's a "Set Rally Point" button on each shipyard.

Sliders actually shouldn't work with WASD keys, that's just me forgetting to remove auto-navigation from them which is enabled by default. Eventually, if we do keyboard control, it will be more tailored and thoughtful. Definitely want to copy RoTP's "Use the mousewheel to change the slider" ability eventually though.

 

[Jeff Graw]

We're contemplating a major change to how planets behave and are generated, so that the final result would look like a bit of a cross between SoTS 1, MoO 1, SpaceWard Ho! and Starflight.

This essentially gives planets a huge amount of variety, and, at least in theory, a lot of space for strategic depth. A big boost to eXploration and eXploitation in general.

The downsides are an increase to complexity, and more difficult balancing.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/awboz7fnf0kqnqi/New planets.docx?dl=0

Have a read and let us know what you think. So far reception to the idea has been moderately to exuberantly positive, although I don't doubt that there will be those who dislike the idea too.

This isn't something we're for sure going to do, and if we do end up going this direction, the final result may not look exactly like what is described in the doc. However, it's being seriously considered. It's true that there's a bit of risk involved, but also much potential upside in terms of strategy and world building.

Of course, this change would be a very significant move away from MoO 1, and take DG away from its current position of "MoO 1++" to something that is quite distinct despite sharing a similar underlying philosophy.

 

[Quatlo]

We're contemplating a major change to how planets behave and are generated, so that the final result would look like a bit of a cross between SoTS 1, MoO 1, SpaceWard Ho! and Starflight.

This essentially gives planets a huge amount of variety, and, at least in theory, a lot of space for strategic depth. A big boost to eXploration and eXploitation in general.

The downsides are an increase to complexity, and more difficult balancing.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/awboz7fnf0kqnqi/New planets.docx?dl=0

Have a read and let us know what you think. So far reception to the idea has been moderately to exuberantly positive, although I don't doubt that there will be those who dislike the idea too.

This isn't something we're for sure going to do, and if we do end up going this direction, the final result may not look exactly like what is described in the doc. However, it's being seriously considered. It's true that there's a bit of risk involved, but also much potential upside in terms of strategy and world building.

Of course, this change would be a very significant move away from MoO 1, and take DG away from its current position of "MoO 1++" to something that is quite distinct despite sharing a similar underlying philosophy.

Sounds awesome, just add some interface feature to the game that filters potential planets according to your race and the complexity on the player end is pretty much gone.

 

[Jeff Graw]

We've moved the beta onto Steam, finally. Testers, shoot me a message to get your keys.

 

[RealDeath]

We've moved the beta onto Steam, finally. Testers, shoot me a message to get your keys.

If you're still offering, I'm pretty interested to check out your beta (can't seem to PM).

 

[Jeff Graw]

Check your inbox

 

[Jeff Graw]

I guess I should bump this every now and then...

A lot has changed since August of last year. Don't have time to go over everything, but we just pushed a big patch. Notes below if anyone is interested:

-Save games from previous versions of Dominus Galaxia are not compatible with version 0.6.9.0.


-Added starlane support. Our implementation allows travel outside the main network at a reduced speed, the rate of which is moddable in data. Not all worlds are necessarily connected via starlanes. The goal is to find the sweet spot between “every world is a chokepoint” and “anything can come from anywhere,” which both (in our view) sap strategic depth by normalizing the significance of choices. Whether or not a game uses starlanes is selectable as an advanced game option which is enabled by default.


-Just to be clear -- since the subject of starlanes is about as divisive as Donald Trump -- this is an ENTIRELY OPTIONAL feature. If you dislike starlanes, feel free to disable them, but we suggest you give our implementation a try at least once.


-Nevertheless, it should be kept in mind that the AI is not completely adapted to starlanes yet and will sometimes pick odd paths. But under the hood our AI doesn’t see starlanes or slow nebula, just the distance between various points. In other words any AI misbehavior that exists with starlanes also exists in their absence; it just isn’t quite as exposed.


-Colony ships now exist as an advanced gameplay option. Starports can also be toggled independently. In total there are four colonization modes. By default, only starports are enabled. Colony-ships-only emulates MoO 1, enabling neither emulates Star Lords, while enabling both feels like a hybrid between MoO 1 and DG.


-Wormholes are now transient, with a specific period where they are up and down. This is toggleable as an advanced gameplay option and is enabled by default.


-The game speed advanced option has been divided into two parts: production speed and research speed.


-The galaxy generation algorithm has been rewritten to create more interesting and fair scenarios. It also places empires first instead of last, which lets us spawn as many empires as we want irrespective of galaxy size. Previously, the maximum number of empires per game was probabilistic based on the number of valid start locations that existed after generation.


-While much better than before, the new generator is still very much a work in progress and will continue to improve with time.


-All 10 races can now be represented in a single game, up from the previous maximum of 8.


-When the random galaxy size feature is enabled, players can now bound the possible number of stars with a minimum and maximum.


-Nurgs and Xygob now feature diplomacy artwork. Other diplomacy artwork has been updated slightly.


-Each empire now has a capital world. When a capital is invaded and taken over by a hostile power, the previous owner becomes a vassal of that power. In the event that a capital world is destroyed (via orbital bombardment), a new capital is selected.


-In other words, it is no longer necessary to destroy every colony of every opponent to attain victory. Just capture all the capitals. This is a major improvement to late game pacing.


-The corollary here is that one can usually keep playing even after they are defeated, albeit as the vassal of a larger power.


-The vassal system is a bit sparse for now, but will be fleshed out further in later revisions.


-Sensor range is now decoupled from logistics range. At the start of the game, you can see stars that are not reachable but are within scan distance. Such stars appear as special icons, and the area between logistics and fog of war is also conveyed distinctly.


-There are now two more stages of scanner techs.


-This feels like a good compromise between both sides of the fog of war debate. There’s enough information to think about things more strategically, but not so much information that it becomes a non-strategic puzzle.


-As such, fog of war is no longer a game creation option. You were fun while you lasted!


-There are two new planetary modifiers: Gold and Gemstones, which respectively double and quadrupole population income on a world.


-Neutrals start out weaker, and the first few neutrals spawned each game will always be pirates.


-Tech costs have been lowered slightly to speed up game pace.


-AI can now create dedicated fighter and bomber designs.


-In the event that combat occurs with >2 sides, allied or NAP empires cannot fire on one another.


-Stacks can be turned in combat via right clicking the desired direction.


-There is a new ship special that available from the start of the game: “Battlewagon Conversion.” This increases space and HP by 50%, but halves warp speed and reduces defense by 1.


-When sending transports, players can now pick a desired safety level for the path transports will take. This can either be the fastest possible path, or the safest path where stars without intel are assumed safe, or where stars without intel are assumed unsafe. Additionally, hovering over the “eta area” for each colony in the transport UI will produce a tooltip showing the path to be taken.


-Where planetary environment names differed from MoO 1 (eg. Volcanic == Inferno), they now use MoO 1 names.


-And of course, quite a few minor changes, fixes and improvements that aren’t individually significant enough to mention… or that have escaped my notice while writing this ​

 

[Jeff Graw]

Next big addition will be spying along with expansion of the diplomacy system. The goal here is that spying, rather than being a disconnected afterthought, will be integral to the rest of the game.

(Keep in mind that the following is forward looking and subject to change)

Diplomacy and spying will go hand in hand. The better your relations with another empire the better return you get for trade and research treaties, but you also become more vulnerable to each other's spies. These kinds of "apples or oranges, but not both" decisions can be extremely strategic.

In turn, poor relations and (especially) open war makes espionage more difficult. This, at least if the rewards and penalties at each end of the spectrum are properly balanced, helps to generate more organic and believable reasoning behind the foreign policy of each actor.

Most likely, there will be some form of tension between prevention of espionage and correct attribution of perpetrators.

Additionally, the relationship between two empires will be determined organically via the actions that each empire takes, possibly with some random events thrown in. The relationship value will not be an indicator of how well one actor likes another, but how amiable each empire's subjects are to the others'. In other words, the Nurg may hate the Humans even though both leaders would prefer a warmer relationship or vice versa. The AI will not be constrained or limited by the relationship value (at least not on proper difficulties) but will take the effects of that value into consideration when it forms strategies.

This is in contrast to most other 4X games where a relationship value is merely an abstract concept that does absolutely nothing besides constraining the actions of the AI. Because random disconnected abstract concepts don't also constrain real human players, and because we're aiming for AI liberation, this is a big no for us. At the same time, getting rid of such concepts altogether can really do a number on immersion. Where we can eat our cake and have it too, at least theoretically, is if we can create systems where the smart play is also the immersive play. In other words, we want to avoid arbitrarily constraining the AI for the sake of role playing casuals, but we also don't want the AI to act in a way that works on a meta level while creating in-game behavioural inconsistencies. Therefore, we should strive towards gameplay systems where the meta move is also internally consistent. And that's what the aim is here.

 

[DakaSha V]

would brofist

edit:

Looks like newfag is the new oldfag

 

[Jeff Graw]

Latest build supports hot-seat multiplayer, if that's still important to anyone.