first impressions

[Songbird]

I'll not burden you with feature requests as I enjoy the game as it is and I'm sure whatever else is added with time will be just fine. The option to save during long battles is appreciated.

Supernova 2 is an excellent "beer-and-pretzel" strategy game, and again, thanks. This game has great potential if marketed well to gamers. Have you marketing plans beyond the manner in which Winter Wolves previous games have been marketed?

Always willing to offer ideas.

Thanks again.

[jack1974]

Hello,
well currently sent out a few review copies to some wargame-friendly sites. Have to look for more, I think this game would be good for wargamers looking for something else beside a WW2 scenario

[KnockOut]

Still reccomending random events. This would require more strategy for macromanagement mode as the user would have to weight marginal cost versus marginal benefit based on how random events change things. Also, in future games, the user would have to determine the Probability of certain events and change his behavior based on that.

The difficulty levels also offer a lot of risk for no additional reward. In the technology screen, how about a new "Omnipotent" technology branch? After battles, you have a chance to get data crystals from the older races of galaxies past, the chance of a data crystal is based on the difficulty level, the higher the difficulty level the greater the chance of receiving a data crystal. The only way to buy points in the Omnipotent technology branch is via the data crystals received randomly from battle.

[CautiousChaos]

Hi everyone! I'm a newbie here and I have to completely agree that some level of random events, situations, or even changes to available technologies would be a must-have for me. I'm kindof sitting on my $25 right now because the demo I played was so very, very short and I didn't get any real chance to see what the game was like in detail. I see here that there is a strong sense that the game is missing some random elements. From what little I was able to play it looks like you can pretty much follow the same tech build cycles as a matter of course, once you find the one build combination that works. Better is if the technology available was slightly different each game you played, like Sword of the STars. Having random events and situations though would go a very long way to convincing me to pick up the title.

-cc

[jack1974]

Hello,
well since so many are requesting random events I'll add them for sure on next update.
What you mean if the technology was slightly different every time you played? I don't understand this part
I based the game on classic technology development trees like Civilization: you have to research first the basic stuff and then build the advanced one. There is some variations in the full version since you have the Alien Technologies that are different from one side to the other, and also they start randomly placed on different stars every time you play the game.

I'll add the random events, but also make the change requested by wolfdaddy, that is the custom ship building. Right now, if you want to discover a particular ship like the interceptor you need to research certain technologies. Instead if you can customize the ship equipment, you could even use the interceptor blueprint and place on it 5 long-range bolt, so that you don't need to research the missiles/torpedoes. (maybe this is what you mean for different technology)

I think this simple variation could change completely (in a much better way) the game, and that's what I'm going to do next, together with a skirmish mode that will be available even in the demo (with some limitation) so people can play the battles, which I think is the main focus of the game. Right now isn't really a "space strategy/colonization game", but more a wargame with a resource management backbone. Indeed as someone else posted here the game is way more similar to the SSI game Star General than Master of Orion series.

Hope I managed to solve some of your doubts about buying the game in any case remember that, as happened with my past games, I'll continuously add improvements so in 4-5 months you could end up having a completely different (better) games from today.

I might also consider allowing more playing time in the demo.

[CautiousChaos]

That's really great news! To be more clear on the random technologies, the notion that Sword of the Stars had implemented was fairly cool. The idea was that you might have a dozen or so branches of technology to explore (shields, armor, missiles, etc.) by default. In each game one of those branches was not available at all. So you might need to go one game without missiles or shields. Though I prefer to have the random events and situations much more than this notion of random technology branches, it still was a pretty interesting twist. For me, I like having my shields and nifty shield effects, so if I started a game without that branch, I usually started over. I might be over simplifying this, but hopefully the point is coming across.

Me personally - I'm a huge fan of random events, so I am very pleased and encouraged with your message.

-cc

[jack1974]

Ah now I understand what you mean. Interesting, indeed
However before I start implementing such thing I need first to program the "customize your ship" screen, because that way I can exclude some technologies at all and in general allow more freedom on what the player can research. Some ships like the special ships or the mothership will be dependendant on a specific tech, but apart for that you can have any other combination of weapon. I don't think would be fair for example to allow the player to put 4 acid cannon gun on a battleship - this would mean that the ship could potentially burn a ship armor within 1-2 game turns and that could put lot of unbalance to the game (even if could be fun). So initially the special weapon will remain fixed on the unique ships of each faction.

Also I agree that for now is more important to add random events during the main management game. I'll have to think about stuff either bad / good, that can speed up or slow down your game progresses.

[Random1]

It would be fair... just make 'em pay a high price to do it!

[wolfdaddy2002]

Random event Suggestions:
1. Rebellion: Connect the likelyhood of this to Empire happiness. A system just up and rebels, so you loose that system.
2. Pirates: This is a touch more complicated. You end up loosing money due to piracy. The computer can tell you generally what area the pirates are in (say, a cluster of 3-5 systems) but you have to hunt them down. Pirates should have some sort of unique pirate ships, built for speed, turning, and serious damage, but low on hit points.
3. Supernova: A system of yours (NEVER the home system of course) just up and explodes. Hell you could even have a black hole form in that system, forcing the players to go around it. (any ships passing to close are automatically lost, sorry, no saving throw)
4. Wormhole. Two random systems are now connected with a wormhole that allows instantanous travel between them. I'd suggest that there be two types: Stable, and unstable. The unstable collaspes after a certain number of turns.
5. Coallition: 3-5 systems, (they have to be close to each other) decide to join together and form a coalition. Invade one system and they invade back.

Another thought: Forget an OMNI tech. Personaly i tend to find it a let down if there's a tech that lets you kill everything. It's cool at first, but in the end it doesn't add to game play. The game becomes a race to see who can get the OMNI tech first. I do like the idea of ruins that let you research different techs. Ones that aren't avalible normally. I'd suggest that you make 5 new techs, that can only be found on ruins, and they are avalible to both sides. And perhaps only have 1-2 show up in a game at all. Well maybe 6 new techs. Here are some thoughts for new techs. (Yes i'm stealing them from different sci fi shows and games, if you want the serial numbers sue me)
1. Time. Time weapons don't do damage, but they cause the enemy ship to freeze for a turn or two. Long recharge time, no missles. No shields either. (that would be too powerful)
2. Psionics. Long range, missles and beam weapons. Long recharge. ignores sheilds, doesn't damage ship, kills off crew like nobodies business. Sensor range seriously incresed
3. Dark Energy. Power source only, a dark energy power source can power anything. This would mean you'd only need one power source in a ship instead of multiple ones. Which means lighter, faster ships. I'd also suggest that it automatically upgrade all weapons so that they are lighter and take up one less point of space.
4. Crystal: Armor: any ship with crystal armor becomes much more resistance to beam weapons, all beam weapons gain range upgrade. Thus if you find say, two ruins with crystal, you'd gain two range upgrades. up to a max of +50% range. No other effects.
5. Living ships: Your ships always have crew, and your ships will regain crew (upgrade level) per turn, and heal 10 times the upgrade level. (Just as above, so two ruins with Living ships would be 2 crew a turn and 20 hp per turn.)
Note that two of these open up entire tech trees, while three just provide a bonus. I didn't want to suggest anything too complicated simply because the simpler it is, the sooner we get to play with it. I'm greedy that way.

[jack1974]

Some good suggestions indeed. The new techs can be implemented easily enough, global events instead require more time and some probably would be hard to make the way I programmed originally the game. Anyway I had already in mind to do the time and psionic stuff (with different names) in the original game, but then I decided to finish it and release version 1.0.
My goal is to add the new techs and also the skirmish mode before end of this month - hope to make it