A Question about the space stage being like StarCraft

(Xeno) #1

Would it be possible for this to happen in thrive (technological and physically)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_XwzBMTJaM

#2

If I understood your question that it was about basically having the ability to make StarCraft happen in the space stage, then the answer is “sure, but…”.

And the but is that it’s not our goal to make [insert some really specific thing from another game] and it will be really, really low priority for anyone (unless you want to program it yourself). And there is a chance that it won’t happen because we go for different kinds of game systems that don’t allow your idea to happen exactly or anywhere near like you imagine it.

(Xeno) #3

So it will not be possible to warp in stuff using little robotic drones?

I actually wanted to ask if we could do stuff you find in starcraft since the first Time i came onto the forums but the question i was going to ask was would it be possible to have Your guys have lightning hands and the archon merge i thought it would be stupid to post this but i realise there are other stuff that could be in it

#4

So you want thrive to specifically pick out cool stuff from StarCraft? That’s highly unlikely as we aren’t going for cloning random parts from other games, rather thrive is its own thing that won’t have random things dumped into it from other games. It’s of course possible for mods to be made that do stuff like add stuff from other games to thrive.

(tjwhale) #5

I think StarCraft is cool, I love Protoss, and I agree with @hhyyrylainen that we’re best of just going our own way and doing our own thing.

I think for the space stage I am in favor of starting with armies and fleets being represented by a single unit at a high level. I think making an RTS is a huge amount of work and actually won’t really improve the gameplay that much. If you’re going from 10,000 BCE to 3000 AD then you won’t want to stop for every battle.

(Steve) #6

A decent number of games have the auto-resolve or AI sucks take control yourself approach. Galactic civilizations represents entire fleets in 4 ship, those being the ones that encompass most of the army so having fleets represented in one ship is fine. In my personal experience in total war and other games, when the auto resolve in gonna lose and I take control myself, I can win against overwhelming odds. Maybe have a few map, deep space encounter, asteroid entcounter, planetary defense encounter, so on. That would let people who want to see and command battles instead of auto-resolving them.

(Steve) #7

Double. Also the space stage is a long ways away so this game might be a lot more popular and the dev team might be a lot bigger so this wouldn’t be so big a task to do.

#8

Making 3D space battles where you can see individual ships going around is always going to be a huge task it’s just going to take less time than forever with a lot of people working on it.

There might exist a future where we have enough developers who want to make 3D space battles to make it happen, but I’m kinda doubtful of that.

(𝒦𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝑜𝒻 𝒯𝒽𝒾𝓃𝑔𝓈) #9

I imagine you could make low poly models for stuff in the back ground, such as smaller ships in a fleet.

#10

I wasn’t talking about models, but the whole thing: programming AI for single ships, programming weapons with visual firing effects, programming flight mechanics for the ships, making it match what is calculated based on the stats of the fleets should happen. There is an absolute ton of work.

(tjwhale) #11

I think this is my biggest problem with drop in battles, it’s really hard to make AI good enough to contain the player. I got so good at Rome Total Realism that I played the Berber tribes in North Africa and captured all of Carthage in one campaign by using my one small stack to beat 4 large stacks of theirs. The problem is it’s not really fun after that. It’s just so hard to get the computer to move in an intelligent way.

What I think are good things to spend the time on for the space stage are things like: awesome tech tree, social system where cultures clash, complex trade system, crazy space religions, planet management, super engineering projects, rise and fall of galactic empires, crazy ai rebellions, large scope sci fi concepts like telescopes the size of a planet or dyson spheres etc.

I think all of that stuff is really exciting and cool and is much less work than things like real time battles. I hope we can go down a route a bit similar to stellaris where it’s more about high level decisions rather than narrow ones. (Though I don’t like stellaris so don’t want to copy it closely or anything, just similar style)

(Steve) #12

I feel like this conversation has moved away from making Starcraft stuff but oh well. 4x + space = space battles between armadas, I don’t care if I command or watch (I prefer watch). I understand that making that would be hard but it’s a big part of space games.

I don’t expect space battles, two ships that stand for a fleet meeting and you being destroyed is fine but it’s very anti-climatic, especially if it’s a battle that turns the tide of a war. I don’t feel like I accomplished anything if I auto-resolve.

(tjwhale) #13

Have you played Crusader Kings 2? In that each army is just a single unit and battles in that can be extremely dramatic. It’s about stakes and the meaning of the battle, if you know these are the last of your soldiers and a loss here will bust you down from King to Count you really feel it.

I agree that the Total War series with nothing but autoresovles would be pretty lame.

Another point is that if we get more people on the team and they are passionate about building real time battles or battle sims or whatever then the chances go up that something like this will happen. I’m always trying to convince people to do the things with the best awesomeness to effort ratio, which means things that are easy and really fun but if they’re super keen on space battles then they can be really awesome.

(Steve) #14

This isn’t my worst necro.

Here’s something, what’s the point in any kind of ship customization if the models aren’t going to be seen. At that point it’s just pick a ship size and customize what weapons and components (armor, ships, computers) you want. They could be used for the fleets position marker but that wouldn’t be needed either as they could just be shown as the emblem of the nation they belong to and a radar like blip telling you it’s position and maybe the blip would have different shading or speed depending on the size like the total war flags having the bars showing army size.

To summarize, there is no need for ship customization without some form of real time combat to command or watch.

(tjwhale) #15

In CK2 or EU4 you can customise your armies even though you can’t control or watch the battles. Nomads with lots of horse archers are good against lighter armies but struggle against heavily armoured ones for instance.

I personally do find ship customization a bit of a chore, I think when building a fleet it’s nice if you can just tell an admiral to get the best ships they can. However it is really strongly part of Thrive to have editors to let you make changes to stuff so maybe it is worth keeping that.

(Xeno) #16

Hi just necroing this thread for a number of reasons first of all I actually meant to do a different cutscene but just didnt cause i got lost within the depths of blizzard cutscenes and forgot where i was going with it originally what i wanted to ask was 1 is it possible to make one of your ships a carrier ship (builds smaller or stores smaller fighters and deploys them in battle ) 2 perform a planet cracker (a giant beam of heat that wipes out all life on a planet if used with multiple ships in a fleet or can be used as an offensive weapon in a space battle) 3 have shields finally remebered why i created this

(tjwhale) #17

Yeah I love the idea of having massive powers in the late space stage, being able to glass a planet sounds cool, or deconstruct it and make something else out of it.

(Xeno) #18

To be honest i found out that halo copies a lot of stuff from starcraft the flood (zerg) glassing (protoss stuff) the elites and their energy swords and the halo ring is just the xel naga temple from brood war except bigger and has friendly fire toggled

(tjwhale) #19

I’d never really thought about that, makes sense though, they even have Humans, Protoss (Covenant) and Zerg (The Flood). Both very excellent games.

(Xeno) #20

now that i think about it halo’s main character is a green suited space marine (doom) who is assisted by a female ai (the hev suit in half life is one example but there probably is more) who go on a mission after their ship is attacked to destroy a life destroying weapon being attacked by religious aliens (the protoss are very zealous their main unit is literally called the zealot) the weapons purpose is to wipe out a race of infesting lifeforms as a means to stop them attacking their creators (the zerg and the xel naga )