I'd like to note something that Hyper already did: Many of the things that are listed as "improvements" in SFC3 are in SFB, and are not in SFC1 and 2 due to design decisions.
Also, there's already an excellent strategic game in the SFB universe that any future Dwhatever product could benefit from drawing on, and that's F&E (Federation and Empire).
I've had to read a lot of uninteresting junk about AV above, and this is a simple fact. People like myself hate AV for 2 basic reasons:
1. It seems ludicrous that weapons that travel at FTL speeds think about AV. You fire and they strike the target nearly instantly. C is 3x10 to the 8th power in meters per second. Do some math and figure out how fast that is. Combat ranges are basically in a area where you fire a weapon and it hits the target nearly at the same time, even with high speed involved. However, that's a pretty minor reason. It's a game. You can have anything you want, reality is a joke in game terms. Sort of like cartoon physics. It's fun to watch, but I'm not going to walk out and drive my car into a wall.
The real reason is:
2. When I play certian types of games, I want certian things. Fighter games like Falcon 4.0 or something like Freespace 2 (excellent game) I expect to manuver to where a target has low AV and hammer them. The position of getting behind them is very important. I expect that - it's what I was looking for when I bought the game. When I play a game like SFC I expect to use energy management, sensors, weapons, etc to pound ships into submission. Position is important, but only to attack vunerable spots, not to gain a shooting solution where the enemy cannot avoid my fire (don't confuse my last statement with the execution of a particularly well planned attack, something like capping the "T" of an enemy battle line in a naval gunnery simulation. I refer specifically to the concept pertaining to AV). A good example of this is Freespace again. While a fighter game, it has large warships that engage in battles against each other (where you assist in your fighter). They're spectacular to watch frequently. The captial ships move into range of each other and start hammering each other with the most weapons they can put on target. I've always thought that an interesting game would be to have a game like freespace or wing commander, but where you commanded the capital ship instead of the fighters. SFC is that kind of game experience, at least for me, and for many, many others. That's why SFC3 is so unliked by us. It's not the game we want to play. It seems to try to be both at the same time; it's feel is...wrong. The result is that fans of both styles of games are unhappy. If we wanted a AV style game, there are far better games to go and play with that in there. I recommend freespace 2 myself, it's great
. In short, a starship/navy ship game should play like one, while a fighter game should play like one. Perhaps Taldren could look into a Starfleet Fighter Command? That might be interesting, esp if tied into a version of SFC.
The planning, the management of resources, the move/countermove of sensors, the application of weapons at ranges that maximize your attack and minimize his counterattack, that's what I play for. It's true that AV type games have some of these similar elements. However, it's not the same.
The reason that this is important is that when you create a game, you should think of what kind of people that you are creating it for. In truth, SFC is a grognard's game. It's intelligence is taking the hard stuff the grognard's love and making it's execution fairly simple so it can be enjoyed by a much wider audience. What I think Taldren should do in any future products is simply acknowledge this fact, and add in everything that a grognard could love, while thinking up excellent and clever ways to make it accessible to a wider audience. That's the challenge, and the problem IMO.
Topic: HELPING TO DESIGN A BETTER MOUSE TRAP (Read 33055 times)