Alliance of the Sacred Suns July Dev Post Up Now!

Started by Texashawk76, August 05, 2022, 01:19:03 PM

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Texashawk76

Hello everyone!

This is Steve, lead developer for Alliance of the Sacred Suns. We have just posted a (fairly lengthy) development blog on our Steam community page, which you can see here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1113400/view/3353511793484745370

Thanks for checking it out!

Steve Hawkins
Lead Developer, Alliance of the Sacred Suns

Jarhead0331

Wow. Some really interesting changes there.

I'm curious about the decision to protect the player from bad colonization choices. I think this is a really key aspect of colonization that should be represented as part of the important decision making process. If a player fails to conduct the necessary expeditions, or for whatever other reason, constructs an outpost on a hostile planet that makes it very costly to manage, while not yielding much of a beneficial gain, the repercussions of that error should be imposed upon the player.

What are your thoughts on this? Given that most factions/houses do not have many colonies, just how important is expansion in AotSS?
Grogheads Uber Alles
Semper Grog
"No beast is more alpha than JH." Gusington, 10/23/18


Texashawk76

Quote from: Jarhead0331 on August 05, 2022, 02:22:19 PM
Wow. Some really interesting changes there.

I'm curious about the decision to protect the player from bad colonization choices. I think this is a really key aspect of colonization that should be represented as part of the important decision making process. If a player fails to conduct the necessary expeditions, or for whatever other reason, constructs an outpost on a hostile planet that makes it very costly to manage, while not yielding much of a beneficial gain, the repercussions of that error should be imposed upon the player.

What are your thoughts on this? Given that most factions/houses do not have many colonies, just how important is expansion in AotSS?

Thanks! Honestly, we just wanted to balance that part out - something I've always hated about most 4X games is that you can put a colony more or less anywhere (absent a particular planet class that you can't colonize yet) and it will just grow and expand no matter what. We wanted to take a more realistic approach - so that, for example, there's nothing stopping you from putting a colony in the middle of nowhere, but there's no guarantee that people will actually want to come - a planet needs jobs above all else in a sector that is more or less unemployed, it needs to reasonably nice (lava planets are much less enticing than terran planets) and the leadership needs to be a) competent and b) not psychotic. So having outposts gradually grow and giving the player (and the AI, importantly) a chance to reassess we felt was important. Make no mistake, outposts aren't cheap, and you still have to build them in systems with a LGN connection (formerly, they could work independently) so there is some pre-cost associated now that there wasn't before, but that pre-cost is more strategic in terms of 'What are the pros and cons of claiming and connecting this system?' You don't know who will actually win the bidding, and if you just go and take every holding, you will quickly turn the other Houses against you, which is very costly in the early game. But more colonies = more trade points, more potential shipyards, more research, more EICs (so more Inquisitors), more buildings that generate Operation Points (used for exploration and building) so while you can build vertically in AotSS, I'd say expansion is quite important, especially when other Houses are looking to grow and there's nowhere to go. You gain Power and relationship bonus from opening up another system, and especially opening up another constellation, so really it depends on your personal political situation!

-Steve