Lock 'n Load Publishing's Falling Stars: War of Empires Preview Video. This video shows the gameplay and how the system works. The graphics are not all final but it should give you a good idea what to expect. Let us know what you think.
David
Anyone else expect to hear "eh?" throughout the narrative?
On a more constructive note, I did not get to watch the whole thing but it seemed like the map, or game board, was a bit small for 4 competing empires.
This was guess a small sample but I will take some notes to expand on some of the details going forward.
David
Hey Freyland thanks for the feedback. I'm the developer of Falling Stars. The game will have 3 different galaxy sizes, and what you see here is the smallest. The balance of this galaxy size is more for online multiplayer where players want to interact after only 3 or 4 rounds. The larger galaxy has more of a focus on fewer, bigger space battles, more political/diplomatic relations, and a lot more time for advancing through the tech tree. People who like long drawn out single player games will have a good time with setting the galaxy size to max and having at it. Let me know if you have any other questions or comments!
Also, the commentator is Hungarian, not Canadian haha.
Just wanted to go more in depth into some key mechanics of the game, starting with why I decided to make this game in the first place, and what's different about it!
Until the core version of Falling Stars: War of Empires is released (which I will remind you is FREE!), it's hard to appreciate some of the major things we are introducing to our game and the 4x genre. The extended preview I linked above does a good job of going over the general flow and mechanics of the game, but each of those features have very deep strategic purposes.
So, why did we feel this particular game needed to be made when there are a plethora of other 4x games out already, or coming out soon? The simplest reason is that we wanted to offer a game that has as much strategic depth as many of the current games have vast complexity. To clarify, I think complexity is a great thing. Distant Worlds does an amazing job of giving you so much content and so many different moving pieces that it really feels great when you get it all working in perfect harmony.
But to me, strategic depth is what happens when in a single round, you are faced with a decision tree that forks off into dozens, if not hundreds of different directions, each having vastly different long term outcomes. There is no micro management in Falling Stars, plain and simple. Every decision is an important one, and it's key we make that distinction off the bat so players know what kind of game we're getting into. It's going to kick your butt the first few times you play. The AI will effortlessly choose pretty good strategic paths that have long term goals, while you're still struggling to decide which ship you should purchase for your fleet in a far off system.
But as you continue to learn about the game, your decisions will become more rewarding and your ability to plan ahead will increase. This is precisely where our "Strategic Actions" come into play. Every round, you get to choose a one-time game-changing effect that can steer you out of danger, help you discover another planet to get an edge on the AI, or make technological advancement a breeze. Even better, it allows you to gain an increased advantage if you consistently choose that particular Strategic Action. Players who like to win by pounding other empires in the ground can do that. Players who want to exploit the galactic council and win via political authority can do that. So how exactly do these "Strategic Actions" work?
Before each round of play, you choose one of 6 Strategic Action paths. Each of of these give you a boost in a particular area. "Warfare" will allow you to engage with one of your fleets multiple times in a turn, when normally you can only attack with them once. Every time you use that particular action, you unlock another step of "Supplementary" actions. These allow you to choose from another bonus that gets added to your strategic action. Each supplementary you unlock is stronger than the one before it, and there are 4 to unlock. but you can choose 1 of any of the 4 to add, so you don't get all of the bonuses but you also don't have to pick the "strongest" one. It really depends on what your current situation is. So while the most basic supplementary gives you a few small fighters added to your fleet during the battle, the most powerful one allows you to ignore diplomatic relations and attack a previously allied empire.
So that's a lot of text to digest, and I'll leave it at that for now, but there is much more I could talk about with Strategic Actions, or another of the many unique features we have in the game, but if you want to see this in action, there is a quick overview at the 4:20 second mark in the video above. Thanks for reading!
I haven't watched the video yet, but does it explain why the core game is free and how the game will earn its money?
The "Core" game, which will be free to download, will include all of the features (technology, politics, tactical actions, battle ,AI, etc) and a starting set of content. The amount of content is still being decided on, but it's enough to get a good feel for the game and for potential players to try it before they buy it.
The game also supports online multiplayer, which is the only feature we are considering holding back from the Core version, but if we do hold it back then it will be available in the full version of the game. Hope this clarifies the different versions for you.
So the "core game" is actually what used to be called a demo.
Quote from: tgb on December 15, 2015, 02:12:22 PM
So the "core game" is actually what used to be called a demo.
It's similar, but not quite a demo. I'm not sure if you're familiar with what Starcraft II did, but they released a free "Starter Edition" of the game that had a small campaign, and very limited multiplayer. It was not a work-in-progress or small subset of the game like a demo would be, its intention was to give players a very good idea of what the full game would be like with no time restrictions and a lot more content. That's what we're trying to achieve with the Core version.
Quote from: tgb on December 15, 2015, 02:12:22 PM
So the "core game" is actually what used to be called a demo.
Lol... ;D
Anyway, it's looking nice...do you have a price in mind for the full game?
Okay, so like the core game of Command Ops 2 then. Got it, thanks. O0
No solid price yet, LNL is publishing it and it will be up to them. I can tell you it will be very similar to what they are doing with Command Ops 2.
Progress on Falling Stars went great in December, with some finishing touches on the Single Player version of the game, completion of almost all of the features, and tons and tons and tons of feedback from beta testers (much of which has already been incorporated into the base game). Hearing players frustrations about UI woes,lack of tutorials, unintuitiveness, etc in other games and getting their input on how we could avoid that is 100% the biggest takeaway from we had from this last month of work. Being the developer on a game and understanding every nook and cranny will always leave you blind to the player experience, so we logged every bullet point of feedback we received, implemented everything that wasn't a major change in the core game, incorporated some things that WERE major changes to the core game, and the rest we put on a schedule to either patch in post-release as little enhancements or even sneak in before release.
One feature that our next beta build will make available to players is the diplomacy system, which is really a mixture of many systems but encompasses the majority of diplomatic relations especially with the lesser races in the galaxy. This directly influences your ability to expand your empire, because you need to interact directly with each planet you encounter when you decide to conquer them and use up all of the planets resources, or instead form a treaty with them where you get an offering in place of resources each turn.
Whether or not you choose to "Barter" with them or "Conquer" them is dependent on a few different things, and it makes each decision meaningful but also very very important:
*Who the allies of that particular planet are
*Who the enemies of that particular planet are
*How close the planet is to enemy territory
*What your particular needs are at that point in the game
To expand on what I mean by the above, when you discover a planet you have 3 options: Conquer, Barter, or... do nothing. Just orbit the planet until you're ready to make a decision on what you want to do. While orbiting a planet gives you no immediate benefits, it protects the planet from the grasp of another empire, and it also allows you use a very well-timed barter to take other players by surprise. Bartering can give you instant technology, resources, fleet, or even cause an uprising on another planet. So if another player takes their ground forces off of the ally of the planet you are guarding, and you cause an uprising, it will immediately revert it back to neutral, forcing the player to lose the resource benefits of the planet. That's just one of many examples.
Conquering is much like your typical exploitation in 4x games. You take the planet by force, defeating any uprising and gaining their resources each turn. Pretty simple. But what you also much take into account, and why this is so closely tied with diplomacy, is that each planet has allies and enemies. If you conquer a planet, their enemies will rejoice and you can potentially gain additional bartering benefits from them. However, their allies will shun you, and can potentially reduce your benefits to zero, or even cause an uprising on one of the planets you've already conquered, temporarily costing you valuable resources.
This really just skims the surface, but keep in mind every planet has their own unique set of allies and enemies, bartering benefits, resources, and influence and based on their random placement throughout the galaxy every game, it makes for a really unique experience and challenge every time you play.
A pretty unique-sounding diplomacy system, and I'll be curious as to how it works out. One concern I have is that it sounds like it could get overly-complex, trying to keep track of everyone's allies/enemies, especially as the game progresses and you interact with more planets. Will there any tools/features to help the player make sense of it all?
It's definitely complex, but in the end you really just have to make the best decision you can. The game has a very high skill cap, but a pretty low barrier to entry. Anyone can jump in, make some decisions, and that's their turn. Where it gets really fun is carefully planning out your empires expansion so that you can maximize your potential, which changes every game so there is no set recipe for success. I think this is something the genre desperately needs.
There are a few ways you can keep track of this. First, you can see who the planets enemies and allies are when you first reach them and open up communication. After that, simply by highlighting the planet, all of the allies will be highlighted in green, and the enemies in red. If you are in desperate need of resources, and there are far more "Red"(enemies) around you than "Green"(allies), then it's a pretty easy decision to just take them over. If you have a lot of their allies though, then you might sit on it and conquer later or just barter.
At a glance, it's definitely easy to get all of the information in front of you. After that, it's really on you to try to predict what the best strategy might be.
You have my attention :). When is this supposed to be let loose?
The game is currently feature complete, and we are holding an internal stress test for online multiplayer (which we are putting the final touches on) within the next week or so. No set release date, but I can tell you it will be very soon. We've taken a lot of time to address feedback from testers, and want the game to be intuitive, run smooth, and be a really fun and exciting experience from the first day it's in players hands. This means we won't say it's finished until it's finished. I'll continue posting here until it's released, but you can also create an account on our forums as I regularly update that as well. Not much to talk about until people start playing, but it's a start :) http://forums.lnlpublishing.com/forums/falling-stars-war-of-empires.38/
An update for everyone! Falling Stars will be releasing on April 26th, so add it to your Steam wishlist!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/439960
There's a big discussion on the game at the eXplorminate forums, but I would be happy answer any questions or cross post information here.
You know, I haven't even had a chance to dig into Polaris yet.... :knuppel2:
Anticipating purchase.