^ 'Cause Stardock decided to give you 3D aliens with 3D backgrounds in dialog screens instead of relevant gameplay features.

There were not 25 NEW ships in SC2.

My 2 cents is that upgrades should only be for the main ship in singleplayer. Also, there shouldn't be customizable loadouts for the Supermelee ships either. The only thing that might be acceptable to me would be the addition of preset variants of ships, but again I don't really like that idea either.

I don't mind if there aren't a ton of ships as long as they are well designed. I would much rather have a handful of unique ships than a plethora of mediocre and repetitive ships. Besides, if modders are able to add new ships, there will eventually be more ships than anyone will want to play with.

I know, they even included ships that weren't in the main game!

I actually like the 'standard ships' like the yehat terminator, x-form and shofixti scout.

The SC:O ships seem like they are all trying to do something special while not giving players the ability to fight with a standard dogfighting ship like the terminator.

Or even the fact that the jugger is basically the same as the terminator but with a different shield and different speed/bullet damage. I liked that slight variety

Fixed it for you.

Nope, the graphics and sounds were different. (256 color and soundblaster sound versus 16 color and pc speaker sound)

Sc3 also had 25 ships while retaining none of the assets.

It's not as simple as just letting ships pick what their weapons and devices will be.  The ships in an arcade game like SC are VERY simple.  There is very little too them.  Weapons, devices, speed, acceleration, turn rate, and health... that's it.  That's a ship.

With ship designs this simple, you can't just change a weapon or device on a ship to anything you want.  Think of a ship design in this game as 3 primary components.  The ship, the weapon, and the device.  The ship can be adjusted...speed, acceleration, turn rate, and health.  And the ship is adjusted based on the weapon and device that it has, for balance reasons.  As an obvious example, everyone understands that big strong ships with lots of health are going to be slow, and fragile ships with little health are going to be fast.  Or that if a ship has the most powerful weapon, it won't be the fastest ship of the group.

The design of the ship is based entirely on the weapon and device that it has, and there is no algorithym that is going to do a good job of adjusting the ship to the weapon/device combination.  So any configurablity would be very limited compared to what people who want it envision.  You probably wouldn't like how it had to work.  

Basically, there could be a few options for each weapon and device... but since you are probably re-using those across other ships... mounting the same weapon and device as another ship would make you practically identical to that ship.  If you can have those systems, the ships must be similar.  And so, in the end, you wouldn't even achieve the variety you are looking for... and it would seem "broken" to most gamers.

SC1 supported VGA 256 and had soundblaster / adlib support. Many of the assets were reused. See for yourself.

http://playdosgamesonline.com/star-control.html

You can mince words all you want, but the fact is that Toys for Bob had 14 existing alien races / ships in SC2 and only had to come up with an extra 11 ships (plus the Precursor ship and the Sa-Matra).

SC:O is already on-par with matching or exceeding the ship count of SC1. If you want 25 ships, you should wait for the sequel, like we had to do with SC2.

Okay, I guess you're right. I played it in 16 colors and pc speaker sound.

I think the modding community will come up with all the 25 SC2 ships in no-time though so we don't have to wait very long.

^ Wow, fake internet points are thrown around.

But SCO isn't aiming at imitating SC1. It's aiming at SC2. It's not 1990 today either where there's memory, cpu power etc. limitations. 12-14 ships and the story as long as SC2 is an underwhelming goal for a 2017-18 game in my estimation.

This isn't a $60 AAA SeanMurrayHypeExpress game. It is a meager $35 game on a $5 mil budget.

^ Aha, it's a $35 game with two $15 expansions and multiple $5 DLCs... Not $60 at all... And you didn't PRE-pay $100 for it either.

Exactly. Between DLCs and expansions, the ship count had better be more than 15. But 15 on release day is fine.

Just reading the initial idea, and thought I would pitch in my own two cents...

Essentially, I approve of upgrades, side-grades and asymmetrical ships, although, I do not think ships should be allowed to swap out entirely different classes of weapons. Taking the Human Cruiser example, you should be able to upgrade different components of it (better thrusters/turn and burners, modified missiles, modified lasers, more armor/crew, better shields etc.) and maybe even have some unique upgrades for each ship (human ships, for example, could have a potential upgrade which makes their armor and shields 50% more effective against "projectile weapons" while making it 10% weaker against biological, laser, plasma etc.). But I do not think you should be able to exchange completely different weapons on ships, otherwise that would make many ships obsolete as why would you ever use an Earthling Cruiser (or an Earthling Destroyer, if there is any push to have multiple ships per race, as seen in Star Control Time Warp) when there are other ships that are faster, stronger and can mount the same or very similar missiles that you have? Essentially, I think your ships should have micro-upgrades or even 1-3 different weapon options per primary and auxiliary, but I also think we should be cautious about having weapons overlap on these ships, as if they did it is likely we would all just be using the same ship "chassis" that turns out to be the best mix of fast and durable, and just strapping on whatever weapons we see fit onto it.

Alternatively, if for whatever reason we did want to go ahead with overlapping weapons is that we could say that a Earthling Cruiser can use the Missile Mk. I, Mk. II, Mk. III and Mk. IV (hopefully they wouldn't be named such, and would be unique from one another, like having a cluster missile instead of a nuclear warhead or such) but if you wanted to mount the Earthling Cruiser's missiles on Alien Ship Y, you would be restricted to only the Mk. I variant of those nuclear missiles (so no cluster munitions for you!). This would help balance the desire to only use the most powerful chassis, while also giving some unique weapon diversity to these ships (think spammy Earthling Cruiser with Supox goo cannon, or whatever equivalent there would be to that in game, imagine the potential!)

Those are just my thoughts, and it may turn out that I am in the minority, but I would love to hear your thoughts.

The problem with that, Think Tank, is how simple the ships are.  It's not a like a flight sim where the platforms (ships) are complex and you have a lot to work with in balancing things out.  A strategy game where no real tactical combat ever actually takes place, or an RTS where the combat is so completely and totally broken that it really doesn't matter what you do and literally ANYTHING will work... because nothing at all works, so it blends in just fine.  In this game, the ships have to actually work.  That makes things a lot more difficult.

If you change something, you have effectively made a different ship.

Weapon, Device, Health, Speed, Acceleration, Turn Rate.  Energy recharge is really just an aspect of the weapons/devices.

That's it, that's all you have to work with. And it has to actually function, not like the games you have in mind when thinking of all the incremental upgrades.  Those games don't have to actually function, so you can do pretty much anything you want.  But here... change an attribute and you have a very different ship.  And in many cases, you just break the ship.

There is so little too arcade ships like this that almost any change effectively results in a different ship, not an "upgraded" one.  You get more variety within this system by... making more specifc, custom designed ships that you make work in a specific and unique way.  Altering that ship, is usually just going to destroy the unique and specific way that ship was meant to be.

It's a good thing when you look at it the right way.  The advantage here is... in the end every ship works in it's own specific and unique way.  That is where "the good part" is, here.

And the deceptively simple BPV system takes care of the rest because with SVC game design... 1+1=Chess:-)

Quoting Kavik_Kang, reply 41

The problem with that, Think Tank, is how simple the ships are.  It's not a like a flight sim where the platforms (ships) are complex and you have a lot to work with in balancing things out.  A strategy game where no real tactical combat ever actually takes place, or an RTS where the combat is so completely and totally broken that it really doesn't matter what you do and literally ANYTHING will work... because nothing at all works, so it blends in just fine.  In this game, the ships have to actually work.  That makes things a lot more difficult.

If you change something, you have effectively made a different ship.

Weapon, Device, Health, Speed, Acceleration, Turn Rate.  Energy recharge is really just an aspect of the weapons/devices.

That's it, that's all you have to work with. And it has to actually function, not like the games you have in mind when thinking of all the incremental upgrades.  Those games don't have to actually function, so you can do pretty much anything you want.  But here... change an attribute and you have a very different ship.  And in many cases, you just break the ship.

There is so little too arcade ships like this that almost any change effectively results in a different ship, not an "upgraded" one.  You get more variety within this system by... making more specifc, custom designed ships that you make work in a specific and unique way.  Altering that ship, is usually just going to destroy the unique and specific way that ship was meant to be.

It's a good thing when you look at it the right way.  The advantage here is... in the end every ship works in it's own specific and unique way.  That is where "the good part" is, here.

And the deceptively simple BPV system takes care of the rest because with SVC game design... 1+1=Chess

 

Which is why I am in support of the first suggestion over the second. Having units that increase in specific areas at a relatively similar rate are easier to balance than opening up the flood gates for all kinds of weapons. But at the same time increasing unique diversity among individual units (all units can obtain the same buffs of bonuses, but each unit has its own selection of unique weapon upgrades and ship upgrades) allows for more rewarding, diverse, and entertaining combat. It can still be balanced pretty easily, as you would really only have to balance the base ship, and then its weapons and 2-3 unique upgrades against those of another ship, which is manageable at worst.

But it doesn't provide for more diverse combat, it just transforms those ships into being something else.  When a ship consists of only 5 or 6 attributes, changing one of them literally changes what the ship is most of the time.  This system is designed to support wildly unique and "unbalanced" ships, and that is the types of ships that you make for it.  It is a good thing, but has limitations.  In this case the simple nature of the ships, and the fact that they actually have to function, mean that you can't have the same types of "upgrades" that you do in games with more complex ship designs... and combat that does not actually have to function.

A lot of the time, in fact most of the time, the types of upgrades you are talking about only work within a game because the game itself inherently does not work.  RTS space games are the best example... when the ships just park nose to nose and trade shots until one is dead you can do anything you want with the ships.  It doesn't matter.  It's not space combat, it is a $3 million dollar abacus.  But in top down space combat it has to actually work... AND be fun, which are two different things.  Working is easy, working AND fun is harder.

All ships would have the same general buffs, hence a fully upgraded Earthling Cruiser would still be significantly slower than a fully upgraded Ship Y. The unique modifications only further define the niche that each unit can fit into, while the general buffs can allow for the units to not be completely obsolete in light of new ship designs. It further defines the niche of each vessel and keeps them from being redundant, not making them as such.

We've had this discussion before, and last time I had suggested a good way of doing upgrades within this system.  It is the last post of this thread.

https://forums.starcontrol.com/480361/page/1/#3656657

The balance is in the entire force, not the individual ships, you need to think in term of the entire force when thinking about upgrades.  So, as I mentioned in that post, each ship could have a "thematic upgrade".  An upgrade that "enhances the theme" of what that ship already is.

As part of buying a force, you may have extra points left over.  These could be used on the "Commander's Option" (what this is called in the original BPV system) to buy the upgrade for one of the ships in your force.  These upgrades must be balanced to be "worth about half of a small ship".  If it is more powerful than that the players will always upgrade a ship, if far weaker than that they will always choose the extra ship.  But if the upgrades equal the point cost, "worth about half of a small ship", then it adds a great deal to the decision making process of the player.

Do you want an extra small ship, or to upgrade one of the ships?  Do you know your opponent?  Does he like the Dan'Nath?  Does the upgraded The Measured defeat the Dan'Nath really easily?  Maybe you want that in that case.  Or maybe trading a smaller ship out of your lineup for a medium with no "Option Points" left over is the best idea for this fight.  This is endless, really.  It seems like very little on paper, but this apparently "overly simple" upgrade where you only get to upgrade one ship at most actually does a lot more than you are likely to realize at first glance.

1+1=Chess.  It's the signature of the designer who originally created this system:-)

As long as the modded ships are also in the multiplayer melee I'm perfectly fine with it.

Still, it'd be nice to have some more standard ships in the 15 ships that they provide . Right now they are all doing something exotic instead of focusing on what works well in melee (and what is easily balanceable).

The expansion ships will be, but modded ships are another matter.

They probably won't.

This is another reason to push for Local Multiplayer.

Why not? Cheating issues?

Yeah, and asset availability.

They don't appear to be pumping much of the budget into the multiplayer aspects, since they ignored the one that has been part of the original 3 games. What would make them want to stream modded ships from player to player just for multiplayer?