Feature Ideas/Questions From a Campaign Editor Perspective
Desigining My Ideal Sci-Fi Strategy Game In My Head
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GalCiv2 Forums
GalCiv2 Forums
What I've seen of GCII so far absolutely rocks... no question about it. I also enjoyed the editor capabilities introduced in the AP expansion for GCI, even though it was very limited as a result of the core game design.
It seems the sequel has a lot of potential to give us players the tools we need to really make a great mod/campaign of our own. I just have a few features that I can rattle off the top of my head that would add a good bit of depth and open up design options for those of us interested in modding GCII
1) Planets Independent of Stars
I know planets are now entities directly accessable and visible on the game map now, and not merely an attribute of a star. This is cool. My question is will it be possible to place planets on the map independent of a star? This would be nice if one wanted to design a mission that centers in a given planetary system. I could place a star at the center and space planets out from it on the map.
2) Smaller Map Sizes
In GCI, the smallest map you could have was a 4x4 grid. This was still a pretty substantial chunk of space especially if you were trying to do something fairly small in scale/scope. If I wanted to do my planetary system idea above, the smallest map was waay too big and I'd have a lot of empty/wasted space. I'd like to imagine with a 3d game engine, parameters such as map size would be a lot more flexible.
3) No-Travel Regions
Black Holes, debris fields in space, asteroid belts (back to that planetary system thing again)... regions of the map that could not be traveled over and would have to be driven around. I know this would introduce problems for AI pathfinding, but it could add in a bit of strategy when choosing frontiers and defensive points. Do you want to have a strategic point that's accessable from all directions, or would you rather build a choke point with the help of a neighboring black hole, or quasar partially blocking the way to you?
4) More narrow victory conditions.
In GCI, it was either Kill Player X or Capture Planet Y. In a strategy game, that's kind of limited. It would be nice to see more win options. Possible options could be "Research X", "Acquire Y money", "Develop Z production", "Build Q Ship" etc... This would make for more interesting individual missions.
5) Instant-Travel Objects
Essentially, JumpGates that could move a ship instantly from one gate to another. Now, I'm not saying make these as generally player buildable without severe limits (limited number per galaxy for example), or make them only buildable if flagged as such. Having the possibility for such objects in the game opens up story potential. Back to the planetary system example, lets say you want to breach an asteroid belt (and since we're limited to a 2d movement plane in the 3d engine, it would be unpassable), you build a gate on one side, use it to launch another builder a short distance past the belt, and then setup a recieving station, creating a bridge across the unpassable gap that existed before.
These are just a few ideas I've been simmering... it does of course depend on SD releasing a good set of mod/editor tools for GCII
One can dream I guess 
It seems the sequel has a lot of potential to give us players the tools we need to really make a great mod/campaign of our own. I just have a few features that I can rattle off the top of my head that would add a good bit of depth and open up design options for those of us interested in modding GCII
1) Planets Independent of Stars
I know planets are now entities directly accessable and visible on the game map now, and not merely an attribute of a star. This is cool. My question is will it be possible to place planets on the map independent of a star? This would be nice if one wanted to design a mission that centers in a given planetary system. I could place a star at the center and space planets out from it on the map.
2) Smaller Map Sizes
In GCI, the smallest map you could have was a 4x4 grid. This was still a pretty substantial chunk of space especially if you were trying to do something fairly small in scale/scope. If I wanted to do my planetary system idea above, the smallest map was waay too big and I'd have a lot of empty/wasted space. I'd like to imagine with a 3d game engine, parameters such as map size would be a lot more flexible.
3) No-Travel Regions
Black Holes, debris fields in space, asteroid belts (back to that planetary system thing again)... regions of the map that could not be traveled over and would have to be driven around. I know this would introduce problems for AI pathfinding, but it could add in a bit of strategy when choosing frontiers and defensive points. Do you want to have a strategic point that's accessable from all directions, or would you rather build a choke point with the help of a neighboring black hole, or quasar partially blocking the way to you?
4) More narrow victory conditions.
In GCI, it was either Kill Player X or Capture Planet Y. In a strategy game, that's kind of limited. It would be nice to see more win options. Possible options could be "Research X", "Acquire Y money", "Develop Z production", "Build Q Ship" etc... This would make for more interesting individual missions.
5) Instant-Travel Objects
Essentially, JumpGates that could move a ship instantly from one gate to another. Now, I'm not saying make these as generally player buildable without severe limits (limited number per galaxy for example), or make them only buildable if flagged as such. Having the possibility for such objects in the game opens up story potential. Back to the planetary system example, lets say you want to breach an asteroid belt (and since we're limited to a 2d movement plane in the 3d engine, it would be unpassable), you build a gate on one side, use it to launch another builder a short distance past the belt, and then setup a recieving station, creating a bridge across the unpassable gap that existed before.
These are just a few ideas I've been simmering... it does of course depend on SD releasing a good set of mod/editor tools for GCII
One can dream I guess
