We have talked a lot about the Xplore and Xterminate parts...



How could the Xpand part be fleshed out to be more interesting without being overly complicated?

• If a planet is perfect for species development... wouldn't it already have an indigenous species? (Big blue ones with funny hats that connect to their 6-legged blue horses and flying thingies... since they live in a giant tree).
• quelling the natives would obviously be similar diplomacy to conquering another race's planet.
• could you enslave the natives for increased production?
• financial/luxury benefit from new world resources exotic to your home planet?
• ancient ruins could add flavor (moon temples are intact but wouldn't there be some Dust containing remnant on the surface?)
• race colonization style differences? (diplomacy/trading, wanton destruction, fear/intimidating, psychic harvesting)
  
  

I feel we started talking about this somewhere in the threads but can't find it so apologies if it's out there.

As a secondary point -- our galaxy has what 100k to 400k billion stars. clearly that is impossible to map out but, rather than have an 'edge' to the map which limits it to the point of being a finite soase group of planets, couldn't there be an endless *cough* sea of stars which continue outward with undiscovered wormholes requiring old-fashioned, slow, warp/impulse, takes-forever-to-get-there drive?



A really good scanner would be able to tell there is something out there but the time, resource requirement and inherent doubt there is something worthwhile at the end of that rainbow would keep players within 'known' space.



This would keep the game from expanding out of hand too quickly while not making the player feel like they're stuck in a sandbox.



And for a true Xpansionist race it might actually be their goal to find their own place in space without all the local conflict.



for me immersive fun = suspension of disbelief for a iittle while at least

Some of the things you are talking about are already in (ancient ruins, friendly/hostile locals, etc.) in the form of anomalies.

On the racial differences, I really can't wait to learn more about the unique gameplay features of each of the races. So far we know only that the Cravers gather science from destroying enemy ships (colonizing enemy planets?), once the devs start releasing more info on the other races I'm sure there will be some very interesting details about them as well.

maceman wrote:
As a secondary point -- our galaxy has what 100k to 400k billion stars.

Yes, I've always thought about how one could implement this into a game without actually ruining the game. It would be most difficult to manage an empire of a billion planets....let alone the needing a computer that can process a map with a billion stars worth of activity.



From what I've heard thus far, I'm quite pleased with how they're handling the "expand" aspect of the game. You start out having planets you can colonize. As time and technology progress, uninhabitable worlds become open for colonization. Each planet has a unique set of characteristics setting it apart from the rest of the galaxy. And I really like the tiered colony status going from outpost to colony. I'm really looking forward to seeing that in game.

One way to let our imagination go up and be humble with the gameplay is to abstract some things : the planets we see are just the ones colonizable or usefull. But nothing can prevent devs from adding some visual effect that would add a lot more systems to see, but they wouldn't be accessable (unless you have some unique trait or a tech that would allow a race to search in the void is there would be something to discover. Thus the shape of the universe would change through the game)

Some bigger and brighter stars in the background could do the work, creating a feeling of a more fluid and smoother transition from playable systems to background. Anyways even without them the galaxy looks beautiful in ES.

I agree that the space already looks beautiful. What we're talking about is allowing the player to feel he's in deeeeeeeep space.

i kinda want more than a graphic. i want to be able to research/manufacture a deep space expedition... with unknown results

I like the idea with terraforming. So it is possible to expand in the mid or lategame. I think in Moo2 there was a Gaia-Transformation and this technology was only avaiable at the end of the TechTree. But ok, it was a kind of internal expansion.

But a new undiscovered star system could be a nice event. But such a system would be colonized very fast.

This reminds me of Elite 2 where there were countless stars. I always loved the idea of jumping further and further into uncharted space with the potential for discovering something profound.



I don't know how realistic this would be to implement from a game perspective... Perhaps tie in some random events I.e. disturbing something in the depths of the galaxy best left alone (see Moo2 space monsters).