A plea for Options

[Chasm]

In MoO2 you had options at the start of the game , some concerning galaxy type, and some concerning how advanced everyone was at the start. Starting with nothing was one of my preferred ways to play if I wanted a long game. The advanced option (where everyone had multiple colonies at the start) was fun as an occasional. Both were very different from the standard start, which is what we have now and would likely add to replayability (IMO anyhow). Perhaps even having a choice of science leaders? Or what techs you start with? Or restricted items (no doom stars)?

[SirDamnALot]

Well, on a new game, after the race select screen, there is a good chunk of interface left with "Advanced universe settings" and "todo" written on it.
So something is in the works

Out of curiosity, did you use the "pre-warp" option beside a race with "creative" trait ?
Because I found that you cripple yourself if you have to choose exclusive between absolute necessary techs.

[Arioch]

We will definitely include a variety of map/game options.

If there are particular options you'd like to see, feel free to list them here.

[NullVoid]

Out of curiosity, did you use the "pre-warp" option beside a race with "creative" trait ?
Because I found that you cripple yourself if you have to choose exclusive between absolute necessary techs.

I sure did! In MoO2, those pre-warp techs worked as if you were creative. The subterranean democracy was a particularly effective combination.

Also, options are great, but there's no point in implementing that until the late stages of development. There's still going to be too many changes; this should be finished during the final balancing pass.

[SirDamnALot]

I sure did! In MoO2, those pre-warp techs worked as if you were creative. The subterranean democracy was a particularly effective combination.

Oh you are right, just checked it.Not sure it was always the case, but version 1.3 and 1.4 do the trick.

Also, options are great, but there's no point in implementing that until the late stages of development. There's still going to be too many changes; this should be finished during the final balancing pass.

IMHO, the more fancy/weird options could be pushed post release.
They are great for replay value when you have a good grasp how the game works and seen most stuff.
Then using an option that turns everything on it's ear is very nice to have (e.g. mixing up race traits and special ships),
but for the first runs you will probly have enough learning curve and sense of wonder with the "vanilla" gameplay.

[mharmless]

If there are particular options you'd like to see, feel free to list them here.

I know this might screw with the AI a bit, but I always liked playing an uncreative race in Moo2 because it forced me to adapt and use techs I don't normally bother with and went well with the escapist fantasy thing because my internal narrative would have to adapt, too.

Some advanced option to mirror the basic idea of 'you don't necessarily get what you want' would be amazing. The tech tree we have now doesn't seem well suited to removing technologies, but it might work to remove applications. Same techs to research, same tree, but won't know in advance which modules I'm allowed to work with.

Alternately, or in addition to, shuffling up the technology links and then hiding what leads to what. Perhaps band techs into a few tiers, such that say terraforming is always at least five technologies from the start, but don't show that to the player. Might make some nonsense links, but the point would be an optional way to extend replayability so I think it would be OK if you had something like torpedoes being a link to the second tier of farming. The point would be that I wouldn't be able to leverage the tech orders I learned on previous games. Keep that 'discovery of the unknown' thing in play.

Sorry the examples are poor, I'm at work and don't have access to the real tech tree and apparently I'm bad at recalling it.

[sven]

Some advanced option to mirror the basic idea of 'you don't necessarily get what you want' would be amazing. The tech tree we have now doesn't seem well suited to removing technologies, but it might work to remove applications. Same techs to research, same tree, but won't know in advance which modules I'm allowed to work with.

One thing that might be worth trying (and would also be pretty easy to implement) would be to give players an Alpha-Cent style limited choice of research field each time you completed research. So, you wouldn't actually know what you were researching until it was finished, and you'd have limited choices of which field to put energy into when choosing a new research direction. This is does strike me as a "more realistic" model of research, and it can lead to interesting situations, where you need to figure out how to work with the techs you happened to get, instead of the ones you really wanted. Could be fun for advanced players who have settled into some tech tree traversal strategies that work well for them, and are looking to shake things up a bit.

[Chasm]

Do it, more options are ALWAYS better. More options = more replayability = more people we can addict to the game = more chance at an expansion pack (once basic framework is done expansions are generally easier to work in, and I for one would definitely buy one). I would even leave cheat option in *with a warning of course* cause some people will like to play the game that way, and if they have bought it, WHO CARES how they play it.

[mharmless]

I for one would definitely buy one

Seriously; this. I've gotten quite a lot of enjoyment out of this game even in the beta state. I've thrown good money at completed games which were less fun.

I don't know if it is going away later, but I do really like the ability to quickly walk backwards through my moves and undo any 'ooops' right then and there. I've never seen that feature before in a gaming context and I like it a lot.

[sven]

I don't know if it is going away later, but I do really like the ability to quickly walk backwards through my moves and undo any 'ooops' right then and there. I've never seen that feature before in a gaming context and I like it a lot.

Personally, I think that if you're going to give people the ability to save and load games, you may as well give them an "undo last action" button. But, I think you and I may be in the minority on this one

It's certainly handy while we're testing gameplay features though -- and as I just said over in the bug report thread, I think that there may be more ways that the underlying history-tracking features could be leveraged to add some cool gameplay elements. As one concrete example, right now, there's another "dev" feature that will let you load up any "historical" tactical battle. You can get into it by hitting "ctrl+b" inside the main galaxy screen. A post-game epilogue screen that showed clips from some of the biggest / most significant fleet battles from the game you just finished be a fun bit of polish, and I also think there might be ways that we could integrate some of the battle histories into historical log panes.

Sadly, really exploring these kinds of features is something that will likely need to wait until after the release, as none of it is really "core gameplay", but, um, it's safe to assume that I have more long range plans around these features