I was recently watching my favorite anime series, and an idea came to me, that might make an interesting concept for a game. What do people think of a space strategy game in which the battlefield is not some insignificant solar system, or minor galaxy, but one in which the whole universe is the battle ground? Think for a minute about what that would involve. How would factions fight when they have the resources of entire galaxies behind them? What are some idea that people have for this kind of game? What would you like to see or not to see? What should and shouldn''t it involve? ----------------------------------------------------- Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades Current Design project Chaos Factor Design Document

Galaxy, maybe. Universe? Crap in a hat, that''s too damn hard. I have a hard enough time managing the resources of a small country. besides, you''d have to deal with things like transporting goods, communication, and the like. If you start violating the laws of physics, you''ll weave a tangled web of lies, and people will say, "Hey, how come I can beam all my food and troops billions of light-years to the battlefield, but I can''t just beam a giganuke into the bad guys'' planet?"

Using multiple star systems is cool, even though many such problems still occur. but on a galactic scale, it seems more feasible to me. That''s irrational, and you don''t have to listen to me, but that''s how I feel.

At the end of the day, though, just increasing the scale of the conflict does very little for the game. It''s like a 80 HP her fighting a 1000 HP dragon versus a 8000 HP hero fighting a 100000 HP dragon: Adding zeroes doesn''t make it any different. Not really. So if you''ve got Galaxy A with 1.1 billion starships fighting Galaxy B with its 1.2 billion starships, you may as well have Tribe A with 11 spearmen versus Tribe B with 12. The graphics change, and the logistics are more complex, but the essence of a good strategy game is always the endless struggle to strike an impossible balance between keeping ahead of your enemy and not collapsing under your own burden of advancement.

True, the scale is to massive to even comprehend when it comes to battle raging across the entire universe.

So lets scale down to galaxy size. Even then if we want to create a galaxy the scale would be massive since there are over 100 billion stars in the milkway galaxy. If we where to recrate this on a fractional scale say 1000 stars in the game. How do we handle things? Afterall how imporant would a single solar system be in that situation?

I''m not talking about a small scale strategy like Masters of orion where you have only a few dozen stars.

-----------------------------------------------------
Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

What anime series has battles that take place over the entire universe?

Well, if you made it so that Galaxies were like countries (each a separate entidy) then it would be like Civilization with cities swapped out for galaxies.

If you made it like the Caesar series where you had to "govern" a galaxy, then move on to another galaxy, until your empire controlled... the universe? Then it might work.

Other than that, it really would not be different from many other games, except on the scale. And since changing the scale of things changes the game itself, you end up with a new game.

The only real problem I see is the physics one - how do you deal with the speeds required to move from one galaxy to another? Do you simply "speed time", or have the ships moving faster than c? And if they''re moving at reletivistic speeds, do you account for time and size dialations?

That would be cool... my ship flies to your base. It takes my ship 2 mins to get there, but 20 min have passed on the base by the time it reaches it... hmm...

---

Yes... VB6 is here to steal your minds. Very slowly.

Black Heaven the greastest anime series of all time. Altough it doesn''t go into any details about the war they merely state that there currently involed in war where the whole universe is the battle ground. The series is about a man who lead a rock band in his youth and now is leading an unhappy life working in corporation living with his wife and son in a tiny apartment. Who is asked to save the universe since his music is disocoverd to be the key to activating the aliens ultimate weapon against their enemy.

Mushu: Your sugestions don''t really deal with a strategy game spanning the entire universe or galaxy there just ways to change the names in other games to more a universe sized. One after all risk with planets instead of countries is still risk. Thats also not what I''m going for.



-----------------------------------------------------
Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

quote:

---

Original post by TechnoGoth
So lets scale down to galaxy size. Even then if we want to create a galaxy the scale would be massive since there are over 100 billion stars in the milkway galaxy. If we where to recrate this on a fractional scale say 1000 stars in the game.

---

Personally I''d not want to go below a million stars.

Your computer screen probably has approaching 1 million pixels on it. Each of those pixels has 3 or 4 bytes to represent it. You can say a hell of a lot about a star system in 3 or 4 bytes.

quote:

---

How do we handle things? Afterall how imporant would a single solar system be in that situation?

---

Probably not important at all. You''d lose track of things if each individual place was to have great importance. I think what you''d be more likely to have is some sort of aggregation where a certain region contains maybe 100 systems and you can look at the resource output in total. But, certain systems might have something really interesting that makes them memorable, and as long as you have an effective way of remembering which of your systems are important and which are glorified mines, the game could work.

[ MSVC Fixes | STL Docs | SDL | Game AI | Sockets | C++ Faq Lite | Boost
Asking Questions | Organising code files | My stuff | Tiny XML | STLPort]

design document
at least 1000 opponents
at least xxxx stars
each star 4-20 planets on each planet could be 100 armies each 10000000 soldiers each trying to kick others butt.
I tried do minimalistic design so I would increase that during coding.
So far I know that speed test went nice, and I need faster computer. Currently it look like it would run 3x realtime so this is rather slow, but first it could work better.

Do you know something about metalicity of stars? Size of the Galaxy? 3D starmaps?

I designed it so each star system would have its importance. Some systems would be very rare.
So it seems to work and gameplay would be interesting.

to Kylotan
Hava you listened words 20 TB of disk storage? If you''d like persistent planet maps and have them uncompressed you''d need that.
Star could have 3D coordinates, and other things. Precision 1 pc is too low for star position. so count how many bytes, at last do you need.

quote:

---

Original post by TechnoGoth
One after all risk with planets instead of countries is still risk. Thats also not what I''m going for.

---

Ooops. Sorry!

Well... I don''t know how I would actually accomplish it...

If you assume that there are 1000 opponents on all different plantets then the game would get really complicated: would diplomacy be an option? Would war even be an option? If you''ve ever played the game Superpower, I think your finished version might be something like that (sorry for bringing in other games again).

I think that in order to achieve realism, diplomacy will have to be key - there''s no way you''re going to conquer the universe alone. Massive factions waging war against each other?

---

Yes... VB6 is here to steal your minds. Very slowly.

Have you played "Star Control 2"?
Try the adventure to play in a galaxy.