Hey everyone, I've been thinking lately about how to implement custom species design for my space strategy game. Like any other customizable parts of a game, it has to be divided into discrete pieces. My thinking so far is to break things down into four general areas: Physiology, Psychology, Organization, and Abilities. Physiology handles the species' physical makeup. For example, are they organic or inorganic? Or both (cybernetic)? Are they a single species (i.e. relatively homogeneous) or are they more like an ecosystem (a la the Zerg)? What is their native environment? How tolerant are they of different environmental conditions? Psychology concerns the species' mental and cultural traits. How good are they at learning new things (adaptation)? How specialized can they be? What overall philosophies do they follow (if any)? Organization is about the overall political-economic structure of the species. Do they have a government? If so, what kind? Is there any kind of independent economic system? Abilities, I think, would really be a lump category for anything that doesn't really fall into any of the other three. Possibly things like telepathy, shapeshifting, etc. can go here. Tech tree extensions might belong here as well, if they are not part of the abilities packages themselves. Thoughts? :) - Rob

I think it'll be tough to balance. If there's one combination that really shines, then everyone will choose it, and the system will be disused.

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Original post by Iron Chef Carnage I think it'll be tough to balance. If there's one combination that really shines, then everyone will choose it, and the system will be disused.

Disagree, it's certainly a challenge to balance but not untenable. It's like any other proven character building tool that's out there in mainstream games. World of Warcraft's talent system is a good example, any RPG is a good example really. You just need to limit the choices by some kind of point system. So to unlock the higher level psy powers you need to invest points into the lower rank psy powers. That way you prevent the player from having high ranks in more than 1 or 2 disciplines.

Once you lay out all the possible powers you can rank them based on power and assign point costs to them. Then allow the player to combine them in some logical fashion. By tweaking the point costs and the dependency trees you can balance the selection process.

-me

I disagree. Base point systems are largely susceptable to the scenario Chef Carnage describes. Often this is the case because different 'picks' become decidedly more powerful when combined with other picks, but their point value doesn't change to reflect their new power.

For example, say there's a pick like the OP's "cybernetic" which makes the race not need food. There's also another pick that returns points in exchange for cripling the race's farming ability. Now the 2nd pick isn't nearly so crippling with the first, but will still give a bunch of points because that what it's evaluated to on it's own.

Voila! Unbalanced system.


As for the original idea, I think it would be more neat to allow empires to change socio-economic structures and government in game, rather than using racial picks to set them.

Thanks for your comments so far. I'm not concerned about balancing things yet -- I'm still in the conceptual stage. As for being able to switch organization types, that could certainly be done, but not for all physiologies. For example, a "species" which is really an ecosystem could not really switch the way it does things. Nor could a hive-mind collective. Perhaps the solution lies in certain traits disabling the ability to change organization types.

- Rob

How will you generate visuals from such a system?

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Original post by NIm How will you generate visuals from such a system?

*Ultimately*, I'd like to have a lot of different pre-made images for species... but I would also like to enable players to make their own images and use them in the game. That's a *long* way off, though.

- Rob

I like the direction you're going. One of the things I think important to capture, though, is whether or not the different aspects really make you play differently, and get you in the mood of thinking about whatever the aspect is. So it's important to capture likeness. If you're a hive, for instance, you can reinforce the feel by implementing strategic vulnerabilities in terms of grouping of fleets, range from home, and unique requirements for expansion (after all, why would a hive split to colonize?)

But before you get too detailed, I'd lock down the core strategy first. There's no use, for instance, in having some cool racial ability like "shapeshifter" if there's no espionage and all focus is on brute fleet force.