Why "scout" ships? Hundreds of Star Trek episodes have proved that even a very powerful flagship like the USS Enterprise can be seriously challenged by "routine" exploration and search missions: a state of the art expensive and very strong ship should be the bare minimum for venturing in unexplored or dangerous space, with powerful groups of ships preferable and cheap small ships completely out of the question except as the numerous payload of an aircraft carrier.

Reasonable (and fun) exploration should consist of going there and kicking ass, conquering new territories and clearing them of threats; probes and instruments are a small addition to a primarily military activity. The difference with a military campaign is that exploration happens in "wild" places rather than in well known places that belong to the enemy.

Long range sensors can give a good indication of where to send the exploration duty fleets (or what important planets are going to be fought over when the enemy reaches them too) without yielding anything concretely useful.

This makes exploration and exploitation of planets a key game mechanic.

I definitely don't want this. We are talking about 4X, exploration is only a small part of the game, not the key one. If one wants to focus on exploration he should choose another genre (like Elite style space exploration adventure thing).

Exploration is just a small subsystem of 4X. It's the servant mechanic, not the master.

You send a scout to Cygnis Alpha III and find it has massive gold deposits, so you build an engineering fleet and send it to the planet. Eventually it gets there and they build a warp gate. Once that is operational you have fast transit and can use none warp equiped space craft to get there.

Warp gates are too heavy restiction. I would not gof for these just for exploration. Also, I don't think warpgates fit 4X in general (it messes control of the territory, which is the key mechanic in these games)...

I mean, let's look at the bigger picture. It's 4X game (not a game about exploration). The question is how to make exploration less boring without destroying/changing the rest of the game completely. It's not about how to make exploration fun, it's about how to make an exploration subsystem that would fit a 4X game.

Why "scout" ships? Hundreds of Star Trek episodes have proved

Start Trek is not real life, MOO is :D

Plus, not this scale, in 4X you are some sort of emperor/president, you don't deal with what's going on inside a ship.

4X is a genre of strategy-based video and board games in which players control an empire and "eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate".

So in your view explore, and exploit are not part of a 4X game?

I don't really understand what your view of a 4X game is.

Explain exactly what your definition of a 4X game is please, you seem to want ... well a 2X game?

Warp gates do not mess with control of a territory, in fact they could be a key part in control of a territory. Once you have a warp gate in place, you can expand your influence around it much quicker than having to use slow interstellar travel. Loss of a warp gate due to enemy action would be a major problem and could cause you to lose control of whole regions of space. A key nexus in your warp gate mesh falling to enemy action could easily lose you the game.

I'm really not sure what you are after anymore

eXploration is critical imho. Though deep scans can provide a lot of info about things very far, there's nothing like seeing it for yourself.

That being said, if you look into StarTrek, you'll notice that the Galaxy Class isn't small by any means. It is deployed with specific intentions, and gear to tackle other missions as well. 'To Boldly Go' doesn't meant to take the smallest possible craft, it means to be ready to face anything.

Thus, larger ships should have larger sweeping ranges to deter players from building just smaller ships. Small ships tend to have little to no room for 'extra' systems. They're good at one thing and one thing only, most often, interception.

So in your view explore, and exploit are not part of a 4X game? wacko.png

I don't really understand what your view of a 4X game is.

Explain exactly what your definition of a 4X game is please, you seem to want ... well a 2X game?

Well... A good point... I think it might be personal, I'm not so fond of this exploration thing and I'm not sure I fully understand why it need to be there... OK, I know why it's needed as a *slave* to other parts of the game, but I never saw it as a feature fun on its own... So, yeah, it might be personal.

OK, let's look around then, do you find traditional space exploration fun? Do you like sending these small scout ships? I'm asking about existing games you played (not about how would you like it to work - I try to determine if anyone likes the exploration in 4X space empire games and possibly why they like it).

I have a slightly ironic question to ask, given my position on exploration: why do you feel that exploration does have to be included?

I'm a big fan of the adage "make the game that you want to play"; while I, personally, love exploration, you've said that you don't, and have indicated that you find it superfluous--so why include it in your game? You're not building it for me, after all.

Even aside from the idea that you'll likely be more invested in and more passionate about a game built to your liking, there are likely to be others who feel as you do. In all fairness, how big a market they constitute is another question, and market concerns may well be a reason to go against your preference, depending on your goals for your game.

What does your game look like if you simply drop exploration entirely: all planets are already known to the player (via starmap, scanner and database)?

Perhaps think about the elements that you love in space strategy games, and put some thought into making those elements the core of the experience.

I have a slightly ironic question to ask, given my position on exploration: why do you feel that exploration does have to be included?

1) Players will complain that it's 3X and not 4X OK, that one is minor and not so important, still worth to mention.

2) Information overload. If there are 100-200 systems I do not want to know details about every single one from the start. It will burn my mind with computation requests. I prefer this information to be given to me in chunks over time.

3) It's hidden information and surprise. Let's face it, strategies are pretty predictable games. You know the tech tree, you more or less know possible enemy races, you know the buildings, you know what ships you will design. An unknown (or partially unknown) map is great because you don't know a lot of critical factors from the start (enemies placement, good planets placement, space lanes between planets/systems).

4) Replayability. Sure, you could say if the map is random and you see it from the start it's the same replayability. But I don't think so Hidden map is, well, hidden. Even if you ended up on a similar map next time you play, you will not know it till the end and will still enjoy it and be on your toes.

5) Ancient ruins, artifacts, anomalies, singularities - these are great, but... only if given successively on the way, not all at once (I would be unable to even read all their descriptions if these were revealed at the start!)

So... I don't like exploration on its own, but it has many benefits to the game as a whole (replayability, hidden information, dosage of rewards, prevents infodump, etc)

What does your game look like if you simply drop exploration entirely: all planets are already known to the player (via starmap, scanner and database)?

Perhaps think about the elements that you love in space strategy games, and put some thought into making those elements the core of the experience.

I like the way you think

Actually, I wouldn't mind to give much more information about the map from the start (for the particular game I'm making, overall it would be bad I guess) and/or grant cheap/early exploration. But still... if nothing else, the info overload is unacceptable (I would need to really simplify these planets). Also, some information should be revealed later (OK, I could use events for this, but... come on, digging out an ancient artifact from a planet is far more cool )

I definitely don't want to make exploration the core experience (I don't like it THAT much), yet, I like it enough (I suppose) to include it... I think Unless there is an important reason to exclude it, I could go for it then

Aah, fair enough.

In that case, one more suggestion (and my apologies if this has already been suggested--I think that I skimmed some parts of this thread ^^; ): a very lightweight exploration mechanic: at the cost of some resource (ship-building parts, time; whatever seems appropriate in your game--in particular a "cooldown" period might be useful) allow the player to designate a region of space to be charted. There might be specifics to this--investing more resources to increase the size of the region, or the speed at which charting is completed, but at the cost of becoming less resource-efficient, for example. After this, the exploration is performed automatically--it's a little like casting an area-of-effect spell, in essence--a period of time passes, and then the "explored" region becomes visible to the player.

This would provide decisions for the player to make--is it worth it given the current state of my resources? Where should I explore? Should I put in a little extra in order to explore a little further, thus exploring at a higher rate, or be patient and explore more efficiently, at the cost of exploration taking longer, and of providing more time for nasty surprises to emerge from uncharted space. It also means that you can start the player with only a few planets to deal with, and allow them to increase that at more or less their own pace.

allow the player to designate a region of space to be charted. There might be specifics to this--investing more resources to increase the size of the region, or the speed at which charting is completed, but at the cost of becoming less resource-efficient, for example. After this, the exploration is performed automatically--it's a little like casting an area-of-effect spell, in essence--a period of time passes, and then the "explored" region becomes visible to the player.

Hmmm, how about this:

You designate a planet (in your range and already explored) as a "base of explorations". From that planet each turn there will be auto exploration of nearby planets launched. So, it's like you tell where your imperial survey squadron is to be based. It shows an icon over that planet.

You could have like 3 such survey squadrons maybe? Based on exploration budget? Or on technologies (unlocks additional survey squadron)? Or allocate some budget to say how many planets per turn are auto surveyed?

Of course you still can use your regular fleet (at least for a basic survey), otherwise it would not make sense...

Also (I can't get this off my mind :)), second expoloration layer, the Imperial Archeologists. The standard survey uncovers alien artifacts, ruins, etc. Then you can manually send Imperial Archeologists to that planet to investigate further (and reveal the secret of such structure), it would require one time payment (money) and then you wait X turns for results. Even if failed (there was nothing there) your archeologists still get a permanent bonus to efficiency (or, they get achievement "understood alien language" which would make further archologist excavations faster).

3) It's hidden information and surprise. Let's face it, strategies are pretty predictable games. You know the tech tree, you more or less know possible enemy races, you know the buildings, you know what ships you will design. An unknown (or partially unknown) map is great because you don't know a lot of critical factors from the start (enemies placement, good planets placement, space lanes between planets/systems).

Though you know your possibilities, you don't have a preset path along that trail (if you do, you're ultimately bound to lose in a competitive environment).

The best strategy games force you to reconsider your strategy often.

What I'd say is that, not knowing what your opponent is up to is a risk you can't take: he might be doing exactly that which defeats your own strategy.

Removing eXploration from a 4X is essentially turning the game into a 'watch and adapt' type of game as opposed to actual strategy.

The need for information is counter-balanced by the cost to attain such information. Some players will lose games only because their fear is too high (they explore too often).