Eightball Maniac wrote:You've put thought into how to build a functioning AI, which is reassuring! I'll certainly dig into the Symbiot demo and test it out when it's ready.
Down the road when EFS 1.4 style play is largely complete, do you plan to expand the game's possibilities at all? Fully functioning Church mechanics would be an excellent addition. I'd also really like to see additional factions such as Minor Houses, Vuldroks, and Kurgans, rather than lumping them together with Rebels. Adding factions is a more complex matter since diplomacy would need to be tied into some or all of them...
Oh, I've got
Plans allright ... when I started to code Phoenix seriously I did some research regarding all the previous remake talk and projects that I knew of, starting from the forum discussions in early 2000, to the efforts of 1eyedparrot, BrodieBrodie and Lap ... and came (among other things) to the conclusions that talking the project to the death is a real danger and that going for an EFS1.5 patch has a better chance of success as a project and getting wider community acceptance than going for a full EFS2.0 remake. Thus the need to do more implementation work and less talking about would be vaporware features.
(Of course, in the
Fred Brooks sense, an EFS1.5 could be considered a necessary pilot system if/when making an EFS2.0 ...)
Things that are mentioned in the manual, incomplete in EFS1.4 or heard thru the grapevine as more or less official should/would/could have been features could be considered EFS1.5 features and are high on the list of additions along with general modern game features necessary to reduce tedious micromanagement and speed up playing of turns.
Regarding the Church, with the AI as I now envision it, some features should be less than too difficult to do:
being pissed about high tithe skim,
sending inquisitors directly to raid only known or highly suspect locations of heresy,
escalating hostilities if suspect labs are surrounded by garrisons and maybe
electing a new patriach from a sect with the highest population among the cities and units and setting church AI demeanour accordingly (like high tech acceptance: from "avestites => kill all the scientists" to ... hmm, actually, I don't know which sect would be the most tolerant regarding high tech in the FS universe...) I also recall some priest saying "
As soon as a coin in the coffer rings, a soul from purgatory springs"
Also, regarding assassinations: making unspotted assassins invulnerable to all phases before their first/best/close attack on their first turn might make assassins more useful even in vanilla, and the task of keeping a noble on Byz II a bit more interesting ...
Phoenix looks like it could fly ... three years of work, good game concept, existing community ... it would be a waste, borderline criminal to just stop developing if/when all desirable EFS1.4 features are implemented.
Eightball Maniac wrote:Looking at that feature list and checking out the latest release, I have the following recommendations for mechanics that should get a higher priority, in no particular order:
I added the new features you mentioned to the list and reorganized the list into High, Medium, Undecided and Low priority features.
flowerpot wrote:Hopefully other folks will chime in with suggestions as well.
Hmm, regarding this thread, only Garison, you and I (and moderators) are possibly getting new message notifications, others will have to explicitly nose around this forum.
Heh, if I was publishing videos of some celebrity in a drunken stupor this would go viral instantly ... but a remake of a twenty-year-old-could-have-been-big game will attract only the interest of les connaisseurs ...
I have not thought too much about public relations ... two years ago dogamusprime suggested I post on the Reddit.com 4x, or strategygaming subbreddits. Back then I was of the opinion that it's too early to publish outside of forums or existing threads dedicated to EFS, I thought Phoenix was too much vaporware and I had not any automated testing done. Maybe it's time to go public among more general gaming forums ...