| GalCiv2 will not get it, and neither will GC3. Full 3d simply doesn't work well with free-travel space (as opposed to starlanes as in MOO and others); the game would quickly become totally unmanageable even on small maps. |
the only 4X game that i know that did this was Ascendency. It was awesome, i think that most people cant think natively in 3d so it disturbs them.
Being a pilot, i have no problem with 3d (4d in reality) so i say bring it on, it would add alot to the game. |
Ascendancy
was one of those games that uses starlane-type travel between stars. as opposed to the freel-travel space as seen in Galactic Civilizations 2 and to be featured in GC3.
Kryo's point still stands.
I loved Ascendancy, as well. I've got it in a (fake?) leater-bound disc case somewhere, maybe among other games (I don't know how many discs I put in that case). I don't know about it's difficulty, as I tended not to really care so much about how hard it was to beat an AI, so much as how hard it is to manage my own government. I tend to focus
alot on managing my own people than trying to compete with the AI in these types of games.
... In-system is another matter - I do remember you did have to give the ships orders on where to go once in-system. But I think even then it was fairly simplistic, wasn't it?
We could go the next step and having something would be really frantic - a full 3D world and real time.
We see freighters moving from one place to another, several battles happening at once (you'd see LOTS of flashing lights go of on your display!).
While things would go relatively slowly (e.g. you see ships move but they do slowly, albeit some ships move quicker than others) a large portion of your strategy would be decided on what you should spend time on!
You'd be in control while things are going smoothly.. but you'd really start to panic when other races declared war on you and several things started to demand your attention at the same time! That really would be frantic.
I think that a full 3D environment would add lend itself more to a real time environment. To be honest I still like the turn thing better - so you'd need to have the option to switch between them (or choose which version to play) to keep me happy. |
I think you should play
Hegemonia: Legions of Iron. It involves colonizing planets and building them up, just like these games, but it is also a Real-Time Strategy that involves flying inbetween planets and even flying inbetween systems (the game supplies a form of 'jump point' system to allow inter-system travel (the jump points tend to be over or under the star, if I remember the Multiplayer maps correctly- at least it was true for one of the maps). There's even MOBILE STARBASES that people keep talking about on this forum.
Hegemonia was one of the cooler gaming experiences I've had.
| The difficulty isn't programming, it's making it easy to make your ships go where you want them. |
Yes. This is exactly the point. This kind of game does not lend itself too much towards full-3D maps. RTS does a fair better job, as you are reacting in real-time to enemy activity. Also, the interface for an RTS tends to be quick-clicking to move your ships, which is a great way to handle 2D fields of play, but gets sticky when you go to 3D.
Also:
| One problem with a 3D galaxy is that it's pretty unrealistic. Most, if not all galaxies are relatively flat... if you wanted to make it true 3D that fit in with real space, you'd have a large rectangular prism, with maybe three layers of stars up and down for every 25 sections of stars across... yeah, it might add in depth, but it wouldn't be worth as much trouble as it would be. |
... this must be considered, as well. This kind of game should have relatively flat maps, by nature. There's no reason to have multiple levels in the strategic stage. Maybe for a tactical stage, but not the strategic overview that is scaled to the galaxy.
