>>6605277
Oh fuck yes. I remember this.

Sadly, no ideas at the moment.

Poison waters/food/nutrient materials.
Give gifts ridden with illnesses they haven't body defenses against.
Radiate random spots so that whoever passes by those spots dies of radiation poisoning.
Self-destruct satellite.

What game is this?

Also, asteroids, lots of them

>>6605377

Fukkin seconded!

>>6605377
>>6605455

It's a game he is creating.

>>6605377
>>6605455
a game a fa/tg/uy is developing, he's supposedly not satisfied with most 3x space empire games so he's making his own.

>>6605359
>poison water/food/nutrients
Standard bio-terrorism (poisons planted by agents in foreign systems). I don't see why not.

>Self-destruct satellite
That's basically any missile. Unless you mean natural satellite, in which case you mean blowing up moons, in which case it's planned but might be too unbalanced.

>random spot radiation
If you mean "spots on planet" then I guess it can be a part of nuclear-biological-chemical terrorism options. If you mean "spots in space"... well, I already have minefield algorithms so we might work from there, like making a special "radiation minefield" or something. It would lay dormant until ships pass through it and blowing up they wouldn't damage the ships as regular mines do, but rather kill off most of the crews/marines aboard.

>poison gifts
Trojans, as it were? Yes, that would have a huge dickery rating. It would also lower your diplomatic standing significantly, so it might not be worth it, but the option might be there.

>>6605443
Rocks are NOT free, citizen.

But seriously, I have asteroid drop pods in mind. And possibly a race that makes ships by hollowing out asteroids. That good enough?

>>6605471

Jesus Christ looks amazing!

As for dickery? Something like Exterminus or a Scorched Earth policy. Just burn the planet.

not 40k enough, sage

"Do what the Nazis did and claim to have an insurgent division, when in actuality you don't. May cause a small amount of confusion and some laughter. Cost: Nothing"

>>6605471
Now, I'm not saying this game will be a second coming of Christ, or that I necessarily know better than the guys who made Master of Orion. But I'm making a space strategy game, yes.
>>6605506
Btw that was me.

I vaguely remember this in its infancy. God damn you've progressed fantastically. Keep up the good work!

Also, this isn't backstabbary, but how much in the way of Scorched Earth strategy do you have? I would be giddy as a school girl if you had a bunch of it.

>>6605568
ABEB IT

Troops wear uniforms of another nation and do covert/overt actions against a different nation, straining the relations between both.

Place nukes or equivalent under strategic areas. If you can't have them no one can.

Unleash mutagens on part of the planet. The enemy still keeps control of the planet but now the troops have to fight off these mutants who used to be their own friends and family. Lowers population/production.

Put thrusters on one of the poles of the planet and fuck up it's axis.

Attach bombs to dogs and have the dogs run at the enemy.

Counterfeit goods/money. Trade for a resource or money with another faction, but they are getting a fake. They don't receive any actual benefit and you get your share. Maybe do something like in Civ 4 where a trade deal can not be canceled for 10 turns unless war is declared.

Change the frequency that military orders are issued on causing the enemy to publicly broadcast their position for X amount of time.

Didn't you implement Planet Teleporters a while back?

You could use those to teleport enemy planets near dying stars or black holes.

Also, keep up the good work, this looks awesome.

>Imperial Grenadier
>Panzergrenadier

FUCK YES, FINALLY
I love having a wide array of units, it's something other games like this never have. Please think about including elite badass units like the Sardaukar, every emperor should have those for when he needs to absolutely get shit done.

>>6605601
I don't know why, but that post made me laugh way more than it should have.

>>6605568
>ok now gtfo dumbo's
I bet sysop was wearing a monocle and tophat when he came up with that gem of wit.

>>6605635
>gem of wit
witgem
gemwit
git
wem

i think i shouldn't browse /tg/ while brain dead

>>6605617

Or just teleport it into the middle of your empire so you can cut off any reinforcements and not destroy it.

This works best with a democratic enemy.
In a similar race conflict, one Govern could start sending a lot of immigrants on a foreign planet (as political refugees or something). Like, A LOT. And they should make LOTS of children as soon as possible.
That way in two generations or three they will snatch a great deal of votes/overpower the main population.

This might be a tidbit of inspiration to OP

Don't really have any ideas for backstabbin' but I do have something else to say.

I find that in most 4x-type games no one ever really gets attached to a single planet, so AIs will trade planets away and not really give a shit about indvidual worlds or systems.

I would like to suggest you implement a system that would give a system or group of systems a chance to become incredibly important to a certain race or a number or races. Maybe the faction's dominant religion claims it as a holy land, or there is some kind of valuable technological artifact located there. Not controlling the region would give significant negative morale modifiers.

pic related

>>6605537
Ah, I get you. Make the other guy THINK there might be people in some caverns in order to force him to keep a hilariously large garrison on the planet? Me like.
>>6605526
>>6605540
Two votes for Scorched Earth it is. Something like boobytrapping planets before leaving them to the enemy, perhaps? There are more than enough ways to destroy entire planets to satisfy the most critical of fa/tg/uys. One of them involves mining a rare - and highly volatile - resource called "Brimstone", then raining it on the enemy planets. Thus turning the planet into a Scorched World (unless it's an ice world, in which case you will turn it into a water planet or something). Sorta like a combined express terraforming / genocide plot device.
>>6605612
So much win and awesome, a pity I can't implement all of that. Axis shift is already possible. Impersonating an enemy and issuing fake orders will have to go on the wish list because they might require too much work at this stage. I am sorry about this.
>>6605617
It's actually star teleporters, and fluff explains it away so it works only for large gravity fields like stars. But if you teleport a star too close to another one, they will coalesce into a single binary system and god help those planets that end up in S-Orbit between them. For now you can't use this offensively, though, because you need to have an expensive generator inside the system.

>>6605769
Idea for more Scorched Earth.

ARE ENEMIES INVADING YOUR STAR SYSTEM?
DO YOU NOT WANT THEM HAVING IT?
DOES IT SEEM IMPOSSIBLE TO GET IT BACK?!
TRY OUR NEW PRODUCT!

SUPERNOVA!

IMO, SE in games should be horribly strong, but of course the downside is you're hurting yourself too.

>>6605814
Also you are reading that in Billy Mays's voice manually.

Funding the planet's organized crime/terrorists. Lowers morale, production, funding, etc.

Funding a new political party that works against the interests of the current ruling body. Could change planet morale and if really successful bring you a puppet government.

Dump your own criminal's onto the planet. Then you don't have to fund a prison system, and the foe's morale goes down.

Fund the media, have subtle propaganda broadcast.

Replace local heroes with look alike puppets. Not just politicians, but sports players, actors, scientists.

Drop automated tunneling machines onto the planet. Riddle the ground under them with holes that could cause buildings to collapse, or if really lucky, volcanoes/earthquakes to happen.

Send some kind of device into their sun which causes a solar flare that damages electronics.

After they experience a disaster (which you may have caused) send in aid personnel. Have some of the personnel be legit, have some of them be saboteurs that do anything the everyone has suggested to far.

>>6605768
Systems, and system populations, have traits, and might accumulate new ones over time. Bones of Our Forefathers and Site of Famous Battle are examples of system traits that will work precisely to your liking, and I think they (and the bonuses they are likely to impart) are pretty self-explanatory. However, there might also be systems with negative or ambiguous attributes such as Separatist Tendencies, Loyal to the Local Governor, or Defiant.

>>6605755

Holy fuck, I didn't think we had Elegan/tg/entlemen that played Eve Online.

You know we have a 4chan alliance right?

>>6605277
This is the first I've seen of this. Are there more race other than "Space Germans"?

>>6605925
While /tg/ does have EVE players, I don't play it.

I don't have the funds to have an MMO. I'm barely scrapping out a living. :'|

>>6605939
The only other race I remember is some big bads who appear as giant eyeballs in space that follow your cursor and slowly make planets on the edge of the map disappear.

>>6605962

Yeah, some people have that issue. But if you do it right you never have to pay (in-game currency can be used to buy game time)

Anyway, let's get back to the OP's thread. I am really interested in this.

>>6605987

Me again, to contribute:

Manchurian Candidates, people you kidnap and brainwash who are in power, or are going to be in power.

Another would be to clone them, or replace them with robots, except they'd be under your control.

>>6605965
Hm, there needs to be races with strengths/drawbacks.

IE, a race of AI's that are immune to biological/propaganda/environmental attacks, yet are weak as hell to...say...physical attacks, seeing as they're AI's and not FIGHTAN ROBOTZ

>>6606021

Confirming Orkz must be in this game.

Assassinations. Either of high end political figure causing a possible shift in policies, or of enemy generals causing a loss in a units efficiency.

Since it's in space I can't really think of how to do this one, but misdirection, switching around signs and such confusing the enemy where things actually are on your planet/system.

Steal enemy map, get a rough idea of where they occupy, doesn't give any military unit data.

Take hostages. A rather drastic action, though if one of your planets has some tourism such as a holy site or something you take hostages from the tourists, or actively hunt them out. Safer the other way, though you don't really get anyone worth much. You then make a demand in money or governmental policies, maybe even a prisoner swap, and if the enemy refuses it hurts the peoples morale slightly, but the action of taking hostages REALLY pisses everyone off. Really doesn't seem like it'd be worth the risk to use.

False information. Make it look like your border is heavily protected, or weakly defended, but in actuality isn't. Kinda similar to a previous suggestion in this thread.

Warships use same signal as enemy faction for identification allowing them to get within optimal range and deliver a critical hit or a surprise attack. Good for say getting a destroyer near a carrier. Maybe even paired with kamikaze ships.

Another idea in the same light, privateers/pirates. Probably already on the list.

A take no prisoners policy, causes fear in the enemy but also causes them to fight to the death rather then surrender.

Really hard to do on a galactic scale, but if there was a way you could make their weapons inert or less effective. Faulty ammo, sabotage power sources, viruses on computer systems.

By the way is this an RTS or a TBS?

Destroy supply vessels, leaving desert planets whitout food/important suplys. See them starve to death.

And yes, bad english. Not americanfag here

>>6605848
>>6605686

The problem I have with these is ships making planet fall are most likely going to be monitored. Maybe on fringe worlds or newly colonized worlds would be able to have you drop off prisoners and refugees without much fuss.

On the same though though, if you colonize a new planet, you could perhaps have an option to deport your own criminals there, raising the population but having a negative effect as well. Also would lower the population of certain planets but make them happier as their criminal problem is gone.

>>6605939
>>6605965
Humans are the "main" race upon which the game will be built, and other ones will be added on top of that. You have your mandatory Space Locusts; some near-omnipotent cosmic horrors occupying everything with huge ethereal tentacles; a mysterious unseen race that communicates via proxy but for some reason the near-omnipotent seemingly evil cosmic horrors are running away from THEM; intelligent colonial bacteria that has no concept of an individual; Von-Neumann nanobots gone rogue, forming a nation; a radioactive species using decay for fueling their metabolisms; gas-giant dwelling mantasquids; ring-dwelling aliens; etc.

Oh also a dosen or so subfactions of humans, each with some unique quirk.

And a subset of humans that fled persecution 3000 years ago and now you came to their arm of the galaxy they are fucking PISSED.

>>6606117
Needs space kobolds

>>6606103

I figured that for dropping off things on a planet that you don't want the enemy to notice you'd use stealth dropships or drop pods. If they find the drop pods, they know something's going on, but they don't know what. For extra shenanigans, use dropships/pods from another faction making the defenders think it's a third party causing havoc.

>Praetor thread
YES

>>6606041
RTS.

Sabotage is very possible, and subversion on a system-level is high on my wish list. Stuff like, invest heavily in supercomputers and science vessels and calculate enemy shield frequency mid-battle. Then get the ability to drop their shields galaxy-wide and enjoy a few in-game minutes of non-shielded enemy. Or subverting SDI defenses to launch interstellar warheads through what they thought was a safe border.

False intel is a must. Since the game will have "preparations for war" mechanic, meaning you can't just attack anyone at a whim without first preparing for war, you might cause galactic havoc by planting news that Enemy A is planning war against Enemy B (who is Enemy A's ally).

When suggesting dickery keep in mind there is a Grudge scale in the game. The more civilians you kill the higher the Grudge they get against you. High grudge unlocks some really dirty moves that would otherwise be impossible, or at least frowned upon by everyone in the galaxy (well, except Space Bugs, they don't give a fuck).

Bribe enemy top commanders to defect

Watch them executed for treason

>>6605506
First: Welcome back Praetor

Next,
>make ships by hollowing out asteroids

So... There's Orks? Fucking awesome.

>>6606251
Hey, from a tactical standpoint a hollowed-out asteroid is good idea, imagine an asteroid field suddenly exploding with gunfire as it turns out that it was actually a small armada of rock-ships?

Democracies automatically accept when the enemy sues for peace after seven years, no matter how close they are to victory.

Enemy uses this time to rebuild the fleet and crush the democracy six months later.

>>6606318
That reminds me. In a recent episode of Star Wars Clone Wars, there was a battle where the Republic was outnumbered by Droid battleships. So they stationed clone ground troops on the asteroids around the planet they were orbitting. When the battleships pulled past, the ground troops opened fire. I don't know how that would work, but I thought it was actually a cool strategy.

>>6606318
YES. I want to be able to make an Asteroid Field into Missile Ships.

The enemy fleet goes into an asteroid field. Moments later, all ships in the fleet have "Warning! Missile Collision imminent!" flashing on their screens. What ships aren't destroyed, you could fix up and re-fit using the left-over sections of other ships.

>>6606375
But their spy had told them of your plans, and sabotaged the asteroid openings. All those missiles those ships fired blow up inside the asteroid. It was the most decisive destruction of an opposing force ever.

>>6606364
Would probably not work at scales the game represents, or in actual space warfare. Also you'd have to chain yourself onto an asteroid because their gravity is so small, one twitch of your toes, one minimum reaction to the gun's recoil, and you've jumped straight off it.
>>6606318
Asteroids usually are a good location for all sorts of sneaky bastardry.

>>6606544

What about something like a secret garrison, or automated defenses?

Some kind of drone that is like a drop pod turret would also be cool for instance defenses.

>>6606544
No, it's not, asteroids in reality are thousands of miles apart.

>>6606587
But not Asteroid FIELDS.

>>6606587
And how exactly does their distance in between one another change the fact you can conceal military materiel on/behind one from detection?

Hmm, how about adding something like colony drops. Maybe a special kind of ship, which is mainly just big engines. It's only purpose would be to ram small moons, colonies, asteroids, etc. And then set them into a collision course with another planet.
You know, force one of their planets collide with another one, bonus points if both are inhabited.

>>6606693
In reality you'd need huge energies to change an orbit significantly, and if you already have huge energies, you are much, much better off just ramming the planet and causing the vaporized rock shockwave to engulf the entirety of the surface. After arranging a collision between two planets it would likely take decades for said collision to occur (unless one is a moon and very close at that).

>>6606740
Yeah, but you wanted dickish stuff; you didn't specify that it needed to be cost effective. But I guess it would work with space stations orbiting near the planet, though the effect of having to kill your own population to save yourself wouldn't be much in comparison.

- An option to make the civillians of a planet tats about to be attacked commit mass suicide down to the last man woman and child, causes serious moral damage to the enemy and lowers the planet value for turns afterwards (Due to the fact they're cleaning up masses of corpses)

- Option to have suicide bombers/fly ships into other ships and planets if the crew gets low.

- Torture, prisioners, your own people, random passers by, anyone.

-Options to set how hard your IRON FIST OF RULING clenches, maybe a series of yes or no law questions (How is murder punished, how is kidnapping punished, how is Littering punished), more harsh your rule the less rebellions, but you also have more prisioners (To torture) and the more dissent.

-Several different ways to render planets Totally uninhabitable, each with different effects (Blowing it up, biological warfare, creating a creature that thrives on the planet that shits fire and eats orphans, ect)

-Planetside warfare with a potential to end up fighting to a stand still (Think Kreig...) would be awesome.

>>6606882
- Option to have suicide bombers/fly ships into other ships and planets if the crew gets low.

Umm, apparently you've never seen me streaming MoO2.

I like to mass produce the smallest available ship, run them up into the enemy's fleet, and self-destruct them.

At least early game.

Those Red Shirts know it's for the glory of their Race.

Zombie apocalypse for everyone!
But seriously consider different "stages" for the same methods, for example viral propaganda develops into a memetic phenomenon that drives the opponent to insanity and homicide. Don't look so tough now eldritch abominations!
Also make fucking with the enemies head an artform, if you can cloak their own ships or planets from them do EEET!
Make planets that are lethal seem inhabitable and vice versa.
Make the opponent lose technology!
Watch Irresponsible Captain Tylor.

>>6606631
Yes asteroid fields. Asteroids not in a field are in reality millions of millions of miles apart.

For concealing things, asteroids are realistically no worse or better than any other stellar body. But if you're planning on launching a surprise attack from an asteroid, you'd have to be pretty lucky to have your enemy come close enough.

>>6606882
>>6606913
Option to ALLAHU AKBARUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

>>6606996
>For concealing things, asteroids are realistically no worse or better than any other stellar body

Except you can have thousands upon thousands of them in a cubic AU, depending on their orbits (and a presence of Lagrangian points of sufficiently large masses). And also asteroid (and asteroid FIELDS, of course) ARE better for concealing starships if said starships cannot descend into a planet-level gravitational field, or a planetary atmosphere. And a majority of them can't, you need special modifications to make atmosphere-descending starships.

That's not to say it's impossible to hide on small, remote planets and/or their moons, of course. I just don't see why you feel compelled to argue asteroids do not make for good concealment just because they are not, um, close to one another (even though they usually are, in astronomical terms).

Also, nothing needs to fly through an asteroid field to make an ambush worthwhile. All you need is to be able to have a place in a star system where you can conceal a large force of low-g, low-atmosphere capable spacecraft. An asteroid field fits the bill perfectly.

>>6607221

>cubic AU

At those distances you wouldn't even need the asteroid. They wouldn't be able to find you anyway. Asteroids would also be just about the most conspicuous thing out there, so hiding behind one would probably be worse than just being in empty space.

A third party of mercenaries and rogues and intelligence traders.

Willing to give you false information if your enemy has paid at least 1.5 times the amount of money you're paying them.

They'll work for anyone, and for everyone, and they're more than willing to work with you and then backstab. It's just the prices, it's just business. nothing personal.

e.g. you need a bit more extra oomph, so you rent out some mercenaries. Your enemies can for a high price, ask if you're renting any mercenaries out. and for an even higher price, ask for them to backstab you at a certain time.

unless, of course, you pay them extra.
It's always good to pay a little more, because you never know when your enemy is buying those mercenary forces from you.

>>6607247
>At those distances you wouldn't even need the asteroid. They wouldn't be able to find you anyway.
Boy, have I got news for you. The "stealth in space" argument is a common misconception:

>The Space Shuttle's main engines could be detected past the orbit of Pluto. The Space Shuttle's manoeuvering thrusters could be seen as far as the asteroid belt. And even a puny ship using ion drive to thrust at a measly 1/1000 of a g could be spotted at one astronomical unit.

>This is with current off-the-shelf technology. Presumably future technology would be better.

This is taken from http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3w.html#nostealth , all solid science stuff by the way. Of course it is possible to nitpick about today's photon-based detection in a future ftl-enabling environment, but it stands to reason that any fictional detection method employed in the future ("FTL scanner") would only be even better than the ones we have today, otherwise why develop them at all?

Of course, I'll have cloaking devices and stuff like that, but only on specialized craft. Thus for most ships you'd need existing objects to hide the shadow of their signature. It's a tactic as old as mankind, possibly even older if some ape ever bitchslapped another one while having the sun at its back.

rolled 1, 3, 1 = 5

Perhaps you could have a certain ridiculously expensive starship or component capable of drawing out stellar material. Nothing says "fuck you" like throwing bits of their own star at them.

>>6607582
Creating protuberances is one thing.
Compressing entire stars into massive sector-shattering warheads is also planned, but would probably require a combined tech level of 20 average empires.

>>6607376

You're arguing that it would be a good way to set up an ambush, whereas any competent starship captain would have their eye on any asteroid they go near, which more or less defeats the purpose of hiding near one.

Consider the following: You are wary of ambushes (as any good starship captain would be in unfamiliar terrritory), but are on a huge, flat plane. There is a big rock in the distance. A single big rock. If anyone comes out from behind that rock to attack you, the element of surprise would be lost before they get anywhere near you.

Oh, and here's a tip: The effects of gravity generally cause asteroids migrate to roughly coplanar positions. Meaning that the cubic AU in which these asteroids are located is probably going to be concentrated in a single plane, and can easily be escaped just by going up or down, severely limiting the number of hiding places which can be used for an ambush. At best, there would be perhaps a dozen asteroids within reasonable distance, and the moment the "ambush" ships start their "ambush," they'll be lighting up like neon signs, surrounding the "victim" in a single plane, which in space is about as useful as surrounding a building using only two people.

A hiding place that's rather conspicuous isn't a very good one.

>>6608005
>A hiding place that's rather conspicuous isn't a very good one.
Agreed completely. And while an asteroid is a rather conspicuous hiding place, seeing as how there are thousands upon thousands of them, you are looking at a lot of conspicuous hiding places. While standard protocol would probably suggest avoiding them just in case, you probably wouldn't be able to find smaller fleets concealed inside without a very deliberate and thorough search.

Keep in mind I'm not really arguing a staggering potential for proximity based ambush. With interstellar drive capability it suddenly doesn't matter if something is 1AU away or 50, but let's not open up that can of worms. I am rather looking at asteroids' starship concealment utility. With the game's scale, no tactical fleet maneuver will be possible anyway, so I'm just thinking in terms of how an "asteroid field tile", if you will, would affect flotillas sitting in it. I agree that any thoroughly colonized and developed system would probably have an automated surveillance network around such conspicuous places - for precisely this reason - and I am even thinking of implementing that somehow.

In my opinion, by the way, rings, such as the ones surrounding our own gas giants, would be a much superior hiding place. This will definitely be represented in-game somehow, probably by giving space pirates ring bases.

Shameless self bump, in vain hope more suggestions come this way.

If anyone is wondering, I am saving all these threads and copypasting all the ideas from them, no matter how far-fetched.

How about some crazy evil genius type stuff, like blocking out the systems sun with a huge gas giant or something (i do not know how these things work in space).

A deathstar would also be hella cool, or perhaps the ability to turn a planet/moon into a deathstar.

>>6608544
I had an idea. Since there are multiple human factions, unless it'd be too much work, I thought a Faction Maker would be nice. Possibly saving them to encounter them in other games.

IE. This is the [Name]. They fight for [Idea/Person/God]. They are strong in [Thing] and weak in [Thing]. They are [Militaristic/Pacifists/etc]. Etc etc etc.

bump

also, http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/6605277/

>>6608614
>like blocking out the systems sun
GOD YES. WE NEED A DYSON SPHERE!

When she leaves you for another dude, seduce her and right before you come on her face, tell her that she'll never be able to sleep with him again without remembering this. Then come on her face.

Oh, wait, did you mean backstabbing on galactic politics? My bad.

- Engineer the perfect killer species and free it on a particular planet. Or if you have a Death World in your empire, you can capture dangerous species that would single-handedly terminate entire ecosystems on other planets.

- The axis thing was a great suggestion. Maybe something that could even modify orbit? Getting the planet slightly farther or nearer its star, so as to freeze or burn everyone in it? Or maybe using some sort of screen between the planet and the star.

-Not really backstabbing/dickish, but maybe embargoes? If you are an economical superpower, withholding stuff to a particular faction could mean the death of them.

Also, for curiosity's sake, any idea on what quirks the different human factions will have?

NEEDS. ORKS.

SPACE ORKS.
NO PLAN.
JUST WAAAAAGH

>>6608544
If the player's civilization advances sufficiently in the field of nanotechnology and mind uploading/strong AI, then there should be a chance that a world in that civilization could be turned into gray goo, or a cloud of nanocomputers turns the whole solar system into a giant computing cloud encircling the sun, or something. If some of your race escape to found a new colony in another solar system, then there's also a chance that you accidentally brought along some of the nanites, and then you're fucked.

As for backstabbing, you could drop nanites on your enemies' planets to turn them into gray goo, or digest them into raw materials. Or infiltrate their brains and mind control them.

I'm not sure if anything I just mentioned has been stated before because this is the first time I've seen this, so my apologies.

>>6608617
Something like that is planned. Humans are divided into several factions with different aptitudes. You can, distribute preferences among skills/tech branches, there is 8 of these skills so far but more to follow.

And you can also customize your emperor's character, picking from origin and several traits. A brawler who can pilot his own mech, or a master tactician unfamiliar with matters of finance or a logistics genius who doesn't know first thing about combat? A hedonist who fights wars just to add an unwilling princess to his harem, or a diplomatic schemer with connections to some of the disgraced clans? Religious fundamentalist or cyberphiliac? A fascist xenophobe or an open-minded master trader? As you can probably see for yourself, these Emperor traits have empire-wide effects and define how the game is played.

Well, if a planet has a moon. Blow up the fucking moon to fuck up the weather on the planet if it has an atmosphere.

"So, following their attack on our border colonies, we retaliated with overwhelming force."
"You invaded them?"
"Nothing so plebeian as that, no. We released a series of social networking programs and institutions on their public computing systems. Hundreds of them. Wide-area, niche, and everything in-between. Within ten years, their industry and expansion had stopped. Within twenty, they were so morbidly consumerized that we merely created a trend of bottled water and added significant amounts of Arsenic to it."

Look up FreeOrion, go to their brainstorm board and steal ideas that you like.

Genetically engineer Ambassador.

Walking time bomb kind of genetically engineered.

>>6608787
"Grey goo", or what I am referring to in-universe as "the Cancer axiom", is a reason why Von Neumann and nanomachine technology is absolutely, positively, banned from the game universe. To elaborate, the last time humans dicked around with nanomachines, they made the mistake of making them Von Neumann nanomachines. Then a defected replication sequence for swarm controller nanites gave birth to an AI awareness called Knossos Machinae. It was NOT pretty. Basically all the bad things you mentioned happened already, after the Machinae eradicated 80% of mankind and eradicated forever a few other species in the Orion galactic arm. Now there is an entire neutral species-independent body that goes around policing against self-replicating machines, nanites, and a list of other blacklisted technologies.

But mostly I am doing this because any Von Neumann technology would be incomprehensibly imbalanced by the very nature of it allowing fast exponential growth.

There should be different options for the degree of warfare you're waging.

Scorched Earth Total Warfare is not the same as a clean occupation force.

I want the option to be considered a force of unreasoning Death, avoided at all costs like the goddamn Reavers. If my civ can't legalize and encourage cannibalism, I'm uninterested.

Wwweeeelllll, changing the orbit of an asteroid so years after that it'll hit a planet.

>>6608993
Cannibalism trait is in already. It started off as converting population to organics, but then I ditched the "organics as stockpiled resource" approach for a number of reasons, so now cannibalism reduces number of people in starving systems... but makes the system not starving (which is a huge deal, trust me). Also starship crews eat on-board marines if ship is out of supply radius.

And there is indeed "total war" option. You know how 4x games diplomacy usually has alliance, peace treaty, cease-fire, war?

There's another notch in the ladder here, called Nemesis. "Nemesis" is to "war" what "Alliance" is to "cease-fire". It's a status of absolute hatred. You cannot declare peace with your Nemesis. You cannot surrender to your Nemesis. You can freely eat babies of your Nemesis and instead of penalties your population receives bonuses to morale and happiness. You must suffer crippling penalties for 20 years to merely downgrade Nemesis status to "regular war" status. THAT's how much of a clusterfuck Nemesis relations are.

Question. If you were to estimate, how far into the game are you to a Working Beta?\

'cause I'd test the FUCK out of this game.

>>6609181
I now wish you to add horrific atrocities like selling enemy's young as food products, since you mentioned eating babies.

If you can design a game that can bring about my mental image of the most depraved empire in the universe, I'll be happy. If you can design a game that will do that and yet still keep them internally viable (none of this "without an enemy, they devour themselves and its all over" business. Just because we're evil doesn't mean we can't live together), I may have to touch you in naughty ways.

>>6609243
Atrocities sounds like it would be a fun idea. You can do all kinds of horrible things to absolutely crush enemy morale, but you wreck diplomatic relations all over the place.

>>6609187
I hope for a very meagre release before New Year's. Just one species to choose, simple combat, simple AI, no music, you understand. But it would be a start. So people could report compatibility bugs and engine problems.

>>6609243
I like being politically incorrect in my games and there will certainly be fun to be had with the game on that front. That much I promise you.

Hell, what kicked off the entire thing is me promising /tg/ to have races with skulls have "number_of_skulls" trait so that the game knows how many skulls you harvested in battle, so that you can build a throne made out of skulls of your enemies.

There's the Grudge scale, traits tailored to nuance diplomatic relations (for example, run a xenophobic empire to get fewer penalties for attrocities against non-humans, or a xenophilic one to get better modifiers when ruling conquered systems), and the ability to do forbidden stuff anyway while trying to hide it. This last bit is where I expect information warfare to shine - agents not only stealing techs, but revealing, or even planting, your attrocities. In short, I think even the sceptics will be pleased.

>>6609397
>throne of skulls

MUST HAVE IN-GAME PICTURES.

>>6605277
Embed subliminal messages that are complete gibberish in your broadcasts, and make vague hints that get your enemies suspicious about them. Then watch and laugh as they spend precious time and money trying to make sense of them.

I have a few questions about the whole "Sub-Races" thing.

Will multiple sub-races of the same core race show up in a single game? (Ex. Two variants of Humans show up in one game.)

>>6609281
>all kinds of horrible things to absolutely crush enemy morale
>crush enemy morale

You mean like when the Germans bombed London in WWII?

>sub-races

I'm totally feeling a Vulcan/Romulan mod coming on.

This game needs more battlemechs.

>>6609489
I rarely say this up front. But your idea, good sir, is getting into the game 100%.

>>6609456
As many as you'd like. How else would I support civil wars, factional splintering, and the like?

The galactic map will probably be a lot more dynamic than you are used to, because it isn't the be-all end-all galaxy, it is just a tiny sector of it. Therefore there are sector entry points that communicate with surrounding sectors so expect nomads, warlords, trade routes and all sorts of stuff coming and going through the sector gates spicing up the game.

Hell, if a sector is doomed, and given the amount of doomsday weaponry I am aching to put in, expect to be given an option of "Noah's arc"-like projects to avoid being obliterated and get an ending score higher than zero. Then maybe you can start another game with the same character and arc ships in another sector.

>>6609562
Mixed up quote numbers in that post. Silly me.

>>6609555
What do you think "Panzer" in "Panzergrenadiers" stands for?

Sure as hell ain't just tanks.

Information warfare. Agressive memetic viruses released over the enemy's communication channels. Releasing faulty information through double-agents.

Trading flawed research that they only realize is flawed when they try to turn on their new technology. Say you're the first faction to develop antimatter generators. Another faction that you have been planning on betraying offers to trade you something for it, and you get the option to give them plans that have a minute flaw that turns the generator into an antimatter bomb when they try and power it up. Wherever they were trying to build it loses a huge chunk of infastructure and population, and you can claim that it isn't your fault they couldn't build it right.

>>6609562
huh. Wasn't expecting that. But follow up question:

Will there be traits for each pre-made Sub-Race that deal with other sub-races?

Ex. 1:
Humans A believe in a unified Human Race. They will try to help out other Human Sub-Factions when they can. Therefore, if Humans B get into a war, usually Humans A will help Humans B.

Ex. 2:
Humans C believe they are the Master-Humans. They refuse to help and support any other Human Sub-Race's endeavors. This means they would NOT come to the aid of any Human Empire's call to arms. Most of the time.

>>6609562
Thanks.

>>6609616
For the 'sabatoged tech plans', the target's chance of uncovering the flaw depends on how much they trust you, and how close they are to getting the technology themselves, maybe even if they asked for it or you offered it. A suspicious high-tech faction would be more likely to spot it than a long-time ally with poor tech-tree advancement.

What about having variable capabilities for each unit out on the field? I don't know jack about programming, but it seems like having every unit using the same stats for detection/attacking/speed would be sort of boring.

I like to think of it as "The guy in charge of finding enemy starships in this particular craft is REALLY GOOD AT HIS JOB, but the man in charge of making the ship move is in need of replacement. The dude with the weapons system isn't too shabby."

Then again, that raises the question of whether or not you would allow re-statting your starships at a lower cost than rebuilding an entirely new one, and I still don't know jack about programming, so I don't know how hard that would be to pull off.

Tectonic disruption. Spies use controlled nuclear explosions to cause massive tectonic shifts.

How about creating a tiny miniature black hole and releasing it into the planet? It'll just grow inside the planet like some kind of demon sperm, until it eats the entire planet whole.

>>6609682
Useless factoid: your average mid-strength earthquake (5.0) has the same energy output as about thirty-two THOUSAND TONS of TNT.

Delayed Action Extinction Level Event.

Take a big-ass asteroid or moon and alter it's orbit to collide with the planet in X number of turns, then give it a stealth system.

The enemy fortifies their position and starts to take advantage of the planet's resources and whatever infastructure you left behind. As they think they've got a hold on the system they move in their population and invest more and more in the planet. And then, one day an astronomer notices an oddity in the orbital paths of some of the objects in the system, star command loses contact with a ship entering the atmosphere, something is... BOOOM

>>6608976
Even so, if you grew powerful enough it should be possible at least as an endgame weapon.

Also, how will you handle races/factions/whatever? Will they be randomly generated, with the exception of humans?

>>6609668
>Get best pilot, merc, commander, mechanic, and doctor available.
>Make Firefly crew
>Wreck other team's shit

>>6609781
Fuck yes elite crew ship. I loved have Elite level ships with awesome captains in MoO2.

My concept of dickery would require quite sofisticated political and economical system. Destroy important source of resources and make your enemies fight for remains. Interrupt their negotiations with promises you won't fulfill. Cause military incidents on borders between them. Trick them into a catastrophic economic rivalisation, etc.

Ok while we're here I think I finally have the ground combat system down and I'd like to hear feedback.

The premise is to have simultaneous ongoing and interacting planetary combat and fleet combat, wherein ships bombard ground, troops land and secure a landing zone, (after a certain tech or two, you can land starships into atmosphere, or have them sprout legs to behave as gargantuan class titans). Another premise is to have strategic level combat, no direct orders to units, no commanding armies at all unless you are actually physically there (or in communications radius).

Now, think of a planet as being divided into hexes. Not sure if it will be hexes, I'd like to go with an actual sphere, but let's think in familiar terms for now. You don't interact with these hexes at all outside combat. There are like 100 hexes per planet, depending on planet size. When the battle starts, the game generates, on SOME of these hexes, several POPULATION CENTERS (based on poplevel), several MILITARY INSTALLATIONS (based on military rating), and a single ADMINISTRATION CENTER.

You then pick bombardment mode and a drop location. Either have some shock troops or pummel a hex with artillery before attempting anything. Then you set general orders from several dropdowns. Army menu says advance/entrench/withdraw. Ship Support menu says orbital bombardment/orbital patrol. Third menu distributes fighters for combat air patrol/precision airstrikes/dropship protection. You get the idea.

Then you look at the battle developing and adjust options. You MIGHT be able to click on specific hexes to set as operational objectives.

You may NOT command individual armies or give them "destination hexes".

Here's a Xanatos-level plan that can only be used against Nemesis races.

First, you have to secretly relocate 60% of your homeworld's population. Smuggle them out of the system, and make sure the 40% that remain don't betray any information. Then use a Doomsday Device to blow up your homeworld. Once that's done, send 10% of the people that were taken off world and send them to the Nemesis race's territory, seeking refuge from the destruction of their planet. Your "refugees" will have to be brainwashed to ensure their silence and help them stick to the plan. After they get killed, reveal 5% of the people you relocated earlier and have them declare that they are the last survivors of your race and that the Nemesis race has slaughtered more than half of them.

From there, you can enjoy yourself as the good aligned races turn against your Nemesis.

>>6609668
Sounds like Dwarf Fortress, sort of.

>The Good Ship USS Donghaven
>Lightly Armed
>Moderately resilient

>Incompetent Commander
>Incompetent Pilot
>Decent Gunner
>Mediocre Mechanic

>>6609668
I guess depending on how in-depth he wants to go, he could either have an overall "Crew Stats" or he could create profiles for each of the primary officers on a ship, and how much of a bonus to their respective command they give, then have it so they can level up, get special training, be injured or killed in battle, have a chance at escaping their ship's destruction to be assigned to another command, and eventually grow old and retire. But that's getting a bit Dwarf Fortress-Complex, which is a bad thing if you ever plan on getting out of the alpha stage.

>>6609893
>>6609887
Dwarf Fortress In Space Mind

>>6609830
But that's not all.

Depending on your command rating, or present Generals, you have Strategy Stars which allow you to pick special options called "stratagems" such as Blitzkrieg, Trap, Reversal, Cutoff, Counterattack, etc. Some cost more "strategy stars" than others. You may choose when to employ these stratagems and it takes time for Strategy Stars to get "recharged". You might also pick specific targets for bombardment or certain stratagems.

Obviously military installation hexes would impart huge bonuses to defenders, lesser bonuses to adjacent hexes, provide airbase range, be resistant to bombardment, etc.

Based on your objective and distribution of hexes, you could occupy only population centers, with military bases holding out, besieged and encircled, or you could invade military installations first to be able to utilize them for airbase radius bonuses and turn their anti-orbital firepower and potential shield capabilities against enemy fleet in orbit. It is to be understood that a ship battle is taking place upstairs during all this.

Once you occupy Admin center hex, it's over. You win. Unless it's a nemesis war or enemy population has Defiance trait or something (then you have to fight until eradication).

Add to this the fact that planet hexes are generated according to planet type. Different techs/doctrines would provide bonuses for different terrain types. Oceanic planets will have some hexes as oceans, limiting the landmass for maneuvers. Aquatic species will have subaquatic population centers where only specially equipped armies can go. Etc, etc.

Oh and finally if you are an emperor in your custom mech, you and your elite "bodyguard army" are a unit on the hex map. And you can control that one, and ONLY that one, directly, per-hex. Everything that happens to that unit also imparts a roll against you. Set stance to reckless mellee combat for fast reputation... etc.

So how does it sound, /tg/?

>>6609956
Sounds awesome bro, sounds awesome.

>>6609887
>>6609781
>>6609803
You realize you'll have hundreds to thousands of ships and millions of troops, yes? You'll never command or ferry around anything smaller than an ARMY. It's a strategic level game and due to that fact I must sadly dismiss such tactical instruments as specific ship traits. I am not saying games of tactical scale are without merit; I am saying that this game will have a strategic scale and couldn't possibly support that level of detail. Unfortunately.

Of course different unit kinds will be available. You get different units and make armies/fleets out of them. Then you control the fleets, not individual units.

And I am still working on some sort of gross ship customization model (for example selecting your 500 destroyers and telling 100 of them to install Armoured Hull modification and other 100 to install Missile Destroyer modification).

>>6609956
I want a custom mecha, fuck yeah!

>>6610026

Presumably you'd be able to have a certain amount of customisation with the generals and admirals of fleets and armies though?

>>6609956
>Emperor in custom mech
Reminds me of Yoshiro.

Have an option in where if your ships are losing a fight, they all go on a blaze of glory attack, ramming other ships and/or overloading their reactors.

>>6610047
Hopefully. I will have to playtest it out to see if it is better to have several but detailed Admirals/Generals, or a few dozen more or less faceless ones. The "detailed" approach is very possible, after all I already have character traits, must have them for the Emperor. But would it be advisable from a design standpoint? Remember, I am going for as little micromanagement as possible.

This and other questions I cannot answer before playtesting. And of course hearing player feedback.

>>6610087
Only if you have a high enough authority, or are leading a desperate and/or fanatical battle.

I'd suggest an option for exiling the population of a planet. Imagine you've just captured a very valuable planet, but the inhabitants aren't taking too kindly to your new overlord-ship. Instead of killing the lot of them, you send them off to some fringe-world of yours which is inhospitable while taking a majority of the goods produced there as tax; all the while your empire's involvement is kept at as hidden as possible. The people on this planet are technically self governing.

Doesn't sound dickish enough? How about this: you leave clues on the planet and spread rumors and tales of some other empire being the real criminals behind their forced exodus. Wait a few generations and one of the following things may occur:
- The exiles start fighting the empire for which you planted clues for either by insurgency, assassination, or outright war.
- The exiles figure out that your empire is the real perpetrator and therefore go all Kushan on your ass trying to reclaim their homeworld.
- The exiles forget their past and live on as vassals to your empire.

I'm way tired though, so there might be some obvious logical fallacies here that I've missed.

>>6610317
I've suggested things like this, as well as things like Slavery in a past thread or so. So have other people.

I BELIEVE, if my memory's correct, things like that will probably be in the game.

>>6610403
I, for one, would certainly like for practically EVERYTHING to be in the game. The only constraints we have here is development time. I'd like to finish this game in the foreseeable future so it will probably be a matter of excruciatingly deciding which awesome features to cut in favour of which other awesome features.

Unfortunately.

>>6610487
Did you ever go ahead with that penal legion idea?

>>6610605
Dunno if he said anything about the Penal Legions, but I know he said something about colonizing worlds with your Law-breakers.

I'd like to add on to that idea:

Sending Prisoners of War to planets along with your Law-Breakers to colonize worlds.

ITT fa/tg/uys have no realistic conception of what level of complexity is appropriate for a vidyagaem.

I mean, some of these suggestions are WELL beyond dorfy levels of complicated.

>>6610605
The game doesn't have Prison Colony object or code in it yet, but don't worry, penal legions will definitely be in. They're just a specific kind of army, with some special rules (you can throw their lives away without penalties), that can be built from Prison Colonies.

I am not starting any work on ground units until I wrap up the ground combat design document. I lost over a month on finding a proper system/planet/population/infrastructure model and I am not making that mistake again.

You mentioned planets getting fucked up if they end up in an S-Orbit around a binary star, as opposed to a P-Orbit.

Can we place space structures at the barycenter between two equally sized binary stars? At the very least it would be a damn good site for solar energy extraction before you get enough tech to build a full-on Dyson swarm, and you could probably generate even more from the tidal forces exerted by the two stars.

(Not sure how to do something dickish with this, though.)

>>6610928
This shouldn't be too hard to pull off, with some approximation.

Since you won't get an accurate 3d model of a star system (with orbits and whatnot) you will probably not be able to see a screen that would show an actual structure in between the two stars with gravity simulations etc. Nor do I intend to track accurately the location of orbital structures, or provide a too high number of orbitals to choose from and build (for reasons of wanting to avoid micromanagement).

However, it would be a piece of cake to add an orbital structure that requires the "binary" attribute in the system, is called "Barycentric outpost", and does some stuff. In this case, "stuff" would mean generating energy (even if I don't have energy as an explicit resource, we could come up with something), house some colonists, and increase tech infrastructure.

I am still toying with the idea of making Lagrange points, especially those of binary (or ternary) systems important fluff-wise and perhaps even mechanics-wise. I figured that might be a convenient place for ships to enter/exit interstellar FTL, or for eventual stargates. Something like that.

>>6611151
Any idea when you will have a playtest in order? Also, don't you require artists, or somesuch?

>>6611221
Like I said, somewhere around New Year's a very bare version might find its way to the public, but I am not making any promises. Coding real-time strategy games is NOT that easy when you are one person, I'll tell you that much.

Regarding the artists, do I detect a thinly veiled offer for help? I really wouldn't mind someone taking up some of the art, but I am not really in a position to coordinate such work until I have some playable executables to back me up. I am somewhat talented with 3d modelling software and Photoshop/Gimp myself but I have no time to make any fancy graphics in addition to all the coding.

There's another reason I'm not overtly asking for help. I'd REALLY like to be able to some day hire a small team of coders/artists and implement a more complete vision of my insane ideas. Therefore in the long term the game will most probably have a commercial sequel out some day. So it might get slightly problematic on the legal side if, for example, I am locked out of using faction logos or character concepts from a previous, freeware installment of the game because I don't own the IP and the artist/originator/IP owner is nowhere to be found.

It has happened to people I know.

I'd like to see some choices made when you start the game, that defiens the character of your race. For example, as humans, you can decide how the race became unified.
1. Conquest. Some nation conquered all the others, and now expands into space.
2. Constitutional Republic. Unified government and such.
3. Nuclear holocaust. One "nation" survived, and rebuilt.

>>6611380
>3. Nuclear holocaust. One "nation" survived, and rebuilt.
So... The Enclave won in the long-run of the Fallout Universe?

>>6611380
Verry possible to implement. In choosing your background you could also get to choose your nation of origin from the Orion Arm (fluff states you are an envoy/exile/expedition leader to the Perseus arm). I'll make sure you have a wide variety of source societies to choose from and make it so they impart appropriate modifiers to the Emperor and/or his flock.

>>6611362
I see. I'll look forward to it.

Huh. This thread was large. Gotta go.

Tune in for the next update, possibly a website revelation, weekends on /tg/, afternoon 4chan-time.

In the meantime, http://twitter.com/praetor_game is a temporary measure for those afraid to miss an update.

>>6611597
Awesome, thanks.

>>6611597
you should post a link to the 4chan archive of the thread on the twitter page so people never need to miss the thread

Fuck up Ecosystem.
Not fun when the dominant race can't breathe.
Shuttle over some colonist.
Voila.

>>6606117
Will we be able to 'solve' the mystery of that ingame as it where?

>>6609397
>Grudge scale
I hope there is a corresponding RAGE scale.