Galactic War Suggestion

Galactic war's been out for a while and doesn't feel like it's been given too much love. It just sort of feels like a bunch of factions sitting around doing nothing waiting for your one commander and his friends to walk into one of their systems instead of an actual galactic war like the name suggests, and most of the gameplay is entirely luck based where sometimes you get screwed over with no orbital and an enemy comm on a different planet, while everyone else starts with full tech and can easily go somewhere you can't. For these reasons I barely ever play it, and prefer to just do skirmishes against AI instead, even though I was really hoping for it to be great when I heard it was initially being worked on

Personally I was hoping the game would be something like Galactic conquest in Star Wars Battlefront, and got some ideas from that game that could make galactic war be more dynamic, fair and interesting, and wanted to see what people thought



- All factions spawn on one system at the edge of the galaxy with one commander each, rest of the galaxy is unowned

- Commanders take turns moving from system to system to capture more planets, with the AI fighting you and each other for control of systems instead of just sitting around

- All captured systems give you a certain amount of "points" per turn, based on the radius or metal spots of all the planets in the system combined instead of random drops

- Starting system for each faction is a custom looking planet and gives more points than it should based on radius or metal, marked on map with star instead of circle

- You can use these points to buy upgrades like you usually unlock currently for capturing systems

- Upgrades include things like the unit damage bonuses, eco efficiency bonuses, more upgrade slots, and more commanders to move around the map and take more planets

- NO building unlocks included because you can build all buildings from the start of the game (srsly)

- AI actually follows these point upgrade rules and buys more comms as necessary based on their losses on the galaxy map and how many comms it thinks it needs and can afford

- Although sub-commanders are now individual units on the galaxy map, if you place more than one commander on a planet you're fighting on, then the extra commanders spawn in as sub commanders like currently

- All killed commanders are removed from the galaxy map and you have to replace them by buying more

- If a planet with no galaxy map commander is attacked, the defending faction on that planet gets a commander that's at half health and can't repair up any higher than half, to keep matches on undefended planets interesting but leaving the defender at a disadvantage from not having an actual comm there (could be another idea but this is the best I could come up with)

- A faction is destroyed if they lose their starting planet. Starting planet is guarded by a commander boss for all factions (including yours) that has double health, health regeneration (not massive but decent, can heal from 0.1% health to 100% in like 10 minutes or something) and stronger weapons (specifically to deal with tier 1 spam and basically force the game to tier 2 for more epicness) custom skins for these commanders or at least a model size increase highly recommended, to literally tell the players that these guys are a pretty big deal

I think you are right about that the galactic war should be a turn based were the ai plays too. i like this idea.

Now this is the sh*t i would love as galactic war in PA.

Just one suggestion, don't make it 'turn based' in the sense of, player one takes a turn, then player 2 etc.

Give people simultaneous turns, where they all input orders and move at the same time.

Advantages:

• get's rid of first turn advantage - If GW ever gets the clan-wars style gameplay which was once thrown around as an idea long ago, moving at the same time would be great. if multiple battles get triggered in a single move, then resolve those battles in player order.
  
• Introduces an amount of uncertainty and bluffing - if two commanders are near each other, both are trying to predict what the other will do, will they go for this planet in between us? will they not contest it and take this other one off to the side? i don't know what they'll do, nor can they be sure where i'll move, makes it exciting. In attittion, if you make 'alliances' in GW and work together with another faction, you can agree to each take moves that will support each other, but secretly, you're breaking your alliance and moving against them that turn. makes sneaky backstabs more exciting and hightens tension when 'allies' are near each other, where either player might at any time be tempted to pre-emptively strike.
  
• helps to prevent *un-earned* snowballing

Disadvantages:

• None

This.. Is what GW should be. Don't take this as an atack to your work Uber, but this guy has planned what you fellow fans would like GW to be. Please, take this post into cpnsideration. Cause no one is happy with how GW is designed

Great ideas, I was thinking the same thing after I posted, especially about making it work with multiple actual players instead of solo, the only thing I was worried about with simultaneous turns is if two comms both attack the system the other one is on, then they meet in the space between them where there are no planets, and that would require big changes being made to the game to support (plus currently orbital only combat is dominated by anchors which have no counter)

You could randomly choose which system gets fought on to get around this, but that'd be a little lame so I decided for at least the first post to just go with standard turn based :/

If it's 1 com vs 1 com, they bouce back to the planets they came from, if one side has more coms than the other, they force the side with less coms back and the match goes ahead on the planet the larger force was attacking.

If you wanted to stop coms getting stuck in an infinite cycle like this (which might not be a problem if you can keep bouncing and get a second com over to support), you can make it so that coms lose health every time they bouce, so that eventually you'll lose the com. (this doesn't have to be the coms 'actual' health, maybe you have 5 bars, and both coms lose a bar every time they bounce, so someone with more bars will eventually kill the other com in a stalemate situation.)

This also allows coms on higher health to beat down weaker coms, or force them to retreat. alternatively, you could have coms 'level' as they win more, and the higher level, the better priority they get in 1v1 push. You could also have certain techs you find modify this, so that some tech might automatically help you to win bounces etc.

You could generate a "deepspace asteroid belt" system instead of having them bounce back.

These are the ones I'd be most OK with, I really don't like the idea of bouncing, just because it feels artificial and slows down gameplay, so a commander level or an upgrade that chooses who wins would be great, with ones where both sides are evenly matched (same comm level and both don't have or do have the encounter win tech) result in a random system of the two being selected, just to keep the game flowing

This might be risky, since I see people just rushing halleys so they can launch one of the asteroids at the enemy's starting asteroid, which would be pretty lame

I would like a space battle mode on a flat plane where the commanders spawn in their space pod things which has extra health to make them not be an easy snipe, and then just have an orbital battle, but that would require a unit to counter the anchor (uber make SXX be able to shoot orbital pls) and some sort of space resource that stays on the flat plane (asteroids again except you can't land on them or make ground buildings on them, just mex that can be built by orbital fabs?)

also i would like a bit of story line, or some kind on narration from the guy that did the TA and PA intro voice.
now GW it feels and it IS just a skirmish game, not a single player Campaign because i do not campaign against anyone specifically and there is no Higher End purpose or plot!
i had higher hopes about that when it was funded in KickStarter.

I never bothered playing to the end of galactic war for the reasons in my first post, so I have no idea how many narratives it has as you get into the late game, but I feel at least one narrative and video when a faction gets destroyed is sort of the minimum if you want it to be considered a "campaign", even if it is open ended instead of a linear story

Wouldn't need to have any launchable asteroids, but that would always be a fun addition.

Yeah I just liked how star wars battlefront gave you a space battle if two enemy commanders met, so I just keep thinking about space battles

Yeah, but with orbital in this condition, I'm not sure about space battles. Also, straight-up space battles wouldn't work very well with PA I think, or at least not in the current state of affairs.

I really like this idea other than starting with everything unlocked.

However I think things could be bought with points rather than randomly discovered, or unlocked in a logical order that creates a progression rather than pot luck. One good reason to start with limited buildings and units is to provide a sort of tutorial element to the start of the game. This way newer players can get to grips with the basics before being overwhelmed by all the things you can build, and I think it is still fun for more experienced players to have to win with for example only Dox. This means that systems have to be generated accordingly, so the nearby systems are doable with limited tech, slowly progressing towards ones in which you need advanced tech to be able to win. I think it is great to have a way to discover the game that isn't strictly a tutorial, but still provides introductions to various facets of the game in a progressive manner.

That's the problem though, if you do it like that they you have to make the gameplay static again like it is now, because you then have to make the AI cheat so something like them unlocking naval with their starting points and you unlocking ground with yours now means that neither of you can fight

The only way I could think of limiting units to be anywhere near a decent idea would be to make advanced factories unlockable, but definitely not standard ones, you should have all of those all the time, especially if it's going to be used for multiplayer galactic war as well

Some good ideas. It kind of sounds like the Total War meets Dawn of War, both excellent games. I'd still limit the initial available techs to T1 to start with, T2 being tech you find and capture, but otherwise I like it.

The other thing youy could do is instead of finding specific techs, maybe you find a 'blueprint' which gives you a point which can be used to unlock one unit in the roster.

If you wanna force people to use unconventional setups, you can put broader restrictions on them, like "this naval blueprint can only be used to unlock one of the naval units" "this blueprint can be used to unlock any of the artillery units" etc.

TLDR -probably all very good suggestions op!
I WANT A STORY FOR GW UBER PLS!

Well, it does technically have a story already.....