Hard Mode for Galactic War.

Here's a challenge for those who are too scared to play against real people.

No save-games, and if you die in single-player Galactic War; you die permanently. Make a new galaxy, and start over from the beginning.

So steam supported dead-is-dead mode.

(I say steam so you can use the bug-recovery benefits of save files and steam will catch you trying to cheat, I would prefer it to be platform independent but that makes it trickier).

Yeah, the intention with Hard Mode is that it actually is that. Enforcing legitimacy is definitely desirable. Saving between games is fine (as in, the game will remember you've conquered { these } systems) so you can turn the computer off from time to time.

Maybe give players a shiny star to pin on their achievement list for it.

Sounds like a great idea. A couple of players enjoy a challenge. You might have heard of the genre 'Roguelike' (like FTL, Dungeos of Dreadmore...) where you basically start the game knowing that you will most likely die long before the game ends. The challenge is to get as far as possible with random items and events and maybe get to the end fight after trying many times.

Grimbar can explain it better.

Just like Ironman mode from the UFO/XCOM series. I like that.

Oh, and quitting counts as dying.

Sounds very interesting. Id like to see that as well. (i still like multiplayer, dont get me wrong).

Could be interesting for a kind of FFA galactic war mode.

But of course allowing players to hide from death when they are not on, but possibly by leaving their systems exposed to attack and the defense of an AI.

I like this.....following this thread

So permadeath. Very good idea, permadeath makes games much more interesting and gives them more replayability (for those who don't want to play online).

I'd make the quitting = dying thing toggleable, since some of us don't have enough free time to spend playing a 24 hour long game, but still want that hardcore aspect. Quitting could save the game at that point. Granted it's open to abuse, but who will it affect anyway . . .

As does power cuts, crash to desktop, bsod and so on?

No need to make quitting=dying. This isn't to impress other people, it's to prove it to yourself.

If you save-scum an ironman game, you're sorta missing the whole point, and you're punishing yourself enough. An auto-save feature would be great, too.

I think ironman should be an option separate from difficulty, but I think it's an awesome idea. I would like a "save and quit" option that deletes itself when you reload. I like others, I don't always have hours at a time to play, so being able to quit at anytime is a must (as long as you can't save scum).

If you're not penalised for quitting you could just quit whenever the game doesn't go your way. Power failures and BSOD are unfortunate, but collateral damage.

Also, we haven't seen any evidence that single-player GW matches will last 24 hours.

I would be more concerned with the far more crippling game glitch. There should be very regular autosaves and older saves should be automatically deleted, this would minimize the usefulness of loading an earlier save.

Hardcore galactic wars for MP. Allow the ability to fall back some systems if things are dire if you have the right tech.

I'd hate to be the one to point this out, but if you are only playing by yourself, and you only have yourself to answer to. Then why do you need anti cheating measures.

If the only reward of playing on hard mode is the satisfaction of a job well done. And if you do successfully cheat, then doesn't that kind of defeat the whole reward on it's own?

Exactly, you're doing it for yourself, no need to build in all kinds of complex anti-cheat measures.

Shouldn't quitting just be saving? That's how XCOM's IronMan feature works. You can't save-scum it, because you don't have a save option. It just automatically saves everything you do. So you just quit, and when you log back in, you're right back where you left.

Might be a bit harder with an RTS than a turn based game, but the same concept could apply.