[Flipside]

To be honest, I have Terran Conflict, and it's a very enjoyable game in my opinion, though it wouldn't appeal to people who don't enjoy that micromanagement, been playing the series since BTF, and I'll agree there's a lot less sitting around waiting in the newer versions

[Mikes]

To be honest, I have Terran Conflict, and it's a very enjoyable game in my opinion, though it wouldn't appeal to people who don't enjoy that micromanagement, been playing the series since BTF, and I'll agree there's a lot less sitting around waiting in the newer versions

I played the X games too up to Terran Conflict and yeah they are somewhat enjoyable. My problem with them is that, while they offer a decent enough - although quite repetitive - open world with trade opportunities and random combat encounters...... someone seriously needs to whack them over the head, make them sit down and try to at least rudimentary make them understand what the words "storyline" and "mission design" actually mean.

As far as Storyline/Mission design go, X3 has always been sorta the "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" aquivalent of computer gaming....  half the time your are outright disgusted and the other half you are wondering if someone really CAN be THAT incompetent or whether it's so bad on purpouse and trying to be amusing by setting a new kind of record of how abysmal games can be.

And no i'm not exaggerating... if anything i'm understating.
X2/X3 is pretty much redefining what "trashy" reallly means as far as story and missions go... and right afterwards it's trying to prove that there is no bottom to the concept of "abysmal".

The only way to get any kind of enjoyment out of it - for me anyways - was to pretty much to pretend neither story or missions exist and rather concentrate on the trading/building/random fighting part... until you get bored and/or realize that there really is no purpouse to having a huge empire other than earning more money and build a bigger trading/production empire.... and no purpouse to having a fleet of ships other than having it look pretty because the AI can't handle fleet engagements with 2 or more friendly capital ships without shooting itself in the foot (literally, friendly fire is several orders of magnitudes more deadly than enemy fire as far as X3 capital ship combat goes lol.).

Trade. Fight. Build. Think. In a way, X indeed allows you to do everything you ever wanted to do in a space-sim game... the problem is that at the same time it's trying very hard to make everything as unenjoyable as possible lol.

[Spoon]

Could give us some examples of said horrendous story telling? I never got past the first part of X2 (whats up with that terrible control scheme/layout?) so I wouldn't know.

[Flipside]

I'll agree there are some annoying bugs in the game, one of the most being that the Dolphin Hauler, one of the most expensive trade ships in the game, tends to crash into things and explode if you are in the same system whilst it's trying to dock.

As for the storyline, also agreed, it's pretty fragmented, part of the problem with open-ended games is that it tries to account for every eventuality, which was especially apparent in X3, where they actually had to 'loan' you ships to do missions in, because the game couldn't be sure you wouldn't be fighting a couple of Khaak Clusters with a fleet of Battleships. Terran Conflict is a little better in that respect, but still fractured, but there are multiple storylines you can choose from, but you are still left, at the end of the day with that 'what now?' feeling. No-ones ever really been successfully in creating a Universe that continues to evolve outside some 'scripted' definition. Though, perhaps one day, it might be fun to try.

I'd love to see a game that combined open-ended features with RTS features, so that, if relationships drop between two factors, the factors actually properly go into war mode against each other, launching attacks, building fleets, claiming territory etc, with the player having some, but not total influence and choice between their actions.

I won't even touch the 'I need new underwear' walking animation in X2

[Flipside]

Could give us some examples of said horrendous story telling? I never got past the first part of X2 (whats up with that terrible control scheme/layout?) so I wouldn't know.

Well, the problem was, partly, that a lot of the storyline missions were completely unaffected by your own in-game efforts, you could, more or less, start the game, complete the storyline and then actually start playing the game as intended, which kind of defeated the whole purpose of the game engine

[Deepstar]

Space-Sims are only sleeping

There will be awake again sometime

And there are still space-simulations every year from russia. Like the Tarr Chronicles, Tomorrow War, Enosta etc.. Sure, there only offer elements we even seen in older games like Privateer or FreeSpace 10-15 years ago, but it's better than nothing.



My hope is Elite IV and that it can reinitiate this genre, again, like in the 90s. I still believe in it

my best female friend is studiing game-producing (she is a big freespace fan), maybe she will create a space-sim for us, in future, too

[voidSkipper]

This has a bit of potential, I think.

[Mikes]

This has a bit of potential, I think.

Depends... it's an MMO and that has me vary.

MMOs have that tendency to attempt substitute content and gameplay with much easier and cheaper to design repetition and "work" for rewards.
(i.e. the famous "carrot on a stick" that makes players jump through the silliest hoops end on end.)

Not saying jumpgate will fall into the same trap necessarily... just that MMOs have that "strong tendency" in general lol.



As far as X3 storytelling and missions go... it was pretty much degraded to an intergalactic scavanger hunt with the occasional skirmish vs. a squadron of enemies that you could kill in your sleep and usually it ended before it got anywhere halfway interesting. I.e. pretty much 90% of the story was the devs making up Bulls**t reasons why you had to find Character X on this side of the universe so he could tell you another b***** reason to find character Y in another corner of the map.

The one moment that sent me into a giggling fit was in X3... as it showed you a cutscene with your ship following a bad guy into a tight tunnel within an asteroid. Problem: I was flying an M1 Battleship at the time that was about 10 times larger than said tunnel....  didn't end well The game of course didn't care about your ship size and executed the cutscene with mindless abandon showing my "lumbering" battleship suddenly nimbly dodging and weaving behind the bad guys fighter (lol) ... until it well, kinda didn't fit into the tunnel .  Still, hilarious lol.

But back to the story itself: X stories were pretty much all designed around being beatable with a cheapo ship and provided zero challenge even when using a cheapo ship. X3: Terran Conflict tried to offer a bit more challenge at least but never went beyond absolutely bland generic mission design either.. and worse, ended up introducing the need to pointlessly "grind (i.e. perform mindless repetitive tasks at nauseum)" for money and resources as a way to keep the player busy and draw out the storyline, a practice you would usually only find in MMOs. Of course in X3 as an offline game that would translate into using SETA (time compression) for 24-72 hours of real time while your automated factories made money that otherwise would literally take weeks of mindless repetition to accrue... but still...      that's "gameplay"? seriously ?

That pretty much sums up my X experiences: Early excitement at the possibilities followed by utter disbelief that they want to sell this kinda crap as worthwhile "gameplay" lol


To illustrate the point... let's assume the final moments of the final mission of the X3 Terran Storyarc would happen in Freespace, it would go something like this:

Spoiler:

Alpha1: Aright so why are we here? Because a scientist made the Xenon mothership/factoryship mad, that was peacefully helping these settlers before right?
Command: Right! We are here to protect the Settlers against this horrible threath. We ar...
Alpha1: Well this kinda sucks! There could have been civil war with the Terrans and the Commonwealth.... or a Xenon Invasion! But this ?! Some looney scientist messed with a poor friendly Xenon mothership and we come to repair it ? There wasn't even a single cool battle yet for christs sake! i mea...
Command: Shut up Alpha1!!! We have to get there immidiately and fix it before it can destroy us all! Form up and protect the fleet at all cost! We must prevail!
Alpha1: Aright aright, i see it, is it this huge big thing in the distance ? Gee that will take ages till we get there...... what's it doing there anyways? its kinda flying in random circles like its drunk ?
Command: Incoming Xenon Fighters! Protect the Fleet at all cost we mus...
Alpha1: (/taps missile hotkey a few times .. /watches a small pathetic Xenon squadron explode in the distance)
Command: Protect the Flagship! They must not get through! We...
Alpha1: Err Command? They already dead.
Command: What ?
Alpha1: They are dead, few minutes ago.
Command: Shut up Alpha1! This is serious! Lifes are in danger.
Alpha1: yeah yeah. Are we there yet?
Command: We must reach the Xenon Mothership at all cost! Protect the Fleet...
Alpha1: /sighs Protect it ... from what ?
Command: From the Xenons! Aren't you paying attention!!!
Alpha1: Xenons? Where?
Command: Well uh there is the huge Mothership back there!!!
Alpha1: Are we there yet?
Command: /glares
Alpha1: /twiddles thumbs
/Fleet finally arrives at the Xenon Mothership that is still flying drunk circles
Alpha1: Mh so why isn't it shooting at us ?
Command: Incoming Xenon Fighters!!!
Alpha1: /Tap/Tap ...  eh yeah they not even trying eh?
Command: Protect the Flagship!!! We must survive! We must stop the Xenon threath!
Alpha1: It's still not firing... is there even someone aboard?
Command: All ships! Fire on the Mothership! Protect the Fleet! we must lower its Shields to allow our Marines to board it!!! All weapons lock on and FIRE!
Alpha1: Mhhh it's still not firing back...
Command: Just a little longer! Hold on and we will prevail! Do not let up! We must...
Alpha1: Geee /boring /jumps out!
Command: Where did Alpha1 go!?!? Ah crap!... aright aright we won! we boarded the Xenon! Alpha1? Hello!? come back please! we won! we must celebrate our victory! Alpha1?

ah yeah... something along these lines. Now that was actually more fun typing than playing the mission lol. And no i'm not kidding.. i really did get bored and the marines kinda were bugged and never made it aboard.... but as i jumped out the mission completed anyways. So basically i killed a few Xenon Fighters and watched a small Terran Fleet abuse a quite helpless Xenon mothership that never fired a shot. Bravo. How is that for a climax ? I don't really think player interaction would have been required at all to finish that mission...  and previous X games were sadly similarily "challenging" lol.

[Flipside]

Yeah, that made me wonder about that mission as well...

Spoiler:

Funny thing was, I used a cheat script to generate one of them, and it appears they forgot to add the guns, once I'd added a bunch of weapons to it, it could pulverise anything that was silly enough to get directly in front of it

[Mikes]

Yeah, that made me wonder about that mission as well...

Spoiler:

Funny thing was, I used a cheat script to generate one of them, and it appears they forgot to add the guns, once I'd added a bunch of weapons to it, it could pulverise anything that was silly enough to get directly in front of it

Well in previous games they went out of their way to remove any kind of challenge at all... so it might as well have been on purpouse.
And the amount of fighters in the mission was simply way below "pathetic" as well lol

[voidSkipper]

X did not impress me either.

I would expect that there will still be grinding in Jumpgate, but surely it will be more bearable when you're not just watching your craft take gentlemanly turns at kicking each other's shins.

Basically I saw it and thought "this is how Eve should've been". Of course, only time will tell. The atmosphere of the forums at the moment is disturbingly League of Legends-esque, in that everyone is convinced the game is never going to be released.

(It also just occurred to me that these were my first posts on this account. This is actually a re-register and I totally didn't come here just to pimp Jumpgate >.>)

[Spoon]

Hehe great stories there 
Seems like I didn't miss out on much awesome 

[Blue Lion]

X did not impress me either.

I would expect that there will still be grinding in Jumpgate, but surely it will be more bearable when you're not just watching your craft take gentlemanly turns at kicking each other's shins.

Basically I saw it and thought "this is how Eve should've been". Of course, only time will tell. The atmosphere of the forums at the moment is disturbingly League of Legends-esque, in that everyone is convinced the game is never going to be released.

(It also just occurred to me that these were my first posts on this account. This is actually a re-register and I totally didn't come here just to pimp Jumpgate >.>)

What was your other name?

[paul1290]

I don't have much faith in MMOs anymore.


A lot of people are going to hate me for stating this unpopular opinion, but I'm going to say it anyway.

I think the MMO genre the way it is now, despite being a financial success, is a huge failure in terms of game design. I've never seen a whole genre of games so bogged down by sloppy gameplay mechanics and bad design paradigms. The current models by which MMO games are designed seem broken and faulty all the way down to their core ideas and will never fulfill the full potential of MMOs as genre of video games. Nearly all of the current MMOs consist of taking the rulesets of smaller games, applying them on a scale they simply were not intended for, and trying to cover up the holes and gaps that result by throwing money at them. As long as game developers insist on sticking to these models, I don't think MMOs are going to get any better, what you see now may be as good as its going to get unless the way in which MMOs are set up gets a major overhaul.


*diverts all power to anti-flame shields*

[Spoon]

Dear sir Paul
I wholehearty agree with thee.

[Mikes]

I don't have much faith in MMOs anymore.


A lot of people are going to hate me for stating this unpopular opinion, but I'm going to say it anyway.

I think the MMO genre the way it is now, despite being a financial success, is a huge failure in terms of game design. I've never seen a whole genre of games so bogged down by sloppy gameplay mechanics and bad design paradigms. The current models by which MMO games are designed seem broken and faulty all the way down to their core ideas and will never fulfill the full potential of MMOs as genre of video games. Nearly all of the current MMOs consist of taking the rulesets of smaller games, applying them on a scale they simply were not intended for, and trying to cover up the holes and gaps that result by throwing money at them. As long as game developers insist on sticking to these models, I don't think MMOs are going to get any better, what you see now may be as good as its going to get unless the way in which MMOs are set up gets a major overhaul.


*diverts all power to anti-flame shields*

I wholehearty agree with the sentiment, but i disagree with your analysis.

I would argue the opposite... MMOs are too well adapted to social dynamics and basic human needs. It really "isn't" about gameplay or enjoyment, it's about need fullfillment and addiction on a very basic level, reinforced by social dynamics. It's all about how our brains reward center works. If we complete a task through hard work, our own brain sort of gives us a chemical "pat on the back" that makes us feel good. MMOs are built around this biological fact. Early levels usually introduce you to the mechanism, with easy tasks that do not take much time and rewards at a rapid pace..... the higher you go, the more gear you get.... the slower advancement becomes... but at this point.... our brain already got used to it... and craves it more and more... so the fact that "work cycles" get longer and rewards become fewer is not perceived as a bad thing.... nope, rather it increases the expectation... the craving of reward... to the point where expectation and craving become the same and is triggered by the work or "grind" itself. At higher levels you have social dynamics reinforcing the cycles. The biggest "Rewards" take a concerted coordinated effort of a group of people now ... and anyone not "putting in their time or lacking in effort" will get told off by the group.

The Result... being pretty much as close as you can get to a "virtual drug".

Real drugs work by rewiring our reward center the "quick and dirty way" and naturally hard drugs are quite dangerous for this very reason, even if you just take them once...
... but it doesn't necessarily need chemical stimuli to develop addictive or obsessive behavior. The percentage of exposed people that really do get addicted may be lower than with "real" drugs...
... yet, if you do get people to basically "condition themselves" through enough repetition, the final result is hard to distinguish, in that the drug or game becomes the focus and eventually whole purpouse in their lifes.

The basic mechanic of a typical MMO... is that of killing bigger rats with bigger swords. Gameplay remains more or less static... killing just takes longer the further you progress (and usually rats get graphically bigger with each level lol) The reason this works at all is, as said above, that we are wired for progression at a very basic level... but the way MMOs abuse this basic human tendency ends up in behavior that's about as pathetic as a dog chasing a treat that you bound to their own tail until they collapse from exhaustion.

Now MMOs still are quite different as you look at specific games... and you will find exploitation of said basic human traits to different degrees and some games definitely are milder than others...  yet, if you want to know what drives the masses to these games and how some games keep peoples attention and make them invest hours, weeks, months of their lives despite simplistic, even pathetic actual gameplay... then look no further than how our brain's reward center works lol.

Does everyone get addicted? Nope, of course not. Just like not everyone gets addicted to mild *real* drugs like alcohol or nicotine either. But the addictive nature of MMOs is something that the general public seems to get more and more wary about, as more studies are being conducted on the matter. It's pretty obvious at this point that at least "something" will happen eventually... in the very least a regulation concerning minors. People can argue how its everyones own responsibility how long they play as much as they want... in the case of adults i fully agree. Everyone has the right to waste their life in whatever way the want - in the case of minors however it is absolutely irresponsible to expose them to addictive mechanics of that calibre, so i would not be surprised at all, if we d see MMOs become "18+/21+ only" sometime in the next years at all.

[mFuSE]

@Mikes,

full agree. But thats how the most games work, not only MMOs ^^
Even the first console games back in the 80s gave you a bigger gun after harder bosses until the final level

The real problem in our days is, the whole 3D graphic and special effects take so much work that there isn't much room left for emerged gameplay.

Talking about MMOs is more about how and who plays such games...
Especially WoW is an example how effective an simple design can be. And this is it all about, because it is so simple to learn and play, it's so successful. Not because it is a MMO or its loot system.

It's not completely dead.

There's still MMO's like Eve Online, though I guess those might not count as space sims for some people.

There's also the Egosoft and their X series of space trading and combat sims, even if they do suffer from a bit of "jack of all trades master of none" syndrome.

EvE is definitively not a space sim!
I tried EvE over and over again .... but i just can't chum with it ...
It really lack of a free flight mode, without this it's not really a space sim ... it has more strategic elements.

Apart from that EvE seems to be a really great game. Especially the community with their story vids like "TheFate_of_D2.mpg" or other vids show what a gigantic sim world can be build. But, you really have to like it and you have to put a lot of work over a long time into it.



I think game evolution went a long way and the mass of players simply want more than "only" flying a ship around.
I think the classic space sim genre is ... dead, so sad this is. Freespace2 was very late, Freelancer was too late.

Shooter have the same problem btw. What worked for some time now (outstanding graphic and nothing else) didn't get peoples attention any more. Game designers will and are already right now facing big problems. The needs for games a growing over the last years rapidly and i guess not everyone can keep up with.
So for some time we will see only sequels from successful games and i don't expect a big bang, a whole new game design and gameplay in near future (except Nintendo, they do in turn nothing else than invent new gameplay possibilities )

[Mikes]

@Mikes,

full agree. But thats how the most games work, not only MMOs ^^
Even the first console games back in the 80s gave you a bigger gun after harder bosses until the final level

The real problem in our days is, the whole 3D graphic and special effects take so much work that there isn't much room left for emerged gameplay.

I have to absolutely disagree with that i'm afraid.


MMOs are different for seveal reasons. Why ? MMOs charge monthly fees: meaning...  it would be detrimental if the game had a definite "ending", because if a player could finish it, they naturally would be inclined to "quit" and stop paying monthly fees... and the tragedy of MMO design really is rooted in that attempt to make an "endless game".

How do you design "endless content" ? A campaign that "never" ends ? Well... you would need content that players want to repeat. So far so good... so ideally you would create content that was so much fun, that people would want to do it multiple times.... right. Then some developpers found out it doesn't really matter whether people had "fun"... as long as you gave them "goals" to "work for". And that, pretty much, was the beginning of the end.

That is the basic idea... in later titles and especially a certain very popular one... the idea got perfected by making the early game incredibly accessible and easy to start out, while slowly but steadily increasing the amount of work it takes to reach the next milestone, the next reward...  until you finally arrive at max level and are stuck "raiding" every single night with a couple of dozen other people who mindlessly repeat the same dungeon literally dozen of times until everyone has their "gear".... which is required to start the same thing all over again in the next dungeon... a common notion at this point that you may hear from players is that they "have invested way too much time in their character to quit now ... (despite having long stopped to actually have fun lol "

... from a purely financial perspective, considering "content cost" vs. "how long it keeps players busy" ... it's of course brilliant. It also happens to be what i would consider a perversion to the concept of "gaming".



Traditional games are enjoyable because of the gameplay and/or story the offer; while items anddifferent weapons may be present in a lot of games... the motive to constantly improve your items/weapons to infinity, certainly is not. In MMOs on the other hand... it's the very opposite. Becoming more powerful is the one real purpouse in the game, with storyline and gameplay being a secondary concern, if any at all.

If you designed Freespace around just basic weapons, it would still be a very enjoyable game - little difference even lol (Heck, in some campaigns like Sync you only had basic weapons throughout the whole campaign LOL).
If you took the items out of an MMO...  you would have a revolt on the forums with players demanding to put them back and threathing to "quit" (i.e. stop paying) the second you took them out.

I don't know how to make it any clearer... but the foundation of most MMOs is really pretty much what i would consider the antithesis of tradtional gaming:
Instead of playing to intrinsically enjoy what you are doing... you are "enticed" to "work" for extrinsic rewards.


When you look at teaching methodology in pedagogics you may come across the notion that if you just get pupils to "work hard" for a project, they will automatically be proud of it afterwards, simply by virtue of having worked hard for it. It's a positive reinforcement cycle: Work - Reward - Feeling Good ... Willingness to work hard increases to feel good again.

While the goal of pedagogy is education...   the goal of MMOs is nothing other than to make money... and abusing this reinforcement cycle the way companies did with MMOs is not just going way beyond anything that would be possible in other fields... it's pretty much also a perversion of what "entertainment" is supposed to be... or rather,  it's pretty much replacing "entertainment" with "conditioning".


It certainly is not an "evolution" of the medium that is gaming... if anything it's quite malicious "exploitation".

[paul1290]

I guess a cycle of addiction would would explain why developers don't even bother trying to make MMOs any better. Why bother making a better game if your players are going to keep playing even if it is badly designed?

However, I don't think MMOs should be all about a continuous addiction because that would be severe case of underachievement for the genre.

MMOs have the potential to do so much more and yet developers are just too obsessed with their money-making cycles of grind to realize that.




There is an MMO currently in development called Love that doesn't rely on a continuous repeating of tasks, but actually tries to create "endless content" through procedural generation algorithms that generate goals and alter the landscape based on the past actions of the players on a given server.

It's being developed by Eskil Steenberg, who amazingly enough is pretty much making the game all by himself. He even programmed most of the tools he's using to make the game, he has made several of his tools available for download. (not surprisingly, many of the said tools focus on speeding up several aspects of game design through procedural generation)

Love's pipeline is built around Verse, a network protocol (also developed by Eskil Steenberg) that allows models, animations, and other graphical assets to be edited in game in real time while the game is running and allows all changes to be seen by all players without requiring them to download new files seperately and restarting their games. This is what allows both the game's AI and the players to edit landscapes and other aspects of the game without interrupting gameplay.


http://www.quelsolaar.com/

http://news.quelsolaar.com/#comments38

What should be the driving force that keeps your player playing the game? A story? Wining? Cake? How about something you can be sure that every gamer likes; a game. Want to make a popular game? Here is the secret: make two. I may even make three. The reason people put up with collecting 30 scorpion tails, is because they are not really playing the scorpion killing game, they are  playing the improve my stats game. People who play pokemon are not really playing a game where they are fighting it out with other pokemon trainers they are actually trying to catch them all. Even when you are playing the crappy 360 game you may actually play the Achievements game. Being able to not just decide how you do something in a game but also come up with the reasons why and make your own decision to do it, is far more powerful then hearing some female radio voice direct your to some "really important" button you need to press for some reason.

Perhaps people spend too much time making good games and too little time motivating them. This is vary hard to design because it can often mean you need to punish your players. You don't like that you are thrown out of the game when you die in counter strike, but it means you will motivate you to take your survival very seriously and heighten the tension. There is a "Diablofication" trend in the game industry right now, and while games like Diablo manages to motivate its players through loot, I think there are other ways to do it that are more interesting.

I have been working lately to create a system for self explanatory missions, by building infrastructure in to my cities. The idea is that rather then having someone explain to you what you need to do you should be able to scope it out your self and then come up with a plan. These things need to be very clear so that you can easily read the environment, but still complex enough so that you need to think. In a normal "hand made" level there is usually only one solution to a problem because the game designers want you to see all their work they have put in. If you find a way to skip the boss and go right to the next level that is a bug. In a game where the content is generated, no work is lost if the player manages to skip the end boss, and  there is nothing wrong if the player can do that every now and then because it is empowering the players own creativity. However if the player always can skip the boss something is wrong. An other issue with multiple solutions is that people stop thinking and start just trying random things. In Love there is the concept of power relays that are used to power various things. A player could assume that any power relay used by the enemy is useful to the enemy in some way and therefor go about destroying them all just to be sure. This brute force approach will mean that players will never try to understand their enemy, and they will never plot anything out before hand.  If they don't understand why they are doing it they are not motivated to do it.

To give you an idea of what the infrastructure system does here are a few examples: There are various power sources in the game that all have their different behaviour, wind power doesn't provide power during morning and dusk as the wind dies down, power stations can be destroyed with gun fire and reactors explode if you lead power in to them. The different power sources can be used to power various things like defence turrets, rockets and artillery, but also of manufacturing stations that provide various power ups, so if you want the enemy to stop healing them self's you may want to look in to cutting power to the health regeneration manufacturer. Another thing that you can power is a force field generator that creates a bubble you can shoot out of, but not in to. One interesting feature of the force field is that power sources don't work inside them, so by cutting power to a force field you may inadvertently power on something else. Equally you can turn on a force field in order to take out a power generator. If you find the coordinates of a teleporter (something you can do using the binoculars) you can teleport to it,  but often they are mined, or under the watchful eye of a defence turret. Bombs, artillery and turrets are all controlled over radio, so by using a chaff you can temporally take them out.

All this stuff is in the game right now, its a bit rudimentary and I'm busy working on polishing it all up for GDC. Once this is done the only thing left is reworking the AI to give the cities their own intelligence so that they can not only defend themselves but also attack the players settlements. Then I guess we will have to find out if it all works. Sorry if the updates are few, but I'm hard at work, and as it turns out, one man development is slow. Not collecting 30 scorpion tails slow, not making two games slow, but close.   

So I guess there is a spark of hope in the sea of piss that is the MMO industry.

[blackhole]

I want to point out that spacesim games are dying because the developers try too hard to make stunning graphics instead of gameplay that isn't mind-numbingly boring.

The fundamental reason games aren't good as they were back in the days of say, FS2, is because games couldn't rely on graphics to sell. Bluntly put, everyone had dismal graphics, so everything hinged on the gameplay. Now people will just buy anything that's shiny and then complain that it isn't fun. What needs to happen is that really good graphics must become universally accessible by anyone to remove their importance, and then games will be forced to rely on gameplay once again to prove their dominance.

(It's more complicated then that, because you have to blunt the effect of artwork as well to keep that from taking over the big importance factor, but you get the point)