EFS Remake

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Mjolnir420
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Re: EFS Remake

Postby Mjolnir420 » Wed Aug 16, 2006 1:57 pm

looking forward to it

vistachiri
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Re: EFS Remake

Postby vistachiri » Thu Aug 24, 2006 11:59 am

Hot damm this project excites me. Haven't played eotfs in a lonnnnnng time, prolly will load it up soon. Possible suggestions though

The fading suns universe is kind of like its portrayed, at least as far as the game allows. Nobles, league members and church personnel being the only ones technically allowed to have technology really through the "priveleige of martyrdom" or something like that, forget if thats the correct term. Essentially way back the church had to cut a deal with the nobles allowing them to use tech free of sin so to speak while allowing them to keep the populace more under control. The league gets pretty much a free pass because of one of the league factions,The charioteers, controlling access to pretty much all jumpgates through jumpkeys, why no industrial spying? Spies get tossed from airlocks regularly. Thus a great portion of the worlds are veeeerry low tech .Pandemonium for example, which noncoincidentally is very rich with slaves. While some like leagueheim and holy terra are ridiculously hightech, though not second republic tech level by any means. Though the lore is pretty difficult to implement in the context of the game. Pretty much what you describe is what I always took it to be. Houses themselves are pretty massive, and even the church has its own labs whose scientists they also consider exempt from the sins of tech. Though EFS never really explained that the reason the other 2 factions allow the league to exist is because of their extreme involvement in so many areas where they've made themselves pretty much the only option. Hired labor=> pretty much controlled by the league, you generally are best suited to at least ask the guild if they have anyone for a particular task available before hiring, accidents happen, salvage, banking,w/the exception of the brothers battle who also sometimes make loans, starship piloting/jumpkeys, etc etc.

Things that would be neat

Symbiots playable, symbiot unit inspiration, philosophies etc can all pretty much be found in the lifeweb sourcebook from hdi. Really interesting reading that even opens up possibilities for trade, alliances and whatnot. The vast majority of symbiots are pretty much drones, those found on stigmata for example. This is due to a symbiot withdrawal after they realized that full fledged sentient symbiots are very very vulnerable (in fact pretty much wide open) to theurgy and psi, what especially bothered them was mindreading. As symbiots, at least the original 5 were pretty much humans hybridized by a random encounter w/an alien species, and they really have developed their own civilization and different factions it wouldnt be too far fetched to play them. Reading up on the xyll warbeast also gave a ton more flavor than the original text entries in the game, apparently a human had to be pretty much vivisected alive, exposed to mutated symbiot spores, and then turned into a mindless ravaging beast i.e. what usually happens w/no imprinting lol, originally done by, yep you guessed it, the decados.

More sense out of the patriarch? He seemed to always just randomly proscribe techs just for the hell of it. Don't think anything ever got taken off the list either. I recall instances where even brothers battle got proscribed...which is just...wrong, considering they're a church faction and all, and Xyll warbeast just happened to be A ok, maybe it was a bug.. An implementation for the death of the patriarch and a new one being selected would also be pretty neat, providing he could unproscribe certain techs.

More diplomatic functions w/the church and the league? Not sure how, but it was always kind of irritating when you knew the only thing they wanted was the 3rd republic or a theocracy. I usually just ended up destroying the church once I got strong enough to hold off their inquisitors for a bit while I researched various things like plaguebombs etc.

Someone already suggested it somewhere else I believe but the Vau having a more involved role might be nice, although lorewise they're pretty skimpy and definitely nonexpansionistic. Also ridiculously enigmatic, having not accepted a diplomatic envoy I believe since the 2nd republic.

More tech? the original had an awful lot of it, but then I <3 researching, would always focus on clearing the whole thing as fast as possible, then while other people are cruising around in their pitiful little ships, oh look...here comes a fleet of cadiz dreadnaughts....they look... pissed...wuho---end transmission.

Exploration a bit more perhaps? Was always kind of disappointed with the amount of ruins on alot of planets and the pretty simple rewards for some of them. More relics would be pretty cool.

Church politics inside it more flexible? Always seemed weird that the church would pretty much w/out vast vaaaaast amounts of manipulation remain orthodoxy. A way to choose a planets sect when you colonize it would also be nice, rather than pay the price for changing it later, perhaps with benefits for each sect keeping in line with their flavor. Sanctuary Aeon for example adding morale everyone loves Amaltheans, hell an avestite was seized by the local populace and hanged when accusing one of antimony. A research bonus to preceptors relatively new faction, veeeeery technologically enlightened, etc etc.

Playable church and league? Would be very interesting, especially with a different goal in mind. As playing for a theocracy or a 3rd republic would be your main goals. There are 5 factions leaguewise, major players at least, and 5 churchwise as well 6 if you toss in the preceptors.

Individualized wildlife? Seemed kind of silly the only things I would run into on a given planet were always either rebels or symbiots in ruins. Each planet has its own dangers outlined pretty well in the lore.

Vorox as a unit? 'nuff said.

Actual profitable trade system of some sort. Say I take all this food I have as surplus on severus, and I pop it over to pandemonium, where another house happens to be in control, well pand is pretty scarce in food, so its going to be pretty profitable, grab some slaves toss em over to stigmata, new recruits, have fun boys, meanwhile my other freighter grabs profits heads to holy terra, buys some medicine and brings it back to severus for a tidy profit. Would add another dimension to the game entirely rather than just build build build crush crush oppress oh I have all the scepters, I win, however fun that is.

The superscale structures are pretty interesting, maybe some kind of mechanism where if another faction finds out about it they're gonna be pretty hot to trot concerning it. Avestites are pretty well known for hunting down second republic artifacts with extreme burnination so to speak.

I like what you've got as far as tech so far, and reing should pretty much be the goal, as thats everyone's, except for the church's goal in even the pnp. Though the houses would be more focused on it as a way to crush their enemies, protect themselves etc. It's not easy by any means though, I always thought of the tech as being a buildup w/out its logical conclusion. Holistic pretty much I think just never tossed sr tech towards the end b/c it was never covered in the 30 year emporer war. Of course then again alexius ended up winning and thats not really covered either, though possible.

As for armies, are you talking strategic tbased combat? Dude that would absolutely kick total immense ass. Even something like legion arena's sort of hybridized system would be amazing.

If any help is needed with the flavor design so to speak I know quite a bit lorewise as I've run game s of it before, only problem is I'm moving and not going to be netwise much for a bit after I'm back. I'll try to check in when I can though.

1eyedparrot
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Re: EFS Remake

Postby 1eyedparrot » Fri Aug 25, 2006 3:49 pm

Oh thanks! That is a whole lot of info I did not know. I have sort of a mailing list going around with some of the other interested parties, post your email or just email me thompsonaf@gmail.com with your username in the title and i'll add you.

vistachiri
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Re: EFS Remake

Postby vistachiri » Fri Aug 25, 2006 7:02 pm

np bro, hit me up at vistachiri@yahoo.com, have a whole mess of the sourcebooks. Leaving in a few days though and uberbusy. Should be able to log albeit infrequently soon after I'm back provided nothing happens to my comp in shipment.

ssfsx17
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Re: EFS Remake

Postby ssfsx17 » Sat Aug 26, 2006 10:27 pm

My e-mail is ssfsx17@yahoo.com and I am very interested in the success of this remake!
"People are easily amused by quotes." - Some guy with a cool-sounding name

Lord Austere
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Re: EFS Remake

Postby Lord Austere » Sat Aug 26, 2006 11:02 pm

I too would be happy to help ( ttijnn@hotmail.com ). But as I'm no artist, nor a computer programmer I'm not sure what good I could do.

Gregory
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Re: EFS Remake

Postby Gregory » Thu Aug 31, 2006 7:30 pm

For those who suggest the game should be more simple should be attacked by email with a barrage of viruses. The very thing EFS offers to me and others I have read is "depth". You need more than the IQ of the average human turnip to play this game. I am personally of the opinion that what this game needs is more "depth". This is not to say that there is a need for more Micro Management or less user friendly. No and again No. This is to say that only members of North America's Intelligentsia TRULY appreciate this game.
We need a game with a far more sprawling technology tree, a larger diversity in unit types and applications, we need Officers and royal members with special attributes and their own lenghty development tree based on Veterancy, we need more diversity in resources depending on location in the galaxies that promote interstellar colonial wars and heightened diplomacy, we need more diplomacy options, and last but not least we need a killer AI that is adjustable in style, intelligence, and especially different in diplomatic approach based on which 'house' or institution is dealing with which. We also need more Imperial institutions with the Imperial being AI controlled with influence from the current regent. And being the regent should entail you climbing the Imperial bureaucratic tree and accomplishing directives from the Imperium.
Technology should be dependent later in the game on meeting certain resource or population objectives. With each major house or institution being in strategic position of controlling a certain resource. Hence creating a need for a diplomatic or military approach to furthering technology. Also, After a certain point Technologies should specialize into their own subjects thereby creating a large difference in units, characteristics and abilities, and maybe even structures.
With a larger diversity in technology will inevitably come a larger diversity in unit and leader types and abilities. It could be that to gain a certain leadership ability that one should have to research an the Philosophy behind the tactic first. Such as Blitzkrieg or close artillery support. These two things alone will create a much more interesting game.
Third we need a unit, officers, and royalty with different special abilities based on Veterancy,Technology,and House or Institution that it Represents. Examples being the above Blitzkrieg improvement suggested for Armies that include all mechanized units. Thereby when the controlling officer(s) have this attribute, depending on veterancy in this attribute, the Army has a chance at having after battle movement and attack. Or an attribute called 'Guerrilla Warfare' whereby the officer is able to retreat,move and completely make invisible his Army unless an opposing army literally runs into it. There is an incredible amount that can be done to the game in terms of Veterancy and "house abilities"
Fourth there needs to be more resources that are specialized throughout the galaxies that cause greater need for cooperation,conquest of enemy colonies,war with NPC Institutions or sneak tactics.
Diplomacy,AI,and Institutional bureaucratic improvements all come hand in hand as detrimental to increased game play enjoyment. My suggestions on these are far to lengthy to state now for they are an essay on their.
For anyone who read all this, thank you for putting up with babbling ons.

ssfsx17
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Re: EFS Remake

Postby ssfsx17 » Sat Sep 02, 2006 4:56 am

For me, the one thing I would change about EFS is the way that it encourages unit and engineer spamming as the way to win. Whoever is best at spamming out units and engineers is the one who wins. I would solve this by:

- Greatly extending the build time of units, so that you cannot spam out a whole army every two or three turns.

- Making the resource buildings give a lot less, but also making units cost a lot less.

- Making food a much more limiting factor, so that spamming out both buildings and units will get your people starving pretty quickly.

- Making the higher-tech units much more powerful than the lower-tech ones, rather than only slightly better. A few higher-tech units should be able to defeat large amounts of spammed ATG and Artillery.
"People are easily amused by quotes." - Some guy with a cool-sounding name

littlejon20
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Re: EFS Remake

Postby littlejon20 » Sun Sep 03, 2006 3:36 am

I'm glad to see the enthusiasm. I sent an E-mail to One-Eyed-Parrot to get on the list and offer my services to help. I'm not familiar with the EFS universe other than what is in the game, but one thing I always found annoying is that there was no territory. Someone can come in with a few engineers several units and create a city on your homeworld right next to your capital and you're the one that needs to launch an "unprovoked" assault.
I think having a planetary control percentage would be a good ideawhere you need over 50% ownership in a planet then you can warn other houses that ships over that planet will be taken as an act of war if other arrangments have not been made. Something like 25% ownership for owning the palace, 15% for the church. 5% for controling a neighboring planet and the rest for the percentage of cities/units on the planet.
There would need to be some prevision like a 15-20% buffer so that it's not an acto of war if two houses were expanding in parralel and one of them ended up with 55% and the other 45%, then the power over that house would be limited like don't expand within 5 squares of one of my cities.
Just brainstorming here what do you guys think?

littlejon20
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Re: EFS Remake

Postby littlejon20 » Sun Sep 03, 2006 3:43 am

One thing I forgot. Not all ships would be an act of war. If transports moved in the controlling house would have the right to:
- search the transport and know what's on it
- tell them to move away from the planet immediately (ie no dropping people off)
- tell them not to move that house space as fast as possible with no "drops".

Of course the controlling house would have to have a space presents to inforce these rules

Russell
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Re: EFS Remake

Postby Russell » Mon Sep 04, 2006 3:38 pm

Ssf, those are points I agree with you on, however, those are actually things that can be currently implimented right now. I had begun working on a newly balanced version of the original EFS 1.4 but after hearing their was this remake project I stopped.

Grimly Fiendish 2
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Re: EFS Remake

Postby Grimly Fiendish 2 » Wed Sep 06, 2006 7:45 pm

Some good ideas.

ssfsx:

For me, the one thing I would change about EFS is the way that it encourages unit and engineer spamming as the way to win. Whoever is best at spamming out units and engineers is the one who wins. I would solve this by:

- Greatly extending the build time of units, so that you cannot spam out a whole army every two or three turns.


Given that each turn is a year, and given that real armies are raised not at the army level but at the regimental level, you should be able to raise an army per developed planet per year. That army would consist of many (20?) units, so you'd need 20 producing structures, say 10 forts and 10 factories, per planet to be able to do this if each unit takes 1 year to build. In the real world, only capital ships, fleets, air forces, and tank armies need 2 to 10 years to build. So longer build times for all units may not make sense.

Slowing engineer building is another matter . . .

- Making the resource buildings give a lot less, but also making units cost a lot less.

Maybe, but this seems pointless. How would this change anything? Either way you will be producing to the limit of your capacity.

If you always need more resources, you will always need to build more engineers to harvest/process more resources. So perhaps you would want engineers to be expensive and slow, and cities to produce massive quantities. Then you will need fewer cities.

- Making food a much more limiting factor, so that spamming out both buildings and units will get your people starving pretty quickly.

Good! How? By reducing farm output or increasing something else?

- Making the higher-tech units much more powerful than the lower-tech ones, rather than only slightly better. A few higher-tech units should be able to defeat large amounts of spammed ATG and Artillery.

Definitely! BTW, the reason the AI builds so many of those units in EFS is that the EXE file forces it to. That can be turned off. My point is, this is not really a question of balance—the system is rigged.

I'd focus more on the rock-paper-scissors aspect: the fact that arty and infantry are best vs guns, so guns need to be supported by arty and infy. You already have several different kinds of infantry with increasing armor or agility or both. To defeat a stack of 20 atgs insufficiently supported by arty or infy, you'd need, say, a half-stack of regular infantry, a quarter-stack of powered or tracker infy, or 2 units of assault/shock legions.

Unfortunately, EFS does not model low-value units well. It's actually too easy to make a unit that can't make or take a hit at all.


littlejon20:

I'm glad to see the enthusiasm. I sent an E-mail to One-Eyed-Parrot to get on the list and offer my services to help. I'm not familiar with the EFS universe other than what is in the game, but one thing I always found annoying is that there was no territory. Someone can come in with a few engineers several units and create a city on your homeworld right next to your capital and you're the one that needs to launch an "unprovoked" assault.
I think having a planetary control percentage would be a good ideawhere you need over 50% ownership in a planet then you can warn other houses that ships over that planet will be taken as an act of war if other arrangments have not been made. Something like 25% ownership for owning the palace, 15% for the church. 5% for controling a neighboring planet and the rest for the percentage of cities/units on the planet.
There would need to be some prevision like a 15-20% buffer so that it's not an acto of war if two houses were expanding in parralel and one of them ended up with 55% and the other 45%, then the power over that house would be limited like don't expand within 5 squares of one of my cities.
Just brainstorming here what do you guys think?


What you're talking about is fiefs. Yes, there should be a way to claim territory. And when an enemy occupies it, it remains yours—you are simply deprived of its income. After some years, you lose title to it.

Then you need the diplomacy options that go with it: remove your troops or else, pay me and I will remove my troops, etc.

Wouldn't different architecture for the different factions be cool? :)

1eyedparrot
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Re: EFS Remake

Postby 1eyedparrot » Thu Sep 07, 2006 4:28 am

Hey fellas, I don't have my data with me right now(on a campus computer, should get home internet soon), but here's a bit of a summary of what i've been working on-

Game Engine-
Some advances, some setbacks. I've made progress creating a rudimentary map editor in Java. Although there are some limitations i'm trying to work around. I'm also researching and considering the Python language as well. Python has many built-in game objects already, so this may be a possibility.

Political Structure-
An idea i've been developing is how the imperial faction would work. The imperial guard/fleet/stigmata whatever have no real leadership(regents have little authority) so the generals WANT a house to become powerful enough to take the throne. The imperial throne is controlled by...who? The imperials! You have to gain their support in your claim for the throne. You can either 1) bribe them or 2) impress them.

Bribing them is quick but less reliable, and other houses can bribe the imperials you just bribed to take away their support of you! Impressing them is much harder, but puts their admiration and loyalty in your pocket instead of lip service. Impressing them would be such deeds as holding back the symbiot hordes, colonizing worlds, having political power over such powerhouses as the guild and church(an empreror would need to be able to balance both sides).

I'll add more later, I can't remember much off the top of my head. But there will be a greatly extended diplomatic/espionage part.

Combat-
Stacks are history, never really like them anyways. In their place I have based the units of off conglomerations of ancient and modern army compositions. You have to ability to create Legions, which can command up to 10 Brigades, each brigade can command 7 regiments(1 LHQ if applicable, 1 BHQ, 4 main , 1 aux). Here's an example

1st Legion

1st Infantry
1st LHQ(Legion HQ)
1st BHQ(Brigade HQ)
1st Rifles
2nd Rifles
3rd Rifles
4th Rifles
1st Tanks

1st Armored
2nd BHQ
2nd Tanks
3rd Tanks
4th Tanks
5th Tanks
1st Gunship

etc...

Each brigade is created on a template of either Infantry, Armor, or Artillery. It consists of 1 HQ regiment that provides morale support and enhanced targetting if in range, 4 main units of the type of brigade and 1 aux unit that supports the main unit. I have better explanations and detailed lists at home, i'll post these later.

One more thing on combat, attacking an enemy unit will not automatically lead to war! No, it's a battle sure, but no 2, or 5 houses are at war until they declare war on you. This enables light skirmishes and such ilk.

Resources-
I have new modeled system of resources and manufactured goods, it is far too lenghtly to write out again, i'll post it soon.

Cities-
Post more later

Thats it for now, there will be updates later this month once I get home internet.

Grimly Fiendish 2
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Re: EFS Remake

Postby Grimly Fiendish 2 » Thu Sep 07, 2006 6:20 pm

Parrot, that sounds excellent. I like the need to gain the support of the imperial bureacracy—naturally the ministries would want an emperor who would lead them well. And you definitely need to be able to fight without starting wars. That's a major failure of EFS!

The infy, cav, and arty brigade types seems very smart. You keep it simple that way. Would you be able to upgrade individual brigades? How much of an area would a legion cover?

Your inclusion of gunships in a ground legion is also cool and well thought out. An armor legion would have some mobile infy as well, although I'd think a tank legion would be rare in EFS. (IMO, humans should always provide cheaper cannon fodder than tanks do—and they don't need oil. Thus the powered-armor legions of EFS.)

I'd like to suggest some alternative nomenclature, since legions never used brigades or regiments. Classically, a legion had 10 cohorts of 500 men (in 30 maniples) plus a smaller (160 men) cavalry unit. Legions always had cavalry auxiliaries to serve as eyes and ears. They often marched with light infantry auxiliaries (non-Romans) as well.

Later, the eastern empire evolved a heavy cavalry army with small cav cores and substantial infantry support. I don't know how the terminology changed but it probably did. Legions got smaller.

Anyway, "cohorts" would be cool instead of brigades, which I think were a Napoleonic invention.

You may want to check out the open-source game "Wesnoth."

ssfsx17
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Re: EFS Remake

Postby ssfsx17 » Thu Sep 07, 2006 8:25 pm

About those military organization ideas:

Have you played People's Tactics, by Victor Reijkersz? Found at http://www.peoplestactics.com/
Perhaps you have already played it, but you may want to look into that game. It doesn't actually take away "stacks," it just makes them easier to manage, but it shares a lot of those ideas about military organization.
"People are easily amused by quotes." - Some guy with a cool-sounding name


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