Hi everyone! I am back in office. I will do a big check-up on SE stability/bugs upcoming week.
However only expect major work on SE to recommence after DC5 will be finished. More news about that upcoming title soon.
In the meantime let me share the results of the big summer poll with you right now!
Roughly speaking, the veteran players, who dominate the poll, really would like me to deliver on navy units.
I can confirm this is number one on my todo list for SE. Just gotta finish DC5 first before I can free up some serious ammounts of time to dig into this.
Its been an exceptionally hot week over here in France, luckily my office has air conditioning. For “fun” I have been reading Zaslavskaya , interesting to learn about how people inside the Soviet Union saw some of the core problems of the system.
I have been mostly working on DC5, which is slowly shaping up enough to be revealed to the public after the summer holidays.
AI work on DC5 also made me eager to bring some improvements to SE in the future. Especially since in the last poll “better AI” scored really well. So the new follow up poll is up and running. It is asking: what exactly should be better? results so far are interesting and I would like to share the initial results with you.
The first results from the AI difficulty poll is that players are not mainly asking for strict “same rules” AI, but for AI that feels more believable and less arbitrary.
One of the biggest pain points seems to be “logistics and roads”, especially where supply, mountain roads and rough terrain make the AI look like it is breaking the logic of the world.
On the battlefield, players want the AI to do more of the following: defend key assets/choke points, mass for offensives, exploit real advantages and stop acting too timid when it should be pressing hard.
On the “empire side”, players also want more consistency between economy, army size, morale, diplomacy and war decisions, as well as more rational peace and clearer signs of what a regime is thinking.
Another important result is that regime personality matters: players would ideally like different regimes to behave more distinctly both in diplomacy and on the battlefield.
I am leaving the poll running here. Thank you all for taking it, it’s helping me a lot in planning the work for the future improved SE AI.
The last poll gave the surprise result “better AI”. Many caveats there, but still, it was not really expected. So we are following up with a detailed poll https://www.vrdesigns.net/vidcom_poll/ai_poll.php
Am I really managing to do a small post every week? Maybe, but summer holidays are near, so lets not get our hopes up that much. Anyways I am still mostly working on the next DC title and making good progress here. Seems the reveal of that title will be after the summer. So I wont say much on this topic.
Seems like Silo season 3 will premier 3rd of july. Looking forward to this. The series worldbuilding managed to grab me, especially the moddeling of the different social-power groupings is giving me some ideas.
I have been happy with the recent roles/gameplay poll for SE. Just closed it, enough results are in. Big thanks to all participants for taking the time! I’ll need to ponder the results a bit more, but I’ll share the card picks top 20 with you already.
Here the big suprise, to me at least, is that “better AI opponents” is that much in demand. Note especially the difference with “cleaner UI” which is all the way at rank #11.
I think I’ll do a follow up poll in one of the coming weeks. Keep in mind that all these polls are just make the blind man discover where the walls and exits are, of the dark cave he is in. Its really all done to improve my grasp on the rough preferences, be they graphics, gameplay, roles or whatnot. As always you can count on me to make my final choices in a less democratic fashion.
Let’s see I manage to do another small blog next week.
The polls I did recently on the Vidcom Gfx gave me some very interesting results, helping me shape my thoughts about them much better. So now we are attacking a more core subject. What kind of role would you like to play? What kind of gameplay interests you most? It would be appreciated if you could find 4 minutes of your time to complete the mini-game poll: https://www.vrdesigns.net/vidcom_poll/card_poll.php
Edit: Poll has been closed. sharing results soon. Thanks for helping out!
