PA and a single-player campaign

[dirrtymartini]

Someone recently mentioned that PA won't ship with a single-player campaign. There is talk about a sandbox mode, also known as Galactic War mode (?), but no scripted campaign. A couple of questions:

1) What is this Galactic War mode? Is it a dressed-up sandbox?

2) If there is no scripted single-player campaign, why not? Is that leaving a lot of lonely gamer money on the table?

3) Will the Galactic War mode provide players with enough of the game and resources to practice before joining MP servers?

[Kefo]

1) big ass procedurally generated galaxy that lets you conquer it planet by planet either solo or multiplayer.

2) they went the way of the galactic war which I would prefer since it is procedurally generated meaning no play through is the same.

3) yeah it will. It will be the same game so no limited abilities or units. In essence it can be a practice ground to refine strategies against a AI opponent before going into a mp server.

[UberGaf]

First, I would point out that the Galactic War is not fully designed yet. It's one of the (many) areas where we expect to combine our ideas with the community's ideas. If you would like to have input on this, or any other area, of the game's design - head on over to the Uber forums:
http://forums.uberent.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=61
(that link is the non-restricted forum)

The current notion about the galactic war is that it will be a procedurally generated campaign that can scale from 1 to N players, where N may be thousands. It is not a story driven campaign, but rather gives an over-arching structure to a sequence of individual battles; single or multi-player.

Scripted single-player campaigns are fairly resource intensive in terms of time/money/manpower, so while I wouldn't rule out one ever existing, we felt that given the aims/goals of the kickstarter, our resources would be best spent on developing and maturing the core technology.

One of the promises we made during the kickstarter was for the game platform to be highly moddable, and we've kept that in mind as we have put things together from the ground up. It may be the case that given a solid tech base, solid mod tools, and solid dev support from Uber, a single player campaign will grow out of the community itself; of course, that is fairly speculative, but it never ceases to amaze me what a handful of dedicated fans with good tools can build. Our goal is to make it so that our fans can realize their vision on top of the PA platform.

[dirrtymartini]

Publicado originalmente por Kefo:

1) big ass procedurally generated galaxy that lets you conquer it planet by planet either solo or multiplayer.

That sounds interesting. With no two galaxies being the same, that should help with strategy. I'm assuming there are some form of bad guys since we're talking about conquering them? (sorry to ask a simple question but I'm still reading up on PA)

Publicado originalmente por Kefo:

2) they went the way of the galactic war which I would prefer since it is procedurally generated meaning no play through is the same.

Agreed about the unique playthrough.

Publicado originalmente por Kefo:

3) yeah it will. It will be the same game so no limited abilities or units. In essence it can be a practice ground to refine strategies against a AI opponent before going into a mp server.

That is very helpful info and exactly what I was after. Glad to hear there is an AI opponent. Is there a single AI opponent or multiple? I ask because there is talk about factions.

[Kefo]

Whew! I thought ubergaf was going to make a liar out of me when the reply was posted. Never know what you sneaky devs will say ;)

[dirrtymartini]

Publicado originalmente por UberGaf:

First, I would point out that the Galactic War is not fully designed yet. It's one of the (many) areas where we expect to combine our ideas with the community's ideas. If you would like to have input on this, or any other area, of the game's design - head on over to the Uber forums:
http://forums.uberent.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=61
(that link is the non-restricted forum)

The current notion about the galactic war is that it will be a procedurally generated campaign that can scale from 1 to N players, where N may be thousands. It is not a story driven campaign, but rather gives an over-arching structure to a sequence of individual battles; single or multi-player.

Scripted single-player campaigns are fairly resource intensive in terms of time/money/manpower, so while I wouldn't rule out one ever existing, we felt that given the aims/goals of the kickstarter, our resources would be best spent on developing and maturing the core technology.

One of the promises we made during the kickstarter was for the game platform to be highly moddable, and we've kept that in mind as we have put things together from the ground up. It may be the case that given a solid tech base, solid mod tools, and solid dev support from Uber, a single player campaign will grow out of the community itself; of course, that is fairly speculative, but it never ceases to amaze me what a handful of dedicated fans with good tools can build. Our goal is to make it so that our fans can realize their vision on top of the PA platform.

Sounds like Galactic War mode might be just what I needed. One more question, if I could...

Will Galactic War mode give me just enough room to learn how to play PA on my own?

Let's say I'm a new RTS player and recently purchased PA. I would want to learn the ins and outs of the game before joining an MP server. Nothing will ruin a gamer's experience quicker than showing up unprepared for a fight. I'm not fishing for a tutorial -- just the ability to explore, learn about units, devise and test strategies, and so on before getting to MP. Does Galactic War mode fit this bill?

Thanks for the reply from the source. I also appreciate the background behind the decision-making.

[Jack the Roamer]

I'd like to add a question to this topic if you don't mind answering:

What kind of mod tools are the developers plan on releasing? Will I be able to create my own "campaign" and share it with others?

Will there be "mod manager" to simplify the addition of new player-made content or copy/paste numerous files manually?

[UberGaf]

Publicado originalmente por dirrtygsharp:

Will Galactic War mode give me just enough room to learn how to play PA on my own?

Yes. Actually, even without galactic war, in the alpha right now, you can play solo against the "AI". I put "AI" in quotes because it doesn't 'do' anything right now except stand around and wait to be beat up on. In any event, you can explore the game as it stands without having to bother with other people.

What kind of mod tools are the developers plan on releasing? Will I be able to create my own "campaign" and share it with others?

In the most general sense, "all of them". There are tools that we use internally to do things like make models, animations, etc, and tools to import models, animations, etc into the game. The tools that we use are already being packaged with the alpha. So the community will have access to the same tools that we have access to.

That being said, we're not open sourcing the engine itself. You won't be able to re-write C++ code and recompile the game. So there are limitations to what exactly you can accomplish. But the general philosophy is to give as much to the community as is reasonably possible.

Also, all of the UI is written in javascript and laid over the game in what is literally a web browser window. So anyone with any web-y background should be bale to mod the UI.

Will there be "mod manager" to simplify the addition of new player-made content or copy/paste numerous files manually?

This isn't a part of alpha, or perhaps even beta, but my gut says "yes". We'll probably write it directly into the Uber Launcher.

[dirrtymartini]

Publicado originalmente por UberGaf:

Publicado originalmente por dirrtygsharp:

Will Galactic War mode give me just enough room to learn how to play PA on my own?

Yes. Actually, even without galactic war, in the alpha right now, you can play solo against the "AI". I put "AI" in quotes because it doesn't 'do' anything right now except stand around and wait to be beat up on. In any event, you can explore the game as it stands without having to bother with other people.

That is great news. Thank you, again, for your reply and the fast follow-up.

[Salarus]

Thank for sharing Uber, that is a great feature to engage the overall modding comunity to build custom game plays. This would be welcomed with open aims, however are you considering to have a storefront inside the main menue (like itunes) for easy access to mods and consolidation of custom/storylines gameplay?

[Kieran whitehead]

Any news of when Galactic war mode will be able to play ?

[gearsmithy]

If I would have known there was no single player yet, I wouldn't have bought the game.

[Subedii]

Publicado originalmente por Kieran whitehead:

Any news of when Galactic war mode will be able to play ?

No word on that yet. Personally I'd guess it's probably not for a while. Listening to the latest Stream, it sounds like its lower down on the list of priorities right now.

[Bryan]

Publicado originalmente por gearsmithy:

If I would have known there was no single player yet, I wouldn't have bought the game.

but there is, just host a multiplayer game and start it before anyone joins, the other factions will be played by AI, although they don't do much yet

[Tycho Rhade]

I have heard the idea that there are not going to be any starships/space vehicle combat, but it was pointed out that someone could build engines onto an astroid and if there were another erstaz vessel, one could shoot it out/ board it a la warhammer style...

has there been any mention of how space combat is going to work?
specutaltion has everything from naval like vessels to space elevators and gundam style mecha, then come the dyson spheres and warp gates, ect...
how big is galactic war going to be?
is the entire galaxy available in one map,or will there be points between star systems that connect?
do you just start off on your homeworld, and then expand to fill your star system, and then mission complete, head to the next system via warpgate and do it again, or spiderweb out in a continuous match via FTL drive?
will it be only one system at a time, or will you be running an entire galactic campaign all at once?
or will there be a stratigic map of the galaxy to go system to system?
will there be differing methods of travel depending on race?
if i start a game single player, would i be able to invite others afterwards?

[Joe Pesci]

i for one would like some sort of singleplayer