A concern about moving to the Sci-fi theme.

[mr_stibbons]

To be fair, @mr_stibbons , what you said would actually be pretty awesome. Even if your statement was given as tongue-in-cheek in recognition of the fact that it's simply not happening.

That's not entirely tongue in cheek: The kir'ko video has short flavour text bits on the tooltips for the doctrines and the one with the swarm operation. So do the doctrines in the vanguard video. So while I don't expect every mod to get a flavour text blurb, I'm hopeful that techs and operations get a bit more fluff added as development continues.

 

[HousePet]

Nothing wrong with it. But a cryptic tech tree can be a pain in the neck when you're trying to play a game. Some of us are busy working out strategy and don't always want to be bothered by story details or flavor text while we're at it. If the story is there, it's cool; I like immersion as well as anyone. But when I've got half a dozen things to think about and there are enemies at the gates, I don't want to have to stop and figure out what String Theory does, or what a Quantum Reactor can do that a Fusion Reactor can't. It's not a big deal, though. If the game is good, I'll play it often enough to start memorizing these things. But I must have played Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri a couple hundred times at least, and I still don't know just what good a Children's Creche is or what benefits I get from Centauri Secrets. Things like Perimeter Defense (walls) and Network Node (library/computer) are a lot easier to remember and work with.

I never had problems with that, and can remember what most things did. The techs were colour coded and clearly listed what they did. "String Theory" wasn't a tech, it was Superstring Theory and it gave you the Chaos Gun. Since it said Chaos "Gun" it was pretty clear what it did. The game told you that a better reactor gave more hit points and reduced the cost of excessively powerful unit mods (it even gave a warning in the design screen when the costs got excessive.) Children's Creche is obviously a growth modifier (also gave defender morale and base efficiency). All the Secrets techs gave you a free tech from being the first to get it, I'm pretty sure there was a message when it happened that made it clear about that too.
SMAC had a complicated tech tree, but it was in no way cryptic.

 

[p55carroll]

I never had problems with that, and can remember what most things did. The techs were colour coded and clearly listed what they did. "String Theory" wasn't a tech, it was Superstring Theory and it gave you the Chaos Gun. Since it said Chaos "Gun" it was pretty clear what it did. The game told you that a better reactor gave more hit points and reduced the cost of excessively powerful unit mods (it even gave a warning in the design screen when the costs got excessive.) Children's Creche is obviously a growth modifier (also gave defender morale and base efficiency). All the Secrets techs gave you a free tech from being the first to get it, I'm pretty sure there was a message when it happened that made it clear about that too.
SMAC had a complicated tech tree, but it was in no way cryptic.

It's "cryptic" compared to Civ. C'mon--it's pretty obvious what a library, granary, or wall does; it's significantly less obvious what a network node, children's creche, or tree farm does. Yeah, if you like being pulled into the theme via all those trope shifts, it can be fun. But it's still a bit confusing until you get used to it. I'd be having a terrible time with AoW3 right now if it wasn't for all the pop-up info. I'm constantly asking myself, "What in the world does X do?" But thanks to the modern interface, I get an instant answer just by hovering the pointer over X and reading about it. I can do something like that in Endless Space too, but I gave up; I didn't want to bother learning all the stupid names for various tech advances. Same in Sword of the Stars, except that the 3D tech tree was what made me give up there.

Of course, it's not always obvious in Civ either. I used to know what the Pyramids did--provided extra workers and made work faster. The idea was that if you can build the pyramids, you'll be good at building other things. In later versions of the game, the Pyramids wonder allows you to change governments instead. Huh? Where's the connection there?

My point is, every "trope" ought to serve as a good mnemonic device. Its name and description ought to match up with what it does in the game.

As I've said, it's not a big problem. Just a little annoyance for me. But it's just me, I guess. My attitude is that flavor text is nothing but icing on the cake. I could do without it altogether; if it's there, I want it to stay out of the way of my game play.

Because of that, I'm one of those wondering if Planetfall will turn out to be just a reskinned AoW with less melee and more ranged weapons. If so, it'll be a take-it-or-leave it thing for me. I really don't care of the theme is history, fantasy, or sci-fi. The main thing is, how does the game play?

 

[HousePet]

Civ has had an equally large amount of shockers as far as clarity goes. Even knowing the history references could lead you astray about what something did.
SMAC got around that by colour coding and keywording everything. You didn't need to know what a network node, children's creche, or tree farm did, as it colour coded them and had keywords giving blatant clues. SMAC had unfamiliar terms in it, but they still followed some rules that made those terms easy to understand. The colour codes were the 4 Xs.
Its only cryptic if you are going to insist that the name is the only thing you can base your knowledge on, and ignore everything else they put on the screen for you.

 

[HousePet]

And since I'm partly arguing for SMAC to give Triumph hints on what it did well, I should add that all the icons were symbolised and tended to follow themes that also made it clear what they did. The Quantum Lab for example, is pretty clear about what it does (Quantum being power supply 3 and Lab being Lab). And then the icon for it is the Quantum symbol inside a flask (which is used as the Lab symbol).

 

[LennartGS]

The tech trees in Planetfall are categorized by function. There's military vs society division and within these tabs there are paths which contain a particular type of skill. (i.e. covert ops, weapon groups, doctrines) then each group is classified with a function (tactical/forces/etc).

We're working on the final look of tine research interface; now the main interface is done we're going over all the icons; and will ensure the icons communication category and function.

 

[HousePet]

We're working on the final look of tine research interface; now the main interface is done we're going over all the icons; and will ensure the icons communication category and function.

Thanks Lennart! I haven't seen the latest stream yet, but this might still be relevant. I'm finding the icons on the research interface look tiny.

 

[Nerdfish]

Could there be a simple gameplay text at top of the page in a different color ?
Help text for a unit could be for example

"area of effect thermal attacks, effective against organic targets. armor plating are effective defense against non-psychic melee and ranged attacks. Moderate speed and high sustainability. Intended counter for organic melee troops."

The rest of the text could be dedicated to explaining the lore.

 

[Fenraellis]

Aside from the fact that I think that's a step too far towards... hand-holding of a sort, it would also need to be variable to adapt to mod selections. Since what mods a unit has could easily change several of those points you just mentioned.

If nothing else, you just described what armor rating does, which is a function of armor, not of the unit. At best, the keypoints might mention the unit to have 'high natural armor'. Considering base armor ratings we've seen so far have ranged from 0 to 5, with up to 3 extra armor from Military Engineering Guilds and potentially an extra 3 to 6 more armor from unit mods, even a 0 armor unit can fairly easily by mid-late game have more armor than a unit with 5 base armor that hasn't equipped any armor boosting mods.

I fully admit personal bias in my response. As I'm the kind of person who explored the Tome of Wonders as the first thing I did after launching my first game of Age of Wonders 3. So I personally feel it's a bit silly to have to tell players how to use their units and what they might be good for, when it should be fairly apparent with a little bit of experience and system understanding. That and, as mentioned, unit mods might drastically change the function of a unit(damage channel conversion mods, and concealment mods, or even the jetpack mod, being some stark examples.

 

[Nerdfish]

Aside from the fact that I think that's a step too far towards... hand-holding of a sort, it would also need to be variable to adapt to mod selections. Since what mods a unit has could easily change several of those points you just mentioned.

If nothing else, you just described what armor rating does, which is a function of armor, not of the unit. At best, the keypoints might mention the unit to have 'high natural armor'. Considering base armor ratings we've seen so far have ranged from 0 to 5, with up to 3 extra armor from Military Engineering Guilds and potentially an extra 3 to 6 more armor from unit mods, even a 0 armor unit can fairly easily by mid-late game have more armor than a unit with 5 base armor that hasn't equipped any armor boosting mods.

I fully admit personal bias in my response. As I'm the kind of person who explored the Tome of Wonders as the first thing I did after launching my first game of Age of Wonders 3. So I personally feel it's a bit silly to have to tell players how to use their units and what they might be good for, when it should be fairly apparent with a little bit of experience and system understanding. That and, as mentioned, unit mods might drastically change the function of a unit(damage channel conversion mods, and concealment mods, or even the jetpack mod, being some stark examples.

Paradox games had a reputation for scaring away newbies, some hand holding is good for that.
Combat help text may even go to the extend of suggesting the mods to use.
Combat help text is also not something for experienced players. The lore is there for that