Sid Meier's New Game Is About Starships

jones_supa writes: The next game from the mind of veteran strategy and simulation game designer Sid Meier has been revealed. 2K and Firaxis Games have announced Sid Meier's Starships, a turn-based interstellar strategy game scheduled to arrive in early 2015 for Windows, OS X, and iOS (iPad). In the game, you control a fleet of starships as you journey through the galaxy to complete missions, protect planets and their inhabitants, and build a planetary federation. As you trek through the stars, you will be challenged to expand your federation's influence and reach. You shall also amass futuristic technology and take part in combat using a deep roster of customizable ships. When designing Starships, Meier was intrigued by the idea of exploring the next chapter in the story of Civilization: Beyond Earth. "What happens after we colonize our new home and eventually build starships to take to the stars? What has become of our long-lost brothers and sisters from the planet Earth," Meier asks. "My goal was to create an experience that focuses on starship design and combat within a universe filled with interstellar adventure, diplomacy, and exploration."

Comments

We can only hope...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I wonder if they'll find a way to keep it from feeling like little more than a reasonably ambitious Civ5 mod, notably unlike last time?

Re:We can only hope...

[Elad Alon]

Some cities were owned by different empires at different times. Could that be the issue?

Wot?

[Greyfox]

Kind of like Galactic Civilizations III? I'd guess they'd better hurry if they don't want Sid Meier to steal the wind from their sails.

Re:Old stuff.

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Yeah it's the same song played with different instruments.

So what, it's a damn good song.

I don't like to hear about competition

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

I too am working on a space civilization style simulator for Ipad/Android tablet.

My theory was that with all the fame of games like Clash of Clans, why not take competition one step further to games like Risk, Civilization, or Master of Orion?

Touch pad is perfect for those turn based games like that. They're just a bit more challenging to write since you need to write a custom active server since P2P would just invite hackers to ruin your day.

I could talk more on this project, but its so early in development that it isn't anything more than a hobby affair. I was thinking of taking my time on this one, sculpt it just right, and have good polish on it for 2-4 years out from now. One of the things slowing me down is that I can't seem to get Java to communicate with AS3 via sockets. So it is looking like I'll probably have to write my game server in C/C++ which will be a challenge without garbage collection, nice arrays, debugging, nice strings, an ide, and so forth.

Re:I don't like to hear about competition

[adonoman]

Why not write your game server in C/C++ with garbage collection, nice arrays, debugging, nice strings and an ide? Leaving those out seems like you're intentionally making things difficult on yourself.

anything has to be better than beyond earth

[Virtucon]

I've been gypped with Beyond Earth.. It's definitely crap at this point. Sorry Sid, the magic is gone.

Re:anything has to be better than beyond earth

[mjwx]

I've been gypped with Beyond Earth.. It's definitely crap at this point. Sorry Sid, the magic is gone.

Its been bad since Civ V.

Civ IV: Beyond the Sword was the high point of the Civ series, it's now in decline thanks to Firaxis chasing the casual dollar. The fact this new game is coming out for Ipads is a clear warning it's going to be seriously gimped. I dont think Sid Maier has much, if any input on the current games that carry his name, a lot like Tom Clancy.

I took a pass on Beyond Earth because Civ V was so horrible. In fact I'm still playing Civ IV BTS over Civ V.

Re:anything has to be better than beyond earth

[WuphonsReach]

One unit per tile (1UT) sucks on the Civ5 maps because the hexes are way too large for the scale. The only way 1 unit/tile would have worked well would have been to subdivide the hexes into 7 smaller hexes while keeping the cities the same size (taking up multiple hexes).

The other major issue with the series is that instead of simply improving upon the Civ4 series (by adding hexes and fixing the stack of death issues and doing work on the AI), they brought in a brand new designer who threw out all the lessons of the past in order to put his mark on the product.

The result was a poor product with numerous bugs and many balance issues and a definite downgrade from Civ4's quality.

A Boom in Civilization

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is war an assumed mandatory condition for space travelers? This is patently absurd (though perhaps fun in a game). Don't ya think we would have already located some extraterrestrials if there were wars going on in space? Or is this war thing predicated on humans being out there?

We are entrained to believe wars are inevitable, due to differences in opinion or scarcity of material. May I once again posit that war is not a natural result of being human, but rather one put upon mankind by strong, selfish, sociopaths that profit from it?

Re:A Boom in Civilization

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is war an assumed mandatory condition for space travelers?

Because if you look at previous phases of human exploration, they all involved lots of fighting, too. There's no reason to think that exploring space will be any different - there's a lot of empty nothing out there, punctuated by a few hospitable pieces of rock. The first person to land on and claim a given rock for his own purpose damn well better be prepared to defend it from the next 30 guys who try to land and claim it for their purposes.

Don't ya think we would have already located some extraterrestrials if there were wars going on in space?

Yeah, I'll go set off a dozen large thermonuclear devices somewhere in the universe - no cheating and telling you which direction to look - you tell me when you spot them, okay?

Re:A Boom in Civilization

[blackbeak]

Previous phases of human exploration had a number of common or frequent driving elements that space exploration is not likely to have. Such as: zealous religious missionary activities, conquest at behest of the king, racist judgement and condemnation of indigenous cultures, imperialist overreach into another country for minerals, slaves or other goods, etc. Most of that ideology is driven by the social thinkers/drivers at the top (or the powers behind the throne) and the privileged class just below that, not by the average citizens who prefer to just raise their families in peace. Humans will probably not even make it into the "interstellar community" if the species can't shake off the rule of sociopath oligarchs.

If we can assume we've evolved enough to travel among the stars, we would have solved a number of social problems (anger management?) and tech ones as well. I would expect we'd be way, way beyond playing "Billy Goat's Bluff".

Ok, there's plenty of space out there. We might miss a few battles just looking up from earth.

Re:A Boom in Civilization

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Arguably, the question of whether there will be war 'in space'(as opposed to space travel, along with some messy little ground wars on inhabited planets and any sufficiently large habitable constructs; but minimal involvement between the two), depends pretty strongly on what assumptions you bake in about travel speed and cost, as well as those about the difficulty and cost of exploiting tricky objects like gas giants or very low density clouds of gas and dust.

If travel is fast and cheap, the universe is huge, so you'll really need to be emotionally involved to take much risk on protecting this rock when there are trillions of other rocks just like it(though if Berzerkers break out, their travel will presumably also be fast and cheap, and then you have issues). If travel is too slow, war gets less likely because the offense is at a substantial disadvantage: even if you can build 'generation ships' or similar that can survive journeys in the decades to centuries range, the locals will be decades to centuries ahead of where they were when you started out, while your ship will be decrepit at best. On occasion, you'll get lucky and the locals will have nuked themselves into the ground shortly before you show up; but barring that it will hurt.

It's only really when travel is cheap and fast enough that you can viably send the fleet to somewhere; but slow and expensive enough that borders, resource pockets, and assorted other points of interest are highly valuable, that there's really a good case for something that actually looks much like terrestrial war.

Re:A Boom in Civilization

[Jeremi]

Why is war an assumed mandatory condition for space travelers?

Nobody assumes it's mandatory for space travellers.

Lots of people assume it's mandatory if you want to make a profit selling your space-themed video game. And they're probably right about that.

Re:A Boom in Civilization

[barc0001]

> Don't ya think we would have already located some extraterrestrials if there were wars going on in space?

Why would you think that? Let's open with a quote from Douglas Adams:

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”
  Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Our own galaxy is 200,000 LIGHT YEARS across. This means it takes light 200,000 years to cross from one side to the other. It's friggin' enormous. And what we can observe is only relatively large energy sources like stars. Let's presume for a minute that there are some ETs happily engaged in armed conflict with each other 500 light years from us, tossing around 20 megaton nukes all day long like they're NBA players at a strip club making it rain. Assume that they are using 10,000 of such warheads against each others ships every day engaged in action around a star system. That's a total energy output of 200 GT (Gigatons) per day. The STAR in that system if it's a star like Sol will be putting out 7890000000000 GT per day of energy. How are we even supposed to detect 200GT more on top of that load? That's like going into Giants stadium at night and staring at the light arrays from the pitchers mound and trying to pick out someone flicking a lighter for a half a second in the midst of one of the arrays.

Secondly, I mentioned the "space is big" thing, right? Suppose these races developed doomsday devices that could actually kill stars and are happily wiping out each others' systems with nova-bombs. But they're fighting 500 LY away from us and their war only got really going 200 years ago. It's still going to be 300 years before we start seeing evidence of their handiwork.

Re:A Boom in Civilization

[EzInKy]

It is just that war is a natural state for humans. Just look at Europe today. No matter how open and welcoming a society can be, there will always come along someone who demands subservience to the will of their sky pixie.

Re:A Boom in Civilization

[inqrorken]

"Let's assume, that the human race manages to balance birth and death, just right to fit its own planets, and thereby becomes peaceful. What happens? Soon (about next Wednesday) the Bugs move in, kill off the breed which 'ain't gonna study war no more' and the universe forgets us"

Though the best argument made in the novel is, 'juvenile delinquent' is an oxymoron.

Re:A Boom in Civilization

[rossdee]

I thought our galaxy was only about 100,000 LY across
Wikipedia says 100,000 to 120,000

But maybe Samsung will come out with a bigger one

Re:A Boom in Civilization

[Sloppy]

May I once again posit that war is not a natural result of being human, but rather one put upon mankind by strong, selfish, sociopaths that profit from it?

It's a natural result of life, apparently. Go look at some pictures of floppy-eared puppies, or fluffy kittens or fish or trees or algae or fungus: awwww, what cute warlike sociopaths. "You're eating my food, competing for my mate, or claiming my turf? Fuck you. DIE!!" Humanity is the only thing I ever heard of, who sometimes isn't sociopathic.

One can hypothesize a space empire without war, but it would require some extreme creativity. If you have an idea for a warless game, that's awesome, but do you really think war is a far-fetched assumption on someone else's part? I know what planet you grew up on, earthling, so quite pretending you're from some other alien background.

No, no and no!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not installing this! Out of respect for my starved turtle (RRtycoon), ex-girlfriends (Civ 1 to 4),...

Linux support?

[Eythian]

No Linux support? What is this? 2014?

I got the perfect title for it

[funwithBSD]

Master of Orion!

Re:I got the perfect title for it

[__aaclcg7560]

My roommate loved that game (MOO2). His favorite tactic was to hold his enemies at bay long enough to build out 36 Death Stars that would systematically vaporize all the enemy planets. Having 36 Death Stars firing at once is enough to bring the CPU to its knees. He never got tired of wrecking the interstellar neighborhood.

Re: We built this city?

[fyngyrz]

All those moments will be lost in time ...like tears in the rain.

MOO

[Vrallis]

*Please*, please, please...let this be what I always hoped Master of Orion would become...

Re:Old stuff.

[cb88]

Urquan-Masters...literally is Star Control 2. They even upgraded it some I think in the sound department...

Now if you mean new material in the style with with the level of cooky inspired awesomeness that is SC2 then yes... totally yes :D

Re:Old stuff.

[gl4ss]

Master of Orion comes to mind..

first moo was pretty good. the sequels.. were missing something somehow.

a decent master of magic remake would be nice.

Spore

[Jarik C-Bol]

Sid Meier is just re-making spore as 3 games, and skipping the weird creature creation stage. Seriously, at this stage we have a 'conquer the world' game, a 'conquer nearby star system' game, and now we have a 'conquer you local galactic arm' game? sounds like spore, only without the insane promises.

Re:Old stuff.

[Wraithlyn]

MOO2 was pretty good too.. the only thing I remember disliking compared to the first one was the number of ships you could build were more limited due to different supply mechanics.

MOO3 wasn't evan a game, it was a fucking spreadsheet. Never been more disappointed in a game. And I've played Daikatana and DNF.

Re:Old stuff.

[ConaxConax]

Sounds more like Sid Meier's Pirates! except in space.