I think the first issue with expanding minors remains is it worth all the work.
As I recall it will only happen if and when it is as important as other outstanding game issue.

My main concerns are not about the work required but rather the impact on gameplay. My feeling is that it is more likely to hurt gameplay than improve it.

If anything, I'd say minors would start with their colonies already, well, colonized. The more powerful the minor, the more colonies they'd start with. It would simulate the difficulty in annexation. At least one game has done that already, most likely with BotF in mind. But, that game had a HUGE map - 5000 stars huge.

Forgive me for inadequate explanation.

When I said "colonizes" I meant that was occuring "during map generation."

So starting at Turn 1, Vulcans would have their home system + X surrounding systems already colonized and growing at minor race growing rates.

I can see where balance becomes an issue but putting an artificial limit on their expansion (i.e. they stop at this range or this many planets) would allow them to be viable opponents early game, but by the end game they should be little more then an annoyance.

I think it would greatly improve both replayability, modability, and overall game satisfaction. It's one thing to be told in a text screen "The Breen are a powerful Empire" and then see their single planet system that you storm over like all the rest.

It would be another to meet the Breen "Empire" and see 12 well defended and guarded systems.

I think there are numerous ways that they can be "crippled" so as not to overshadow the major races. Limiting their expansion is one of them. Once they hit their "limit" they stop invading and expanding, instead just shoring up their borders so that if you got into a war with the Breen and they curb stomped you, there is still a chance they will "stop" and so instead of being completely destroyed like against a major race, instead the left "side" of your map is now effectively off-limits unless you want to fight past a bunch of Breen Warships.

So unlike BotF where minor race ships just float freely around, minor race ships not classified as "explorers" or "raiders" would instead defend their home turf. So you would still get Vulcan scout ships or Yridian spies or Orion raiders floating around and causing trouble, but the "Vulcan Battlecruiser" or "Breen Warship" would stay patrolling/intercepting in Breen space.

Again, early game, if you get into a war, while a destroyer or some scouts can cause you trouble, it would take a very unlikely scenario where your entire empire crumbles at the hands of a handful of fast attack ships (note: not a swarm, a handful).

HOWEVER if you want to take the fight to the Breen or Sheliak or Kezon, THEN you'll have to bring the big guns. So a minor race won't destroy your empire, but they sure can destroy your main battle fleet.

The major concern I could see is a player getting "trapped" by hostile minor races. So say you were stuck between the Kezon, Sheliak, and Breen and they all expanded and surrounded your empire early on, were all hostile towards you... you could become isolated and stuck. So would it be possible to limit the # of expanding empires per "quadrant" of space?

There was talk about an 80x80 map, so could you subdivide that into, say, 20x20 chunks and say only one expanding minor could be in each of those 16 "sectors". If you limit their expansion to only at most, 10 squares from their homeworld, the likelihood of you getting surrounded by minors should be greatly reduced.

Instead, ideally, you might have a minor empire on one side and the other, but there were ould be large corridor of space that you could still move around and between them. 10-square empire would be the rarest one, perhaps only Breen, Ferengi, and Kezon (and ?? for gamma).

So each Quadrant (Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta) would have only only "large" empire (Breen, Sheliak, Kezon, ??? (Jem'Hadar?), a couple mediums 5-square empires, and then the rest being 3-square empires, and again, limiting one per 20x20 section of space.

Someone would need to go through and just test map generations to make sure huge blobs of "minor races" don't occur, and if so, why?

Notice you'll have 4 other (AI) expanding empires in the galaxy.

/nod. A critical concern I would have is that all this eats up cycle times.

If of the 170 minor races require processing time, and minor races can expand and fight, and the AI is expanding and fighting...you see where this is going.


Aurora, an awesomely detailed 4x game currently in alpha I think...fun game, massive amounts of detail but a major concern is that if you have more then one "enemy empire" in the game, if the two enemy empires bump into each other and start fighting the game grinds to a halt as the enemy eats up all the cycle times circling around each other, blowing each up other up etc. while you just get frustrated because you're clear across the galaxy and can't build a single farm because it takes too long to process just 5 seconds of game time, let alone the month speed you were doing before.


But that's mainly an issue because their combat engine is integrated into everything else (and the game is built in VB). SO if processing time is NOT a concern, I think it would be really really really cool. Yes, you could be hemmed in with a minor race on one side and a hostile major on the other, but that's part of the fun and challenge. Perhaps that can be built into the difficulty level, so that on "easy" mode minor's don't expand while on "impossible" each expanding minor is basically the same as a major (limitless expansion) so instead of just facing K/R/C/F/D you also face Breen, Kezon, Sheliak, Andorans, Vulcan, etc. etc. etc.

I would dub that "impossible level difficulty"

There are a few places (like this thread) where I have glazed over some of the issues with minor expanding races. I'm not convinced that it could be implemented in a way that consistently improved gameplay. Sure, it could improve gameplay, but it could also screw it up pretty badly, and the odds tend to shift in that direction.

Here's kinda my take on this; I understand that it's a lot of hassle at the moment, and there are other, more important things (such as AI) to work on. But it's also something I personally really, really want, so how about this:

Leave the possibility of coding it in later, after the majority of the game is done, and put it off until then. In other words, don't make code that you'd have to change later to make it possible, and if time permits before releasing the game (or even after, as kind of an addon), go ahead and add it. It makes little sense to do it before adding AI anyway, so just procrastinate a little.

Like I said, though, I really want this. It was this feature, more than anything, that drew me to the game in the first place.

It would be nice to see as long as it does not overun the game.