What would make it better

Gratuitous Forum Gratuitous Space Battles
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I hope this is the official forum for the game and the actual developers of the game are reading it, I registered just to post this topic.

I really enjoyed Gratuitous Space Battles, it is quite addictive and well done game but here are some constructive suggestions:

-improved animation of everything, ships and turrets moving more fluidly and with greater animated detail, if Defense Grid: The Awakening could do it so well it so can you, animation always brings everything to life and is much more important than graphics

-story driven campaigns, was it so hard to find a couple of SF books on the internet or short stories and slightly adjust them to the game, how hard is it to copy 2-3 paragraphs of text on each mission?
It is indeed very easy, undemanding and simple and would bring more to the game so I was surprised you didn’t bother with it at all.

-campaign permanence. not only story driven, but missions should have gradual consequences of how you ended them, having permanent ships that level up, and each upgrade/unlock decision is relevant and costly. Just think how much more would this add to the game. Even Plants vs Zombies played it out like that, gradual progress and accumulation and later you have many mini games and endless survival scenarios if you don’t care about reading and story.

-also a galactic conquest mode with economy aspect and ship leveling and permanence like Star Wars: Empire At War would be the best thing for this game.

-change the name of the game, seriously, Gratuitous Space Battles is not so cutesy as it is lazy, If anything Defense Grid: The Awakening showed is that a single person’s superb voice acting and story telling fleshed out much of the appeal for the game. You don’t have to downplay it and be sarcastic to attract more attention to the game, it stands on its own.
The current name of the game is not conducive to any kind of immersion.

I think these are my main objections, I’m sure I forgot a lot of minor things I thought of while playing…

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…What could be animated? They’re space ships, not transformers.

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Hello, Xol, and welcome aboard! GSB’s designer (yes, singular) has a frequent presence in these forums.

I think in this case you’d best be served by looking up the definition of “gratuitous”. The lack of such imagery is fully intentional and is a core aspect of this game. Cliffski has stated repeatedly that in this game, the cause, genesis, reason or motivation for any and all of the battles does not matter. We’re mainly here for pure strategy. Oh yes, and to watch things erupt into boiling spheres of pure annihilation as one’s strategy is executed by your individual AI captains.

Check Cliffski’s dev blog here. A campaign mode for GSB is well into the design stages as we speak. We don’t yet know the full scope of it.

See above. It’s not lazy at all. If you’re looking for a story-driven game, this is emphatically not it. :slight_smile: I’d like you to have a clearer understanding of the kind of game GSB really is so that you can see its strengths and enjoy them for what they are.

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Take a look at animations here-

supremecommander2.com/na/uni … g_kriptor/
supremecommander2.com/na/uni … ul_ripper/
supremecommander2.com/na/uni … e/airnomo/

and so on…weapon effects, shield impacts, weapon turning, ship moving(accurate engine exhaust level and placement) etc…as for your “space ships, not transformers” remark maybe you should take a look at first 10 minutes of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith…

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Hi again! Thanks for the links; I’m pleased to have some way of better understanding what you’re requesting.

The animations in question are visually impressive. However, I fail to see how the inclusion of such would lend any utility to GSB. If I had (for example) little gun-cam video or com-chatter audio interruptions popping up at random intervals I’d be royally annoyed. When one’s trying to remain focused on the overall ebb and flow of the battlezone, I really couldn’t care less about anything that detracts from my strategic “read” of the situation. Especially if said content is obviously added just for the “ooooh, shiny!” factor. It’s like going to make a castling in chess and then suddenly having a dramatic pop-up movie of the attack pushed into my face. Very pretty, yes, but adding nothing to the gameplay and in reality likely detracting from one’s concentration.

As for the opening of “Revenge of the Sith,” yes that was pretty ridiculous. If you remember that it was intended solely as over-the-top dramatic fiction and in no way representative of a spaceborne tactical challenge that you were tasked with winning, then it’s a superb example of art…not a battle sim. :slight_smile:

I’d far rather keep GSB at its present level of abstraction…that’s already optically awesome enough for me while not obscuring the data that I’m trying to obtain. Just my $0.02, of course.

6

I must agree with Astro here. The animations you indicated (thanks for those by the way) are very cool, very impressive stuff. But they really wouldn’t add much to GSB. We’ve got some perspective-type animation in a few of the backgrounds (asteroids with the Order expansion, lightning effects with the Swarm), and that is about enough for me.

The only bit I will add to Astro’s rebuttal, all of which I agree with, is this: The name Gratuitous Space Battles gives this game a trait that is somewhat rare in games these days: It is Exactly What It Says On The Tin.

7

A highly replayable campaign with a story (1 page of text per conflict) would be awesome.
Like if you would start with a small amount of resources on your homeplanet and start your galactic conquest from there, with many conditions of each conflict determining your overall success, like how many crew or ships you lost, if you have no loses several times in a row you receive certain strategic abilities and buff to your forces based on what tactics and weapons you used, and many other boosters just like the awards(medals) system in King’s Bounty: Armored Princess, that system would fit perfectly here.

8

You might want to take a look at Weird Worlds: Adventures in Infinite Space. It has a battle system similar to GSBs, and is heavily rpg/plot-driven.

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That’s not a proper game, everything is too rudimentary and symbolic.

Btw, how do I stop the ships from wandering off, despite formation command almost always some ship decides to go solo, maybe the command repertoire should be expanded?

10

One very important thing I forgot.

RPG aspect makes everything better:

-your units gaining experience and leveling up made Company of Heroes, Tiberium Wars, Supreme Commander 2 much better
-economy and upgrading your weapons made Resident Evil 4 a huge hit
-wargear and loot made Dawn of War 1 and 2 much much better
-Borderlands, enough said
-Killing Floor, wouldn’t be the same without the classes and leveling, many people say that’s why it is better than Left4Dead(besides KF having much better gun animations)

every genre of games benefits hugely from any kind of RPG aspect.

11

“Better” is a purely subjective term. And it becomes fairly clear from reading these forums that the majority of the posters are generally satisfied with GSB as it stands. When there is a significant issue that bothers the player base, Cliff is pretty good at addressing it.

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ships dont wander off, they follow the orders youve given them. if theyre falling back its because they have a Cautious order, if they are wandering around outside weapons range, reduce their range setting.

14

module suggestion–>missile redirection, often when the enemy ship is destroyed the existing missiles bound for that ship blew up in mid-flight instead of continuing to new closest targets, it would affect only missiles from the equipped ship.

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If you post those suggestions in a new topic in the suggestion subforum there is a much larger change for anyone to see it.