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Lost Empire: Immortals - Q&A Feature
Gwynne Dixon
01/02/2008
TVG dips its little pinky into the final frontier to talk with Pollux Gamelabs about its upcoming space strategy game...
Soon to join the likes of Galactic Civilizations and Sword of the Stars in the space strategy sub-genre is Lost Empire: Immortals. TVG recently caught up with Pollux Gamelabs' Lead Programmer, Jonas Moller, to discuss the intricacies of the studio's incoming turn based strategy game. Stay tuned for more details in our preview next week.
TVG: Lost Empire: Immortals opts for a fully automated battle engine that provides an impressive visual display of the combat, but sacrifices player interaction during battle. Other turn based battle systems, such as Civ IV's, have a simplistic visual representation of conflict, but a greater degree of player choice during combat. What was behind your decision to go with the fully automated engine?
Basically, we've played a lot of games which are turn based strategy with real-time battles. It's interesting to begin with, but then gets kind of repetitive once you've found the optimal strategy - you've played your hundredth battle and you get bored.
With Lost Empire, You don't have to watch the battles. Also, at any time you can go back and see what happened [all the battles that are played out in turn based play are saved for use in the automated engine].
TVG: So, you can give your ships certain traits which determine how they move in battle. Additionally, you can customise each ship's weapon setup in the fleet. What are you doing with these features to add depth to the strategy gameplay?
You can actually see where units are heading. Your weak units might be getting pounded by bombers, or maybe they're sneaking around and perhaps you should change your strategy by setting ships to guard your weak ships. Maybe you should tell your fighters to stay back and protect against enemy bombers.
We're aiming to make a game which allows you to graphically conceive the battle, allowing you to see where you need to change your strategy. Also, the weapons system should make it pretty clear which weapons are being used, so you can see if an enemy is using long range weapons for example. This means you'll need some fast ships with some heavy hitting, close range weapons, so you can get in there and take him out.
TVG: Many space-based strategy games, such as Galactic Civilizations, have a combat experience feature for the ships. So, the more battle-hardened they are, the harder they will be to take down. Will we see this in Lost Empire?
Not currently. It could be something for an expansion pack.
TVG: You mentioned the modding system earlier. What's that going to offer gamers?
The modding system is really all of our variables in a spreadsheet, so you can easily find where everything is. We have these editors which allow you to go in and very easily change the graphical user interface, the layout of buttons and so on... We have the ship editor as well so it should be possible to make a game that doesn't look like our game.
TVG: Is that going to be accessible to users who perhaps aren't that experienced at modding?
It's pretty easy to change values in a spreadsheet.
TVG: But isn't there also a couple of other editors as well?
The ship editor and particle editor. You can make effects for weapons, so you can say 'This weapon should be an ion cannon that stays on for this long.' You can introduce these sorts of effects and changes. They won't be shipped with the game because we'll probably need a bit more time to make them user-friendly so that people outside of the company can use them.
It's something that we'll release after the game is released, or perhaps after we've produced our gold master (then we'll have some time before the game is released).
TVG: But the aim is to make it accessible to most people who will pick up a copy of the game?
Sure, yeah. It'll be pretty easy to modify how the game functions. If people have demands for the game after that, then we can put them in patches if they want something a bit more interesting.
TVG: There's a story that lies behind the strategy of Lost Empire. Am I right in saying that this forms one of the winning conditions?
There is a storyline winning mode, where there are these two immortals - one is sort of good and the other is definitely evil. You get missions from either one of them and you can accept them. At some point, one of them will ask for an alliance and these two factions divide before war erupts.
So, your goal is to destroy the other immortal but if you don't want the story then you can turn it off. There are other winning conditions such as having the strongest economy, being the strongest player and having the most science.
TVG: And this story goes back to an ancient civilisation that used to inhabit the galaxy?
Millennia ago, these immortals ruled the galaxy and they had all these minor races which remain in the galaxy. But something destructive happened and players will have to find hints of what happened.
TVG: From what you've shown us, it appears as if units move in fleets during the turn based game. This obviously works in conjunction with the mammoth battles in the automated battle engine. What's a good size for these fleets and what types of ship will they be made up of?
That really depends who your opponent is and what your sciences are. You could have a fleet which has small ships with heavy hitting weapons and fast engines, so you can get in close and hit the enemy before they have time to react. Or maybe you like battleships, in which case you can have a fleet of battleships.
The further you get into the game, the more fleets you will have and the more ships you can build. There's not a building limitation, so if you have a very large empire you're probably going to see pretty big fleet battles.
TVG: In the Lost Empire galaxy there are an impressive 5,000 star systems. Are these going to be randomly generated at the beginning of each game or are they set?
They're not set. We have a galaxy generator which takes a lot of parameters into account. We can make the galaxy smaller with less stars, or the centre of the galaxy can vary in size as well as the galaxy arms. So, you'll be able to select different galaxies of different sizes.
TVG: You've also mentioned the 30 minor races that inhabit the galaxy and that you can conquer, culturally influence or team-up with these races. Can you tell us a little more about how this dynamic works?
You can become friends with them by giving them resources. If you're close to a minor race, then you can sign a trade agreement. Once you've achieved this then you can start getting sciences from them. Each minor race has a few sciences that you can get from them only.
You can also assimilate an entire minor race if you have enough minerals. Then, of course, when you give them minerals then they can build up their fleets and sometimes they will attack. Even if they still like you some rogue general might come and bother you, so you'll have to take this into account.
TVG: I think you also mentioned that, if you befriend a minor race, then they will help to protect your boarders by fending off aggressors. Is that right?
I would like that to happen, but that's not in the game yet. Right now they attack those they are near to, so if you want to annoy another player then you can give resources to a minor race that is next to them, and the minor race will build up a fleet. Then the other player will have to make a choice of whether he wants to give them even more resources. Eventually you will have to do some military action to make sure they don't get too strong.
Also, there are different power levels to the minor races. Usually a player will start next to one that is not too difficult, so there's this initial conflict with a non-major opponent where you get to do battle and try out different ships. Then, at the centre of the galaxy, there are these very powerful minor races which have much better systems that are more desirable, but they also have bigger ships.
TVG: What can you tell us about the different characteristics of planets, such as farming and trade for example?
They have farms, minerals and construction capacity. This is how fast ships are built, so if you want to build battle ships then you're probably going to need a construction system, otherwise they're going to take ages to build.
We've simplified trade because we don't like you to have to go and build individual trade routes. So, we've built trade systems which automatically build trade routes to the nearby systems. You sort of have to create this trade network and ensure that everything is connected.
TVG: That'll certainly take some of the more mundane labour out of the strategy...
We really focused on eliminating micro-management. We wanted it to be easily accessible and focus on the fun which is building fleets, designing ships and going out to conquer space.
TVG: In the past, space exploration strategy games have given gamers this vast expanse of space to explore, but then all you see in front of you are bland, 2D star systems as the fog of war is gradually eroded. Lost Empire certainly avoids this with glossy 3D visuals, a detailed battle engine and a vast galaxy that you can zoom in and out of at your leisure...
That's exactly what we're aiming for. Once you take a colony ship, you can go and build a colony way out in the expanse of space.
TVG: How long will a voyage take? Say, for example, travelling half-way across a 5,000 star system galaxy?
That's a pretty long time and you might have some trouble getting through all the gaps.
TVG would like to thank Jonas Moller, the Lead Programmer at Pollux Gamelabs, for taking the time to speak with us about the studios upcoming space strategy title. Lost Empire: Immortals is due out on PC during March.
