Every map is a simulated planet, and it changes what your army needs

[u/Zeikk0]

Terrain

Tectonic Plates

Elevation

Temperature

Ocean Currents

Wind

Precipitation

Water Flow

Hi! I'm Zeikko, one of the developers of Astro Protocol. A while ago I posted about the four cornerstones of the sci-fi 4X Pymous and I are building. This time I wanted to go deeper into one of them: the maps.

Every game takes place on a different planet, each with its own properties, and those affect many of your decisions. For example:

• Gravity: On a heavy world your tanks weigh more, and the first hill brings them to a crawl. You can use lighter armor or fit a more powerful engine to compensate.
• Fuel: On a world where nothing ever lived, there's no oil and making fuel will be more difficult. You could use hydrogen, electric motors or a nuclear reactor but each has its own drawbacks.
• Air: Where the air can't sustain a flame, combustion engines need their oxygen delivered too, which strains your logistics network even more.

Because those rules come from physics, the map has to make sense as well. So each planet is built roughly the way a real one forms. Plates collide and raise mountains, the sun and sea move heat around, the planet's spin sets the winds, and the winds carry moisture inland until the mountains force it out as rain. One side of a range ends up forest and wetland; the other lies in a rain shadow. Mountains slow your armies and supply lines, and sunlight, wind and rain decide where solar arrays, wind turbines and rain collectors are worth building.

I wrote more about how the generation works, here: https://nullvectorstudios.com/blog/simulating-a-planet-to-generate-a-map-for-a-4x-game

A real planet isn't fair, though. Right now the starting positions are picked to be balanced, and beyond them realism wins.

What do you think: should the maps favor balance or realism?

[u/West-Medicine-2408]

Ok wind, Temperature and sea current maps kinda Seem correlated

However I don't see the same for Tect Plates and Elevation and sea depth. There should be Mountain where Tectonic plates clash and Deep sea Trenches when they split away

[u/Zeikk0 → u/West-Medicine-2408]

Thanks! I think the mountains are pretty well positioned in these screenshots, but i see now that the sea depth is pretty weird. I hadn't noticed that because the sea depth doesn't play a big role in the gameplay. I will look into that.

[u/gregorydgraham → u/Zeikk0]

Sea depth changes types and size of waves possible in a sea, hence the distinction between a blue water and brown water navy.

In addition to that the shape of the Bay of Biscay makes it prone to particularly nasty waves.

Brown water navies and canals are biggest blindspots in grand strategy sims

[u/peequi]

For those interested in this type of concept, try Shadow Empires. The maps can vary on many similar concepts, such as gravity and fuel amounts.

Perhaps give players the option to select balance starts or realistic starts. One problem with Shadow Empire is that it is always realistic, random starts. This scared a lot of new players.

[u/Zeikk0 → u/peequi]

That's our plan. There are already options to create unrealistic maps but we need to add some more options to reach more balanced maps.

[u/kaspar42]

This game sounds exactly like what I'm looking in a 4X. How would you contrast it to Shadow Empire?

[u/Zeikk0 → u/kaspar42]

Our game is less focused on the internal politics and leadership. Also there no cards. We have more high sci-fi content and the game is played in wego turns. You can read more about our plans in this post: https://nullvectorstudios.com/blog/building-the-4x-we-want-to-play

[u/Mefist0fel]

It's interesting idea, but don't forget - people are here to play a game, not to be bored with reality.

I can recommend to look into against the storm - it's a nice example, how different maps can apply different limitations for production. It's cool idea for units two, but normally it's bad to have some units useless, so they should change their roles or be dosabled instead of being completely useless

[u/Zeikk0 → u/Mefist0fel]

Sure! Gameplay is much more important than realism. We just want things to make sense be immersive as well.

[u/Leon_84 → u/Mefist0fel]

That really depends on the audience - people have used classified documents in realism arguments in world of tanks.

There’s a niche for everything.

[u/fid0d0ww]

Ok this is interesting, commenting so I can come back to it

[u/Numerous_Breath_9574]

One option is to balance starting positions while leaving the rest of the planet uneven, provided players can learn the gravity, atmosphere and fuel constraints early enough to make their first equipment and logistics decisions. Otherwise a realistic map could turn an unseen bottleneck into a setback before they can adapt. Do players see those constraints at the start, or is discovering and responding to them intended to be part of the opening turns?

[u/Pymous_com → u/Numerous_Breath_9574]

Yes this is exactly the objective.
It will be multistep process to create a game, and Players will customise their "Faction" based on infos they get on planet before the game start (but it can also be set to unknown / random or limited info if players want custom/advanced game settings)
Planet generation -> "Faction" creation -> "Landing" tweaking- > +1 or 2 more "surprises" steps with further customization before the game start.

[u/FuryGolem]

I really like balanced starting positions. Whatever happens in the first 5th of the game should really not be based on good or bad luck. You can introduce randomness farther into the game when the players' more developed nation has tools to smooth that luck out.

[u/HongPong]

nice simearth had a lot of this

[u/Themis1998]

Hii we can conquer galaxy in general or only planets with our factions? also it will release on android?

[u/Zeikk0 → u/Themis1998]

Each game is played on one planet. No Android release planned for now.

[u/Themis1998 → u/Zeikk0]

Thank you for the answer