Would You Buy a B5 game

[Valen is my name]

did anyone else play ogame a while back? if that was made into babylon 5 it would be a great first step towards better and bigger b5 games

 

[cordas]

An RTS wouldn't have to be about resource collection and rushing. The best RTS games have no resource collection at all (it's just a relic from Dune II - The Battle for Arrakis anyway) and with decently balanced units it would come down to tactics and manouvres instead of spamming units. Take away the ability to build units and you take away spamming and rushing. See Blitzkrieg and MechCommander for good RTS games with no unit building.

good games, but where is the back ground for it? Yes there was Gropos, but thats just one episode and didn't really give enough info to base a game on. All it would be is a B5 themed game rather than an actual B5 game.

 

[locarno24]

Take away the ability to build units and you take away spamming and rushing. See Blitzkrieg and MechCommander for good RTS games with no unit building.

And the Total War series....

Essentially, something akin to Total War, with fleet combat replacing the battles would be superb;

B5 is as much about the intrigue and politics as it is the fleet battles (cool as they are), and a second point is that that said intrigue is as regularly against your own race as it is the enemy (TP war, EA civil War, Londo starting the Narn War largely as a political manouvre in the centauri court, Crusade's assorted shadow-ness, the minbari castes manouvring for influence, etc, etc, etc.)

The CCG did this well; a player represents a single faction within the race; that of the races B5 ambassador - who may or may not be a dominant faction within their race....the ambassador builds up influence; resulting in certain elements of the military/intelligence agents coming under their control. Again, think Rome:Total War with its four (nominally) allied roman factions competing with one another as much as the other nations (albeit usually in a les military fashion)

If anyone's played Master of Orion, then you get a good idea of some of the mechanisms involved, but with (most of) the map and diplomacy visible from the start, more limited technological development (short of aquiring alien technology - i.e. Minbari/Vorlon or EA/Shadow, or indeed, via diplomacy, EA/Minbari)

 

[Lord David the Denied]

good games, but where is the back ground for it? Yes there was Gropos, but thats just one episode and didn't really give enough info to base a game on. All it would be is a B5 themed game rather than an actual B5 game.

You misunderstand me. I didn't mean a B5 game should be a small-scale wargame like Blitzkrieg, just that the unit allocation and balance should be handled in a similar way. A bit more detail would be nice, of course, but with a large-scale fleet combat game it wouldn't be needed.

 

[Locutus9956]

What Id REALLY like is a computer version of B5Wars in the same way they did Starfleet Command 1&2 from Starfleet Battles.

I still think B5Wars was superb simulation of B5Ships thats onyl real drawback was its complexity made it rather slow to play. With a computer doing all the calculations for you it would be AWSOME.

Basically I want B5 Starfleet Command (hell even a MOD for Starfleet command would do me nicely but Ive yet to find one that isnt half finished or just rubish!)

 

[Lord David the Denied]

A mod for Bridge Commander would be better, I think. I just don't like that behind-the-ship perspective... but then end up using it in Bridge Commander... :?

 

[Locutus9956]

bridge commander was a nice idea but it just lacked the level of tactics you could play about with in SFC (the first 2 anyway, SFC 3 wasnt even close). The other problem BC had was the campaign got very repetitve after a while, it started out superbly with nice varied missions then it just turned into 'today captain your assignment is: BLOW UP CARDASSIAN!' Followed by blowing up some more Cardassians, with a round of blowing up some Cardassians to close out the evening

Dont get me wrong, I LIKE blowing up Cardassians, but it gets a bit boring after a while That said a B5 Game along those lines with a good plot could be very very cool. It would be great to command an Omega from the bridge .

It would also be good to be able to actually play the whole game from the bridge properly unlike BC where you had to play most fights from 3rd person.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Agreed. Trouble with Starfleet Command, though, was that it was massively, grossly, sickeningly inaccurate. The only thing it actually had to do with Star Trek was a few of the ship models and a few race names. Starfleet Command III was, at least, a bit truer to the source material.

A B5 game in this vein, done accurately, would be pretty fantastic. Single-player campaigns for races besides earth would be basically essential. A Narn-Centauri war campaign leading up to a Shadow War and Earth Civil war campaign would be great. You could command a Narn ship in the war with the Centauri, then swap sides for a Centauri campaign, then get a White Star for the Shadow War campaign and perhaps move up to a Sharlin, before getting an EA ship for the civil war.

 

[Obsidian]

Having recently found myself sucked into the total war series once again, I'd have to say that style of play would really be quite good for a game based on B5. Might be a little hard to distinguish it from Empires at War since you would effectively have battles in both space and on land. The big difference could be things like diplomats, merchants, spies, and assasins. EoW was effectively "Build force, conquer planet. Build bigger force, conquer next planet. etc;" No intrigue there since it was always a two sided conflict. B5 on the other hand can go in all sorts of different directions.

 

[emperorpenguin]

Agreed. Trouble with Starfleet Command, though, was that it was massively, grossly, sickeningly inaccurate. The only thing it actually had to do with Star Trek was a few of the ship models and a few race names. Starfleet Command III was, at least, a bit truer to the source material..

SFC3 was a great game. I loved the ability to play a campaign as Federation, Romulan, Klingon or Borg.
That would be great for B5. The ship combat would need to be 3D though and not dogfight-esque.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

There was true 3D movement in Bridge Commander. Weapon arcs were above and below the centreline of your ship as well as foward, aft, left and right.

Either a game like Bridge Commander, focused on individual ships duking it out, or a game like Empire at War with fleet combat and galactic politics would be good if done right. If done badly, it'd stink.

 

[H]

I'm playing sfc3 again at the moment, my only problem with the game was the movement system, it's a complete pain, nearly every AI ship just sits on top of you and flies in a circle, a very very tight circle, grrr!
still played it till far to late though. Nearly ready to upgrade to a Vor'Cha

 

[Iain McGhee]

The Starfleet Command series is based on the Starfleet Battles boardgame which predates the films as well as TNG. That's why a lot of the ships are made up to fill out various roles in the fleets, just like in ACTA (and B5Wars). Same reason why there are several races which don't feature in the show (and one which was renamed from the Kzinti who turned up in an episode of the cartoon series which Larry Niven wrote, a Star Trekified version of "The Slaver Weapon"). SFC3 was much improved after the patches were released, same as it's predecessors. There's also a lot of fan-made "realism" mods for all three (and Orion Pirates) for those who want TOS-style ships.

Back to the thread, I'd like to see a ship-to-ship game along the lines of NEXUS (yes, I know a mod is in development with a demo released but it seems to have stalled) and/or a strategy game along the lines of Masters Of Orion (there was a Star Trek one done by Microprose but I don't remember the name) with large-scale empire building and diplomacy.
Don't think a RPG would work that well (how would you deal with ship combat properly involving your character without tacking on a simplified subgame or making it hands-off cutscenes ?)and I don't think the material is suited to a RTS (unless you count the Homeworld series I suppose).

 

[Valen is my name]

how about a sims type game set on Babylon 5 itself, where you control a character and the others are computer based, then the online mode would have a real Babylon 5 community! (i apologise if this has already been suggested)

 

[Locutus9956]

and/or a strategy game along the lines of Masters Of Orion (there was a Star Trek one done by Microprose but I don't remember the name)

Birth of the Federation. It was basically the sequel to masters of Orion 2 but with a star trek licence. And it was fantastic and had (and still does to this day imho) have the best use of intelligence and diplomacy in any game of its type (with the POSSIBLE exception of Civilastion 4).

There WAS a semit made mod for it for B5 but I could never get it to work properly and from what I read it wasnt a very good Mod. But overall yes. A B5 4X Strategy game would rule beyond all possible levels of awsomeness

 

[Spike1382]

and/or a strategy game along the lines of Masters Of Orion (there was a Star Trek one done by Microprose but I don't remember the name)

Birth of the Federation. It was basically the sequel to masters of Orion 2 but with a star trek licence. And it was fantastic and had (and still does to this day imho) have the best use of intelligence and diplomacy in any game of its type (with the POSSIBLE exception of Civilastion 4).

There WAS a semit made mod for it for B5 but I could never get it to work properly and from what I read it wasnt a very good Mod. But overall yes. A B5 4X Strategy game would rule beyond all possible levels of awsomeness

Birth of the Federation had a good strategic element, but lacked tacticly. And kinda fell apart when the Borg showed up. Rebellion had a great chracter element. Just happened to lack, well, everything else.

 

[Locutus9956]

Tactically it was really just a case of whoever has the most ships won but it wasnt that bad there. As for the borg, well they were done as the Borg SHOULD be in Startrek (ie truly scary) but you could turn off random events then they never showed up (there was also a mod file available to take them out of the game without disabling the other events )

BoTF shows its age a bit these days sadly but I would love to see a proper sequel to it still (and a B5 version )

 

[cordas]

Don't think a RPG would work that well (how would you deal with ship combat properly involving your character without tacking on a simplified subgame or making it hands-off cutscenes ?)and I don't think the material is suited to a RTS (unless you count the Homeworld series I suppose).

I think its ideal for RPG, all the politics ploting and scheming, you could simply just ignore ship combat and leave that to the jocks, you could put in a mini game if you wanted to but i wouldn't bother.

 

[katadder]

redo Star Wars Supremacy (rebellion) as B5 with updated graphics etc. thats a cool game.

btw anyone still play this? i would love to get some 2 player going on it.

 

[Niemand]

I've got a few friends that were talking about making a B5 mod for Freespace 2. So many of the ships in there already look B5ish, it's not that hard of a port. And who wouldn't love flying some Tbolts and Starfurries!