Interview With Lee Dotson of ZarkSoft Games

The video tutorials you’ve released so far give us a great overview of galactic imperial management, but the battle system remains a bit mysterious. How much does this early footage from back in April 2011 reflect what’s in place currently?

Unfortunately the visual battle shown in that video has been pulled from the game, but it will return in a post-launch update. Not too long after we released that video, we went into full beta and ran into a number of issues that needed to be addressed. Ultimately we decided that the core gameplay and stability needed to come before the enhanced visual combat display, so for now there’s just an animation that plays over the planet to indicate that a battle is happening there.

In terms of mechanics Empire is more focused on strategy than tactics, so battles are handled by a time-based round system with an AI determining which ship attacks which and when. What this means for a player is that they move all the ships they want to be involved in a particular battle and then press “attack.” Since the rounds are time-based, you can retreat if it looks like you’re taking heavy losses or send reinforcements into a battle that’s still in progress, and other players can join in as well.

I should also point out that since individual ships are targeting one another and a full battle is being simulated behind the scenes, things like the makeup of your fleet come into play so it’s not just about having the highest cumulative attack and defense ratings for a mass of ships. For example, Capital Class ships like a Super Dreadnaught have a very high attack and defense rating and are excellent for planetary siege, but they get bogged down when fighting large numbers of weak units because they can only attack one ship at a time.

What perks come with forming alliances with other players in Empire? Is there any way to win the game through trade and diplomacy, or should players expect that their alliances will have to break down at some point?  

There’s not a specific “diplomacy” win condition, but forming alliances and managing relations are big parts of the game. There are a number of reasons to form an alliance with someone. First of all, if you’re investing a ton of resources into fighting with your neighbors while someone else is quietly building their strength unchallenged in a remote corner of the galaxy, chances are you’ll be easy pickings. There’s always something to be said for convincing your neighbor that someone else is really the threat. In that regard Empire often plays out like an episode of the reality show Survivor, but with plasma cannons.

More directly though, Trade specialists can gather Rare Ore – a resource needed for most high level units and structures in the game – much more rapidly than the Researcher or Warlord specialties, so they’re often befriended by other specialties. As for what a trader gets out of the deal, their win condition requires them to gather huge amounts of resources and the best way to do that is to trade with other players. Obviously they don’t want to trade with other traders because they’d be directly competing with each other.

Tell us about some of the abilities the player can develop through scientific research. Could different players end up with vastly different fleets and defenses depending on their research paths? How about race choices – will that be on tap at release, or maybe a feature you’ll implement later?

Yes, player fleets and defenses can be dramatically different from one another. Currently there are roughly sixty technologies from four different schools of research, each of which has nine ranks that increase the bonuses received from that technology. A few of them are specialty-specific but for the most part the player can mix and match them as they see fit.

Based on the technologies you research you’ll be able to create different types of offensive, defensive, and trade units. Additional abilities include cloaking technologies, creating jump gates, destroying planets, and collapsing stars to create black holes.

Some of my favorite technologies, though, are the ones that don’t require you to directly attack another player. “Mercantile Diplomacy” allows you to set up trade routes with another player even if they’re at war with you; “Counterfeiting” allows you to covertly reduce another player’s share in a trade and even steal from them if you’re sufficiently advanced. “Piracy” lets you siphon off resources from vessels that are passing by. Meanwhile, “Smuggling” allows you to start loading another player’s population onto your cargo vessels instead of resources.

Currently there’s only one playable race in Empire and a supporting class of NPC aliens that inhabit the center of the galaxy. Adding races is something we’ve talked about doing. I’m a big proponent of giving a different look and feel to new alien races along with different styles of gameplay, so the time investment is a bit larger on that front. Therefore we decided to save alien races as a potential item for future expansion.