I am indie game developer with some successes and think about creating new, great, classic SF experience.

The question is "What makes FA unique and fantastic game?".

Fragile Allegiance is rather not known but I find out this game as the one of the greatest games in SF genre, unique and inspiring as well. Have some thoughts about this but I need your help to know if i am correct for sure. And to know what do you expect from classic SF game. Why do you play FA? What feature do you find most important or/and making the game memorable and powerful? Help me, and maybe one day this knowledge will help create great gaming experience :)

Are you already bound to the idea of making a FA remake? If not you might also consider leaning more towards its spiritual ancestor Utopia, which focusses in a sim-city manner on running a colony (you have to care for the needs of your colonists, while building up industry, finances, research and a military) - enriched by espionage and miliatry action vs aliens, trade and dealing with domestic issues like crime or random events:

http://www.mobygames.com/game/utopia-the-creation-of-a-nation

http://www.gog.com/wishlist/games/utopia_the_creation_of_a_nation

My dream would be a remake of this...ideally a remake should allow you to lead also the attacks on the aliens (in the original, you only have control over defending; attacks happen purely text-based) and the domestic issues could have much more depth (similar to Tropico, another favorite game of me)

When talking about a game like FA, it's maybe better to understand where the game doesn't work than where it does. FA has the makings of a timeless classic, but is marred by some bad design choices. Steep learning curve and byzantine interface aside, FA's primary failure is what it asks of the player: unrelenting high-speed micromanagement. At 10+ asteroids, the game becomes almost impossible to play, as you have to choose between setting up ore transfers and fighting your wars.

If this were a modern game, you'd think it hadn't been sufficiently playtested. Bizarre interface restrictions, such as only being able to add ships to fleets one at at time, introduce a grind factor to every screen. While some screens (like the missile interface) offer beautiful mouse support, the asteroid engine controls (to name one example) require navigating several sub-menus for each course correction. While supervisors can be hired to micromanage your asteroids, they're only moderately capable and themselves need to be micromanaged through their pay and stress levels.

If you're looking for a game idea, you could do worse than to simply make a clone of Fragile Allegiance. It has all the elements of a fast-paced 4x masterpiece, but an incredibly tedious execution. Simple interface improvements, and removal of detrimental game mechanics could produce a game to stand the test of time.

I think if you're looking at developing a 4x game, you would be best served looking at what is out there already, and what works and what doesn't. Now, obviously, a lot of that will be personal choice, but here's some of my feelings on the topic:

Game: Stars! Turn based, hot seat or play by email.
Pros: Good fleet interface, ships customizable, planets can be remotely mined (not needing a colony to extract resources). Lots of automation options for fleets in particular (patrol, assign tasks per patrol point, with repeat options), multiplayer support (not real time, PBEM, but still good). Good tech tree.
Cons: Zero diplomacy options. Every race is trying to kill you, and the only way to win is to exterminate everything.

Game: Master of Orion 2 Turn based, no multiplayer.
Pros: Good fleet interface, ships customizable, Good tech tree, diplomacy is fantastic, as well as allowing for alternate ways of winning (council vote). Great story to go with it as well, regarding the Antarens and Ancients; unique races.
Cons: Only way to get resources from planets is via colonizing. AI is limited and usually 'cheats' to be competitive. No multiplayer.

Game: Fragile Alliance Real time; multiplayer (in theory)
Pros: Very different universe; quasi-real time (I play with time pause during menus); Decent tech, but it's all available from the start (given enough cash); No worries about being able to colonize. Can issue multiple orders to ships (but not repeat).
Cons: Clunky interface; no real variety in colonies; very limited ship design/tech.

Then there are the real time games like Sword of the Stars, the Homeworld series, and others like that. Alpha Centauri would also be a good one to look at, but I haven't played that one.

I'll out line my dream 4X game (because this is something I've thought about for a long time):

The colony and production aspects would be turn based, similar to Stars! and MoO2. Once the right tech was achieved, fleets could intercept other enemy fleets in deep space (like Stars! and unlike MoO2). Ships would be customizable. The battles would be fully 3D and take place in real time, with options for full control (think Homeworld), or opt for automatic battles with each fleet having a number of settings that control their strategy (formation and attack/targeting order), and when/if they retreat. Remote mining or colonization would be available, and automatic trade routes could be set up (again, like Stars! has). Diplomacy would be a must (I've heard great things about the diplomacy in Alpha Centauri, but MoO2 does it very well). Diplomacy should be one means of winning, as well as no 'winner' but getting all the races to agree to alliance or peace...something like that.

Don't forget Star Trek Birth of the Federation. An awesome game on the Star Trek universe.

Hey guys, thanks for replies. In fact you mentioned the games I was inspired by too (like MoO2 and Alpha Centauri), which means I should probably listen to you a bit more :)

You are talking about diplomacy, tech trees and fleet control. Good interfece is off course a must have since it is the only way how game can communicate with player (and also - it can be well designed and I have enough skills from commercial gamedev to do that well). How about social aspect? I mean - races in MoO2 or fractions in Alpha Centauri?

Personally I think freedom is what makes this such a great game. You can approach in game problems in various ways. For example combat- there are advantages and disadvantages to using ships or missiles (not to mention the different types/load outs of each) plus countless ways to combine the two. I've always loved sandbox type games and appreciated that you had so many choices all the time- you aren't forced into specific approaches

I would love to see a remake. Talking about diplomacy/social aspects never really cared about it really- Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock

True on many points and I agree. However I can propose some solutions for your trouble, at least as a single-player experience (which is what this game is mostly about).

Firstly, play normal gamespeed instead of "fast". This has a major impact on gameplay too as gamespeed does not affect the speed real-time-in-your-face (in other words - what-you-can-see) aspects of the game, such as orbital fleet combat speed, missiles in orbit speed, observable space fleet combat speed and in-orbit movements-rotation of ships. So as you decrease gamespeed - colony running/building/space travel speeds are all slowed and extended in comparison to visually observable combat aspects. You may even try slow if you want even more time for microing/building, but that may be a tad too slow at the beginning.

Secondly - the game is playable in semi-turn-based (active pause) mode - "TURN OFF TIME IN MENUS" option.
With this + normal speed you will have all the time you want to run your colonies, add colony supervisors, it'll be a breeze, trust me.

Try these settings and let me know.

What disappoints me in this game is just some design/balancing choices, which is more a result of lack of polish/patching.

Agent sabotage missions aspect of a game is highly questionable and with major cash at later stages of the game is borderline cheating. Tell me, how does one man blow up humongous defense grids, missile storages, and piles of buildings all by himself with nearly 90% success? The game would be far better of if "sabotage" was a non-feature or at least there were ways to succesfully counteract this, cause even asteroids with 10 security centres will still be heavily affected by this.

Secondly - pretty low and non-upgradeable ranges of most ships and missiles: With the exception of command cruisers all other ships are difficult to get to a distant opponent, and necessitated heavy asteroid engine use reduces gamespeed to a crawl in many instances. Supposed command cruiser fleet extension is extremely unwieldy and supermicrointensive.

Wish there was a source code somewhere to this game, to make this a gem that truly shines.
At least wish if someone could use IDA Pro on this and correct some of this staff by debugging, my skills at this are near zero unfortunately.




Its aesthetically highly appeasing game with unique style of visual presentation and great attention to detail and special atmosphere of corporate war money-above-life style. Very ironic and sarcastic game against corporate evil, love it. Any sequel/remake will need to retain that futuristic look, design and highly details presentation/immersion aspect which sets it aside from competition. Also it handles large-scale combat with lots of ships very well and the upgrade/hardpoint system is well thought-out and likeable. Hardpoint upgrades a bit linear with a little bit of cost-vs-return consideration (with no weapon stats figuring this out is matter of experience mostly) , could be retouched a bit to include both cost-linear and rock-paper-scissor balancing.