> Set your 4X in the world of Dune! Or of Warhammer 40,000! Star Wars, Trek, Battlestar Galactica! Babylon Five! And so forth. Most of those depict a single co

> Set your 4X in the world of Dune! Or of Warhammer 40,000! Star Wars, Trek, Battlestar Galactica! Babylon Five! And so forth. Most of those depict a single conflict, hardly a match for the 4X playbook. > I'm pretty sure everything from the recent Civs back to the original Starcraft tracked unit advancement. And in some of the Civs (4 or 5) it was so powerful that some of the modern units were comparatively worthless unless they had "skills" that they could only get by inheritance on the individual unit upgrade path. You'd have a clear separation between core units nurtured through the ages all the way from antiquity and gunfodder whose job was to keep the core units alive. That was all rule-gamey and zero flavor. Also too micro in my opinion and single units are still not important enough to be considered protagonists of the story. Space 4X already come with a ship designer ever since the original MOO. But it's often just busywork to illustrate the tech progress a little. I think that this is a place that could be extended without feeling pointlessly micro or suffer from faceless genericity, if done right: so research has discovered positron phaser torpedo projectors (aka random generic technobabble). The technology apparently has an efficiency sweet spot at 50m bore length. Should the development branch design a new hull around those dimensions or do we create a less efficient module that fits our venerable, cheap Bounty-class frigate that gives crews +10 morale because of that popular holovid show set aboard the lead ship of the class? (aka random flavor event hull class bonus). And all the specialty role ships that have been derived from that hull? It would be an interesting game mechanic because you can't fall into a default pattern like "always go for the biggest, longest range weapons and avoid battles where the enemy might come into close range": even the most module-conservative player would occasionally have to cut compatibility introduce a fully new generation. An echo chamber, where the player is mostly interacting with consequences of her own decisions. Decisions that are not necessarily better or worse in terms of running but that are meaningful because they shape your future options. That's what I expect from all games that aren't just about eye candy or reaction time. I like the idea better the more I think about it. This could actually be a very nice Stellaris DLC, a boatload of chance event microcontent and a total overhaul of a game mechanic that can be rewritten in total isolation of the others. If only Paradox were into making DLC! (just kidding there of course)