Overworld map travel, too easy?

[konfuzed]

The one thing I thought of is using food for something like this. Many roguelike games require you to manage your food as a resource. This game already has food (I think you can even take it from settlements already?), but your character doesn't seem to need it even when spending huge amounts of time away from the crystals. Anyway, walking around on the strategic map could use up food, more food for walking through tougher places. And if you ran out of food, there could be a harsh penalty typical of roguelikes such as death by starvation, or a milder one such as a "starvation state" with reduced stats. Killing trash mobs could potentially even help replenish your food stores, so killing them feels less useless but you're still not compelled to sit there and grind killing them.

[Dizzard]

What if the Exploration map is just more like a map that plans where you're going to go rather than it being you actually travelling as you move the character from tile to tile. (if that makes sense)

I'd rather see a focus on making the battles and side view exploration more challenging/enjoyable than just throwing some random battles in to the overhead map.

I like the idea about adding travelling mobs though.

[Misery]

I'd had an idea about this as well.

Part of the idea of the gameplay seems to be a connection between all the stuff you're doing on your own... all the sidescrolling and item hunting and whatnot... and the stuff going on in the settlements.  It IS basically the whole idea of the game, after all.... you're trying to work towards improving these places as much as possible and helping people survive.


Well, right now there's a major disconnection between the settlement stuff, and the overworld map when you're in explore mode.  Run around all you like, there's nothing resembling a connection until you're actually down into a dungeon of some sort searching for things to help you improve the world.

So my idea is:  Perhaps, for every so many tiles you move, let's say, er, 30, one turn passes on the strategic/settlement level.  This would change ALOT of things.   It would make distance matter, for instance;  finding good, convenient routes on the world map or exploring for shortcuts or something would suddenly come into play, whereas right NOW, the actual layout just doesnt seem to matter at all.   Different tile types, or even level numbers, could modify how fast/slow your guy travels through/past them, altering how long it takes to get to the next turn change.  Thick forests, for example, would make sense to take "longer" to cross than, say, open fields.

And this all just makes sense in a logical way as well;  right now it seems a little funky that you can go explore the world outside, go into silly numbers of dungeons, run all over the world, and when you get back to the settlement.... absolutely no time has passed and nothing has happened simply because you did not click the magic button that allows it.   That part has seemed very strange indeed to me since the start.   It just feels off.

That's not to say that you wouldnt still have the end-turn button in the strategic/settlement modes, but it would make exploring the worldmap much more.... er.... dynamic?   I"m not sure if that's the right word.   But it'd add another layer of strategy and challenge to the one section of the game that, right now, seems absolutely devoid of it.

[zebramatt]

I had the same thought.

You would need some way of knowing how long an excursion was likely to take in turn time before it was too late to change your mind, however. And some indication of the general state of turns all the while you're in the overworld.

It's a pretty fundamental change but if it were implemented, probably the way to go would be to have a 'turn time clock' of some sort, and have a more turn-based style of overworld movement: you move a destination indicator to where you want to go; an arrow connects your character to the destination with some sort of inline indication (colour-coding, numeric clock icons with "+x" on, where x is number of turns or some other turn time clock numeric indicator); and then you confirm to advance to that point and change turn time in that fashion.

But I'm not sure how much fun it would be!

[Spork]

How would advancing turns by moving in the overworld work in multiplayer?

[Misery]

How would advancing turns by moving in the overworld work in multiplayer?

On that note, I kinda wonder how advancing turns AT ALL works in multiplayer.    Right now you can just click and end turns as often as you'd like, but how would that entirely make sense in MP?  Particularly if you've got people off doing their own thing;  a system where all the players would have to agree to it before the end-turn activates would be very annoying in a situation like that.    Or anything of that nature.

[Dizzard]

The only thing that might be a bit annoying is, if time is constantly changing every time you make a move....

It's going to get irritating real quick when you have to drop everything you're doing just because a mob is moving in on one of your settlements.

You could help this a bit by perhaps training npcs to be soldiers/guards so that they could better protect the settlement themselves. Which would result in much less loss and danger. I mean it's kind of sad if a settlement needs you all the time to take care of them

[Spork]

Or having the monsters besiege the settlement until you come to save it, halting its production.

[KDR_11k]

I think the hammer bros-style monsters are the way to go. My take on the details:

Monster ambush groups originate from overlord or lieutenant lairs. They wander around semi-randomly and passing over their tile immediately draws you into an area with the ambush group, unable to warp out before they're all dead or you run into a different "room". Ambush groups are microbosses (or maybe a new class called ambush monsters, like microbosses stat-wise but none of the rewards associated with those so you don't want to hunt them down) that have the level of the tile they're on (so you have to worry about the environment you're in, not the level of some random monsters that just ran into a low level area). Groups are visible if they are on scouted tiles but otherwise hidden. The groups prefer areas that are advantageous to them, i.e. either higher level than the player or covered in a windstorm (or both) and will not venture near towns (they are not going to raid towns and they should not drag the player into areas that won't challenge the player). They don't move over lava flats or oceans because that would be redundant.

Each evil outpost maintains a certain number of ambush groups that will stay roughly in the same area. If a group is eliminated the outpost will generate a new one after a few turns. Destroying the outpost will not immediately destroy the ambush groups. Groups without a living outpost are free to wander anywhere and will probably end up retreating to higher level lands.

[x4000]

How would advancing turns by moving in the overworld work in multiplayer?

It wouldn't, unfortunately.

On that note, I kinda wonder how advancing turns AT ALL works in multiplayer.    Right now you can just click and end turns as often as you'd like, but how would that entirely make sense in MP?  Particularly if you've got people off doing their own thing;  a system where all the players would have to agree to it before the end-turn activates would be very annoying in a situation like that.    Or anything of that nature.

There will likely also be some permissions that only admins on the server can set, such as "can manage settlements."  And anyone you give that to you basically have to trust a certain amount in the sense of how you trust your allied in AI War not to go stir up 10,000 enemy units and get you all killed.  There will be similar permissions for things like friendly fire, so that random players can't just come into your open server, grief you by murdering all your NPCs, and then leave.  The goal being that you can have a fairly open server, where people you trust can do the sorts of global activities that you wish, but where most of the other folks that you're not sure about are relegated to a support role where they can't wreck all your grand plans.

[c4sc4]

There will likely also be some permissions that only admins on the server can set, such as "can manage settlements."  And anyone you give that to you basically have to trust a certain amount in the sense of how you trust your allied in AI War not to go stir up 10,000 enemy units and get you all killed.  There will be similar permissions for things like friendly fire, so that random players can't just come into your open server, grief you by murdering all your NPCs, and then leave.  The goal being that you can have a fairly open server, where people you trust can do the sorts of global activities that you wish, but where most of the other folks that you're not sure about are relegated to a support role where they can't wreck all your grand plans.

Awesome! I was wondering about anti-griefing measures.

[x4000]

I think some grieving loopholes are inevitable in a fairly open world (example: stealing rare loot and not sharing), but the stuff we can prevent, we aim to. Players shouldn't need some custom mod to set up multiplayer server security; that should all be manageable by players directly in the game itself, I feel.

[c4sc4]

I think some grieving loopholes are inevitable in a fairly open world (example: stealing rare loot and not sharing), but the stuff we can prevent, we aim to. Players shouldn't need some custom mod to set up multiplayer server security; that should all be manageable by players directly in the game itself, I feel.

Right, there will still be some thing but you addressed my two biggest ones, someone killing all the NPCs in my settlement and people wrecking my settlement or wildly advancing turns.

[KDR_11k]

How about suiciding four times in a settlement (settlements other than the starting one have "green" areas attached to them after all)? That'd generate a vengeful shadow raid party and should do so right on top of the settlement.

[superking]

if its a coop game that is played in small groups, wont this be another affair of playing with friends or the same small group? thus, if someone trolls, they get the boot or you leave?