An Ancient Shadow Returns

[RCIX]

Hello all! That's right, I'm back If you don't recognize me, just ask one of the older members or search the wiki for my name.

(Currently running AI War in the background right now just for the epic music, but I hope to change that)

Anyway, what I came to post is I dearly hope that there becomes a Champion Only mode where you have to win with just your starship (and maybe a small constructable fleet?). I think I would really love it if there wasn't quite so much to manage.

[Draco18s]

WHO THE F*CK ARE YOU?

(Welcome back dude, seems I've shown up too )

[x4000]

Good to see you again!  In terms of the design stuff, on this one I'm leaving those questions to Keith.

[RCIX]

Feels good to be home.

*blows on Dev whistle to get Keith over here *

[Draco18s]

While you've been away a pack of velociraptors tore through.

[Wingflier]

Hello all! That's right, I'm back If you don't recognize me, just ask one of the older members or search the wiki for my name.

(Currently running AI War in the background right now just for the epic music, but I hope to change that)

Anyway, what I came to post is I dearly hope that there becomes a Champion Only mode where you have to win with just your starship (and maybe a small constructable fleet?). I think I would really love it if there wasn't quite so much to manage.

This is simple, just find a reliable friend to do all the heavy lifting for you

We'll (my friend and I) probably be starting a game soon ;p

[keith.lamothe]

Feels good to be home.

*blows on Dev whistle to get Keith over here *

Welcome back

My response to your comment on the blog post:

@RCIX: Sorry, the game wouldn't work anything like correctly without a human home command station somewhere in the game, nor would you have any chance at all of beating the AI with just a champion ship

But you can play both a normal player and a champion player at the same time, in case you hadn't noticed that.

It's something I'd love to be supported too, but I just can't fathom being able to balance the game to be sane in both the normal and the champion-only cases   On top of a lot of work to even get it working right (where on earth is the AI supposed to send its waves, etc).

Nah, even the craziest stuff I do to this game has to "cut with the grain" in the sense of making as few changes as possible.  Even making this a "new type of player slot" has proven to be too much "crossing the grain" and that's just one little bit of it.  May be able to resolve that one more satisfactorily, at least.

[RCIX]

Well I'm gonna fight for it a little

So I believe the main issues are:
 * Where would the AI send waves?
 * How the heck would you make it so you could win? (lose condition is quite obvious)
 * Balancing it with Normal players/without

I think I can solve problem 2 relatively easily: Let players build a fleet. Offer power modules and shipyard ones too, let a starship "dock" with resource nodes to consume them at a high rate (enrages the AI maybe?) or build harvester units which travel back and forth, stuff like that. Problem 1 is solvable from there. Offer various aura modules that would buff allied ships in the area, and/or strong offense modules so you can eventually have an endgame-level fleet (or whatever it takes to snipe the AI) in one ship.

IMO this would increase the available options, so that you can maybe choose to have a Normal player defend key objectives and feed the Champion resources he needs to get to the core worlds and wipe them out, or have a patrolling champion defend a normal going all-in for a giant fleet to cut a swath through to whatever he pleases.

The issues may be bigger though, I don't know :x
 

I mean, it would definitely require a lot more work to set up, but I think it would be worth it ^^

[keith.lamothe]

What you're describing would be more work than would fit in an expansion of twice the price, with nothing left over for other features

[RCIX]

*gets out wallet*



Eh, I suppose. Aren't there mobile command stations though?

[TechSY730]

Wait, you're back?
Crud, just when I thought I would be able to take over as the #1 non-admin poster. I was so close too. (as of this post, 2442 posts for me, 2457 posts for RCIX)


Saw you in the main site's blog comments, but good to see you back here proper.


Now to dig through your post history to remind me what you have contributed discussion and idea wise over your even longer forum "lurking" time than mine.
Or would that be a bit too stalkerish/creepy?

[keith.lamothe]

*gets out wallet*

Oh yea, I'd gladly shell out a lot more than that myself, but I don't think there'd be enough people to make it a paying proposition and I think it would ultimately have some fallout for the game as a whole.  It's one thing to have a lot of different things running around inside the same sandbox, it's another thing to make an entirely different game inside it.

Eh, I suppose. Aren't there mobile command stations though?

Nope

[RCIX]

Wait, you're back?
Crud, just when I thought I would be able to take over as the #1 non-admin poster. I was so close too. (as of this post, 2442 posts for me, 2457 posts for RCIX)

I guess my post count sense was tingling? Dunno.

NEVAR *spams posts to stay ahead *

Now to dig through your post history to remind me what you have contributed discussion and idea wise over your even longer forum "lurking" time than mine.
Or would that be a bit too stalkerish/creepy?

All I can find on the wiki are mentions of a few bugs I found and a couple of ships I suggested. The credits documents seem to have gone AWOL or you could look through those; i seem to recall me being up there with X4k and Keith on most ideas for Either Neinzul or Zenith, something to the effect of 15-20% of the stuff in whichever one it was in. (/tootingownhorn)

*gets out wallet*

Oh yea, I'd gladly shell out a lot more than that myself, but I don't think there'd be enough people to make it a paying proposition and I think it would ultimately have some fallout for the game as a whole.  It's one thing to have a lot of different things running around inside the same sandbox, it's another thing to make an entirely different game inside it.

I wonder if I'll ever find something to replace me being hooked on League? Everything I see that might do it has a subscription fee or is not what i expected ;p No worries though. I know how hard it is to work on games, judging from the wreckage of various prototypes that sit on my hard drive. Even have one that might possibly be completable, if I could just get past this design issue.

...How did i get that far off topic so fast?

[TechSY730]

Now to dig through your post history to remind me what you have contributed discussion and idea wise over your even longer forum "lurking" time than mine.
Or would that be a bit too stalkerish/creepy?

All I can find on the wiki are mentions of a few bugs I found and a couple of ships I suggested. The credits documents seem to have gone AWOL or you could look through those; i seem to recall me being up there with X4k and Keith on most ideas for Either Neinzul or Zenith, something to the effect of 15-20% of the stuff in whichever one it was in. (/tootingownhorn)

Hard to say without diligently reviewing post history, or comparing dates. When was Zenith released?

...How did i get that far off topic so fast?

Ah, The Arcen Games' Forum's ability to magically make any poster into someone who can't keep a single topic of thought through a thread.  Didn't you miss that feeling?

[RCIX]

Hard to say without diligently reviewing post history, or comparing dates. When was Zenith released?

Was probably Zenith, now that I think about it. I dropped out of AI War end-of-year 2010, so I did contribute to Neinzul though. I found a release timeline here: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=AI_War:Fleet_Command#Release_History . I think I joined around 1.2something.

...How did i get that far off topic so fast?

Ah, The Arcen Games' Forum's ability to magically make any poster into someone who can't keep a single topic of thought through a thread.  Didn't you miss that feeling?

I never missed it until I got it back I don't think I realized till now how relaxing this environment is. Nice change from League forums, where it feels like everyone's always at each other's throats.