Mind helping out Chris a bit? Lists of features and their basics.

[Cinth]

This is how Chris works here.  If something needs to be discussed, it can be discussed here on the forum.

Oh I know, but now that you've dumped the list into the google doc, you can see how intimidating just the list is.  14 pages for just one line for each unit.

Dear god.

Oh it should be longer!  Stuff like Fabs that just have different contents have one listing.  No marks or AI/Human variants.

I'll get it presentable tonight so it isn't that bad going forward.

[kasnavada]

I don't think that's a good idea.

I'd rather rework the units like proposed in wingflier's "let's remove hull types", because the discussion there just leads to a change in what units do and are.

About what units are "useful" and "not"... I think this approach and list is a waste of time because everyone can and will have his preference. Your focus should be in enabling modding to cover about 98% of what units can do, and creating maybe 30 "small" units, 10 "flagships" at most. If someone else wants "specific", he'll mod it and maybe, in the end of the dev run, you can ask forumers to build the remaining ones for you. Given what you made of the forum, it's a no-brainer that you'll find volunteers.

Basically, the only thing you need is the list of abilities to be modded in the game:
- direct damage,
- AOE damage,
- shield
- hitting
- decreasing health by time
- decreasing health by shot
- regeneration
- AOE damage divided by number of hit units
- eating other units
- immunity to shield
- damage resistance
- repair capability
- life stealing
- auto replication
- drone generation (by time)
- armor suppresion (acid whatever)
- teleportation
- carrier capability
- explosion on death

I think I forgot a few, but still. It's all that's really needed. You want to make modding a reality ? Then you should make use of it. Don't make yourself work MORE than you have to. It does not matter if someone likes ships or not. It's going to be moddable.

About game mechanics, well. I think basically it's covered in the "what makes AI WAR, AI WAR thread already".

[Misery]

This is how Chris works here.  If something needs to be discussed, it can be discussed here on the forum.

Oh I know, but now that you've dumped the list into the google doc, you can see how intimidating just the list is.  14 pages for just one line for each unit.

Dear god.

Heh, true.  That's gonna be a lot to parse, yessir.

Though at the same time, I doubt Chris & Keith would be reading all of this in one go; more likely this is the sort of thing where they'd jump to the page for a specific unit and read some of the stuff about it, when they're ready to at all deal with that unit.  So maybe it's not THAT bad.  Maybe.  Well, okay, it still rather is, hah.

Expected, though.  AI War seriously has a TON of units.  So... very many...

I wonder how long it'll be once people have really started adding their thoughts about the units? 2 squillion pages?  3?

[Pumpkin]

I'm sorry, but I sincerely don't understand what is the point of that.

If it prepares a balance of ships, that clearly fits into a later development period. Comments like Standard Fighters needing more speed or Shield Bearer less health isn't what is expected here, right?

If the point is just to list everything to prepare the skeleton of the XML document that will be parsed by the game's engine, some folks around here have been putting some effort to make nice lists on the wiki: Fleet and Starship, but also Golems, Turrets, Guard Posts, Guardians, etc, etc.

I really, sincerely and genuinely don't understand what you're asking, Chris. I'm sorry.

[Cinth]

I'm sorry, but I sincerely don't understand what is the point of that.

If it prepares a balance of ships, that clearly fits into a later development period. Comments like Standard Fighters needing more speed or Shield Bearer less health isn't what is expected here, right?

If the point is just to list everything to prepare the skeleton of the XML document that will be parsed by the game's engine, some folks around here have been putting some effort to make nice lists on the wiki: Fleet and Starship, but also Golems, Turrets, Guard Posts, Guardians, etc, etc.

I really, sincerely and genuinely don't understand what you're asking, Chris. I'm sorry.

Sigh.  That list will be racked and stacked by what the community wants.  Ships we want the most will get done first.  Then those in middle and so on and so forth as time allows.  It's pretty much how Chris is going to sort the workflow once this gets underway.

[Captain Jack]

I'm sorry, but I sincerely don't understand what is the point of that.

If it prepares a balance of ships, that clearly fits into a later development period. Comments like Standard Fighters needing more speed or Shield Bearer less health isn't what is expected here, right?

If the point is just to list everything to prepare the skeleton of the XML document that will be parsed by the game's engine, some folks around here have been putting some effort to make nice lists on the wiki: Fleet and Starship, but also Golems, Turrets, Guard Posts, Guardians, etc, etc.

I really, sincerely and genuinely don't understand what you're asking, Chris. I'm sorry.

He's asking us to break down the current version of AI War into its component parts, listed and labeled. Then he wants us to tell him what we think about those parts. Briefly. Like you said, the wiki is nice, but he needs a list of everything in the game. The wiki is for when he needs more than "activating all four of these begins an endgame scenario similar to Fallen Spire, except you are charged with defending four locations instead of one".

[Cinth]

Well the top half of the doc is readable now that it has been broken into pieces.  I've put an example up at the top to make grabbing a copy of the format easy.

I'd like to ask that you hold off on the bottom half until I get all those items sorted out.

[Pumpkin]

He's asking us to break down the current version of AI War into its component parts, listed and labeled.

I see only units. And there is much more "things" in AI War than units. What about resources, AI behaviors, player's strategies, etc? I thought ship details and balance were due for much further down the development process.

Is this to make the skeleton of an XML file?

What about better organizing/defining unit families first?
Like Starships, Sentinels and Devices?

[Steelpoint]

If the general idea is to 'distill' all the units down to a single core unit for each category (to cut down on the hundreds or so different ship types for players to try and understand) then I think going to the extreme of initially gutting all except ONE ship for each fleet category would be a interesting start.

Let me give a example. Fighter style ships would be classified as a Brawler ship, since they are expendable and are meant to get in and take the big hits at short range. As it stands this 'Brawler' catagory encompasses a lot of ship types. Acid Sprayer, Anti-Armor, Fighter, Laser Gatling, Youngling Commando, Youngling Weasel, Tachyon Microfighter, Vampire Claw and Vorticular Cutlass are all classified as a Fighter Brawler role.

So to simplify it you can remove all those ships and distill the Brawler down to just a Fighter ship, from eight different ships to one.

From there, if you want variety, you can then add two sub-fighter types that each take one aspect of the role in one direction at the sacrifice of another. So while the Fighter is the base brawler class, a Laser Gatling would be very weak in comparison but you can have a lot more of them.

(I'm basing the fleet roles off of the wiki list here.

[Pumpkin]

But that's content! I don't understand! I'm sorry but I'm genuinely lost. It has been said that content will be modable and therefore pushed back down the development process. Let's talk design of families of units (turrets, GPosts, starships, guardians, etc), not families of fleetships.

[Cinth]

He's asking us to break down the current version of AI War into its component parts, listed and labeled.

I see only units. And there is much more "things" in AI War than units. What about resources, AI behaviors, player's strategies, etc? I thought ship details and balance were due for much further down the development process.

Is this to make the skeleton of an XML file?

What about better organizing/defining unit families first?
Like Starships, Sentinels and Devices?

One thing at a time!!!!  Right now we're looking at units and mechanics.  I've populated the list and I'm working on sorting it out to make it read better.  I need time to do that   The top half of the doc is sorted reasonably.

[Pumpkin]

One thing at a time!!!!  Right now we're looking at units and mechanics.  I've populated the list and I'm working on sorting it out to make it read better.  I need time to do that   The top half of the doc is sorted reasonably.

Well, okay, then why not listing mechanisms? Like RoF, armor, armor piercing, AoE, reclamation, engine damage, armor damage, cloaking, tractor, swallow, etc?

[Cinth]

One thing at a time!!!!  Right now we're looking at units and mechanics.  I've populated the list and I'm working on sorting it out to make it read better.  I need time to do that   The top half of the doc is sorted reasonably.

Well, okay, then why not listing mechanisms? Like RoF, armor, armor piercing, AoE, reclamation, engine damage, armor damage, cloaking, tractor, swallow, etc?

It takes time to get all that listed.  I'm working on units.  If you want to list Mechanics, there is a section at the bottom waiting to be filled up (it's below the ships list).

[Pumpkin]

One thing at a time!!!!  Right now we're looking at units and mechanics.  I've populated the list and I'm working on sorting it out to make it read better.  I need time to do that   The top half of the doc is sorted reasonably.

Well, okay, then why not listing mechanisms? Like RoF, armor, armor piercing, AoE, reclamation, engine damage, armor damage, cloaking, tractor, swallow, etc?

It takes time to get all that listed.  I'm working on units.  If you want to list Mechanics, there is a section at the bottom waiting to be filled up (it's below the ships list).

Okay, let's do this.

[Captain Jack]

Is this to make the skeleton of an XML file?

No, it's to make a list of everything in AI War. This list will be used to help decide what goes into design document for AI War 2.0.