Thanks for all of this, everyone involved.
This thread did partially inform my recent post here:
https://forums.arcengames.com/ai-war-ii/brainstorming-about-offense-vs-defense-and-refleeting-speeds/msg218579/#msg218579But I also wanted to directly respond to a few things in this thread separately, too. The conversations have overlap, but are definitely separate.
1. One of the things that I keep coming back to in my head lately, and this thread only reinforced it, is that there isn't enough going on. There aren't enough layers. We've streamlined out so much micro that the game feels simplistic compared to the first one. And in general what is there is very good, and the streamlining helps what is there enormously, and I am not advocating for reverting to microing engies around or something. I also think there are still some things that need MORE streamlining, so that will improve the experience that we have going on here in one way, while unfortunately digging the "too simple" hole deeper.
- Now this might sound insane, and maybe it is... but I think that we need at least one more vector of competition with the AI. It's just something that has been striking me, of late. The only thing that we compete with the AI on right now is tactics, which any AI can only be so good at, and strategy, which is hugely asymmetrical. There's a defensive "minigame" as it were, and the streamlining has hurt that a lot. The tech tree was always weak in the first game, and has only gotten moreso here -- see my related thread.
- So that got me thinking, though. In what other ways could we do something to make science, hacking points, and AIP, more interesting. Could we build "minigames" of sorts into those? Those are already part of the meta, but what if those required some skill and planning and thought in the same way that setting up effective defenses in the tower-defense part of the game does?
- A "proper minigame" for science is, naturally, a more involved tech tree. Visually we could do it, if we wanted to. We could do something like Civ, or something strange like the Sphere Grid from Final Fantasy X. You get science, and you choose how to advance along these paths, and it's interesting and fun. It's another little screen to occupy some of your time and interest, and it's a change of pace from the rest of things. You're not competing with the AI on this, per se, but in a lot of ways it does feel like you are.
- A "hacking minigame" seems like it could be more adversarial, and indeed more of a direct "turn based minigame," so to speak, in the same sense that planet defenes is a "tower defense minigame." We already have the perfect "board" for this, too: the galaxy map. What if hacking points, or some analogue, were used in a tug of war of sorts on planets here? This would involve no units anywhere, it's all just numbers in the simulation and some new bits of interface on a "hacker view" of the galaxy map. You'd "deploy hackers" anywhere that you can see, and have them do something for X amount of gametime. The AI would have antihackers. You win simply in a king of the hill sort of style: hold the place for long enough, by having more hackers than they have antihackers, and you complete the objective. You set off an EMP at that planet, you stall the next wave, you get permanent scout intel there, you destroy prevent reinforcements there for X amount of time... all sorts of things could be done that don't require hooking up to specific individual units but mess with the AI and give you interesting defensive options. Perhaps for every hacking point you get, you get 1 hacker to be used this way, and for every AIP the AI gains, they get 10 anti-hackers.
-- There was this mobile game with lots of little planets, and it had little arrow-like ships circling them, and you'd get more the longer you held a planet. You could send certain numbers of them from one place to another, and at the other end they would fight the guys at the other side. You couldn't move them while in transit. My dad plays something that's a clone of that in VR. Anyone know the game I'm thinking of? I think that using similar visuals to show hackers and anti-hackers, we could have a pretty cool thing going there really fast, and it would be on my plate, not Keith's.
- The overall goal of having hacking work like this instead of the current way is that then there is another layer to the game, a third thing that you're considering, which is good. It doesn't require micro, per se, but it does require attention and is something you might focus on while refleeting, or you might hold territory for a while in order to let your hackers do their thing from that space, then let go of the territory, etc. Maybe a special building at that space lets you have extra hackers as long as you hold it, or just for 30 game minutes, whichever comes soonest, etc. Since you can't compete economically with the AI here, given that the economies are unrelated, this sort of extra cat and mouse layer would make it feel more 4x-y to me.
- The minigame doesn't have to be that sort of thing exactly, but the idea is that it's something that is simple, easy to grasp, has a visual component, doesn't involve actual ships, does involve actual planets and territory, and gives you and/or the AI bonuses or penalties based on your successes there. It gives you an outlet for things that isn't purely military, and makes the galaxy map have more than one meaning to it.
2. I'm partially wary of the Ark getting more useful, but I suppose it would be cool if it got more guns, etc. It automatically has a "don't go into AI territory or you aggro them majorly" mechanic, so if we kept that but let the Ark become very strong, then that would be our roaming special forces unit all on its own, potentially. And it WOULD work in enemy territory, which is cool, but it would just have a (very easy to digest in a lore sense) penalty to doing so, rather like aggroing a superterminal for too long makes sense in the first game.
