A am in the process of moving my office today (subleasing from Pablo, so exciting to work in thr same space as him!), so I won't be around much.
A few questions/thoughts:
1. Is there a succinct place where the current thinking of "the metal-less economy faction" has their ideas? I still suspect it's a bridge too far, but I'd be interested in reading that. I'm suspecting that aside from what was discussed in thst thread originally there was more talked about in discord, etc.
2. Regarding reflecting mode being a thing, I like the idea of there being a button I can push that is more of an "emergency rebuild" option. Or something like that. Basically that would take NO clock time, and not be equivalent to fast forward in some important ways (wave countdowns, for one). But it would just pop out your replacement fleet immediately, possibly at no metal cost. But it would cause the AI to gain some sort of amount of budget equivalent to the metal and time you would have sent. The tool tip for this button would make it clear what the impact of that would be. It can't be speeding up waves or that's kinda defeating the point many times (or is it?). It can't be increasing AIP or nobody would do it. I'm thinking that a nearby planet or three will get reinforcements immediately, of a certain strength that is calculated based on the difficulty level and amount of metal and time you would have sent. If you see in advance in the ui in a tool tip which planets would be getting how much strength thrown into them (approximately), ans/or how much strength will go to the warden or hunter, you can make the choice of if it seems worth it, partly with knowledge that you might not even care about one or two of the planets. But it should make a particular effort to include planets you lost many ships on in the last hour, maybe.
That idea is half baked but strikes me as interesting partly because it's not a fast forward mechanic. It's similar, but more localized and personal and an "equal and opposite reaction" thing. It's also a way to bypass metal without taking metal out of the game.
3. As far as "reflecting time should just be done via fast forward," I think that'd fair and the interface could actively pop up and suggest that to you. That's a very simcity-like approach, which you know I like. Simcity always had long periods that would have been incredibly dull if you had to wait in real time, so there was cheetah speed for a reason. Getting players to use the time controls more seems really relevant.
4. The one downside of the time controls becoming more a part of the core game loop is that's not very friendly in multi-player games, especially with lots of players. We all have to be at a fast forward point at once, and in even just a 4 player game there's often someone doing their own thing and not excited about fast forwarding. This is specifically why I was thinking of something time-based and personal, because Desmond can be working on his planets and in the middle of small surgical strikes that he's microing, and I and my dad can do an emergency refleet many times over as we pummel the enemy in turns, thus causing our own battle to go back and forth a lot because of the AI being a boosted in our area, but that's our own decision and doesn't affect Desmond and what he's doing. Netflix time is way more real in this game when multi-player is around; sometimes teammates would be so slow in their intense micro while I had nothing else going on that my dad and I would literally bring a book eaxh to read. This was in most strategy games, and it was less of a thing in AIWC, but it's why we can't play Civ together at all anymore as a foursome with our particular gaming group. And turn timers just made the micro-heavy ones resentful. I wanted to work on my economy for ten more turns, but my uncle would have like 50 stacked weak units with animations on that he's attacking some other faction with (we stopped after Civ 4, as a group).
Anyway, so while I do agree that fast forward is awesome, particularly for solo play but also probably fine most of the time in two player, I think that something that bypasses time and completely global effects would be nice forward thinking for larger multi-player games.
5. Reprisal waves getting bigger and having no warning strikes me as dangerous in that it will be game ending with no warning. Or else it's still too weak to matter. Either way it's nonobvious and will make players scared to attack things. I think that if the reprisal wave was constructed over time as you fight on an AI planet, and you can see the strength it will be rising, and a short-ish timer being "delayed because of fighting," then that gives players some interesting messaging. I can see I'm causing a big wave to be built in response to me. I can see it will strike at planet x that I'm fighting on, and then travel through real space.
Really this is a new mechanic from traditional reprisal waves, I guess. Maybe in addition or maybe replacing it. But anyway I can see that it will arrive in 1 minute except that it's paused because of all the fighting going on, but at the same time it's getting stronger as I fight more. I can see how much of it was built because of my losses versus the AI taking lossess and getting angry. I can see that if I manage to clear the planet of all the guard posts and command station, the wave will be cut in half or canceled or maybe just decimated.
So it becomes obvious at some point to stop because I can directly see that I'm endangering myself. And it also becomes obvious to stagger my attacks, keeping a strong enough force hitting the enemy at all times that I'm able to cancel that scary wave. It actually encourages brinkmanship, but in a controlled fashion. With an emergency reflecting function that bypasses the metal economy but maybe makes that wave even WORSE, it all becomes a very self-contained battle experience that is mp-compatible and at least clear if not always intuitive.
