Thanks ;)Sorry for the late reply. I was limited to my phone ;).
But, in the case it's not, could you share your thoughts about the current system / how to improve ? Then I'll "summarize", and mantis it to let them know.
The number of turns that AI saucers are holographic is now based on the difficulty level. Previously it was always 5. Now it is:
Easy: 5
Normal: 3
Hard: 2
Harder: 1
Nightmare: 0
Thanks to kasnavada for inspiring this change.
If they've played any games designed by Chris before, they won't hate you. If you play on Nightmare (or Misery) in an Arcen game, you probably know what you're getting into. :)The number of turns that AI saucers are holographic is now based on the difficulty level. Previously it was always 5. Now it is:
Easy: 5
Normal: 3
Hard: 2
Harder: 1
Nightmare: 0
Thanks to kasnavada for inspiring this change.
I think this thread triggered this. The guys attempting nightmare are going to hate me =).
Anyway, others having ideas and / or opinions ?
When I read the description of the game, I thought you've have a few turrets to defend yourself, and that you'd build barracks, helipads, missiles and so on - they would make your "standing" armies. You'd play your "city-building" turn, then, on "end-turn" it would be "warphase", simultaneous attacks from both sides, marines / robots / planes rushing to defend your place and kll stuff, killing armies or destroying the closest buildings, then coming back home. You would "decide" where they would attack, then intercept / be intercepted depending on their orders. Of course, "no limitations of range" by turrets in that mode - you can attack stuff next to your territory with whatever you want. I know it sounds like a series of guerrilla attacks, and I think that seems to fit the videos well from what I've seen.
Nice to see you're still around Tigers.Thanks, clearly I'm not full time here anymore, I've been contracting for a while, but my focus has been on handling stuff coming in from other places (Steam, stuff like that). For the next few weeks I'm going to be focusing on getting SBR suggestions into Mantis and stuff like that.
When I read the description of the game, I thought you've have a few turrets to defend yourself, and that you'd build barracks, helipads, missiles and so on - they would make your "standing" armies. You'd play your "city-building" turn, then, on "end-turn" it would be "warphase", simultaneous attacks from both sides, marines / robots / planes rushing to defend your place and kll stuff, killing armies or destroying the closest buildings, then coming back home. You would "decide" where they would attack, then intercept / be intercepted depending on their orders. Of course, "no limitations of range" by turrets in that mode - you can attack stuff next to your territory with whatever you want. I know it sounds like a series of guerrilla attacks, and I think that seems to fit the videos well from what I've seen.
I threw this in Mantis for you: http://www.arcengames.com/mantisbt/view.php?id=17197 .
I was just thinking that with the increasing forum and Mantis volume and number of similar issues I've seen recently (although that might just be because I read through about four days worth in one afternoon) it would be good to have someone around to help wrangle them into some sort of order so Chris and Keith don't have to spend so much time on it. I can't think of anyone with better credentials for the job. :-)
Nice to see you're still around Tigers.Thanks, clearly I'm not full time here anymore, I've been contracting for a while, but my focus has been on handling stuff coming in from other places (Steam, stuff like that). For the next few weeks I'm going to be focusing on getting SBR suggestions into Mantis and stuff like that.
I love the idea of dedicated phases for building and war. Having the latter one resolve things simultaneously might just be the idea to resolve the ongoing issue of first hitter advantage!
If this is feasible, that is :-\.
I skeptical of any design that takes its influences from Risk, but I'm guessing the comparison is very weak. I'll see what Chris comes up with.
The problem of combat simplicity is that it leads to: Phage Wars and clones (e.g., http://recessive.wikispaces.com/).
Complexifying for the sake of complexifying leads to grindfest among other things. Rest assured that I'm not proposing simplifying for the sake of simplifying - my main focus is to ensure that the game "flows".
Not sure your idea would work, considering that PC is not dumb and targets your actual military buildings in construction, you would have pretty small chances to establish covering with camps. This forces to farther confrontation already with camps and lucky military building survivors for next territory, so basically your main military sorta never fights, but rather stands behind.
I expected saucers to appear the turn after I "declared" war but I'm still waiting for them. Maybe it's for later.
Right now, Defenders can defend within a territory while attackers can attack neighbouring ones.Not particulary true. Using his idea, defender can encroach and use defence of established base to build attacking base and pepper enemy offences, infrastructure, or defenses.
Your suggestion contains the idea that it would be better if defenders could defend neighbouring territories, while attackers could attack two territories out?
Isn't that pretty much the same situation, just with extended ranges?
There's one part of my proposal that seems to be largely overlooked here, and that's the part where factions would have to designate which territory their military structures are attacking or defending. A defensive building could only defend one territory per turn, even if six were in its range of protection, and the faction needs to designate where that defensive power sits for the turn (defaulting to previous selection or origin territory of course, so only need to fiddle for changes) This way, defense isn't able to be impenetrably deep across a whole cluster of territories just by being a cluster of territories. Defenses would either be poor to mediocre across or consolidated into a select few very powerful territories among them. The other thing is, attack structures would act as defense structures until turned to the offensive. The units 'housed' at the offensive military bases would default to defending the territory they're in if not positioned to defend somewhere else or attack. Same for defense structures being able to send their more limited number of housed units on the attack.I would love to see and try out the overall flow of combat you outline here in-game.This might well be what Chris is after - going from what he outlined on previous occasions. Especially the dynamic and by default hidden routing of power/defenses definitely sounds like a significant step in the right direction!
This creates a situation similar to Risk where you may have a few frontline territories with loads of units on them whereas your rearguard areas and secondary territories have relatively few.
It's also been mentioned that Chris wants military expansion to be slow and expensive, which I imagine is part of the reason for the tower setup now. That's also why my proposal ties units to structures too, because it slows down and disperses the Risk-style death clumps, but it also keeps the Risk-style death clump weakness of having a lot of relatively under and basically undefended territories that can be attacked when things get concentrated for a roll. If the attacker has the forces to win their objective, the defender still has the option to strike back somewhere, and relatively easily given the 2-territory units. The idea is that defenders would use their heavier, 1-territory units to try and soak up or slow an assault force while sending their 2-territory units to hit back at the same time in some (hopefully) under-defended territory, which includes the option of the defender just dumping all their units from their defending territory(ies) into the territory(ies) launching the attack for some mutual destruction and hopefully buy themselves time to build up their military into a more effective response. A possible outcome here is the attacker's bases get destroyed which could send their assault forces back to other territories that can still support them (potentially degrading them in the process). Attacking is an invitation for reprisal in this system, and I think there's a much better chance for that reprisal to actual be an effective one compared to a lot of systems I've seen.
Another aspect that seems a bit overlooked is dealing with the pseudo units themselves. It's not just about plopping new military bases and fortifications in your new territory and continuing the roll. You also have to have the production capabilities to cover your unit losses in the march forward, and the defender can shift their own units from other territories to cover loses and oppose your advance that way. To keep momentum, an aggressive attacker has to have the capability to replace units and continually build a whole slew of new bases each time it advances, whereas the defender can concentrate more on units and improving their economy to tip the scales back in their direction. If the defender breaks the attacking army, that actually weakens the defenses of the attacker's territories and gives a better chance of reprisal and turning the situation around too, especially if the attacker uses up their 1-territory units trying to take an adjacent territory.
Thirdly, if a conflict concentrates units on a particular battlefront risk style, this gives better opportunities for a strike from another direction and even from another faction.
I'm essentially trying to blend the economic and force projection complexities of traditional, unit-based 4X military models with the more static and streamlined structure-based model SBR is currently in while adding a bit more strategic flexibility to the mix than is typically possible in either.
The biggest weakness I see is giving the defender at least the opportunity to counter a spearhead attack where the attacker has only one territory in reach while the defender has multiple ones, in that the attacker could draw defending forces to one territory then shift its forces to another and decimate it. Would probably have to implement something to show enemy unit movement out/through territories you own with units only able to move one territory a turn as an addition to the spying bit revealing the marching orders of other factions on success.
Edit: To answer kasnavada a bit better -
Why should you be able to see what units are housed in enemy military structures? Unless you have really good spies of course. In my system, having a base or fortification in place doesn't mean said structure actually has any teeth at all. It could have none. (Ignoring possible passive bonuses with fortifications for the territory they're in).
Hm, so, has any of the combat stuff changed at all recently?Next to nothing since the original introduction of territories, I am afraid.
I havent played this in ages, so I'm curious as to changes that may or may not have happened. Dont like the current combat model (or what I saw last time I played it anyway) one bit.
There was one excelent disaster/economy colony building RTS called Outpost 2.Just wanted to aside to give props where props are deserved. Outpost 2 is incredibly underrated, and did a great job of salvaging its poorly-rated-and-deserving-it precursor. The single player campaign had some pretty amazing and frantic player-versus-environment missions with no combat. It's incredibly dated now, in that awkward early-Windows-9x era that's so hard to get compatibility to work with, but if you're okay with doing a bit of archaeology I recommend it as a neat piece of overlooked RTS history. Also it came with a surprisingly compelling novella; the story was about on par with Alpha Centauri's world building.