Having difficulties with resources....

Bronco78th · 2011-07-29T12:45:50

Hi All, Ive spent the last few weeks working on a GDD for an RTS strategy game based on the Uboat war in the Atlantic during WW2 (you may have seen this recruitment thread Here) The idea is coming together, ive done afew mock-ups for interfaces, started pulling together various asset lists etc and I feel im on my way to being able to work on it and open it confident I know where im going. Im aiming for the game to be quite historically accurate and is aimed at those of us gamers that love reading and researching the war. That being said I am still struggling to work out a resource system thats versatile yet simplistic. There will be 5 main resources in the game (or cargo's that convoy and cargo ships can carry) which are:- General Stores (Building materials, factory materials etc)Supplies (food)FuelMunitions (Tanks,ammunition,aircraft,military vehicles etc)TroopsOviously as the Allied player, The US and Canada for much of the war will have an overwelming amount of resources, The UK however will be very much on the edge in terms of resources available, the idea of course is to get those resources across the Hostile Atlantic ocean and Feed/supply the UK As the Axis player, The resources will be very high, before being wittled down the longer the conflict goes on. But how do I present this system to the player? Ive considered making it really simple and say that each country has an overall amount of resources and each convoy to reach that country obviously adds to the over resource pool, so US has X of each resource, UK has X of each resource, France has X of each resource,Canada has X of each resource etc....but this is far to simple and completely takes out the factor of Coastal convoys, the player has no need or reason to send a group of ships on a historically dangerous journey from say Liverpool to London because the resources they bought from Canada or the US are just added to the main 'UK resource pool' regardless of where they docked.My second idea was to apply the resources pool as above to the Ports, obviously smaller ports will have a very small pool of resources and larger ports will have a much bigger pool of resources. I do however feel that this is both a mathematical nightmare, and will be too easy to unbalance the game, given that I have historical information on ship types and what there potential cargo tonnage was....but absolutily no idea what a realistic threshold would be when it came to Resources and supplies at the Ports....admittedly I haven't actually researched this point (yet) but from my recent experiences its one of those things that even with a vast amount of research the information would be very much incomplete and guess work anyway.While writing this post Ive actually came up with a 3rd idea which is probably the best of them all (YAY!) which simplifies point 2 and is similar to point 1 and that is to devide the world map(game map) into regions, so ships docking at Liverpool will add to the 'North West ' resource pool, but because the 'South East/London' Resource pool will not receive those new supplies....the player would need to make a coastal convoy to take resources from the 'North West' resource pool and get them to 'South East/ London' resource pool.....*grabs pen and paper to figure if this idea is viable* Any other ideas on how I can get my head round this problem? Many Thanks, John

Game Design and Theory Game Design

Started by Bronco78th July 17, 2011 10:56 PM

13 comments, last by Acharis 12 years, 8 months ago

Acharis

5,990

July 24, 2011 08:24 AM

I want the game to be designed in such away that a strategy gamer could pick it up in afew hours and understand what they are doing, a non strategy gamer to become competent at playing it in afew days.

I don't think casuals would be interesed in the "ubot" theme in the first place.

As for including coastal convoys and ommiting Murmansk it feels weird... I know the differenece between PQ13 and QP13 and still never read about coastal convoys. The difference in importance is huge. Also, if you include coastal convoys you should include railroads too (since you deal with the internal transport network then).

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Bronco78th

136

Author

July 24, 2011 11:33 PM

I don't think casuals would be interesed in the "ubot" theme in the first place.

I Disagree with this almost entirely, I say almost entirely, because the average 20 year old who thinks the Germans won the war or indeed Hitler was famous for being the German National Football manAger instead of an evil dictator who in his own ways was a genius then you are correct. But if you follow or have played games based on world war 2 that are not watered down console games you will reliase there is a large number of WW2 fans around that would play a historically accurate, realistic world war 2 game becuase its just that, relaistic and historically accurate.....just see the communities of the fore mentioned Silent Hunter, Il2 Sturmovik Series (or even just the SimHQ Forums) even Company of Heroes then you can see people will play a game like this purely because its World War 2, regardless of it being about Uboats or convoys or aircraft bombing convoys.

for those that are interested, the football manager thing came up in a survey of UK School kids and a disturbing number of them thought Hitler was a football manger.....

As for including coastal convoys and ommiting Murmansk it feels weird... I know the differenece between PQ13 and QP13 and still never read about coastal convoys. The difference in importance is huge. Also, if you include coastal convoys you should include railroads too (since you deal with the internal transport network then).[/quote]

I agree with this point and ive not said at any point I want to totally overlook Russia and the Arctic Convoys (or the Med for that matter) , but by including them in my inital design it presents me with a long list of problems which id rather avoid by leaving them out for now. This is why as a solution I proposed the 'auto resolve' battle system as noted in my previous post.

Including the internal transport system for the UK and its allies goes way beyond the scope of what im intending, plus you would then need to model the effects of the Blitz and the rail infrastructure being almost constantly bombed, you could infact make a game out of that in itself.
This is a strategy game focusing on naval combat between uboats, Merchant men and Escorts, not a game which focuses on weather the Didcot marshaling yard was bombed during the night or not.

Regards,

John

Luckless

3,283

July 25, 2011 01:11 AM

Convoys were used in the open ocean, not in coastal waters. The coasts were already defended, both by frequent naval patrols, and by an air craft over-watch. Convoys were designs so that the merchant ships could travel with protection between areas that were defended. Basically you are putting guards around the merchants and running them between two fortresses. Once the ships are inside the 'walls' of either 'fortress', they don't need that protection, and are basically free to split up and move where they're needed. The walls being the defended zone of coastal waters that saw frequent patrols and readily covered by aircraft.

While the home water defences were by no means perfect, it would have taken tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of ships and air craft carriers to extend a similar level of defence to the whole of the North Atlantic.

From the game play point of view, you would need to find the balance between coastal defence, and open water convoy defence. Cut one too thin and the opponent would make you bleed there. (And if you're on the offence, put too little pressure on one, and they'll pull resources from the other and crush you.)

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Bronco78th

136

Author

July 27, 2011 12:11 AM

From the game play point of view, you would need to find the balance between coastal defence, and open water convoy defence. Cut one too thin and the opponent would make you bleed there. (And if you're on the offence, put too little pressure on one, and they'll pull resources from the other and crush you.)

This is exactly what im aiming for....all about the player balancing what forces they have at their disposal. and designating the important regions and objectives to focus there defense on.

Acharis

5,990

July 29, 2011 12:45 PM

From the game play point of view, you would need to find the balance between coastal defence, and open water convoy defence.

Historically, it would be incorrect. In fact there were two choices. One, assign combat ships to convoys (direct protection of the convoy with focus on anti submarine and anti aircraft defence), second, assign combat ships to force fleets (patrol in proximity of several convoys with the purpose of fighting battleships and heavier threats).

Also there could be a third choice, which is recalling part of direct covoy escort in returning convoys (empty) which adds more forces to the patrol force fleet or to the incoming valuable (full) convoys.

From tactical point of view the choices would be to stick together or spread the convoy (but this was proven to be disastrous so I don't know if it would make sense to implement such option).

The whole coastal convoys don't even use the same pool or defensive resources (no battleshipos needed at all, proximity of friendly airports with customized seafighers that were useful for ocean convoys anyway, coastal convoys basicly mean pure anti submarine assets).

This is exactly what im aiming for....all about the player balancing what forces they have at their disposal. and designating the important regions and objectives to focus there defense on.[/quote]I don't think there were many such choices, and even if, these choice were rather obvious.
You could prioritize the cargo I guess...

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