Orymus3

This thread is a followup to a design that's been discussed in the following threads:

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/642693-communication-in-a-4x-game/

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/642461-research-system-in-4x-games/

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/642498-minimal-ship-customization-in-4x-games/

Hello folks,

As you might already know, I'm currently elaborating plans for a 4X game I'm currently developing.

As I'm trying to make this a compelling strategy experience, I'm struggling with a few elements here and there and I could really use a hand with this one.

The game I'm basing my concept around is the very old VGA Planets. To simplify this game for the purpose of this thread, this is a game where you build ships using various minerals and $ and use fuel for movement. Each ship can go at various different speed, each of which have their own distance travelled and fuel consumed ratio. It is much less efficient to go faster from a resource (fuel) perspective, but more often than not, you'll want to go to the fastest speed possible.

Additionally, ships and planets you control have sensor ranges, which allow you to see enemies coming a few turns before they actually do.

The part I'm currently struggling with is when trying to intercept an enemy that seeks to enter your cluster and go straight for your valuable planets.

The current setup would go a bit like this:

- You see the enemy ship

- You choose to send some of your ships at the most likely planet they'll hit

- The enemy ship bypasses you and go further at top speed

- You follow them at top speed

- This goes on until either of you no longer has any fuel

This is one of the situations where the game feels very dull. Normally, engagements and interceptions can really be fun, but there's really no stopping one enemy ship from going straight to the heart of your empire (provided he knows where it is). The run and chase gets a bit boring.

Technically, you could refuel your starships at nearby bases and keep the fuel advantage, but it really isn't a great defensive mechanic.

Now, VGA Planets had a solution for that. It allowd you to create Minefields. Essentially, minefields were created by turning a large amount of torpedoes (an ordnance that cost a lot of minerals to produce) into an area of effect minefield around a point of origin.

This way, you could turn an economic advantage (minerals) into a sizeable defensive advantage around a planet. You could cover entire fronts with intercalating minefields, etc.

The enemy would then have two options:

1 - Cross the field (at the peril of MAYBE hitting a mine, and taking damage as a result, knowing most ships would die with 1,2 or 3 hits only).

2 - Sweep the field (by bringing ships armed with a lot of phasers).

In other words, the opponent could either risk it, or be slowed down.

While I like this concept in general, it also feels a bit stagnant. Slowing down the enemy is interesting, but sweeping mines isn't necessarily an exciting reason to be slowed down. On the other hand, the fact the player can risk it is random. I don't like random much, I believe that player error should come either from inexperience, or hidden information (things they could scout if they dedicated sufficient resources towards acquiring this info). Having minefields that are sure to hit a ship might be a bit extreme as well.

One side-mechanic I've developed in an attempt to rectify this slightly is to have planetary invasions take more than one turn. Assuming you drop troops on an enemy planet, they won't instantly conquer the planet. Instead, they'll duke it out for a few turns, requiring reinforcements, and benefitting from the firesupport of any orbiting ship. This system meant that an enemy that bypasses your fleet just can't planet-hop and drop a few people here and there and take your entire empire out of the blue. Rather, they'll need to drop their force on a single planet, bring additionnal reinforcements from behind, and stay in orbit to support their assault. In other words, if they've not achieved "space superiority", their assault might be thwarted the minute they stop to besiege a planet.

This is an acceptable mechanic, but it does not do a lot in terms of space geography control/defense as a minefield would.

Thus, I'm looking for potential alternatives that would cause an opponent to be delayed in their invasion of a sector that would prevent them from easily running away from your ships (assuming you were wise enough to set them up in the first place) and be free from random chances (but provide hidden information advantages).

Any thoughts/suggestions?

Hi folks,

Once again, this is related to a game I'm currently developing.

Sister threads:

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/642498-minimal-ship-customization-in-4x-games/

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/642461-research-system-in-4x-games/

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/642693-communication-in-a-4x-game/

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/642734-input-method-to-emulate-multiple-sliders/

I'm currently tinkering with one of the most 'interesting' parts of the genre: The Battle System.

Following in the legacy of some of my favorite 4X games, I want this to be a 'sit back and enjoy' type of combat, where every player decision has already been taken (how to build ships, what to bring to the conflict, etc). Therefore, I want it to be fairly simple.

I also want to avoid it being a 'cool looking' chaotic level where every ship is present and firing here and there: I want players to see how they have won or lost exactly so that they can learn from every battle.

To be perfectly in line with my current ideal, I want to prevent players using several smallers ships to easily defeat players using biggers ships. The reasoning is that, for economic reasons, the player will want to use a fleet of smaller ships to colonize/develop as many planets as they can, as quickly as possible. I want combat to balance things out by giving a slight edge to larger ships.

VGA Planets uses a system where each ship duels, in a specific order. I believe this gives too much of an advantage to the biggest ship which can, most of the times, destroy every ship one by one without taking much damage. I want it to be viable (although economically not so viable) to respond to a high-tech ship by massing smaller crafts, but I just want to dissuade the player to willingly use this strategy.

I've come up with two hybrid systems which I believe both make sense and introduce an interesting mix of strategy. I'm looking for input on the following 2 systems:

1 - "Lane System"

In the Lane system, the first 3 ships of each fleet are pitted against one another in their own dueling lanes. These battles happen at the same time, and as soon as one ship is the victor in his own lane, he gets to reinforce another lane. It appears in that lane, at a far distance, and closes on the enemy.

Other ships are in a queue, with a distance indicator. As time passes, they grow closer to the last lane and eventually reinforce it one-by-one. That way, if there is reinforcement on both sides, Lane 3 eventually leads to a new conflict. If only one player has reinforcements, it will take time, but it will reach lane 3, then lane 2 and finally lane 1.

2 - "Duel + System"

Much akin to VGA Planets, the first ship of each fleet are pitted against one another.

A queue of reinforcements is comig behind, with increasing distances.

Every ship will always target the 'oldest ship' on the other side first (ordered by their arrival into the duel) meaning the first ship to die is always the first one.

(This system is a simplified rehash of the first, minus the idea of parallel fights).

Thoughts?

Hi,

I'm currently struggling with a player input / User interface issue I'm trying to fix and would like your feedback.

I'm working on a project where you manage a single resource towards various poles.

Think of it as trying to manage people to do different tasks:

'how many people should do task "a"'

'how many people should do task "b"'

'how many people should do task "c"'

...

Now, most games I've seen use multiple 1-dimension sliders and some form of a total.

Many of them will make it so that when you increase one slider, it will automatically substract from one of the others in such or such way.

I find this system to be suboptimal at best and irritating to use, but lack more efficient implementation to really substantiate it.

Since there are 6 different allocations in my game, I initially went for a sort of hexagon where you could just drag your allocation balance, but it was limited in that, if you would move towards B, you'd also inherently move closer to A and C, while moving away from D,E,F and my system really doesn't have much correlation by proximity.

I was wondering if you know of, or have thought about potential implementations to make manipulating such a system simpler and less irritating?

Hi,

Here's a followup on my current project which has been discussed here and here.

This one will be a little different as I currently don't have much of an answer to provide, only the problem. Hopefully you'll be able to assist me as you have in the past.

My current problem is this:

I'm trying to implement communication as a key element of the gameplay in my game. Given that it ties well with the theme of logistics that I'm trying to establish, it 'feels right' and gives me another means to reinforce logistics while providing further strategic decisions and opportunities to the player.

The issue here though is that I don't have a gameplay implementation for what communications entails.

The closest element I've found in games was the influence, which would stretch from planets up to a certain distance and have an effect on things located within that distance.

My initial assumption was that, much like is the case with current limitations, and as can be seen in sci-fi tv series, if a ship would ever leave the maximum communication range of the empire it is connected with, it would be 'on its own'

Unfortunately, I'm struggling with this concept for various reasons:

- Similarly, I don't want to limit the range. I think its important for the player to be able to send a ship very far in exploration, and a communication range would just prevent this. Likewise, it would suck to be unable to retaliate on an enemy just because he's destroyed one of your bases and has come out of your range.

- In tv series such as, say, Star Trek, when a ship is beyond the range of their central command, they have sufficient leadership aboard to make clever decisions. The issue here is that, its very hard to grasp that from the standpoint of the player if he is playing the collective counsciousness of high management. On the one hand, I don't want the player to lose control of his ships just because they are out of range, but then, if I don't do something drastic, communication ranges won't mean anything.

Therefore, I'm looking for a tangible way to implement a logical system that would either buff units for being within range, or penalyze them for going outside, or any tangible reason for you to stay within these lines as much as possible and seek to expand them.

One concept I've ruled out is the implementation of influence in Galciv2 as it allowd you to takeover enemy planets through influence, and this really doesn't make sense for communications and for my game.

One thing I've noted though is that communication could have a detrimental effect on any enemy's sensor within range, somehow hacking them and sending fake data, but I'm not sure I want communication to play as the defensive counter to sensors.

Any ideas here?

Hi,

This is meant as a companion to this thread regarding a 4X game I'm trying to develop, but assesses a much different topic.

I've noticed, with puzzlement, that most 4X games are proud to present ship customization as their core gameplay elements.

Once again here, I'm not debating that its fun and interesting, but rather, I'm surprised I'm unable to find any 4X game that has preset ships so to speak.

My reasoning is as follows (once again based on VGA Planets' approach):

If you can customize your ships, you can craft a fleet that resembles you, embraces your playstyle. While this is very fun, and allows for some learning (you learn by making mistakes), I find it less challenging. It often becomes more a matter of how many ships you can bring, or whether you can build the strongest ship rather than how you use each individual ship and insure they fit their role. Ships will either specialized efficiently or tend to go broad, without consistency.

Let's take an example: Chess.

Chess is fun because, while you're not proficient with all of the pieces, you generally win the game by utilizing all of your pieces efficiently. You might be a Queen-lover and be deadly with it, but learning to master the knight will allow you to capture your opponent's queen more efficiently in many cases.

By losing games, you hone your craft of chess mastery through learning how to best utilize pieces you are not proficient with. Over time, opponents will figure what pieces you are not skilled with, and exploit the game by leveraging your shortcomings to their advantage. At such point, it won't matter how good you've become killing pawns with your Queen if you can't sidestep your knights in fork positions.

This, in my opinion, is also why Chess is a lot more fun than checkers. At checkers, you need to learn a single pattern, and apply it everywhere. The game is more a question of awareness than tactic.

Now, think of chess as a game where each piece has a value, and you get to purchase your army up to a total amount of points. You're likely to pick whichever piece you are proficient with, completely ignoring the ones you believe are weak (by lack of predisposition). In other words, you'll avoid the issue of trying to learn and appreciate them. While it makes for a fun game (I'm pretty sure a 4 queens vs 10 knights game would be interesting for example), it also lacks a lot of substance.

Also, if there are seemingly dominant strategies, all players will converge towards the same strategies in such a way that they become too similar (queens vs queens). You'll end up playing the opponent rather than the opponent's playstyle of an established concept.

In VGA Planets, ships are much more organic. When you pick a species, you need to carefully consider their fleet arsenal. They rarely have fully dedicated ships for a certain purposes. A lot of them are well-rounded, but particular traits make them slightly more or less efficient at one thing or another. More importantly, all fleets lack specific components, and this creatures an innate weakness of this species. Strategies often evolve from the conflicting weaknesses, and it becomes fun as this is problem solving for the player: how am I going to perform this necessary task when I don't have an optimal ship to do it? Various players will come with different ways to cope for this, discuss it over forums, look for ways to min/max each ship to their advantage.

All of this because players can interact based on things they all share: ships.

When ships are customizable, players will only share blueprints on how to build them, and the purpose they have, but it won't account for the real problem solving as it won't cater to any specific weakness.

Examples:

A species whose warships are nearly all carriers will find itself at an advantage (they are very strong) and a disadvantage (it costs $$$ to produce fighters and replenish them). It will dictate that they will try to fight the enemy in masse where they can quickly dispath most ships in a volley, and will avoid specialists that can either disrupt all of their fighters or target their hull directly (lots of beams, or lots of torpedoes).

If there's one ship in their arsenal that gives them lots of beams and/or torpedoes, no matter how inefficient, it will probably get used. People will complain that it is weak, but they'll be happy they have it to react to some situations.

When a species has 6-12 ship designs, that are all preset, you can bet you'll utilize most of them over the span of several games.

This compares well to an RTS such as Starcraft. In Starcraft, the units are unique for each species, and preset. Players understand how each unit interact on the battlefield, and they learn to counter strategies as efficiently as they can. They also have favorites, but know they can't stick to them throughout the game if the opponent plays wisely.

Now, I can imagine an RTS with customizable units, and it would be fun, but it'd probably less challenging and rewarding.

My objective here is twofold:

- I'd like to open this discussion, as I don't believe I've covered all bases. While I believe this is a good approach, I'm affraid I might have missed obvious pitfalls.

- I'm looking for reference 4X games with preset ship lists with relatively small or no customization capabilities. My researches this far have been rather poor. I've isolated VGA Planets (core reference) and Star Knights as avenues I can further research and base my work upon. Any other title I should look into?

Thanks.