Good idea, Paul. It''s somewhat similar to the techniques applied in MOOII (command points) and the Civilzation series (base support).
We''re planning on doing something like that. Since money is very important in the real world (and has been since its invention), we want to make money equally important in the game.

So every ship or base or whatever requires some funding (e.g. for the crew''s salaries and the ship''s maintenance). If you don''t have enough money, the ships won''t just dissapear, but they won''t be usable either (just like the crew is on strike ).

Where you say "resources", we just use money. The money is raised by means of taxation (on trade, in colonies, etc...). But higher taxes limit productivity, of course.

Dormeur

I just skimmed most of the post, but here goes...

quote:
As far as I know there aren''t any quality TBSs. None. Sure there are plenty of turn based sims, the civ sort of stuff. However I''m talking strategy, which means multiplayer.

Heroes of Might and Magic (which is mentioned here) and X-COM (also mentioned here) are both good games, although X-COM is more along the lines of a jagged alliance-style squad combat than TBS. Another good game is Warlords III (supposedly, Warlords II Deluxe was better, but I haven''t played it.)

Stars!, which I don''t even know if can be found any more, was also a pretty good game. While it didn''t have a turn time cap, it allowed everyone to play their turns simultaneously (? spelling) and then submit them to the computer hosting the game. It used a combat engine to create the battles, then saved them to videos which are sent out to the players so they can see exactly why they won (or lost) a fight.

quote:
One possible solution could be some kind of semi-turn based movement method. I like the method they use in Titans of Steel (or Mechforce).

Don''t forget M.A.X. It actually gave you your choice of whether to play TB or RT.

one more...

quote:
and 2ndly, have you nailed do the combat engine maths logic yet?

If I understand this right, this isn''t necessarily needed. For instance, HOMM based its combat engine on unit speed and unit (or stack) HP. Warlords III just pops up and has a dice-based combat engine with no player control over the battle.

I don''t like that very much, but I guess in the case of the Java web-based game, that''s required.

Dormeur, I like the idea of carrying time over and of AI-assisted management, but I''ve discovered that sometimes AI doesn''t work at all like it should. In Stars!, I let the computer play a few turns for me, and it proceeded to switch all of my mine building (mineral-free) to defense building (very expensive) and started randomly throwing minerals around my empire. So my suggestion for you, and anyone else trying this style of control, is to have several different AI settings, for how strictly they stick to what you''ve already set up. With a loose setting, it would do whatever it thought would be best for you, while with a very strict setting, it would do things which don''t drain your resources or upset your people (like exhorbitantly taxing them.)

I''m done with ideas right now, but I''ll come back if I get any more. Oh, and yeah, it should tell you you can''t anonymously start a thread.