Wai: Uh... thank you, sensei.

tsloper: I dunno. If I'd actually written Don Quixote, wouldn't I want to mention that?

Talin/Rosecroix: Not sure what you mean by browser-based. Like a MUD? For instance, Achaea, if you've heard of that?

a) Fair enough. But don't disparage it too much. I'd like to find some other random outsider who's written one this intricate.

b) Really? But I truly believed that I had composed a GDD that would stand the test of time, one that combines efficient design, literary merit, contemporary yet eternal allusion, and just the right mixture of high and pop gaming culture. I even wrote a guide to the GDD, a companion if you will, to help make sense of the rapid-fire parody and archaic references. But now I see my folly. Oh, the perfidy of hubris!

I'm going to cry in the corner. Console me not.

I feel like I should post something, but... I have no idea how to respond to that.

Just a couple questions on your design...

How do you plan on managing the pacing of the game? Just looking at some sample numbers... 50 players per nation, times 25 nations is 1250 players playing a game over a period of 30 days. How do you balance the effects of players putting in 8+ hours per day in the game vs players that are only putting in maybe 8+ hours per week, or 8 hours over the entire 30 day gaming period?

What mechanics are going to be in place to give the most clever and skilled players the advantage over the ones that just have 10 times more time to play the game?

I really like the overall concept you've designed, and it reminds of some of the earlier play by email (which were simply computerized version of play by mail) type of conquest/exploration/roleplay type games of the past couple decades, and even in those games where you had a specific number of turns that could be played daily, missing a day of activity could really put you behind the ball in terms of "Winning". Seems to me the problem would only be significantly compounded in your design.

With only 50 players per nation, it's likely that there will be periods for most nations during a 30 day period where no player is logged in and playing at that time. How do you plan on managing the actions of others players towards that nation, whether peaceful or aggressive in nature?

Well, the thing is, players don't generate resources by themselves. Businesses (this includes both gathering facilities and manufacturing facilities) generate resources at a given rate, depending on Production technology, number of workers in the facility, etc. So the only disadvantage in that regard of not being online is that you're not spending all the resources you accumulate at once. Which is fine, because it probably takes a while to save up for what you actually want to build, particularly since each player doesn't own a business of every type, so you have to sell certain resources at market to buy others, or at least trade yours with other players for theirs.

But even if a player doesn't log in at all, their businesses' outputs don't go to waste. Some of the output for all businesses automatically goes into the national "government" stockpile, which any player can access (but to varying degrees depending on their Economy authority).

Well, if a player misses a day, there are forty-nine others to do stuff for him. If a player seems to be totally inactive and hasn't logged in for, say, a week, there are mechanisms to kick out or "exile" the player. After that, the nation can take in a rogue player, or one who joined after the start of the game, since it has fewer than fifty players. Also, after a player is exiled, to expand on the first point, the government stockpile gets all their wealth and resources, so they haven't gone to waste.

A lot of the nation runs by itself once players set the parameters. Armies move by themselves once a player gives them orders, Merchant NPCs handle trade routes by themselves once players establish the route, businesses automatically produce resources each tick, certain NPC types (like Builders) automatically find the most appropriate job (and work at resource facilities if there are none), players can queue research or units to be trained, etc.

That said, players have plenty to do if they do want to put time in, as I've already been over. But like I mentioned, I'm not sure you could really find eight hours' worth of play per day, so it wouldn't give you an advantage and you probably wouldn't want to anyway, except maybe for the social aspects inherent in this kind of game.

The main caveat here is that I'm sort of against having combat AI, since it's usually pretty easy to take advantage of. But if there isn't anyone online to take command of an army, and there's no AI to serve in a pinch, there isn't really anything for the army to do except retreat. And that leads to obvious problems. I guess that would be an argument for allying with other nations (so their players can handle battles when your own aren't logged on), but it's probably a stronger argument for having AI. One possibility-- I don't love it, but it may be the best solution-- would be to limit the times of day when you can start battles. So you can't have little surprise attacks at four in the morning on a weekday.

Actually, one of the main concepts behind this game is that I wanted to design something where it's less important how long you've played and how much time you spend playing per day, and more important how "clever and skilled" you are. This comes from the personal experience of playing free MMO after free MMO when those were the only things that mattered. I could be as clever as I wanted, but the l33t h4xx0r who'd been playing since beta was gonna destroy me no matter what. I thought, what if there were a game where this wasn't the case? That's part of the reason I have the game reset every 30 days.

However, I also played a space-empire-sim game called Hyperiums where, after a reset, you lost everything you'd built up. You kept nothing. That struck me as sort of a waste, and sort of annoying to the players who'd spent all that time on it. So I included the credentials system. That way, even though you lose all your personal belongings-- resources, wealth, vehicles-- you keep the prestige you got from your accomplishments during the previous games, and there's a level of personal pride beyond the cooperative one of having the highest-scoring nation.