Ascendancy was a great game, at least early to mid game.
Just a thought about this: All the combinations of of weapons, engines, shields, etc. should lead to specific strategies (like slow/strong, fast/weak, etc.). So what would the turn around time be to design against a specific strategy once you realized that your enemy is fielding units that allow it? In an RTS with fixed units, if you see an enemy unit being constructed (or often the buildings that support it) this gives you an idea of what to pump out. The faster the game, the more you're relying on a known progression up a known tech tree (as in "okay, he's got Goliaths, Siege Tanks probably aren't far behind"). With designed units unless you fix to visually identifying what strategic stage your opponent is at (with weapons or modules as suggested above) this sort of clue will be harder to generate.
It could work, however, if the distances were long. If you see someone has nuclear missile launchers, then the game has to give you time to design and build nuclear shields. But this could lead to really slow and long games without many fights.
Another possibility would be to design the game strategies around the technologies such that it's not a race up the tech tree. For instance, as in reality, if you're facing a nuclear weapon weilding opponent, you spread out your fleet. This, in turn, might favor light fighter attacks, which (like in WWII Pacific battles) necessitates deploying light ships as fighter screens.
The key here is that none of these strategies are unavailable at game start. Rather, the player receives an attack and uses logic and experience to reconfigure their fleet tactics to respond. If you do this you could throw lots of customizable ships in the mix provided that battles grind on somewhat without any big one-two punch (at least until end game). The constant contact in theory should allow players to lose, learn, and come back with either a new technology or (more likely and probably slightly more desireable) different strategy.
Space RTS: Customizable Ships?
Author
Wow, a lot of good replies here!
First off, my "intellectual exercise" concerns turning Ascendancy into a pure real-time game, so nothing like the Total War series would work for me.
Second, I'm really not concerned about balancing right now. My focus is on "game flow", for lack of a better term - the quasi-mystical ability to keep a player's active interest for the entire time he plays the game.
In Ascendancy, ships are built simply by putting items into slots. There are different hull sizes (small, medium, large, huge) and different types of items (power generators, engines, sensors, shields, weapons, specials). So my question is, how easily can the above be placed into a purely real-time game?
I definitely think there should be an external program (a "ship builder" or "ship editor") that will let players pre-design ship types to use in the game. What do you guys think of putting the functionality into the game itself? Would it be useful at all? Looking at gameplay videos of Sins of a Solar Empire, it seems like the pacing could be slow enough to let players produce new ship types in-game.
Finally, I'm wondering whether the stats of enemy ships should be displayed automatically, or whether they should be displayed only on mouse-over. Do you guys have any pros/cons here?
First off, my "intellectual exercise" concerns turning Ascendancy into a pure real-time game, so nothing like the Total War series would work for me.
Second, I'm really not concerned about balancing right now. My focus is on "game flow", for lack of a better term - the quasi-mystical ability to keep a player's active interest for the entire time he plays the game.
In Ascendancy, ships are built simply by putting items into slots. There are different hull sizes (small, medium, large, huge) and different types of items (power generators, engines, sensors, shields, weapons, specials). So my question is, how easily can the above be placed into a purely real-time game?
I definitely think there should be an external program (a "ship builder" or "ship editor") that will let players pre-design ship types to use in the game. What do you guys think of putting the functionality into the game itself? Would it be useful at all? Looking at gameplay videos of Sins of a Solar Empire, it seems like the pacing could be slow enough to let players produce new ship types in-game.
Finally, I'm wondering whether the stats of enemy ships should be displayed automatically, or whether they should be displayed only on mouse-over. Do you guys have any pros/cons here?
An RTS with customizable units is Impossible Creatures. Check that one out. You could design your army ahead of time. IIRC, you could also design units on the play field, but there were some limits (cap to total number of designs you could have ready at any point, I believe). One thing Impossible Creatures did well was visually distinguishing the units - when you see a rhino/cheetah cross you know what it's going to be able to do!
Personally, I'm working (well, sort of working anyways) on a TBS game where units are designed ahead of battles (actually, there's no unit creation mid-battle anyway). My goal is to provide extreme flexibility, at the cost of pretty much everything else.
Personally, I'm working (well, sort of working anyways) on a TBS game where units are designed ahead of battles (actually, there's no unit creation mid-battle anyway). My goal is to provide extreme flexibility, at the cost of pretty much everything else.
The thing about unit customization is that the interesting customization aren't the slots for larger weapons or more shielding, that's just a simple scalar for attack and defense strength. It's the unique one off abilities which really give the game spice. For instance in MOO 1, there was the repulsor beam which pushed ships away 2 units. Since most ships have weapons which only fire 1 unit worth, it render them totally ineffective, allowing for a much smaller force to take out a much larger one given the right upgrades (your own ships have to be also equipped with 2 unit firing weapons to overcome the distance gap as well).
The AI would eventually adapt and build more 2 unit firing weapons or missiles which couldn't be blocked by this tactic. It's the uniqueness of one off upgrades coupled with the counter strategies which made the game fun and addictive.
Also coupled with the fact that you can only equip these on off upgrades on hull large enough to carry them, which inturn increase the time to build them, makes for some interesting tradeoffs in terms of time vs effort in your strategy.
-ddn
The AI would eventually adapt and build more 2 unit firing weapons or missiles which couldn't be blocked by this tactic. It's the uniqueness of one off upgrades coupled with the counter strategies which made the game fun and addictive.
Also coupled with the fact that you can only equip these on off upgrades on hull large enough to carry them, which inturn increase the time to build them, makes for some interesting tradeoffs in terms of time vs effort in your strategy.
-ddn
Don't know how this would play out, but perhaps you could make it like this:
2 min (or similar) research, build etc time.
5 min real-time rts.
Everyone would move, attack etc at the same time.
2 min (or similar) research, build etc time.
5 min real-time rts.
Everyone would move, attack etc at the same time.
Instead of having players design ships within every game, I allow players to create "schematics" between games that they can save. Players can make "fleets" of 24 different schematics. Before each game, each player selects one of their "fleets" to use. The 24 ship types in the fleet become the units the player can build during the game.
Quote:Original post by Wavinator
All the combinations of of weapons, engines, shields, etc. should lead to specific strategies (like slow/strong, fast/weak, etc.). So what would the turn around time be to design against a specific strategy once you realized that your enemy is fielding units that allow it?
If you include advancing technology you can make it in a way that there are specific buildings for different parts of the tech tree. This buildings could change there appereance depending on what is researched. Like you build a laser tech center and research a specific laser technology. Grafically your laser tech center may have several wings or distinct labs and one of them changes its appereance to a unique appereance for the technology you just researched so scouting still enables you to see what you opponent is planning to do.
Another possibility would be to make technological advance really expensive and difficult so when you fight some light space ships with small laser guns early on you can expect to see bigger ones later (and base your shieldresearch on that) because a complete switch to some torpedo-like weapons may be really expensive.
One way would be to change the pace of the game.
In games like homeworld or homeworld 2, capital ships may get blown up in a matter of seconds and an engagement over in a few short minutes. This not only make ship designing difficult as you need to be on your toes ready to make tactical changes in split seconds, but also cheapens the feel of capital ships. In my mind a battleship should be powerful enough to last through everything the enemy could throw at it and grudgingly give up when its finally overwhelmed.
Of course I'm not talking about a battle that takes hours to complete, instead change the pace of the game make things happen slower to allow you to identify what tactics the enemy are using and go to the drawing board to design and build a counter for it.
In games like homeworld or homeworld 2, capital ships may get blown up in a matter of seconds and an engagement over in a few short minutes. This not only make ship designing difficult as you need to be on your toes ready to make tactical changes in split seconds, but also cheapens the feel of capital ships. In my mind a battleship should be powerful enough to last through everything the enemy could throw at it and grudgingly give up when its finally overwhelmed.
Of course I'm not talking about a battle that takes hours to complete, instead change the pace of the game make things happen slower to allow you to identify what tactics the enemy are using and go to the drawing board to design and build a counter for it.
Problem with simply upgrading weapons, shields, etc.. is that it presents the player with false choices. So people just pile on the best of everything until they can't afford it anymore. Since you know a level 4 laser will always be better than a level 3 laser, there isn't much guess work about design. It's not like your going to go with something less than what you can afford, and what you can afford is dependent upon on what your economy can build.
That's the same problem Alpha Centuari had, it had so many little upgrades to weapons and what not, there wasn't any point in customizing it, since you never would use old out of date tech as it would get crushed by the latest tech.
Look at great RTS, they don't have units with just bigger weapons more shielding, they have units with unique abilities and custom roles. Starcraft for example, the ghost is a infantry unit but it isn't just an upgraded marine, it's a stealth unit with a long range weapon.
To truly make customization mean anything you'll need to create truly unique abilities and balance those out. Perhaps for every perk you need a counter-perk, kinda like how fallout works.
-ddn
That's the same problem Alpha Centuari had, it had so many little upgrades to weapons and what not, there wasn't any point in customizing it, since you never would use old out of date tech as it would get crushed by the latest tech.
Look at great RTS, they don't have units with just bigger weapons more shielding, they have units with unique abilities and custom roles. Starcraft for example, the ghost is a infantry unit but it isn't just an upgraded marine, it's a stealth unit with a long range weapon.
To truly make customization mean anything you'll need to create truly unique abilities and balance those out. Perhaps for every perk you need a counter-perk, kinda like how fallout works.
-ddn
Quote:Original post by ddn3
Problem with simply upgrading weapons, shields, etc.. is that it presents the player with false choices. So people just pile on the best of everything until they can't afford it anymore. Since you know a level 4 laser will always be better than a level 3 laser, there isn't much guess work about design. It's not like your going to go with something less than what you can afford, and what you can afford is dependent upon on what your economy can build.
This is a good point, but I don't think it's always true when the upgrades are linear but the choice of what to upgrade constrained. What if you have to choose between level 4 lasers and level 4 shields because they're balanced against each other in terms of power requirements? Now the player must decide whether or not they want a fast attack strategy which reduces enemy contact or whether they want to try to slug it out with weaker weapons while relying on stronger defenses.
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