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Post by David West on Aug 15, 2006 1:40:13 GMT -5
The exact details will be discussed in separate threads, but here’s a basic overview of how I expect the game to work.
Players register and choose their capital city/country details.
Cities are managed to produce taxes, military units and resources. It is possible to build research centres and factories to research more advanced units.
Ground forces can be sent out of the city to capture terrain and other cities, both neutral and enemy. Each piece of terrain captured will have a value attached to it, for example it will mean more people are under control of the players empire and so can be taxed or recruited into the army etc. Some terrain will have special resources such as oil wells or gold mines etc which will help the beneficiary to build more.
Ground units can fight other units, there will also be combat between ships and aircraft with strategic bombing possible.
Most of the screen will be taken up with a map showing the lie of the land around your own units and the right or left panels will show unit details, city information, research stuff etc.
Not sure yet if the game will be open or close ended and what the objectives should be. I am favouring a turn based game rather than real time, perhaps one turn per day, or some system to allow players who don’t login often a way of competing with those who do.
I’ll add to this as new ideas come along.
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Post by imkrazie on Aug 15, 2006 15:45:40 GMT -5
Turn-based or real-time? Turn based in my opinion may be the better option
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Post by David West on Aug 15, 2006 17:00:51 GMT -5
It is easier to code so I would prefer that too. One turn a day about right? I could make it so that if you missed your turn for the day you still got production and could "save up" moves for a few days to allow for catching up.
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Post by Floodland on Aug 16, 2006 4:56:10 GMT -5
I think turn-based would be preferable too. Most people wouldn't want to commit to something that's likely to eat lots of time from the outset where you have to stay up all night to gain an advantage. Also I think open-ended games eventually lose their appeal - once you've got all the "stuff" you're ever likely to get and yet you still get beaten up by the big boys then it gets a little depressing! I'm thinking in particular of Inselkampf here. Having said that, Torn City is open-ended but manages to remain (relatively) interesting by having new developments written for it now and then and also one-off "story" events that can break up the routine.
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Post by Floodland on Aug 16, 2006 5:31:39 GMT -5
I like the idea of a spherical or wrap-around map, then no-one is disadvantaged by being on the edge. Coordinate system? Square-based map? Hexagon-based map?
How will you handle combat between units? Lanchester square calculations? Will each unit type have a probability of hitting each other unit type? Do they fight to the death? Can you have multiple units against each other in a single battle? Can you have battles involving more than two opponents? Will there be any advantage for going for the "manoeuverist approach" rather than wars of attrition (e.g. a handful of crack troops taking out a command and control centre rather than thousands of troops fighting toe to toe)?
How about artillery that can fire at a map location without needing to know if there's anything there? Logistics - ammo and fuel? Unit "postures" (e.g. attacking, hasty defence, prepared defence, road move, cross-country move) having an effect on damage etc.
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Post by David West on Aug 16, 2006 7:03:22 GMT -5
Ooh, so many questions!
I was going to make the map square based as it is easier to code (you'll be hearing that a lot from me) and I think it's also easier to understand from a players point of view too.
The idea I had was for new players to start at the map edge all the time, so they wouldn't be near any of the established players (or maybe just the odd one or two) and would have new areas of the map to expand into.
Combat was going to be handled thus:
At the end of the current "turn", so around midnight say, any opposing units which were adjacent would be involved in combat. So in theory you could get several units attacking one unit, I don't think I'm going to have units "stacking" for the first version of the game to make it simpler, apart from in cities (this is like the PC game Empire, although that is realtime).
Artillery would be different, yes I do intend having them. They would be able to attack anything within their range, probably 2 squares away until you get the technology to build longer range artillery.
To be honest I'd never heard of that until you mentioned it and I found out what it meant on the net! I may use these formulae in my combat routines, interesting, need to do more research there!
Yes, as long as they are in contact with each other or the artillery is in range. I don't know if you ever played any of Ken Wrights wargames on the Spectrum (Stalingrad, Overlord etc) but it would be along the lines of that.
The first incarnation of the game will be as simple as possible so units will have 1 "Hit Point" each, so yes. Later on I will give units different amounts of "Hit Points" so they could survive multiple rounds of combat depending on circumstances. I intend coding it with the simplest possible rules to begin with but "future proofing" as much as possible so the enhancements can be made quite easily.
Yes.
Sort of. It will be worthwhile depriving the enemy of their cities and any resource rich terrain they may own. There wont be any command units as such, although it is something I may implement now you've given me the idea!
That was my intention, as long as an enemy is within range they will fire.
To some extent I will be implementing this, although I'm not sure how to code "line of supply" logic I would make sure that any units which relied on resources such as oil had enough to draw from being produce by the players empire they were owned by. If not they'd have some kind of penalty, reduced movement, combat penalty etc.
Good idea! Hadn't thought of that one - I could make a flag for all units that have moved so if they get into combat they would have a penalty for being "surprised" etc.
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