I like Warhammer 40k with the Eldar.
They can teleport buildings out of danger, so that you can avoid combat in PvP
This game also have a unit limit, which reduces the amount of micro and thus make the game more relaxed.
The most common problem of FFA in Zero-K is, that noobs like to porc in their base and avoid fighting the strong one because they fear to lose.
The strong one can pick up one after another and especially try to kill a player which got recently attacked (thus weakened).
"Playing SimCity"
Moderator: Moderators
Re: "Playing SimCity"
I think one thing you might have difficulty with is that while there always seem to be a few players who want to play SimCity with their base... I don't know if you would actually attract those players with a Base Building RTS... they play like that because they "want a solid infrastructure" or "don't want their base overrun"...
As such I think the solution would be to remove the option... limit the number of useful buildings that a player could build... or have a "base building phase" and a "combat phase"... or start the player with a base of operations but don't let them improve it...
or simply balance a game towards rewarding good base building, like when you play one of those island VS island maps against the crappy stock AI and the best strategy was to tech up to a swarm of rapiers and snipe the Commander.
As such I think the solution would be to remove the option... limit the number of useful buildings that a player could build... or have a "base building phase" and a "combat phase"... or start the player with a base of operations but don't let them improve it...
or simply balance a game towards rewarding good base building, like when you play one of those island VS island maps against the crappy stock AI and the best strategy was to tech up to a swarm of rapiers and snipe the Commander.
Last edited by SinbadEV on 10 Apr 2013, 23:24, edited 1 time in total.
Re: "Playing SimCity"
+1or have a "base building phase" and a "combat phase"... or start the player with a base of operations but don't let them improve it
Some special defense buildings which are not rebuild-able by player (maybe only rez-able)
Re: "Playing SimCity"
I'd just go with separation of attack and defense - you don't need separate timing.
Basically, each player starts with a small invincible home zone - everything they build there is indestructible. They can build offensive factories for free (cost nothing but worker-time) but they have a limit of 3 offensive factories and those factories cannot be assisted. This gives each player a fixed flow of offensive units. There's a supply limit on the offensive units, so you may as well use them rather than waste time when you've hit max.
Offensive units don't hurt each other.
Then, you've got defensive units - they cost metal. Player gets a fixed metal income for building defenses and mexes. Mexes only produce a very tiny amount of metal, compared to the far larger base income - at endgame their income is at most doubled.
First player to N (10? Map-specific? Whatever) mexes wins. Mexes that are claimed or are close to a player's units glow on the map with his playercolor, so every player can see who's the most powerful and can attack him with their offensive units. Play it as FFA.
Boom, you have a game about expansion and sim-base work, where everybody has offensive units that are good for *nothing* but attacking. They all know vaguely how well and where each other player is so they can gang up on the leaders, but they don't know the specifics of the enemy's defensive layout or plans so they still need to scout extensively. Every player is in the game until the end because even if their entire expansion is wiped out, they can start again from their little safe-zone and start the expansion once more. And even if their base has been decimated, they've got the same income of defense/territory claiming construction, and the same output of offensive units.
Every player knows the absolute upper-limit of how much threat they can face - just the total offensive supply limit of every other player put-together. So it's possible for him to build impenetrable expansions that are tough enough to withstand this limitless onslaught... *but* other players won't be so defensive and will be more aggressive about claiming territory and so an overly-cautious player may lose the race to the victory condition.
The game encourages teaching too (even among enemies), as the stronger players will want to teach the weaker players the art of offence as they gang-up on the leaders in temporary alliances.
Three gametypes naturally fall out of this
1) Full mode described above
2) Tag-team mode where players form co-operative pairs - a player is either "offense" or "defense"
3) Assault mode. One team of players is all defense/expansion, the other team is attack/containment. Play to a fixed time-limit - if they reach victory condition before then, their "score" is the time. If they fail, the "score" is how many mexes they controlled when time elapsed. Then the teams swap roles and try to beat the other score. It worked in UT.
Basically, each player starts with a small invincible home zone - everything they build there is indestructible. They can build offensive factories for free (cost nothing but worker-time) but they have a limit of 3 offensive factories and those factories cannot be assisted. This gives each player a fixed flow of offensive units. There's a supply limit on the offensive units, so you may as well use them rather than waste time when you've hit max.
Offensive units don't hurt each other.
Then, you've got defensive units - they cost metal. Player gets a fixed metal income for building defenses and mexes. Mexes only produce a very tiny amount of metal, compared to the far larger base income - at endgame their income is at most doubled.
First player to N (10? Map-specific? Whatever) mexes wins. Mexes that are claimed or are close to a player's units glow on the map with his playercolor, so every player can see who's the most powerful and can attack him with their offensive units. Play it as FFA.
Boom, you have a game about expansion and sim-base work, where everybody has offensive units that are good for *nothing* but attacking. They all know vaguely how well and where each other player is so they can gang up on the leaders, but they don't know the specifics of the enemy's defensive layout or plans so they still need to scout extensively. Every player is in the game until the end because even if their entire expansion is wiped out, they can start again from their little safe-zone and start the expansion once more. And even if their base has been decimated, they've got the same income of defense/territory claiming construction, and the same output of offensive units.
Every player knows the absolute upper-limit of how much threat they can face - just the total offensive supply limit of every other player put-together. So it's possible for him to build impenetrable expansions that are tough enough to withstand this limitless onslaught... *but* other players won't be so defensive and will be more aggressive about claiming territory and so an overly-cautious player may lose the race to the victory condition.
The game encourages teaching too (even among enemies), as the stronger players will want to teach the weaker players the art of offence as they gang-up on the leaders in temporary alliances.
Three gametypes naturally fall out of this
1) Full mode described above
2) Tag-team mode where players form co-operative pairs - a player is either "offense" or "defense"
3) Assault mode. One team of players is all defense/expansion, the other team is attack/containment. Play to a fixed time-limit - if they reach victory condition before then, their "score" is the time. If they fail, the "score" is how many mexes they controlled when time elapsed. Then the teams swap roles and try to beat the other score. It worked in UT.
Re: "Playing SimCity"
This can be much easer:
You have 2 factions, not core/arm, but offender/defender.
Resources are divided equally to both factions.
Excess to the other faction wastes 20% of excess.
______
What this really needs is: more units which don't leave wrecks, so that they can not be rezzed and used against yourself.
Their defensive role would be slightly worse because you don't get metal back.
You can even make them slightly stronger with a dead explosion.
Doesn't this sound a bit like artillery? no wrecks close to enemies, slightly stronger because they are out of range, etc.
--> just make arty better and give static even better arty to fire back form well fortified bases which already have deflectors.
You have 2 factions, not core/arm, but offender/defender.
Resources are divided equally to both factions.
Excess to the other faction wastes 20% of excess.
______
What this really needs is: more units which don't leave wrecks, so that they can not be rezzed and used against yourself.
Their defensive role would be slightly worse because you don't get metal back.
You can even make them slightly stronger with a dead explosion.
Doesn't this sound a bit like artillery? no wrecks close to enemies, slightly stronger because they are out of range, etc.
--> just make arty better and give static even better arty to fire back form well fortified bases which already have deflectors.
Re: "Playing SimCity"
Why even make it PvP? An AI won't complain when its role is boring.
Re: "Playing SimCity"
If you're going to have an AI, why implement it at all rather than either folding the role into the player's or phoning it in and modeling the end consequences for the player without simulating the means and methods?
That said, the role should not be boring for at least some segment of players, otherwise there is no discussion to be had around implementing it.
That said, the role should not be boring for at least some segment of players, otherwise there is no discussion to be had around implementing it.
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1v0ry_k1ng
- Posts: 4656
- Joined: 10 Mar 2006, 10:24
Re: "Playing SimCity"
I think every RTS player goes through all the stages at some point, with the final stage being complete understanding of the game played at high level and transcending the fear of defeat. One of the first stages is turtling... I remember playing exactly like the noobturtles I now despise when I was about 12 and playing through the TA campaign for the first time.
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bobthedinosaur
- Blood & Steel Developer
- Posts: 2700
- Joined: 25 Aug 2004, 13:31
Re: "Playing SimCity"
one of my problems with the blood and steel game i toyed with was the scale of the game. I wanted cities to be an important resource but they ended up just being small capturable infastructures and the game more or less focused on micro and army orders.
A city rts game could have a vast array of resources and maybe even a supply/demand trade system. Some kind of market system that would allow for resources you are short on to get traded for something you have an abundance of, and niche units would be dependent on certain niche resources. that might be difficult using spring.
another division is you could either have ai or scripted grown cities or have some city building done by the player. also maybe the player doesnt have total control over building specific zones but might have some ai growth based on the health of the city similar to zoning in sim city.
I think the greatest difficulty I ran into is the scale of the engine. Sure you can kill the grass and trees and force players to use maps that have lower elevation profiles to simulate a larger scale but the combat on some small scales really just breaks down. Spring was made for micro and macro combat and not large theaters of war with regions of cities. maybe you can cartoonize the scale so cities are little chubby blocks but then you get into the problem I had in blood and steel. I think the best game to date to pull this off is the cartoonized simbase building that didnt rely on intricate game play options.
A city rts game could have a vast array of resources and maybe even a supply/demand trade system. Some kind of market system that would allow for resources you are short on to get traded for something you have an abundance of, and niche units would be dependent on certain niche resources. that might be difficult using spring.
another division is you could either have ai or scripted grown cities or have some city building done by the player. also maybe the player doesnt have total control over building specific zones but might have some ai growth based on the health of the city similar to zoning in sim city.
I think the greatest difficulty I ran into is the scale of the engine. Sure you can kill the grass and trees and force players to use maps that have lower elevation profiles to simulate a larger scale but the combat on some small scales really just breaks down. Spring was made for micro and macro combat and not large theaters of war with regions of cities. maybe you can cartoonize the scale so cities are little chubby blocks but then you get into the problem I had in blood and steel. I think the best game to date to pull this off is the cartoonized simbase building that didnt rely on intricate game play options.
Re: "Playing SimCity"
Bob, how does your idea compare with RoN?
Re: "Playing SimCity"
This sim-city sandbox game.. couldnt it be stored as some sort of buildorder? One Buttone left behind "Build Base" and then the simcity guys have to compare there citys by attacking them?
Re: "Playing SimCity"
Stronghold. This is Stronghold.A city rts game could have a vast array of resources and maybe even a supply/demand trade system. Some kind of market system that would allow for resources you are short on to get traded for something you have an abundance of, and niche units would be dependent on certain niche resources. that might be difficult using spring.
It is absolutely not difficult to make a custom resource system in Spring. Not in any way. You just have to step over the rotting legacy corpse of engine resources and accept having to do them yourself.
Re: "Playing SimCity"
but this is hardwork...look at this hands of yours and ask yourself. Do you want see bleeding blisters?
Re: "Playing SimCity"
Wrong! This is FUN. Also, totally did that, and no blisters.but this is hardwork
Re: "Playing SimCity"
It's fun, the only hard work is the optimization for 1000+ units which are constantly producing for more than just a few frames :)
Re: "Playing SimCity"
Not if you use just a bit of brains and think ahead.It's fun, the only hard work is the optimization for 1000+ units which are constantly producing for more than just a few frames :)
Re: "Playing SimCity"
Does Spring sum all windgen inputs each frame?Anarchid wrote:Not if you use just a bit of brains and think ahead.It's fun, the only hard work is the optimization for 1000+ units which are constantly producing for more than just a few frames :)
* Or is there some adder/subtracter if some input changes? (stunned/enabled)
The best would be to only calculate sum*wind-strength each turn - is Spring intelligent enough to handle it this way?
If you try to do something to reduce function calls for 1000+ windgens (all players) to only a few per player you know what I mean
Re: "Playing SimCity"
I think if you look at Greenfields you get a pretty good simbase type of game.
The economy is still exponential, but you don't fight for the first part of the game. You build a big base, you try and build it faster than the enemy, and then you clash only once you've reached epic artillery, shields and techs. Michi in Age of Empires 2 is similiar, a large line of trees seperates both teams which cannot be effectively removed until the final tech level.
Often these kinds of games end when you hit the combat stage, because one team has rushed a lot faster than the other, but many players find this sort of purely economically determined game outcome more relaxing because they can learn and experiment without interruption before the big clash where they get wiped out.
Almost all RTS's basically have some kind of early rush you have to be competent to fend off, and only at very high skill levels can you get a macro game. This is very anti-casual design.
NOTA is another game to look at for this kind of thing. The starting command tower makes early rushing fairly futile, while you have a large no mans land in the middle that can be fought over and contested.
You don't need to remove the exponential curve to get this kind of gameplay. No rush 10 minutes works (Though it's nicer to have something more organic).
The economy is still exponential, but you don't fight for the first part of the game. You build a big base, you try and build it faster than the enemy, and then you clash only once you've reached epic artillery, shields and techs. Michi in Age of Empires 2 is similiar, a large line of trees seperates both teams which cannot be effectively removed until the final tech level.
Often these kinds of games end when you hit the combat stage, because one team has rushed a lot faster than the other, but many players find this sort of purely economically determined game outcome more relaxing because they can learn and experiment without interruption before the big clash where they get wiped out.
Almost all RTS's basically have some kind of early rush you have to be competent to fend off, and only at very high skill levels can you get a macro game. This is very anti-casual design.
NOTA is another game to look at for this kind of thing. The starting command tower makes early rushing fairly futile, while you have a large no mans land in the middle that can be fought over and contested.
You don't need to remove the exponential curve to get this kind of gameplay. No rush 10 minutes works (Though it's nicer to have something more organic).
Re: "Playing SimCity"
Does anybody know about Shellcore Command 2: Infection?
You basically build sim city with your ship.
* The fact that you have only 1 Avatar and that it is very well micro-able (like a base in spring-games) is very attractive to sim-city players.
You have to decide between speed or range, agility or hp, fast/tracking accurate or slow/balistic heavy weapons each time you change your setup.
* Rockets could give you a higher alpha but you can't re-use these resources.
* Shields can reduce (not absorb completely) xx% of the damage but cost resources(purchase), energy(maintenance) and increase weight, thus slow you down or they could deflect slow, not-self-propelled projectiles.
* there could be stockpile for rapid-fire, batteries to increase fire rate over a greater period of time or more generators to win in the longer term.
* Armor plates which can completely protect essential (untill destroyed themselves) parts but increase weight.
Because your avatar is mobile, you could put all essential parts on the left, but weapons, shields and armor on the right.
* This decrease vulnerability vs a single enemy, but increase vulnerability vs agile or multiple enemies.
If one enemy purchased a lot of modules and got too strong, you gang-attack him and wear some modules off.
* If you die, you respawn 30+s later with a cheap setup designed for gang-attacking one slower enemy with your whole team and poisoning his strength with no real losses.
* * But having all your team at one spot subtracts from your ability to do other tasks for some time and give another enemy the chance to grow.
The macro-strategy part would be:
* static, cost-effective defense (can be avoided if too centralized or beaten if too de-centralized)
* patroling scout drones
* sending drone swarm attacks to take out anti-heavy defense
* seting up economy to produce parts for your avatar
You basically build sim city with your ship.
* The fact that you have only 1 Avatar and that it is very well micro-able (like a base in spring-games) is very attractive to sim-city players.
You have to decide between speed or range, agility or hp, fast/tracking accurate or slow/balistic heavy weapons each time you change your setup.
* Rockets could give you a higher alpha but you can't re-use these resources.
* Shields can reduce (not absorb completely) xx% of the damage but cost resources(purchase), energy(maintenance) and increase weight, thus slow you down or they could deflect slow, not-self-propelled projectiles.
* there could be stockpile for rapid-fire, batteries to increase fire rate over a greater period of time or more generators to win in the longer term.
* Armor plates which can completely protect essential (untill destroyed themselves) parts but increase weight.
Because your avatar is mobile, you could put all essential parts on the left, but weapons, shields and armor on the right.
* This decrease vulnerability vs a single enemy, but increase vulnerability vs agile or multiple enemies.
If one enemy purchased a lot of modules and got too strong, you gang-attack him and wear some modules off.
* If you die, you respawn 30+s later with a cheap setup designed for gang-attacking one slower enemy with your whole team and poisoning his strength with no real losses.
* * But having all your team at one spot subtracts from your ability to do other tasks for some time and give another enemy the chance to grow.
The macro-strategy part would be:
* static, cost-effective defense (can be avoided if too centralized or beaten if too de-centralized)
* patroling scout drones
* sending drone swarm attacks to take out anti-heavy defense
* seting up economy to produce parts for your avatar
Re: "Playing SimCity"
There's also the old game Stratosphere: Conquest of the Skies where you fly a fortress around.