Spring RTS Engine

I keep having this vague idea for a spring game where all, or nearly all, of the units are stationary towers, and what's more, these towers have hierarchical connections all the way back to the commander. Power and metal flows through the network as well- you might have a bunch of fusion cores one place, but if the connection between that and your turrets is too narrow...

It may be that a walkable path must exist for a connection to be made- you can't have a connection right over a mountain, for instance. Maybe there's a convoy of short-lived units between each tower, or maybe there is some other way.

Units might act in a less controlled fashion; they might use your tower network like cell towers, forcing them to stick relatively close to your areas, or you might just not be able to give them direct orders, instead building factories and giving general waypoints for the produced units.

Does anything like this exist as of yet?

Congratulations! You succesfully described Fibre!

Wow, I guess I did. Thanks.

You've described the general Fibre type game but I think there is a lot of room to move around in that game design area.

I think the economy and network structure is poor in Fibre so there is room to make what I think would be a better network game. Specific things about Fibre:

• The economy is pure map control
• Nodes link to all nearby nodes for no cost

This makes bases blobby and removes some of the interesting things about networks. The equal territory value give you no reason to make thin lines of nodes as there are no targets to aim for. So you cannot hamstring a blobby opponent by taking out a node because no node will cause disconnection if killed.

I'd like to make a network base type game at some point. Something with the network and economy mechanics more like Moonbase Commander but in real time.

zwzsg wrote:Congratulations! You succesfully described Fibre!

thx for that link btw, couldnt find it

(DONT google images of cuberorsfinest at work)

Power and metal flows through the network as well- you might have a bunch of fusion cores one place, but if the connection between that and your turrets is too narrow...

i think some of the bigger turrets in zero-K require being connected to the "energy grid."
It is formed by all buildings that generate energy. (basically you make lines of solars/wind to connect mexes, turrets and fusions)

Non spring games with "network bases" would be Netstorm and The Settlers.

dont forget crepperworld

http://knucklecracker.com/creeperworld/web/play.php

also Perimeter 1+2

I've been trying some Fibre. It's pretty neat, but I found that there's little reason to consider the terrain itself The ground units just charge straight up anything, and you don't need any resources.

It'd be interesting if Parts factories had to be built on metal depots, or just produced more parts for the same amount of energy when metal is available. And then, of course, add a special node that could be built on a geo vent which gets more energy, making it a good place to fortify and start broadcasting power from.

I know it'd be simple to make the units have significantly less climbing ability, meaning that even low cliffs could have tactical use.

Ok, I'm going to have to crack that mod open pretty soon.

You can make geovents spawn superchargers, those do give extra energy when claimed.

knorke wrote:also Perimeter 1+2

Perimeter 2 doesn't have the network thing anymore, you can just throw energy cores wherever you feel like it. Other buildings have to connect to a core but it's just not the same.