Spring RTS Engine

I would like a checkbox option "[x] Allow in-game allying" that would enable people to ally each other during gameplay. How this would work; you'd press H, select the player from the list, and click a newly added "Propose alliance" button. The target player, and all the players who already are allied with him, would get a notice, after which they can either confirm, or not confirm the alliance. Every player of both alliances would have to confirm. Leaving an alliance should be as simple as pressing another newly added button in the H menu. A notification to all players would be given upon a player joining an alliance, or forming a new alliance with someone. If every player end up in a single alliance, the game should end.

Many RTS games already have in-game alliances, one of the ones I've tried being C&C Tiberian Sun, and I think it allows for much more interesting matches than without, especially when it's FFA. Sure, some people, who already have the upper hand, might gang up on weaker teams, but at least it doesn't happen so often in TS. I think the Spring community has fairly enough honor to play fair.

One more thing... I don't know if it's already possible, but I'd like to have some button to show a list of alliances in-game. It's just something that has been missing all the time, and it'd be quite useful especially if in-game alliances will get implemented.

From another thread:

Tobi wrote:In the interface the lobby uses to start spring - it is possible to specify a full alliance matrix of ally teams. In the simple case this makes it possible to make two ally teams alied (useless), but since it's a FULL matrix, ie. "A is allied to B" is not necessarily equal to "B is allied to A", this also makes it possible to play games like: A can only attack B, B can only attack C, C can only attack A (where A,B,C are ally teams).

I have been told this was implemented in the old lobby (by jouninkomiko). It has never been implemented in TASClient though.

The implications of this being implemented in spring are that all code already should be able to handle allied allyteams, meaning in-game alliances wouldn't be too hard too implement: just add GUI commands to modify this matrix in-game. Sooo, maybe someone likes to make a patch?

Can you rephrase that?

Anyway, what I can understand from that, it'd be a different system than in my suggestion. I want to discuss my idea in this thread.

No, it wouldn't. Tobi's talking about a system that works like this:
The matrix above represents the relations among teams, where ones mean "the ally-team in this row is allied to the ally-team in this column" and zeroes mean the opposite. (So A can only attack B, B can only attack C, and C can only attack A in this example.) Modifying the matrix ingame would then be the same as changing ally-team alliances the way you describe, it just needs to be coded/tied to the GUI. :)

Nice! I can already imagine a 16 persons ffa game with 1 vet and 15 noobs where the noobs make a huge alliance against the vet... and lose!

There are definately times I would like to kick a moronic ally over to the other team.

If someone does make a patch
Plz remember to add a script.txt option so u can pick to lock ally teams aswell

+1
So We can relive the glory days of backstabbing allies in the back just as you cripple the other teams on ffas with temp alliances (one man left standing) on moon quartet.
:D

Also, did anyone here ever play a mod for half-life called The Ship?
Everyone had a randomly selected target to assassinate and had to avoid being targeted by their own randomly selected assassin - had tons of paranoia :)
We could have mods or game modes with a similar theme.

You know what would be the funniest part of alliance forming, IMO? You could threat a significantly weaker player, especially if you occupied his base, namely his economy, and then force him to ally you, and possibly share some stuff. "Ally me, or get wiped out!" :D Annexation. In 16-player games some professional player could create an empire.

JJ45 wrote:You know what would be the funniest part of alliance forming, IMO? You could threat a significantly weaker player, especially if you occupied his base, namely his economy, and then force him to ally you, and possibly share some stuff. "Ally me, or get wiped out!" :D Annexation. In 16-player games some professional player could create an empire.

Yeah, it would be cool!

Old Warcraft-approach is simplest: each player has a "peace" list of other players, which are simple checkboxes. All the box means is "my units will not attack player X". Any change to any player's "peace" is notified in the talk-box. Which means if you make "peace" with player X and he doesn't make "peace" with you, then he can still kick your ass, and your units will stupidly not return fire.

The GUI would also have to show who has peace with you (bottom-right-player-list is best), since that's important (obviously, since one-way-peace is suicidal), and a full matrix must be visible somewhere else.

All I want to do is have a game where everyone is allied and we play intricate games of dipolomancy and Economic freeze out...untill someone says, "Screw it," and starts shooting.

Zoombie wrote:All I want to do is have a game where everyone is allied and we play intricate games of dipolomancy and Economic freeze out...untill someone says, "Screw it," and starts shooting.

For that to work, you need an incentive to be peaceful with your neighbors. As I said, peace amounts to "not shooting", and consider that you're better off with your neighbors alive than dead.

Consider - if I'm at peace with Player X, then player X can start walking crawling bombs into my turf and plan my death - so why the hell would I want to be at peace with him?

Unless peace gets you "trade money" or something.

the more ally´s you have the more effiecient your economy runs, cause you dont have to defend against all. maybe with the use of ingame handicap 1 ally is handicap 1 2 is 2 etc

Pxtl wrote:Old Warcraft-approach is simplest: each player has a "peace" list of other players, which are simple checkboxes. All the box means is "my units will not attack player X". Any change to any player's "peace" is notified in the talk-box. Which means if you make "peace" with player X and he doesn't make "peace" with you, then he can still kick your ass, and your units will stupidly not return fire.

The GUI would also have to show who has peace with you (bottom-right-player-list is best), since that's important (obviously, since one-way-peace is suicidal), and a full matrix must be visible somewhere else.

There should be an option to make your units return fire, and also an option to automatically declare war on allies that remove peace on you.

Pxtl wrote:Consider - if I'm at peace with Player X, then player X can start walking crawling bombs into my turf and plan my death - so why the hell would I want to be at peace with him?

Unless peace gets you "trade money" or something.

Send an equal amount of "occupation forces" to HIS base.

Make dragon teeth.

Or we could just make ally victory possible (if everone left is in the same alliance the game ends) and to prevent everone allying to everone right after start we can give each player a target (someone he cannot ally with).

Pxtl wrote:Old Warcraft-approach is simplest: each player has a "peace" list of other players, which are simple checkboxes. All the box means is "my units will not attack player X". Any change to any player's "peace" is notified in the talk-box. Which means if you make "peace" with player X and he doesn't make "peace" with you, then he can still kick your ass, and your units will stupidly not return fire.

That's how Tiberian Sun, the game mentioned in the first post, does it.

IIRC, you could still force fire in the C&C games though.

manored wrote:Make dragon teeth.

Or we could just make ally victory possible (if everone left is in the same alliance the game ends) and to prevent everone allying to everone right after start we can give each player a target (someone he cannot ally with).

No, that target thing sounds stupid. I don't think this is needed, as I doubt people are stupid enough to just create a single big alliance.

I doubt people are stupid enough

Yes they are...

People are always stupid enough