Vostocks GB2

[Puzzlebox]

I read your ideas on the next game Vostock, I just wanted to outline some of the problems I had with it. This is just first thoughts, I'll go more in depth later.

 

The unique powers, when Empire Earth did it with the military and economic heroes it was truly stupid, same with Rise of Nations and it's civilizations. In the case of the latter it was the hoky way they in which they presented it. The way they did it is just a bad idea. I'm not wholly opposed to implementing something like that but you need to get rid of the military/political classifacations, same with the powers with the modeled after the quotes i.e. "Power of the Dark Side" these things look really nice in a features box but suck when applied, what's more is these abilities that affect units across the map shouldn't be available via selecting the individual unit; thats a big mistake.

 

There are alot of problems with having recruitable heroes in a game like this, considerer the time frame, it would certainly be stupid if two players had the same hero from two different time periods and even more so if it was the exact same hero. Let's say for an RM or DM or whatever freelance multiplayer game you want to think of there are a number of options, the host player may opt to allow recruitable heroes in general or he may not, he should have the option to limit the selection to predefined lists that make certain none can conflict, but not every civilization would be able choose from all their heroes anyway, perhaps the player could select from a group of recruitable heroes or have the host put it at random or random within the defined lists...

 

The key here is options, anyway, for non-campaign or specialty games the host should have the ability to allow players to choose an overseer or commander which probably should be a playable unit, the abilities he/she/it would grant would not depend upon the unit itself i.e. if you placed the unit in the scenario editor it would not grant you any bonuses. The bonuses would be applied because the player selected that commander in the menu before the game, however if the unit dies they should lose any bonuses granted by it. Maybe you could put stipulations on keeping it inside the base or fortress to for the bonuses to be active or this or that but that may be a bad move even though it seems like a good idea----or eliminate the worry entirely by--making it optional.

 

Ex.

Faction|Rebel Alliance|

Commander|Lando Calrissian|

Bonus: All economic buildings cost 20% Less and are constructed 20% faster than normal. Gas extraction rate is increased by 50% and all gas extraction upgrades are free.

 

The resources are another problem, three is a novel concept and probably will be an attractive idea to developers who want to do something simplistic and novel so they can slap it on the features next to a bunch of annoying repetetive bullets. However I think the best way to configure the resources is to have a number of primary and secondary resources, spice for instance, could be collected/mined/extracted whatever and sold for credits or bartered for some other resource-- ex. American Conquest, or you could trade with local factions so your not paying to ship it off-world(figuratively), but the local faction will of course have a far more limited amount of resources to trade both in volume and selection. Secondary resources open up an enormous amount of options, say spice improves your worker gather rate by 10% or a special alloy that reduces the cost of your buildings. The resource stuff has some kinks in it but I will work it out later.

 

I'll leave it at that for now.

[Puzzlebox]

Not to shoot holes in the gas thing, but it really should be fuel.

 

Primary Resources

-Food

-Metal

-Carbon

-Fuel

-Credits

 

Gas may be extracted though, it will add to feul, some gases like Tibanna will add more than others, Ex. a standard unupgraded gas mine will yield 15 fuel a minute, if it is a Tibanna gas well in the same circumstance it will yield 25.

[Admiral Vostok]

First off, welcome to the forum, Puzzlebox.

 

I haven't reviewed my outline for a while, but I'll address the points you've made.

 

"The Unique Powers"

If by unique powers you mean the "Advanced Tactics", then I should tell you I've gone off that idea now. Were I to revise my outline now they would be wholly scrapped.

 

If however you're referring to Heroes and their abilities, let me justify why I think Heroes deserve a place in a Star Wars game. Heroes are undoubtedly one of if not the most important aspect of the Star Wars movies. To not include heroes and heroic deeds in a Star Wars game is to not be faithful to the movies. You'll notice that I've designed the Hero Powers so they aren't like those in WarCraft 3. Instead of having a range of powers that you can't remember what each one does until you click it, the heroes usually have one power that is always in effect, like an aura around the Hero, and one power that is activatable. Simplifying the powers down like this helps them fit better into an RTS game. The exception is of course the Jedi and Sith Heroes - I made their powers more micro-intensive because I felt they should in effect be one-man armies, who are mostly used on thier own like they are in the movies rather than as part of an army (the Republic Jedi being the exception since you can build them en masse).

 

"Recruitable Heroes"

Continuing on the Hero theme, I'll point out to you what I was continually pointing out to the fanboys making Imperial Assault: this is a case where fun wins out over realism. While it might seem strange that two players can have the same heroes, it is no more strange than having the ability to have the same factions fight each other, for example Empire vs Empire. Also keep in mind RM games will allow such weird combinations as Empire vs Republic.

 

What it comes down to is that it is more StarWarsy to include Heroes than not to include them, but it is also more fun to allow them in RM games the same way it is more fun to allow Empire vs Republic.

 

Resources

I've effectively got what you're suggesting - resources like Spice, Plasma, Water, etc are mined, but instead of having to manually trade them which would be horribly annoying, they are instantly converted to Credits upon their return to a Resource Point.

 

As for Secondary Resources, that's an idea straight out of Rise of Nations which I'm not a fan of. While there are plenty of StarWarsy resources, there are not enough to make a decent amount of secondary resources without making it silly like Rise of Nations did.

 

Your fuel idea isn't bad, I'll take it under consideration for when and if I update my idea. Also, there are reasons I got rid of Food and Carbon, and five resources are way too many.

[Puzzlebox]

I took the secondary resource idea from civilization and american conquest--sorta american conquest. I should probably give you my readme or someone else so they can post it in a couple of web pages, I hate that free **** though, popups...

 

Heroes--I wouldn't play the game if it didn't have heroes in it, what I meant was in RM and multiplayer games. Buy yeah they should have an enormous selection of heroes (in the editor at least) and placeables from the movies. They need to expand the editor significantly.

 

The secondary resources would be

 

Nova-Can just be mined for credits and not made into anything special.

 

Cortosis-Can either be mined for more metal at a faster rate or instead be an object-like a Cortosis Bar.

 

Focusing Crystals-Can and should be made into an object-Focusing Crystal.

 

Spice-Could just be collected for credits, which would fit into how I have the other resources collected.

 

I didn't put much thought into the resources before but it's shaping nicely. Five is not toomany though, those five are very realistic and it wouldn't hinder gameplay.

[Darth Windu]

Puzzlebox - Hi and welcome to the forums. Getting to the subject, I agree with Vostok in that 5 resources is too many. I have two in my template, which are Metal and Credits (mined as Nova, or Water on Tatooine, Spice on Naboo etc) which can be found in my signature, and the reason for this is to get away from the Economic micro-management in games like SWGB where you have to juggle 4 resources, so that more time can be spent on building military forces and fighting, much like the C&C series.

[Puzzlebox]

I think two would hurt the game, badly. But if you get down to it the point generally is to build an army as quickly as possible and go kill things with it, predominantly your enemies, or maybe your allies if they just wiped out most of your enemies and have nobody guarding their bases, hmm. Back to what I was saying if you look at it that way then yes it's just a stupid death fest but you can't just cut it down to two resources.

 

I'm sure everybody dislikes micromanagement, for good reasons, it takes away from the game and is a real bitch when it does so late in the game, but this doesn't have to be a problem, even with five resources, not that credits really count in the same manner as the other ones, the taxes thing resolves most of that problem and gives you both a reason to develop a current base and to expand. As to some of the more annoying micromanagement like scouting, the solution to this is easy and I don't think I need to type it.

 

Vostock the heroes powers thing I don't think work because if you give them to a few of them then you have to give it to all of them and it just gets messy. Universal powers like force push or melee heroe specific attacks that work automatically like some sort of power attack or for sith a rage or fury attack that doubled their attack and attack rate would be good. erg I'm getting all over the place.

 

Jedi and sith sit down and meditate to regain health and force points. It goes apprentice-padawan-knight-master. Sort of a a latent level up, say a kill requirement maybe and meditation points as well, they will gain twice as much or so when meditating with a master nearby. Masters do not need to meditate to regenerate h/f pts and maybe knights get a slower regeneration of both and padawans a slower regeneration of one or so thats minutia which I don't want to get into because I hate typing this much.

 

As to late game micromanagement my intention to curb this would involve a bank or racially equatible building for credits which just simply means they build it and it generates an additional stream of credits. Food, carbon and metal can be synthesized #note there is a bunch of material that I would need to put behind this so lets just say you can need some of another resource for each and you can't do all three without running negative in one.

 

As to fuel, if they want their mechs and airships to run and buildings to be powered they will be fighting tooth and nail over deposits. Trust me, late game nuisances can be mopped with a solid interface and smart features. For instance changing some of the annoying drop'n method of collection for certain resources into a garrisoned building type situation. I was gonna do a web page thing but like I said I hate that free **** so I'll stick it a pdf in a nice tag format.

[Admiral Vostok]

I don't think two resources would hurt the game as much as five resources would. Let's look at the resources of the three most successful RTS games of recent times:

WarCraft 3 - 2 resources

C&C Generals - 1 resource

Age of Mythology - 3 resources

 

Personally I think 3 resources is nice. Credits, Metal and Gas are the most realistic, looking at the movies.

 

As for my heroes, I don't see how two virtually passive heroes and one Jedi hero is going to get messy, especially with the simple powers I've given them.

[Puzzlebox]

What I mean is with your heroes if you give those units those powers it would be stupid not to give the other heroes i.e. the ones in the scenario editor powers as well, you certainly can't have unique powers for all of them and it wouldn't be smart to just have the inequity of not giving them all powers and if the misc. ones share the same power or powers as the few you are talking about.

 

I think that there should be a number of force powers for the Sith and a number for the Jedi. If plausible the same system of these eh "extras" could be used for a couple of the other units as well and if so any hero melee units.

 

I get why your stuck on gas now-the whole purist thing, I suppose I am too, a purist that is, can't stand that repeater trooper garbage etc... but as for the gas it really is better as fuel, you can get fuel by collecting gas but it will make the game more diverse and improve the rm by having resources done like this. What I want to stress as well is the classifacation thing with the political and military heroes, that really isn't a purist thing, I know you'll retort with a good counter point to that but all that handling the heroes with the military political thing will do is make the game more rigid. Ex. Emperor Palpatine, if you have a rigid set of powers or abilities for said classifacations he would get political abilities like eh whatever attributions you would define, but not the military ability, as well he's a Sith so he would get those powers too. You could of course just not care about that and stick him in the editor along with the rest of them but then your not considering everything you should.

 

Resources

Your killing me with all this typing

I'll get to it for the edit.

 

*Edit*

5 resources available through different means will make the game (warning:overused) incredibly rich and diverse and add to replayable significantly, if someone doesn't want to manage their resources they can hand some or all of the management over to a the ai, their own player ai, a governor or whatever you want to call it. Again it must be noted that options are key here as well, you can't screw up then.

[Darth Windu]

Well in terms of fuel, the Gas idea isnt bad (it was originally my idea) but i still dont see how it can work being in the air. Having Gas in the ground, which doesnt contradict the films, would be best.

[Puzzlebox]

The gas is a good idea, but it should be fuel and there should be other types of fuel (that is to say there should be other things in the game like gas that contribute to fuel), I thought about the gas being the sky problem before but didn't get anywhere, if there is a cloud ground terrain that obviously hurts realism but thats very minute, for the ground it would be steaming gas wells or a variety of different graphics but back to the air, there would have to some floating platform maybe but that really isn't in the air. I don't know, maybe some foggyness and different lighting around the platform.

[FroZticles]

Warcraft 3 is not really comparable to what we even want. Micro Management is huge and you only have to worry about your economy the first 5 mins into the game and if you want to expand later on.

 

I do not think gas/fuel will have enough uses in the game to be a whole resource just for aircraft?

[Majin Boba Fett]

Wouldn't all the buildings need gas to operate? Also, gas can be taken from the air from certain planets like Bespin. Of course, planets can only be used in conquer the glaxy or something like Windu's idea for planets.

[Admiral Vostok]

Heroes: The Heroes in the toybox of the scenario will only get the generic powers, not any unique ones. Heroes from the toybox don't need unique powers because they aren't used enough and don't require balancing with the other Heroes. If you want some "realism" justification, the Heroes available in RM are the important ones, while those only available in the toybox are not, so have less powers.

 

Basically I'm only concerned with RM. Toybox doesn't need to be balanced, and doesn't need much more than art and a voice-over.

 

Gas: I'm sticking to Gas, because whereas Fuel can only realistically be used in the production of vehicles, Gas can be justified as contributing to the Fuel in the vehicles but also being coolant for Troopers' blasters. So not only is Gas more realistic from a Purist point of view, but it can be used in the construction of more things.

 

Emperor Palpatine: Not sure what your point is there, but Palpatine isn't buildable in RM so he doesn't matter. For the purposes of the toybox he can have the same powers as Vader.

[Puzzlebox]

Frosty, my intention for fuel is that it would power all of your machines, mechs air craft, naval vessels (if there are any) and your buildings (or maybe the power generators that would supply them but that may be bad and a bit confusing). I don't want you to think I mean the slow crawl situation that came when cossacks etc... did this, that was just a different type of game.

 

Vostock, I think the toybox is very important to the game and if you are designing a game that should not be stuck in the backround, I do see your point however in as much that it would be plausible to just give the ones in the editor bland non-specific powers, not that I agree. I wouldn't give the heroes meant for RM seperate powers at all, I would give the Sith Jedi units the same powers no matter if they are heroes or not and any special attacks certain ranged units might have would be the same for ranged non Jedi/Sith Heroes.

 

hmm, force lightning would go in, so maybe Fetts get their flame throwers finally some mechs would use the same fire attack and perhaps some creatures so it would be justified to stick it in, not that they would be the only units getting it.

 

-----------------

Resources

Your killing me with all this typing

I'll get to it for the edit.

 

*Edit*

5 resources available through different means will make the game (warningverused) incredibly rich and diverse and adds to replayability significantly, if someone doesn't want to manage their resources they can hand some or all of the management over to a the ai, their own player ai, a governor or whatever you want to call it. Again it must be noted that options are key here as well, you can't screw up then, and you can kiss 90% of any remaining micromanagement good bye.

 

Keep in mind thats with an all ready brilliant interface and smart features, so you can have your frag fest and your death matches... and your build up and fight realists, and with the other options you can even have your build up and not fight lunatics-But they will like it too because as I said, lots of diversity etc... and most importantly, broader customer base and more money.

[Majin Boba Fett]

Not that it matters a whole lot, but you keep spelling Vostok wrong.

[Puzzlebox]

Nirto, I have no idea what your talking about.

[Admiral Vostok]

He means that I don't have a "c" in my name.

 

Puzzlebox, I'm not really sure what you're trying to say about the Heroes, but my stance is this:

1. Toybox heroes do not need special powers and do not need to be balanced with the rest of the game. They are secondary in every way to multiplayer playability. As such, the best they'll get is put into one of the Classifications of Hero (Military/Political/Jedi/Sith) and have access to the Generic Powers of that class.

2. Heroes in RM are extremely important if you want to faithfully capture the feel of the movies. The powers as I have them require as little micro-management as possible while still not letting the character fade into being insignificant. Variety is key, so in addition to the Generic Powers of each class, buildable RM Heroes get their Unique Powers.

3. You seem confused over the way Jedi work in my game. The Republic is the only faction that can build Jedi; but a single Jedi or Sith Hero is available to each faction as well. The Republic basic Jedi have very simplified powers to avoid micromanagement in game, while the Jedi and Sith Heroes have slightly more involved powers as I want them to be used in one-man-army type situations.

 

 

Now, as for resources, five will make the game rich and diverse, it will bog the game down with resource trading and extra management. Three is plenty.

[Puzzlebox]

I know what he meant, I was quipping.

 

1.There shouldn't be military and political powers, the units shouldn't be classified like that in any way that affects the game in a manner a rule would, if you just want to call them that then that is fine, it works better, if you want to find characters that mirror those supposed stats then thats fine too. But don't make any character unrealistic by molding them to the game and don't give a military bonus of scare units in given area through targeting as in a military hero or an increase production in area by targeting power to a political hero.

 

2.They are important, I agree, but it will take more than that to faithfully capture the feel of the movies, what your saying about heroes doesn't affect micromanagement one way or the other. The character has his or her own significance and do not need their own unique powers, they didn't have those unique powers in the movies, you are making powers out of quotes that sometimes relate to something that the character did in the movies, that's completely unneccessary. I agree about variety being important and hold that there are plenty of other ways to add variety to the game.

 

3.I read your ideas accurately, I think a small number of specific Jedi and Sith powers should be included though, not just one universal set. As for micromanagement, a slow force regeneration bar and automatic scripts for the units to use will handle that, not that there would be much anyway. One man army type situations are easily handled by increasing a number of their stats, to site an example we'll take Darth Maul, he would have a substantially higher amount of hit points and increased force points as well as having a faster rate of attack and maybe a few other increases such as faster regeneration, my point is the characters make themselves significant, especially if you are a fan of the movies, pushing it further is unwarranted.

 

Resources-My varying a.i. control idea handles any problem frag fest and death match lovers who sometimes play rm settings would have with five resources, for middle of the road gamers it varies with how much they like doing, but as I said the varying a.i. will solve any problems that they might have, not to say there would be any. as for the rest, nobody is going to get bogged down, they can buy and sell four resources and credits they get from developing*, the same developing* they undergo in the natural course of the game, they can earn more if they are fortunate enough to find spice or nova but mostly it will be from taxes.

[Puzzlebox]

Irreguardless you should add Sith to the Empire, Palpatine has a bunch in episode III.

[Majin Boba Fett]

"Only two there are. No more. No less"

[Puzzlebox]

Sam Jackson said that if he could pick how he was going to die in the third episode he would want to be killed by someone who was better than him, like Darth Vader or a group of dark jedi just not by a stray blaster bolt or an explosion, why would he say that, odd I think, I doubt Samuel L is a fan past the normal movies so he either picked it up from some shooting or he just heard of dark jedi and said that, I wager he slipped.

[Darth Windu]

In terms of Jedi/Sith and Heroes in single-player, the way I got around this was to give only the Republic the ability to produce Jedi (for obvious reasons) but also give each faction a General which are-

Confederacy = General Grievous

Empire = Darth Vader

Republic = Obi-Wan Kenobi

Rebellion = Luke Skywalker

Naboo (Bonus Civ) = Padme Amidala

 

Now, apart from Amidala, all of the heroes are Jedi or Jedi-like, and due to their status they are incredibly strong and difficult to kill. This way, although only the Republic has Jedi, they can be balanced overall while still allowing the Heroes which wont affect MP games.

[Majin Boba Fett]

Windu & Vostok - I like both your templates and you've obviously put some work into it, but don't you think it's a bit complicated. Sure, it brings originality to each civ, but it als makes the game much more complex. Perhaps the game should include a generic mode (similiar to the one in place with the exception of a few tweaks) and a unique mode (much like the one you both have planned)?

[Admiral Vostok]

Over complexity is one of the major things I was concerned with. That's why I have:

1. Classes of Hero, so they're easier to understand. Puzzlebox suggests scrapping the system, but doing so would make it more difficult to get a full understanding of Heroes. The most annoying thing for me about WarCraft 3 was every time I had a new hero, I had to figure out what their powers were, figure out and remember the shortcuts, and try not to get them all mixed up. Cutting down on the variety of abilities and generalising Heroes into classes doesn't give you as much customisation, but makes it a hell of a lot more playable.

2. Added the single unique power to each Hero to get some uniqueness, but without sacrificing the needed familiarity that totally unique powers will destroy. Sure, they never had the powers in the movie like Puzzlebox noted, but this is definitely a point added for fun rather than realism.

3. A set of Jedi and Sith abilities rather than totally unique ones as Puzzlebox wants. Again this relates to the above point; Jedi should work the same between factions so you don't have to relearn their abilities every time you change factions.

 

As for resources, Puzzlebox I am yet to see an RTS successfully have more than three resources while still managing to make them completely unique and not dumbing down the worker AI so much you don't have to think about resources. The last game I played with a whole heap of resources was Rise of Nations, which you seem to be a fan of Puzzlebox, but the resource management in that game was so dumbed down it didn't require any thinking at all... not what a STRATEGY game should be like.

[Majin Boba Fett]

I wish the workers in SWGB had auto-thinking like the workers in RoN. Also, I wish the scout had an auto-scout option as well, but I guess that's just lazy.