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Re: Game Idea


Jermin wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I'm a newby in the Xconq world. Still I will give you
> my comments about that idea.

Thanks for the input!

> What if player A manage to convince player B, C and D
> (all players on planet Saturn) to let him rule in a
> governorship commonly agreed ? Could that be a victory
> condition enough ?

Yes, in fact that is already supported as the scorekeeper
"last-alliance-wins".  Every side has to declare that it
trusts every other side in the game.  (The default
scorekeeper is "last-side-wins", which effectively
requires all alliances to be temporary.)

> > At the same time, research is going on, so when FTL
> > becomes available, a whole new set of worlds opens
> > up.  Worlds can range from the hospitable to
> > inhospitable (with terraforming research to help),
> > and from thinly settled to urban.
> 
> Which level of terraforming do you have in mind ? I
> mean it seems unrealistic to let a planet be terra=
> formed completely in less than 10 or 20 years long.

Well, this is a game, so we can alway postulate the
discovery of hyper-replicatory-terraforming-nanorobots
or something. :-)  But I was thinking of more limited
abilities, planting forests and the like.

> > Since it's near-future, military hardware will be
> > similar to today's.
> 
> If research could improve movement speed, why could it
> not improve also fighting tools ? I'm refering to
> games
> (RPG) like Shadowrun and Cyberpunk. Both look at the
> future with a new range of weapons, from bullet- to
> beam-weapons, including gas weapons and also combat
> drugs.

Xconq's model would start to break down a bit if, say,
all soldiers had individual flying packs, or instant
regeneration, or personal teleportation devices.  The
things you're talking about - translated into net effect
on division-sized units - would make sense though.

> > Space combat might be hard to fit into this and
> > could just be ignored, or left as a sort of
> > background transition device.
> 
> That's what I meant earlier. No space combat, else the
> military invasion might prove to be very hard to
> reach.

Total Annihilation postulates jump gates on planetary
surfaces, a clever way to take space out of the picture..

> > The scale of combat will be much as for Xconq's
> > standard game, but units will be generally faster.
> 
> If you want to include combined arms fighting ability,
> then the stacking limit of each cell should increase
> to allow many different units to fight together.

That's a toughie.  Big stacks are harder to play...

It occurs to me that we could introduce a force
composition action, where players glue several units
into single composite, similar to TOAW's unit setup
but done on the fly.  So you get to make a kick-ass
RDF that can go anywhere and do anything, but you
can break it down again if you need the individual
units to go on separate missions.

> > Players' ultimate goal is to use their resources
> > from the colony planets to take over all of the
> Earth
> > and thereby rule known space.
> 
> For mining operations, it would be interesting to let
> the players do some programmed tasks to collecting
> units.
> In "Stars!", a game of interstellar conquest,a player
> can assign ordered tasks at a unit, like a
> space-miner,
> to reach the mining planet, dig and get a certain
> amount of minerals, return to its home planet, deliver
> the materials and cycle again.
> So, the first tasks are :
> - find some mining ressources
> - build some miner
> - assign them tasks to have a regular income of
> materials

This is recently added actually - look at the "Collect"
action while running ancient.g.  You can click on the
location from which to collect, a la *arcraft or AoE.
There's also per-side treasury to go along with that.

> > This game design will take some new implementation,
> > but things like campaigns are already on the
> > wishlist, and so the focus can be as much on adding
> > some chrome and getting the AI to handle this well.
> 
> For the technology tree, CivII has some hints about
> how
> AI handle it.
> Each technology can have one or two requirements.
> Each technology has a type, defining its domain.
> Each technology has a rating in that domain.
> So the AI, with a defined behavior, consider each
> technology with its rating and the "interest" it finds
> in that domain.
> Example : A "militaristic" AI favors the "weapon
> system
> and units" domain, and select in that domain with to
> research first.
> If the rating of a researchable unit is below the
> "interest"-rating of a technology from another domain,
> then the AI will choose the other-domain technology.
> 
> One might implement it like that :
> AI militaristic :
> domain interest-modifier
> weapon 150%
> social 50%
> biology 75%
> physics 125%
> 
> With the following technologies :
> domain technology base-interest-rating
> weapon laser-beam 12
> weapon sharp-blade 2
> social cathedral 12
> social fighting-center 6
> social library 8
> biology genetic 12
> biology first-aid 4
> physics nuclear-plant 8
> physics ballistic 4
> 
> The researching order for the militaristic AI would
> result as follow :
>  laser-beam 18 (12*1.5) (weapon)
>  nuclear-plant 10 (8*1.25) (physics)
>  genetic 9 (12*.75) (biology)
>  cathedral 6 (12*.5) (social)
>  ballistic 5 (4*1.25) (physics)
>  library 4 (8*.5) (social)
>  sharp-blade 3 (2*1.5) (weapon)
>  first-aid 3 (4*.75) (biology)
>  fighting-center 3 (6*.5) (social)

Sounds like you're halfway there already!  I like the idea of
having the AI choose its focus, then adjust research balance
based on that.

Stan

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