wowgetoffyourcellphone's gameplay design

[Servo]

35 minutes ago, Lion.Kanzen said:

 

-battalions is great idea, but no like BFME. 

-unique, all your ideas are ripe-off from  other games. The game will be unique if the mechanic will be different even if the game stop to be a RTS.

you and me have similar ideas. But there 3 facts  where don't have an agreement.

SC.

Battlaions concept

etc

I really enjoy this. Unique but ripped off, Rofl

[DarcReaver]

15 minutes ago, Servo said:

I really enjoy this. Unique but ripped off, Rofl

4 resources - AOE II ripoff
city phases - AOE II ripoff
Blacksmith/technology system - AOE II ripoff
"counter" system - AOE II ripoff

Combined with a @#$% game pace.

But yeah, using a squad based system is a ripoff... 

So what?

IT's not about whether the system was used by another game at point X in the past. It's about creating a concept, using various tools to make the whole game itself unique.

Currently 0 ad has what absolutely, unique and OUTSTANDING gameplay element?

Ah yea, soldiers can gather resources.. wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow
So units can do the most boring task in the game to not be idle. Impressive.

Edited April 13, 2017 by DarcReaver

[niektb]

@DarcReaver: please mind your tone a little bit, will you?

@Lion.Kanzen: if the only change would be to remove the CS concept than it would indeed be even more a AoK clone. However, combined with the other changes mentioned in this thread I think it plays quite differently

[DarcReaver]

15 minutes ago, niektb said:

@DarcReaver: please mind your tone a little bit, will you?

@Lion.Kanzen: if the only change would be to remove the CS concept than it would indeed be even more a AoK clone. However, combined with the other changes mentioned in this thread I think it plays quite differently

If the sun sets in the east maybe.

[Servo]

We never said 0AD is unique. I even wanted an 0AD with combinations of mechanics from Stronghold(weapons, siege/handling, walls, resource gathering  some on AOE/RoN (TC not firing when ungarrisoned, roads, merchants/caravan/market system).

i think the last time I abandoned RoN was I played Civ5 and I told myself that if this game is not turn based it's really nice. Civ5 to me is like a combination of those above mentioned games. Now I am about to do the same when I come across 0AD. I guess unless I miss playing multiplayer I will be sticking with 0AD. 

BTW I started playing PC when I came across C&C tiberean sun and from there I never stopped. They said Starcraft 2 is best but I want real games. I played all the above mentioned games too but my attitude is to find a game that satisfies mostly of what I'm want and I found 0AD to have more of what I want from a game. 

[Servo]

Game pace is really good, you can choose what pace you want easily.

Soldiers gather resources, yeah of courses they can. In times of war anything that you can have or mobilize of importance matters. 

 

 

[DarcReaver]

7 hours ago, Servo said:

Game pace is really good, you can choose what pace you want easily.

Soldiers gather resources, yeah of courses they can. In times of war anything that you can have or mobilize of importance matters. 

 

 

To quote myself:

  Advantages of Citizen Soldiers/gatherers:

 

-          Usage of military units when not in combat

-          Especially cavalry can gather far away by hunting

-          Easy transition from economy to fighting

Disadvantages of Citizen soldiers/gatherers:

 

-          No distinction between economic and military units (an integral part of every RTS)

-          Since many gatherers can be active at the same time (economic + every military) gathering rates have to be poor to avoid “economy explosions” which means that the resource income increases exponentially with each additional soldier

-          Players loose resources when attacking, short math example:

o    Soldier collects 0.5 food per second, 30 soldiers work as gatherers which means 15 food/second income (or 900 food/minute).
Now if the 30 soldiers move to the enemy the player will lose 900 food every minute from his soldiers not gathering. Provided that the enemy has a similar army/economy that means that he’ll be ahead with 900 food for each minute he can gather (which would be equal to ~10 or more soldiers).

o    The attacking player needs to destroy more than 900 units worth of food every minute to get an advantage from his attack. If he can’t do that his attack actually weakens the Attacker instead of the Attacked -> unbalanced by design

o    Fixes: soldiers move at unrealistic ultra high speed (less time to get to the enemy) or lowering the gathering rates. The issue is the same still, attacking player initially has a large disadvantage

-          There is no progress from weakest -> strongest unit. Instead the players already start at a high level and then only progress in very small steps towards higher tech levels

-          Citizen soldiers discourage capturing as they are efficient at protecting the base early on, rendering capture rather useless

-          To get citizens back to work is a very fiddly task and annoying compared to regular economic units

Overall it’s better to adjust gathering to specialized units for each civ type instead of giving every civ the ability for soldier gathering. This makes civs more diverse (-> more gameplay depth). One (poor) game mechanic lost for a massive gain in playability is more than worth it.

[Servo]

@DarcReaver I think we differ much on so many issues because you are more concerned with multiplayer mode while I'm more with single player. I hope the developers would make more setting provisions to toggle on/off some game mechanics so players can  have their preferences wrt his/her style. 

If I know or have knowledge to modify and play the game the way I like then you won't find me in this forum. 

TBH I only play the game starting with very low resources. If there's a setting which could make techs very expensive that will be my preference too. 

Edited April 13, 2017 by Servo

[Zeta1127]

I beg to differ. Unit types are very distinctive. I have never misidentified a unit based on its type, because units of the same type look similar enough, but are still quite distinctive due to the emphasis on historical accuracy, which is going to be further emphasized when formations are more than just eye candy for screenshots like they are now. Units in formation are not going to feel like ants, instead they are going to feel much more like the battalions you want. Naval combat is also criminally underdeveloped, and is also going to benefit from formations, along with ramming and other mechanics that will make it more historically accurate.

I can support a bit more rigid tech tree, with some prerequisites like Fields requiring Farmsteads, and increased training times to give progression some structure, but much more than that won't be 0 A.D. to me.

Edited April 13, 2017 by Zeta1127

[Lion.Kanzen]

Here a better battalion concept than the other poors games.

 

[Ulfilas]

-- for balance :

1) Citizen soldiers can should either be in economic mode or weaponized mode. In economic mode they can gather or build, but if immediately are forced into combat they are limited to melee nd slightly better than a Spartan woman at fighting. To change to weaponized mode, where they have their full combat strength, they must first vist a house or city center and drop anything they are carrying (wood, food etc). This simulates them 'arming up', or if they carry nothing then they can simply visit a house to 'arm up'.

2) Citizen soldiers in economic mode should move 10% faster than their weaponized counterpart

3) In weaponized mode, citizen soldiers have a 'food bar' which slowly decreases when away from the aura of house, civ center, barracks. When the food bar drops to zero the citizen soldier reverts to economic mode and must visit a house / civ center to reenter weaponized mode. Being within the aura of a friendly caravan shiould also reset the food bar.

4) City centers should no longer fire arrows. Instead, the city center should provide an armor bonus to all freindly units in its aura. In this way the village level can also see invasion (currently it is insane to attack a civ center at the village phase, which is highly unihistoric)

 

[IberianJavelinMan]

5 hours ago, Ulfilas said:

-- for balance :

1) Citizen soldiers can should either be in economic mode or weaponized mode. In economic mode they can gather or build, but if immediately are forced into combat they are limited to melee nd slightly better than a Spartan woman at fighting. To change to weaponized mode, where they have their full combat strength, they must first vist a house or city center and drop anything they are carrying (wood, food etc). This simulates them 'arming up', or if they carry nothing then they can simply visit a house to 'arm up'.

Is way better than what we have now, but it doesn't solves the problem of choosing eco production or military production (you still can spam soldiers near your base for eco and using them later for fighting). Or you can spam them send them to the gatherer spot and then choose if you want more soldiers there or gatherers, but the player don't need to do any production decision, no depth in choices just more men. What is better is that you're gatherers are not instantly self defenders (rewards for scouting and defending gathering spots).

2) Citizen soldiers in economic mode should move 10% faster than their weaponized counterpart

It depends on the soldier, why has a citizen carrying all the metal or stone he cans to move faster than a man with a slinger? So I won't do it, maybe they'd move faster if they aren't carrying anything.

3) In weaponized mode, citizen soldiers have a 'food bar' which slowly decreases when away from the aura of house, civ center, barracks. When the food bar drops to zero the citizen soldier reverts to economic mode and must visit a house / civ center to reenter weaponized mode. Being within the aura of a friendly caravan shiould also reset the food bar.

I like the idea of "soldiers need supply" but I don't know if we are proposing a too complex game. But, nice approach.

4) City centers should no longer fire arrows. Instead, the city center should provide an armor bonus to all freindly units in its aura. In this way the village level can also see invasion (currently it is insane to attack a civ center at the village phase, which is highly unihistoric)

I don't have anything against about logic or history but it wouldn't be too hard defending your self from rushes?

 

I think we are messing too much with wowget's proposal with so many different ideas in the same topic. It's hard because we can't discuss any aspects by its own, they work together in the gameplay. But following these endless threads is really exhausting and time consuming we should find another way.

Edited April 14, 2017 by IberianJavelinMan
mispelling

[Servo]

DarcReaver said that resources increases exponentially with more gatherers. This is one very good point. It's almost analogous to spamming unlimited numbers of one combat unit type a players prefer. 

If there's a sort of commerce cap there will be no over production of resources, it would be very nice. 

Same as combat/or any units(including women, priests, merchants, etc) if there is a cap on the number of any unit type it could avoid spamming too much that could IMO have better gameplay.

Edited April 14, 2017 by Servo

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

If there are separate Slaves and Citizens from the soldiers, then it's easy to have an econ cap without negatively affecting combat strategy. Age of Mythology already do this by capping citizens. Can be a hard cap or soft cap. Benefit of a hard cap is that it is very simple and easy to understand and be aware of. Benefit of a soft cap is that there's more flexibility and still benefits from expansion. Bad thing about a hard cap is that it feels artificial and arbitrary and ideally should be scaled by match pop cap setting (not difficult to do). Bad thing about soft cap is that it's variable and is just another thing that has to be managed by the player. There are pros and cons.

 

Another way to soft cap the economy a bit is to make things more expensive as the game progresses. Ideally, this should be a quantity vs. quality decision by the player. As units are teched up, they can become more expensive, soaking up some of that excess economic output.

Edited April 14, 2017 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[sphyrth]

Formations? I'll just go soft for now.

Citizen Soldiers - Historical but Broken. The fact that you don't recognize them as "Villagers that can fight" should already tell you that it's broken. Please don't remove, just improve.

Overall Gameplay Design? Moving away from AoE2 and closer to Battle Realms. I mean....
Resource Outpost > Civic Center
Soft Capping - I happen to like this because "Don't ADD a resource, just REPLACE population"
Peasants (Slaves) transforming into Military
Non-upgrade Phase Transitions

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

On 4/14/2017 at 9:30 PM, sphyrth said:

Formations? I'll just go soft for now.

Ideally, they'd make the implementation in a way where mods can choose to have hard battalions or soft battalions. Though, I would not expect that functionality to be built-in if the core game goes with soft battalions. Core game comes first of course. It would just be nice, so I don't have to wrangle some like-minded folk together to essentially fork the code.

Edited April 16, 2017 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[wraitii]

The most likely outcome, to me, right now, is that we'll ultimately support 3 things:

-individual units

-individual units walking more or less in formation (like in Age of Empires 2)

-actual bataillons for warfare, treated as a single unit, but possibly composed of several underneath.

[sphyrth]

16 hours ago, wraitii said:

The most likely outcome, to me, right now, is that we'll ultimately support 3 things:

-individual units

-individual units walking more or less in formation (like in Age of Empires 2)

-actual bataillons for warfare, treated as a single unit, but possibly composed of several underneath.

Is there a poll for this? The third option is what I favor.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 minute ago, sphyrth said:

Is there a poll for this? The third option is what I favor.

He's saying the code would support all three levels. Which level the core game actually implements is what you're probably talking about.

[wraitii]

Well obviously we support level 1. Level 2 is easy enough. Level 3 would need some new code. We'll probably get there eventually, but can't say anything on the when.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

13 minutes ago, wraitii said:

Well obviously we support level 1. Level 2 is easy enough. Level 3 would need some new code. We'll probably get there eventually, but can't say anything on the when.

Right, level 3 is the rub, because there are sub-levels to it, like, should the engine support training whole battalions, even if the core game doesn't do it that way, etc.

[WhiteTreePaladin]

13 hours ago, wraitii said:

Well obviously we support level 1. Level 2 is easy enough. Level 3 would need some new code. We'll probably get there eventually, but can't say anything on the when.

Would really like number 3 as well. It doesn't have to replace anything, could just be an addition.

[Khosrov]

All buildings should stay captureable.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 hours ago, Khosrov said:

All buildings should stay captureable.

Nope 

[Lion.Kanzen]

3 hours ago, Khosrov said:

All buildings should stay captureable.

Nope considering walls( by exception of Helepolis)