View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0021852 | AI War 2 | Gameplay Idea | Oct 19, 2019 5:42 pm | Oct 21, 2019 3:04 pm | |
| Reporter | Asteroid | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | closed | Resolution | won't fix | ||
| Product Version | 0.954 Hacking Log! | ||||
| Summary | 0021852: (Post-first-DLC) Turning radius and acceleration for units | ||||
| Description | I feel like AI War 2 units don't have much to distinguish them from each other besides unique abilities (e.g. parasites) speed, health and damage. The other stats such as Albedo, Armor, Engine Power and others actually have no direct impact on unit performance, serving only to support an artificial and complex rock-paper-scissors system. I think the game would really benefit from units that don't turn on a dime and accelerate from zero to max speed instantly. They would feel more like actual starships when controlled and in the overall look of combat, and it would give two powerful balancing tools to make units feel unique and have their own niche roles in battle. While fast-turning and fast-accelerating units being difficult to chase by their slower counterparts is already interesting, units being limited to fire in specific directions (forward for fighters, broadsides for some frigates) would make the whole system even more interesting. This has deeper implications on AI coding because units now need to try to face the correct way to fire at enemies, taking into account the possible trajectories they can take given their current speed, max speed and acceleration. To complete the picture, if performance allows missile weapons could get their own speed and acceleration so you have slower, torpedo-like projectiles that faster ships can potentially dodge. More detailed list of stats we could implement: - Forward speed - Forward acceleration - Strafing speed - Strafing acceleration - Turning speed - Turning acceleration - Turning speed and turning acceleration for individual turrets, for tank or battleship-like units - these can be so extremely cool to control and watch. - Inertia/Mass - if we want to go all Newtonian and prevent units from stopping on a dime, too. - Deployment time (for artillery-style units that need to deploy before firing and undeploy before moving) I've seen ideas in previous design documents or discussions regarding the introduction of "terrain" to the game. If some kind of irregular nebulae or attractor fields were added to some systems, the following could also be added: - Ground resistance (in-spaaace equivalent) - a factor affecting real-life vehicles, how good are you in navigating soft, muddy terrain. Plugs into the whole tracked vs wheeled thing. - Air resistance - how good you are at speeding through floating particles in a nebula. A reference for me on how to make units interesting and diverse based on their physical properties is Total Annihilation and its spiritual sequel Supreme Commander (you could also include the Total-Annihilation-inspired Spring Engine games such as Zero-K on Steam, and Planetary Annihilation). I'm sure nobody here needs another reminder that Chris is in massive debt at the moment and needs to fulfill his Kickstarter obligations before engaging in further large modifications to the game, so this is a suggestion for when and if the game is financially successful enough to pull Chris out of the red. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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The amount of added math on that gets pretty insane. Plus it gets frustrating for people to not have ships just do what they say, which is what winds up happening. We've coded things like this before for things like The Last Federation, and it wouldn't be feasible here. |
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Frankly having my ships do that just sounds annoying. |
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Can't argue with the maths part. For the "people" part, I can never figure which "people" we're talking about. You can always find people unhappy about something. Total Annihilation is praised for its responsive unit control yet all units have such physical properties and can be hindered by slopes, wreckage and other terrain obstacles. Homeworld was also extremely popular yet ships don't turn on a dime. Personally I like AI War's high-level strategic gameplay but its moment to moment RTS gameplay leaves me cold. I know I'm not the only one since most people in discussions admit to blobbing their ships together, this indicates that the gameplay isn't very compelling. You don't see people praising ship to ship battles in reviews either, the focus is always on the higher-level stuff - strong hint that the RTS part is merely serviceable. It's a bit of a pity to not even envision improving the core gameplay because some purists happened to get attached to AI War 1's style of unit control. Of course in the end, it's up to you Chris to decide who you want to please. |
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It's not about purists or ideology. It's about what level a game is operating at, and recognizing a game can't do all things. Positioning ships matters a lot in this game, and one of two things will thus happen: lots of expensive math to make the exact same thing happen as now but with fancier intermediate graphics; or behavior is markedly different and the feeling of moving pieces around relatively precisely is gone. The other games you mention have a very different scope and feel, and unit move speed and battle speed. Aka both are much slower in some ways, but a overall campaign is faster. In my case, I don't want to contemplate reimagining combat here because that would be a fundamentally different game. Probably a slower one requiring more babysitting. Overall the design here is intended for you to not even pay attention to a lot of your battles while you make larger grand plans, and that's wholly different from most other rts games. Basically this game has already gone through a lot of shakeups to its DNA, and that was the purpose of the pre-launch period. Part of the promise of a launched game is not making such radical changes that could affect the entire feel of the game incredibly dramatically. That's not extra content or tweaked mechanics; it's a rabbit hole at least as deep as fleets were. I do enjoy realistic ship movement, and frankly I enjoy the concept of gravity wells and slingshotting and fuel conservation and orbital mechanics being a part of combat. I'd love to do all those things in some game. But not this one; that would be a smaller, much more focused and intimate game. Essentially this game is what it is, and there's a ton that could be added or refined, but doing fundamental reworks of mechanics is not a post launch sort of thing. Somebody always gets left behind. And in this particular case the math just doesn't work at this scale anyway. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 19, 2019 5:42 pm | Asteroid | New Issue | |
| Oct 21, 2019 10:39 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Oct 21, 2019 10:39 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => closed |
| Oct 21, 2019 10:39 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Resolution | open => won't fix |
| Oct 21, 2019 10:39 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0053811 | |
| Oct 21, 2019 10:43 am | BadgerBadger | Note Added: 0053812 | |
| Oct 21, 2019 1:26 pm | Asteroid | Note Added: 0053816 | |
| Oct 21, 2019 3:04 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0053817 |
