View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | Date Submitted | Last Update | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0023606 | AI War 2 | Gameplay Idea | Aug 28, 2020 2:35 pm | Aug 31, 2020 2:57 pm | |
| Reporter | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | Chris_McElligottPark | ||
| Status | assigned | Resolution | open | ||
| Summary | 0023606: DLC3 Concept: The Human Factor | ||||
| Description | There are a lot of things that I've been thinking about with regard to what I might do to bring in my own flavor (finally!) with new factions or content in the third DLC sometime in the future. DLC2 isn't even done (I have yet to even start my part of the work on it), but that one is well-defined and huge and has its own identity. At any rate, I doubt I'd be working on any content for DLC3 until November at the earliest, but it's good to plan ahead and know what will be worked on. One of the things that really isolates the player right now is the fact that they are in command of ships that seem to be kind of infinitely spawning and destroyed, and while there are some human voices around, and the AI chats at you a bit, there's still not a lot of interaction. A common question with AIWC was "are the ships crewed?" In other words, are we chucking literal lives away as we let ships die? The answer is obviously no, most of the time. The ships must clearly be un-crewed, or we'd run out of people. But still... there have to be SOME pilots, remote or otherwise. And hey, what about noncombatants beyond those who are clearly in cryo-freeze and so on on your home planet? I've never explored this much in the game, but my headcanon has always been that basically the ship caps come from how many remote pilots you have who are able to establish secure connections to the ships they are running. Something along those lines. ----- So, new factions and such would be very interesting in general, and the civilian industries shows some of the things that are interesting in an allied human civilian faction (for example). But it's also possible for us to completely rewrite some of the game rules -- we can't ever get rid of the "standard" ruleset, whatever that winds up being called, but we certainly can make a second or third ruleset and later choose what is the default. So what I'm proposing in the next section is a new ruleset, meant to exist in its own space separate from the existing ruleset that would remain unchanged. ----- 1. You have a certain number of humans of several different skill pools (commanders, pilots, civilians, maybe two more). 2. If you run out of humans in a given category, then you must train humans from a different pool to do the job, which costs probably either science or hacking points. (For the hacking points usage, think "download via the matrix") 3. Fleets start having a number of pilots that they have to have with them in order to operate the ships that come from that fleet. 4. If ships are away from the flagship of their fleet, then we start adding increasing intentional delays in before they can take actions. Aka, you can send your ships away from your central flagship on a suicide run 3 planets away, but by the time they get that far from their flagship, your direct orders as well as autotargeting is slowed WAY down. You know... lightspeed problems. This is unlikely to come up too much. 5. Pilots can juggle more than one ship of each type they are competent in. But when they do so, those ships are slower to act (small delays before each order, extra reload times leading to lower DPS, etc). This is the sort of situation you get into only if you truly have to. I'm not sure about this one. 6. You can also potentially (not sure about this one either) have a fleet run more ships than it has secure connections. Having remote pilots is one thing, but having a secure connection for them to do their piloting is also important. Headcanon is that this is why the drones deteriorate over time (they deteriorate just in time to not be taken over by the enemy; drones might need to be reworked in this game mode and actually just fully die immediately after a timer rather than losing health over time). Anyway, if you're running connections from a flagship to 100 eyebots and you only have secure connections for 80 of them, then there's going to be a nonzero chance of some of those extra 20 "going rogue" and joining the AI and turning against you. The more dangerous the area is, the more likely this is to happen. Basically this is a way for you to "soft go over the ship cap" but have a downside. It reminds me of the ability to set stupidly high taxes in SimCity, where you can get some money back but also people and businesses run away from your city. 7. Back to stuff that is more certain. No more crippling of human ships. If a thing if yours dies, then it goes to some sort of build menu where you can build it again... but for the full cost, of course. Losing a ship that would have been crippled has the primary major cost of human lives: the pilots on board, as well as the commanders required to run that specific thing. 8. Losing something like a command station without evacuating the staff first would also come with the same sort of costs. If you are to scrap a command station, then it will die immediately but put all of its crew into an escape pod or a few escape pods. Those can then seek out another fleet or some sort of headquarters and be stationed there. 9. That's right, people have physical locations. So you can't teleport commanders or pilots over to a new place on the other side of the galaxy. If you want to change the loadouts, then little crew transports that are defenseless but fast will be sent. If the enemy destroys those, that's definitely bad. 10. I think it's pretty clear by this point that the system I am describing here is really complicated to the point that all of your logistical management will be focused on people and making sure that they are in the correct positions. The pain of this could be intense, but that's why this game mode also needs to give a major gift to players: no more AIP costs to anything they do. Capture all the planets you want... AIP won't prevent you from doing that. Your limitations are time and people, now. 11. AIP won't be gone entirely, but instead would go up passively over time on a schedule that is based around whatever you select. In this game mode, you can't completely have the tempo. The AI is actually aware of you, or at least becoming increasingly so, and you're in a slow race to get what you need, manage your logistics to get humans where they need to be, and for the first time in an AI War game you don't have to worry about being subtle about it. If you can snuff out the neighboring system without losing any humans or much time, go for it. Enjoy. 12. Certain features won't be compatible with this game mode, obviously, like data centers and super terminals. What I will probably do is make it so that those are ways to acquire more secure-connection-equipment or more people, or something along those lines. They would have different names, of course. If this sounds like a completely new game, you are not far off. In some ways it is kind of like Betrayal Mode in The Last Federation, but I think it's actually a mode I would be far more inclined to play in this game compared to something I feel a bit "done with." I'm frankly a bit put off by having to sneak around, and by having to juggle AIP and a few other things. I'd prefer new logistics to manage, and I'd prefer to feel the humans under my command and their triumphs and losses, even if it's at the level of stats mainly. None of that is meant to invalidate the "normal way to play the game," but since this is almost all player-side stuff, I do think that most content will wind up being inherently compatible with both game modes. I expect to see people who flip between game modes, or choose a favorite mode and stick with that. It's always possible to later go in and add yet more rulesets en masse, but frankly I'm not looking for that much variety. I'd rather make it so that we have the "push" method of keeping players from just doing everything (avoid AIP) and then a new "pull" method of keeping them from doing that (time and resources are limited, like most RTS games). I can't stress enough that this would not be an attempt to ever deprecate the main ruleset, at least in particular not the whole AIP system. Crippled ships and whatever could be whatever -- maybe there IS a third ruleset from the outset, which is kind of a hybrid of these new ideas while still keeping AIP, for those people who want "push and pull" all at once, but no sense of time pressure. But anyhow, this is something that I was thinking about while I was eating lunch today, and I thought I'd write it up for commentary so that I can have a few months to let this settle before I even think about attempting it. Obviously other external factions are also needed for DLC3, and their interactions with us as players need to be novel for the game, but I got to thinking about our own relationship with the galaxy and decided to start there. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
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Huh. Just read through...I like this. Somehow I think of Star Carrier, even though not much like this occurs in the series. Having actual losses...feels like it brings it more to what I think I prefer nowadays. I could see mixing it with ClassicFusion in future, if I still have that around at the time (and if it's possible). Feels like something I'd be interested in if I still worked on the game, since it seems to solve a few issues I have even in CF still (things like the potential endless ship production). |
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Yeah, I don't mind endless ship production when it's clear "that is chaff and we can afford it," but when that's paired with "some things are not chaff and we very much cannot afford those," I really tend to like that. It's so divergent from AIWC that for the core mode of AI War 2 it wasn't going to be possible, and I didn't really think of this version of these ideas until recently. Having personnel and some of those other concepts in some fashion are older than AIW2 itself. |
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4. If ships are away from the flagship of their fleet, then we start adding increasing intentional delays in before they can take actions. Aka, you can send your ships away from your central flagship on a suicide run 3 planets away, but by the time they get that far from their flagship, your direct orders as well as autotargeting is slowed WAY down. You know... lightspeed problems. This is unlikely to come up too much. Sounds annoying for gameplay and imo wouldn't add much. It's like factorio's belts. Logically they'd require power, but they don't for simplicity and to prevent lots of player fustration of needing to power EVERY belt they have. 11. and for the first time in an AI War game you don't have to worry about being subtle about it. But fallen spire! spire aside, i think i like this actually. I play really aggressive and enjoy going high aip, even without fallen spire. Very interesting proposal Chris. I like the idea of having a "core" game that can be changed with different rule sets. It'd be like playing Nap, Spit, President, Hearts and texas hold'em. They're all card games fundamentally, but each one has a radically different set of rules. I could very well see Classic Fusion being a thing with this in mind, as well as a few other game modes that could be added. Perhaps even a turn based system if you're feeling adventurous enough? And a Hunter/killer being the equivalent of a boss fight. |
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I am happy to hear this will be an optional ruleset, as I have not found anything in it that I actually like, while some parts rather bother me. But the idea different rulesets sounds very interesting, maybe more so if it can be opened up for modders to create their own systems. It seems to be some kind of untapped frontier to allow many styles of gameplay. |
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I think item 4 is probably a bust, yes. And I am fond of the idea of making it so that we can have more rulesets, including potentially my own version of Classic in some fashion at some point, potentially. That would be a whole hell of a lot of work on its own, and not compatible with most expansions or mods, but might be doable. I don't know if I'll ever do it. And crawlers, I definitely expect that a lot of folks will be like "that's not what I came for," and so my hope is that the other content in the expansion is compelling enough to warrant the excitement. And that the potential of what this could be used for with modders would also help there. |
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Chris, I'm changing my mind a bit on if ClassicFusion would be allowed as a distributed mod. When I have the next update for it, I'll let Demo stream it and see what interest there is, if any. No point considering it if nobody cares. |
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Fair enough, I am fine with whatever makes sense to you. I think demo will probably need to post on Steam and a few other places to be sure there is interest, since that's where most people are. |
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I'd like to give an expression of interest for this, and I think you already know which list items are like to be busts, which is generally stuff I'd classify only hard science fiction to pay attention to. (num4 in theory, and probably num8 in practice without automation) I also think that The Human Factor is also an excellent chance to explore the AI's almost assured dominance in hacking (num6), though I realize you're not requesting feedback at this time. |
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Although you've acknowledged it, the removal of AIP is a fundamental mechanic and design choice of the game, and one that I personally wouldn't be interested in removing. Even without AIP, the AI still needs a way to slowly escalate its attempts to destroy you, and AIP does this job well enough already.What are your thoughts on a different approach more oriented towards rewarding the usage of this "human" element to balance out its downsides? I've spitballed a few ideas below: 1. Humans would have marks just like everything else in the game from 1 to 7, perhaps give them military rankings like Sergeant, Major, Lieutenant, etc with the same colors that marks use for flavor purposes. Higher mark humans do their job better. Humans for the most part will replace the mark system on objects for the player, replacing the ability to mark up stations and fleets with science. 2. Humans each have the ability to operate semi-autonomously if toggled by the player, which will surrender control of certain objects to them, but allow them to improve upon what the player would be capable of normally, as each of your subordinates can provide finer control than you as the player can, but you can only give them broad orders in comparison to what you would normally do. 3. Humans each have "specializations", some benefit they will provide when permitted to act autonomously in their role. As for a few examples of how this would work: 1. Commanders would be stationed at a command post. All commanders increase the energy, metal, health, attacks, planetary bonuses, and unit caps of the system they're stationed at based on their rank. A Possible specialization of commander would be "Siegemaster", which would increase the turret cap on this planet further. If control over the system is given to this commander, they will slowly use your metal and science to passively build power and otherwise unobtainable defensive structures such as fortresses. Alternatively, your commander could be a "Technician", which would increase the energy production of your station, and if given control would use metal and science to construct powerful but unstable energy generators that produce enormous energy, but will explode like a nuke and increase AIP if they are ever destroyed. 2. Captains would be stationed on fleet flagships, including mobile factories, battlestations, citadels, and arks. All commanders increase the health, shields, and weapon performance of the flagship they are stationed on. Captains would independently control the movement of your fleets, and while they have control of your fleet they can be given a system or number of systems to exert control over using their fleet and the ship lines within. Their specializations will be a major component of how their fleet will choose to act. A Captain could specialize in "Breaching Protocol", which would give all ships in the fleet a reduction in damage taken and increase in damage dealt after using a wormhole (stacking multiplicatively with other effect on vanguards/pulsar tanks). This bonus would be further increased if the captain is given direct control over their fleet. While in control, this captain would be far more likely to retreat if they have been at a planet for too long. A Captain could specialize in "Long-Range Support", which would give all ships in the fleet increased attack range. If their range is already infinite, it will increase the damage they deal. This bonus would be further increased if the captain is given direct control over their fleet. While in control. this captain will travel to the edge of a planet's gravity well and unload their ships there. If they start to take heavy losses or enemy ships get close, they will relocate their forces to another faraway safe location in the same system. 3. Pilots would control individual fleet lines. The pilot's mark would determine the mark of the ships in that line and the number of them. The specialization of each pilot determines how the ships will move and attack in combat. This is differentiated from the captain's specialization in that the captain mostly covers fleet-wide manuevers while the pilots cover maneuvers for individual ship lines. A pilot could be an Optimiser, which would improve the conditional multipliers of units, such as agravic pods versus high-power engines, damage reduction from faraway targets. A pilot with direct control over their fleet line would prioritize targets that damage multipliers would apply to and this bonus would be further increased. A pilot could be a Defender, which would improve units' combat performance while within a certain range of their flagship. A pilot with direct control over their fleet will let them move more than a short distance away from their flagship, and the bonuses to combat performance would be further increased. |
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Lots of good ideas in there. One thing I do want to clarify about the "removal" of AIP, though, in this alternative game mode: the AI would still have AIP, but it would rise at a steady rate over time, not based on your actions. Most RTS games are a race between you and your opponent, even if you wind up stalemated for hours in a protracted war with someone. You are still racing, but simply holding even -- if someone pulls ahead, that ends the game. In a traditional RTS, the early phases of the game do not have too much ability to threaten complete destruction to one side, except via rushing tactics in games that support that (most, but not all, RTS games). AI War has been about careful consideration of your choices, and your choices lead you down a path at a tempo that you specify. In some ways, you can think of AI War as almost turn-based in terms of the "grand race that is typically an RTS." The AI almost never increases in macro strength (okay, there are exceptions like reinforcements, but still) until you trigger certain actions on your end. In other words, the player is the pacesetter, and whether the player wins or not is based on the player's skill at evaluating objectives and whether taking an objective (and thus incrementing AIP) will benefit the player more, or the AI more. This is a great simplification full of half-truths, it's important to note, because in reality AI War has so many overlapping systems that it's impossible to predict exactly how long-term game flow would work when you take out or change a few of them. It was just this sort of experimentation that led to The Pivot, and then later Fleets, as two major revisions to the core concepts of AI War 2 after attempting to "recreate the original but a bit different" did not pan out in two very broad styles prior to that. So please do bear in mind that I'm aware of how interconnected everything is, and I'm also aware that certain things must stay or the game is no longer "AI War" in any recognizable sense. But! With that duly noted, I find myself interested in exploring... alternative ways of playing with essentially the same toys. Make no mistake, I still want to make new toys and new factions and so on that will all be right at home in AI War 2 as it exists now. Not doing that and going in a radical departure of the fundamental game would be... unwise on virtually every level. In some respects, this is why I want to do something that allows me to change up the rules and do something fresh and different, but with a minimum of new content that is exclusive to the new mode. Does that make sense? Part of the appeal, for me, is seeing if I can change as little about fleet combat and construction and so on, but at the same time enormously overhaul how people actually engage with the game when they play in a new mode. One of my favorite examples from Chess is "bughouse," a 2v2 variant with two boards. Both boards are playing individual speed chess against each other... but white and black on each side are teamed up in opposites. If I am your teammate and I capture a black piece from my board, I hand it to you and you get to place it. You capture a white piece from your board, you hand it to me and I get to place it. Suddenly many of the truisms of Chess go out the window. You can unfavorably "trade material." You can sacrifice a queen to get a rook, because what the other board next to you needs is that rook, and it can be employed before the queen will be. The game is the same, the rules are the same, there's just a few changes... but everything about the attitude and where your focus is is different. You may opt to simply go chasing after "useless" pawns and endlessly pick them off, because it lets your teammate flood the board with pawns. I don't prefer bughouse to regular chess any more than I prefer speed chess to regular chess. But I do value all three variants, and they play extremely differently. I also really enjoy late-game chess puzzles from chess books, where it's "win in X turns" in some crazy situation. As a board, as pieces, Chess is incredibly flexible at making our minds do all sorts of different things, and you don't even have to get into adding new pieces like "the magical princess that roams the board." I am aware of the variants of Chess that are more common in India, and the different pieces that they have, but those have less interest to me because it's not just a new way of thinking about an existing game... it's a fundamentally different game. Which is not a bad thing, but it basically invalidates all the openings and typical moves that I'm familiar with from Chess. If that makes sense? Bughouse or speed chess or other variants let me keep that knowledge that I spent so long acquiring, and use it in surprisingly new ways. I have been thinking about AI War for a really long time, at this point. Just over twelve years as of July. I don't plan on stopping that... but I do want to have a fundamentally new way of playing with the same toys. As an option, like bughouse, not as a replacement, like a sequel. In this other way of playing the game, I don't want to have to worry about setting the tempo. That's what AIP increases are. That's you getting penalized in the tempo for a choice you made. It's like saying "okay, I went, now it's your turn." If the AIP is there and just gradually goes up on its own, and I'm allowed to focus more inward on my own logistics and on smaller engagements, while feeling the constant time pressure of an enemy who will eventually race past me if I don't win first... that seems refreshing and new to me. It's a little bit speed chess, it's a little big bughouse. Having to think about where humans are, and what kinds of humans you have, will change everything -- like if you're scooping up pawns and handing them to a partner in bughouse. But, like speed chess (or bughouse), the stakes are also somewhat lessened. You can make mistakes and take useless planets or grab a new fleet just because it's there. You can recover from that later. Because everyone is rushing, mistakes happen, and the play is quicker and more joyful and relies on old knowledge in order for the speed not to be overwhelming. To be fair, I don't expect for this other game mode to be lightning fast like speed chess, so in some ways that might be an inappropriate and/or scary analogy. I hope that this new mode is rather low-key, low-stress, "plan for the middle term but don't think too hard about it" on most difficulty levels. I hope that tactical engagements and logistical choices are felt to be significant, but that none of them are the end of the world. I hope that losses are felt as being caused by the enemy, and are just part of playing, rather than being something that "was a poor move that gave the opponent an opening." I guess that's why I keep thinking of speed chess. It's not the fact that speed chess is fast. It's that I can play speed chess largely on instinct, and notice new things and take joy in discovery in a way that I can't when I'm pondering over every possible consequence of my actions in a regular game. In speed chess, we notice short term patterns and some middle-term ones, but things change so quickly that nobody below a grandmaster level is going to be thinking of the whole game all at once in that scenario. It makes it... like improv, a bit. Improv has rules and structure to it, and that's important, but you also really don't know where it's heading until you get there. That's what I want. After a long day working on code for AI War, I don't have the mental energy to play a long-form thinking game like AI War. I did before I had kids, but I haven't had that sort of mental energy in a long time, outside of work itself. So my enjoyment of AI War 2 is not in long campaigns, but in a battle here or there, in decisions, in the design of the thing itself. So I guess that's where I'm coming from. I want a version of AI War for brains that are a bit more tired than mine used to be. One that keeps the institutional knowledge that folks like those of us in this thread have built up, but which gets us to improvise with it in a way that is fun in the short and middle term of a game, but not really stressing about the long-term end of things. I want to think three or four turns ahead, not seven or ten. But I don't want to be bored, so I need more to do, and I need some new rules to constrain me if all my actions don't have tempo consequences: hence logistics and humans. It may utterly fail, I don't know. But I'm interested in exploring the minimum number of changes I can in order to get an experience like this. That will engage my brain in these new ways. I hope that others will also find it engaging in new ways. And then beyond that, the bulk of the new content would hopefully work between both game modes, so for the people who will inevitably ignore this mode it isn't a huge waste of time. Defender Mode in AI War Classic was something of an attempt at having different game rules and such, but it was so basic (small planet count, survive the clock as waves come at you) that it was not that interesting. I was also designing that in answer to the requests of others, not because I wanted to play that myself. This one I want to play myself. I know what I want my brain to feel like while I'm playing, and the original writeup here is my "minimum work, most likely first plan" attempt at that. If it doesn't work, I'd either scrap the concept entirely or refine the concept if it shows promise. Betrayal Mode in TLF was a lot easier to implement than Defender mode, because as a concept it was taking a nontraditional game and making it more traditional. I had no interest in playing Betrayal Mode, but plenty of other people did, and I could understand their desires pretty easily, and accommodate most of them. This time I'm the one with the desires, and once again it seems like it's heading back in a more traditional (for RTS games) route, so I'm hopeful but still skeptical as I am of any new concept that is overly large. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 28, 2020 2:35 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | New Issue | |
| Aug 28, 2020 2:35 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Status | new => assigned |
| Aug 28, 2020 2:35 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Assigned To | => Chris_McElligottPark |
| Aug 28, 2020 2:53 pm | RocketAssistedPuffin | Note Added: 0058234 | |
| Aug 28, 2020 3:13 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0058236 | |
| Aug 28, 2020 3:35 pm | DEMOCRACY_DEMOCRACY | Note Added: 0058237 | |
| Aug 28, 2020 5:15 pm | crawlers | Note Added: 0058238 | |
| Aug 28, 2020 5:31 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0058241 | |
| Aug 28, 2020 6:00 pm | RocketAssistedPuffin | Note Added: 0058243 | |
| Aug 28, 2020 8:13 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0058248 | |
| Aug 30, 2020 10:31 am | ParadoxSong | Note Added: 0058288 | |
| Aug 31, 2020 10:34 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Edited: 0058288 | |
| Aug 31, 2020 10:35 am | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Edited: 0058288 | |
| Aug 31, 2020 1:55 pm | MasterGeese | Note Added: 0058322 | |
| Aug 31, 2020 2:53 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Added: 0058323 | |
| Aug 31, 2020 2:57 pm | Chris_McElligottPark | Note Edited: 0058323 |
