Tamren

Something similar to my standing Order 31? I think a mix of both would be perfect. The whole point of automation is to take over from us to handle tasks that are no longer fun. There are situations where the computer could take over completetly. For example you could have campaigns or scenarios that are entirely focused on one of the 4 Xs. Its still important to have an economy in a war focused scenario but a good AI could take over and let the player give his all on the war front which can b

If you try to use player interaction to improve the behavious of AI opponents then that wouldn't work. The only way to truly test the AI is to give it total control and observe how successful it is based on the results of its own descisions. If it is acting "stupid" then you need to give it access to more and or better information so that it can make better descisions. If you have any hand in the process whatsoever then the end result can only be in essense a stupid version of you. You are mo

Progress! I now have an outline in my mind for the third "half". I must admit I thought this "gamer thesis" would only take me two posts to write out. But as Tolkien once said, the tale grew in the telling, and you guys are awesome for carrying it this far. I can only describe some of my previous discussions as trying to clear a minefield with a baseball bat. Before I continue with the main weave I want to catch up on a few loose threads I didn't have time for. [quote who="kei

[quote who="Spartan" reply="10" id="1935969"]If there is going to be a topographical movement system then there must be some kind of stamina subsystem in place in order to prevent endless chase downs. Moreover I also think that if a retreating unit drops below 10% strength it should auto disband. Additionally that calls into question effects on movement due to weather systems.[/quote] Rome Total war worked a bit like this. Units got tired if you made them run too much and this would m

Aw man that sucks. I have a hard drive that died out of the blue after making very loud noises. Wen't from working fine to instant dead in about 2 seconds. It still spins but before I can RMA it I have to recover anything I can. So I bought another hard drive and its insanely noisy, so that one is being RMAd right now. Its a pain.

Dreamers unite! Mwahahaha.

3 words. Dire sky sharks.

Depends on what you mean by simple. I really don't like the idea of all infantry being pigeonholed into a speed of one map tile per turn. Its okay to abstract the mechanics under the hood but they have to have a little complexity to begin with. Lets say your lightly armed scouts had a speed of 2-6. 1 is normal marching speed. 2 is about jogging speed. 6 for infantry is an all out sprint. 2-6 means that your scouts can maintain a speed of 2 without getting tired. 6 is the maximum speed

Weight is balanced by speed. But weight has its advantages. Even if they don't have spears, heavy infantry are resistant to cavalry. To understand why just run into a waist high concrete barrier at full tilt.

Yeah exactly. You know its a flail, it looks like a flail, works like a flail and hurts like a flail. It is not simply a picture of a flail with the number 10 beside it. Simple things can convey this to the player. Idle animations are a good one. Troops with nothing to do and no enemy in sight will do things like stretch and take practice swings with thier weapons. Flailmen standing in formation are spaced far apart, when they take practice swings they cover a lot of ground. More tellin

Hmm interesting. Its especially important that we don't have units that outrun other units because one unit has a speed of 2 and the pursuing unit has a speed of 1. Impossible chases between units with difference in speed of 5% are also annoying.

Well you could sum that up as "impaired vision", the unit in question would have a bleeding eye symbol above them to indicate the problem. It would also apply if they got sand in thier eyes or something like that. Direct X 10 is capable of rendering "god rays" and you might have less of a top down perspective that allows you to see the burning sun in the distance. Graphics tech keeps rolling on and on so something like this happening isn't as unlikely as it sounds.

Very nice indeed. That solves all of the concerns I had when I first tried Impulse months ago.

[quote who="keithLamothe" reply="5" id="1934763"] - The computations involved have to "scale well" with large battles, i.e. cpu/memory performance. As long as you aren't building a Reality Simulator (TM) this is probably fine, but it can get out of control.[/quote] Scalability is the key point to all of this. I could explain the minutia behind each and every figure in every unit in my mock battle up top. But because the combat involves groups of people, these details become less

Standing orders could also apply to unit production. For example: Order 31 is as follows: "each town must raise and maintain a single unit of spearmen not to exceed 10% of the total population. Up to half of the soldiers may be militia if there are not enough workers to fill the current production quota. They must be armed with equipment up to the current standard, if the resources required are not immediatly available then the next best local option will be taken until supplies can b

Aren't you forgetting that the grand vizier in MoM was horrible? If you turned him on, all of your towns will act just like the rest of the computer controlled towns. If I could get him to stick to buildings that would have been perfect. But leaving him on always resulted in huge amounts of redundant troops. I could garrison a town with 6 regiments of elite longbowmen and he would still build basic cavalry instead of a shrine. Along with "template" governors we should be able to custo

Sins ship scale is highly abstracted, well it has to be or it wouldn't make sense. The lasers the ships fire at each other would be wider than most towns in Canada if you measure them by the size of thier gun barrels. At the current scale it takes a fighter craft less than 10 seconds to travel from the earth to the moon. The game engine is missing out a lot of things, the most obvious being gravity. Not that Sins isn't fun in its simplicity. Lots of games make a point of being realist

I have been suggesting ideas about games for quite a while now. In my experience the short focused discussion will more often produce people that agree with each other but very rarely will create useful information behind an idea. For example, you could say "I wan't magic swords" and everyone else could say "yes thats cool". The developer can't do much with this, all he knows is that we like shiny things, which he probably knew to begin with. A better way of handling this is to have a

It is possible to add complexity to RPS. Try best out of 5 rules. Or even best out of 10. That is what we wan't to accomplish here. Pikemen beat cavalry, unless the cavalry have bows, but then the pikeman have heavy armour and shields, then the cavalry ambush them, but the ground is trapped. See what I mean? There are counters and counter-counters and counters to counter-counters. The point is, one side loses because the other guy beat him. NOT because he lost a simple abstracted game

Edit: This is in response to Iwarmonger of course. Yes. But dumbing down or simplifying the system is not the way to go. You have to have as much detail as possible and simplify it for player consumption . The detail must be there to handle calculations in the background but you can't overwhelm the player by feeding it to him all at once. So by picking out the most relevant information and putting it up front you give them as much as they need when they need it.<

Diamonds. The hardest metal known to man! :P The system described sound slike building blocks. I want a horseshoe so therefore I need a pickaxe to get ore, a smelter to make metal, an anvil and forge to shape the metal. And I need trained people who know how to operate all of the above. This only has to be as complicated as you want it to be but if things are too simple they start to become confusing because things don't make sense. Maybe your smithy might be making horseshoes

A game that you can't lose becomes boring instantly.

Heh neat! Its a pity these avatars aren't retroactive.

I wouldn't mind doing this at all but it depends on what exactly we would be required to do.

I think that if you included spells powerful enough to affect the whole world, you should not be immune to the effects of your own spells. You would have to have to ensure that you were the best prepared player to take advantage of the spells effects. For example, having an entirely undead army before casting a spell that puts every living thing to sleep.