Coherent Sandworm Ideas

Ooh! I've had an idea! It's so awesome I'm committing the sin of double posting just to get it out there.

I was sharpening my knowledge on the crysknife (heeheehee), when I had the idea of being able to harvest sandworm bone to health-buff the next *insert reasonable number here* units to come out of a factory which you assign the bone to. Maybe OP?

Hunting the wild life for a health boost.... Reminds me of another rts from long ago, that's right: Warcraft before the evil of the mmo destroyed a once beloved strategy franchise with the most diabolical evil price system ever conceived.... *blizzard board meeting* 'gentlemen, I have a way we can sell players a game, and then charge them monthly for the right to play it!'

What if u turned it into a salvage game? the worms were metal, metal could be something very rare. You could small spots of metal like an oasis on the planet, but tons and tons of wreckage.

Maybe an infinite spawn point for lesser dessert creatures, but the sandworm kills them leaving behind wreckage. Of course as you venture into that area, there is a huge source of wreckage to obtain, but you may also run into the sandworm and take loses. Or the sandworm could leave behind a trail of metal slime.

I like the basic idea. But I'd change it a little.

I like the idea of sandworms because it makes a planet unique. I think just the idea of sandworms coming to munch on units when there is too many of them in certain area already works well. I like it also because it makes the planet more unique.
As you and other people pointed out, might to too hard to implement (the whole implement this, take away somewhere else), but if uber had unlimited resources and money, I would love to see this

I like random factors in gameplay, it means that you have to account not only for one single event, but for the chance the event happens. Let's say that you intend to attack your opponent, but there is the chance your raiding force will be intercepted by sand worms. Perhaps your opponent knows this and purposefully leaves this side of his base undefended as bait. I think environmental factors can add more avenues for decision making this way.

It's like any card game: such a game would be boring without all the random factors, because otherwise it would be predetermined. The random factors create such a wide range of possible outcomes that there is no way for you to calculate it all the way through and account for all the random factors, and this means that the game is more difficult to figure out. Both random factors and opportunities for counterplay from your opponent can increase the depth of the game.

And aren't sand worms cool? You could always make two types of sand, one with wildlife enabled and one without. I don't know why Uber shouldn't add it to the game, especially if they're also adding metal planets that can turn into death stars.

And let's not forget that the great battle at the end first book of Dune, starts with a nuke strike, forgotten and forbidden weapon, used to break through the defensive wall of the capital.

Exactly how I use it to break through Turtles, time to time. Now that I think...

Whoa



Not everyone's read it.

A LOT of competitive game players hate random elements though. It takes away the simple test of players individual skill and can sometimes sharply skew the battle to one side's favour by sheer RNG

I'd by shocked if all this ended up in the competitive stream. Besides, isn't true skill being able to deal with unexpected events? So far I dont think we've discussed anything that's horrendously unfair.

'A LOT of competitive game players hate random elements though.'

Personally I find very equal match ups with predictable gameplay very stale to watch or play. I'm all for random events if they can be in some matter predicted and add to gameplay by introducing new strategies and things to consider.

Then, surely, the more adaptable and therefore better player will in the main win such battles more often.

I'd love for environmental affects, wildlife etc as it would be great to see a game with such complexity, depth and scope where these things matter. Adding forest fires will be a good start and are a good example of an environmental effect which adds to the game.

For PA though any inclusion of these outside of mods would have to be done very carefully as it could slow down the pace of the game drastically (and is something i don't think uber wants)

PA isn't a 4x after all, but it will be interesting to see how galactic warfare opens this up.

It depends on the type of game. If you have a random event of which the outcome is affected by skill, then if you have one hundred such events per game, the randomness should even out and only skill will matter. If the outcome of the game is strongly affected by only one event it breaks down and becomes frustrating though.

Typically what you want is: randomness that makes the game more difficult to figure out, but does not influence the outcome of the game. This means you have to eliminate random events that have a predominant effect. I don't know if sand worms fall under that category.

I wouldn't say they do so far. They have fairly predictable behaviour as it stands.

Perhaps the Chronocam could be leveraged to replicate the Spice-induced prescience and awareness? While it isn't setup to work that way and might require some fiddling (read: massive overhaul) with the technical side of things the game could be sped up for the Spice-user - while enforcing normal speed on everyone else, i.e. those players effectively living in the past of the simulation. When the effect wears off either the Spice-user would be synchronized with the rest again, i.e. set back in time, or the others one be fast-forwarded to the Spice-users state.
The first scenario would give the Spice-user a planning advantage by seeing things that might follow from the current state of the game while the second would result in more of an execution advantage.
And no, I don't think the way that Chronocam works is sufficient for this. At the least it would have to be enforced server-side to work its magic and disabled on the clients.

If that wasn't one insightful and level post on random events I haven't seen one. Commendable!

Hmmm, interesting. But it might be too complicated to actually do.

Most likely. But with Chronocam at least the foundation for something like this is in place. We will see.

I hope so. I haven't got a clue how to actually mod anything. I'm just the ideas man:

Agreed, this and other random hazards, should be mods, or maybe some "i luv micro" expansion/patch (ie. official mod).

And that i would love to see, fully with sandworms harvesters and spice that must flow.

It is there right? I did say that didn't I? I'm not hallucinating? It's not written in mayan glyphs?