Back story: Long ago, an unimaginably powerful race, threatened with extinction, left behind the metal planets. They served as this civilization's last hope of survival against some terrible, but now forgotten enemy. A number of metal planets were hidden in the darkness of space as a final last-ditch effort to survive before they were wiped off the face of the galaxy. One day, these metal planets will awaken and there true purpose will be known once more. The metal planets are massive temporal manipulation devices capable of reverting entire celestial bodies to any state they had in the past. In the far future, the metal planets will reactivate, target the home worlds of their creators, and bring a long-dead civilization back to the height of its power in an instant - unless a clever robot commander can figure out how to wield them as the ultimate weapons of war. How it could work in-game: Once activated (however that happens) a metal planet would be capable of targeting one of the other celestial bodies in the game and reverting it to a point in the game of the activator's choosing. Alternatively the player could revert the body's state to what it was at it's formation, a ball of molten rock and hot gas - effectively destroying it and removing it from the game. The player would select the desired planet state by opening a special Chrono-Cam window where the user would select the point to revert the planet to. The player could revert an enemy-held planet to the state it was at the beginning of the game and take it over, restore a captured world to it's rightful owner, or un-destroy a planet that was hit by KEW. The commanders themselves would not be affected by this because of their temporal shielding that I totally did not just make up (to prevent copying commanders). The Chrono-Cam allows players to view the game's state at any point in game's past, so the needed information to restore past gamestates exists. It may be tricky to retrieve that information for only the surface of a single planet though. Just an idea I had while brushing my teeth, thanks for reading.
The chrono-cam is currently a replay device. There's no current way to alter the passage of events, and the effort to make that happen would no doubt be quite massive. But it would make a really cool game. Perhaps it's a bit too complex for something as loaded as RTS, but it definitely looks like a (somewhat closer than previously available) possibility. If a really big game has some kind of glitch that loses a planet or crashes, well that kind of invalidates the game. The replay system could potentially restore broken games up to a certain point, but it doesn't look like something you'd use as an in game thing.
Past events would not be altered, a "saved version" of the targeted planet would take the place of the planet at the current game time.
Ideas regarding time travel immediately makes me think of how to resolve the paradoxes. In this case, what do you do with any units that were transported off-world before the time-jump occurs? What if those units were the very ones which activated the time machine? If these aren't solved, it's open to abuse - duplicating entire armies by simply moving them offworld and then reverting the planet, or getting multiple commanders etc.
Like I said, commanders have temporal shielding because science. The other units would probably be the most expensive unit copies that you ever made (because of energy cost), but you would get a copy. All commanders would maintain their current positions, even if that means they are destroyed. I have no Idea how the Chrono-Cam works of the inside, this idea might be difficult to implement, or impossible to implement. But like you said, it is cool to think about.
That's a discussion that demands its own forum. Achron had an interesting take on time travel. It whole heartedly supports and encourages paradoxes. However, several "time waves" run across the time stream, cleaning up paradoxes and sorting things out. It looks like multiple game states have to run at once, which is absurdly demanding on a computer and wouldn't work here.
In a way, multiple game states run whenever you turn on the Chrono-Cam during the game, one for the running game, and one for the replay. The metal planet weapon would simply allow a player to choose a previous version of the targeted planet (NOT the entire solar system) and have it replace the current version of the planet at the planet's current location. There is no real time travel, really, only a partial save is loaded to replace some of the current game.
Except I don't think it's multiple game states, my understanding of the Chrono-Cam system was more so that it's a recording rather than a distinct game state. You also still have to address Raevn's other points, what's stopping someone from building a big arm, transporting it off world and then setting the planet back to right before he transported his army? Mike
I'm pretty sure I've activated the Chrono-Cam during the game before by accident, leading to severe confusion. The "real" game is running on the server right? Your client is basically a viewer. In this case, the Chrono-Cam would just act as a nice part of the UI to select a desired state to revert the targeted planet to, then the window would close and you would be back in the game. Also, I would assume Uber's plan for the metal planets is to have them be "Death Stars" anyway, if you want to waste such a valuable shot simply copying your army, your enemy would likely be relieved (you could have just destroyed or reverted one of his worlds). Also, metal planets could be one-time-use for all we know. This is just a thought that would help metal planets do more than what an asteroid drop would do (at least what it did in the kick starter trailer), simply annihilate a planet.
I thought Chrono would be actually able to do time travel. The server just states where the units are, how they behave and then just feeds in incrementally larger values of time into them. That's how you rewind a game and continue playing and end up with a different conclusion. So why can't the server rewind the game, magically paste-in some units from teh future and then let the game play again?
Doubling your army(and or allowing you to attack 2 places at once with the same force) can be very powerful, think of it this way, if you each have 5 planets and you 'revert' one, all you've done is impacted him by about 20% and you can only do that once. On the other hand if you double your army you can now attack 2 Planets at once(40%) and if those are successful you might have enough army left over to combine them and attack a third planet a the same strength as your last attacks(60%). Sure reverting is more immediate, but long-term is doesn't have nearly the same pay-off potential long term as outright destroying the planet or doing some business with the army. Mike
You are right, there would be a tactical decision to be made, depending on variables like how many planets each player controls, the properties of those planets, the size of each player's army, and more. This could be potentially balanced by making the metal planet so expensive to activate, that it is comparable to reproducing a late-game army. It would also be interesting to know how long it generally takes a player to reproduce an army (or double its size) using conventional means (time is a resource too, the metal planet would allow you to "harvest" additional time in a way). It might turn out that putting the resources into holding and activating a metal planet really isn't worth it. With so many unknowns, it is anyone's guess.
The answer is you make an entirely new game. The only title to even tackle these issues is Achron, which uses time waves to regularly clean up paradoxes. There is enough wacky stuff in the realm of time travel to warrant its own series, if not genre.
i love the back story duplicating armies and stuff is a problem yes but if you limit it to just only buildings then maybe but then there is still a problem because if you start a game on the same planet as you're opponent then that would mean that you're own buildings are gonna get reverted to certain state but i guess thats the downside of such insane power
There was an RTS game released a short while ago which did actually let both players actively play around with time, duplicating armies and such and having ways to resolve paradoxes. Never tried it mind you, but here is the game: http://www.achrongame.com/site/
The first time, you mentioned Achron, I had no idea that you were talking about a game. I'll definitely be picking that one up. Thanks.
