GALACTIC WAR METAGAME : TURN BASED vs MORE REAL TIME

inpired by this :https://forums.uberent.com/threads/galactic-warfare.53274/page-2#post-812904

would you like for the galactic war metagame to be something like sin of a solar empire or something like civilisation?

What is SOASE style? I bought the game thinking it would be fully real time, I really hope it doesnt go turn based..

According to what I've heard, the battles will continue to be realtime, but a turn-based system will be used to decide where the next battle is fought.

How would a real time GW look like? Wouldn't it require you to play multiple games of PA AT ONCE?
Sorry, but I can't do that.

no you just fight for your faction where and when you think it matters

Your statements massively conflict with very basic principles of my understanding of the GW metagame. Please explain your concept in detail, I don't understand it at all.

How the hell are you going to be able to do that in real time. Its hard enough for a single person to play on a scale 5 planet. There will be even more stuff happening when we have working balanced orbital.

And what happens when you are out for the day, or you can't play at a specific time. Do you alienate 90% of the player base because they are dirty casuals who can't play during the day, or don't want to spend all there evening playing PA?

The whole idea of making it real time is stupid. What you want to do is buy a 4x space game and stop talking about GW.

I had the understanding that it will be in real-time, but will limit you to one solar system only. So you wouldn't be able to play on multiple solar systems at once. I don't know exactly how that would work, though.

My understanding is that GW was the replacement for a campaign or story mode for PA, so that would have made MP and Co op secondary to it no? So that doing it all in real time was viable in SP and co op because you can save it and quit and come back to it. Battling it out in one star system while there are other battles going on in other star systems at the same time (albeit simplified data coming back to you that ones beating the other,) that's how I thought it'd be. Wasn't too bothered about the MP version of it.

But that's how it is. Multiple players can fight over multiple planets all they want at the same time.

There's no point in this poll because this is already decided, communicated to the fans, and making the entire thing real time is simply impossible with current technologies and from a gameplay standpoint.

Think of Galactic War like a game of Risk – that popular turn based strategy board game.

You have the galaxy, with randomly generated universes. You choose which one you want to attack, then you play a game of Planetary Annihilation like we do today. If you win, you gain control of that universe on the galactic map and then the next combat zone is chosen.

What you're suggesting is a full real time strategy game across an entire galaxy.

That is simply impossible.

We do not have the technology to allow for true real time strategy at the scale and complexity of Planetary Annihilation across an entire galaxy with hundreds of planets.

And even without technology limitations, it would be HORRIBLE gameplay.

Imagine going head to head with a computer. They can control more than you can and can hop between systems better than you can.

It's already tough enough to manage a few planets at a time. Now try to imagine playing Planetary Annihilation across 50-100 planets.

It simply can't be done.

Nor was it ever communicated to be anything remotely like that.

The Galactic War is like a randomized campaign. You choose where you want to fight next, and then you begin a Planetary Annihilation match within a universe. You win or you lose, then you gain or lose territory on the galactic map.

That is how it is going to be. That is how it has always planned on being, even from the Galactic War Kickstarter Video.

Anyone who thinks they want a full limitless real time strategy game where you're fighting across hundreds of planets is... well... they haven't properly thought it through – because it is a dumb idea.

Actually I think it's not about computing power limitations. It probably would be possible to separate different planets from each other on different servers to have one big game that spawns a whole galaxy. But PA is not supposed to be an MMORTS.

The GW mode, as far as I can tell, will be like the IGW map in the Phoenix Worx client for OTA (whist Total Annihilation ins't played much now the PW client is still available- I'd suggest checking it out to get an idea of what I'm on about http://www.phoenixworx.org/)

A brief description of how IGW worked in PW:
There was a large map of planets, joined together with a net of lines to signify 'warp gates'. Each planet had an allegiance rating that swayed between the 2 factions. Once a planet got to 75% weighting towards either faction, that faction was said to control the planet and the warp gates to adjoining systems were opened up.

The IGW was basically a numbers game- A core player of rank X plays an arm player of rank Y, the winner gains Z percentage points of control (where Z is function of the ranks of the 2 players- maximum points are awarded for a low rank player beating a high rank one).

This allowed multiple players to play multiple battles on the same map. Only planets in contention were playable. The goal being for one faction to completely conquer the map (which never happened as in TA there was quite an even split between the 2 factions, although occasionally it did sway a bit).

My only issue with IGW at the time was that each battle had very little impact on the score, so winning didn't feel like you were making a difference. I also felt there was little strategy to it as due to its implementation the planets were pretty much chosen for you.

I am hoping Uber can expand on this model to bring a bit more strategy into it. It would be really nice for them to have a mechanic to give the systems you control more worth than just a point on the map. I also think that once a system is under control by a player it should be difficult to take back.

Some ideas that might enable this:
1: You should be able to leave an army in place in GW, however to prevent people from simply camping unlimited forces in situ, there should be some sort of 'maintenance cost' for standing forces to limit their number.

2: To achieve point 1 without making it totally overpowered: I think there needs to be an additional resource that only applies to the 'galaxy view' in GW. If each system you controlled provided a small income, then the amount of standing forces could increase to give the player a chance to keep control of larger empires.

3: The 'standing forces' can be used in aggressive actions against neighbouring systems to help, or could be 'warped in' as reinforcements later in a game to help a player get established and have at least a fighting chance in an enemy controlled system.

I think the standing forces could be implemented in the form of a small pre built base (the more structures higher the maintenance cost), so that you get a head start if someone attacks. The cost system would mean that only key locations would have these start bases- so choosing which systems to defend becomes important.

The 'attack support' idea might be harder to implement although it could work on a simple system of for each adjoining system with standing forces, X units are produced per minute and can be warped in every Y minute.

Given the nature of a system like this it isn't really turn based or real time. The stats from battles could be updated pretty much instantaneously, and arguably due to PA's engine it should even be possible to warp in new commanders into an active battle. It wouldn't be possible to just 'zoom in' to an active battle though without going through the loading process as otherwise I think the servers would just collapse under the load.

Tats, I think you still don't understand what a meta-game is.

Think of it this way;

A meta-game is a game outside of the game itself.​

So you have your standard solar-system sized match/battle. That's the game itself. The results of that - did you win/lose/draw - then feed into a bigger game.

Uber's proposed GW is kind of turn based.

Your standard fights are exactly what you have already played. Standard fights are all real-time. If you win one of these; congratulations, you control that solar system. You can now launch attacks into neighbouring solar systems. If you lost, then bum luck. Try again, or go find another place to attack.


[PS:] Thanks to everyone else in the GW threads that knows what the hell is going on. <3

in any case I find this debate much more interesting then just "it's been decided, leave it to the devs" we're already comming up with ideas. doubtless we'll inspire a dev.

should be like: SW EaW, GC.

I've not played EAW, could you explain how it works?

is like both, you can move at the same time that the enemy can move, but you can't do like in SOASE, moving in both fronts:
/watch?v=Cs8jRVb6EEI
after 5 min

Actually, as I understand it turn-based vs real-time isn't really the distinction you are looking for.
The impression I got so far is, that the meta game represents more or less a global graphical/map interface to local real-time battles (game lobbies) in singular solar systems, perhaps with different starting conditions depending on previous battles there and some recording/bookkeeping of the global statistics.
While the boardgame like character (depending of the interaction depth and influence of fight results) gives the look of a turn based system, that doesn't have to be the case. As long as it's running persistently it's also kind of real-time, not with necessarily the same time scale as the live battle scenarios but real-time none the less. Nothing stops the devs from allowing players from choosing simultaneous their battles without waiting for turns.
It's just two games with some defined interface connecting multiple solar battles with a galaxy level metagame.

If I understand correctly SOASE (haven't played it myself) there the galaxy level and the solar level is combined in one game? I don't know the scale/complexity SOASE, but I doubt PA could manage that without burning too many resources and abandoning scalability (in a metagame the "galaxy" size has little to do with the ability to run a single game server on a solar level ). Aside from that, the metagame character was announced early on without giving too much specifics, but the hint at a separate game on top of the solar level was relatively clear.

You 'could' have a real time system where games are decided when players actually attack in real-time, having players drop in mid-game to reinforce a realtime battle, then having a sides victory prevent a further attack for a limited amount of time, having the players respond to other battles.

But that could cause problems when players all decide to attack at night when opposing players have logged off and gone to bed knowing there will be no resistance, or when players lock off all of the choke points after battles, preventing people from playing.


A kind of Turn based system would be easier, but then how is one turn determined? a single battle? what about multi-side wars or possible FFA's?

What would a commander death mean? Losing a sides lives until they run out and lose? A battlefield style ticket system? and re-spawn timer?

There are many questions.