+12hr games

Joining a game while it's in progress basically

Join in progress.

Sweet

Wow, 12+ hour matches would be enormously massive. My average SupCom match was always around 90-120 min, with 5 hr being an absolute record, and even so I considered myself a diehard turtler. I've played some 12-15 hr matches in Warzone 2100 however, but that mostly was because tech upgrade is kinda slow there.

I'd like to see games on such a scale in PA, however, it will require balance and core gameplay more similar to combination of vanilla SupCom with some long-play oriented RTS (Earth series or mentioned Warzone 2100) and so completely different from TA. I'm not adherent to TA, but many people here around and even in dev team want PA to be TA's replica on an interplanetary scale.

If we'd like to have a long matches, there are three core mechanics that extend match duration:

• Strong positive feedback - that said, no small event or mistake should be able to turn the entire tide of the game. Any significant change in situation should have an action of a corresponding scale. That also implies exclusion of any twitch gameplay elements (such as micromanagement) as well as inclusion of strong defensive capabilities to counter fast-attack and spam tactics.
• Localized economy - ability to generate everything you need in-place. When resource amount depends linearly on controlled territory, side with even slightly more territory have more resources, and so quickly gains even more territory, recursively pushing game to an end. Localized economy takes territory control as strategic decision of distributed vs concentrated frontlines without making it a game-destabilizing necessity.
• Extended tech progression - an option to counter enemy army stockpiling by technology advancement, with next tech level being very hard to beat using current-level tech. Overall match course should be set to an ultimate showdown on top tier, however, tech progression should not automatically cover defence holes - putting T2 PD vs aircraft should not scale efficiently (i.e. have same power precentage increase as from T1 AA to T2 AA vs aircraft) , even if TA-style free targeting for all weapon types is used.

I never said that. I was just saying that PA will likely support a higher player count per game than your average RTS, ie: almost everything else currently in the market.

Lemme drop in then......
What a tease.

As far as dieing and rejoining a game in progress goes it could be as simple as programing the server to make a list of every player that joins and marking the ones that are killed. When a player joins the server would check his/her name against it's list and if that player is marked as killed it would give a message of (You have been killed) and not allow access.

Some begining assumptions:
I Would imagine that "teams" would be set at the start of the game.

Like in SC2 (I hate to compare it, but it is a good reference point) you can set your unit "control," allowing team members to control your units.

In PA, I can see several options:

1 - New Player join and don't get a new commander. They can just work with the existing units that have been build by previous players. Commander control could possible be set to "team."

2 - Players get a whole new commander, possibly through spawning an in unused planet/asteroid. This would be awkward... Starting from scratch 6 hours into a game, with everyone else owning a planet or three already.

3 - Each team starts on a single planet. Through a portal/gate thing. Each new connected player enters through the gate. This would possibly allow re-spawn, but would change the focus from commander killing, to gate killing.

Just some ideas... But It would be fun to have team mates around the world, where you can switch off... I can see galactic struggles that last days. I would give total control to my Russian friend, before going to sleep for the night, as my opponent does the same.

Why?
Imagine this for a FPS?

While that may be an interesting experiment to have respawns, FPS games are typically designed around respawns, RTS games not so much.

That could the reason why there is this whole casual vs hardcore discussion.
A death in a FPS is not the end, the defeat ends the game in RTS usually.

The scale and the 40+ player aspect of PA may be suited to change something here in RTS.
Also having combined controll maybe hierarchical would be good in this regard.
There will be players wanting to play more sim city,
There will be some making the big general like decisions.
There will be some liking to micro their little hearts out.
With PA maybe there is a chance that all of them find their niche in one and the same team (with respawns).

Regarding the drop in/drop out. Do you have some way of controlling the players that are allowed to drop in and control your army?

For example, I play with a group of friends, and we would want the possible commanders restricted just to us, as we would be cooperating over Skype and arranging to cover each other etc.

Allowing anyone to drop in/out would run the risk of deliberate griefers dropping in to order all of your units into the lava, and Ctrl-K'ing all of your factories (or similar...)

Could we have the ability to build commanders to allow players to re-spawn and possibly invite more friends?

Could work nice in the larger games.

Hah, that actually sounds like a neat idea... rebuild the ACU... of course for a certain price and cost... ^^
I have to think about it if it is feasible game-play wise, but the initial idea sounds nice.

That will be quite a challenge to do... But can be rectified if you can "set control" manually, picking which player has control over what.