I've loosely been following what you've been doing, and that's to say I've seen a couple videos. So, I figured I'd post up a couple ideas I had and see if they had any merit, or possibilities. !) I'm not sure how or if you plan on allowing space combat. Depending on how you'd implement it, it could be both cool, and a valuable part of the game. If you made space faring vessels large hulking behemoths, which could be used to bombard planets, or planetary defenses it could add an extra flare. While hulking, a slow rate of fire would limit the ability of people to wipe out planets, and it would be too time consuming, and cost prohibitive. Say the cost of a dreadnought or battleship type space ship would cost relatively 30 - 60 minutes of high end resource gathering, making it too costly to field massive fleets. It would be pretty cool though. 2) Unique factions. To take a note from starcraft, not a carbon copy, but one faction a combination between organic life and machines, one that is completely organic, even their large weapons and space craft, and the third being completely mechanical, you could even add a fourth which would be a confederation of multiple alien species, ranging widely in the vehicles and tech they use. 3) Customization. Allow players to customize the types of units at their disposal, set 20 or 30 unites for each faction, and allow them to choose 15 they can actually use. Or allow them to choose the weaponry that each unit has on it, equip a tank with ballistic weaponry, or lasers, or missiles, etc... each having a different range, damage and rate of fire. Allowing each person to completely cater the forces at his disposal to their play style, and making sure that even identical factions are never truly identical. 4) Some kind of progression. If you do create customization on whatever level, create some kind of skill, or level based progression system which would allow you to unlock mods, commander bonuses, skins, abilities, improved units, etc... give players a more increased reason to grind, and or spend money via micro transactions if that's even a thought. "exp boosts" are always a popular item. 5) PLEASE! Do NOT adopt the cornered rat mentality which is "we do what we want, as a paying customer you only have the right to play the game, we don't care what you want, or if you are happy" CRS (cornered rat software) were the developers of World War II Online and one of their lead devs actually said that to me in an email in response to my questions "as a paying customer don't I have a reasonable expectation that you'll keep the promises you've made me?". Please do not take that kind of disastrous stance. 6) Planetary bonuses / rare artifacts. If you implemented things along this line, they could create huge focal points for battles, and create huge momentum swings. The guy who is way behind in planetary conquest, and therefore output, could get a massive shift if he captures a planet that gives his units a minor shield, or increases his units space travel speed, or things along this line. It could create all or nothing opportunities to remain competitive, if someone behind the ball sees an opponent discover that special artifact or planet, he could launch an all or nothing assault to take it himself, and if captured give him that little advantage that would create an opportunity for the win. 7) Persistence, some kind of minor persistence. Maybe it is commanders or a set number of persistent hero units that have special abilities unlocked at certain level intervals, and they gain abilities, hit points, skills, or what not from battle to battle. A way to make each fight matter, so that win or lose, you have a reason to continue playing, opposed to simply quitting if you are behind the ball... if you finish you know you'll get x amount of exp for your commander, or persistent hero units. 8) Persistent games. If you are playing a massive game between a dozen different people, have the ability to hand off control of your team to someone else, monitor it from another platform (i pad / i phone), or set AI objectives and how the AI will play in your absence. This could make massive games not only possible, but worth while, and interesting. Adding an increased incentive, a nice experience boost for playing in a massive game opposed to a small game to promote them. Allow players just joining after the game has gone on for a determined period some kind of bonuses, and immunity for a set time, to encourage people to try joining a massive game, to ensure it isn't abused, and prevent new people from joining after a determined time period to again prevent abuse. 9) If adding different types of species, add different types of planets, say for instance the organic race couldn't colonize a planet with an sulfuric atmosphere, but the robotic race could, and the robotic race couldn't colonize an acidic planet but the organics could because their blood was acidic (just an example for discussion). 10) Allow automation of resource gathering and production. If you end up allowing massive games, monitoring huge empires resource management can be not just daunting but damn near impossible. If there was a setting as to what degree the AI monitored / automated resource gathering could be a huge benefit, and allow even the most casual of players to be competitive. If they chose to allow the AI to monitor resource gathering they wouldn't have to worry about it, and would be able to focus on research or military, enabling them to keep up with the hardcore player who can multitask at a level the casual guy just isn't capable of. 11) Bots, this would apply more to the massive games, but you could set it so bots are present and differ in their game-play strategy from aggressive expansion, to turtleing. 12) Minor races, think unique quirky experiences which you could negotiate, conquer, trade, or absorb through alliance, the smaller races into your empire. They could have their own look to them, and unique units which would give special benefits forcing you to make choices. Say empire x has a really nice artillery unit, that has longer range than anything you could ever build, the only way to gain access to building that unit though it to get that minor race to become an ally through diplomacy and as an ally they gift you that artillery unit every so often, on the other hand, the gravity of that planet makes all ground troops created there 25% tougher, or if you get them to outright join your empire, the reason the gravity is so high is because the core of the planet is so dense, so you get 25% more minerals or metal from mines there. 13 planetary climates. The jungle planet restricts movement of all land units, the ice planet is the same. The planet with a higher gravity field slows hover units, and the ones with lighter gravity speeds them up. Planets with a methane atmosphere make ballistic rounds and missiles have 25% less range, and the planets with an atmosphere high in oxygen make explosions from missiles and ballistic rounds 25% more splash damage. Just examples. 14) please have a plan to have diverse armies. All 4 forces, land, air, sea, and space. And proper counters, artillery to take out ground, air to take out artillery, anti air to take out the air, and ground to take out anti air. 15) If you allow the creation of super weapons, allow the creation of super defenses as well so they can be countered. If you can create a world destroying cannon, allow the option of a super planetary shield that "Is so powerful that it can stop asteroid sized objects, but can't prevent smaller ship sized objects from passing through" Or an "Anti asteroid laser" that "Is capable of destroying even the largest asteroid, and preventing planetary destruction, but is unable to quickly target ship sized objects" Making them cost prohibitive would be fine, but there needs to be a counter so you can protect those planets in which you've heavily invested in their development. 16) co-op It might not be a bad idea to allow two people to play one faction. For instance an 8 player game, with only 4 factions, 2 people controlling each of the factions, could lead to an interesting game. Each faction being played to it's highest capability. Ok, those are my ideas for now. I hope they give you some things to ponder, that people haven't brought up already.
Not to be a negative nancy, but you're about 8 months too late to bring up topics we haven't talked about already. Frankly all of your topics have been talked about prior, many of them pop up consistently like custom/additional Factions. I don't have the time to write up about everything, but you can find everything yourself. The Sticky Threads like the Topic Index and Confirmed Features List should point you out to most of the pertinent threads and everything else can be found by putting some effort into Searching. Mike
I would highly recommend the confirmed features list and some of the topics in Knights topic index. Most of your ideas have been already brought up or have been addressed by Uber not to appear in the official release.
Yeah, as knight said. Most if not all of your ideas have been brought up numerous times. Just in case, here is a short version of a review of your suggestions: 1. Deep space battles are not planned for the games initial release due to reasons of time and UI. 2. There will be only one faction, or, to be more specific, only one unit pool. 3. This level of customisation is not needed for a game of this scale. 4. Neutrino has stated he is against commander unlocks or unlocks of the kind you are suggesting, not to mention they introduce too much micro. 5. The people on this forum have suggested many things about the game, which the devs are all too happy to listen to (unless its space battles or factions). I don't think this is a problem to be worried about. 6. This sounds like an unfair luck of the draw thing. While the person worse off might get it, what if the person better off gets it? Wouldn't they then be propelled forward in the game, solidifying their lead for the rest of the game? 7. Like said before, there will be no progressions that give people uneven advantages. Also, this is not a MOBA; there are no hero units. 8. While the idea of people jumping in is a good one, there are a few drawbacks to your idea; namely the XP boost, iPhone/iPad monitoring (they don't have time or money to make that), and the 'death-streak' style immunity bonus after re-joining. 9. There will be no native planet species. 10. There is no need for resource gathering and production automation; unlike Starcraft, resources are gained automatically by power generators and mass extractors. You can que units in this game, too. 11. A good suggestion, but I think it has been suggested before. I am also not sure whether the devs have responded on this; you will have to check. 12. Like said before, there will be no native planet races. Besides, that would introduce too much micro into the game of this scale. 13. This one is a controversial topic that has been discussed many times, but the general consensus is no damaging or annoying passive effects, apart from the obvious ones (eg. air cannot fly in space) 14. There is a large unit-count for this game to make up for the single faction. No need to worry here. 15. This one has been discussed before. Here are two points of note: there will probably not be any shields in the game, and the generally accepted counter to asteroids is destroying it with nukes or boarding it before it reaches your planet. Also, there will be no super big game-ending experimentals in the game. 16. Factions by themselves (i.e not separate unit pools) may be planned for the game, but I cannot be sure. In any case, this is a 2v2v2v2 style gamemode, so this is pretty much going to be possible in the game anyway. I understand that you only pledged now, but you should read what has been suggested (including the economy system thread) so that you can catch up the last 8 months you missed. You should also watch the previous live-streams so that you have the full picture.
1-5, 16) No. You've got some catching up to do, to even figure out what the game is about. 6-7) Not going to happen, but may work as some kind of campaign metagame thing. Alas, there will be no campaign at release. 8) This is a RTS, not a webgame. 9, 12) This is a RTS, not a 4x. 10) Play Supreme Commander or Total Annihilation. A great many automation features will be returning in PA. 11) There will be Sorian AI. Check it out. 13) Potentially cool. The planet will always play SOME role in how battles play out. It may be expanded for stuff like this, and custom maps may include more things as time goes on. 14) Alpha testing, beta testing, etc. There are thousands of posts and suggestions and countless options to choose from for interesting and unique units. This is basically 90% of game balance and the end result is still in smoke. 15) Super defenses are a bad idea for the most part, because their only purpose is to stall the game. Game ending mechanics are necessary because most people need to sleep.
