Diplomacy

Sir you have just made the single best PA gameplay suggestion ever. No special UI needed outside of a simple chat client, no balancing mechanics to worry about, and it brings more depth and strategy to the game than any more complex system ever could.

You sir, win the PA forums. I salute you.

That's I think a better way of describing something very similar to what I was getting at. Simple tools that can make the game hugely complicated are the holy grail of multiplayer in my opinion.

because PA wasn't going to include in game chat? I think the extra diplo options will make for an interesting game variety.

on the Spectrum of --FFA-------------------Teams-- Diplomacy games like what the OP described will be a healthy middle.

I think the idea is the interplay between open group communication that is broadcast to everyone, and private communication that is broadcast to specific players, that Antillie is really impressed with in this case. Also, how often is voice chat ever implemented in online RTS games? Not just text, text distracts your fingers and is too shallow, voice adds an element of playing against your enemy in a way that has traditionally been restricted to Board Game play, as far as I know.

However, I like your idea FAR better than mine, yours would introduce a wild amount of variety in the tactics and strategy of how the game would be played, and I can see games like that going on for three or four hours and being entertaining, engaging and challenging the whole way through. Not to mention filled with crazy turnarounds when the guy who was captured in the first ten minutes of the game, had really only intended to take the heat off themselves while they just **** around in the asteroid belts building jet engines on them and consulting his captor's scouting information for targets. Some Astoundingly cool events and emergent tactics could come from that idea.

Mine may introduce a mechanic with a lot of subtlety and depth, because of the emotions and information revealed could be used dangerously effectively, and if it were utopian then you could have one match, where the entirety of the group chat is misinformation, while the real deal making happens under the table, and then the next match with the same people, but different starting positions, the group chat could be used for trash talk and intimidation, while rumor and sedition could be spread through private chats. But, for all that, it invites a wide open hole for the dickery of the internet and competitive online games to just violate your PA games, and potentially consume and ruin any and all interesting gameplay in continuous, rolling mounds of human excrement.


EDIT: Or, Antillie was aware of the fact that my idea had done before and was demonstrating scathing amounts of sarcasm that both you and I missed Veta.

I think that all there should be is an in-depth chat box in which it can be easily accessed at any time during the match and a global and private chat along with simple functions like trading and cease fire. That's all I want, leave everything else up to the players to decide. The last thing I will say is I do like the idea of having something of a history of the alliances you've had before, it gives credibility to the players that behave with honor and those who don't. But instead of that maybe a dedicated chat box (different tabs; say one for world chat, one for private, etc) that is called gossip, in which you can globally ask for information about a player without that player knowing about it.

I like the idea of a simple chat that encourages diplomacy. However, you still need a simple UI box for diplomacy that allows the sharing of resources, intel, cease fires, etc.

It doesn't have to be anything complicated. But without that, simply telling a player "Okay, I'm not going to shoot you," won't make your bloodthirsty KBots stop shooting him.

Yes there needs to be a basic UI with options like

-Share resources (will divide any excess energy or metal between all players you have this turned on for)
-Share Intel (self explanatory)
-Cease fire (stop targeting that player, I assume PA will still have friendly fire)

I also had an idea for a tribute/protectorate system

-become protectorate (offer Intel and excess resources in exchange for ceasefire)
-offer protection (ask for Intel and excess resources in exchange for ceasefire)


with this the player that is getting protection does not see the Intel or get the excess resources of the player who is protecting them.

The player who is doing the protecting could also share resources and/or Intel with the player(s) they are protecting if they want.

If another player makes a ceasefire with the protector then it automatically applies to all the the protectorates of that protector.

This would be good for games where you are more powerful but not powerful enough to fight someone because you are fighting lots of people already. Also, you could threaten to blow someones planet up if they didn't become your protectorate.

Perhaps as well as excess resources going to the protector there could be a percentage fee of all production (like 10% of all energy and metal produced goes to the protector).

Protectorates could rebel at any time and attack their protector if they wished.

There could be 2 options in the game creation menu call

-protectorates enabled
-protectorate victory

Protectorate victory would have 3 settings. True, protector only, and false. If true then all protectorates of the winning protector also win. If set to protector only then the protectorate loose when the game ends and the winner is the protector. If false then the winner is the only remaining player so a protector must attack its protectorates to win.

At the risk of repeating myself, wouldn't it just be simpler to have a small UI to determine:

-Which players your units will fire on
-Which players can see your intel
-Which players can use your resources
-The status of each player towards you (Colorcoded? It seems easy enough to do)

That's pretty much all the mechanics that would be implemented anyway, it seems crazy to build an elaborate system around them. Besides, there can be advantages to not firing on a specific enemy's forces in a multi-army battle, even if they are still hostile to you.

Indeed, minefields for example

Or when you're trying to cripple one player specifically. Maybe you see two enemies fighting and, rather than destroy as much of both their forces as possible, you annihilate one and let the other attack his base.

Okay, took some more thought on the matter, and figured, Porque no las dos? Implement aaall the ideas.
Though first, let's determine some variable choices:

Programmed Alliances/Teams VS Free For All
Public Chatting (voice and/or chatroom style, player silencing always an option)
Private Chatting (same as public, but on dedicated channels, with the ability to refuse communication)
Alliance Chatting (same as above, with a dedicated channel for each alliance open)
Allied Fund Pooling (allies choose to pool funds when joining together, perhaps with a voting or weighting system that gives the conquering side final say)
Fund Transfer (send aid to any player/alliance of your choosing)
Ceasefire Truce (agreed upon by both sides, and the player must explicitly break it, does not imply alliance)
Ceasefire Command (selected group of units immediately stops any attack against a specified player, as a single action, no consequences for resuming fire)

I am personally against Intel sharing interfaces. Do that with the chat, easier and quicker to open a private chat and say "Hey, red team is massing some heavy hitting units near you and I can't get there in time". And WAY more fun, because they don't know if you are leading them into a trap or not, and they have to judge how reliable you are.

Free for all modes: (all default to not having ally based options)
True Free For All: Default to No Ceasefire options, no private chatting, no fund transfer.
Diplomat's Free For All: Ceasefire command available, fund transferring available, no ceasefire truces, public and private chatting available.
Liar's Free For All: No public chatting, ceasefire truces available, no ceasefire commands, no fund transfer.

Alliance Modes:
Feudal conquering: Ceasefire command and truce available, Fund Pooling and Transfer available, alliance only through conquering, ends when only one alliance remains, public, private and alliance chats available, betrayal ability decided in lobby.
Team Matches: Exactly what you'd expect, no private chat, alliance chat, all alliances preexisting, no alliance creation, fund pooling decided in lobby, no betrayal available.

Unlikely, Fun Mode:
Feudal Rebellion: Everyone starts on the same team with one person designated "King", all pool resources, "King" can arbitrarily cut anyone out of this pool and they lose all their resources not in storage when cut off, when cut off, they automatically become rebellions, rebellions are automatically the same team while the king is still in play, but they do not share resources, when the King dies the king's resources all pour into claimable storage and everyone not rebelling starts at zero (but keeps all their production), and all players become their own team, last player standing wins.
Could use a little tweaking to avoid an awkward beginning stalemate when everyone decides to be massive leaches and build nothing but unit fabs, drains the resources, then waits for someone to start building mexes so they can edge out an advantage, but if that were avoided, I think it could be really hilarious.

The important thing is that you'd only implement three or four in game UI: A chat system, a ceasefire command, a fund transfer option, and possibly a ceasefire agreement. Everything else here would be involved in the lobby or the game type options when creating the lobby.

Buuuut. It's kinda grossly over-complicated when it hits the alliance part. So... I kinda just want to cut that half off entirely, and replace it with a standard team definition. Though I've already typed it all, so I might as well post it up for people to see.

I think Starcrafts alliance system is the best thing here, its just an easy check box that gives you their vision and insures your units ignore theirs.


It can be perm if you want, or not. Flexibility and simplicity is the key.

this is what's in the OP except it separates share intel and hostility (like in StarCraft 1).

Options for each player: Cease Fire, Share Intel, Share Control

Option for all players: Share Victory

OR

Options for all players: Alliance (shares victory, cease fire and intel), Cease Fire, Share Intel, Share Control

Alliances/shared victory for example could be disabled in FFA but ceasefire and share intel could not be leading to some interesting Barbarossa scenarios I imagine.

Alliance could be a prompt you accept or deny and automatically ends when one player voids it and could be mentioned in chat or kept private. I would suggest that if a player cease-fires another player is indicated as Hostile (red text/check mark boxes usually work) until that player also ceases fire. If that player later ends his cease-fire the game could automatically end your cease-fire as well and indicate so (if you have a cease-fire enacted, otherwise this would be ignored). There are plenty of situations where a 1-sided cease-fire would be useful, off the top of my head: hiding a stealth base, hiding a minefield, allowing your opponents to reach and destroy each other without interruption, allowing your opponent to over extend or make a mistake.