Game Concept: Board Development in PA

What Is Board Development?

Board development is a gameplay concept where over the course of a game the game's state advances from a start state to an end state. Player actions develop the game forward towards its end state, not alternating between similar states, and not regressing the game back to an earlier state.

Over the course of a game each player's actions will develop the board differently. Each development changes the landscape that players consider as they make decisions, prompting further differentiation. With each board development the game's state becomes more distinct from every other game played, ideally creating a situation the players have never encountered before that requires problem solving, novel thinking, and creative strategy.

Board development is important for three reasons. Firstly, it differentiates each game played, making each game new and interesting. Secondly, it creates a concrete game state for players to base decisions upon and structures each player's concrete game actions in terms of their effect of developing the board. And thirdly, it gives the game structure, allowing players to organize their decisions within the context of the game while guaranteeing that the game will actually end.


EXAMPLES OF BOARD DEVELOPMENT

Chess & Go

Different games will implement board development differently. For example, in Chess the start state is a board full of pieces set at specified locations. Developing the board involves moving pieces out onto the board from their initial positions, and capturing pieces to remove them from the board. As the game progresses the board develops into a progressively more complex picture, creating a unique situation every time.

Another implementation of note is the board game Go. In Go the board begins empty and players populate the board with pieces one at a time over the course of the game, in some ways the philosophical opposite of Chess development. Over time more pieces are added, creating a different board picture in every single game of Go. Eventually the game approaches an end state where the board is filled up with stones, and neither player can make any more productive moves.

In Go, unlike Chess, it is possible to develop backwards by removing stones (it is not possible to add pieces in Chess). However the act of capturing stones places a new stone that wasn't present before, resulting in a new, different game state. Even though some stones have been removed, the game has advanced towards an inevitable finish (for Go players, the "ko rule" is used to ensure this occurs even if a series might repeat infinitely).

RTS games contain aspects of both Chess and Go and typically feature both additive and subtractive development. Which means RTS has the potential to capture the strong points of both Chess and Go, and be extremely interesting. But it also creates the possibility of static or repetitive game states. Armies or bases can be created and destroyed, potentially returning the game to an earlier state or creating loops or functionally identical game states where players face the same decision again and again.
The key point is that interesting games develop over the course of a single game. This development creates highly diverse and unique situations between games, where no two games are ever the same, and minimizes repetition during a single game.


In Other Board Games

In my opinion board games are far, far ahead of most computer games in terms of refinement and sophistication of gameplay because a board game lives or dies by gameplay alone. Board games entirely lack flashy graphics, single-player stories, and online multiplayer. In order to get someone to enjoy playing once, much less have fun many times, board games have nothing to offer except fun gameplay.

Board games almost always place heavy emphasis on board development. A board game's mechanics are centered around an actual physical board, and developing the board advances the game. Board games are mechanically simpler than computer games but still must create interesting player interaction. Games like Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride, etc. require concrete board development because players take turns making discrete actions. As a result, each player's actions need to have a concrete effect on the board which affects other players' decisions in order to create counterplay between players.
A simple example of board development mechanics is placing a road or settlement in Settlers of Catan. Building has a concrete effect on the other players' available actions and decisions, and has an enduring effect on the game. As players develop the board, the game progresses until it reaches an end state, in Catan this happens when players have reached the specified number of victory points, primarily by counting up settlements/cities.

RTS games are more complicated because players act simultaneously and their moves are continuous, not discrete actions. Furthermore, RTS fundamentals usually dictate a game's state be fluid and reversible. An army is constructed, an army is destroyed, potentially reverting the game to an earlier state. RTS games have both an in-flow and an out-flow of board contents, as anything that can be added to the board can also be removed.


In Turn-Based Strategy Games

Turn based video games are often more heavily inspired by board games than real time games. For the same reasons board games must develop a physical board, turn-based video games develop the in-game board with each player action.

One particularly stellar example of turn-based strategy board development is the gem Greed Corp. Greed Corp is a turn-based hex strategy game (available on Steam) with a very unique economy and board development system. Each hex has a height which is reduced by one when resources are extracted. When the hex reaches zero, it is destroyed. Even a maxed stack of troops can be instantly destroyed by destroying the hex beneath it. Strategically harvesting from and destroying the map is more important than actually fighting with armies. Destroying the map is irreversible. Which means the game can only continue as long as there is a map to fight over. Every player action advances the game irreversibly towards a tense conclusion with a mostly-destroyed map.


In Real-Time Strategy Games

RTS games are not without board development mechanics of their own. Starcraft features two board development mechanics. The first, and most obvious, is structure construction, especially expansion facilities; Command Centers, Hatcheries, and Nexii. Expanding to a new base using one of these structures is a significant and fairly substantial/permanent game event. However structures can be destroyed, making this board development much "softer" than Starcraft's other board development mechanic.
The real board development mechanic in many RTS games is depletion of resources. Every mineral collected in Starcraft is removed from the board. Mining resources is a completely permanent action; it is totally irreversible. When enough resources have been collected from a particular expansion its mineral line will mine out. Eventually, the entire map can be mined out. Absence of resources makes it very difficult for players to construct additional units and pushes the game towards a final end state.

I absolutely am not advocating for PA to feature resource depletion. Unlimited resources using a flow economy is fundamental to the game's philosophy. However this does mean PA needs to differentiate and develop game states using another (ideally more interesting) mechanic.


Bad Board Development: Risk

Not all games do board development well. Bad examples include games like Risk and Monopoly. Risk is clearly the worse of the two in terms of board development. The board of player-controlled provinces only ever changes by troops/pieces being added, moved, and removed. There are an unlimited number of perfectly interchangeable pieces, and changing ownership of provinces is perfectly reversible with no permanent effect. The board never substantively develops.

In order to win at Risk, players must attack from their own provinces into enemy provinces. This means they must have troops, and this action will remove troops from the board (either their own or the enemy's). In order to stop the game from reaching a stalemate condition, this requires that more pieces must be continuously added to the board. Thus, players receive more pieces at the start of each turn.

The consequence of Risk's fundamental design is that players don't ever develop the board. Each turn involves adding pieces, using them to attack, and removing pieces from the board. However anything that occurs is perfectly reversible by an opponent performing the same series of actions. I place N troops, attack and capture your province. You place M troops, attack and recapture that province. We are back to where we started. Simply put, a game with this structure stagnates horribly from lack of board development.

Risk's game designers must have quickly realized that their basic game structure was very weak. They added cards to attempt to band-aid two things. First, cards convey a persisting advantage to a player just for capturing a province, which means the board "develops" through players acquiring cards even if they are just infinitely exchanging the same province repeatedly. Second, the cards can be exchanged for an escalating lump sum of troops (subject to random matching), creating a destabilizing effect that allows a player to perform more actions on a turn than they would otherwise. The board also sort of "develops" with each card exchange, since the next card exchange will yield more pieces in a process that cannot be reversed. As the game stretches on cards will be exchanged for increasingly large numbers of pieces to destabilize the game, eventually tipping the game into an end state because one player has such a huge shot in the arm of pieces all at once.

Long story short, the cards in Risk are an uninteresting mechanic for board development, and Risk as a whole is simply not well designed. A fact of which PA should make careful note, because both games feature an unlimited resource system with units being both created and destroyed. Without a solidly designed board development structure PA could devolve into a Risk-like stagnation with units forever cancelling each other out.


IMPLEMENTING BOARD DEVELOPMENT

Irreversibility

The important feature of board development is that it is a substantial feature on the board that changes how players make decisions about that board. One straightforward method is to give players mechanically significant actions that are irreversible. Actions like placing a settlement in Catan, or capturing a piece in Chess are both significant and irreversible, automatically creating development towards an end state.

RTS games are mostly unable to use irreversibility. Indestructible constructions and unbuildable destructibles are both possible, but are weird features that tend to act against interesting counterplay. Generally speaking player units and structures are both buildable and destructible. Players collect resources to add units to the board, and they are destroyed removing them from the board.

PA may be special in its ability to implement an irreversible planet-destruction player action. Once a player destroys a planet, they have developed the game just like removing a chess piece from the board. Only instead of removing pieces, the player is removing space in a manner similar to destroying hexes in Greed Corp. If repeated, eventually the game reduces to a small battlefield.

However planet destruction alone is insufficient because it is too large an event. The cost of destroying a planet, or even a large section of one, needs to be so high that fighting over the planets are the bulk of the game's player interaction. If planet destruction is the only substantive way to advance the game then there will either be long periods between game-advancing events, or planets will be destroyed left and right and undermine the significance of combat units fighting on those planets. Furthermore the meat of the game is the intra-planet ground war, and wholesale planet destruction ultimately adds nothing of interest to ground warfare. Planet destruction eliminates it. Destroying many the planets may reduce the game to a ground war over a single planet, but if that ground war stagnates the game would still be broken.


The "Strong Tendency" Approach

An RTS like PA will be composed of units and structures that players construct and destroy. However if the creation and destruction cancel out then we have a Risk-scenario where the game stagnates, which must be avoided. Instead, PA should be designed with a strong tendency for the game to progress in some directed manner.
TA and SupCom both adopted the approach of having player economies grow over time. As the game gets longer both players' economies escalate in scale, increasing the number of units players can construct, and making increasingly expensive units available for production.

However numerical or quality progression alone is insufficient. While Risk only had a relatively static baseline unit count and strength, just increasing the quantity/strength of units on both sides would not change the game's stagnating dynamic. If both players are using stronger forces they will cancel out just as directly.

In SupCom, as the game gets longer both players' economies grow, allowing players to build more hardware. However the tools the player can create detract from the game state's differentiation. Two identical forces of ten T1 bots, as opposed to two identical forces of ten huge experimental robots. The game state is clearly different; both players' economies must be huge to build such expensive units in quantity. But the resulting gameplay is not functionally different. In the same vein, simply being able to produce more units doesn't necessarily make combat more interesting if it just results in a bigger deathball.

If the "escalating economy" approach is used, then the problem shifts from the game state not advancing to one where the advanced state is no more interesting than its predecessor. There are a huge number of factors that go into designing the choices a player has for spending their resources. Encouraging positional play, making maneuver significant, avoiding rock-paper-scissors, avoiding deathballs, etc. etc.


BOARD DEVELOPMENT IN PLANETARY ANNIHILATION

Economic Board Development

I think that the economic/industrial aspect of RTS games is best modeled after the game Go, creating additive development. In Go the board fills up with more pieces as the game gets longer. Even though pieces can be captured, in general the board becomes increasingly populated over time.

In RTS terms this would be best implemented by creating a strong general tendency for players' total holdings to increase over time. Even though assets can be destroyed, in general the total resource value of a players' assets should increase over time. The economy in PA should be similarly constructive, populating the board with more and more economic, strategic, and military pieces.

Analogously to Go, an increasing amount of resources should lead directly to a increasing quantity of assets which collectively use an increasing amount of space. This requires that PA's gameplay be largely centered around space-inefficient units and structures in quantity. By contrast, resource-dense units or structures will result in relatively few individual units which can be consolidated in small amounts of space. Resource-dense units and structures can exist, but should be highly inefficient, and not a primary gameplay focus. Rather these units should be inefficient specialists.


Combat Board Development

Having player economies escalate over the course of a game certainly can be used as a productive game state development. However PA also needs to have interesting subtractive board development in military conflict. In addition to filling the board with pieces, military conflict will also remove pieces from the local battlefield board. Military board development is important to avoid players treating combat units like expendable projections of economic/industrial power which should be rallied into combat to be used and discarded immediately. Without it, military units become uniformly expendable, boring grist for the mill.

Military board development makes more sense to design in terms of Chess. Players deploy armies as pieces out on the board. A theatre of war develops as players move and destroy armies within the theatre. The sub-game of fighting a war in a particular theatre or region should have a fundamentally subtractive character, like Chess. And this sub-game is developed by removing pieces until the end state where one player has won the battle by eliminating all the enemy pieces. One player has certain forces, the other player has certain forces, and both players try to get the best results possible using the assets they have in the area.

Obviously economic/industrial development allows a player to build more armies. Transport/logistical development allows a player to deploy more armies into a particular theatre/board, like adding more pieces to a chessboard. And when those pieces are lost it should significantly change the character of the board in the area, just as adding another piece should also be a significant change. Multiple theatres, such as continents or planets, will have competing needs for more forces that the player will have to balance. For areas that will consistently need more units it should be worthwhile to construct production nearby so those units arrive immediately, without waiting for them to be transported. Still, intending a single piece to be significant is not a good idea. Instead, an army should act like a piece on a chessboard, with its properties and strength defined by its members.

Hey Ledarsi's back!

Missed those epic long posts of yours sir. Will finish reading & comment

Had to focus on law school finals for the last few weeks. I was still keeping up on the forum, but I was studying instead of writing.

Epic length is not my objective, but explanation of abstract topics requires some text, and then some illustrative examples, and then application, and before you know it you have 10,000 words.

Well, excellent post. And it's a good topic to discuss, because by nature we all want 'fun' to continue - right up past the point where it's not really fun anymore. I mean, how many of us haven't taken a favorite board game and tried to change the rules to make the game last longer - only to discover that the longer version became boring and irritating?

Changing the board and travelling towards a confirmed end state is something that has never been done in any TA-based game yet. The closest you get is the ability to knock out large portions of the other player's economy, which puts you so much farther ahead that you can simply economically run the other player into the ground. But, if you both get knocked back into the stone age, the game literally resets and you can play the exact same game again.

Ok, so it's beneficial to gameplay and enjoyment to have a definite end that doesn't drag out. It's also beneficial to have battles that are not simply economic boxing (my troops are larger than yours)

The big question is then, how *do* you come up with a good implementation of an end-state? Something that is smaller than planetary destruction, but large enough to have an impact, AND something that scales to multiple planets in the game?

One consideration might be to make large weapons do damage to the terrain, and also have the high tech metal extractors do damage to the underlying metal spot - hit it / blow up enough times, and you lose your metal spot. Kind of like a smaller version of an asteroid. High tech could also give you a 'lots now, none later' type decision, and rip into the ground sucking up lots of metal but eventually leaving a smoking, useless crater below.

A lovely read this OP. I have two thoughts.

1) Isn't taking and holding territory in the form of metal/mass spots an irreversible example of board development? After all, even if an enemy takes that spot later, they won't have the benefit of the X amount of mass you received from it while you controlled it.

2) I'm reminded of an idea I've been mulling over for a while, wherein once a building (excluding extractors) is destroyed and the wreckage reclaimed/destroyed, it'd be impossible to build a new structure over that spot. In terms of board development in base construction, a raid that took out a few buildings early on would effectively remove one of your 'pieces', causing you to build around it and form a base that isn't as defensible. Again, it's a 'smaller version of an asteroid strike' idea.

I am against 'damaging' metal/mass deposits simply because of the fact that deposits that are most likely to be damaged are ones in the field. And if a deposit on the field has been destroyed, what's the value of owning that bit of territory? It'd make territory control just that slight bit less important if that happened.

The short version of the big picture idea would be that players fill the map with bases, more akin to the board development of a Go game than a Starcraft type system of using depleting resources. Making bases reasonably permanent and efficient to defend will create a strong tendency for the map to become increasingly filled with bases and armies over time.

The problem with having highly efficient defenses and reasonably permanent bases, coupled with an unlimited economy, is that a game could drag on forever. Which is where the permanent planet destruction mechanic comes in.

I didn't say that planetary destruction wasn't good board development- it certainly counts. However it seems like such a highly destructive event it must be expensive. Destroying a planet is a large game event that must be reserved for high-economy situations.

So, the game progression I propose is to have an early game that consists of a land grab, where players quickly expand across the map as much as possible, until they start meeting resistance and getting harassed. Then, a lengthy midgame where players attack and defend bases with armies, nukes, etc., to seize territory from each other. And then, once both/all players have occupied all available land, are well developed and defended, and can't gain any more ground easily, then the game enters its late stages. Then the planet killers come out.

The difference between light assault bot battles and experimental battles is that a single remaining experimental can go on to destroy a base. Economic and technological progression raise the stakes of mistakes as RTS go on to avoid indefinite stalemate. This is analogous to tennis for instance where there is no true inevitable end - you simply need to consistently outplay your opponent to win a match.

Your scathing criticism of Risk was painful for my inner child to hear . But you're right in the case of Risk, successive proper play will not get you as far as the right cards at the right time.

Enjoyed reading the OP. Worth noting that based on the visual of the asteroid craters, it would take many, many impacts to actually render a planet destroyed/unbuildable on. They seem more like a harder-to-counter terrain modifying version of a nuke than a planet killer, at least individually (which I believe makes it better at board development due to more granularity of change, if I understand the concept right).

Comprehensive analysis. It'll take time, but the problems noted within the bulk of this essay do need addressing. You're the first person to make me scratch my head in thought ledarsi. Have you any (more concrete) suggestions on how to rectify some of these issues you have raised?

I'll try to get back to you with my own... bit of a monster read... need time to let my brain mull it over.

ledarsi could be more brief

"Brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio." (When I labor to be brief, I become obscure.)
-Horace

It's only ~2,850 words. Pretty brief for an analysis of this topic. The first part is ground work, stuff most intelligent people will already be aware of. It's the second half that's asking the questions...

Let's see... blah blah blahblahblah... ah!

Not everything has to be complete destruction or total futility. The solution is obviously to have planet SCARRING weapons as well. This can include things like nukes, mega artillery, mega units (you don't have to like them, but it is a unique factor for their use), mega generator/extractors, and Comm deaths(perhaps even the Uber cannon). Basically, all the late game stuff can deal permanent damage to the planet in some way. This keeps the board constantly changing and shrinking.

This is partially possible thanks to base design. Unit cannons, teleporters, artillery pieces, defenses, generators, and strategic structures are things you always want more of. Factories are half and half, because you eventually reach an economic peak and need no more spending power.

Absolutely. The first thing I noticed about the PA units is how tiny the defense structures are. One of the biggest problems with turtling has to do with packing too much firepower into a tiny space. Towers NEED to be fatter. This can happen directly by increasing the size of the tower. It can also happen indirectly by making them demand energy. They'll probably need both.

The first half asserts games need a constant development towards an inevitable end. I don't agree, many games don't require an inevitable end. Look at tennis it's an extremely popular game and professional matches can take anywhere from 20 minutes to infinity (professional world record is 11+ hours). In tennis you must consistently outplay your opponent to win. I view TA-style RTS the same way.

The second half asserts TA-style RTS have a problem because there's no development to an inevitable end. Which he correctly concludes is a result of there being few irreversible events. For the record I loved Risk.

The conclusions are questionable:

The difference is a surviving experimental will go on to destroy the enemy base and win the game. There is already a technological development at play here which raises the stakes. As the game and technology progress so do the stakes of each mistake. This is conducive to the tennis approach I mentioned above.

TA's design and subsequently PA's design is not conducive to most of these problems. I agree they're worth keeping in the back of one's mind.

I don't see how this is a departure from what is currently planned.

This is moving in the opposite direction of SupCom and TA's scale. To be fair it makes sense analytically in your framework. But as I've noted I don't agree with that framework. To me this sounds reminiscent of StarCraft simcity.


Overall OP was a solid analysis to its end but it failed to explain why we need to change the existing formula in TA-style games.
edit: removed some snark, i was too hard on op

I like fluff and nonsense. As I biologist I'm practically encouraged to "waffle" a little.

despite that, I disagree. The roundabout discursive style of his prose isn't hampering my ability to comprehend it, and it might help others.

He's not got a word limit here. I don't know why you're ragging on it like this is supposed to be an University-grade English essay or somesuch.

He's still trying to communicate something, and he's got nobody marking him up for using the terms used on the course, so there's no real need for 3000 words.

The main thing on board development in PA, from the detail we have at the moment, is planetary destruction, whether by death star or asteroid. The devs seem to like the softness of TA's and supcoms approaches.

There's "soft" deformation too. Asteroids don't always blow up planets, nor render them entirely uninhabitable as far as we know. Wasn't there going to be Biome changes based on the size and speed of the KEW, creating Lava Biomes at the point of impact?

Still, it removes an asteroid from the board. I believe a dev responded to the KEW/lava biome question in a livestream and said he was undecided but was considering all options.

Fatigue is an inevitable end. Fleshbags need rest and sleep, unless you're Korean in which case death will take ya first.

However, a very important question is "that's how you want games to end?" Running human endurance into the ground is a very lackluster way to bring things to a close. It is prone to real world interruption, and isn't very satisfying. A game that drags on far too long leaves even spectators exhausted.

Changing the field is good. It helps build inertia and gives more chances for players to screw up. Plus, it'd be a shame for Uber to create all that planet deleting technology without offering up ways to use it!

Starcraft problems aren't bad problems, nor are they unique. A great many issues which apply to SC ALSO apply to many other RTS titles. If you disagree then I suggest you play at least one to see how matters of positioning, deathballing and counters are addressed.

Sounds about right.

At the moment everything is in such flux it takes some effort just to remain "standing still" when it comes to information.

This is a very good write up. Both formally and content wise. I appreciate the work you have done. I find the attitude some people have and their inability to politely argue their issues with the text's form and content very unpleasant.
But I don't quiet agree with you. Whilst your approach certainly has its merits it is not the only approach to design a fun game. In fact I very much enjoy risks design because of its sandboxy-ness and recursiveness in game state succession.
Also I don't quiet see the problem for PA that you describe. After all you only have to kill the enemy commander to achieve a new game state/ the final state, very unlike risk for example...