Game Concept: Board Development in PA

One player's mistakes will eventually add up and result in defeat. This approach has worked for TA, ZK, SupCom and I don't see why it wouldn't for PA. If PA delivers on its strategic depth, victory will be a result of consistent strategic superiority - not mental weariness. Tennis endurance in this case is analogous to strategic prowess. Tennis matches also occur over days at a time if they carry on too long, fatigue is not the determining factory in most professional tennis matches. It's picking up on your opponent's habits, strengths, weaknesses and exploiting that knowledge with your own approach.

I completely agree, I never said asteroids don't have a place. I said I don't think it's necessary to reinvent the wheel here. We have a good foundation in TA. As technology progresses so do the stakes. A battle gone poorly at T1 may mean extra kills for your commander. A battle gone poorly with experimentals may mean your commander is killed.

The availability of planet destruction as a mechanic is already a departure from the TA formula. Obviously it must have an impact on the design of the game. So we've got one jigsaw piece that reads "planet destruction" and now we have to construct the rest of the puzzle.

TA's progression is similar to what I propose in that player assets tend to increase over time because of wreckage and metal making. TA, ZK, and SupCom usually end through one player having an economic advantage (by mistake or stratagem), converting it into a military advantage, and simply ending the game. This formula works, and PA will use it also. In addition, like TA, PA should avoid creating the situation where the map consists of large, unimportant reaches of land which contain nothing but mexes. Controlling territory, building in territory, and fighting over that territory are the meat and potatoes of the game.

However PA has multiple planets, and correspondingly greater land area. Like TA and SupCom, PA will encourage players to fill up the map, and then build higher density when they can no longer expand. But more land means the game should more strongly encourage outward expansion, and make holding onto that land cheaper and easier. In a nutshell, PA should be designed so that player developments are relatively more permanent than in TA. Due to PA's increased scale and size, a base or an army should be a more durable presence. (important note: this has nothing to do with individual unit/building cost or HP- in fact it is easier to have a durable base/army consisting of many cheap units)

The downside to this approach is that when neither player gains a decisive advantage it will create high-economy stalemates. However, this is fine because we already know PA has planet destruction, which we can design to have the gameplay function of resolving any high-economy stalemates using irreversible planet destruction.

Very well thought out, OP. I appreciate how seriously you took the issue. I only feel bad that Risk is apparently not that smart in terms of game mechanics. This makes me question everything I did as a child :cry:

I think that making games unique and ever changing in this way is a good goal to set.

I guess I'll throw out my not-as-well-thought-out suggestion for the idea:

semi-scarce economy. Instead of taking the starcraft approach where resources eventually run out, instead make it so that extractors get less efficient over time, to a specific point, where they can go no lower. Say, from 2 to 1. This creates an ever growing need to continue to expand beyond what resources you have in order to stay competitive. In fact, this will drive a very interesting mechanic: with semi scarce resources in this way, it makes it much more strategically important to expand out into space, but by doing so, you will be at more risk of being wiped out than before. However, by expanding to space, now you have a much more distinct advantage over the opponent. This would create a very interesting balance between putting resources into combat, and putting resource into expanding, as putting resources into combat will actually take away from your economy compared to the opponent, as opposed to keeping it the same. The longer you prolong the decay, the easier it is to define an end phase, as games wouldn't last long enough for both players to reach equal footing.

I'm sure there are other ways to address it, but who knows. If you keep the decay at a fair enough point that production doesn't get frustrating/unit output becomes un-fun, it could make for some interesting game play that eventually reaches the 'end phase.'

The thing is, zoughtbaj, that reducing the output of mexes doesn't move a TA type game towards an end state. In fact, it seems like reducing your income regresses the game back to an earlier state with less development. It does encourage expansion, but it seems to me there are better methods of encouraging expansion than reducing the income of older mexes.

Late game will involve higher economies, not lower economies. So if anything the output of mexes should increase as the game gets longer. However I don't think they should do this on their own- I think you should pay for infrastructure to make it happen. Such as building excess energy to overdrive metal extractors. Metal makers also result in increased economy over time, but they also make expansion and territory control less important in the late game.

Good point. It would feel weird if you always had to fight to maintain a good economy.

I also used to be in favor of mass fabs...but now I'm not so sure. They're hard to balance right. And I think they break the importance of expanding. And I personally believe that map control and expanding is very important for gameplay.

Perhaps every destroyed unit could cause terrain deformation, and at some point terrain becomes impassable? That's taking things to an extreme though. Hmm. I'm going to take some time to think on this.

If the intended takeaway here is to increase the pressure on the game to culminate as it goes on, I agree. But I don't think you're giving the ways TA-style RTS already do that enough credit. For example, in Forged Alliance as tech progresses so too do the stakes culminating in game-ending weapons (what you describe as strong-tendency approach). The game-enders are marginally different than a typical strong tendency approach though. When a game-ender gets online there is little to no recourse - victory quickly precipitates. Things like T3 Artillery, T4 Resource Gen, T4 Artillery, T4 Nuke are extremely difficult to come back against.

As you noted one can also leverage economic advantage into strategic advantage and defeat their opponent. Due to the nature of the Commander though players that are at a disadvantage can still employ gambits to win the game e.g. Commander Sniping. SupCom also heavily employed tactical trumping which made technological progression strategically lucrative. When a high tech unit appeared on the field it could render previous units totally obsolete, e.g. T2 PD trumped T1 units. This was taken to an extreme in SupCom but I'm sure it will have a place in PA.

Otherwise your analysis is spot on. As far as planetary destruction is concerned there have been mods and game modes where field of play shrinks or grows as the game progresses, e.g. supcom claustrophobia mod. There is also terrain deformation and terra-forming in many spring RTS but it is generally reversible albeit expensive. I think PA will ultimately employ a hybrid of what we both describe in the form of KEWs. As the game progresses KEWs will add up to game ending weapons, initiating a planetary destruction if not shrinking the field of play.

The intended takeaway is that player actions should have a concrete effect on the map that progresses the game. Destroying an army should be like capturing a piece in Chess, where that piece is now gone from the local board.

The opposite would be to have PA armies behave like Risk armies, with armies being created and destroyed without any concrete board effect, and rely on additional destabilizing mechanics to actually progress the game. Superweapons as Risk cards, to continue the analogy. A theatre or battle should be able to be resolved like a chess match or a wargame; by player action without always ending by being destabilized.

Likewise, controlling territory and creating bases/structures should be like placing a settlement in Settlers of Catan. Catan settlements are totally permanent, so it's not a perfect analogy, but they should be significant and durable. The danger is if, for example, player A builds a base, and player B makes an army of the same cost and destroys the base, effectively returning both players back to where they started.

Yup, as long as total assets and technology continually raise the stakes this will not be a problem though. This actually seems to be the purpose of reclaim. Reclaim is somewhat unique to TA-style RTS and is in the same vane as Go. Reclaim will ensure total combined assets grow rather than remain stagnant. That's the main difference between the back and forth in Risk.

The destabilization in Risk is a function of the card system which also continually raises the stakes of the game as it progresses. In TA-style RTS destabilization is a function of technology raising the stakes and reclaim/infinite resource production increasing the total assets in the game as it progresses. Indeed winning battles has a concrete effect much like chess, as continuing to control the battlefield will allow you to reclaim your opponent's wrecks and give you a larger share of total resource assets.

I don't know how much of this will be relevant specifically to PA (perhaps because planets can be destroyed, resources will be fundamentally subtractive in the game? Don't know yet.), but:

I ran into an interesting problem about subtractive board state when helping brainstorm the incentives in free-for-all games (games with more than 2 competing teams) in a custom Starcraft II map; the subtractive elements of some games which lead to repetitive state situations can particularly be a problem in 3-or-more player free-for-all games because it can lead to a game-breaking situation.

In many RTS's, the map resources are finite so that that game length is fundamentally limited: mining out the map places an ultimate upper limit on each game's possible length.

(I have no experience with SupCom or Total Annihilation, so I don't know if their streaming economy is limited in this way, but in Starcraft they are.)

This subtractive board state condition actually leads to an incentive not to attack at all in the free-for-all format, whenever there are 3 or more competing teams/agents/factions. This is because trading resources (in the form of army) with another player, even if favorable for you and detrimental to that player, is almost always going to be most beneficial to any non-aggressive players not involved in the confrontation, who simply do nothing, traded nothing. By attacking, you put yourself behind relative to non-participating agents. The most optimal move is simply to never attack, and the game basically breaks.

To incentivize some amount of action at all, one might think the solution would be to incentivize aggression by rewarding players for destroying the opponents army (example: reclaimed metal in Zero-k). However, in the free-for-all format, one must be rewarded for a greater amount than they lose in the army trade in order to have some incentive to be aggressive, i.e. the ratio of resources rewarded to resources destroyed must be greater than 1.

The major problem with this incentivization is that it fundamentally changes the board development of the game. The available "map" resources switch from finite to potentially infinite, eliminating the soft cap on game time, producing games that could potentially last forever.

So what do we do? We can't reduce the resources rewarded / resources destroyed ratio to something below 1, or, again, the most optimal move is simply to never attack. Instead of rewarding resources to the player who destroys enemy resources (having the unintended consequence of eliminating the soft game time cap), we can preserve the board state progression of constant resource depletion as the game unfolds, not by rewarding the aggressive players, but by punishing the defensive ones. Instead of adding a "you are rewarded resources" / "army resources you destroy" incentive for each player, we add an "all opponents get resources destroyed" / "army resources you destroy".

This preserved the subtractive board state development.

Unfortunately, in Starcraft II at least, it wasn't a perfect solution, it had some really bad unintended consequences like:

• It rewarded bad economic macromanagement (banking resources even when ahead in case a battle went badly).
  It sometimes produced an extremely strong tipping point- it really brought the opponents' economies to a grinding halt, after which they couldn't rebuild army, and would continually lose more and more army resources. Games ended very abruptly from one bad engagement.
  Early game mistakes were magnified.

etc.

It seemed hard to fine tune. I think in order for it to have been successful it would have had to have been part of the game design and balancing process.

This is my honest analysis:

Chess is a death match with no 'resources' other than pawns.

Risk is a political casino with no money on the table.

Go is a game of TA where when you kill the enemy properly you get to multiply the metal of that which you have slain.

This.

Also, I see no problem with reaching steady state for a short period or a long period or with a trade of units. Pieces get traded in Chess all the time. Some wars are longer than others. Some are decisive.

TA is an excellent Board Development model, because it becomes harder and harder to have a steady state between player safety as the game progresses.

I just want to point out that is longer than many research papers that undergraduates write.

I kinda meant "I don't know how relevant my post will be", not "I don't know how relevant the idea of board development will be to PA".

(I think it's a game design concept that's extremely common, even if it may be more subtle in some games, because board development of some sort usually produces a pleasing story arc within the game, producing effects that allow a game to "unfold", in a sense.)

But I do think you then made a good point about how it doesn't necessarily have to strongly apply to PA.

You are right, and I apollogize for taking that quote out of context. Thanks for giving merit to my discussion.

Here are some further thoughts I have on Board Development and how it relates to RTS games like Star Craft and Supreme Commander.

RTS Board Development: There is a growing burden of knowledge (how to counter/defend) as choices for aggression widen as well as a burden of espionage (scouting your opponents forces) to determine what forces are employed against you.

The main reason TA and SupCom feel like there is less board development than Star Craft is because the burden to scout in Star Craft is much higher due to the limitations on intel gathering provided. The issue is due to radar covering land units. Rarely if ever can land units make surprise attacks. Reality is something else entirely. If Osama Bin Laden had radar coverage of US Marines movement we may have never eliminated him.

I am not saying regular land units should not show up on the radar, but I do think it should be considered and thought through. There could be a new intel device for land units and structures that isn't as long range as radar coverage. There is definitely a lot of intel possibilities with satellites and spy planes that do not require land units to be visible via radar.

On the other hand, surprise attacks all the time can be extremely aggravating. We don't want to copy Star Craft intel (none). I think having a strong fast stealth bot in PA would be a good direction without giving up land units on the radar blips. I also think things like mass teleportation stations and unit cannons ala Supreme Commander 2 are good for the development of Board instability late game.

Obviously Assassination lends itself to board instability as army sizes grow.

False, we used gunships and a dropship to snipe him.

Yeah, I'd love to see more useful counter intel. Decent mobile stealth-gens and radar jammer units would be good, as well as regular stealth/cloak varieties of units.

Rather, stealth helicopters were used to drop elite soldiers literally on his doorstep. If ground units showed up on radar IRL it would have been quite simple to find him in the first place

Comms have cloaking... duh. :mrgreen:

Some Commanders might. Definitely not all of them.