I saw this and was reminded to post. I know we've had previous discussions on the topic. What do you guys think about more indepth alliance/sharing controls? For example, giving us these toggleable options: Cease-Fire/Alliance - your units won't attack that player but nothing will be shared, great for tenuous peace in FFA games; a warning/timer-delay would mitigate any type of run-into-your-base-unally grief Share Victory - game ends if you are the last ones standings, great for unset team games; disabled in traditional FFA Share Vision/Intel - share intelligence but not necessarily anything else, great if you want to upgrade a cease-fire to a traditional alliance, corroborate a statement "I do have 2 planets under my control", or convince a player to spare you in a big match "I'm harmless, LOOK!" Share Control - share unit control but not necessarily resources or cease-fire, this would be great for playing with your friends or sandboxing armies of enemy units against each other Subfeature: Unit Control Lock - A way to lock currently selected or specific units such that they can't be overridden by another player. There's nothing worse than 2 guys giving the same units conflicticting orders. This would be a lifesaver even if you are playing with close friends because it's difficult to communicate priority and justification in the heat of the moment. It's better if we can lock a unit and explain after the fact why something had to be done. That's my experience with shared armies on Brood War anyway. Share Economy - pool resources but not necessarily share control, no DELETE griefing Gift Units/Resources - self explanatory; if disabled gifted units could self destruct when the original commander is destroyed alla Supreme Commander. Subfeature: Share Surplus Resources - this would be nice in set team games If we could see everyone's relationship with everyone else that would be great, especially for FFA/unset team games. "Look, Veta has now allied 2 guys. Let's counter ally and take them out". Most of these should be possible one-sided e.g. sharing control with your more skilled friend but not vice-versa and cease-firing somebody temporarily in a 3+ way battle. That isn't to say we shouldn't have dialogs like "player requests ceasefire, accept/reject" or "player stopped sharing victory/intelligence/control/economy". Anyhow, I tried to give as comprehensive a description as I could of the best alliance controls in other RTS. The above would offer a variety of cooperation and game possibilities while still allowing you to prevent more blatant griefing. The last blatant grief I could think of was nuking allies - this could mitigated slightly since Supreme Commander by allowing missile defenses to fire on friendly missiles if they're landing within range. With consideration to defensive nukes this could be a stance/toggle (like the lightbulb button in Zero-K for combat AI).
I like everything you've written. I'd like a lot of control over many alliance-based settings like this. Would be useful for a wide variety of games from 2v2 team to 40 player diplomacy/ffa/warfare games.
I can see this turning into a Civ-type game I am upset that Veta has fallen under the sway of a Heathen religion! I do like the suggestions, but my one concern is that it may make things overly complicated, somewhat detracting from the whole 'annihilation' thing we have going
I don't know about that. I'm not planning on playing many unset team games or FFA but I understand the necessity of cease-fire and share victory there. Whether this is complex or not is a matter of UI implementation which I did not get into. It certainly could be complex or it could be rather simple. This is StarCraft 2 for reference: That's in a team game so alliance options are disabled. Share control is available and resource sharing is in a different menu. The original StarCraft had many of the options I described but they were divided across appropriate game modes. For example, there was no "Share Victory" in set team games and sharing units/economy was an entirely separate mode analogous to PA's Armies. The OP is a list of features I think should be integrated, not what I think the focus of the game should be.
I like a l I like some of this in principle. Not sure if all of it is a good idea outside of forming alliances while in game.
I like the idea for singleplayer games. I think a more dynamic and changeable diplomatic relationship with players/AI could be great fun. I do understand why some would deem it perhaps unnecessary, given the relatively straight-forward RTS style present in this game. However, I still would love to see these in the game. Trade agreements would also be nice.
