Ongoing massive galactic war

Well i honestly think, for this approach the build up economy is not a good choise.
If you go for ongoing connect disconnect, therefor spawn respawn, this just can not work if one Team reached a critical enough mass of units.

Maybe do something unit only and then capture the flag.
Or Autospawn units if killed.
Or start with all Units.

If you want soemthing like this working look how FPS keeps people playing.
IMO.
Dont expect something like Travian but only for real RTS....

You can't take your armys from system to system becuse that would undo the point of commanders, so snowballing is very unlikely.

And if we can assume that systems after a conflict would be striped clean of easy or unneeded resources (Wreakage and factorys) and that these reousrces are then used for some kind of commander progression, mobile asteroid base progression or just in lore being used to respawn commanders who die.

Then systems could be left being rather barebones interms of infasructure and defences, making invasion possible as they won't be instantly nuke'd on arrival.


Personally id like to apply upgrades to my commander for the galatic war, and possibly equip the use of a ateroid to bring a number of ateroids to new systems to speed an invasion. Real ork'y if you ask me, no need for space ships when nature provides!

Edit: I have another idea, what if resources gained from conquerd territorys would allow players to build ai commanders to support them? I think it would be awesome for players to assualt systems supported by a group of personal AI commanders/sub-commanders.

Kind of like NavyField's escorts... I like that idea. I would love to upgrade my commander as the game progresses. Something like the Black Ops ACU mod, only a wider variety of weapons and upgrades, but less powerful (to avoid massive noob stomping). For a playing field that big, I do believe some sort of progression is good. I do not believe, however that asteroids could be used to destroy planets in this game mode, simply because that would not fit with the idea of an ongoing massive galaxy conquest game. I do NOT want asteroid hopping campaigns, would be kind of boring to play cat and mouse across a galaxy. Yes, I think asteroids should be transferable between systems, but their sole purpose would be unit cannons, like the moon in the video, to avoid that oh **** moment of landing on an enemy planet with several strategic missile launchers zeroed on your position.

I agree. Limiting what you move from system to system helps keep the fight fair.

Maybe, but I'm interpretting after a conflict as something that is mutually exclusive with ongoing. What if a dozen enemy commanders decide to drop by while you're mopping up?

Persistent upgrades will make some strict RTS purists upset (myself included if it wasn't done well), but having some sort of upgrades that last would be nice. Having them difficult to get, and something you lose on death would be a good way to put a disincentive on kamikaze gameplay. [EDIT:] When you lose stuff in Eve, you lose it for good. You have to buy/build/steal a new one. It's not like how PVP works in WoW, other MMOs, or most shooters. Not having much experience in AOE:O, can someone tell me how persistent upgrades worked in games there? If it's a good system, then pinch it.

I like the ability to lose upgrades, because it means that an old player isn't always stronger than a new player. If you're walking around wearing shiny guns and armour, you always have to be careful. ^_^

Just bring friends to support you. They're more fun to play with, and might play better than an AI (Sorry Sorian).

Upgrades suck for ongoing things in the end you allways will end with a situation where people win just because they played the game for a long long time. And i dont mean experience in the game.
And moving restriction sucks also. How to invade a system with stockpiled 1mio units when you are only allowed to transfer 10,000?

Shouldn't have been silly enough to stockpile that many units without checking first.

No i mean if the system you want to invade has so many units

There will be a point when upgrades stop, and I only want health and small weapons upgrades.
Moving restrictions are necessary. You never saw whole armies transferred to planets in TA, only commanders. They also prevent one from landing 1000000 units, there is no way in hell that anyone could build up enough defenses to stop that. Unless... it was D-Gunned, that would be a beautiful sight, watching 1000000 units get D-Gunned.

The needs of a galactic metagame are different from the needs of a single match.

Well said. Exactly what I've been trying to say, some things, like destroying planets, will have to be given up in an ongoing metagame, because then it wouldn't be ongoing.

This

Well the game would have to end eventually, why not have the galaxy eventually shrink as possible maps are slowly wittled down?

Depending on the server of course.

I think I know the only acceptable outcome. Complete annihilation of the other factions (wonder where I last heard that one...). The problem destroying planets in a giant galactic war is that there will be lots more asteroids, translating into smaller battles. It's also no fun when you have an enemy going asteroid hopping while you have to chase him down. Using them as unit cannons, however, is a perfect way to ensure fluid and offensive gameplay. Total Annihilation was never a defensive-oriented game, it was more assault mech and stuff like that. This wouldn't work if one had to land a commander on an extremely fortified planet while the enemy already has map control, one would need orbital assistance, to throw units behind enemy lines. You could say that this is a massive disadvantage for the defender, however, the defending commander should have secured asteroids himself, to use them as countermeasures.
Another thing the defending commander could do to lessen the blow would simply be to NOT build stationary defenses. They don't move, so if the attacker drops units in a weakspot, he's screwed. If the defender has an offensive force, he's better prepared to counterattack, and he's following my "offensive to be defensive" playstyle.
I would LOVE to see asteroid unit cannons. Having two asteroids throw units at each other in an attempt to assassinate the other commander before he builds another asteroid base. Hell yes.
Better yet... Coming alongside another asteroid and bringing your army over to the other.

In a strategy game, invasions do not just happen. It is a line breaking strategy that only occurs if the situation justifies an invasion. It's something that isn't explicitly programmed into a typical RTS, but rather emerges when it's simply a good idea.

For example if you get to a world and an enemy has 2 engineers and a factory, you can really contest it by dropping 3 engineers on the other side of the world. If you reach a world and there's 5 bases, huge fusion complexes and bertha cannons stretching the globe... anything less than a pile of rocks leading into 10000 ground troops is a waste.

Contesting a barren world is nowhere near the same as contesting a fully loaded enemy complex. The former needs to be difficult because every world represents a chance to gain an entire world of stuff. The latter needs to be easy or the game will stall, with no one daring to attack until they get some kind of ultimate weapon. On the scale between number of units moving around vs. the overall difficulty of moving them, a logarithmic difficulty curve will likely work best.

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When it comes to completely separate games/maps/servers, there's no reason to carry over the state of the previous game. Each new game should be a new game. Get a Comm, spawn, and start blowing things up.

One idea about how to handle offline players is to have the server bank your economy. If the galaxy is truly huge, you can simply try to hide some of your units or bases. While the server banks your economy in real-time, So if your team lost the front-lines,and you lost most of your forces (that still defend for you, and communicate with allies via mini-map flashes, or sirens, etc) are destroyed you still have a pile of cash in the bank. You can show back up to find most of your forces destroyed. You can start to re-grow your forces from your rear/support bases.

Maybe a way to limit the ability for abuse is to force players to build storage, under radar shields. If the galaxy is VERY big. It would be a truly epic feat to hunt down all the support/mini bases of offline players.

Obviously there will be times where the 'other team' has a huge player advantage on you due to timezone, but you should enjoy the same advantage on them.


Since the scale is so huge, you could really dig in, and hid forces all over and really have a infinite war going

Play some Freelancer for inspiration for this!

Thought experiment for a moment: suppose you've come across an enemy that's fortressed up. Tanks and turrets everywhere.

What do you do? Run, fight, or call in a pile of mates?

I think we'd get around most problems by throwing more commanders at it. However, does this mean that meta-strategy simply devolve into Commander blob wars?

What if there was a way to rate-limit the number of Commanders that can arrive?

Seraphim super-nukes anyone? I still don't think we can destroy planets here, but there needs to be a way to land on a fully loaded enemy complex, or limit the defensive structures and artillery the defender can build. A few unit cannon asteroids may help.

Throwing more commanders at it could be good or bad... If they all land with the enemy dug in, all it does is demolish the resources per player ratio, which lessens their combat abilities. If, however, they landed on the asteroids surrounding this fortress, yes, I can see 10-15 commanders on their own asteroids bombarding the fortress with units. This, is the only true way to attack a "fortress" of large enough scale.
Either way, it won't be "blob wars", 10-15 commanders on one planet means a weakness on another.

If we are allowed to actually build fortresses that is.

If we are all just von neumann probes then won't we just strip systems bare and leave nothing behind?

We are the walking military, as if you can't take stuff with us, then why leave anyhting behind? Just turn it all into more probes and move on.

I was just thinking of that... Why even have defenses like that? I say they can only be built after an enemy arrives, and when one leaves, the defenses are destroyed. I like your thinking here... But armies shouldn't be able to move, like it was stated earlier, it makes the commander pointless.