My main reason for wanting layering is to be able to have a scenario (via mod, probably) with really dangerous planes where the NPCs take the gloves off but there are really nice rewards. Otherworldly, insanely dangerous places. Just perfect for that incredible stack-of-doom you've spent most of the game building. Or for the titanic channeler. But if there's no layering built into the base game, it can't be modded in.
[quote]Are you thinking only one category at a time or would multiple be possible? i.e. focus on 2 out of the four possible catigories[/quote] I was thinking just pick 1 out of like 4 or 5 general categories. It wouldn't make it much worse to allow picking multiple, but would there be much benefit?
I'm glad it looks like we've a palatable solution. Ok, let me restate the goals here: - make it fun for those who want blind research - make it fun for those who want to pick specific techs to research (myself included) - don't place undue or unnecessary burden on development/testing/balancing resources (e.g. avoid options) And a proposed solution: - when choosing what to research, the player can choose between three methods: -- Pick
To clarify I'm not saying it should go to the level of making bronze out of copper and tin, that was just the example that came to mind. Another more likely one would be something like "fire-elemental-gems + steel = fire-resistant-steel" which could then make fire-resistant-armor or some such.
Yea, OAB. However, this may fall in the same category as the 64-bit support: only applies to a (possibly small) subset of users, and certainly won't be free development-time-wise, but is good for future proofing and for the really, really epic games. Dunno, depends on how hard multimon is to implement.
It would be good for future proofing for the game to support multiple displays; I'm not sure how to get a "full screen" do that though. If the interface was sub-window based you could just stretch a windowed version of the game across multiple displays and move the sub-windows around as desired... but it might not be like that. I don't have even a decent idea of what the development time cost of this feature would be, and that's a pretty important variable.<
"That rabbit's dynamite!"
C'mon eet, you know that would be counter-productive. We want them to say *positive* things ;)
18000 Petabytes... I know, I know, the wisdom of "no one will ever need more than 640k" is probably infecting me... but honestly, can the human brain deal with a game complex and big enough to use even 1000 petabytes? I mean, that is a *LOT*
[quote]* +5% to Military research per Faction you are at war with. * +5% to Aquatic research per coastal settlement you control. * +5% to Industrial research per metallic resource you have access to.[/quote] Sounds like a cool idea though like you I don't want feature creep. Your examples there are concrete enough that they could be implemented without great difficulty, and perhaps should; it's just a question of total tonnage of how many different places these modifie
I think it'd probably be good to lay off the mutually-exclusive tech idea for a while; semi-blind research will anger enough people ;)
Ash, Yea, the 0/21/41/61/81 progress 'tier' approach sounds like a good solution to that particular part of the problem. It's ok if the player can occaisionally know which techs they are or are not getting if they are paying an inordinate amount of attention. pigeonpigeon, - The judicious
Tamren, Thanks for taking the time to write all this, it is fascinating. This is a good way to bring out ideas though I hope too many people don't just see wall-of-text and move on. I confess that I saw your first post in the dreamer thread and just moved on because I thought you were headed towards Elemental: The Reality Simulator (TM) ;) But now I see that you do understand need for complexity management. As you've pointed out, the model, how
Norhg, if the channeler is hard enough to kill (including in AI hands), perma death is fine. We'll just have to see in the beta how hard it is to kill one, it's difficult to project now.
Yea, the inference by tech cost problem occured to me which is why I wasn't sure if they should even get a progress indicator. It would be weird and kinda frustrating to not have something though, so it could display an estimate (e.g. "will be complete in 7-12 turns"). I like the idea of the 3 levels of focus. And I'm a serious control freak and want to pick my techs ;) I'd like to hear what objections others would have to this model. As a non-op
That sounds like a very cool idea, one that I would enjoy. The immediate problem that comes to mind is the downside you mentioned. A lot of players will hate the idea, and a lot (smaller number) will hate it in practice. They won't like that they really wanted to focus on cavalry but the game just refused to give them the right techs for it. That could be really, really frustrating, and it's not a "challenge" type of frustration, it's just the random number generator
Alex, Personally, I would prefer straight-up turn based battles like MoM. But I can deal with continuous turns. What I don't want, or rather what I'm certain isn't feasible without hurting the project, is to have two distinct full-blown tactical combat engines. Such a change doesn't fall within the modability scope because it involves a very significant difference in the coding of the game; you would need one set of functions to process turn-based combat and
I really liked this part of MoM. Each color had spells I really wanted and would really change the way I played when I got them. Even with the same selection of spellbooks it was a different game each time. I never felt that I got such a bad "random" roll of what was available to me that it wasn't as fun, though sometimes more challenging. So it's not good for balance if you're aiming for mirror-ness. If you're aiming for GC2 type balance where starting locations
I would like NPC/AI governors in an RPG/4X game where they had real personality, dialogue, story developments etc... and I posted about doing that earlier but the more I think of it I just don't think that such a degree of RPG could be worked into this without hijacking the straightforward 4X goal. I do like the idea of units/heros/whatever that provide bonuses to cities where they are stationed or nearby, and those units could be, ah, "persuaded" to cease to exist like
Certainly, it would not be as simple as making the feature available, there is still much to decide as to what it should actually do. And you are right that it would be far preferable to identify a single system that would please everyone (or nearly everyone) rather than "copout" and go with two distinct systems. So what middle ground would work? What would please the control freaks, min/maxers, and those who want a form of blind research?</
In general, OAB. Options Are Bad. Options are *NOT* "free" in development resources. In general, the cost of implementing a significant option is pretty high, higher than the benefit of having both alternatives. However, it is not always the case that the cost of implementation is all that bad. It's a case by case thing. That's why I went into the list of each specific coding/data-type change that would be necessary. In t
Multiple categorizations would be possible, it's the difference between a straight-up field/attribute storing a tech category id on the tech type and a sub-type within the tech type that would store an association with a single tech category id and you could have multiple records of that sub-type. as opposed to <tech-category-association category="Milita
My personal opinion: please, no guns, not in the un-modded game.
Oh, but what I would give to see a gigantic armored cave troll stomping onto the field sweeping aside large swaths of infantry, but suddenly there's a huge explosion and flash. Then there's large pieces of troll lying about as the tank rolls on by ;) But this ain't the game for that, at least not outside of modding.
(remember, this proposal is just for "blind research" to be an _option_, not mandatory, not even defaulted to "on") Sounds cool as an option, and I would probably play some games with it on. The tricky thing development-time-budget wise is balancing the number of semi-niche options to implement versus time spent on core features and whatnot. Implementation probably wouldn't be a total bear. I guess you'd need: - another checkbox on the option
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