It's public - Empires: Darkest Dawn

http://forums.bsid-clan.com/index.php?app=custompages&do=show&pageId=2

Read, express questions/thoughts/outrage here or at the BSID forums. I will attempt to include/consolidate questions asked into the Q&A over time.

Also, The Map Maker is released.

 

Looks interesting.
Assuming that we won't have arsetwitchs ruining it, that is :p

 

I like this quote:

"During a Skirmish, all "fun" plugins (parachutes, showdamage, etc) are disabled, and admin abilities (such as ungrief, alltalk, etc) are disallowed."

FUN IS DISABLED, ADMINS ARE DISALLOWED. THIS WILL MAKE EMPIRES BETTER.

 

So it's just an automated version of empires PUG, only you get extra resources if you're winning on the board, much increasing the slippery slope problems empires already has. Ok. The first 3-4 rounds will be cool, after that it'll just be decided before the round even starts.

But by all means answer why this won't happen in the Q&A.

 

I can never know how to interpret your posts Chris, so I'll choose to believe you are being facetious.

The concept is to make it as serious of a match as possible, bordering that of a scrim. To keep parachutes/showdamage/jetpacks/turbojeeps/etc takes away from the seriousness of the game. It also messes with game balance (I don't want to alter any balance or lack of balance, that's for the devs). Also, if you have a member who griefs during a Skirmish, they can be dealt with by removal from the Campaign, banning from the server etc... but it doesn't change the fact that you lost that Skirmish, so admin action during the Skirmish is pointless (not disabled, but disallowed/discouraged). Banning immediately is probably in order, but ungrief, alltalk, and the like (where they do not have direct impact on an abusive player but can have an effect on the game result) should not be used.

 

I'm not necessarily saying that it's a bad thing, but it is simply the empires pug. I do see some differences:

You can be either team whilst playing with the same people.
Considerably less organisation here.
Possibility of more than one match per night.
No-one in charge overall to choose the maps, i.e. done off maplists randomly rather than just a map per week.

In other words, fixing a few problems with the empires pug, and removing a few of the better things.

 

EMPIRES IS SERIOUS BUSINESS.

 

Trickster, do you just insist on being a pessimist?

I don't think it's "Just" anything, give me a little credit. It's a multiplayer turn based board game, and it integrates with the source engine. It may resemble the PUG in what it accomplishes, but don't play it down like that.

You do get more resources for map control, a common theme in strategy games. After 3-4 rounds the Campaign will start becoming for action filled (at this point you'll be approx 3-16 minutes in on the first day) because the first few moves are just getting bases, much like the first minutes of Empires is getting refineries.

Yes, a group with more resources has an advantage on the board, just like the supposed "slippery slope of Empires", can you think of any other way to do that aspect of it? You have to reward expansion, it is about taking out your enemy, not outlasting them.

The reason none of your "this is failzorz" thoughts are going to be a reality are because of two points. First, it doesn't matter how bad you're getting owned on the board, if you win the Skirmishes, you can't lose. There is no amount of resources or board control that mean you win. You have to beat the other team straight up (no upgrades/abilities from the board give you any advantage in-game) to win. Second, even with no supply lines, no bases (except main) and no funds on hand, you get a small amount of funding from your main and can use it to move. If you cannot be defeated in a battle, that one poor army can walk right up to the enemy main, fight it, and win.

So I kinda just explained the same thing twice, but the point remains that it's still about playing Empires. If you don't like something about the balance of that, it's beyond the scope of my project.

@Tricksters second post
I'm no good for comparing this to the PUG, however, I do not want to remove anything that would be considered "better". Can you give specifics as to what you feel is missing here that the PUG had, or something missing in general? I am hoping to make this enjoyable to the masses, not create a niche addon.

 

Looks interesting, Empires needs PUGs that are between super-serious-lets-plan-3hours-for battle and let's just have random forum vets have a game.

 

I'm usually being faceitious, except all the times I'm not.

I really don't think adding in a metagame and removing all the plugins which are designed to add in fun new things and ways for admins to mitigate the damage caused by crappy design decisions is going to improve empires for anybody other than the anal-retentive subgroup of the already miniscule playerbase which takes the game deadly serious. And they'll only enjoy it because they enjoy complaining about how the last organised match was shit as much as they do playing the game, if not more so.

If you have to add in a metagame to make the game fun why not just play the metagame? By removing the plugins designed to improve balance (antigrief and daft fun stuff ++) you are taking balance into the scope of the project, and by adding in this resource idea you're also affecting the balance, you are in essence removing what progress has been made, however small, and adding in more bad balance decisions. If the boardgame does not affect the game in runtime it's pointless. If the boardgame does it's shitty balance.

 

Basically, what Chris said.

 

This smells horribly of stack and pwnage for whatever team. I keep reading that the board does not affect the skirmishes, but then, what is the point of the board?

Also, why not have a fort represent a map, and then running into army's inbetween generates a random map with the map selections depending upon where you are / what the other forts are nearby?

like, take the direct distance from each fort, and then reverse the percentage of spaces between each fort, then use a random number to get the final map decision.

( Fort 1 is 4 spaces away, fort 2 is 8 spaces away, fort 3 is 12 spaces away, fort 4 is 26 spaces away. These represent canyon, cyclo, isles, and mvalley. total spaces is 50. Reversing the percentage of each map being picked would mean that 8% it would be mvalley, 16% it would be isles, 24% it would be cyclo, and 52% it would be canyon.)

also, the game really should allow for in game changes. Having 1 fort LoS gives you 10 ticket advantage, having 3 would give you 30, having all around the center would make being attacked at the center fort give you a bonus of 80 tickets, center fort could also be NF defenders always in escort.

something like that.

Think bonus like how Star Wars: Battle Front II worked.

the only thing that you shouldn't drastically change would be starting res. It also might be possible to start a game off with all players having 20 points (2 skills). Have these bonuses cost 2-3 rounds worth of money and make them worth while and costly to use for a skirmish.

but seriously, go play battle front II, and see how that game works with it's bonuses. It gives you an almost guaranteed win to use a certain bonus, and in that game, what bonus you could use was based upon buying them with credits. Even with that super advantage though, having skill could usually offset the advantage.













Bonuses:
Vehicle boost - Switches the scripts to a custom script with vehicle boost enabled for a certain team.
War Veteran - Starts the match with your team players having 20 points, or rank 2.
Regenerative Armor - Starts the map with regenerative armor research completed. (bug kane to see if you can complete research for only a specific team or use a modified script that has a faction specific regenerative armor with same regen stats.)
Super Calc - Team gets super calcs for the first 30~ seconds of the match (debug build)(see about getting a dev to make this command player specific or team specific)
Expert Refining - Res nodes give 1.5x res
Scientist - Research moves 1.25x faster

That kind of stuff, though costing many points, would allow one team to be able to defeat the other team if used, but only 1 bonus should be useable per team per skirmish.

Again, SW BFII Style.

 

So this is how I understand what is being said on the Q/A.

Is this right?

If so, sounds fun! This is what the PUG should have been. However, I see two problems.

Problem 1: Lack of connection between metagame and Empires matches (outside of the generals).
I think it would be better if you could purchase metagame upgrades that help you within matches. That would help integrate the two parts (which are a bit disjointed now) and give people playing in the Empires part more incentive to win/pick a good general.

Problem 2: Only two people play the metagame.
The metagame looks fun, but from what I can tell, only two people will be playing it. It would be great if other people on the teams in addition to the general could actually be involved (besides through winning skimishes).

While I understand why you want to keep the metagame and Empires matches as separate as possible, I think that diminishes the overall effect. In what you have described, there seems to be little reason for people playing in the skirmishes to care about what happens in the metagame (other than being yelled at by the general).

 

Those are the exact 2 problems I meant when I said it'd share a lot with the pug, only the 2nd point even moreso.

The idea is good, but in my opinion, it's not going to help the game that 99% of the people play at all.

 

@Chris/Trickster
"I really don't think adding in a metagame and removing all the plugins which are designed to add in fun new things and ways for admins to mitigate the damage caused by crappy design decisions is going to improve empires for anybody other than the anal-retentive subgroup of the already miniscule playerbase which takes the game deadly serious."
Take it up with the devs, I'm not modding Empires, I'm adding to it. Also, if everyone could agree on the "fun" plugins then I'd consider it, however maps don't consider the plugins, so turbojeeps for example create new strats but only on the server running the plugin. Parachutes let you get places you normally shouldn't be able to. These are best addressed by being removed in my opinion.

"If you have to add in a metagame to make the game fun why not just play the metagame?"
The metagame is fun, in fact my wife and I have enjoyed playing it for about a month now. The fact that we're here to play Empires and that this can add importance to the matches makes both games more fun.

"By removing the plugins designed to improve balance (antigrief and daft fun stuff ++) you are taking balance into the scope of the project"
lolwut? Antigrief affects game balance?

"and by adding in this resource idea you're also affecting the balance"
You must have misread, or I wrote something in a manner than most will misread, but currently I have no plans to affect ANYTHING in the Empires gameplay. Not starting res, not res multipliers, not starting tickets, nothing. I cannot affect balance if I don't touch anything.

"If the boardgame does not affect the game in runtime it's pointless. If the boardgame does it's shitty balance."
So basically I need to just ignore you because you don't believe this can work no matter how I go about it. Thanks for the warning.

@Metal Smith
No stacks, the teams are actually locked in before the Campaign starts. The majority will agree the teams are not stacked before anything begins, and team switching does not work.

I could do the fort idea, other than yours being harder to code I see very little difference. My current implementation allows all cells to have their own maplist, you could just put the same map in the list multiple times if you want it to have a higher chance of coming up for the given cell. My system can do what you described (with some math and work on the board developers part) without modification.

In game changes (res,tickets,scripts when they become available, etc) I'm sure will be a topic for debate, at this time I've leaned against it to preserve the "balance/lack-of-balance" that is present in Empires currently. I'm not dismissing the notion, but currently haven't done anything to support it.

I own Battlefront II (xbox), I know the bonuses and I really do like the system, however see point above. Not against it, but I would want the majority support, and will need a team greater than one member to balance and test.

@ScardyBob
You essentially have it, yes.
To address the problems:
1)see above, I won't make the plunge alone but I'm not against the idea
2)every four minutes (or less) it will be your teams turn again, and at that time, the most popular (by vote) player is the general. I'm not against forcing a round-robin system in that can be enabled (all opt-ins get a turn) but I could see that going bad fast. As it stands, you could adjust your votes to share the turns. All players can see the board and discuss strategy in the DD team chat so although not controlling the move, they can have input. I cannot think of many additional ways to involve them at this time.

 

You might also want to release a 'stand-alone' version of the metagame for people to play around with (i.e. one where the skirmishes are determined without playing an Empires match). That way people could get experience as the general before trying out a 32v32 version.

Also, I don't want my previous comments to comes across as negative about the whole idea. The metagame looks fun just by itself (and I'd be interested in playing it without any Empires-related stuff). However, the current layout looks like 64 people playing an Empires match and 2 people playing a metagame without much interaction.

Edit:
Ah! That does help. I didn't realize that other players could view the gameboard besides the generals. Though, maybe you would want to include voting options for major decisions (or allow the general to start votes?) So something like, the general wants to attack an enemy outpost. Before he can do so on the board, he has to put up a vote for a majority decision. So the general gets to choose the target, but the team makes the final decision based on an up or down vote. I think it would be better if these interactions are more formal and players other than the general get a say in decisions or actions in the metagame.

 

@ScardyBob
I could make a standalone, however everything (almost literally everything) is controlled serverside, so I'd basically have to write an offline version more-or-less from scratch. My original plan was to disable Skirmishes and run a few concurrent servers over a weekend so people can just play with the metagame (I guess that's what people are calling it, fair enough).

Comments came off fine, and I understand your concern. Let's be honest though, 30+ of the 64 won't give a shit about the Campaign, they'll just want to shoot people, and that's fine. Everyone except the Generals can just play on the server (random maps, all fun plugins on) until the Skirmish vote comes up, so they'll be occupied. They can also, at their option, jump in to the metagame and advise their General or become the teams General. I'd love additional suggestions because that's all I've come up with thus far.

 

what about incoorporating more then 1 general per side?

there are more armies on the map, what about making each army have a general? acting independently but as a team they could play the metagame and make the choices, and it could be that if an army is defeated, a new general has to be chosen for the new army (cant be the last one) so leadership roulates


or i could just have not understood how it worked, it seems like armies have individual funds, so it could work if you could easily edit that part of it

 

Thats true. But I can guarantee you there will be more than 2 people interested in playing the metagame, but not necessarily having the responsibility of the general. Having positions or decision making power that is formalized, but less responsibility than the general would be a great addition IMO.

The first two things that I can think of that might be worth pursuing in this theme are voting and/or delegated army commands.

Voting: Certain major decisions (attacking or army upgrades or building) require approval from a majority of the team members logged-in to the metagame.

Essentially, the general decides targets, upgrades, building type, but the rest of the team (who is interested) gets the final up or down say. They don't have to make the decisions but they have to approve them.

Delegated army commands: The general can delegate control of an army (I'm assuming that you can have more than one at a time) to a team member (sub-commander?).

This would also reduce micromanagement, since the turns are time-based. If I have 10 armies, I might have trouble giving them all orders within 2 minutes. Also, it could give other interested players experience in commanding and make them feel more involved in the metagame.