As an alternative similar to chess, take a look at the game Odium.
Here is a simple summary: The game boils down to a series of chess-like battles. You have three characters, the enemy has a variety depending on the setup. Battles take place on a grid of varying sizes, often with obstacles covering some of the squares. Between battles, your characters may acquire and rearrange their weaponry, but during combat I don''t think there''s much trading allowed. Each character gets to move, then attack. Each weapon (and there''s only a small selection) has a different range, direction, damage. For example, a pistol fires up to 4 squares orthogonally, but a rifle can fire about 6 squares in any of the standard 8 directions. And ammunition is kept very limited throughout the game, so the player has to think things out.
The enemies usually get some stranger weapons.
There is some range in the damage values for any given weapon, IIRC, but it''s not a lot.
If the player lost any of the three characters, it was game over.
I thought it was a rather satisfying challenge, although necessarily short.
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Random Calculations in Combat
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quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
As an alternative similar to chess, take a look at the game Odium.
Here is a simple summary: The game boils down to a series of chess-like battles. You have three characters, the enemy has a variety depending on the setup. Battles take place on a grid of varying sizes, often with obstacles covering some of the squares. Between battles, your characters may acquire and rearrange their weaponry, but during combat I don''t think there''s much trading allowed. Each character gets to move, then attack. Each weapon (and there''s only a small selection) has a different range, direction, damage. For example, a pistol fires up to 4 squares orthogonally, but a rifle can fire about 6 squares in any of the standard 8 directions. And ammunition is kept very limited throughout the game, so the player has to think things out.
The enemies usually get some stranger weapons.
There is some range in the damage values for any given weapon, IIRC, but it''s not a lot.
If the player lost any of the three characters, it was game over.
I thought it was a rather satisfying challenge, although necessarily short.
This reminds me of a game called Archon (C64 & Amiga). I was thinking about a system slightly similar for a board game i was planing. Where there were two boards in the game instead of one. One board for strategy and the other for tactics. Tis, a hard one indeed.
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Kylotan : OK, most of your arguments are good, but I''d like to react on one point.
I agree with you that this might be a bit annoying, because the game would kind of get very boring ... but the way I see it, it''s because you consider only existing RTS, which IMHO are very much flawed.
Because this ridiculous system of building your units on the battlefield inherently offer you this ability to build exactly the units you need when you need. If you had "counter units" (if each unit had a nemesis unit on the other side), indeed you would have a very boring game (or any other qualificative you see fit).
Now if you look at what happen on a battlefield, all warfare technology IS about creating the Nemesis unit for another unit... BUT there are problems of money, and most importantly of deployment, maintenance, etc.
e.g. It''s OK to have a massive line of coastal defense (with all the counter uits you want ready to go), but if all those forces are massed at the north of France because that''s where you expect the D-Day to take place, and suddendly the debarquement occurs some hundreds kilometres from there ... you have a MASSIVE problem.
This is the kind of problem that I call strategic, and that just don''t really exist at the moment (well, they do, but on a sensibly less dramatic scale).
The way I see it, yo have to have a strategic level map, where you move your armies against a massive invasion, where you mobilize resources and build units, where you might use long range weapons (nukes, aircraft attack, long range artillery); then you have a tactical level where the actual fighting takes place. That way, the killer units make more sense, just like in real warfare, because to use them, you have to plan ahead. As well, all the building of units would occur at a slower pace, but at a larger scale. All the research new technology would be more natural, because honestly, I dunno you, but I think the last place on earth I would install a physics lab would be on a battlefield.
Well, some ideas to improve the genre. Hopefully no one will listen, so I''ll the one to say "I did it first"
yopla :-P
quote:
But in most realtime strategy games, with the Favoured Foe kind of system of which you speak, it''s simply a case of:
(a) See your enemy coming
(b) Quickly construct the force that directly defeats such opponents
(c) Destroy the enemy
I agree with you that this might be a bit annoying, because the game would kind of get very boring ... but the way I see it, it''s because you consider only existing RTS, which IMHO are very much flawed.
Because this ridiculous system of building your units on the battlefield inherently offer you this ability to build exactly the units you need when you need. If you had "counter units" (if each unit had a nemesis unit on the other side), indeed you would have a very boring game (or any other qualificative you see fit).
Now if you look at what happen on a battlefield, all warfare technology IS about creating the Nemesis unit for another unit... BUT there are problems of money, and most importantly of deployment, maintenance, etc.
e.g. It''s OK to have a massive line of coastal defense (with all the counter uits you want ready to go), but if all those forces are massed at the north of France because that''s where you expect the D-Day to take place, and suddendly the debarquement occurs some hundreds kilometres from there ... you have a MASSIVE problem.
This is the kind of problem that I call strategic, and that just don''t really exist at the moment (well, they do, but on a sensibly less dramatic scale).
The way I see it, yo have to have a strategic level map, where you move your armies against a massive invasion, where you mobilize resources and build units, where you might use long range weapons (nukes, aircraft attack, long range artillery); then you have a tactical level where the actual fighting takes place. That way, the killer units make more sense, just like in real warfare, because to use them, you have to plan ahead. As well, all the building of units would occur at a slower pace, but at a larger scale. All the research new technology would be more natural, because honestly, I dunno you, but I think the last place on earth I would install a physics lab would be on a battlefield.
Well, some ideas to improve the genre. Hopefully no one will listen, so I''ll the one to say "I did it first"
yopla :-P
I kind of like the combat engine of the Final Fantasy games, with the exception of FF: Mystic Quest (on SNES). All of the others had a certain set damage, but then it was altered some way by a random calculation so while it is techically possible to kill x enemy with y weapon every time, the randomizations will keep that from happening. Critical strikes and the tech meter from Secret of Mana are also neat.
quote: Original post by ahw
Because this ridiculous system of building your units on the battlefield inherently offer you this ability to build exactly the units you need when you need. If you had "counter units" (if each unit had a nemesis unit on the other side), indeed you would have a very boring game (or any other qualificative you see fit).
Yes... if you had X credits to spend -before- the battle, and before you saw the opposition's force, and then had zero/limited ability to construct new units/call in reinforcements, you would have shifted the emphasis to strategy. The player would have to choose a style of play and try to outplan the opposition. In a sense here, the 'random' factor is the other player, since you don't know for sure what they will use against you until you see it.
Lots of turn-based games play like this.
quote:
Now if you look at what happen on a battlefield, all warfare technology IS about creating the Nemesis unit for another unit... BUT there are problems of money, and most importantly of deployment, maintenance, etc.
Well, I think you showed up a contradiction there... all strategy games are about resource management. You might only have 1 level of resources (your units/pieces), or you may have 2 levels of resources (money/credits, which then buy units). Part of the process of formulating a strategy is thinking "will 2 weaker units equal/better 1 stronger unit"? Also, a new unit may be developed that is not better than anything else, but is good all-round, so as to facilitate versatility in the force.
But yes, making a unit to defeat a given other type of unit is a large part of military technology, but it is not the only goal, as you do not always know precisely which foe you will be up against.
quote:
e.g. It's OK to have a massive line of coastal defense (with all the counter uits you want ready to go), but if all those forces are massed at the north of France because that's where you expect the D-Day to take place, and suddendly the debarquement occurs some hundreds kilometres from there ... you have a MASSIVE problem.
This is the kind of problem that I call strategic, and that just don't really exist at the moment (well, they do, but on a sensibly less dramatic scale).
I think, to put a very blunt label on them, strategies are 'plans', and tactics are 'reactions'. Any system that lets you suddenly pump out 20 'Anti-tank units' when you see tanks approaching is neatly bypassing the concept of strategy since you can react to almost anything.
quote:
The way I see it, yo have to have a strategic level map, where you move your armies against a massive invasion, where you mobilize resources and build units, where you might use long range weapons (nukes, aircraft attack, long range artillery); then you have a tactical level where the actual fighting takes place. That way, the killer units make more sense, just like in real warfare, because to use them, you have to plan ahead.
Yeah, I think that is the essence of the issue: having to plan ahead.
quote:
As well, all the building of units would occur at a slower pace, but at a larger scale. All the research new technology would be more natural, because honestly, I dunno you, but I think the last place on earth I would install a physics lab would be on a battlefield.
I think it depends on the game. It would be frustrating for some of the more action-based 'strategy' games if they were all decided within the first 10 minutes by your choice of strategy. You need the ability to muster reactionary forces. And hence, the battlefield physics labs
I just don't like the 1-to-1 correlation of Unit-Counterunit as that is too obvious Edited by - Kylotan on August 21, 2000 11:25:44 AM
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