Ok, I''m busy designing my pet rts right now, and I stink at game design, so when I''m faced with tougher descisions I prefer to ask other people who know what they are talking about... which is where you, the reader comes in The game itself is set in a totally abstract world, so there are no soldiers or buildings or grass or dragons or spacecraft... this descision was mainly because it hasn''t been done before and I don''t want to have to chase after an artist to get something looking half decent... this way I can get away with an army of ""s... what this means to you is that you don''t have to worry about science or reasoning when you answer the question The actual question... I was thinking about having a unit which could travel forward in time. The whole logistics haven''t been worked out yet, but my basic idea is like this: The unit is just like a normal unit, but there is an extra action available: time travel. When the user clicks the button, the unit splits into two units. One of them is ghosted out and the other is solid. The ghosted unit represents the future unit and the solid unit represents the present unit. The enemy can only see the solid unit. For the first few seconds of the time travel, the future unit will be faster than the present unit, so if the player tells the unit (unit being a collective for both the present and future units =) to move, the future unit will get there before the present unit which travels at the normal speed. Then, the future unit will slow down to normal speed. At this stage, both the future unit and the present unit will move at the same speed but they could be in very different locations. After the time travel has expired, the future unit will slow down so the present unit can catch up. When unit attacks, the attack will come from the future unit and not the present unit (although I am considering making it come from both if I do actually implement it). Orders given to the unit will go to the future unit while the present unit will do what the future unit was doing however many seconds ago. For the enemy, they might be sitting around, and then suddenly there base would be attacked seemingly from no where, then a few seconds later, the actual unit would turn up. My current points for and against: For: It is different and hasn''t been done before Another dimension of gameplay Against: Might be confusing Frustrating for the person being attacked - what can they do to combat it? Possible flaws - if both teams had a time travel unit, could the future units attach each other? If not, why not? If so, how would they see each other? Anyone care to help me decide?... any thoughts are appreciated, maybe a different method which fixes the flaws, maybe another game does this already? Trying is the first step towards failure.

Tachyon warfare... l33t.

Hmmm. Interesting idea. You could balance it by not allowing the "present unit" to move at all while the "future" unit exists. The "present unit" would therefore be a kind of remote control for the "future unit". It''s cool to imagine a guy in a meditative state mentally controlling a future projection of himself. This also addresses the weirdness (IMO) of having both units moving at the same time. The way you describe it, it sounds like it would look like the "slow unit" and the "fast unit". You could also have an "anti-unit"--some unit that can see future units. Like the Star Trek NG episode with the scepter in the cave ... something about seeing beings that are out of phase ... something or other.

I like the idea.

VERY interesting idea... interesting enough I think to not make this idea just one of the units, but to base an entire RTS game around it.

What kind of warfare would happen where units could use time as one of their many tools of war?

Could units travel back in time to correct mistakes made?

Just as quick example, using regular game ala Command & Conquer:
enemy comes upon you and infiltrates a weak part of your base. Using a ''go back in time'' unit or option, you might be able to plant some gun towers in that area in the past, gun towers that ''magically'' seem to appear in the present.

I think that the time-travel idea really might work, but indeed, it might be hard to balance.

ChronoTroopers in Red Alert 2 work a little like this. They don''t split, but they phase out from one place and phase in to another, with a delay depending on difference.

I like the idea, but unless you have some kind of "statis defense field" around your base, I don''t think its fair to be attacked by something you can''t repel. You could break out with the "tachyon detection radar" or, since it''s abstract, maybe some weird equivalent-- that way, you could at least see it coming.

I like the slow down idea. Maybe a defense prematurely slows the unit down by disrupting the ability?

For future unit combat, I''m really not sure. Can the past unit avert actions of the future unit? Or are those actions locked in? If future unit A attacks past unit B, does f-A kill off f-B? If so, then what does past unit A attack?

As Chief O''Brien once said in a DS9 episode, "I hate temporal mechanics!"

--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

Hmm. It is an interesting idea, but I am not sure. As presented, I dont know enough about how it would work to really decide whether I like it (from a gameplay point of view) or not. I dont think that the fact that it is different is enough reason to justify it though. You need to ask some questions....

1. What does this unit really add? Is it generally useful, are there any interesting tactics which might emerge?

2. How does this unit fit in with the rest of the game? Will it dominate the game (effectively rendering all other units pointless) or will it be dominated (would using this unit just be a complete waste of time?) As presented, it looks like it may prove to be a dominating unit... build 10 of these things, and you get 10 extra ones for a small period of time which can move faster and are completely undetectable. Is there some kind of counter unit (temporal stabiliser or something like that) which can suppress this ability? And how do you balance them?



Edited by - Sandman on July 10, 2001 3:47:35 PM

I think is a good Idea, however:

its not time travel, what you descrive is ASTRAL PROJECTION, you might throw some of the Philadelphia project there to make it more interesting.

now about using real Time travel, you could have besides the astral projection option a time travel option that would work like this :

a unit goes to the future (posible if you travel at the speed of light) you just say, go to 10 minutes in the future, and it desapears, then 10 minutes later it reapears, so you might be able to send a whole batallion to the future, and when you are being attacked ZAP! out of nowhere you have the batallion back, hope you understand what I mean.

Messing with time is always fun, and this has got me thinking of a different way time travel could be handled in a game.

Instead of sending a unit into the future, why not send a unit into the past? Well, actually, don''t send a unit from the present into the past, but from the future to the present.

Here''s how it would work... Mark a unit for future time travel to the past, specifying how far in the future the unit will come from. Just like that, that unit appears from the future at your present time location. You now have two units, both fully functional. However, the original unit has a countdown timer corresponding to the interval specified earlier. When the timer expires, the original unit is sent back into the past, but you get to keep the one from the future.

However, there is a catch, if the original unit gets killed before it has a chance to go back in time, then the unit from the future never can have existed, so all actions taken by that unit are undone. This requires that for that interval, all damage done by the unit from the future must be kept track of, and if the original unit dies, then the future unit is terminated, and all that damage is undone. This means units can come back from the dead, and horribly damaged units and structures might regain full health. A battle might feel as if you were fighting against twice as many guys, but if you win, you might only feel the effects of an attack force half the size.

Combine this ability with sending units into the future and astral projections, and you can come up with some very esoteric strategies.

Peace out.

(Evil Grin )
Wizardry, you seem to have stomp against the Granny Paradox that states that if you go back in time and kill your grandma when she was a kid your mom (or dad) would never had existed and neighter did you, so you cant travel in time to kill your grandma making imposible the existence of your mom (or dad) so you did existed making it posible for you to go back in time to kill your grandma when she was a child, making . . . .

I am sure you get the point

this is the reason why I stayed out of traveling to the past (in my post), going to the past is way compicated, you would have to come up with a good explanation on why if you kill the first unit, the secound (from the future) is still there.

Hope that helped again

I thought I expressed this in my post, but I''m more than happy to clarify.

If you kill the original unit before it goes back in time, you would never have gotton the second unit. This means that any action taken by the unit from the future is reversed so that it is like that unit never existed, because it never did. The unit disappears, and any units or structures it killed are brought back to life.

The only way a paradox would result would be if the unit from the future killed it''s earlier self, but a possible explanation for that would be to just remove both units and say that time just contrived to stop a paradox by eliminating the situation. That would also serve as punishment to the player for being so stupid and would require no extra code to implement.

Hope that clarifies things.

Peace out.