Command Decisions

posted on October 14th, 2012, 9:41 pm

So I was thinking about a way to further diversify games, in addition to the avatar system. What if, at set intervals during the game, players could be given a command decision choice. Similar to the avatar selection, but not quite as significant.

The actual effects would be varied, and the scenario would be randomized, and different based on your race, but the general idea is as follows.

15 minutes into a game, a federation player would be faced with a short scenario.

"An unknown phenomenon has been located in your system."

And you are faced with the following choices. (just like avatars)

Choice 1, Explore phenomenon and gain a small supply cost reduction, but slight increase in build time, both for the remainder of the game.

Choice 2, Ignore phenomenon and gain a short term reduction in sensor range, but slight increase in ship defenses.

Another command decision could be presented like 15 or so minutes later with buffs and nerfs being permanent or temporary. Adding a third option to completely ignore the decision could be considered, but I think always making one option permanent, and the other temporary would be better. They could be personalized to the species you are playing as too. For example, the klingons don't care at all about unexplored phenomemon, but tribbles.... I mean, a insubordinate starship captain. Do you put him to death, or do you just put him in charge of a garbage scow? Both actions would have upsides and downsides, but only one option would have permanent repercussions.

Anyway, I think it could add a cool, almost RPG aspect to the game and would make long games a bit more interesting. If nothing else I might use it in my own mod.

posted on October 14th, 2012, 9:53 pm

I like it.

Any command decisions in early game should result in light bonuses, so as not to make early game too volatile. and later game decisions could have bigger effects (although still small compared to avatar choice).

the possibilities here are quite numerous. investigating an anomaly could cost a 1 time supply hit, but in return allow you to use a special weapon for a while.

eg pay x supply to research a nebula, and it contains some technobabblonium which lets your torps do a small bit extra damage. the boon lasts a limited time as there was only so much of the material to get.

of course there would have to be fairness. the random chance coin flip would need to be restricted so that both teams get a decision at the same time, with both teams getting similar value benefits/costs.

also this shouldn't force the player to make the decision immediately (it would be annoying in battle to get a prompt), so the button could be at the starbase for 60 seconds or something. a text notice (like when attacked) would let you know you have an option at your starbase to check.

posted on October 14th, 2012, 10:01 pm

not a bad idea, how would it work for single player?

Perhaps both players at random time interval .... 12-19 minutes into it (the player can't plan knowing at exactly 15 min he will received options to give him advantages) therefore an element of uncertainty, and the game pauses. a short scenario is played out in text, (for single player, or in multiplayer both players the game is paused) and three random questions are asked and you have to select answers.

1 such scenario could be...

A nearby -- event here -- is occurring. It lists your current resources in game: such as you have 2 sabres, 1 monsoons, 1 intrepid. Dil. Tri. Sup. And asks. select what you are willing to expand to resolve issue. Helping a minor race. Or acquiring a disabled battleship with possible lingering enemy warships still lurking.

Anyways, after you fill out the questions random things could happen. Perhaps you lose a ship in the course of the event. Or you gain tritanium dilithium after rescuing a cargo supply group of ships. Or perhaps both.

And obviously, many scenarios could be thought up. If there is a possibility for interface like that in game.

so three questions:
1) an event is occurring, would you like to investigate or continue with your current mission without delay? yes/no
2) this problem/opportunity/dilemma is presented. what action will you take?render economic aid, military aid, etc... perhaps a few choices. reward here too. military aid? all ships assigned if successful gain 1 rank after mission (or could end up damaged or destroyed)
3) the problem was.was not resolved. further action... economic/military/science. If option 3 is yes, say you decide to permanently give up a destroyer to remain as escort to cargo ship, they decide hey! thanks! and you get your economic reward for military service. etc

posted on October 14th, 2012, 11:21 pm

Well, I think knowing everyone will get a slight buff and nerf every 15 minutes doesn't really decrease from the unknown because you still don't know what the effects will be, but I suppose having it happen at random intervals is ok, as long as it happens for all players at the same time.


As far as AI goes, you can either have them always take the temporary option, or just pick a third invisible option like they do with avatars now that has some combonation of the two. It would be simpler as far as coding is concerned if they would just always pick one option or the other.

@myles

Yeah, it would definitely have to be at the same time for both players, and I think some kind of reminder you have to click would be best, that way it didn't hinder your battles. I do think though, that when you click it, it should pop up as two big buttons like avatars. The cool thing is hat I think this is all already possible with current code. Just start the timer at the beginning of the game, no matter what avatar you choose, and based on your race, a random decision could be generated every 15 minutes or so.

posted on October 15th, 2012, 12:16 pm

"An unknown phenomenon has been located in your system."

And you are faced with the following choices. (just like avatars)

I would like to see such things in map events you can either ignore or actually explore with units to gain a bonus or to accidentally trigger a catastrophe. I liked that event-system in Haegemonia a lot, there were so many different happenings that could take place. Squads and single units disappearing in space (sometimes coming back after a while), accidents on ships which have a random subsystem or simple damage effect, heroes gaining experience by contacting old friends, alien wreckage being detected granting more research points if salvaged, asteroids suddenly being more or less valuable than expected, and so on and so on. I'd like to see such events in a similarly interactive way rather than clicking multiple-choice-stuff.

posted on October 15th, 2012, 12:36 pm

It would be interesting to have them related to map objects, but the problem is that it might become unfair to someone who can't mange exploring at the same time as everything else. It would also be easy to stack multiple effects and become Unfair.

You could, I suppose, make it so you could only "explore a phenomenon," once every 10 minutes or so, and you couldn't stack effects. It would make having deep space outposts a little more interesting, and purposeful, but we would also need much larger maps to support actual exploration.


That being said, it would make a pretty cool single player campaign. You move your fleet through a very large map and just explore objects. Some objects give you good things and some give you bad. Like exploring an abandoned freighter and finding out it is a klingon trap, or maybe that its hull was full of dilithium.

posted on October 15th, 2012, 9:08 pm

It would be interesting to have them related to map objects, but the problem is that it might become unfair to someone who can't mange exploring at the same time as everything else. It would also be easy to stack multiple effects and become Unfair.

A race between players to achieve a goal isn't exactly unfair. Technically you'd send a scout into sensor range to scan something, which shouldn't be too much of a problem with the new version, because scouts will be a crucial part of any battle-group.

Map events should include everything from a simple gas-cloud that suddenly appears up to a ship that travelled through a rift in the space-time-continuum. With the possibility of salvagable objects being included in the game to earn this and that, I'd see this as an opportunity for more competition and more intensity during games.

I agree that being confronted with it all is not beginner-friendly, however (as in Haegemonia) the map events could easily become optional in the map-settings.

posted on October 16th, 2012, 7:01 am

I would love to see some "hostile" map events/objects whatever you want to call them. Perhaps a lone borg cube shows up in your klingon versus federation game or Orion pirates attack your mining stations early on etc.

posted on October 16th, 2012, 12:04 pm

I would love to see some "hostile" map events/objects whatever you want to call them. Perhaps a lone borg cube shows up in your klingon versus federation game or Orion pirates attack your mining stations early on etc.

no.

the ai can't be trusted with anything more than a sabre class. give it a ship that can actually affect a player, and the problems will be clear.

the ai ship will attack a player, hence hurting them. even if they don't lose ships, they've spent time fighting off an attack. putting them at a disadvantage.

dice rolls to hurt players isn't something i want.

the only way to add any semblance of fairness would be for the exact same ai force to attack all players at the exact same time. and that still has issues. one, the ai isn't that smart as to coordinate, it'd probably end up sending all ai ships to 1 player.

two, example, the ai sends the same number of borg pyramids (2 regen, torp, nanite factory) to every player. the fed player who still has a bunch of monsoons in their fleet laughs. the dominion player with t15s quits. klingon with charghs quits too.

i prefer random events to remain optional benefit things, rather than guaranteed hurt.

posted on October 16th, 2012, 3:13 pm

I would love to see some "hostile" map events/objects whatever you want to call them. Perhaps a lone borg cube shows up in your klingon versus federation game or Orion pirates attack your mining stations early on etc.

This would be ok in a campaign type scenario, but not in competitive multiplayer.

Like Myles says, in multipleyer you can't do anything that isn't multiplying the entire game by 1. Everyone in the game has to get the situation at the same time, and all choices have to lead to a buff and nerf of equal weight so that it is not OP, just a change.

posted on October 16th, 2012, 5:28 pm

I was mostly thinking about single player versus AI myself but other games have done it for multiplayer and it worked out nice. Star Wars Battlefields? I think that was the name of it.............had enemies like pirates and native inhabitants that attacked anyone who got close to their bases. It added some extra Oomph! to the maps and something to keep an eye out for.

I was actually thinking more along the lines of ships patrolling a particular part of the map and not leaving the area not actual attacks on the base itself. Using the Borg cube, or any ship for that matter, example you could either a) have it so that it is already there but won't attack until you get to close to it or b) have it appear in a certain spot after say 15 or 20 minutes which would make sense for more powerful ships.

The fact that it could be random would also make games much for tense because inevitably people will develop build strategies that work the best against their opponent and whenever they fight the Klingons they will use the same strategy all the time and a different strategy all the time against the Romulans etc. Having to prepare for unexpected events would force people to change it up a bit so that they aren't caught off guard by a wave of 10 borg tactical cubes popping in after 10 minutes.

Obviously you would have to restrict it movements so that it won't go out of a predetermined area. I don't know if its possible to have collision only effect one ship and not others or have the AI set to very low movement or something but it would be kind of cool to stumble on something bad once in a while in the process of exploring. After all half of Star Trek involves encountering dangerous aliens the shows weren't about meeting ferengi or tribbles all the time. By limiting it to a specific area you wouldn't make it unbalancing simply because you actually have to go there in order to be attacked which could happen to either side of both sides if you have more than one random encounter on a map. Location wise they could be located in the middle or on the outskirts of the map so that each side has an equal chance of running into it. Most maps are fairly symmetrical anyways so that shouldn't be to hard.

posted on October 16th, 2012, 5:39 pm

Well, having dynamic NPC's is one thing, and it would be cool don't get me wrong, but its not really what the idea was about. More of an RPG scenario. Not really having Orion pirates on the map, but rather have a message that says some civies were attacked and you can choose to help them or not. You will never actually do anything, but if you choose to 'help' them, you get one thing and lose one thing, or if you choose to ignore them, you lose one thing, and get one thing. You would never have to actually do anything other than just click a button and move on with the game.



Having things like that spawn on a map randomly would be cool for a campaign though. Like if you moved into a nebula and a random situation would be 'spawned', weather it was some special type of nebula, or maurading enemies, or maybe some portal to another dimension that you had to actually deal with in the game. But again, this isn't really feasible for a multiplayer rts.