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Same-team Multiplayer Idea
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Poll Result
  Good idea?  
 
Sounds interesting.
50%
 50%  [ 5 ]
No.
50%
 50%  [ 5 ]
 
  Total Votes : 10  

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X-Fighter
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PostPosted: Mon May 10, 2004 1:38 am    Post subject: Same-team Multiplayer Idea Reply with quote

One thought, for multiplayer, it would be cool for cooperative sub-featuring to be available--each player could "claim" certain jobs, while others are shared between several(P1 becomes the Intelligence director, P2 the Engineer, P3 the Strategist, and everyone share the ability to fight battles and render alliances for their adopted area of the country). Players could abdicate(it'd tell everyone else they did) if someone else needed to do something, but would otherwise run that part of the country.

There'd have to be some verifying system(a yes/no vote, I guess) before anyone can take over a given facet, but these could be done both before the game starts and with quick interface(click yes/no on a question box, with a time limit on how long before the voting concludes without you).

Perhaps a more sympathetic system, such as being able to select a player
to handle your share for you would be better, so that there'd be less hand forcing. This would, of course, require some statistics stored on each facet, so that players could readily interface.(If you see someone has a 200 in politics, and they're asking for your alliance control, you know you can genuinely trust them). Probably done best with a post-game vote system and graph bars(if the person did a good/bad job, you vote as such, and their bar recalculates with properly... a non-vote counts as +1(just to show they've got experience at it), a + vote counts as +2 (they've got experience at it, and they're good), and a - vote counts as +0, but increment the denominator used in calculating the bar by +1 increment by. The initial denominator should be somewhere between 10 and 100, I'd imagine, with each player being allowed to select different initial ones for "zoom" effects(2 guys with about a dozen fights each have near-equal bars at x/100, so finding the better one would require a smaller sampling... they haven't played enough yet to make a huge difference on their bar yet; on the other hand, sometimes you legitimately don't want a guy who's only fought 12 battles showing up as a potential general, unless he's gotten an awesomely high score).

Hm. Post thought: Naming. There should be sub-ranks for size categories(a general controls land battles for the nation, a colonel for just a small region; an admiral might control 1 solar system, while a Commodore would control a galaxy)
Action Position Rank Stat
Battle Commander Tactics
Unit Development Strategist Strategy
City Development Civl Engineer Design
Alliance Management Diplomat Diplomacy
Intelligence Gathering Director Covert
Research Management Scientist Technology
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Harabek



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PostPosted: Mon May 10, 2004 9:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sounds great. A little confusing, but great.
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PostPosted: Tue May 11, 2004 3:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Interesting results to the poll so far. I wonder, if anyone may volunteer, why you'd preffer having AI run features for you, rather than another player?
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Lothar
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PostPosted: Tue May 11, 2004 6:53 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Human players are less predictable than AI's, which can be a bad thing when you're trying to run your city and your war machine. If you know the AI is going to have 8000 credits ready for you in a few minutes, you can plan to use the 8000 credits in a particular way -- but if a human is controlling it, you just don't know what you'll get. Maybe 10000 credits but an unhappy populace? Maybe only 5000 credits? Maybe you won't have enough to build that fancy squadron of tanks you wanted to take the north bridge, or maybe one of your commanders will commit troops to an offensive before you're ready to supply them. You don't have that problem with a well-written AI -- you know what it's going to do given the resources you have.

Also, human players are more likely to completely overlook something important that the AI would automatically take care of. I can't tell you how many times I've played on a Starcraft team with a friend who plays Zerg, and realized we have no detection on our airforce, except for my comsats. "Um... send some overlords please" "oh yeah..."

Now, I personally prefer coop games to single-player games, provided they're designed properly for good coop gameplay. But it takes time to adjust to the way certain teammates play, and I don't think it'd work well to just randomly hook up with people online. Even the most elaborate stat systems leave some very good players with bad ranks and some bad players with good ranks.
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PostPosted: Tue May 11, 2004 7:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hm. Odd interpretation.

That would, ideally, be the whole point of a ranking system-- so that you'd actually know "oh yeah, this guy is an awesome strategist, let him take care of that department" or "I'm better off just using the AI/my own work".

It's also noteworthy that the predictability is the weakness of an AI... if I know that attacking your units at X location will cause the AI to take a certain course of action, then I can cause it to make stupid mistakes that a human would normally learn better of, or atleast think twice about.

Of course, if the AI isn't prone to make such mistakes, why even bother including that part of the game, when we all know that an AI could do it better?
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icarus
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PostPosted: Tue May 11, 2004 10:24 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

and besides moast peple i know would want to countrol thear own country
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PostPosted: Tue May 11, 2004 3:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Just so everyone knows why I came up with this:
Poo Bear wrote:

It would be nice to build upwards with the ability to assign aspects of the game you are uninterested in to subordinates.

So in the land based game you have a system akin to feudal lords bickering over control of city states who form an unstable ruling council. At this level there are:
1. battles to fight (generals)
2. armies to customize and train (military strategists)
3. cities to develop so that technology can be advanced (town planners)
4. alliances to create or break (politicians)
5. intelligence to be gathered (spy masters)
Each of these "jobs" can be performed to a lesser degree by an AI stand in, thereby freeing you from something you might not be interested in currently.

...

Each level feels and plays in a similar way to the one below but the battles and politics become more epic. Each game could use the code and resources from the one before to simulate the level below. Each game introduces more high level AI stand-in options to let the player pick and choose what activities to involve himself in. This gives the appearance of an ever expanding universe without the player getting stuck in micro-management. As we have a completely developed simulation of every level, the player can still decide to dive into a minor city battle, planetary war or stella conflict safe in the knowledge that the AI will run things on his behalf while he is away having fun.

Hence, it seems the game, by design, will already be designed to be "too big to do everything at once", so, unless you're an overly serious hard-core, you're going to have someone else doing some of the tasks ANYWAY.

So, having your "own country" would be abnormal;you'd normally be sharing it, so why not with other players, instead of just with the AI?
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Weeble
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PostPosted: Tue May 11, 2004 4:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I always wanted to be able to play Carrier Command with a number of players controlling manta fighters, walrus amphibious vehicles and the various carrier weapons. Of course, things might get messy when somebody runs over a walrus or two with the carrier. But it would be great to fly air-support for a walrus delivering a virus-bomb (which will take control of an island when delivered to the command center).

I do like asymmetric multiplayer games, like TFC, or Natural Selection with its commander mode. It's nice to feel special and unique within your team. Nevertheless, I think that the different roles should not interract over too many different layers. Make sure that players can observe what others on their team are doing, beyond simply seeing the outcome of their actions.
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Darth Dallas



Joined: 18 Oct 2003
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PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2004 12:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think as far as co-op games go, I think I'd much rather the AI manage the more mundane stuff (for instance, after I assign templates to things, it just uses those when appropriate in design, money management etc.). I also think most people who play these sorts of games would like the shootem up stuff too, so in this respect, might as well have same teams, but from their own cities/territories acting in tandem.

I was also was pondering things like supplies to form supply chains and if something like that could be AI controlled effectively as an ongoing endeavour, or if it needed to take the form of missions we have to execute to proceed.
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starscape junkie



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PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2004 12:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

If theres going to be team multiplayer, it (should) happen one of two ways

a.) shattered galaxy approach, you are assigned/pick a faction, and you deploy your units to attack different regions of the map, each area would have an objective for the attackers/defenders(the poc works well in shattered galaxy)

b.) the other approach, you are given a MASSIVE world, and each player gets their own little parcel to defend etc etc, forces the player to make aliances, let his or her ai to attack, defend etc when they are not online.

c.) suggestions?

I personally find option A to be a fun concept, one that could easily be moddified for battlescape. This is also a good option because you can have a small world(sg has only 72 points of contention, and 3 are uncapturable because they are faction capitals)
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PostPosted: Wed May 12, 2004 7:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Something like this would have to be optional; a player could pick AI over other players, or just do it all themselves. In that regard, you could choose betweem being your very own faction and being part of someone else's.

I would think it might be interesting to handle certain aspects that you're particularly good at, while letting someone else concentrate on the parts that bore you, and it would also mean that both of you would do better jobs, having less to worry about.

The coolest part, though, would be that you could actually be a team, rather than a mere alliance.
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Sorrow



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PostPosted: Fri May 14, 2004 12:06 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

i don't like it.

I think co-op is enought, 2v2.

no need for this.
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icarus
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PostPosted: Fri May 14, 2004 2:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

and the question stays eveanly devided (for thouse who dount rember it went from 3/3 to 4/4 to 5/5
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Sorrow



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PostPosted: Sat May 15, 2004 3:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

it will be alot of exstra work for the devs to put this feature in, and for very little gain, i think your better off with a coop, i mean AOE the orignal [i think] had a same "team" multiplay like this suggests, it was lame, me and my dad would do things like, both make a vilager or both tell a unit to do diffrent things, both build the same building.

There just isnt enought in it to make it worth while.
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PostPosted: Sat May 15, 2004 9:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

No no no no no....

If you and your dad were on a team, one of you would be making the villager, the other would be telling him what to do... there wouldn't be any conflict of interests, that'd be stupid...

Imagine what you'd expect an AI to do for you(do you expect it to sit there over-riding your commands? How much would that suck?!) Then imagine a person doing it instead.

So, if, say I'm one of the best research and designers in the game, but I've got this problem with building a proper defense, I could research and design units while you're deploying them, so I don't lose to my ineffective defense deployments, and you benefit from having the sharper, smarter, and better-armed designs than you'd normally pull off by yourself.

Also, 1/2 the people responding to the poll appear to like it, so it is worthwhile. Wink
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