I am SO glad I'm not designing this one... Too many possible problems.

Is there tech development? If so, how do you start a new 'empire' when all the current ones already have higher tech and will just wipe your sorry butt out (don't tell me they need the newbie empires, they'll just end up being the experience farm for new crews for the older empires).

How does a new empire get started in an older shard?

Does it just magically pop up outside the sight of the older empires or does it pop up in the midst of them?

If it pops up in the midst does it get the empire of the empire it's creating an insurgence inside of or is it doomed to being outclassed and quickly destroyed?

Don't get me wrong, it's got potential, but I'm thinking that it's more of a large scale strategy game than a MMORTS in the normal sense of 'RTS' on the computer. I'm thinking something like World in Flames strategy, maybe Federation and Empire (Star Fleet Battles strategy game, horribly imbalanced) type strategy game.

Just out of curiosity, how many strategy games has the developer actually played? Not computer strategy games, but board games. I mean the big ones too... Europa, World in Flames, that level of strategy games, where you need 2 pingpong tables just for the board and another one for the counters. That's the size that you're looking at here, probably bigger. Otherwise you'll end up with a game world that hits it's critical mass point (players conquer x% of the galaxy/universe) and it's all downhill from there if you're not careful. It's definitely not a long-term game... after 6 months your single galaxy/universe might be down to 6-10 alliances or, if it's small enough, 6-10 players.

Good luck to your team. I'm somewhat skeptical on the potential of MMORTS game potential though. Not yours in particular, just the genre in general.

[edited by - solinear on July 30, 2002 1:53:38 PM]

I don''t think this is necessarily a good idea. If the idea is that your empire would still be there when you got back, it couldn''t work. For example:

I build up an empireof considerable size, but have to leave. I log off and the AI takes control. The AI goes into a super defensive mode. Now, let''s say another player comes along to attack my empire. If the AI has an artificial defensive boost such that the aggressor cannot destroy my empire, the game would fail to be fun for him. Also, any time a badass army attacked my empire, I would log off for a period of time and log back in to see if the attack had ended.

Now, if the AI did not get a strong enough boost to repel all invader, why would I want to put forth the effort and investment of my time to build an empire knowing that it would be overrun when I logged out.

I would say that the only way of making an on-line RTS persistant while maintaining the fun in playing would be to save the strength of the player on exit and respawn them on entrance adjacent to empires of similar strength. This would allow casual players to play against other casual players.

Any thoughts?

Actually, I see one big problem. If two people who are friends that work at different times of the day play the same empire to keep it active, they could largely dominate any opponents.

I can see solutions, but they''re not really MMO compatible.

1) Play each ''game'' (scenario?) to the end or until your Empire is finished/destroyed.

2) Get points based upon how well you do (kind of like Civ)

3) Every time you start fresh, you start with people who have similar point values to you and you can spend those points for racial/imperial bonuses like tech and so forth or save them for the future. Also, if you start later in a game, you get bonus points to assist you.

4) Keep a tally of highest total points, highest average points earned per game (over 3 games) and so forth.

This will have a few different effects. First, it will mean that nobody''s stuck with a losing proposition. Second, Sticking around longer will earn you more points, so you''re more likely to try to last longer in a losing position hoping to get more points for the next game you play in. Third, if you win, you''ll likely be playing against other people who are of similar skill level. Fourth, there is competition for both total points and for average points per scenario.

Just some thoughts though. I still don''t think that it''s a good medium (MMO) for RTS games though.

I have heard this problem a couple times, so I will say a couple things. I played a game called artifact, the sole base of the game is to search a huge map, look for artifacts, and hold 4 of them for 24 hours. The catch is you can only play for 2 hours at a time(its a timer) and you gain back 15 minutes every hour. The only ai is if you are being attacked, your units fight back(if they are within range). This game was fun for the simple fact that you could utterly decimate others while they were away and even while they were there, but it was simple to rebuild, allianced were easy, and there was no difference(other than personal skill) between vets and newbies. Now other games can be just as fun, or better, but this game was good at the time.

Another game I heard of with this problem would be someone making an online elite game. ... Well I will skip all the others to get to the point. Ai should defend just as well as a human, if you cannot program this, just give the units a small boost(just enough to match human players) and tell them the ai is just better(try not to make it hp, try shots fired or speed). A list of commands to do while away is good, but when attacked they should draw sufficient troops to defend, not more, unless its possible to do such a thing without putting other spaces in danger. If you want them to be logged on while away, they must be safe.

In addition, I have played a couple online games(mostly muds) where me and my friend alternate shifts. I play, he sleeps, I sleep, he plays. This creates only a small imbalance, as not many people do this. To punish such a thing would probably cause normal people to be punished for nothing at all, but the easy thing to do is to say, "You have been playing 24 hours, your troops/ are tired". Let them continue to play, but at a diminished rate.

"Practice means good, Perfect Practice means Perfect"

The only rts mmo that i have played is Artifact by Samu Game.
The game dont have any ai whatsover when you are not there and people can attack you all the time (logged in or not).
This is not a really good way to do it i think but the game have some good idea to how manage this kind of problem though.

You can let your ally control your empire when you are not there.
Which i think is a great idea. If you put that in that gonna be a good start. Dunno if your game gonna have guild or something like that but you should do a command that let you give the permission to another player to control you empire. By doing that you gonna decrease the number of time where your empire is "uncontrolled"

Dont allow people to attack during certain hour, a lot of people are actually enough crazy to stay up until 4 am just to be able to attack an empire when anybody is there. Gonna suck for people who cant play during the hour that you determine but it''s something that i think should be done.

Make the player set task in advance for the ai to execute when he is not there. But i think the ai should do ANYTHING if any command are ordered. Because if you do that it''s barely the ai who gonna control the destiny of your empire, you cant be there even 1/10 of the time. So the ai gonna build more of the empire than you.

Artifact was not a persistent world so losing your town was not a big deal. But in a persistent world geting destroyed during the night when that took your week or even year to build it gonna suck a lot

Pretty much all the idea that i have for now, gonna rethink about that though, it''s an intersting problem i think.

Its late so I haven''t taken the time to read all these responses; I just want to throw in my two cents.

I think that IF you decide to go with the AI system, wherein the AI takes over play for you when you are away, then you need to have the AI play as the player would.

There are two ways to accomplish this: Either use a VERY simple scripting system that allows even non-programmer folk to build a set of instructions that handles different types of events the way the player norally would, OR, you develop an AI strong enough to "learn" from you as you play. In other words, it handles things the way you (the player) handles them, and the longer you play, the more accurate the AI''s interpretation of your command.

Another option, MUCH simpler in the greater scheme of things, is to formulate some kind of logical-sounding scenario wherein your empire is simply inaccessible to other players. Obviously you can''t just say "My Empire is on vacation" -- you''ve got to think up a really good, believable reason why players suddenly can''t fight your empire or otherwise affect it in any way.

Now, I''m reminded of the old Tradewars 2002 game, too -- in this game, it just informed you of everything that happened while you were away when you log back on. This isn''t actually such a bad idea either -- but in this case, you should make it somewhat difficult to COMPLETELY wipe out an empire -- and you should be careful to make sure that a new empire can be created easily enough if somehow it does get destroyed in your absence.

I never really got into the Tradewars game, so I''m not the best person to tell you how it worked, but its something to look into perhaps.


Brian Lacy
Smoking Monkey Studios

Comments? Questions? Curious?
brian@smoking-monkey.org

"I create. Therefore I am."

Well,
First off, thanks for all your comments. This game is geared towards being an mmorts, so I don''t really think changing it is an options. Now you have to consider the magnitude here; first off, finding someone''s whole empire and destroying it would not be an easy thing. If the map is so huge, you would have to know where they are to wipe them out, because they would have been spread out. Also, the players will have the option to customize their ai, so that it would have a fighting chance; the attackers wouldn''t have a single disadvatage. They would be able to destroy most of the empire, leaving only the homeplanet, or the home system, spared, while the defender is offline.

Now to prevent people from logging off in the middle of a fight, there could be a time of say 5 minutes after the person logs off, that the ai takes over. We would have to add something in for accidental logging off, like the internet becoming disconnected.

Finally, I think that the things you gain from a system like this, would far outwiegh what you lose. This would be fun for players because they would be able to develop their empires over time. They would not have to play extensive periods, or anything like that. But could still expand.

Thanks for all your comments, and I''d like to hear more of your opinions. Also, we recently renovated our site:
http://www.spacesim.tk
So tell me what you all think!

Thanks again,
Fireball

How many servers are you planning on running anyway?

Think about it...If, say, you have 10,000 user accounts...but only 25% of them online at one time...then your servers will be under the load of 7,500 user AI/scripts...this is ontop of countless unit AI/scripts under the command of the absent users...isn''t that pushing things a bit much?

Well server wise,
we don''t have a set number; we were going to use cluster technology, and set up a system where they would share resources. Right now, we are trying to concentrate more on the design aspects, and then think about how to implement them physically; not the other way around.

Thanks,
Fireball

Actually you only expect to get 20% during peak times, 25% is only at the highest peak times, like the day before Thanksgiving or the day after a large expansion. You could fear the 8-10% user load during the lowest population times, so you''re actually looking at a much higher AI load most of the time.

Wow, I never thought I would find an online game company that actually hopes that their customers stay online .