Right now I think the most undetermined part of my strategy gme is how I''m going to do the "War Machine"...i.e. the part of the game that deals with creating, equipping and transporting war material to the front lines. I really hate the peon harvesting way of resource gathering, and I don''t like the idea of a player being able to chose at will when he needs to build new units. I''d prefer that my resource system doesn''t require the player to actively guide anything to harvest resources. And speaking of resources, I can think of raw resources (oil, metal ore, wood, food), refined resources (fuel, machinery, electronics), and people resources (quantity, skilled). I haven''t really figured out how to abstract the concept of "money", since it''s not enough for a country to be rich without having resources, nor is it good to have resources without having money. In the former, you would have to rely on trade to get your goods, and the latter, you need to pay the corporations to hire people and actual turn raw resources into refined resources. On the manufacturing side of things, I want a system that requires a bit of forethought into planning what you need. I think that the ability to call on demand for new troops leads to a mentality set that requires less thinking and forethought. If you did badly in a battle but you are rich, you can always just order some new troops...and the only penalty will be the time it takes to build all the troops. I''d prefer a system where not only does it take time to manufacture new troops, like most governments in the world, you have to put in budgetary requests. Factories simply can not scale to the demands placed on them by the whims of the player...they need some kind of future-looking budget which allows them to estimate what tools, workers, and resources they need to bring to the factories to create the work order. I can immediately hear some people groan and say this is realism for realism''s sake. I say not at all, and that by making the player plan for the future, it requires him to use his troops very differently. For if your plans don''t go according to how you thought, you might be up $hitcreek. It will make tank rushing harder to do because if the player guessed that''s what you were going to do, and he also guesses that your future orders will be for more tanks, he can create units to counter the tank rush more effectively. In other words, by making the manufacturing system less flexible and more reliant on forethought and planning, the smart player will have to think in advance and estimate what will happen if things don''t go right. So it''s not just a realism factor, but a gameplay factor as well since it affects the way players will fight their battles. This leads to the third leg of the "War Machine" question....getting the troops and logistical support there. It''s not enough to create your troops...now you have to provide for their transportation and upkeep. While most units are self-mobile, you may want to get them there faster than with their inherent mobility, or they may need different forms of locomotion to get them there (amphibious craft, air mobile landers, dropships/droppods, etc). Perhaps mroe importantly, an army travels on its stomach, and its important to have good lines of supply to route food, ammunition, fuel and other vital supplies to the frontline. Some games have transport units to ferry units...and this is the most easily solvable part of the problem. But the supply line/logistics question is more tricky. Fuel, ammo and food resources must be shipped off to the fighting units or they will degrade in performance and morale. Again, I can hear players say, "this is realism for realism''s sake", but think of the consequences. The smart player does not even need to directly attack his opponent''s forces to win. He can send airborne troops behind enemy lines to cut off lines of supply, send Irregular Warfare troops to harrass, interdict and sabotage supplies, or if its an amphibious invasion force, he can send in Naval forces to run a blockade to prevent supplies from coming through. Some games do lines of supply by having a radius around a building or a supply unit, and if the unit strays from this "supply zone", then they deteriorate. While it''s a step in the right direction, I think there needs to be link establised between manufacturing centers->transport->distribution hub->supply units->unit. Much like setting way points, the player can select these path lines and also set up redundancy path lines in case one gets "cut" One last related point to the manufacturing and transporting question is the issue of how to actually create new units. Most games have units that have a health level, and they go to a repair vehicle or repair center and they get back to normal. Usually there is no cost to the player to "heal" their units. I would propose that there is a "healing" cost of sorts. I was thinking of having all units have a maintenance cost. This factors in things like fuel cost, ammo, and food. There are two aspects to this....upkeep and repair. The upkeep is an ongoing cost that is paid out every turn, the repair cost is dependant on how much damage they take. For example, if a platoon had 10 men killed, and 8 wounded out of 30, then they must pay for 10 infantry units, but can go to a MASH unit to get the 8 men healed and sent back to service. The cost is free since the cost of "healing" is paid for by the MASH unit''s maintenance cost. Damage tracking as well as supply tracking is going to be very important in my game. Some will ask my I went to such pains to model things so realistically. I say its because it offers more and deeper gameplay. It requires the player to think on many more layers to be successful. The realism is there for a purpose...to add to the gameplay and the challenge. Just as some people prefer flight sims to arcade fliers, I''d like to see a Warfare Sim out there one day.

quote: I''d prefer that my resource system doesn''t require the player to actively guide anything to harvest resources. And speaking of resources, I can think of raw resources (oil, metal ore, wood, food), refined resources (fuel, machinery, electronics), and people resources (quantity, skilled). I haven''t really figured out how to abstract the concept of "money", since it''s not enough for a country to be rich without having resources, nor is it good to have resources without having money. In the former, you would have to rely on trade to get your goods, and the latter, you need to pay the corporations to hire people and actual turn raw resources into refined resources.

Whatever resource/economy system you create, make sure it is something that can be influenced by other players. In a game that uses harvesters for example, it is a perfectly valid tactic to attack the enemy''s harvester to create economic pressure. In Total Annihilation it is valid to attack the energy and metal producers for the same reason. Whatever solution you come up with should allow for similar tactics.

Definitely.

One of the main strategies in my game is to capture or destroy the manufacturing and refinement centers. I don''t like the idea of capturing resources and then using it for yourself though. It takes years of development time to build the facilities to harvest resources, and it just doesn''t make sense for me to have the opponent capture it and use it himself. From a game design perspective, I think it''s also bad because not only does the former owning player lose resources, but the enemy gains them...for a net effect of +2 to the controller. I think this is too imbalancing and it will mean that battles will focus more on capturing resources than anything. While resources ARE a valid target, I think the net effect is too strong.

Also, as I mentioned there is a difference between raw resources and refined resources. In war, while blowing up oil fields are fine, it''s more important to destroy the oil refineries that make fuel or plastics. My game world is a bit tricky though since it is a Civil War. Therefore both sides want to reduce collateral damage as much as possible.

I think that since my game is a Civil War, the best way to alter the War Machine factor is to disrupt the transportation of supplies. Germany nearly did this in WWII with its U-boats...they couldn''t invade the US or England, but they did a really good job of preventing the Allies from getting a foothold on Europe. I think almost every game out there doesn''t do supply side logistics its due credit in warfare. Most armies have 3-5 times as many support and logistics units as the fighting units. But games don''t factor these things in presumably because they feel players don''t want the extra headache of factoring these in. I personally think its only a headache because of the real time nature of the game. These RT games are trying to extract war processes that take several years into several hours....and they don''t really do it justice. So they figure..."ahhh, why worry about logistics, it''s just one more headache players have to worry about on top of everything else".

Simplicity is one reason, but don''t forget the polygon and/or CPU cycle budgets.
Also, it seems to me that in some RTS games (particularly older ones) the visible units are only symbolic representations of larger groups. For example, while you may only see one infantryman, he actually represents a group of men. The same thinking may be applied to support units, whereby the few that you see are representative of the many you don''t. This way, the player is not bogged down by every little detail of logistics, yet still has to think about the overall management and defense of the support units.

I''m already worried about CPU-cycles and polygon counts

The way I''m going to implement my logistics I think is to define "routes". I guess in a crude sort of way, you can think of it like networking. You have gateways which tell you where to look for directions and routers that tell you how to get there. The gateways are the Distribution Hubs, and the Routers are the Supply Units. Supply units then drop off supplies to supply centers which are abstract objects. They are abstract because they are integrated into the BattleGroups and move with it. They can not be targeted per se except by Irregular Warfare units. So the only concrete targets to attack would be the transports between the Manufacturing centers and the Distribution hubs, the Hubs themselves, or the Supply Units. The Manufacturing centers are going to be embedded within cities, so they are abstracted in a way too, and can only be attacked directly by bombardment, or by invading the city itself.

In my battles, a city will take up the entire map....it''s not like they are elements on a map, they are the map itself. Actually this brings up another for a new thread in its own right....how to create large worlds.

This is an interesting topic. First, let me throw out some food for thought: this could provide the answer to your previous thread on intelligence in games. If there is some sort of distribution network for materials, then simply knowing the presence of certain materials in the enemy distribution network could give some clues as to further helpful loci for intelligence gathering. Moreover, it provides a path for infiltration units to return to the enemy bases. For example, if a platoon is supplied from its division headquarters, all you need to do to find the division headquarters is to follow the supply transport back to base. Perhaps you could order a spy to infiltrate the supply network and send the contents of the transport, which would give a good indication of the nature of the enemy. Fight in a skirmish, and they request caseless ammunition, you know that at least some of them use caseless ammunition. Have the infiltrator return to the division headquarters and infiltrate there. Then you can learn the contents of at least some other units, and perhaps their locations or the departure times of their supply convoys (so you could follow them). This may be too slow and/or involved for a game, however. It may make an excellent standalone game or component of a MMO wargame, though.

I''ve mused over similar concepts for my pet game that I''m never going to make (probably). The game I have in mind is a bronze age RTS. Your units don''t get created when you need them, you train your already existing population. You don''t lose until your people are dead. Given the relatively few relevant resources of the time (gold/money, food (meat, grain, fruit), bronze, copper(ore), tin(ore), swords, wood, bows, arrows, horses/camels/mules, leather, armor (copper/leather)), a full simulation is not out of the question.

More on topic, civilians can be killed (and probably will be, though women and children won''t be killed by irregulars, but might be if an army sacks the city). It will be up to the army to protect them from masses of enemies (the civilians won''t be defenseless, and will be significantly dug in, not to mention probably protected by some of the army, so irregulars killing many of them is probably not likely).

The way I''m going to represent supplies is with a convoy at the center of every army''s encampment or march. That convoy is simply the representation of the distribution network (i.e. it''s the mess hall) of the army (army used in the sense that it''s a bunch of people who march together), so it won''t move except to keep up with the army. It will be periodically resupplied by convoys from the nearest city, which are assembled based on the needs of the army. Escorts will probably reside in the city with the suppliers, and will automatically surround the resupply convoy and move along with it.

The part the player will deal with is occasionally providing assistance to a convoy under attack, or having to return to a city because of a destroyed convoy, or having to attack an otherwise undesirable target because you need their food (booty!). The player will need to create new cities to expand his population and the resources under his control. He will have the option to enslave the population of a captured city instead of slaughtering them (they can revolt, you know), and he will have the option to relocate them to help suppress revolts.

quote: Original post by Flarelocke
If there is some sort of distribution network for materials, then simply knowing the presence of certain materials in the enemy distribution network could give some clues as to further helpful loci for intelligence gathering. Moreover, it provides a path for infiltration units to return to the enemy bases. For example, if a platoon is supplied from its division headquarters, all you need to do to find the division headquarters is to follow the supply transport back to base. Perhaps you could order a spy to infiltrate the supply network and send the contents of the transport, which would give a good indication of the nature of the enemy.... This may be too slow and/or involved for a game, however. It may make an excellent standalone game or component of a MMO wargame, though.

Interesting ideas, and I hadn''t fully thought out the capabilities of my Irregular Warfare units (fancy term for Special Operations or Special Forces troops). I do know that my IW forces will combine the elements of espinoage, sabotage, guerrila warfare, interdiction, harrassment, assassination, infiltration, exfiltration, and misinformation duties. Good suggestion though...and in game terms, the IW teams could take a peak at Manifests and get a good guess at the amount of replacements, and reserve forces the enemy has at his disposal.

quote: Original post by Flarelocke
Your units don''t get created when you need them, you train your already existing population. You don''t lose until your people are dead.

This illustrates a good point....in the time frame of most games, population is a finite quantity. Unless wars span more than 20 years, you won''t have a new generation of personnel to replenish your armed forces.

quote: Original post by Flarelocke
More on topic, civilians can be killed (and probably will be, though women and children won''t be killed by irregulars, but might be if an army sacks the city). It will be up to the army to protect them from masses of enemies (the civilians won''t be defenseless, and will be significantly dug in, not to mention probably protected by some of the army, so irregulars killing many of them is probably not likely).

I''ve been thinking that my game will have a strategic/tactical portion like the Total War series has. Armed forces can therefore decide to sack and invade a city. This does entail a lot of effort, and it will be very costly for the invading side. Since my background is essentially a Civil War with only semi-defined borders, it''s possible to kill your own supporters in an assault. People might ask, "why attack a city". Couple of reasons...one is to take a facility intact. Theres the possibility that the other side will blow it up to prevent it falling in enemy hands, but there is that possibility. These facilities can range from manufacturing centers, to resource centers to even things like bridges. There''s actually another reason I chose for city assaults....using them as cover against Orbital attacks. A Navy dare not attack a city while its being invaded. Why destroy your own people''s homes?

quote: Original post by Flarelocke
The part the player will deal with is occasionally providing assistance to a convoy under attack, or having to return to a city because of a destroyed convoy, or having to attack an otherwise undesirable target because you need their food (booty!).

Yes, having to make sure your supply lines are protected is critical. The Allies originally wanted to invade France in 1943, but the Kriegsmarine U-boats did such a nice job of sending convoys to the bottom of the sea meant that they had to put it off for awhile. The way many strategy games currently play it out is that the best defense is an offense. Make the other guy worry about his cities and buildings coming under attack, that you don''t have to worry about your own defenses. Trouble is, nice in theory, but it should be harder to put into practice because a smart player will be able to weaken an enemy''s forces blow without necessarily even physically fighting his foe.

quote: Original post by Flarelocke
The player will need to create new cities to expand his population and the resources under his control. He will have the option to enslave the population of a captured city instead of slaughtering them (they can revolt, you know), and he will have the option to relocate them to help suppress revolts.

Since I believe in realistic time frames, it won''t be possible to create new cities. Even creating new manufacturing centers may literally take 30minutes to an hour of game playing time (think about, most wars on average last 5 years or less, many less than 2 that represent say an average game battle of 3-5 hours....so how come it takes a few minutes to create a new manufacturing center which in real life would take a year....the scales are all wrong). And to counter the inevitable criticism that this is using realism as a gimmick, I say it adds to the gameplay. By forcing the player to rely on existing structures or capturing enemy equipment, it forces the player to be very protective of his own buildings and resources. The attitude right now is...as long as he doesn''t destory my harvesters, so what, I''ll just rebuild my buildings in case things get ugly. In real life, losing even just a few refineries or manufacturing centers is extremely critical.

This is a very interesting topic. Here are a few of my random, (probably not very useful) thoughts.

I think that focusing in your RTS more on the supply part of war is a fascinating angle. It is true, many wars are won and lost not by the amount of troops, but because of disrupted supply chains to the troops on the front. I think it would be difficult to create a supply infrastructure which wouldn''t require a lot of micromanagement by the player to ensure their soldiers were always supplied.

I think the population idea is a good one. If you don''t have an unlimited supply of units, but instead have to realize that each soldier is a person who can''t just be manufactured in a factory, the strategy of the game would become much more realistic. However, it seems since soldiers are not as easy to come by, you''d have to also make them not quite as easy to kill. After all, if you had units dying as quickly as they do in other RTS games, either your cities would have to be gigantic, or the game wouldn''t last very long.

I really like some of these ideas, and I think that they would move the dynamics of the game away from the standard "collect resources, crank out buildings and units, and hurl them at the enemy." If the player had significant incentives to protect his units and cities, his strategy would be much more cautious, striking carefully, just as real generals do.

I do have one question I have about this game, though. With all of this increased complexity, how are you going to present the information to the player in such a way that they can control things but also not have to manage every minute detail. You said that part of the emphasis would be on large cities, with a population of civilians. Would the player control these civilians? Or, would the civilians be autonomous agents going about their daily business? If so, would they build houses and businesses themselves? Would the player just zone it like in SimCity? I''m mainly just interested in how the player would interact with the various elements of the game.

Dauntless,

Great ideas, as usual I like how you''ve actually thought through the idea of supply chain logistics. Personally I think it is fascinating.

I have a few suggestions and observations. Since you are thinking of large assaults on cities maybe you should think along the lines of one player "defends" the current city and another attacks the city. They would have different methods of supply.

A great way to understand this concept is to look to history to the German Army''s siege of Russian Stalingrad. Poor supply chain logistics, trouble procuring the proper resources and mother nature [the russian winter] are ultimately what lost this battle for the Germans.

The Germans were the attacking army. Only a small amount of the German army''s supplies were actually plundered from the Russian and Ukrainian country sides. This was probably most often food and draft animals. Almost all of the supplies were flown in by planes or shipped via trucks and trains [on captured Russian rails] across eastern Europe. This included military supplies like entire tank groups and foot soldiers being loaded on supply trains. Planes were often used for carrying food, soldiers, and ammunition.

Like the Germans the Russian army procured almost 100% of its soldiers from other parts of Russia shipping them via trains and boats to the shores of the Volga where they would be shipped across the river to fight. For the most part Stalingrad''s food actually came from the fertile farmland east of Stalingrad and its fuel came from the south in the oil producing regions which the Germans never managed to capture. Unlike the Germans many of the Russian heavy arms wre actually built in Stalingrad. The Red October built the Russian T-34 tank during almost the entire seige. They''d roll them right off the assembly line, unpainted, into combat. There was similar industry throughout Stalingrad.<br><br>The Russian stoicly defended that tank plant as best as they could. What ultimately lost the battle for the Germans was that the Russians slowly encircled the Germans and cut off their supply lines. Eventually the air drop was the &#111;nly method for delivering supplies to the Germans. Unfortunately for them the weather prevented most planes from landing. The german army ran out of food, fuel, and ammunition because their supply lines were gone. They faced mass starvation and the entire Seventh Army was forced to surrender.<br><br>Through strategic _capture_ of supply lines, like roads and railroads, and air fields the Russians were able to force the Germans into submission.<br><br>In a game context this would mean that in order to get your supplies as an attacker you wouldn''t really have industry. You would procure by request and delivery along your supply lines. This might mean that throughout your campaign there would continually be caravans of trucks, trains and plains delivering to your supply depots. Replacement troops, artillery, and horses would arrive via trains and the wounded would be taken out &#111;n the return voyage. Most of this could be handled automatically. The wounded would trade places with the replacements when they got to the front lines.<br><br>The defender would have the advantage of having some limited industry to ensure more timely delivery of certain goods such as weapons and food. This would mean though that should these industries be captured it would be much more difficult to procure further resources from outside the city.<br><br>In Stalingrad the determining factor wasn''t really a matter of too few troops &#111;n either side. The Russians lost 2 million soldiers and the Germans somewhere around 1 million. It was a matter of supplies and it was a matter of control of territory, like train stations, road intersections, industries, and airfields. Eventually the German''s ran out of food and ammo and were thus unable to fight [The russian winter put a stop to pillaging food because there wasn''t any]. I think that nearly 500,000 troops surrendered. This was still a formidable force but it wasn''t an affective force due to having NO supplies.<br><br>So, the supplies really determine the fight. &#79;ne way you could easily handle this would be to have a bar along the bottom of the screen which would have buttons and pictures of supplies and troops along it. When you want to procure a certain good you click &#111;n that button and it will add it to a queue and deliver it by any means necessary to the a drop off point. You''ll want some means of specifying priority as well.<br><br>In each drop off point you would specify where you wanted each specific good to go from there. Delivery by train would be quicker than by road which would respectively be quicker than by foot. Each method of delivery would have a limit to what it could deliver in each caravan. If you order all tanks as high priority and forget fuel and ammunition your artillery may run out of ammo thus balancing of procured goods is essential.<br><br>If you have three train depots and five major supply roads into the city under your control you''ll probably see your goods come in in a reasonable amount of time. You''ll probably get a lot of what you want. Should you not have any of these supply depots you can still request that troops arrive via the country side to try to fight there way in. This would take quite a long time and they would come into the city via any edge of the map that you control but they wouldn''t have the speed benefit of transportation routes like roads and rails. Should you get surrounded, then you''d be screwed unless you have airports.<br><br>I''d say you should have three distinct areas:<br><br>supply lanes - lanes of delivery to a drop off point. These stretch from the edge of the map to to the drop off point. The entirety of the lane must be controlled for successful drop off. Train rails and major roads have static starting points for supply lanes. This means that if you lose control of the starting point of these your are in trouble. Trains have static supply lanes as well which can''t be moved. Roads &#111;n the other hand have static start points but dynamic supply lanes. If you control the start position of the road you can change its destination.<br><br>Drop-off point - Train depots are considered drop off points. A supply lane connects the edge of the map to the drop off point. Train depots are static drop off points and can not change. Roads do not have to have static drop off points. You can change where these are and the supply lane connected to the edge of the map will change. Finally the country-side drop off points can be placed anywhere under your control and connected to any place &#111;n any edge you control.<br><br>Supply Depots - This is where the supplies are automatically routed &#111;nce they reach the drop off points.<br><br>You''ll want the players to be able to bombard the supply lines, which would result in loss of supplies as they arrive. Example: If a train is hit by a mortar round you may lose some of the supplies in the train car that was hit.<br><br>To make bombardment fair (unlike games like Dark Reign I where you could bombard someone into oblivion from across the screen) you''ll have to make sure that artillery require ammunition and possibly an FO (forward observer).<br><br>Wow, this was way too long.<br><br>RandomTask

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
This is a very interesting topic. Here are a few of my random, (probably not very useful) thoughts.

Very useful thoughts actually

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
I think that focusing in your RTS more on the supply part of war is a fascinating angle. It is true, many wars are won and lost not by the amount of troops, but because of disrupted supply chains to the troops on the front. I think it would be difficult to create a supply infrastructure which wouldn't require a lot of micromanagement by the player to ensure their soldiers were always supplied.

I feel that most RTS games on the market today are more tactically oriented than strategically oriented. I feel that not having a supply equation built into the game is a big reason for this. There's more to building the "War Machine" than harvesting resources, building buildings, and then creating units. This model is so abstracted that it doesn't offer enough concrete elements for the players to tweak and use as a part of their strategical thinking. As for the diffuculty of managing this, I've been trying to think up of some AI tricks.

In my game there are AI Commander objects which directly control units and take orders from the player's Avatar (a physical representation of the player himself on the map). Just as there will be AI Military Commanders, I think I will have "Mercantile" Commanders that manage the economy, manufacturing and transportation of all necessary material to support the war effort. These MercantileCommanders can be given an equivalent of a "Rules of Engagement" that the military Commanders get that tell them basic things like welfare of the citizens, ratio of production of certain unit types, etc. They will basically do their best to ensure the smooth running of the logistical side of warfare. If something weird happens though, then the player can step in and re-direct supply routes (which is why I jokingly titled the post the way it was...it was in the voice of a frontline Commander requesting some reinforcements).

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
I think the population idea is a good one. If you don't have an unlimited supply of units, but instead have to realize that each soldier is a person who can't just be manufactured in a factory, the strategy of the game would become much more realistic. However, it seems since soldiers are not as easy to come by, you'd have to also make them not quite as easy to kill. After all, if you had units dying as quickly as they do in other RTS games, either your cities would have to be gigantic, or the game wouldn't last very long.

Being a fairly avid student of military history, I've always thought about Sherman's march through the south (and Sheridan's plundreing of it) as well as civilian carpet bombing in WWII. When you think about it, the utmost priority of an armed force is to protect its people. While "humane" wars try to limit damage only to members of the armed forces, there are two factors that can not be escaped. As your troops die, your fighting age population shrinks. This is not a renewable resource. And just as importantly, if your country is invaded or bombed, your population will also decrease. A countries population is ABSOULTELY its most vital resource since it can not be recaptured or manufactured. It may possibly be bought (through mercenaries) but that's it. And yet how many games have population as a resource? Very few. By stressing this resource, it should make players less willing to throw troops away needlessly (I really hate the cannon fodder mentality of most RTS games in which there is no penalty for destorying large sums of your own armed forces). It will also mean they should be much more willing to protect even pure civillian based cities with no military or manufacturing centers (think Dresden).

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
I really like some of these ideas, and I think that they would move the dynamics of the game away from the standard "collect resources, crank out buildings and units, and hurl them at the enemy." If the player had significant incentives to protect his units and cities, his strategy would be much more cautious, striking carefully, just as real generals do.

Exactly. I want the player to concentrate on the consequences of his actions. If he chooses a gung-ho all out offense strategy and then his homeland gets burned down, then that massive armada he created is worthless because now he can't get any supplies and his people are dead. Some will probably say, "well an army can live off the conquered territory. This is a really bad idea. For starters, using captured equipment is tricky and it also still needs supplies...and I don't think your enemy is going to give you supplies. Secondly, taking the natives food is going to piss them off. It's one thing to conquer them and make them prisoners in their own homes...but if you take their food, you are assigning them a death sentence. This rallies the remaning fighting troops, and will lead to lots of partisan activity harrassing your flanks and rear. Thirdly, you can't just capture manufacturing facilities if they are of foreign design (in my game, since it's a civil war, this is a possibility). Afterall, you won't know how to run the machinery, and would you trust workers who are forced at gunpoint to not sabotage pieces of equipment?

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
I do have one question I have about this game, though. With all of this increased complexity, how are you going to present the information to the player in such a way that they can control things but also not have to manage every minute detail. You said that part of the emphasis would be on large cities, with a population of civilians. Would the player control these civilians? Or, would the civilians be autonomous agents going about their daily business? If so, would they build houses and businesses themselves? Would the player just zone it like in SimCity? I'm mainly just interested in how the player would interact with the various elements of the game.

As I mentioned early, I'd like to introduce a Mercantile Commander class which handles AI related to production, resource gathering and transportation. For production and resource gathering, the player can assign ratios of what kinds of materials and units he'd like to see (is the player more of an air buff? then he can set a higher ratio of building and funding to McDonnel-Douglas and Boeing for example). For tranposrtation, I think that my network analogy will be the best way to do this.

Each Battlegroup (which is a logical organized hierarchy of fighting units) will send "packets" to the Distribution hubs. From there, the Hubs will route these packets which contain supply requests of the total sum of all its units, to the Mercantile Commander. This will take place automatically without the player needing to intervene. Back home, the manufacturing centers ship their goods via transports to the Distribution Hubs, and then the Supply Units pick up supplies intended for the BattleGroup. Supply Units do not even have to be "attached" to BattleGroups...they will seek out the highest priority PattleGroup (which will be indicated by how much its requests are) and will judge by a "metric" rating if they are farther away from the BattleGroup than a closer Distribution Hub. So almost all of this will be automatic and done without the Player's intervention.

What the player WILL have to manually do though is make sure that the AI Mercantile Commander does a good job of providing the right level of transports, manufacturing centers, distribution hubs, etc. Since I'd like the AI to have an NN/GA "brain", the actual choices the player makes can help the AI "learn" what the better choices are. So over time, the player will have to keep an eye out less and less.



[edited by - dauntless on February 5, 2003 6:11:53 PM]