FlareLocke:
Yeah, I think I get what you mean; that’s a pretty good idea. And I guess you’re right about the design thing, but even though we don’t have all of the details completely worked out, we do have a general idea of what we would like to do.

SoaringTortoise:
Wow, those are some really good ideas. I defiantly like the idea of rewarding people with money, but should this be done by another player, say one higher ranked, or by the computer, using some sort of formula? Also, right now, we’re in the alpha stages of our engine, and are gearing it towards an RTS. We’ve thought about making an rts/fps before, and we might actually go ahead with it at a later point, but we just wanted to start easier; just to see how far we can get with the engine. Oh and one more thing: I was thinking if it would be possible to have players form their own guilds/factions, or if you guys think we should just have like 7 or 10 preset ones, like FlareLocke mentioned?

Thanks for all the great ideas!

Oh yeah, and I check out RuneScape, but I couldn’t really find any relevant information on the site.

Thanks again,
rdaneel

Hey rdaneel,

I like your thinking... This is for an MMORTS? Wow. This is awesome. While players are away from their computer, you could have the AI take over and just defend for you while your gone. You could have the player say to the AI the maximum amount of gold to spent, the max defense units available, what units to use primarily as defense, what they could use if things get "tough", etc. This idea has great potensial.


- Rob Loach
Current Project: Go Through Object-Oriented Programming in C++ by Robert Lafore

"Do or do not. There is no try."
- Yoda

quote: Original post by Rob Loach
Hey rdaneel,

I like your thinking... This is for an MMORTS? Wow. This is awesome. While players are away from their computer, you could have the AI take over and just defend for you while your gone. You could have the player say to the AI the maximum amount of gold to spent, the max defense units available, what units to use primarily as defense, what they could use if things get "tough", etc. This idea has great potensial.

Heaven forbid if your RTS is realtime though. Your SOL if that is the case. Also making a decent AI for an RTS game is damn impossible. Don''t tell me you cannot find an AI''s weakness in Any game and expliot it to the N^th degree, because I sure can. If were talking about a MMO game then Grief players would learn how to break the said AI in a matter of weeks and then you would have to reprogram it to compensate.

Risky and hard as heck to do. But this is just my view on it.

The question you pose is the reason why Sovereign got scrapped by Sony Online after several years of development.

The only way to make this work is to make each "side" not rely on a single player. Planetside, for example, solves this by defining a few sides, and having players be much smaller pawns. Another game that does something similar, although not persistently, is Wulfram (a k a ShockForce).

I agree with those that have suggested allowing sub-bases to be attackable at any time, while each player has one permanent main base that is virtually invicible. Everyone has to log off sometime.

Of course, those who spend the most time in the game have the best chance of success, and this should be countered somehow. I like the idea of making special defensive preparations that go into effect when you go offline. A "Vice President" or "Defense Secretary" needn''t be so much an advanced AI as an NPC interface to a collection of options for improving offline defense.

Defensive Options:
- Hire Defensive Mercenaries: Mercenaries are hired on a regular basis as existing troops are eliminated, which continually refreshes the player''s defensive military power
- Minefields: Player can build special minefields that are remote-activated whenever the player goes offline, and deactivated when the player returns
- Defensive outfitting: Players can research special defensive capabilities that can be applied to specified units, which trade offensive abilities for increased defensive abilities.

A Defensive Outfitting example:
A player can research "Stonewall" which lets him/her choose to sacrifice a unit''s aggressive attack stance entirely (meaning the unit will never attack unless its division is attacked, and will never press forward or offensively choose a target of its own accord). In exchange, Stonewall allows a unit to take more punishment before being destroyed, while refusing to fall back.

****************************************

Brian Lacy
ForeverDream Studios

Comments? Questions? Curious?
brian@foreverdreamstudios.com

"I create. Therefore I am."

Thanks for all the ideas guys!
Just an update:
Right now, I''ve been thinking about what SoaringTortois and a few others have been saying, and I think that it might be interesting to make an RTS where the world is persistant, but your location is not. Meaning that you could be somewhat of a merc, building up an army, and such, but when you go offline, your troops would go with you; any building you built would stay though, vulnerable to other people''s forces.

This way there would be no need for restriction along the lines of ''you can attack this only at a certain time'', or situations where people would be logging of for immunity.

rdaneel

I had thought of the location thing also, where you log, that "section" of land vanishes, replaced by a blank, and when you log in, your "section" reconnects on the outskirts of the main world as a possible idea. IE, your camp "spawns" when you do but is not present when you are not.

Another branch to this, is on logoff, all assets are liquidated and banked. Upon logging in, the player has the value of the assets to rebuild them at a place where no one is atm. This only works if the build times in teh game you have are reasonably short. Thus if a player played for 4 hours, they accumulate wealth of the gameplay, but aren''t out 4 hours time in making a base as they can recreate it within 5-15 minutes.

A further permutation on that is that the buildings that they have completed, are available for immediate placement after logging in.

The problem with the base existing while offline, is as noted above, you would have to write a hell of an AI to adequately defend player assets, or institute some immunity scheme which makes offline players bases potential safehouses for allies that they would not ordinarily be while they were live. You couild have their base exist with AI defense, and make the buildings destroyable, but not permanently, so that an enemy push could waste the base for a time, but not till the player logs in can it be permanently destroyed. This however means that a group of adjacent players could log in later and be a guerilla force in your back ranks by avoiding the main thrust being offline.

These ideas are all adequate, but need to be put together to fill in the gaps:

Try making an AI that observes your strategy while you''re gone and plays it out when you''re gone. While gone, your allies have most controls over your buildings, but cannot move or destroy anything. The AI will request payment for taking care of your empire to cover his hiring expenses. Or you could have it so the ''AI'' was your prospective son or advisor, aspiring to follow in your footsteps. If your AI could not find anything to do on a matter because you had done something weird, it would employ a random strategy to that area, or observe your allies. Also, when you log off, your structures and units become stronger to compensate for the lack of genuine intelligence. A recording will be kept on video of your progress while offline, which is played back fully or with highlights, depending on the user. The AI can also be deactivated entirely if you do not trust it enough. Your allies can still attack you, thus presenting the dilemma of who is or is not your true friend, but if they DO destroy yor base, you get a limited control over THEIR stuff, and can get sweet vengeance. Enemies could even bribe your allies to assassinate you... But these are just a few observations, and I urge you to decide based on your own thoughts, but DO NOT OVERLOOK MY IDEA!

This is going to take AGES to be answered, as the last post was the 11th of MAY! I mean FOR GOD''S SAKE! I... Oh, never mind...

A MMORTS with persistant world, what can be done when a player logs off?

If you strip away all the destracting issues...the core problem is player ownership of units/bases...This needs to be adressed...it''s a hold over from traditional RTS games...and in a MMORTS persistant world game, player ownership of units/bases becomes more of a liability...a new why of measureing player status would help a great deal.

Maybe invert the whole RTS design formula? instead of haveing a few players control/own hundreds of individual units (taken to the scale of a MMORTS...thousands of players controlling/owning millions of bases/units)...invert it...thousands of players controling a limited or fixed number of units/bases?

Or maybe go with a different approch...players (even when logged on) don''t have direct control of thier units/bases...players must "Program AI" for the units/bases that govern their actions at all times...logging in allows the player to modify the AI, maybe even test it in a "simulator", then assign it to specific units and so on (have a "chain of command" type structure in that base AI not only must govern thier own defenses and what/when to build, but can also pass orders on to units under thier command)

As long as you try to retain traditional RTS features/mechanics in a MMORTS persistant world game...you are going to run into lots of problems such as offline players...and the solutions you find to such problems are nothing more then patches or additions to the game...each makeing it more complex and createing problems of thier own...it can be real helpful to strip the RTS genre down, identify the problem areas in the genre when bringing it to the arena of a MMORTS persistant world, modify or remove such elements...basicly start with a new foundation that can withstand the added stress of a persistant MMO game world...redefine the RTS genre so to speak.