I like it when units gain experience. I gain an attachment to the Level 3 sniper that was created at the very start and is still around sniping. Although I generally did not like the game, Emperor Battle for Dune did this well.

I like it when the resources are very limited and scattered throughout. There are few games which aren''t about turtling up around a resource and repeating.

Also, I''d like something other than the standard health bars above units. What kinds of wounds do my battle-hardened troops have? Will my medics actually run out to get a troop and bring him back to camp or does he just explode upon death, not affecting morale or anything at all really.

I liked the idea of only being able to issue commands within the confines of your chain of radar towers. If you send something out and it doesn't come back, you have no idea what happened to it, or what lies beyond until a scout returns.

There are some problems with this, though. I wanted to have icons on a resource sheet showing the status of all your units (so you could know what's going on at a glance and issue commands to whole squads or just one unit). They would naturally be grayed out if they left your radar chain. But if they got destroyed, it wouldn't be right to remove that icon until you know they have been destroyed. But then, how will you know until one of your units sees the wreckage and comes back? And what if the engine removes the wreckage to manage storage space?

Just a little design paradigm I haven't quite worked out yet.

Others here on the forums had ideas like sending out scouts to call shots for long distance weapons, provide awareness beyond the towers, have the AI automatically determine the best way to attack, etc. Others wondered why I couldn't keep radio contact with my units anyway, if the rest of the technology is so advanced. Well, it was a game device, that's why

Oh, and hopping directly into a vehicle to mementarily handle a problem. :D


[edited by - Waverider on January 12, 2004 1:05:33 PM]

Here are some off the top of my head...

Instead of gathering resources, how about having airstrip or port where you can order supplies. HQ has a budget, so you can only order so much per day. The game becomes more about what you do with your units and less about how fast you can build the most units. You can build additional ports to keep from getting all your eggs in one basket, but your buget doesn''t change.

How about defining supply lines (series of waypoints?). Then assemble supply convoys and designate which groups they are to resupply. During battle, the troops could automaticly generate orders and the convoys would travel back and forth with fresh supplies. Select a storage depot and adjust the ammo/food levels. Select a supply vehicle to transfer from port to depot.

How about having vehicles manned. If you destroy the vehicle, the troops have a chance for surivial and can defend the area with light arms.

How about enemy troops can lose morale and attempt to escape or surrender. The enemy can capture them and transport them to a POW camp, where they interrogate and learn over time some random placements. Note that the prisoner can tell truth or lie, so don''t trust the intelligence. Use medical technology to improve the POW camp''s effectiveness.

How about buildings that are actually to scale to the units. And how about actually entering them. I''d like to be able to double-click on structures, and get an indoor, top-down, view of them. You could cycle through the floors of the building. If it''s your building, then you can see everywhere. And if it''s an enemy building, then you can only see the areas around your units, or any cameras/sensors they may have placed.

If you make a group/platoon and you set way points, ALL OF THE UNITS SHOULD TRAVEL IN A PACK. I always hated if I had a platoon of a few tanks with a bunch of smaller much faster units, the faster units would arrive at the way point way before the tanks and get destroyed if the enemy was there.

Oh, totally random maps so that noone can memorize them and have an advantage in multiplayer! (With strategic playability of course - resources should be randomly placed but be similar distances from the players' starting points)

Some static ones are ok too, so the elitists can have their fun.

[edited by - Waverider on January 12, 2004 4:00:51 PM]

quote: Original post by Waverider
I liked the idea of only being able to issue commands within the confines of your chain of radar towers. If you send something out and it doesn''t come back, you have no idea what happened to it, or what lies beyond until a scout returns.

There are some problems with this, though. I wanted to have icons on a resource sheet showing the status of all your units (so you could know what''s going on at a glance and issue commands to whole squads or just one unit). They would naturally be grayed out if they left your radar chain. But if they got destroyed, it wouldn''t be right to remove that icon until you know they have been destroyed. But then, how will you know until one of your units sees the wreckage and comes back? And what if the engine removes the wreckage to manage storage space?

Just a little design paradigm I haven''t quite worked out yet.

Easy just have them marked as MIA(missing in action) on the resource sheet.




-----------------------------------------------------
Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

Thanks for all of the good suggestions! I might not respond to everyone's ideas here, though I dont think there was an idea here that I didnt really like, so.. yeah... rambling...

Many have stated that they wish that controlling individual units durring battle or atleast give them more complex commands to start with, not just attack this building here... I dont care how you get there, or where you are attacking from or who attacks you on the way. One thing that annoyed me in some of these games is when I send an army to go attack only to find they were ambushed, but didnt bother to defend themselfs... they were so worried about getting to their attack point, they all died... kinda sux. What I think I will implement as of now to fix this somewhat:

I already have it setup where you can do more than tell a unit where to go. You can set waypoints so units travel to each in a specified order, and hopefully I will implent a method to allow you to state how quickly the unit travels to each way-point, and how well the unit should try to stay out of sight. If you would like the unit to be sneaky, it will probobly take that unit longer to travel. If, you just need it to get ther ASAP, it will not try to sneak past anyone or try to be covert.

Also, I am hoping to have a to a mission mode, where you can create a mission. For example, you tell each unit or group of units where you would like them to go, when they should get there, how cautious of being seen/heard/etc they should be, etc... Also, one idea I had is to be able to control the unit's defense/offense stance anywhere from say 1 to 10. where 1 would be extremely defensive and 10 nearly suisidal (like most RTS games today... if there is a tank at pointblank aimed at them, they stand there ground even if they only have a couple of knives ;P) I think this area needs to be expanded on more though. Say I am giving commands to a unit. Do you think the 3(cautiousness/agressiveness/quickness) settings I have come up with will suffice or would you rather see more/less some different... Basically, how would you like to be able to control your units?

Got kinda carried away, but in that mission mode, you could design a mission to a large amount of detail before any units are even created. Then once you get something figured out, you can create the units you will need, and send them off to do their parts in their respective places. Some things you would be able to plan would be those 3 I mentioned above, plus which order units/buildings should be attacked, who should stand 'in front of' who... and maybe even into which units are msot important. You could say flag a group of tanks you would like to use to take out the main base with as 'vital', and then units would go out of their way to protect them. How much control would you liek to have, and how would you like to use this control? What do you think of the idea of creating missions ahead of time and sending your units off to battle? This is much different then the common method used today where you must conduct a battle in real-time. This is ofcorse not how real battles occur for the same reason... its too hard to control everyon eat once in real-time with enough precision to carry out any kind of detailed stradegy.

I would really like my game to focus on more on how each unit is used instead of how many of which unit you have. I guess this is a bit counter to the idea where you can designyour own custom units, but we will see... I would like for a player to be able to defeat an army of say 100 units with ameager 10 if stradegy is used by the player with 10 and not with the one of 100... I REALLY would like stradegy to be a focus...

to make a quick list of things I will look into implementing:

-much much better ability to conduct battles/stradgize (sp?)
--plan battles ahead of time
--simple method for grouping units. commands can and often will go out to platoons, etc...
--smarter units... (defend your self if you will obviously fail attacking)
-communication system
--units out of range, can not be 'seen'
---good point about how to handle the quickly large number of lost units that floods the system... ideas?
--try to be frugal with communications, it's not hard for an enemy to use 3towers and figure out where the message is comming from...
-Line of Sight
--units can not spot things behind them... maybe if we can set the units' covertness, it checks for units from behind more often, etc...
-unit experience
--maybe the full range of settings such as covertness/aggressiveness/all other attributes, will not be available to less experienced units. experienced units slowly gather better attributes
-ability to enter buildings
--I am wondering what level of gameplay this adds... maybe it would be a little more simple to just let units enter buildings and even hide in them... this allows you to still get all of the gameplay you were wanting without me having to render the inside of buildings ;P also then the player doesnt have to order his units around every building in the camp... I think this is mostly an issue of preference.

With all of that in mind, what other kinds of things would you guys like to see? Love the ideas so far!!!

dwiel

[EDIT]the last 2 or 3 posts were made while I was typing this...
I really like the MIA list. Good call.
I am currently working on a system which will provide completely random maps with interesting terrain... I couldnt agree with you more here
dont remember if I mentioned the point that units inside a platoon or group or w/e should stick together... good idea anyway, one that will hopefully be implemented...

[edited by - Tazzel3d on January 12, 2004 5:32:59 PM]

[edited by - Tazzel3d on January 12, 2004 5:34:11 PM]

-when you upgrade a technology every unit you have instantly gets the new improved version X, even if they are engaged at the time and totally cutoff from supplies, i hate this. much better IMO to have, once the upgrade is done all new units benifit from it but all old units must be rotated from the front to be retrofitted with new equipment.

-Supply lines would be kinda cool too.

-dont know how it would fit in with your game but for the "Age of.." series i really would have liked a temperary militia force; you should be able to call to arms your civilians, but at the cost that once the battle ends they take a while to return to full effectiveness at their prewar jobs.

-for more modern / postmodern games a code makeing/breaking tech or upgrade would be really nice. Think about what a large part american codebreakers did in WW2, this is never included in games.

- moral; this was in closecombat, wouldn''t you be woried if you were facing down a panzer with a rifle?

- fireteam or larger units, never seen one or 2 men go out to war on their own myself!

- new ways of getting money/resurces, harvesting the enviroment is overdone, time for something new.