Some positive feed back thus far. The game that I'm working on at the moment is a strategy game. In the mission planning phase not only to plan out mission objectives and review any intel you've gather you also pick the gear that your team will be using from your supplies. Two concerns I have though involve the player being faced with the unanticipated.

For instance if the players sends in a commando team without the proper equipment it could mean the team can't overcome obstacles that they encounter, and could possibly lead to death of the entire team. How would you as the player feel if you failed a mission because you decided to bring a few extra ammo clips, only to discover on mission that what you really needed was some extra computer spikes or a few wall taps. Or in another care going into a base armed with anti personal weapons only tofaced with a rampaging Manticore that decimates the entire team in a matter of seconds.

Edit: terrible grammer on my part.

[Edited by - TechnoGoth on January 18, 2005 8:02:52 AM]

Quote:

Original post by TechnoGoth For instance if they send in a commando team with out the proper equipment it could mean the team can't overcome obstacles they encounter and possibly get wiped out entirely.

Generally I think there are two ways to deal with this. 1) Provide player with NPC leader or support that are geared for the mission. If the NPC dies, the player can strip the eq. 2) Place item required to complete the mission in the area for player to find. Either way, it's a simple level design issue IMO.

Quote:

Original post by firewindshadow Generally I think there are two ways to deal with this. 1) Provide player with NPC leader or support that are geared for the mission. If the NPC dies, the player can strip the eq. 2) Place item required to complete the mission in the area for player to find. Either way, it's a simple level design issue IMO.

It doesn't make much sense in my project for the commondo team to be able to find needed items lying around on the missions they undertake. After all its not about killing people and looting their corpses. Also except for a few story specific missions all other the other missions are ones the player has created in order to persue their goals. For instance you might decided to send a commondo team to raid a research facility in order to steal valuable research data. Now chances are a member of the commondo team could pick up a replacement firearm from a dead guard, if they run out of ammo. But they are not going to find access codes and equipment to get them into the high security mainframe unless they brought them with them.

[Edited by - TechnoGoth on January 17, 2005 3:11:13 AM]

Have alternative ways to reach the goal.

Unfortuantly having multiple paths to each goal isn't always possible, for one thing the goals are all user assigned and would depend entirerly on what the player was trying to achomplish.

I think the best thing to do is to not hold the players hand allow them to learn from their own mistakes. If the player send a commondo team into a base to break into a vault, and doesn't bring the nessary equipment to achive this goal then I can hardly be expected to provide the needed equipment on sight for them.

What I will do though to ease the burden on the player is to have the team leader of a mission automatically choose and assign equipment to thier team. The player can then alter this equipment as they wish.

That should satisfy everyone.

Quote:

Original post by TechnoGoth How would you as the player feel if your failed a mission because you decided to bring a few extra ammo clips, only to discover on mission that what you really needed was couple extra computer spikes or even a couple of wall taps. Or to going into a base armed with anti personal weapons only to faced with a rampaging Manticore the decimates your entire team in a matter of seconds.

I'd find this very annoying.

It would be marginally less annoying if there was sufficient intelligence to give me a good idea exactly what I need, because at least then mission success wouldn't be entirely based on guesswork, but at the same time, I'm not sure I'd necessarily want to read through a load of crap at the start of each mission in order to know exactly what equipment I need to take through.

As a middle ground, how about some kind of mobile HQ vehicle that can carry a wide selection of equipment. This would be parked/hovered out of the way to avoid detection in most cases, while the commandos went in. If you found that you needed some item desperately, you could pull some men out, rendezvous with the HQ and re-equip them. It would screw up your original plan, and it would waste time, but at least you'd have a shot at completing the mission rather than failing completely.