Hi all, I’m in the middle of writing a TBS and would like to get some feedback on an idea I’ve had for unit movements. I must admit I haven’t played that many TBS games before so let me know if this idea is already being implemented in another game. Also, note that the game I’m keen on developing won’t be aimed at the hardcore TBS enthusiast, but will be bent more towards the casual gamer who likes puzzle games. Now, from what I’ve seen far, in most TBS games, each player is allowed to move their units a certain amount and perform some other actions for each unit they have on every turn. My idea is to utilise an ‘action points’ system, where you can move any unit to any location as long as the amount of ‘action points’ doesn’t exceed the number of points you currently have. For example, say at the beginning of your turn you have 10 action points. You can move a mounted knight 3 tiles at a cost of 6 action points, ( 2 per tile), and move a foot soldier 1 unit at a cost of 4 points, (4 per tile). Or, you could redistribute the points so the knight can move 1 tile and the soldier can move 2. The number of action points allocated to you for each turn would increase and decrease depending on certain factors, like the number of units you have or the number of buildings you own. There would of course be certain limits imposed on unit movements such that if you have 100 action points, you couldn’t move a mounted knight 50 tiles in one go. Does this idea sound plausible? Could there be any issues with using such a technique? Has it been used before in another game? Do goldfish fish sleep at night? Thanks, 6 P.S any links to some good shareware TBS games would also be appreciated.

So, what your saying is, rather then giving units their own individual Action Points, you have a Action Pool so to speak and spend points from the pool to move individual units. Hmm.. can't say i've seen it done like that, but if your imposing limits on unit movement then i'm not sure i see much of a different between giving each unit their own points and having a common pool. They both tend to achieve the same thing, unless you plan on having time spent on other tasks, like an omni-resource.

The Underdogs is an excelent source of many types of games, i'm quite sure you'll find an arsenal of TBS's to look at.

I did something similar for a design way back for a board game and later tried it in BASIC. I ran into problems of first-move wins.

Do the points persist between turns and are the turns done in sequence or concurrently(that's the great thing about computer games, it's easier for turns to be done at the same time)? I used action points for attacks as well.

I also had much fun adding upgrade options to units, which had to be paid for every turn and adding new attack, defense, and movement options. What kind of units and setting are you using? This can also be useful for targeting and then keeping casual players, reel them in with the basic moves and simple gameplay but add stuff for depth when they're ready.

This is novel in my experience.

Roland's problem with first-turn wins is something that I foresee. After all, if you have enough action points for a team of five to act in a turn, and you can use them all to have one guy sprint a mile and shoot a dozen times, then what's to prevent a player from using his characters as "lives", making each one go all-out until he gets beaten, and then switching to a different one.

If you balance it well, I'll be impressed, and it would be neat to see how such a system could be made to work. Fallout did this with just one character, and it was terrific. If you use multiple characters, you might want to think about how to make sure that they don't all just channel their potential into one guy. It would hurt the suspension of disbelief (if I stand still, then Jim can run twice as far, and if the heavy gunner holds his fire, the sniper can get two more shots off).

Thanks for the replies, there are some interesting points there. You're right, I was thinking of having a 'pool' of points that could be distributed as you see fit and, yes, you are also right that could be abused into an unfair advantage if not balanced well.

In my minds eye, the game is going to be aimed at those who aren't keen on spending hours playing a single map, that the player prefers a faster more action/puzzle type game. For that reason i'll be limiting the number of units to 20 for a players army. A player will also be able to combine up to 4 units in a single group there by allowing 5 groups to moved as 5 single units.

As mentioned before, the number of points will limited to a single unit even if the pool is quite large. It would sort of work like a bit like this.

First, add up all the points each unit is allocated; a knight = 6, a soldier = 4, total = 10. Then double the number of tiles a unit can move to work out its maximum distance. So if a soldier can move 1 tile every 4 units as a basic move, its maximum move is now 2 tiles at a cost of 8. I would perhaps include some kind of penalty where you lose more action points the further a unit goes over its normal move, but I'll have to work on that.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback, if it hasn't been implemented before, i'll have a play around with the code and try to get it working.