I am a n00b and should roll out my l33t speak now – yes I should I am talking about an mmo* game. I deserve to be flamed for my slightest desire to start a mmo* topic. The truth of the matter is that I have done not enough research on this topic but I guess enough to put some demo code on the line. My basic idea is make a standard rts but have a single world on a server where everyone plays. Screenshot: http://www.atlantisinterior.com/galacticus/screenshots/shot1.JPG General specs are of my demo : 3d world – 2d map (but units are flat *so far* anyways) Genre: abstract-space (ships are made of energy and span many light-years in size) Main resource is energy (computation would come as 2nd resource) Tested with 4 people on line at same time Plays – horribly (bigger map and balance is needed) Looks – simplistic (which I like – it has a style) Lag – is bad (I run the server from a home cable conection) So far tested with 4 people on line at same time was a success. (Linux and Windows clients) After getting this far I think the mmorts are very possible and quite different from most games. In design I foresee couple of problems which I would like this thread to address: Problem 1 hardware: Server data requirements can be astonishly high. Battles with thousands of units can eat up server as well as users bandwidth very fast. I the beginning I had 25 units eat up all my computer bandwidth. Now this problem been fixed by sending only needed information and using couple lag hiding tricks. Your thoughts on this? (Should probably go into a separate thread) Problem 2 game play: I only saw one play type on my open server tests so far. Player login builds an army – kills every one on the map. There is little hope that an offline player could defend against online player. So far my idea is to construct much better defensive turrets then any offence unit to tilt the balance. What do you think about games where it’s very easy to heavily fortify a location? Second idea is make some sort of AI but it can be lured into traps very easily if not made right. RTS AI is a complex endeavor what do you think? Problem 3 game play: Ok so we got our well defended players and they keep growing and growing and finally they are so big they control the entire game world and no new player can rise up. One solution to this is to have the world expandable – new planets – new galaxies. The other is to make size of the empire not a factor of victory. Make a factor of victory some thing like “ratios.” I am talking about ratio of expansion to time, ratio of inflicting damage to cost of units. Primary resource in my game demo is energy so it makes things simple if you spend 1e to destroy 20e you are 10 times “better” then some one who spend 1000e to destroy 2000e. What are your ideas this key issue? Problem 4 player interest. I don’t think that I cam correct in assuming that just because there is not that many mmorts’s around it shows that the game type is not popular and would not be popular? Tell you the truth I am a n00b at game development – heck the game demo itself is written in elegant multiplatform Python and good old OpenGL … not the fancy M$ C# and DX3d.net people crave about!

I like the look of your graphics. Have a nice retro feel but in a 3d way.

Anyway I think you've hit on some of the problems with any MMO type game when your avatar remains in the world while you're offline. This problem goes back to the old BBS days where only one person could be logged in at a time. In those cases your opponent was always off line. :)

A couple possible solutions that work are:

1. Limit the number of moves per day. Then someone can't crush you by just staying online and continuing the attack. This is sub optimal as you really want to have people playing 20 hours a day.

2. Make offline defense crazy tough to crack. Basically when you go offline your armies go into a turtle shell. Once again this is sub-optimal as it means you end up only attacking people who are online. And then if you're getting beat you just log off for defence.

3. Have an AI take over your defence while you're offline and make it upgradeable. Basically you can choose to build up your AI instead of developing more of your tech tree.

Either way I think the concept of a MMORTS will eventually work. And I think you want long time players to be able to build up crazy armies. Makes for epic battles. Maybe start nOObs off in a different "galaxy" until their army is big enough. Might be a good way to split up your server usage as well.

Make it so that your world is 'bendable,' by which I mean all the factions in the game are player-controlled, and when a n00b begins they can either start off on their own or join one of the larger player forces. Combine that with the ability to rob a player of his/her forces (but make it REALLY hard to do so, and only possible with a lot of support/a bigger force/the said player's consent (a temporary version of the last option could possibly solve the offline defence problem)) and you could have all sorts of in-faction politics and an easy to enter but tricky to master world of betrayals and backstabbing. Fun.

Adding the ability to order vassals around and to qpunish said vassals if they don't obey you should give an experienced emperor plenty of reason to continue playing and make massive-scale wars possible.

Limiting the number of moves per day should be more like hours per day. But then some people may play 6 hours on weekends while 30 min on weekdays. I think I will get complaints about “Your in-game time expired” message. Would you like that?

Turtle shell when players log off line I have thought about – but players logging off for defense is a problem but it can take effect 5 minutes after player logs off.

Buildable AI? Sounds complicated. The main reason I don’t want AI is because people who play mmogs want to play with other people not AI. They can do this at home but then again AI helper. Kind of unsure at this point currently I think I will have the simple AI but have tough defenses.

I will most certainty include faction support – some thing with shared vision and maybe control of your buddy’s units when he is off line.

Robbing units? That is an interesting idea but I don’t see it feasible in a large scale way. Sharing is caring – I think I should have some of that.

Political world of betrayals and backstabbing is fun and that is why I made my mmorts in the 1st place because of the even deeper immersion then the standard mmorpg grindmill.

Currently my idea is to use aggressor flags. When player attacks a far weaker player he becomes an aggressor. Any player can attack an aggressor even a much stronger one. Player stops being aggressor after some time or he looses about 25% of his empire. (he has been punished)

I was hoping that this system will prevent n00b killing and stronger vs weaker combat will not be advantageous because then even stronger guys will come beat on you. But its not 100% fact you might get a way with it … See any shortcomings to this system?

Another question is how to I score such a game? Most obvious is size of economy, size of army. Then maybe number of kills or number of battles won / battles lost … or relay my favorite damage inflicted / damage sustained. Given a good thought all of those measures of victory and skill are good. Maybe have winner in every category?

How much in game in-management do you think I should do? Have some kind of a dev-faction with witch communicate to n00bs in game and maybe provide AI type protection to weaker players. Some strong player attacks a new player off line and this heavy imperial guardians hyperspace in to defend against such injustice.

Your thoughts please?

My immediate thought is 'thank god it's a space game'.

To preserve units / facilities when a player isn't logged in, have their 'fleet' disappear back into 'hyperspace'. Job's a good one. Then you have basically a standard MMO framework, where players gain 'experience' (fleet strength) and go and do 'quests' (missions) either against NPC forces or potentially other players.

You're going to need to go the Dawn of War / Homeworld route of controlling and tracking groups by selection, not individual ships - let the clients sort out what's going on 'precisely', and just model the group strengths on the server.

What Id say to focus on things that take awhile, you can't attack and kill everyone with a huge army over night, cause it takes a week to build up a army decent enough to take out a city, and then a couple of days to get your army on the borders of the defenders boundarys and while your on a campaign to attack others, you can't keep building up your army, managing your towns resoruces, while the defence can, giving them the advantage.

A attackers force should be twice the size to have a decent chance of destroying the defence, any less, and the benefit should go towards the defense

If you logoff without a decent defence after your intelligence reports a army is headying your way, no wonder you logon the next day to find everything has been destroyed

This way, a newbie should be able to hide long enough to build up some defense

It takes resources and effort to control a large empire. So have your game reflect this. The larger your empire the harder it is to maintain it. Have rebal factions springing up all over the place. A simple AI could handle these (eg: Attack nearest base/planet/fleet). These also could form seeds for new players to start in (either start their own empire or take over a rebel group).

You could also have one or more ratings. Thyese ratings can influence events (like rebels arising). One rating might be honour. If thye initiated an attack on a vastly inferior opponent (newbie) then their honour rating would go down. The lower the honour rating the more dissatisfied the populus is with their ruler (the player) and the more rebels will form. Thus if a player, goes PKing newbies, they will find that their honour will plumet and they will have to fing internal strife. In effect it will become self balencing.

AI Rebel factions will automatically attack the players so they will get labeled as an aggressor, so the player won't loose honour for attacking them (self defence). This will also stop greifers from causeing too much damage by starting a new account and attacking another player to force the player's honour lower (but it gives the griefers an opertunity to participate in the game by allowing them to act as a rebel faction and scince the AI is super aggrssive, a greifer would act identical to the same as the AI). Griefers can become an essential part of the game's community, not a problem, but a solution.

To reduce the problems associated with times the player is logged out, you could have all actions occure at a slower pace and then reduce the micromanagement. Instead of the player controling individual ships, ofr groups of ships, give them control over fleets. They could descide the composition and basic strategies and tactics, but have the game do the calculations behind the scenes (so to speak).

this means that the player can set a particular defence strategies and tactics for the various fleets at their disposal and then will not need to respond to an imediate incursions, as the attacker has just as much control over their fleets as the player who is logged out.

Some of the AI settings could be:
1) Response radius: At what distance do they detect threats
2) Threat Threashold: At what level of concentration of ships constitutes a threat
3) Flee Threashold: At what point will this fleet attempt to flee an engagement
4) Target Priorities: Which groups of you ships will target what enemy ship types an in what order of priority (and at what threashold amount - use simple greater than/less than conditionals).

Those our all good idias. I thought about having the entire fleet disappear but then there is nothing permanent about the players I wanted to model my game to more of a standard rts type like Total Annihilation, Starcraft, Warcraft, Command and Conquer – just have it out in pure space on a largest scale ever done before. Disappearing fleet is something easer to do homeword style with star system hopping for RU’s.

I really like the idea how griefers can be come part of the game. Have some thing like “griefers click here” button? Or have all new players rebel from a larger player?

Some of the AI settings I thought are building blocks are:
Response radius: At what distance do they attack units
Pursue radius: To what distance do they chase the enemy
Return position: Where they go back to
Other Ai settings are just more customization like:
flee threshold
attack threshold
call for help radius
respond to help radius (may be even hyper spacing in)

I love the PKing newbies decreases honor. How good do you think if I make this honor the winning criteria for the game? Sound honorable but then no one will ever attack any one and there will be 100% honor for all.

I thought giving player control over fleets not individual ships and came to conclusion that ships/fleets don’t matter – it’s still a unit you control. It’s the number of units that you are concerned about. It makes not difference if this is one ship or 1000 ships as long as they behave the same. I aso think one ship looks better then 1000 ships because you really cant make out what they are just 1000 dots.

So if game is design for you to have around 25 units per battle – that’s ok! So far I see 5 classes of units.
Fast scount
Fast general unit (cavalry)
Hard short range ( knight )
Long range( archer )
Big long range ( catapult )
Pawn units ( pike man )

I don’t think I will make it very easy for players to have 1000 vs 1000 unit battles.

Tech tree what you think I should do about it?

Hiding of newbie is one of my thoughts. Have star gates to move your ship any where in the galaxy in a second not next to any other unit. And have the location of star gates known to everyone. This way if a newbie does not have a star gate good luck finding him. This concept will also make it convenient to attack online/same size players as you are get score for it. Because you can tell where they are by looking at star gate map.

Aren't armies analogous to clans/guilds? So why should a single player here control an entire army? Have players control squadrons, platoons, battalions and so forth, with some of the superior/subordinate officers being humans and some being AI (balancing would then be a matter of ensuring that none of the sides in the war/conflict had a disproportionately high number of humans). This way, even if a couple of humans are offline, a couple will be online, and there will always be AI to at least ensure the team puts up a fight.

Make all units dependent on [insert resource], and make it so that the only way for the units to maintain effectiveness (and increase in number) is to physically move over a resource spot on the surface of the planet. Instead of just harvester units, entire armies would move from resource spot to resource spot.

Once a resource spot is spent, a new resource spot will spawn somewhere else. Certain areas of the planet could spawn bigger resource spots, drawing the bigger armies towards those areas, because large armies would not be able to gather enough resources from the smaller resource spots to keep their units operating at full capacity.

Limiting the number of resource spots will force players to fight over them. Some players may opt for the in-and-out tactic, building an army made up of nothing but fast units, which would allow them to run for the nearest resource spot, and retreat from it as soon as an army built for strength shows up. Others may build slower, tougher armies, which are very hard to remove from a resource spot once they establish a presence, or armies specifically designed to drive other armies off a resource spot.

In order to allow armies to remain present even when a player logs off, you could make it so that destroying another army's units does not result in a gain of resources, or in only very little gain. The energy spent to destroy an army whose player is off-line would be greater than the energy gained, making the process unattractive to all but those that simply want to cause havoc.

Of course, if, like Oluseyi suggested, you make armies consist of several parts (squadrons, platoons, batallions, etc) and give each player of a team control of one of those parts, the existence of completely dormant armies can be avoided, as with a little bit of cooperation, teams can ensure that at any one time, at least one human being is in control of that team's army.