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Original post by Rycross Achron is attempting to create an RTS where time-travel is possible, and time acts sort-of like a resource. You can actually go back in time up to 2 minutes ago, depending on how much time-travel energy you have, and destroy enemies units. Causality waves can destroy those units, or in the case of factories and all, units that the buildings produced.

That's actually a really cool idea. I'd love to see how that project turns out.

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Original post by Portugal Stew I would be very entertained if time was a literal resource that you have to mine or else your entire operation simply slows down. There could even be a supply chain for time, where you actually have to ship time to bases if they do not have an immediately available time mine. You don't even really have to conquer your enemy's base in that case, because if you completely cut off their time supply then they can't move.

Oooooooooh, do want! The problem is that you'd have to bring a lot of time into battle with you if you're going to attack near their time mine, because they'll have tons and tons of time near there, and therefore probably be able to get off two or three attacks to your one, per unit.

I think I'd be inclined to have a time-emitting unit, and the ability to slow down time is focussed on a radius around that unit. You could then have the option of affecting a large radius for a short time, or a small radius for a longer time.

Unit upgrades could include things that minimise the impact of the time distortion on your own units. So you could slow down a load of enemy tanks, and then send in your own tanks with 'time-armour' that move and shoot at their normal speed. This would give you a massive advantage when you initiate time-combat. However the enemy time-emitter runs at a different frequency, so if they deploy a time-bubble, your units are slowed down, and their upgraded units run at a normal speed.

Starcraft 2 features a Protoss unit with a time distortion shield. It works pretty much how you described.

Thanks everyone for the reply s,

I see Portugal Stew has interest in strategy games.

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Original post by Portugal Stew I would be very entertained if time was a literal resource that you have to mine or else your entire operation simply slows down. There could even be a supply chain for time, where you actually have to ship time to bases if they do not have an immediately available time mine. You don't even really have to conquer your enemy's base in that case, because if you completely cut off their time supply then they can't move.

I wouldn't ad the resource gathering as a primary thing, but without time resources you will be already dead. Although It could be a game type in which you would stop without time.

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Original post by Rycross Achron is attempting to create an RTS where time-travel is possible, and time acts sort-of like a resource. You can actually go back in time up to 2 minutes ago, depending on how much time-travel energy you have, and destroy enemies units. Causality waves can destroy those units, or in the case of factories and all, units that the buildings produced. Its a fairly interesting idea, and I hope it pans out. Apparently, you can play the game like a normal RTS (no time-travel) quite successfully too.

I see its not uncommon idea, but Archon has time traveling, which depends on AI very much and think that phew players make changes to the time line- there would be lag or if the game isn't made properly, the consequences made by going to the past would plan out differently on two separated computers.
I think I wouldn't ad time traveling to my game and leave only time slowing/ fastening because I see it could turn out frustrating at some points and AI could do things that you wouldn't do. Also I want my game to be faster and this could lengthen the time of the battle, even its interesting thing to travel in time (but someone's head could explode from this).

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Original post by Portugal Stew Quote: Original post by Rycross Achron is attempting to create an RTS where time-travel is possible, and time acts sort-of like a resource. You can actually go back in time up to 2 minutes ago, depending on how much time-travel energy you have, and destroy enemies units. Causality waves can destroy those units, or in the case of factories and all, units that the buildings produced. That's actually a really cool idea. I'd love to see how that project turns out.

Yes, it is a cool idea.

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Original post by Bursar I think I'd be inclined to have a time-emitting unit, and the ability to slow down time is focussed on a radius around that unit. You could then have the option of affecting a large radius for a short time, or a small radius for a longer time. Unit upgrades could include things that minimise the impact of the time distortion on your own units. So you could slow down a load of enemy tanks, and then send in your own tanks with 'time-armour' that move and shoot at their normal speed. This would give you a massive advantage when you initiate time-combat. However the enemy time-emitter runs at a different frequency, so if they deploy a time-bubble, your units are slowed down, and their upgraded units run at a normal speed.

This concept also would fit to my game because no going back to the past would be involved. There could be phew tech trees:
Mass (map) time slowing,
Accurate time slowing: for single unit to move fast efficiently (not creating a bubble every two meters),
Counter time slowing: disturbing enemy's abilities,
Philosophical (no reply had for some reason): makes your units less disturbed if stopped int the battle, researches the time that takes for enemy's solider to be disorientated( imagine there comes the enemy and suddenly time stops around you and you don't know when it continues)

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Original post by BeanDog Quote: Original post by Portugal Stew I would be very entertained if time was a literal resource that you have to mine or else your entire operation simply slows down. There could even be a supply chain for time, where you actually have to ship time to bases if they do not have an immediately available time mine. You don't even really have to conquer your enemy's base in that case, because if you completely cut off their time supply then they can't move. Oooooooooh, do want! The problem is that you'd have to bring a lot of time into battle with you if you're going to attack near their time mine, because they'll have tons and tons of time near there, and therefore probably be able to get off two or three attacks to your one, per unit.

And so could you.
You could also take a truck with units and stealthy move it near enemy's base and using time resources deploy them in one time and attack from behind.

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Original post by doomhascome How about this: there is a lag between unit orders and when the order it carried out. Start it off with a 1 sec delay. It can be modified to more or less by the time resource.

The output of lag would be very similar:

Solider moves 10 meters in one second, with slow motion two seconds;
Solider gets order after one second so he gets there also in two seconds.

I still don't think its a good thing.


I would like to hear your compares about time traveling/only slowing speeding time.

Thanks for your reply's.

A couple of other ways to use "Chronotons":

- Use Chronotons to duplicate a unit (could be how you build units), however, duplicated units are vulnerable because if one is hurt they all get hurt (so if you had infantry created like this, if one is reduced to 1/2 hit points, they all are, and if it is killed, they all are killed).

- Use chronotons to speed up a unit/zone: This would cause a unit (or any units - including enemies - in the zone) to act faster than normal giving it a higher rate of fire, movement, healing, construction, projectiles, etc.

- Use chronotons to slow a unit/zone: Just like the speeding up unit/zone effect, but instead slows them down. High levels of this might actually stop time in the zone (and if you slow down a zone and then speed up your own units, you could do some interesting things).

- Time jump a Unit/Zone: Use chronotons to jump a unit (or units in a zone) to a future time. The effect is that they pop out of existence for a few second and then reappear as if nothing happened (from the units perspective, they would have just travelled forwards in time).

- Time step: really just a teleport, but with the added restrictions that the unit must be able to get there by themselves and with the added bonus of the unit recovers hit points, energy, etc as if it had taken the time to move there (you work out the time it would take for the unit to reach the destination and then calculate what effect this time would have on the unit's stats).

- Time manipulation: This would be a super weapon. This would actually reverse the time of the game (think of the game "Braid"). Anything that has happened would reverse and reset to the new time (this would be very expensive and the further back you want to go the more it would take). The game would resume at the point the time line was reversed to. At most, this should be limited to around 5 seconds. It will create a new time line (so no going forwards).

- Temporal protection: This is the counter super weapon to the Time manipulation idea. This would protect any unit/zone from effects of any time powers/weapons. If this is in place then the power has no effect on them. This can also be played on enemy units (so kill the commander and put the temporal protection on him and the other player can't resurrect them by using Time manipulation.

- Replay: A period of time is replayed in the current time (you have to store it first). So a unit might be killed, but if you have stored a unit then you can bring them back for a short period of time (it is a bit like the Duplicating idea, but anything that happens to this created unit does not effect the real one).

What you really need to do is to store all the data from what occurs in the game (this is easy as many games are able to store and play the replays). The difference is that you can do this during the game to achieve in game effects.