(Before I start, this is not an actual game I'm attempting, dear god no. I'm just throwing ideas around and creating a GDD to work on.) Hi there! I've been working on this idea recently, and was wondering if I could get some feedback. It is a realistic in gameplay, but unrealistic in setting, Naval Warfare game that combines RTS and 3rd person action mechanics set in the 15th - 18th centuries. I'll describe the game, then ask a few questions to that'll help me finish off the idea. ---------------------------------------- Average Multiplayer Round Everyone is in the lobby, where you can see the chosen map, rules and other players. Before the game begins, you select a flagship and captain. Everyone readys up and the game begins. Every player starts in RTS mode, where they have control over their ship only, and have access to menus for crew allocation and repairs, can select where to move and who to attack etc. This would be pretty automatic, but could be manually changed for more experienced players who can manage this themselves. As well as firing cannon volleys at each other you can choose to ram other ships or grapple and board, or send out a boat to sneak up and board. As you play, you earn some sort of points which for the moment I shall call captain points. These are used for power-ups in RTS mode and to switch to 3rd person mode for when you board. Boarding would consist of getting on to the enemy ship and killing key Officers, such as the Captain, First Mate and Quarter Master. If you don't have enough points then this is automatic, otherwise you do this in 3rd erson view and control the Captain. If you succeed then the ship becomes controlled by your AI team mates. As well as the players, there are a number of AI ships that can do all player ships can do, but are chosen from pre-built template ships. Upon a player captains death the player becomes the captain of one of these ships, which are generally weaker than player ships but allow you to continue without the round ending. The winners in my fictional round would be the ones to sink or route the enemy fleet (morale would come into this somehow....) Of course other gamemodes are available such as port defense or escort. ------------------------------------------- Notes: Flagship- These are the main player ships and are created in a module based editor before the game. This would work on a points system, eg Small Hull is 1000 points, 2 extra cannon ports 200 points. 5 of these could be saved to choose between in the lobby. Maybe unlockable aesthetic upgrades from single player? Flags and ship paints. Crew uniforms. Hrm Captain- There would be different classes of captain, based on stereotypes from the era. Pirate captains would be good at boarding, but suffer in reload times for cannon. Admiral S. UpperLip would excel at range and get morale bonuses but is weak at melee. Your captain would also affect what your crew looks like, pirates get striped rag uniforms and eyepatches whils the Admiral Upperlip gets Redcoat Marines. These are only aesthetic changes. Maybe you could change your Captains clothes too? Wind and Current- For sail ships these make the map alot harder to navigate and make positioning more important then just lining up and firing. Can be negated somewhat by adding rows of oars, using up crew but making you faster up stream. ---------------------------------------- Question Time! 1. Would you play a game like this? If not why not? 2. What visual style would you prefer? Bright carribean cartoon-y a-la Sid Miers Pirates! or a more drab, realistic style a-la Empire-Total War. 3. Are there any features you would like to see added? ---------------------------------------- ALSO: Please don't write Tl;Dr. It doesn't help, and, well, who cares if you didn't read it? Thanks in advance, feel free to ask if there is something you didn't understand, or I didn't explain properly (most likely the latter).

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Question Time! 1. Would you play a game like this? If not why not? 2. What visual style would you prefer? Bright carribean cartoon-y a-la Sid Miers Pirates! or a more drab, realistic style a-la Empire-Total War. 3. Are there any features you would like to see added?

1. Maybe. I'm still not all that clear about what it is that draws me to a game.
2. It wouldn't matter much to me.
3. There probably would be things I'd be wanting when playing but it's hard to tell what that is just now.

I'm not entirely clear on how the game would be laid out. Does your primary view show your captain on the ship shouting orders to crew or do you see an overview of the ship on the ocean relative to the other ships?

I get the image of something done in the style of old Final Fantasy games. Play a captain running around on the ship shouting out orders. Limit the view somewhat so that it's more like you can only see what people on the ship would see keepping combat to that sort of view. Also, if you're part of a fleet, maybe limit communication between ships by whatever techniques were available at the time. I'm basically thinking that when people were on those sorts of old ships they didn't have vast overhead displays to work with so I kinda wonder how something like that would be to play.

Competing against other people could certainly be fun. But personally I'd want some sort of single player campaign to get through.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

I'm just focusing on multiplayer at the moment, so I can't say much on single player.
The way I saw it though was when you started you had an overhead camera, like a normal RTS and but it would be limited to an area around your ship, like in Total War games I guess. Only when boarding took place would you switch to 3rd person and take part in the actual fighting. There would be a minimap though that shows the positions of other ships.

Disclaimer: the following game would not work in the 15th-18th century.

Kseh had a really interesting point. While many games feature 3rd person naval combat, few have first person game-play, and even fewer execute it well. Perhaps having some manner of control panel on board the ship (lets you view the world from a 3rd person perspective (satellite imaging) and give orders from it, but you still control a person: regardless of whether or not your ship is sunk, if you die, you lose. Losing members of the chain of command would give more lag for your orders to take effect. You can also manually give commands while on board the ship (shout for someone to repair a hole in the deck, put out a fire, get a weapon functional again) which you can't do while in the 3rd person viewpoint.

The 3rd person tactical could only really be used early game, because once the combat starts you'll want to be in the thick of things, or at least ensuring your ship stays afloat, as well as you could give your allies a good morale buff if your near them.

Every aspect of the game-play described would work with this system, and might be more fun. Having you feel like a character who's life depends on victory would be more interesting than swapping between a god and a random captain.

That's just my 5 cents. Do whatever you want.

What games do you know that have 3rd person naval combat? You said many but I can only think of Rise and Fall: Civs at War. Do you mean an RTS, birds eye camera? Technically that is 3rd person, but not usually reffered to as one in games. 3rd person, for me, means over the shoulder as in GRAW, Gears of War etc.

Sounds a lot like Sid Meier's Pirates, right down to the boarding and killing the opposing captain.