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Just had another idea on game mechanics. You know how RTS factions are usually wildly different from one another in technology and classes? Well what if we did something like that to balance out all the different kinds of gameplay we want to offer. I mean, on the one hand, you want to be able to do stuff on the ground as an individual player or infantryman, or play around with tanks or mechs or other ground vehicles. On the other hand, you have space ships which can do orbital bombardment whilst being untouchable to all those things on the ground. So how do we resolve these major differences to avoid invalidating certain types of gameplay?

I think we do it by switching up the compatible technologies. For instance, we want mechs and tanks to be a valid option on the ground, so why would anyone go with that instead of just hovering a big ship at low altitude and rain down destruction? Maybe there can be antigravity devices, but they have diminishing return and thus limit the size of ships which can move freely in atmosphere. Maybe there can be a star wars remote shield generator deal where you can't bring in the big guns unless you take out the shield generator first.

Then different faction tech can have different specialties which are incompatible with other faction's stuff. Or more accurately, you can mix and match, but rather than rock-paper-scissors advantages, you are encouraged to concentrate your resources on a faction-specific tactic.


I'm not sure how well this would work in practice. RTSes are really challenging to balance, and this is world is a bit too open-ended to be using the same well-regulated and carefully balanced scenarios you would expect from that sort of game. But I thnk the factioning idea still holds merit. I really want to see some legitimate mecha-based warfare.

As the guy with the mecha based faction, I agree with this, although the balancing issue could be overcome by just having a set of standard units (planes, mechs, tanks, giant space badgers, whatever) and have the faction units look different (so you can tell what faction it is) but the faction units have the same stats as regular units.

That avoids imbalanced units, a shield thingy would be a good idea, or massive anti ship cannons, which stop you from getting too close.

As far as providing a counter to just raining down death and destruction from the heavens, EVE's DUST 514 FPS addon has these huuuuge AAA guns that must be disabled before any starship captain in the right mind will cruise in and help the poor bloody infantrymen. Having these as an option for factions would lead to some very interesting sieges.

A shield generator could work in multiple scenarios, it could be used on the ground to defend from a space borne attack, or it could be used on a mother ship or something to defend it from an enemy attack, where enemy soldiers would have to infiltrate the vessel to deactivate the generator, and disable it, then either take over the ship, or evacuate the ship before the ship is blown up. Or fail.

Shields are already confirmed, I think.

To balance things out, though, methinks a shield big enough to encompass a planet would not be able to provide selective permeability to projectiles. The big ground guns wouldn't exactly be useful when the shields are up. And, as such travel would also be disabled, creating a stigma to having it online all the time. Ideally, perhaps a roaring barrage from the planetside cannons before raising the shield would be an ideal strategy. But then this could be circumvented by having orbital cannons akin to Halo's Super MACs...heh, it opens up a whole new can of possibilities.

I think you will most likely want to project your planetary shield with ~100 sattelites instead of 1 big shield generator on the ground.

I'd rather have the generator protected within the shield then be vulnerable to the threat I'm trying to defend against in the first place.

Orbital defense stations and city shields are the way to go for balance, I think.

Spacecraft first, mecha later.

Naturally, but it doesn't hurt to plan ahead. With the amount of fight terrain rendering is giving me, it's going to be a while before I can even start on space.

Keon wrote:Spacecraft first, mecha later.

That's not the question.

It would be cool if we could have a few different part manufacturers that could make different types of mecha, tank, ship parts to give different play styles a twist. Like having one manufacturer only make high-speed engines, but the only armor compatible is a very light mesh. Each company would have a specific name and skin for each part.

That's what I was getting at with factions, but manufacturers would work, too.

I think the easiest way to do something like this would just be to say that for any given ship, you've got x points to spend on engines, weapons, sensors, shields, what have you. Fast engines cost five points, and really fast engines cost ten. If you have really fast engines, you probably can't afford really strong weapons, too, or at least if you did you'd hardly have any shields and sensors at all. That allows for nicely customized ships that are still fairly balanced, but it doesn't lend itself so well to what I think you're getting at, which is more like one faction having higher maximum possible engines at the cost of lower maximum possible shields. I dunno how to do that.

The Core system helps implement that suggestion, LJS.