Delayed Time Strategy

Its an interesting game, and a very interesting concept. I've played very few games like it, and I did enjoy it, though it was a bit slow. I never finished a game, but I would have lost every one I played. To my noobish mind, the tactics didn't seem very advanced. It might help a lot if you could choose the port your ship could come out of, so that you could concentrate on one side even if the AI was dominating the main field.

I would like to play it when its finished, it could be very absorbing.

To answer your question directly, yes I did find it a bit slow, but I haven't played any other games in the genre, so I can't compare it directly to any other games.

Sorry, I can't play your game (I have a mac) but I can chip in with my 2c.

After your last command, after which nothing you do will change the game, the time is wasted. If it's interesting and fun to watch, then it's okay.

If you haven't already, check out the grow series of games here. That's about as far as I would take it, and even then it's a bit annoying the time spent waiting to see if you have succeeded. It's fun to watch the animations for the first 5 or so tries, but it gets tedious.

A lot of games work off a short response time to react to events, even in the non action genre. Increasing the length of time to either see the result of your actions or resond to an event will increase frustration. To counteract this frustration you can either make the process enjoyable (fun to watch) or the results not as significant (not life / death).

If your game is similar to the grow concept (the correct sequence of moves is required to win) then try to keep the length of time until the outcome is known to a minimum, or make it easier so the player won't have to sit through with no interaction over and over. It's a balance, and different players will have different levels of what they are prepared to go through.

Look at it from a practical perspective, is it important to show the slow sequence of events? Would it function the same if the result of your choices were known fairly quickly? You want to have some time peroid so the game isn't a quick test of all the possibilities, and some of the time will be communicating what happened and what the player could to to get further, but all in all the game would have the same dynamics if it wasn't delayed.

The only reasons for the delay are to communicate what happened, waste time so the game isn't short and possibly entertain.

My opinion is make sure it isn't long, that the time where the player has no interaction is informative or entertaining or both. Try to make it interesting as possible and not just waste time for the hell of it.

I just tried your game. Here are my (quite lengthy) comments. The delayed result is interesting but I feel the decisions the player must take are not varied enough to justify the many different ships. I understand the varied ships are just there to allow the player to have lower cost ships in case he has less money (due to upgrade for example). Still the spaceships play the same way and except the mining drone do not exhibit interesting different behaviour.

The player faces three decisions:
- Mine asteroids
- Attack Baseship/Vessel
- Upgrade Baseship defence

The first one is justified. Perhaps add a different size of asteroid to vary the amount gained and to reward the massive production of mining drones by both players. A large asteroid may need many mining drones before it is mined out.

The second one is also justified but as I said above, the ships make no difference. When I build a ship, it automatically aims for an enemy ship. If none are present, it aims for the baseship. We could extend the decisions by specializing the ships on actions:
- a baseship killer: bad against other ships, good against baseship (High protection, low rate of fire, low moving factor, high devastation power). This ship ignores other ships and heads straight to the enemy baseship.
- a ship interceptor: bad against baseship, good against other ships (low protection, high rate of fire, high moving factor, low devastation power).
This ship first targets other ships. If none are present, you could have two options: either make it head back to the base or make it attack the enemy baseship.

The third action is not rewarded enough. It is interesting for buying the player
time but it is degraded each time the baseship is attacked. This action is not rewarded enough: the player will in the end try to build a maximum of offensive vessels to overpower the enemy baseship. I propose that the upgrading action be split in two: upgrade baseship and upgrade ships. The first will definitely upgrade the baseship and have no impact on the baseship health. The second upgrades the ship characteristics to a maximum. When the player upgrades the baseship, the spaceship characteristics will be reset to the minimum giving the player back low cost spaceships.

The length of the game feels long and the player expects for a small game to play fast (not necessarily to be brought to an end quickly see tetris for example). Besides the low number of actions which I have already commented on, there is another drawback: the user interface goes in the way of the playing experience. The vessel list is not unique but separated between three bays which must be manually selected. There is no indications of the impact of upgrading the baseship or wether the player action was taken into account or not (try clicking thrice on the build mining drone action - how do you know it has taken into account building three drone ?). Perhaps you could show the action queue and let the player modify it while the orders have not been executed. The player does not see enough the amount of money he has and must look across the playing field to find out where the baseship health is and where the baseship upgrade level is.

To sum up, here are my proposals:
- reduce the number of vessels to three (mining drone, baseship killer, ship interceptor)
- increase the player options (build mining drone, build baseship killer, build ship interceptor, upgrade baseship defence, upgrade spaceships, repair baseship, repair all ships [this action makes all available ships to return to the base and to come back when repaired]).
- vary the size of asteroid.
- improve the user interface to have a clear view of all the available actions and to show what is the status of the player and his enemy.
- add some chrome (exploding asteroids, warning lights when enemy vessels approach) so that the player feels he must take decisive actions to win the day.

That is all for the moment.
Ghostly yours,
Red.

Sounds like you could do something like rock paper scissors, where there is a circle of sorts.

Stolen (as far as I remember) from Homeworld 2:

Fighters are good against bombers
Gunships are good against light ships
Frigates are good against light ships and gunships
Destroyers are good against medium ships
Battleships are good against destoryers and medium ships
Bombers are good against capital class ships (destroyers and battleships)

This way you will get more interaction with the choices you make, more strategy with your choices.

Thinking about it, you should include base attacking and defence in the 'loop'.

Then again, I could be completely off because I haven't played your game.

Thanks for the comments, definitely some interesting suggestions in there.

I'm curious as to what you guys thought of that other game I mentioned, Medieval Clash. I really enjoyed that game, did you guys think it suffered from the same shortcomings as mine?

I just played medieval clash.
The actions are more diversified:
- build wood cutter
- build warrior: warriors are distinguished and have different behaviours (a horse based warrior goes faster and has resilience power against a foot warrior for example).
- build siege engine: fires directly at the enemy tower
- build tower protection
- repair tower

The player and enemy information are found in the same corner. In one glance I have both tower health level, the elements I can build and their price, the amount of money I have.

There is no delay when I order to build an element: it immediately appears. The delay in the action result lies in the element movement accross the countryside. In fact the moving area is larger than it looks because each tower are on a hill and thus elements move in diagonal. If both tower were on a plain, the delay between action and result would not be as great since elements would travel across a smaller place.

Ghostly yours,
Red.

I thought Crimson Warfare was a better implementation of a similar concept. It used a rock/paper/scissors system combined with an interesting rythm system and some pretty good base building/economy/upgrade options to make it interesting. It took me some getting used to, but once you find the hotkeys you can really go fast.

EDIT: I was comparing Cromson Warfare to Medieval Clash, not to your game.

[Edited by - Iron Chef Carnage on December 16, 2005 12:47:07 PM]

My addition to the list of comments on your game :)

First, I think I got what the other people meant by "slow game": the enemy base must have a billion hit points! It should be much much weaker, even with the cheats it took forever to win. To balance this there should be an option that repairs a bit, but not too much.

Another thing is that the ships take lots of time to get out of the bays. They should get out as soon as the button is pressed; the delayed time shouldn't be completely dead "wait until it finishes building" time IMHO.

Finally, the interface. I have a suggestion: forget the side bar and show the buttons for building directly below each dock. 3 buttons below a dock is fine. You should also use icons, reading the names hinders the gaming a lot (no matter how cool they are). Try to keep every important button and piece of information in the same area.

If you address these issues, I'm sure it would be much more fun even for the casual gamer (especially for the casual gamer! :)


[EDIT]

Re-reading my post I realized it seems like I didn't like your game -- this is not true, I enjoyed it very much and just discovered that this sort of game is really cool :P

The problem is that it's hard to get it right. Crimsom Warfare has a cluttered and complicated interface, and I'm still not sure who kills who. I guess this is a common mistake in these games. The interface of Medieval Clash was perfect, but the 1D battlefield didn't leave much room for strategy, I like your concept better. Yours is almost there IMO :)

[Edited by - Jotaf on December 16, 2005 12:15:36 PM]