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[Anvilfolk]

Cool, those are exactly the kinds of things I was thinking of! And, you can definitely see a few of those in the movie as well.

I've been thinking quite a bit about tech trees, new unit types, etc, but I'm just worried that that will require a whole lot of balancing which I'm not sure I'm the best at. Things will definitely be moddable enough that people will be able to play around with that though.

I am already planning on nukes though, which are thematic and involve a whole lot of destruction, but could add lighter versions of area-of-effect weapons, like grenades. The way I've always thought about the balance of these is, the more destruction a weapon causes, the lower the potential for research from the remains.

So, if you nuke a huge incoming swarm you're definitely safe, but unlikely to grow much more. If you try to fight, you risk loosing a base and lots of troops (giving bugs the upper edge), but might have an enormous boost in research in case you win. This balancing act could be the core of gameplay.

[ScriptWolf]

oh god i want this so bad ! love the idea Anvilfolk i have always wanted a starship troopers RTS

For research would be cool if you uncover more bug types as you rile them up you end up discovering more types of them ?, also having more then +1 attack some coolers stuff like new weapons with sprites and or buildings other stuff would be cool

[Mephansteras]

Cool, those are exactly the kinds of things I was thinking of! And, you can definitely see a few of those in the movie as well.

I've been thinking quite a bit about tech trees, new unit types, etc, but I'm just worried that that will require a whole lot of balancing which I'm not sure I'm the best at. Things will definitely be moddable enough that people will be able to play around with that though.

I am already planning on nukes though, which are thematic and involve a whole lot of destruction, but could add lighter versions of area-of-effect weapons, like grenades. The way I've always thought about the balance of these is, the more destruction a weapon causes, the lower the potential for research from the remains.

So, if you nuke a huge incoming swarm you're definitely safe, but unlikely to grow much more. If you try to fight, you risk loosing a base and lots of troops (giving bugs the upper edge), but might have an enormous boost in research in case you win. This balancing act could be the core of gameplay.

I like those ideas.

Maybe also add in some way to capture a Bug live. It'd be dangerous, but you'd get much better research out of it.

[Anvilfolk]

That's another thing I keep thinking about, also inspired by the scene in the movie where they are testing new ammo or whatever on a live bug!

Implementing in a balanced way might be more complicated. To make sure the system can't be super abused, I'm thinking something like the following:
- You might have some units/weapons that do stun damage.
- Stunning does a lot less damage than regular damage, so that a few Bugs can take out quite a few people only capable of doing stun damage.
- Stun damage fades over time, meaning unless you keep stunning the bug, he's going to wake up and want breakfast!
- To actually bring a stunned live creature back, you'll need loads of men, like 6-8 to a single creature. This ensures that bringing lots of creatures back reduces the amount of available troops by quite a bit.
- Perhaps it requires a specific alien containment upgrade that's expensive?

I don't want people to have to over-micromanage, which might become a problem with this, so I'm leaving this feature for later implementation, after we figure out if basic gameplay is complicated or not

Will make a later post trying to specify what ideas I have for how you win and gain an advantage over the bugs.

[Mephansteras]

Seems wise to hold off until the rest of the stuff gets working properly.

However, I'm thinking the most logical way of handling it would be to select a Bug and mark it as 'Capture'. Then your soldiers that are attacking it can switch focus and work on subduing it and bringing it back to base. They should automatically form a group that has enough people to bring it down and carry it back, without any player intervention. Of course, while they're trying that they could get ganked by other bugs if they don't have enough support. Too few soldiers just shouldn't try at all.

This would require both some initial tech, a holding center, and a situation calm enough that you can spare to have a bunch of guys all focus on dealing with a single bug for a reasonably long period of time.

Should reduce the micromanagement part while still making it a risky endeavor that you can't just go and do whenever you want. You have to either plan carefully for it or snatch an opportunity that presents itself.

[Anvilfolk]

Yeah, that could definitely work! How would stun damage and real damage work though? I guess that if the total of stun damage+actual damage exceeds HP, the creature is stunned but alive. However, research from a live capture should reflect how hard it is to capture bugs, so that research is proportional to HP - actual damage. Meaning that if you stun the bug for its entire HP, then it's worth a million research points, and if you all but kill it, and then stun it at the end, you'll get very little research. This could definitely work, so that if you have numerical superiority you could capture a few.



Regarding how the game plays out at a higher level, here's some ideas:
- Bugs start with one hive and slowly gather food. ALL corpses provide food. Fight over the spoils! They can tunnel to anywhere, giving them fast, hidden, transportation highways. They can also tunnel right into the Terran's base. Lots of factors affect tunnel cost, namely, how far from a hive they are, Terran ground plating, and how reinforced against nukes they are. Tunnels start out hidden, and then bugs can break them open suddenly in an ambush move. Hives are similar to tunnels but possibly generate more food, and can be used to create new troops. They also serve as outposts, since they make tunnelling cheaper!
- Terrans will essentially pick their fights, trying to get as much research as possible. They are constantly balancing the risk/reward of less effective fighting vs getting more research from the spoils. They should be creating small outposts that they can use as staging areas for further attacks. They'll be able to drop expensive beacons which search for bug activity (tunnels, hives, etc). This search takes quite a while to find anything, and beacons are vulnerable, meaning they are going to have to be defended in remote places... also, the Bugs are alerted to the beacon's probing ways, so that they KNOW where to attack.

I can't figure out Terran reinforcements. I like the idea that Terran fleets are arriving every now and then, so you have very limited access to new troops, meaning you need them to survive... but I dislike the idea that if you loose too many troops then there's little you can do, so I'm not sure.



On the technical side, I put in a couple more hours yesterday and I've gotten the basic code down for gathering research from dead bodies. I still need to test and debug it, but the infrastructure's there. I'll hopefully finish that this weekend. The system for Bug food is going to be very similar, so yay.

I think I might add Bug drones, which look a LOT like warriors but only gather corpses. They can also be used in feints, because they are so similar. This is what happened in the book, not the movies.


And again:
- Please help me flesh out the gameplay! Any new unit ideas? Resource ideas? Feature ideas? I'd love a "stance" system, but am not sure how it'd work. Or is this core enough? I'm not a particular fan of tech trees, but a decent one might be a plus?
- Please help me sprite! It takes me forever, and the graphics suck! Usually the problem is finding a programmer. Doesn't anyone want to influence the entire style of the game? There's a single sprites.png file with associated sprites.psd file. If you keep the sprites within the same sizes, you don't even need to fiddle with .xml files! Also, there are quite a few easier sprites, such as for buildings, that we can talk about and add.
- Any ideas for good sounds I can use? I can barely stand those rifles sounds, which are literally me clicking my tongue at the computer... :\

[Mephansteras]

Yeah, that could definitely work! How would stun damage and real damage work though? I guess that if the total of stun damage+actual damage exceeds HP, the creature is stunned but alive. However, research from a live capture should reflect how hard it is to capture bugs, so that research is proportional to HP - actual damage. Meaning that if you stun the bug for its entire HP, then it's worth a million research points, and if you all but kill it, and then stun it at the end, you'll get very little research. This could definitely work, so that if you have numerical superiority you could capture a few.

That sounds reasonable.

I can't figure out Terran reinforcements. I like the idea that Terran fleets are arriving every now and then, so you have very limited access to new troops, meaning you need them to survive... but I dislike the idea that if you loose too many troops then there's little you can do, so I'm not sure.

Hmm...maybe some sort of 'Terran Support' supply counter that slowly goes up. You can use it for various type of reinforcements (Soldiers, Air Strikes, Major Supplies like landmines or Nukes, that sort of thing). If you have enough types of reinforcement actions at different costs, you should be able to do something all the time, even if it's just hold out long enough to build up for a major rebuild/counterstrike.

On the technical side, I put in a couple more hours yesterday and I've gotten the basic code down for gathering research from dead bodies. I still need to test and debug it, but the infrastructure's there. I'll hopefully finish that this weekend. The system for Bug food is going to be very similar, so yay.

I think I might add Bug drones, which look a LOT like warriors but only gather corpses. They can also be used in feints, because they are so similar. This is what happened in the book, not the movies.

I really like that idea!

- Please help me flesh out the gameplay! Any new unit ideas? Resource ideas? Feature ideas? I'd love a "stance" system, but am not sure how it'd work. Or is this core enough? I'm not a particular fan of tech trees, but a decent one might be a plus?

Soldier types:
    Infantryman - Basic soldier. Uses your standard assault rifles, body armor, grenades, etc. Should be the core of the force.
    Heavy Weapons - Shouldn't have too many of them, and they are of limited use except in their specific role. Machinegunners can hold a spot, but can't move once set up without taking down the gun, can't move while firing, have a slow set-up/take-down time. Rockets/Grenade launchers are effective but have limited ammo and can cause friendly fire. Stuff like that.
    Medics - Lightly armed and armored, they mostly try to grab wounded soldiers and take them back to base to patch them up.
    Engineers - Mostly work on building bases, repairing bases, and setting up various specialty equipment. Lightly armored but maybe have assault rifles?
    Snipers - Low rate of fire, have a slow set-up time (but can get up in a hurry). Very effective, but are very much single-target attackers and will be quickly overrun if left without support.

Stances:
   Should be automatic, with increased accuracy from kneeling and even more from lying down. Soldiers will take the appropriate stance depending on how far away the Bugs are, and will default to standing ( so they can retreat/dodge ) if the bugs are rapidly approaching. Might need some logic to keep them from bouncing up and down if waves of bugs keep getting killed with reinforcements rapidly advancing behind them. Maybe a timer so that soldiers who just got up don't go back down until at least 10 seconds or so have passed?

I'm generally against resources for this, other than bug/bug parts to research. You're an invasion force with a finite amount of resources on hand, anything you don't have will have to be shipped down. You're not manufacturing anything on-site.

A tech tree probably isn't too necessary. Maybe just go for a randomized research aspect where you build up research points and the game periodically checks to see if you have enough for whatever it decides the scientists are researching on. If they do, you get something and the points are deducted. You don't really direct them so much as grab stuff for them to research on and occasionally you get notification of a Breakthrough.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

I think some sort of wall fortification should be added in. Especially once that can be garrisoned by infantry

[mastahcheese]

New Unit Ideas:
=Terrans
-A sniper unit, with long range and slow reload.
-A heavy unit, with a large machine gun that has to be deployed. Possibly with sandbags.
-Missile units? Maybe rockets/bombs/grenades, for Area-of-effect damage.
-Flamethrowers, because flamethrowers.
=Bugs
-An artillery unit. (In the Roughnecks TV series, there were huge bugs that spit projectiles in an arc, and at air units.)
Resource ideas:
-Maybe a Terran Acquisition resource? You would gain it over time to simulate the Terrans putting more money and investment into the war effort. You could use it to buy new units, possibly new upgrades, maybe powers like a bombing run with planes.
Feature Ideas:
-Bombing runs with air units.
-Space to ground weapons (sort of same idea as bombing runs.)
-Maybe track ammo for individual marines, and make them have to reload/pick up more ammo.

I might be able to help with the spriting, maybe. Where are the files for those, again?
As for sounds, I suck at those. I think you can find some free sound archives on the web.

Ninja'd twice

[Anvilfolk]

The snipers in particular should be really easy to implement. Just copy-paste the Terran Grunt information, increase damage and decrease reload times in the .xml

One of the main things I'm wary of is adding more stuff because it's possible. We should definitely focus on a really slick, experience. What do snipers give us? There will probably always be too many bugs on screen to target a single one effectively. AoE soldiers is a good idea, but since we are always expecting massed attacks, they should, again, reduce the amount of research available from corpses.

I also like the idea of heavy MGs that need to be deployed, but I was wondering whether that wouldn't be essentially the same as static defences. The bugs are gonna move fast enough that deploying/undeploying probably is going to be inconsequential. They stay behind, they get slaughtered!

I also got research gathering working this morning. I think I'm gonna work on the interface, being able to order things around, that kind of stuff. Right now I'm just hacking it to test stuff more easily.

Updated the OP with the newer video and a new picture.


The files are at https://github.com/Anvilfolk/nEngine/tree/master/7drl/planet5521/data - you should definitely let me know if/when you are changing them though, because you can't really merge those like source code. The GitHub application is nice, and then you'd have a copy of the game on your computer, so you could toy around with it as well.

[10ebbor10]

On a side note, here have some more research ideas, neatly organized into categories. Actually, there's only a single category, but anyway.

Spoiler: Bug Biochemistry (click to show/hide)

Studying the bugs has allowed us insight into their philosophy, the way they communicate, and how to change that.

-Bioweaponry: A virus engineered specifically to attack and kill bugs. Weakens them, and slowly kills them. However, they adapt quickly, and every adaption lessens the effectivity of other bioresearch
-Hive Pheromones: Apparently the bugs use pheromones for secondary communication. Using this, we can throw them into disarray, forcing them to attack, retreat, and start/stop gathering food. For a moment, anyway. With each use, more specimens become resistant, and developing a new pheromone becomes harder.
-Biosignature scanners: We can track their biosignatures with special orbital satellites, allowing us to discover them before they tunnel up to hit us. However, as the bugs adapt, our sattelites start to fail to recognize them.

The idea of this Category is to make a tech that's fairly potent, but becomes weaker the more you use it. The longer you wait, the harder it hits.

Unit suggestions
-Dedicated units to attack underground and Anti air. A small vehicle, remniscant of an oil drill, that inject gas or other types of weaponry into the ground. Or maybe some of those pneumatic echo devices they use to find oil deposits

[Xantalos]

For the snipers, maybe they could be equipped with laser rifles of some sort that damage bugs to a certain extent in the dirction they're pointing at (ie all bugs within x meters of sniper would take x damage), but it isn't too too much?
That will probably end up being a new unit type.
...
Also you need flamers. You just do. Flamethrower guys are essential.

[mastahcheese]

Also you need flamers. You just do. Flamethrower guys are essential.

I CAN'T +1 THIS ENOUGH TIMES.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

bugs should also get some sorta incendiary thing, remember that scene from the movie where that lady's arm gets burned off and those 2 dudes get flamed?

[Xantalos]

bugs should also get some sorta incendiary thing, remember that scene from the movie where that lady's arm gets burned off and those 2 dudes get flamed?

Tanker bugs = yes.