One of the things in Elemental we've been thinking hard on is how the economic system in the game should work. Elemental is, first and foremost, about building a civilization that happens to exist in a world filled with magic.
So when it comes to building things, we are trying to get away from the classic "N production units". There are, for instance, no factories in Elemental. We want players to really understand just how big of a deal it is for a civilization to be able to produce mounted warriors who have metal armor and metal weapons. It's not just knowing how to build such a unit, it's being able to put together the infrastructure to produce such a unit.
Players don't research types of units, they research technologies. Players then design their own units and those designs require certain resources. A basic soldier with a club is pretty easy. You take a guy, arm him with a big stick. A better soldier might involve same guy, armed with same stick but trained. Now he's much much better but it will obviously take longer to get that unit. It's not about production then, it's about time.
A still better soldier might be equipped a bronze sword instead of the stick. But that bronze sword didn't just come out of nowhere. The metal had to be mined and then forged and then delivered. Of course, the challenge from a game-design point of view is that you don't want players to be forced to micro-manage such things. It's supposed to be a strategy game, not an inventory management game. And so, you make that issue something for your civilization to deal with - not the player.
A given land tile may have a metal resource on it. The player builds a mine on it. That mine then produces N units of metal per turn. That metal then flows to the keep's inventory (in the city). When the keep's inventory gets filled, it then starts getting sent out to other cities (little caravans start appearing on the map delivering this stuff). All of this is automated but evidence of a growing civilization. Players can build warehouses to store more inventory of a resource. A player can also build an armory which produces weapons which flow again into the keep's inventory and then into warehouses if built and then out to the country side to other cities. Players can build roads to increase the speed in which these resources make it (and incidentally, these caravans only go out sporadically so the map isn't going to be full of these units running around and they're not true units, they'll be almost like decoration except when attacked).
So when I go to build a unit, the amount of time it takes to build that unit is going to be based on decisions I made -- what am I equipping him with. How much training am I giving him? And of course, since populations of "cities" range from 100 to 1 million or so, one of the resources units require are people. A village of 100 people obviously can't conjure up a legion no matter how much money and resources you have.
How will all this actually be implemented? That's where the open beta will come into play. Our development tools allow us to quickly implement many different concepts and UI's. that's where a lot of our work has gone into so that we can make changes like this. Players saw hints of this in Galactic Civilizations where we could make dramatic changes to the game based on player feedback but it's nothing compared to what we've built for Elemental.
So for instance, do players want to prioritize where these caravans go? How much control do players want of this kind of thing? Would it be more fun to actually have technology branches dedicated to having governors (not AI, just bonuses to supply) that "manage" this. These are some of the many things that players will be involved in.
The main thing I wanted to get across is that we are not going to have the traditional "N units of production". Players will be able to design their units, design how much training (a small squad of elite soldiers or a huge mob of untrained brutes or somewhere in between?), decide how well equipped you want them to be and so on. It's not about sending out a knight. There is no "knight" unit unless you choose to call a unit you designed that has a horse, a soldier who has been trained, plate mail, sword, helmet, etc. a knight when you save it. How long would this knight take to create? Possibly very little time at all if you have the plate mail, sword, helmet, and horse ready to go. Then it's just a matter of the training time. Otherwise, it could take quite a long time (the game will estimate the time based on arriving supplies).
Hopefully this gives you a glimpse at the strategic depth we want to provide players. The choices for players in how they want to play this game are endless.
Why don't we have just have demand 'pull' supplies just as much as supply 'pushes' them, and have potential demand define the level of 'enough'? This would be the simplest way of doing things, I think. Have three goals:
1) Satisfy all existing production orders as quickly as possible
2) The tricky one where we figure out which towns should have their 'minimum stock' (which is determined by their potential use of the resource if they start to produce a lot) filled first, those that need a little bit in case they build something that needs it, those that may need a lot for unit production, or a geographical solution designed to minimize transit times to outlying cities and cities that have all the other resources they need, and so will have their production delayed (I favor this one, but it'll be the hardest to get right).
3) Once all cities have their minimum stock filled, keep their stocks proportional to their ability to produce using this resource until they literally cannot use all their stock before recieving shipments.
4) Continue stocking the resource based on the ability of the city to outproduce supply.
5) The catchall, just stock it proportional to remaining room in the city warehouse.
There are a few key elements to this on the player's end that aren't traditionally encountered, though. Marking units as obsolete will have importance to the distribution of resources, because the obsoleted units won't be used to calculate the utilization potential of a city, so they can change the priority different cities get. Additionally, this means that user production orders can have a large effect on the pattern their shipments take, as can the production of unnecessary buildings, but I feel the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, and that this should keep close to a well microed system (not a brilliant one, though, but solid enough to not be a disadvantage).
If you add;
0.5) Send X amount to City Y as demanded by the player.
I love it.
Sammual
Enjoy some Karma
I find that Stars! is really enjoyable when you are customizing your race and deciding on a strategy, or researching up to a new hull. But once you actually get to playing the game it's kind of a letdown.
Yep. That is why I stated it is a "spreadsheet gamer" title.
Will we be able to upgrade preexisting units if the materials are available? For example, if I have a city garrisoned by broze-wearing pikemen and it receives a shipment of iron armor for some reason, can I give the pikemen the armor to save on training time?
I hope a full upgrade system will be implemented. Frankly speaking it is something else I simply assumed would be in the title.
I can't see it being ignored. When you "build" a unit, you can choose the level of training. Why couldn't you train that unit after it's been created? No reason I can see, other than it might tie up your training facility (assuming there needs to be a dedicated spot for this). And why couldn't you re-equip a unit with something else? In both scenarios, you might have to pay the full cost of the upgrading, but I can't see it as more expensive.
The cool thing here, potentially, is you can create a unit with basic training and tools, and upgrade them later into something more lethal. It increases the value of manpower and encourages retaining troups (instead of simply buying more).
Well Frogboy is a pretty froggy about these things and Boogiebac seems like a smart cookie and this is his first project as lead so I think there is no need to worry at the moment.
I'm not worried. Just some stuff to think through.
So, where does this leave Zubaz?
The official mascot of course.
I thought that was Brad.
The official imperial spy in this hive of scum and villainy (and now Star Wars references )
What's your opinion on automatic upgrades? I like the idea in most respects, but where should it fir in the assingment queue for that resource? I'd say put it after any production (of course, the question is whether to stock a bit in case the user wants to do that, but that's kind of a rare case, and the user can make new units to use the old equipment if needed), and prompt the user if it lowers any stats.
Auto is bad unless it follows some sort of optional and customizable governor setup. You don't necessarily want all your spearmen to upgrade to pikes later. Depending on how detailed the system is, having light archer units for kiting enemy heavy infantry would get them massecred when they upgraded to plate mail.
I really meant armor upgrades within the same class and the like, not upgrading between different kinds of equipment. I'm starting to think of a lot more reasons not to like it, though. Best sweep that one under the rug.
I agree auto is bad. If it is an option for users then OK but othewise I dont like it.
Um, done right, auto is good. If I'm going from type A armor 1 to type A armor 2 (light armor to light armor, heavy to heavy) or from iron swords to steal swords, why would I not want to have that occur?
That question would of course depend on your strategy, econ and unit disposition as well as location at the time of the upgrade. Again if done "right" is the big issue.
Because with the description so far, even the same type of unit to a slightly more advanced one isn't necessarily good. I've got a bunch of spearmen, I start making pikes, intending to add to my army. My spearmen auto upgrade to pikemen, using all my pikes... Even if the economics are far more simplified, unless I get all the resources back, in which case the economy system is kind of a joke, that upgrade is at a loss. Upgrading a veteran unit to better equipment I want to do, but the fresh one is going to be pure waste.
I think you'll have to say what unit you want and then, and only then, the comp will calculate what you need and when you have everything poof a new unit(so nothing automatic there, it's always a player choice).
Well this definately is starting to sound like a very interesting game without a doubt.
Of course the question is to what extend this goes to, i mean what unit.. types i suppose one would call it since there aren't any specific units anymore Will there be magic wielding units ? or will that be beholden to Heroes and the Leader ? and this training, what benefits could be granted from that than beyond just making them tougher in combat ? Could it be used to create engineering units ? or sappers for that matter ! Although that might depend on how advanced the tech can become i suppose.
Otherwise i must say this grants a lot of interesting possiblities, right from massive slave levies (if slaves are something that is in the game ) with Small Elite units among them, to more "regular" armies as well. And what about city specializations ? Where one could tie a specific unit type to a city for certain bonuses ? Both city wise and unit wise.
Why would this be? When you upgrade, the old equipment should go back into the stockpile the new equipment came from. Upgrading shouldn't be at a loss, especially at this time, when weapons were rare and rarely truly outdated.
what if you're shipping +20 swords of dnd reference to the city that you want to go to a new royal guard unit, and the peasants keep 'upgrading' to them and you have to manually unequip them? That's bloody annoying (I know that in my example which is the only way I'd want to see it the production order would mean the swords get saved, but what if the swords take forever to make so you started production early). You'd need to manually do a good bit of work to unequip the swords from the peasants. This isn't to say I don't want any auto upgrading at all, I think that for non-magical weapons, upgrading within the same type of weapon/armor (so bronze plate to steel plate), upgrades should be automatic if the auto upgrader is turned on. I also don't want to see cross weapon type upgrading unless ordered, both because it would be confusing and annoying, and because I think that upgrading to an unfamiliar type of weapon should come at a penalty to experience (not a particularly large one, but enough to make the question of whether it's just easier to disband an outdated militia come up).
Ideally, your peasants aren't going to be using the same type of weapons as your elite guards -- if they are, something is wrong with your paradign.
Ok, so my spearmen auto upgrade to pikemen, leave me with spears, I make more spearmen... Why wouldn't I just make pikemen to start with?
My guys with wooden clubs upgrade to swordsmen, and leave me with wooden clubs?
I don't know about you, but if they don't need retrained at some cost after that change, I'm going to be pretty pissy about it. If I ever use wooden clubs after having more advanced metal weaponry, I want someone to come and kill me because I'm obviously too stupid to be allowed oxygen.
An auto upgrade that can't be customized or disabled with either be pointless, fucking annoying, or dick cheese. There is no perfect outcome here.
That's the point. Swords are good weapons, and if your peasants you're giving iron swords to stay cheap start taking the astoundingly expensive +30 swords of d&dness, that's bad.
Which is why auto done right is desireable. In my case, I want my high-end units to get the best of everything right away, with the results 'trickling down' to everything else (I hate trickle down economics in real life, but here it works great). Someone else might want his army on as even a keel as possible so upgrade the base units first. I don't know how the UI would control this, mind you, but ideas are welcome!
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