When I was a younger man, before I became the old and decrepit 24 year old before you, there was a little-known game not much unlike this one. It was fun, nerdy, made by a small yet very active company (before Microsoft got it, I guess), and had a small, dedicated community of players. Okay, not "Holy crap there are 200 people on ICO at the same time?!" small, but you get the idea. The game was Mechcommander and one of the leagues formed around it went by the name of Steel Command.
The SCL was a heavily role-played league which used Mechcommander as a vehicle to wage an enormous interstellar war between the various Battletech factions (faction websites still exist today, in all their 1998 glory). Factions would fight for territory and resources. They would commit Mechs and other resources to battles, then play out those battles in the game. There was diplomacy and even an enormous map which was manually updated to reflect faction ownership changes (this was back before the web was "dynamic"
I think a league like this would work well in Sins for a few reasons. First of all, it is asynchronous. That is, factions can schedule games or just issue orders ("Explore this planet", etc.) and won't need to randomly have a whole lot of players on at the same time (this is the main reason clans don't work right now). Secondly, Sins is very customizable, which is required for this sort of thing to work. The Map Designer is quick and dirty, but the real power lies in Galaxy Forge (assuming it gets fixed) which allows maps to be custom-tailored to battles. With this customization combined with the fact that different battles can have different supply caps, sizes and so forth, games can be long or short depending on the battle setup and include any number of other variables.
Sins games can be incredibly long, back and forth, intense experiences even though the action isn't necessarily constant -- that's what I love about it. You have to make big decisions -- do I build up and dig in or rush? Do I save that planet being attacked or do I counter? -- which can affect where you are an hour later. But what if the game didn't end in an hour, a day, or a month? What if there were an entire Universe to conquer and not just a star or two at a time?
If there's a game out now that could be used to resurrect the enormous scope and breadth of Steel Command, it is almost certainly Sins. However, this is no minor task and will require dedication and effort from many -- not to mention players! I'm not sure if we have enough people yet, but we'd have to start somewhere. This would be a considerable undertaking and I am already extremely low on free time, so I'm putting this out now to see what sort of interest there is, if any. Please provide feedback!
P.S. If you're wondering who would actually make the site for this, the answer is me. I do it for a living so we've at least got that part covered.
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT!
Like what you've read so far? Then check this out!
Okay folks, it seems like we have enough people interested to make an official inquiry here on the boards. The way I see it, we need a minimum of 25 people to start really getting the ball rolling in an official way on this thing. To that end, I have created a form that interested parties should fill out. It shouldn't take more than 30 seconds and will give me a way to keep track of people with serious interest.
One of the questions asks what you want your "role" to be; I have created the following roles with my recommendation of minimum numbers to fulfill in parenthesis (assumes 3 initial factions; one for each race):
Fill out the form here: http://binjured.wufoo.com/forms/sins-league-signup/
Thank you in advance!
(Entrenchment required for membership for the time being; with more players, hopefully we can have two leagues... but that's a dream for now.)
I used to play in SCL Was in Draconis Combine. Wow, that was ages ago.
Anyway, we used to talk about something like this during the Sins beta, but it's mostly something for the players to set up. Unfortunately MechCommander had a benefit of being based in an established universe with official maps and such that made it a lot easier. What's a galaxy map in Sins look like?
Ah, I'm so pleased to find another SCL member, nobody ever knows what I'm talking about. I was in FedCom, at least you aren't a tube-born You're correct in that the Battletech Universe is more established than Sin's, to say the very least. A galaxy map in Sins would look like... whatever we want it to! Or we just steal as much as possible from BT and repurpose it
Edit: And yes, it was ages ago... well, about a decade anyway. And I'm pretty sure I've been trying to bring it back for that long, too. My first company was going to be based off of SCL in spirit, but it will have to be the second or third one now.
SCL!!!!! I never got to join but wanted too so bad. Love MechCommander! Wanted to Join either Ghost Bear or Clan Wolf.
If we can get something like this started on SINS I could die happy!!! I am happy to help set this up!
Wolf attacked a DC planet once. We had no forces stationed there so we had to do a militia battle (vehicles vs mechs ....) and of course I got to do that crappy fight.
'Course, it ended up in me winning (the attacker was the Wolf second in command, which made it all the sweeter), which was good because not a whole lot of militia battles were won by people, but bad because I became the "militia guy" and I kept getting them
Man, MechCommander was one hell of a game back then. Shame MC2 never really picked up, and the Zone started dying off around then too..
This seems like an awesome proposal!
Someone would just have to device a gigantic campaign map...with stars and planets (some having special bonuses), like forge worlds whowould give defender +20% points worth of extra resources upon start-up,etc!
Really a nice idea!
Would be ideal, as oyu say, in the sins universe!
Yeah, Ive been tempted now to reinstall MC Gold or MC2. I wish there was a MC3. Like you said too bad MC2 didnt pick up. Sigh, I think its worth a try to get something along that line using SINS. But Im a lore/RP nerd so that would be just to cool if we did.
Well someone would have to make a Universal map. With different Galaxies and such. Since SINS does battles by solar systems. Invidual planets would be tied with a system. System wide bonues would be neat. Would mean an crazy amount of Map making and such if we did bonues. We also would have to make a bit of lore up for example:(the different factions within the larger factions. And of course the universal map. *cough* IC could help us witht that *cough*)
Annatar I think that binjured here might be dedicated enough to go ahead and draw a galaxy map to draw. Or you could. If maps is an issue, galaxy forge is easy as ice cream cake.
Sounds like an interesting idea but clans never seem to stick around in sins. Maybe this role playing element is what the clan community needs. As for me, these games were before my time I guess.
The map isn't as much of an issue as setting up the site. It's a pretty complicated system. Everything is done on-site, essentially. Every turn lasts however many days, there's a prep phase where factions can move forces and issue challenges, the challenged and the challenger agree on the map, etc. In SCL there was a point system for determining how many units could be assigned to the battle. If memory serves, every planet produced a certain amount per turn and you could draw out of this pool for your battles. Every 'mech had a point value assigned and you set the total point value for the match that you couldn't go over. When the battle ended, the winner submits a victory outcome, and the loser confirms it. All of this on-site stuff is done by the leader usually and who fights in what battles is decided in-clan.
It was a pretty good system, but yeah, it's a lot of work to set up. By comparison, coming up with a map is a fairly minor thing
Not really, whoever was to design a map would just do so and as an appendix, could add in...
Planet X has such and such bonus which means that whoever controls it gets +2000 starting resources
or... Planet Y has increased military productivity meaning it gets an extra frigate factory above all else (ie. on that map, you add a 0 slot count worth Frigate factory to the team in control)...
Keeping in mind that the planets that are represented on that map are solar systems in game (ie. the battle map itself).
The way I see it, making the map, the bonuses and the actual BATTLE SYSTEMS is EASY!
As for creating backgrounds and all...well you don't need to! Anyone who will commit to this sort of play will most likely want to come up with their own history and factions...thus an aspect you don't need to worry about!
The point system however is where all this gets down and dirty!
PS: If you ever do introduce such an aspect! I will GLADLY be part of the galaxy forge map creator team..for "world map" and individual battle maps as well as being an avid player
Well, When I ment sub factions. You would need to set up some kind of limit. As to keep everyone from just making their own and having a 100 tiny factions fighting each other. For example we will use the Battletec Lore. There is the Inner Sphere, Periphery and Clans. But within the Inner Sphere there are: Draconis Combine, Federated Suns, Free World League, etc. Clans had to name a few big ones: Wolf, Ghost Bear, and Jad Falcon. Periphery had to also name a few: Rimworld Republic, Outworld Alliance, and Taurian Concordat.
If we are to create this we need a set of sub-factions already in place. As to allow you to pick a side to fight for.
Yeah Annatar, your right that would be the hard part. I wasnt too familar on the inner workings of it. I would think you could use the SCL as a great referance and just cross alot of that over.
And Shadow, you could do an appendix for each planet. But since SINS is on a bigger scale and not about ground warfare, doing each individual planet would be redundant. I would think it make better sense to do it on a system wide bonuses. This is of course IMHO.
As for the maps you could just use the In game maps for a basic start. Since your fighting for solar systems. Make a larger Universe picture that show the postions of each system and then have an appendix like you mentioned Shadow for bonuses. An example for a easy bonus to apply would be # of players in a battle. As we get the lore and starting front lines mocked up. We can give this bonues to the defending player as they push farther into your core systems.
I really excited about setting this up. While I dont know the inner workings of the SCL system. I be happy to earn and adapt this over. If we get a rough # of sub-factions I will go ahead and mock up a Universal map of temperary systems.
I'm also damn exited!
Then I look back at my on-going mod "The DOME" and remembering that I also gotta work on that .
But really this would be INSANE if we could get a community around it (even 20 players for starters would be IMHO pretty good), start building the first factions and from there...who knows .
i'll be there all the way ready to provide help and PLAY!
Thank you to those who have given feedback and put forth offers to help make this happen; I am very excited!
Here are some of my initial thoughts, which I think may cover some of the questions / issues brought up:
Obviously the third point infers a crazy amount of map-making, as suggested. Thankfully, I think the combination of Galaxy Forge and the "simple map builder" will be enough. There are people willing to help create maps already and once we have things hashed out it should be relatively simple to throw together a new map based on provided power-ups/abilities and get it out to those who need it. I can handle the site, you don't need to worry about that. Our biggest worry right now will be setting up a solid foundation for the league.
Once I am confident that we have enough interest, I will setup some outside forums for us to discuss these issues (a perk of my work is owning servers) and we can start putting things together.
me, me, me!!! I want in. I´m an old p&p-Gamer from waaaaaay back, and played this sort of thing via snail mail in the 80ies. This sounds very interesting. I´m willing to help with galaxyforge and i can mess with the files a little.
This is an awesome idea, and should be developed quick. i mean this will be better then the shoody RTS campaign everybody is asking for. So, when do we start??
I love MC2 i still have the original disc and manual. That game rocked! sounds good though dunno know if ill get to play
Technically, the sub-factions are already created for us: there are 10 different AI names for each race in the game that are the sub-factions. They lack lore and background, and personality, but they are there.
I wouldn't use a star cluster. Multiple stars add a huge amount of time to finish a game, and the fewer the players the worse. If there's a "star cluster" with 3 stars but only 2 players from each side are committed to play.. well, you get the idea
I think it should stick to solar systems exclusively. Even 5v5 can fit comfortably on a big enough single-star map. The added bonus is we could have characteristics per-star. A Sol-type star is much more ideal for supporting life, so its map would have more terran planets, for example. Outside the game, this would also work well with the logistics: different solar systems contain different total populations, affecting income/production.
This we can make as complicated or as simple as we want. A couple ideas:
- Each system has a "production value" per turn. The total sum of the production values dictates how much you are able to spend on your forces that turn, among all of your battles. For example, let's say a faction owns 40 production per turn, they want to attack one other system and have to defend 2 of their own from attacks. So they have 3 battles and 40 points to spread out among them. They can go and do 13 points per battle, or do 30 on the attack and 5 on each defense.
In-game, the points would translate to the fleet point level they are allowed to reach, going in something like 10 points per level, not counting the first. So committing 40 points to a battle would allow them to research fleet upgrades 4 times. On defense, we can assume "militia" defense forces that come into play if the defender commits x less than the attacker. For example, if the attacker commits 40, and the defender only commits 10, the militias can bump him up to 20/30.
Obviously, when a battle is declared the faction leader has to specify how much he is deploying, and this would be visible to the faction challenged.
- The other idea is to do income-based and have it influence attainable tech level. No point system per battle, just however big your faction holdings are. So say making 2 million credits/turn would allow you to get to tech 2, 3 million tech 3, etc. The connection here is a bit more loose than points to fleet supplies, but it's less to keep track of. Each system would also be capable of producing x credits/turn so some systems would obviously be more lucrative to hold, and would also be prime targets for attacks. The downside is once a faction starts losing, it would be very hard to recover. It would need to be made so a faction is allowed a few concurrent losses before dropping a tech level, but once it happens it can be a huge difference.
- Of course, those two can also be combined
I really wouldn't make bonuses/power-ups specific to systems, though. The starting resources model wouldn't work well because starting resources are set by map so the maps would have to be re-done for each fight according to who's fighting on it and it's a nightmare. It also doesn't make sense that controlling one system would allow you to build some ship that you couldn't otherwise.
I would vote to just have various economic characteristics (they could even have trade values per turn) and base what ships and how many players can deploy on the total faction income from their owned systems.
In essense, this is what SCL did. It was like a pseudo-grandRTS. The "campaign map" was done on the net outside the game, and the game was for the tactical battles. The easiest comparison here would be the Total War games. Just imagine all the movement, politics, economy, etc done outside the game and just the battles take place in-game.
GO GO GO!
Where are we going?
To our computers TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN!
BTW if it does happen (wish I hope SO BAD)...I call The Aerohawks
I be happy to head up a TEC sub-faction. And will be happy to help create the other sub-factions as well. Do love to make lore and such.
We could use the in game sub-factions. If it agreed by yall. I rather make my own but I have no problem using the ingame names.
I like the econ idea Annatar. Its somewhat simple yet has the ability to be very complex if we make it so. Look forward to hearing more ideas and such so we can get this rolling!!!
the map should be triangular representing the two front war the tech are fighting
Huh?
Huh?!?
Annatar, you made some very valid points, thanks for the post.
Technically, the sub-factions are already created for us: there are 10 different AI names for each race in the game that are the sub-factions.
Awesome, one thing down.
I think it should stick to solar systems exclusively. Even 5v5 can fit comfortably on a big enough single-star map. The added bonus is we could have characteristics per-star...
Very true, and I love the idea of the near-direct tie-in for outside the game. I was thinking we could do some tricky stuff with multiple stars, but considering the number of players, yes, it would make more sense to keep things small and easily controlled.
I far prefer the idea of production value to the income/tech-level route. I think the latter wouldn't work very well in many cases because tech level (probably) has more importance sooner than fleet size; many games can be played within the first few fleet sizes, but if you don't have the tech level necessary to even research Trade or LRMs, say...
My only question is, can Galaxy Forge enforce these rules, or will we depend on the factions to police themselves (i.e. "don't research past 2 fleet")? The latter should work, especially given replays, but it would be easier if we could police it. Then again, we'd end up making more and more maps so...
You're right, this is much simpler and would require far fewer maps. I think I was trying to bite off more than we could chew, thanks for reeling me in. I think at this point we have a relatively simple base concept that we can work off of.
In essense, this is what SCL did. It was like a pseudo-grandRTS. The "campaign map" was done on the net outside the game, and the game was for the tactical battles.
I was a bit hazy on the details, it having been so long ago. I remember now, though, and I think this is definitely the way to go here. As you said, given the similarities between a possible campaign map and the actual Sins map make-up, we have an even bigger opportunity for tighter integration between the two.
This is very true. Especially with race-specific techs. SCL did the point system and it worked well, and it ultimately makes more sense than trying to tie in systems owned into attainable tech level, so that would be my first option as well.
Galaxy Forge can't, but it would be easy to catch cheaters. What SCL did was all the battles were in a database, and there was an entry created for each that contained relevant info: who's attacking, who's defending, what system was attacked, map played, players from each faction. The leader of the winning faction would submit an "We won!" sort of an update, and the leader of the losing faction would either approve it, or dispute it. If he approves it, then they were satisfied with the match played and the league admins don't need to investigate. If they dispute it, they'd have to provide a reason for dispute (suspected cheating - more fleet points than allowed in battle or something like that) and the league admins would then look at the replay.
It would be pretty rare to have cheaters because the league would be pretty organized and this kind of thing is really easy to catch through replays and end-game stats.
Galaxy Forge can, however, set players with different starting buildings or whatnot. So, for example, if we decide that the defender starts with a small pre-built fleet it can set that to player numbers and we'd just have to make sure that the defenders occupy the correct player slots on the game setup.
Map count would depend on how big we'd want to make the galaxy. In SCL, there wasn't much of an "end", at least I don't remember a house/clan ever getting defeated. In this one, there could easily be a "one side is victorious" ending, and then the next phase rolls out on a clean slate. So it can start as a small galaxy first, and even with a unique map for each system it wouldn't be too unwieldly. If the player base picks up, it can be expanded into a bigger galaxy for the next phase, and the next, so on.
Yup. It's very easy and natural to wrap Sins up in an out-of-game grand campaign map and keep it expanding. The most difficult thing is making the campaign map system ownerships translate to something tangible in-game (such as the supply point system). It won't be nearly as engaging if your owned systems had no influence at all in-game.
If you think about it, Sins' star travel mechanic works great with it too. On multistar maps you can go from a star to any other star, so the same can work on the campaign map. Anyone can go to any system at any time. Which means it's entirely possible that all 3 races might be engaged in battle in one system, if it's appealing enough to get because it's worth a lot of supply generation And there wouldn't really be a main "homeworld" thing either, to worry about the enemy crippling you early.
This sounds really great. I'd love to help, provided I can do so with my limited skills. I've got no experiences with either modding or setting up a website, though I do posess some programming knowledge regarding C++ and Java. And I am very interested in lore/roleplay, so I'd definitely help out with that! In case you'll need faction leaders I'd be willing to do that as well, though I'd be happy with a normal membership too.
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