User talk:LionsPhil/QuestRTS

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18:34 <%Driblis-Workanbold> Cyrals vs. Cutebolds: The Boringest War
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18:34 < Toastline> :o why would that be the boringest war?
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18:35 <%Driblis-Workanbold> 'cause cyrals aren't particularly violent and neither are cutebolds
18:35 < Toastline> Cutebolds seem pretty violent with the raiding and stuff
18:35 < LionsPhil> Cutebolds are a race in my crazy academic design-exercise-only-this-will-never-get-made ideas.
18:35 < Colour> Make Cjopazedraw first
18:36 < LionsPhil> If you think Age of Empires, in the top-tier age they're CBSF, so pretty brutal. In all previous ages they're absolutely useless. So you're relying on stealth and distribution to survive until you can scrabble together to reach that.
18:36 < LionsPhil> Gameplay dynamics which support appropriate roleplaying.
18:36 < LionsPhil> (And of course other races want to stamp on said bolds while they're weak.)
18:38 < TestPattern> >while they're weak
18:38 < TestPattern> So... all the time?
18:38 < LionsPhil> Before they learn how to build mechs and megatanks.
18:38 < TestPattern> But you'd never get around to coding that part.
18:38 < TestPattern> It'd be sticks and stones forever.
18:38 < TestPattern> And maybe there'd be a sergal with a gun
18:38 < LionsPhil> Of course. I'd never get around to coding any of this :V
18:39 < LionsPhil> I'm pretty resigned to it being a design exercise for the hell of it because it's not a one-man job and I'm not a one-man wonder indie dev anyway.
18:40 < LionsPhil> But hey mulling over how it could be made to work is fun anyway.
18:40 < TestPattern> It gets tricky when things are explicitly unbalanced at different times in the game.
18:40 < TestPattern> It happens sometimes anyway (like D&D pre-4th ed)
18:42 <%Driblis-Workanbold> yeah
18:42 < LionsPhil> Yeah. And, to be honest, I'm not of the strong religious belief that every faction need be exactly balanced. Tournament players are not worth pandering to, and races being handicapped roles is OK for people playing for fun.
18:42 < TestPattern> Yeah, true.
18:42 <%Driblis-Workanbold> kobolds being worthless in teh beginning means that they'll just get their noses stomped
18:42 < Colour> Different strengths at different times?
18:42 < Colour> I doubt it
18:42 <%Driblis-Workanbold> Freaking sergal players always dusty rushing
18:43 < LionsPhil> Unless you're doing factions that are mostly recolours of eachother (e.g. TA) even dominant strategy-esque faction isn't necessarily a problem if they're different counters to eachother.
18:43 < TestPattern> I wanted to run a quest that was a fake RTS, but I couldn't think of what the sides would be.
18:43 < Colour> If they're weak in the beginning they can survive in other ways
18:43 < LionsPhil> Driblis-Workanbold: Yup! Sergals are most relatively powerful early-on.
18:43 <%Driblis-Workanbold> I basically thought about running a TBS sort of quest
18:43 < Colour> I want to do that knda quest someday too
18:43 < LionsPhil> They've got to harrass everyone or they'll get stomped in the endgame~
18:43 <%Driblis-Workanbold> but i don't have the head for numbers that ed_pastry does
18:43 <%Driblis-Workanbold> and i'm a shitty writer and artist
18:43 <%Driblis-Workanbold> and i have little confidence~
18:43 < LionsPhil> Ed_Pastry doesn't have the head for numbers needed to run The Icon ;)
18:43 < TestPattern> Yeah, that
18:43 < Colour> Thinking of sides is easy. Just make it some kind of fantasy thing with different cultures based on real life
18:44 < TestPattern> You can probably do it simpler than that.
18:44 < LionsPhil> Also yeah the Cutebold faction is designed to be tough to eradicate. They don't have a central valuable HQ building or anything
18:44 < LionsPhil> They can spread out, survive losses, and cower in the corners.
18:45 < LionsPhil> Sacrificing a colony to let others escape, letting the attacker think they've got you there.
18:45 < LionsPhil> Five minutes later the bolds flood back out of the trees and rebuild their mud huts :3c
18:45 < TestPattern> Is it one of those things where if one person advances the tech, everyone advances?
18:46 < LionsPhil> I wasn't thinking that, no.
18:46 <%Driblis-Workanbold> haha cutebolds sound like an awesome reace to play
18:46 < TestPattern> (Cuz when that happens nobody has any incentive to push it forwards)
18:46 <%Driblis-Workanbold> run around like jackasses, hiding with your shitty useless camps all over the map
18:46 < TestPattern> The issue there is that the kobolds need to actually have an economy to advance, then.
18:46 <%Driblis-Workanbold> i was considering briefly a Bitequest RTS
18:46 < LionsPhil> Hide-and-see with sergals~
18:46 <%Driblis-Workanbold> but mostly with the blockheads being an annoying neutral faction
18:47 <%Driblis-Workanbold> that just sorta camped near battlefields and built random garbage everywhere
18:47 < LionsPhil> Yeah, I haven't really gone into resources in detail, other than there are some, and you scrabble them from the map like in AoE or whatnot.
18:47 <%Driblis-Workanbold> slowing down movement and making everyone angry
18:47 < LionsPhil> And they have physical representation, like in Settlers.
18:47 < LionsPhil> (So that you can lose them to raids)
18:47 < LionsPhil> (Else the Sergal attacks would be utterly meaningless)
18:48 < TestPattern> Raids usually are meaningless in RTSes
18:48 < TestPattern> Wonder why
18:48 < TestPattern> I mean, in terms of actually stealing things
18:49 < TestPattern> In things like Total Annihilation (not on metal maps) or AoE, being able to kill off resourcing helps.
18:49 < LionsPhil> A lot of things are meaningless in RTSes. Something I /do/ want to tackle is one with zone control and a stab at supply lines, since those are usually handled so weakly. But that's really off on a tangent.
18:49 <%Driblis-Workanbold> ugh TA
18:49 <%Driblis-Workanbold> the commander exploding in TA made me so angry
18:49 <%Driblis-Workanbold> but i did enjoy the game
18:49  * LionsPhil flies an Atlas into Driblis' base, picks up his commander, then dances over his anti-air guns~
18:49 < LionsPhil> Best troll tactic.
18:49 <%Driblis-Workanbold> LionsPhil: supply lines /sorta/ existed in Company of Heroes
18:50 < TestPattern> Supply lines would be really tricky to balance.
18:50 < TestPattern> Way too easy to make it either so plentiful that it's meaningless or so rare that everyone's failing constantly.
18:51 < LionsPhil> I'm thinking more along the lines of attrition for isolated units.
18:51 < LionsPhil> Which ties into the zone control thing, since that gives you a useful, high-level quantization of when exactly something is or is not cut off from base.
18:51 < LionsPhil> Did the enemy disconnect the zone your attack force is in from the zones connected to your base yes/no
18:52 < LionsPhil> Anything that encourages more than select-all, click on opposing army :/
18:52 < TestPattern> So we're looking at like, hearts of iron?
18:52 < floatRand> Cute things exploding~
18:52 < LionsPhil> Afraid I've not played that
18:52 < TestPattern> The smallest unit is a division
18:52  * Colour doesn't like Hearts of Iron
18:52 < Colour> I like to see my battles
18:53 < LionsPhil> Oh, is that one of the hex-grid hardcore TBS types?
18:53 < TestPattern> http://cdn.themis-media.com/media/global/images/galleries/display/67/67924.jpg
18:53 < TestPattern> It's real time
18:53 < LionsPhil> Cool
18:54 < LionsPhil> It may well cover the same ideas, but it's at a different scale. Anyway this is a huge tangent unless people really want to hear me waffling about semi-formed ideas.

19:15 < Colour> LionsPhil make a game with Tezakians and Cutebolds and empires
19:15 < Colour> And REAL TIME BATTLES
19:15 < LionsPhil> And hookers and blackjack
19:15 < Colour> Yup
19:15 <%Driblis-Workanbold> the units have to take cover dynamically and full 3d
19:15 < Colour> Both located in the tavern
19:15 <%Driblis-Workanbold> terrain destruction
19:16 <%Driblis-Workanbold> advancement from late bronze to mechas and tanks
19:16 < Colour> They have to automatically find nearby cover and go on the RIGHT SIDE OF IT according to the enemy
19:16 <%Driblis-Workanbold> get on it LP geez
19:16 < LionsPhil> No more room in the plans for more races so sorry~
19:16 < Colour> Also they can climb over sandbags and low walls
19:16 < LionsPhil> Each gets a gameplay role and there are none left I can think of
19:16 < TestPattern> Only sergals and cutebolds
19:16 < TestPattern> Only
19:16 < Colour> Tezakians have an awesome gameplay role though
19:17 < TestPattern> And only 3 units are implemented
19:17 < Colour> They have numbers
19:17 < TestPattern> It's not so much an RTS as it is a rape simulator.
19:17 < Colour> So many birds
19:17 < LionsPhil> Uh, lessee here: 'bolds, Sergals (or Gnolls, it's kind of interchangable), Dwarves (or Lohrkes), Splinter, Hat'kal/Lazurek, Scellor.
19:17 < LionsPhil> And none of them are "generalists" because fuck generalists.
19:17 <%Sharah> CAN LOVE BLOOM ON THE BATTLEFIELD
19:17 < LionsPhil> There's all kinds of /candidates/ in quests but not ones that I think translate to fun game dynamics.
19:18 < LionsPhil> (The Alliance [Qal/Shirm/Delter] and Astranians are somewhat obvious omissions from WAAAR quests.)
19:18 <%Driblis-Workanbold> put generalist humans in there
19:18 <%Sharah> splinter
19:18 < Colour> Who's the guy with the huge army of crap people?
19:19 < LionsPhil> I did contemplate Astrainians as a micro-heavy role given what LonelyWorld was saying about their short-term shields, but I think that'd be a fun-killer for everyone else
19:19 < LionsPhil> And I hate micro-heavy races
19:20 <%Driblis-Workanbold> >Micro
19:20 <%Driblis-Workanbold> >Astranian
19:20 <%Driblis-Workanbold> I GET IT
19:20 < LionsPhil> :3c
19:20  * Colour doesn't like micro
19:20 < LionsPhil> "I beat you because I drank ten cans of Red Bull and am jittering on the mouse like a pnumatic drill"
19:24 <%Sharah> my problem with micro is that i get so into it i neglect my base and other things
19:24 < Colour> I like sorting out a base and turtling because yaay awesome base
19:24 < LionsPhil> You'd like Dwarves, then :V
19:25 < Colour> Dwarves are too slow and sit in the same place.
19:25 < LionsPhil> Or Splinter. There's some overlap.
19:25 < Colour> I like to expand with little settlements sometimes
19:25 < LionsPhil> Splinter are the hedgehogging faction.
19:25 < Colour> A small fort or something nearby covering resources
19:26 < LionsPhil> Rolling defensive line, whereas the Dwarves are classic [turtle] sit-in-one-place-and-build-a-magma-cannon.
19:26 < Colour> Pretty much
19:26 <%Sharah> I like to set up defences at the nearest tect bildings ASAP
19:26 <%Sharah> tech*
19:26 < Colour> If there's a huge amount of resources somewhere I build as much defense as my real base there.

03:12 < LionsPhil> Decided to stick the notes up. The worst that can happen is that some people on the Internet think I'm dumb. http://www1.tgchan.org/wiki/User:LionsPhil/QuestRTS
03:13 < LionsPhil> Also drawing a little pixelbold running for its life was an amusing way to spend a few minutes.
03:13 < LionsPhil> Har.
03:13 < TestPattern> Yeah, I saw that. It was cute
03:14 < TestPattern> I had a late lunch imagining what the alert sound for "dropship full of tozol mercenaries" would be.
03:14 <%Sharah> that warehouse thing reminds me of blitzkreg
03:14 < Squeegy> Haha test
03:14 < LionsPhil> At least one other person watches the recent changes on the wiki then :V
03:14 < TestPattern> Not all the time, but yes.
03:14 < Squeegy> Just copy the Starcraft nuke alert
03:15 < Squeegy> NUCLEAR LAUNCH DETECTED
03:15 < TestPattern> I was thinking it'd be like something a tozol would say.
03:15 < TestPattern> For maximum OH SHIT SON
03:15 <%Sharah> in that you had unlimited warehouses but had to use trucks to get stuff
03:15 < LionsPhil> They arrive straddling them, Dr Strangelove style
03:15 < Squeegy> Any Starcraft players would instantly get the same sense of dread
03:15 < TestPattern> Like "To the everlasting glory of the infantry!"
03:15 < TestPattern> (oh shit son!)
03:15 < LionsPhil> haha
03:15 <%Sharah> and to get more convenit ammo you had to capture more ammo dumps
03:16 <%Sharah> with my luck my tozzle dropship will land in a spot infested with dipomat snipers
03:17 < TestPattern> Nah, maximum irony would be it getting nuked.
03:17 < LionsPhil> The Tozols basically /are/ a nuke, just fluffed differently.
03:17 < LionsPhil> (I guess Splinter would have actual nukes.)
03:17 < TestPattern> I figured they'd be rarer than nukes.
03:17 < LionsPhil> Or, rather, they're a strategy game nuke, which is to say a big bomb :B
03:18 <%Sharah> no, tozols are c&c3 commandos before people knew how to counter them
03:18 < TestPattern> Nukes in RTSes are kinda weaksauce unless it's TA or something.
03:18 < LionsPhil> TBH I don't know how on Earth the special events would work.
03:18 < TestPattern> ...and in TA, your bases are generally immense
03:18 < TestPattern> Easy. Have a resource which is useful only for that.
03:18 < TestPattern> The rarest resource.
03:18 < TestPattern> Make it so you can generate it in esoteric ways.
03:18 < LionsPhil> Mmm.
03:19 <%Sharah> like the relics in DoW?
03:19 < TestPattern> Like build a trade post and sell stupendous amounts of things on the interstellar black market.
03:19 < LionsPhil> I suppose I have vague inclings of them being like C&C:Generals powers, but with more to them than just time.
03:19 < LionsPhil> That's not a bad idea, Test.
03:19 < TestPattern> (This is how it works in TQ verse. Interstellar currency is a jewel beyond price for your average low grade planet-bound mooks)
03:19 < TestPattern> And then you can spend it on space mercenaries or doobies.
03:20 < LionsPhil> Best choice.
03:20 < LionsPhil> "Hmm...Tozols...or Doobies...Tozols...or Doobies..."
03:20 < TestPattern> dancing_tozol.gif
03:20 < Toastline> Doobzols!
03:20 <@Fredrick> oh god
03:20 <%Sharah> tozols riding doobies
03:20 <@Fredrick> if someone took the time to rotoscope that MC Hammer dancing gif
03:20 <@Fredrick> tozol
03:20 < LionsPhil> *press button on space vending machine for tozols*
03:20 <@Fredrick> that'd be amazing
03:20 < LionsPhil> *dispenses jabberwocks*
03:20 < LionsPhil> FFFFFFFFF-
03:20 <@Fredrick> but that thing must be like a million frames
03:21 < Squeegy> Fredrick I have this dancing guy in a white robe and black belt
03:21 <%Sharah> aaaaaaaaaaaaa
03:21 < LionsPhil> The main problem with rotoscoping something to a Tozol would be mapping the legs across.
03:21 < TestPattern> Every unit would need an uncontrollable dance gif.
03:21 < LionsPhil> haha
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03:23 < Dylan16807> yes dances for everyone
03:23 < Dylan16807> everyone
03:23 < TestPattern> Well, if the doobie ability is to make everone dance, then everyone must dance.
03:23 < TestPattern> Including the tanks.
03:23 < LionsPhil> popping_a_wheelie.gif
03:23 < TestPattern> Bouncing on the hydraulics
03:23 < LionsPhil> haha
03:23 < TestPattern> Or teetering left and right like a tank with a terror drone in RA2
03:23 <%Sharah> have a dance button like RA2's cheer command
03:24 < LionsPhil> Cheer command was great
03:24 < Dylan16807> or for the most ridiculous option, tank does a quick transform to bipedal, dances, transforms back
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03:25 <%Sharah> Cutebolds + GLA?
03:25 <%Sharah> =*
03:25 < LionsPhil> Eh, not quite. GLA still had a big expensive construction yard building.
03:25 <%Sharah> yeah, but you didn't need it
03:26 < LionsPhil> You did if you wanted to use your generals abilities
03:26 <%Sharah> I guess
03:27 < LionsPhil> You could come back from building workers at their supply depots but GLA are still pretty locked to base sites, whereas the idea for bolds is that they really spread out like a vapour.
03:27 < TestPattern> You'd need big, rich maps, like AoE2 or something.
03:27 < LionsPhil> So cutebolds = real-world terrorists, rather than the game ones that bunch up and you can use game nukes on, I guess.
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03:35 <%Sharah> I wonder how you make mobile base without doing something dumb like c&c 4
03:36 < LionsPhil> I did like, in theory, that C&C 4 tried to sort out being eliminated and bored early on with the whole team/respawns thing.
03:37 <%Sharah> I like how world in conflict handled the no base thing
03:37 < LionsPhil> I think that's about the only good thing I have to say about it. (I don't have /that/ much bad from bailing out of C&C once Westwood lost the reigns. C&C3 demo was dire.)
03:38 <%Sharah> even if it caused silly things like the US having the abilty to quickly airlift dozens of M1 tanks
03:39 <%Sharah> or sending 3 B52's after some hill out in the middle of nowhere
03:39 < LionsPhil> WoC is another I haven't played since demos are deeeeead and I've also been in a cave. :/
03:41 <%Sharah> well, if you have time to waste I guess you can watch some of the LP of it http://lparchive.org/World-in-Conflict/

• Gaining specials: buy them with a resource derived from huge amounts of the harvestable resources (e.g. interstellar black market).

12:03 <%Driblis> lionsphil how's progress on QuestRTS :D
12:03 < LionsPhil> hah
12:04 < LionsPhil> Oh, were you around when I linked the wiki page thing?
12:05 <%Driblis> i saw it~
12:05 <%Driblis> but i haven't read it yet because too much text
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12:08 <%Driblis> >dwarves >turtling <3
12:08 <%Driblis> I always enjoy turtling
12:10 <%Driblis> ah but this game is such a pipe dream
12:12 < Cockhole> Your face is a pipe dream.
12:12 < LionsPhil> Cockhole dreams of breaking Driblis' face with a lead pipe :<
12:14 <%Driblis> D:
12:16 <%Driblis> sorta seems like the only species capable of actual offensive attacks are splinter and late-game cutebolds
12:16 <%Driblis> and early sergals i guess
12:17 <%Driblis> lazureks will never be able to leave the woods and will eventually just get overpowered.  Dwarvesn can't leave their fort for long and eventually will just get overpowered.
12:17 < LionsPhil> And Dorfs if they go for the surface carrier rather than the magma cannon.
12:17 <%Driblis> maaybe the scellor but they sound fairly micro heavy
12:18 <%Driblis> >Goblins (low-tier; merged into cutebolds)
12:18 <%Driblis> Racist!
12:19 < LionsPhil> Big heavy APC bristling and Lohrke weapons and ready to disgorge angry bearded people~
12:19 < LionsPhil> So very racist
12:21 < LionsPhil> The Scellor are perhaps a bit micro-y, yeah. They'd certainly need to be a low-population type faction.
12:23 < Cockhole> >Even other specials like Tozols are not immune to their enchanting call.
12:24 < LionsPhil> ><TestPattern> dancing_tozol.gif
12:24 < Cockhole> Stop stealing my jokes you fuckers.
12:24 < LionsPhil> :3c
12:25 <%Driblis> everyone wants  to get some scellor action i suppose
12:25 <%Driblis> how odd~
12:28 < LionsPhil> Well, universally alluring green-skinned-space-babes is kind of their hat.
12:31 < LionsPhil> They probably just approach the cutebolds with hugs.
12:32 <%Driblis> nah they bang right there
12:32 <%Driblis> nose2hoes
12:32 < LionsPhil> And then the cutebolds just stand around stupified for five minutes
12:32 < LionsPhil> "What just happened"
12:34 <%Driblis> poor bolds~
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13:43 < LionsPhil> Oh I missed a line of Driblis' feedback.
13:44 < LionsPhil> The idea with the Dwarves offensively is that they're the sit-back-and-throw-nukes type, like turtling in TA/SupComm.
13:45 < LionsPhil> The Hat'kal are going to break your back with assassins as saboteurs then take you on when you're weakened.
13:46 < LionsPhil> Iunno maybe it wouldn't work out right.
13:50 < LionsPhil> Certainly there are race pairings that would not work well against each-other but that's sssort of by design.
13:51 < LionsPhil> For example cutebolds don't have centralisation of power thus no good target for said sneaky-types.
14:06 <%Driblis-Workanbold> it seems like it would be next to impossible to kill a cutebold player
14:21 <%Driblis-Workanbold> Lionsphil: as a casual gamer that sucks at most things i will say that reading your game spec makes me think i'd basically play dorfs or cutebolds on easy and poke around building cities
14:21 <%Driblis-Workanbold> while the lazureks and sergals sound horribly boring to my general playing style :V
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14:44 < LionsPhil> Yeah, bolds would be a pain to eradicate. :/
14:45 < LionsPhil> I guess they'd probably lose pretty much all of their stealth when they hit CBSF tech though.

• Some factions are perhaps too limited in direct offensive capability
• Cutebolds need to be possible to eventually eradicate: other races need good high-tech intel, and CSBF-era bolds need to lose stealth