tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post112831781621050690..comments2023-11-03T01:45:11.288-07:00Comments on Lost Garden: Space Crack: A gift prototypeDaniel Cookhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10437870541630835660noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11719805.post-1128414859556119352005-10-04T01:34:00.000-07:002005-10-04T01:34:00.000-07:00Perhaps the prototype doesn't meet your original d...Perhaps the prototype doesn't meet your original design doc in a couple of ways.<BR/><BR/>To keep it from becoming an RTS, I think you need to make ship movement resolve simultaneously at turn end. Allow the player to queue up multiple movements with the same ship if necessary. In this way, moving earlier in the turn does not constitute an advantage. This also introduces the possibility of battles in "hyperspace" while travelling between planets.<BR/><BR/>Named planets, fleets and (optionally) ships would be a nice touch for future versions, and would help with messaging ("Your 2nd Fleet encountered JoeBob's 4th Armada while travelling from Altair to Orion!"). In addition, this gives the player a sense of ownership.<BR/><BR/>I also think that the ship-combination feature is a little too abstract. It introduces a restriction that people are likely to chafe under, and creates the possibility of "traffic jams" (not fun). <BR/><BR/>A small "fleet management" panel wouldn't introduce much overhead, and would not be an obstacle to picking up the game, as it wouldn't be essential to winning the game. In this panel the player could combine ships to create larger ships (slightly more effective than the sum of their parts), or divide their fleets to different locations.<BR/><BR/>So the game would work similarly to how it does now, except that (1) players could split fleets if necessary, and (2) players can get a bonus to their fleet effectiveness by combining ships, at the expense of tactical flexibility.<BR/><BR/>Lest one complain of complexity, this is about the same order of complexity as Risk - i.e. not that complex at all.<BR/><BR/>BRAINDUMP: Consider the possibility of a "counter-based" interface as follows:<BR/><BR/>- The mouse cursor acts as a hand. The individual ships in the fleet management box are represented by counters of various sizes.<BR/><BR/>- Dragging the mouse will "accumulate" ships, similar to scooping up a bunch of army counters in Risk. Then you can drop them onto a target planet, or into a separate box where you can give them a "fleet name" (2nd Armada, whatever).<BR/><BR/>- Dragging the ships onto a scaffold/spacedock icon (?) combines them into a big ship.<BR/><BR/>A turn clock would help too.<BR/><BR/>Have you played Metal Knights, by the way?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com