🚀 go-pugleaf

bk039@freenet.carleton.ca (Raymond Martineau) wrote:
> John Doe <jdoe@usenet.is.the.real.thing>  wrote:

>> That's sounds like another good reason for user editable starting
>> terrain. Of course you don't want construction of a large building to
>> take years, but you want players to be able to build their own
>> environment. User editable starting terrain would help correct that
>> neatly, in my opinion. 
> 
> Editable terrain could be a bit too complex, 

Besides what you wrote below, please name something you think might be
too complex. 

> and can lead to potential problems (e.g. a player who plateaus his
> base to make it unreachable by most common means.).  

The same player might have trouble expanding and getting to energy
sources, especially if the surrounding terrain is randomized. 

> However, a prebuild phase similar to Metal Fatigue works...

I seem to recall downloading and trying the demo but did not play. How
would that be any different than allowing players to prebuild at their
leisure before the game starts? 

>> A player should be allowed to move quickly if he
>> (or she) knows what he is doing. If he moves quickly and
>> inefficiently, he should be penalized. That's where energy bars come
>> in. Each player would have an energy bar which is filled at a
>> predetermined rate. The capacity of the energy bars is also
>> predetermined. A slow rate of energy flow into your energy bar and
>> you're not going to do a whole lot and a short amount of time unless
>> you have a large quantity of energy stored up. The total amount of
>> energy which can be stored is determined by energy bar capacity. You
>> can save energy for some later flurry of activity or you can use what
>> you have to disrupt your opponent, long as you do it efficiently.
> 
> I wouldn't be comforatble with this concept for an RTS.  While it
> might work for individual units to simulate supply ranges and the
> like, 

I usually think of an army as being able to share resources. Dealing
with supply ranges probably will over complicate things. Seems to me
that is not as easy to understand as just looking at some of your units
and figuring out how much energy they're using or figuring out how much
energy you will need to build units or construct buildings. 

> it risks causing the player to be rendered helpless when they receive
> a sudden suprise attack.

I don't understand why. 

They would be more susceptible to counterattack after throwing a bunch
of units at their enemy. But that depends partly on energy bar rate of
fill and energy bar capacity. 

I think energy bars just reward efficiency which apparently is a missing 
component in real-time strategy. 

> I do know that a proper implementation of energy might not have these
> kinds of problems - however, most developers don't know how to
> properly write an RTS.  
> 
>> That concept was implemented to some extent in
>> Total Annihilation but it does not play enough of a role in the game,
>> in my opinion. 
> 
> Actually, energy played a different role in TA.  It was used as a
> secondary resource collected by solar/fusion plants rather than a
> limitation on what the player could perform. 

Energy sources such as solar collectors and nuclear power plants fed the
energy bar. Building construction and units consumed a certain amount of
energy which drained the energy bar. When you ran out of energy, your
aircraft would land, and your unit production and building construction
would cease. 

There are Total Annihilation players in here who can correct me if I'm
wrong. I can correct me if I'm wrong, since I still have the CDs.