Scaling Issues

Looking at what has been established for Strat Mode as of now, I forsee that one of our largest problems, will be (and is) scale. All of us have different things in mind when we talk about strat mode, because the number of scales is so broad(sp?). In order to start really working on Strat Mode, which we should as Org Mode is nearly finished plan-wise and is only waiting on coding and polish, we need to mark out all scales nessicary and how they will play and feel.

From Smallest to Largest, all the scales I can note are the following:

Tactical: Dealing with only a few Orgs at a time, generally never over 40. Largely Combat-based and pre-SC gameplay. Lots of micromanagement.

Strategic: Dealing with large armies and full-sized battles and sieges. Generally dealing with hundreds of units to thousands of units. Heavy overlap with the next one.

City Management and Building: Must I explain? Basically just Strategic when the end goal is something other than genocyde.

Small Civ: Dealing with only a few SCs at a time, usually never more than 9. A bit of micromanagement on the city scale but not very much. Combat is reduced to Civilization style "icon dumps" with it being little more than a glorified move order. Lots of focus on your own nation and building it up internally. If this is as big as your civ gets, diplomacy starts taking a serious role.

Large Civ: Dealing with many SCs, covering significant portions of the globe. Gameplay here is largely identical to to Small Civ, but the goals change a bit. If unbalanced, this can feel like a base-race, where having the most (valuable) land means victory. Micromanagement becomes almost non-existant as diplomacy and economics take the front.

Solar: When you finally have started peeking outwards to the stars, the main goals should become expansion and developement. If the player hasn't fixed their world to work sustainably, massive consequences ensue that should set back the player significantly. Depending on how developed opponents are, there may be a space race, and there may be an era of good feelings. Focus is not entirely planet based but more likely large areas on the planet, groupings of SCs and the like. Large similarities with Small Civ, but on a much bigger scale.

Interstellar/Extrasolar: Focus becomes planet based, with large very deliberate movements takening place and very specific long-term goals coming through. Most actions taken on this scale aren't things you can easily change your mind about. Combat becomes even more simplified on this scale, possibly to the point where interaction with global conflict is minimized to one or two options.

Bigger than that? I haven't a clue.

Please note that what I'm talking about here is scale of play, not points of time. There should be no real insentive to play at one scale over another throughout the game.

Sounds pretty good to me.

Me too. I like this breakdown.

I like your ideas. I think that, depending on the number of stars in our galaxies, there could also be a sector-sized strategic mode, though that might shorten near-end-game-length significantly. And, depending on if we can travel to other galaxies, we could have intergalactic strategy mode?

I could think bigger. Galaxy clusters/sectors, and then universe. And then, according to that bubble theory (forget the name), other universes! And then other dimensions! Own existence! win.

You might say that was overkill, though.

toxiciron wrote:

And, depending on if we can travel to other galaxies, we could have intergalactic strategy mode?

This has been discussed to death on both of the old forums. No.

~sciocont wrote:

Sounds pretty good to me.

QFT

Tactical should be more like 2-30 units under your control, especially if we are going to allow players to give orders in the Org. mode. Anything over that and you start controlling squads instead of individual units (and Strategy would take place).

toxiciron wrote:

I like your ideas. I think that, depending on the number of stars in our galaxies, there could also be a sector-sized strategic mode, though that might shorten near-end-game-length significantly.

That's what I was going to say... You beat me to it.

But when you reach a very late stage in the game, you probably wont want to deal with every single star. That would be like having to deal with every single city in early intersteller, it's just too much for the player to handle.

Could I suggest that when you reach interstellar, and can travel between stars, you get the option to group star systems? You probably wouldn't use it immediately, but you can use it as soon as you feel ready. To start with, you might make a group consisting of every star under your control, so you can easily make all your systems work together. Then, maybe the player could make a outpost in a nearby cluster, which they decide shouldn't be grouped with the rest of their stars, because it is too far away to do much, and hasn't got much power anyway. Then it grows, and more outposts are constructed. The player would group these into a second 'outpost group' for doing things in that more distant area, which the main civilisation couldn't reach very easily. These evolve and become a significant part of the civilisation in a separate group. This repeats throughout the player's civilisation's expansion, meaning the galactic civilisation ends up conveniently separated into groups, which will have become the player's main way of controlling portions of their civilisation. And there you have it, the player easily controlling the development of groups right from the beginning of interstellar. Good for getting things done, and making the transition from early to late interstellar strategy mode one of the most smooth in the game.

Looks like the post to make a comment spiralled off into an overly explained idea in a huge single paragraph with no apparent place to be split. Again...

I like that grouping idea.

~sciocont wrote:

I like that grouping idea.

QFT. And I think that's the largest things get.

May I repeat that there should be no huge insentive pushing the player from one scale to another. In order to do that though, we need to work on some serious AI.

For that matter, other than that download on ModDB, do we have an AI Concept? Unifying AI over these different scales will probably prove somewhat difficult. You need strategy, tactics, and individual behaviour, and maybe some degree of variation. All of those are problems in their own right, and it's the sort of thing that needs to be planned out beforehand.

Quote :

Unifying AI over these different scales will probably prove somewhat difficult. You need strategy, tactics, and individual behaviour, and maybe some degree of variation.

Unifying AI over scales would be impossible. Individual, tactical, strategy and mass strategy all need differen AIs.



Also, a (probably) missed logical divison between Tactics and Strategy:

Commander Keen wrote:

Tactical should be more like 2-30 units under your control, especially if we are going to allow players to give orders in the Org. mode. Anything over that and you start controlling squads instead of individual units (and Strategy would take place).

You still need to link them. The individual AI needs to respond to the tactical AI, even if all it does is obey a command, it has to do pathfinding and whatever. Since we reduce away what the player can't see, you only need to go one layer down, but it still has to be decided. Especially since the player will rely on the behaviour of the AI one layer down to manage their behaviour at that scale.

Anyway, the point is that having at least three different types of AI, each extremely broad and complex, is going to be difficult. I know this is an open source project and it can develop as it goes along, but handling the controls at each level is going to be more difficult for NPCs than for players.

@ Keen: 2 - 30 seems reasonable. If anything, we may have to revise downward. I personally find micromanagement of anything upwards of 10 individuals/units to be difficult, but I'm not a hardcore strat game person.
@ EScSi: as far as individuals go, not actually using AI on individuals in a tactical group might be the simplest way to go. I know people were discussing fractals/random movement patterns that could be applied to an individual r a set on another thread, and that might be the way that we go. So the individual AI wouldn't be "obeying": it would be a part of a set, if that makes any sense.

... Though this does raise what might be a stupid question: will players be able to switch scales while attempting to do something in strat mode? Such as "zooming in" to a specific org during a larger combat? Or will we be confined to whatever scale we started the battle/campaign on?

@EScSi: Linking AIs is just order of calling one function. The worst problem is, like you mentioned, designing AIs flexible enough to handle most situations and created content. We will probably have to make very simple at first, and add to it later.

@M. Calligrapher: Micromanaging more than 10 - 20 individuals in RTS-like environment (Strat. mode) is difficult. That's one reason why Tactical should get different controls than Strategy. It's also why Strategy gets squads.

Zooming might be a problem. Getting from the opposite side of the planet close in a running battle might create some illogical situations when units are placed and such.

Commander Keen wrote:

@EScSi: Linking AIs is just order of calling one function. The worst problem is, like you mentioned, designing AIs flexible enough to handle most situations and created content. We will probably have to make very simple at first, and add to it later.

QFT

Commander Keen wrote:

@M. Calligrapher: Micromanaging more than 10 - 20 individuals in RTS-like environment (Strat. mode) is difficult. That's one reason why Tactical should get different controls than Strategy. It's also why Strategy gets squads.

Yeah. Also, I got your point. Will change OP. However, I'll be upping the max to 40.

Commander Keen wrote:

Zooming might be a problem. Getting from the opposite side of the planet close in a running battle might create some illogical situations when units are placed and such.

QFT. I think we'll need to solve via trial and error.