Finally, on Skirmish.

The World Project, from last post, is just an engine. A rather limited engine in terms of sophisticated capabilities, but it runs the simple stuff pretty well. Like making libraries from Twilight 1, though, a game must be made.

The plan is to make a persistent world Real time Strategy. Now, I can't think of any terribly successful games that have done this. I suspect there are reasons. We can come up with some if you like. But you realize by now that this just adds fuel to the fire. More reason to do it. Let's list a few:

1. RTS games are traditionally about rapid build up, economic balancing, and relatively simple combat, where losses are expected and necessary.
2. RTS games tend to be light on customization and freedom, both of which are typical in a persistent world.
3. RTS games tend to involve large quantities of units acting in formations of some sort. This requires unit-unit boundaries/collision of some sort. Large unit count works against a massive setup, as the computational requirements are impressive. Unit-unit collision is problematic in the massive case as well, but this is of lesser concern.
   

So what to do about these? Well, how bout we split the RTS gameplay into two distinct, but necessarily linked, playing fields? In turn:

1. Rapid build up will not work in a persistent game, or the increase of power over the lifetime of the player would be enormous. So, we split power gains into 2 types. One, a mid-combat gain, which is largely temporary. Second, an out-of-combat gain, similar to a typical levelling system.
2. Make customization part of the players units. Typically in RTS games units are selected for relative power in the current scenario, strategically. Change that from 'selected' to 'developed' or 'trained' and you have a longer term customization. Regarding freedom, this is a bit trickier. RTS Player vs Environment is almost universally scripted scenarios, or random fights over set maps. Freedom to travel and choose what the player wants to do would lean towards the latter. Build a world and a set of scenarios to accomplish.
3. Large unit count. Hmm. RTS players like armies. Typical approaches to managing army sized groups are to cluster them into 'group' units. This is contrary to a customization point, though. With a group it is harder to justify massive retraining. So how bout we make this a sort of 'elite skirmish group', where each individual is a powerful fighter in his own right, but the workings of the group as a whole are more important? A close-knit fighting group. Let's give them a leader too; a Commander. This gives the player a troupe to customize as a whole, and as indivuduals. This keeps the unit count to customizably sane levels. Say, varying from 4 to 20 as the player designs.

So now we have a sort of 2 tier game. The combat tier (which I call the Skirmish) is fought in a relatively traditional RTS manner. But there's no base development and economics. RTS are interesting because they require managing multiple aspects simultaneously. If we remove 2, we'll have a pretty boring game. So we either find something to replace these aspects, or increase the complexity and management of combat itself.

Economics we'll replace with unit resources and morale. Morale will become a per Commander value that fluctuates with the users actions, allows certain actions, and may be spent for others. Individual units may be granted abilities that require some local personal resource, typically mana, which may require some maintainence.

Base Development we'll retain in a temporary sense. Defenses can be constructed, or in some cases, inhabited. This makes terrain and location relevant even without a base development aspect. Let's throw some local, disposable units in there too. Now we've got a resource, extra units, that territory may grant (or revoke!).

With these aspects in place, we can build a set of types of scenarios. Scouting, ambushes, escorts, sieges, strikes. Since the combat phase is only a part of the game, and local power gains are small, let's keep these short. 10 to 15 minutes, maybe 30 for a particularly difficult scenario. Starting to sound a little more like a quest in an MMO.

That's the combat tier in a nutshell. The second tier is for managing units, guilds, cities, exploration, customizing, and construction. This tier is not played with your squad! It's for the player himself, so to speak. This way we avoid trying to explore towns and landscapes with an army in tow. Can you imagine Ironforge where every player was really 20 different individuals? It'd be madness. Oh, and really really slow.

So for our first incarnation of the top tier, we imagine a sort of world map. An abstract high level view of the world. Players travel about, either hunting for a scenario to engage in. But what's the purpose? It's it just a glorified scenario selector? Is it a pretty facade for a multiplayer game lobby?

More on the World soon.