Tides of War

Okay, this is my first post, so if my thoughts coincide with ones that already have been posted, I apologize in advance.

The basis of my thinking on all this is 1) that it will be not a true persistant world (who wants to fight a never ending war), and 2) that RTS elements will be employed as was suggested in a few places. Now, by not being a true persistant world I mean that the game world will NOT be the game a year from now was it was on MP launch. I think there should be rounds, where a war starts and continues till one victor remains, and then resets, perhaps with a new map. The one wrinkle comes from the members of the first faction to fall, but that can be fixed by a ) multiple servers/games, b ) observer status, or c ) (don't think this should be used but still a possibility) allowing them to join one of the remaining factions. The reason why a fully persistant world should not be desired is that it would get old fast. You would go out and shoot s---, brag about your ranking, and go home. There is little point to that and its been done to death, although admittingly not with a naval sim.

The RTS elements is where things start getting interesting and radical. I think the game should have a majority of sailors with a much smaller administrative group runs the war. It would work by an hiearchary with the CinC being the highest ranking player online and commander of the war, then down to the port commanders of various ranking ports (more on that later). These person's online efforts would be devoted to their respective responsibilities instead of going out on a ship. Now, I don't mean that there would be one of each position in the game, instead, the positions would shift around according to the ranking of people online currently. Coherance would be maintained by the ability to leave "notes" that the newcomer can read and see what you were planning and your ideas. When an officer logs in that is of an higher rank, a message appears on the newcomer's screen (I realize that many people won't want to play in this way, so it is optional despite of rank. Personally, I would spend most of my time running the war with a few "joyrides" here and there) if he would like the job, and if so, he replaces the previous one after a period that they can work together so the newcomer can get up to speed.

The CinC would be just overlooking the war and deciding whats important and whats not. Missions to players would originate with him. The CinC would be in charge of allocating the faction's resources to researching new technologies to allow his captains more choices in retrofitting, and allotting resouces to port commanders, who use it to: build new ships, build ammo, refuel ships, build airplanes, assign ships, missions, ammo, and fuel at his discretion, with the exception of large perchases such as battleships and carriers, which needs CinC approval. Also, the CinC can oversee ports and any ship under his command in a observer mode, both so he can see tactics imployed and so he can make sure the port commanders aren't going buck wild with their allotments.

Ports and cities should be included to serve as fixed strategic points to fight over. All ports would be cities but not all cities would be ports, and some cities can be inland. The primary difference between the two would be that ports are where ships are built, repaired, rearmed, etc.; would contain an airfield for defensive use (also at the command of the port commander); along with a few batteries of AA and perhaps some coastal artillery to defend from "port" rushes early game. Port ranking comes into play in terms of the size and number of ships it can service and defensive arrangements. Obviously you can't expect every port to be able to retool and conduct drydock repairs to a battleship. Perhaps ports can be upgraded with a high resource cost and a required population, but I haven't thought of the implications of that yet.

Now, cities are useless and useful at the same time. They have minor defenses (depending on size, and usually only involving AA). They cannot be directly controlled by a person, but they are the backbone of the faction. These are the places where metal is harvested (used to build ships and ammo), oil is drawn (used to fuel ships), and people magically appear (for invasions, again, more on that later). The the amount of resources attained from a city varies, but as the population gets higher, as a rule of thumb, the amount harvested gets higher. Resources, while that may make you wince, is an elegant solution to the concerned raised about the number of battleships. It also fixes the problem that sinking a ship is pointless considering that they respawn. You should feel damn fine about yourself about sinking a battleship and the blow it caused to your enemy and "meh" about sinking a corvette. The idea of a resource system would also reward players to conserve ammuntion instead of simply blasting everything in sight because it is infinite. It also rewards a faction for playing well, if they protect their more valuable ships and use resources wisely, they can have more of them than the other guy, as opposed to an artifical cap based on population.

Now, the problem with this system is that if a player loses a ship, his faction may not be able to afford giving him a new one. If this is the case, he runs a transport. With it, either he can try to attack things (if his faction is getting their ass kicked and majority of players are in transports), or ferry resources, fuel, and ammo to where they are needed, or whatnot until he can get a real command.

To wrap things up, let me talk about invasions and city attacks. They would be how cities (and ports also) would be taken, using Marines as troops of course There would be no player controlling them, nor will they have to be visible. They can remain a number in the background. Marines spawn automatically from the population and they can be either moved out for offensive operations (or defensive in another city). The number of marines in a city/population of a city determines the number of marines needed to take the city, with some chance thrown in that number of course. In that little inbetween ground is bombardments. Factions can use bombardments from Battleships and waves of attack planes to attack coastal (or nearly so) cities and thus lower population, lower Marine count, and lower resource output. The same effect is with ports, with the added benefit that parts of the port can be attacked. Wanting to lower submarine attacks? Hit the dock that repairs and builds them. Want to soften up the area for a invasion of Marines from a troop ship? Take out that defensive artillery.

There is more to this idea of course, but going any further would be getting into the mundane details. The point I am driving at is you have an awesomely realistic game here. Don't go half-assed with the multiplayer, make it realistic also and not just in terms of graphics and ship stats. But I think the general idea is across and now I'm going back to World of Warcraft. Thoughts?

Pity I think I am a bit late on the planning process for the game.....

Actually I think that's an interesting change on our intended design and one worth exploring opinion and design wise.

Forgot this point about communications:

Any radio based communications out in the ocean can be intercepted by anyone, cipher technologies can be used to classify your transmissions, however the more you use it without putting more resources into it, the higher chance another faction will crack the code (All this is done in the background of course, only effort will be on the CinC's allotment portion, Captains basically have no control or knowledge of this other than to use or not to use radio communications, and the breaking of it is a random algorithum based on resource input into the field and the amount of radio data picked up by the other side.) and will be able to allow their Captains to overhear conversations.

The work arounds for this would be either light based transmissions, which would be secure (lets simplify matters by ignoreing the possibility of an enemy ship in the line of sight) at the cost of requiring the other ship to be in close range and the fact that transmissions via light are very slow from the completion of the message from the actual transmission.

A middle ground is having Captains who plan to work together for a mission think up possible scenarios for the trip and come up with code phases that aren't obvious, and then use them through the radio transmission.

I like the idea of intercepting enemy transmissions. Would make people more careful about spamming the in-game chat too.

I have to say some good ideas there Although I have to say I dont want this game to get to bogged down in land or air war fare, so if there are inland cities that are to be attacked then it will be done on a very NPC basis.

Yeah, I agree with you, in fact, the concept of armies I had in mind would be a player controlling a troop ship containing them and after getting close to shore near the intended city target, the captain of the troop ship send troops after it. A NPC battle ensues that is determined by a formula. No player intervention after the sending, although a interesting thought is the ability of nearby ships to "donate" their deck guns to the marines for use of artillery and thus lower your losses.

As for the air side, if this game has carriers in it, then air wars are part of the naval war. Those AA guns are on your ships for a reason, obviously planes need to play a part in the war and the concern of coastal support planes need to be raised to a Captain. The act of moving in enemy waters needs to have more of a threat than merely a ship you can see long before they get in range. Granted, you can see planes inbound, but you have seconds as opposed to minutes. Now, we don't need to have a flight sim here, for example, a port commander can send out planes to patrol waters to serve as a early warning and to provide air support if a friendly ship requests it (with the port commander's permission). The same with the carrier, they can use it for a recon screen. Theoretically, this would allow for carriers to create a dead zone for submarines in that they can send patrols further out than the sub's batteries can take it, thus either keeping them on the surface vulernable or forcing a retreat at the cost of the use of a lot of assets in one point and the guzzling of fuel to maintain so many aircraft at once.

In fact, I think that coastal planes should be better than carrier planes in that the lack of a runway limit means a plane can carry more fuel, armament, and armor as opposed to a carrier plane which cannot have too great an inertia.

BTW, when did aerial ASW start coming into play? Any chance of an alternative to depth charges?

In any case, yeah, keep players on the bridge. Marines would be formula based (and like I said before, invisiable, no need for a graphical representation even, and planes would be AI based taking orders and tactics from a human.

Any chance of an alternative to depth charges?

Pretty sure Enigma planes can drop either bombs, depth charges or torpedos. Not sure if only certain planes drop certain weapons or whether its a mission-specific weapon loadout.

/bux

Lol, the whole time I was reading that first post, I was thinking "This sounds kinda like Warcraft or Starcraft"......Then I see "World of Warcraft" at the bottom.

I think there are some good ideas for a 2nd game for TAG, after Enigma is done and up and running.

I think Enigma is too far along to go back and make a lot of changes right now, as they are trying to get it done and let the people who have been so anxiously awaiting the MP version, to get their game to play.

Maybe like an "Enigma: Theatre of Conquest" or something like that, for the 2nd game. =)

Yeah, that was my main concern. The thing is, it probably either has to happen on this game or not at all....its too similar and too different at the same time. And like I've said already, if the online game is just "ooooo I sunk a ship, doing nothing for my faction but increase my own stats," the novelty of playing against humans will wear off pretty quickly.

But about it being too late, I really don't think so. Unless it requires a revamp of the game engine, the potiential is already there ready to be tapped. Airplane AI has been in place for the longest time, as is the user command interface to give the planes orders (only work would perhaps be the addition of some commands). Cities can be generic, and ports were already planned for addition for MP weren't they? The majority of my idea changes the game by the concept of it, and that concept can mainly be handled by simplistic dialog boxes in front of the graphical representation that would be in the game anyway. In my opinion, the entire concept is a lot less intensive than the addition of an additional ship, considering the graphics work, the research, and the physics of the thing. Of course I have very little programming experiance also....limited to BASIC and a language similar to C used in a game where you program robots to do tasks (called Colobot if any are interested).

Yeah, the idea of it is very similar to the now formulaic RTS genre, and yes, I play many a game in it. But the problem with those RTSs is that there are no tactics involved, the winner is who clicks faster and smarter. That wouldn't be the case in my idea applied to E:RT and so it will have a completely different feel. Personally, I am looking forward to what appears to be the next generation of RTSs that do away with resources or almost do so, namely Wartime Command (WW2-based) and Empire at War (SW based made by the new incarnation of Westwood).

And BTW, WoW has nothing to do with a strategy game other than the storyline that branches from the RTS series.