Season Eternal Conflict Ideas Thread

[The Viscount]

So I'm planning a little special season of my own. It's going to be pretty big, actually. Depends on the players.

Basically, War Strategy with a bit of Murder Mystery. Just a bit. Mostly strategy.

Players will first apply as royalty, and up to 4? will be accepted, depending on the amount of applicants. Their goal is to achieve victory by any means.

After that, people apply for officers or vagrants. They have more customized goals, but unless applied for, their goal is to find a lord and help them achieve their goals. Vagrants can act as mercenaries or be converted to normal officers later.

Details in progress, I'll post more when I get home. This is more of a thread to ask what you would think, as well as to invite any suggestions that you can post here or PM me.

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

I like the idea, just need information on how you plan to handle things like movement and the time base of the game (Actions in real time, or is it turn based?). This is a whole different ball park kinda game so like I said with Hero, please keep an eye on the forums as they are updated as requirements to host various kinds of seasons probably will appear.

[The Viscount]

Of course. The information is coming soon.

Ravan: Soon™

Me: No, just soon.

I'll be spending a good amount of time working through mechanics, and two seasons could well pass before I'm ready to rock and roll. I'll give a bit more information, such as how I'm thinking the movement and basic story right now when I get home. So in a couple of hours.

[King V]

I really think people need to think through their ideas more before applying to become a season host. Making the season mechanics and drawing up the season map takes more work than you would think (although I'm not one to talk since I somehow get everything done in a few days).

I can't give my opinion until I see a more detailed version of the season draft.

[The Viscount]

This isn't really a "season host application." This is just to see how people would take the idea of a War Strategy-type game in DRMMO.

Now, I've thought over it, and have developed a (rough) time mechanic. It's much more structured than normal.

TIME system:

The gameplay is divided into months: for simplicity, we will use the months we already have, January-December, instead of some crazy system.

Each month will be a 1-hour period. The game sessions will start on the hour to make it simple. Each month is divided into two segments.

STRATEGY segment:
The player takes time and decides what they will do during that month. They can move between two locations, interact with their troops, issue commands, etc. The player has as long as this period takes to think and rethink their actions. This segment lasts 30 minutes, from 00 to 30.

ACTION segment:
The mastermind tells the players the results of their actions. Players will be given chances to make decisions at certain key points. Example:

Army 1 moves to City A.
In City A, Army 2 is stationed. Army 2 flies the banners of an enemy.

Me: "You see an opposing army stationed within the city. What do you do?"

At this point, Army 1's officer will respond with their action. They could choose to flee, in which point, they will move back to their original stationing. They could choose to attack, at which point they will enter combat. They could choose to siege the town, which cuts off any resource increase. So on and so forth. This segment lasts from 30 to 00 of the next hour. At that point, the player will be told of their current resource levels, and be given the chance to make more actions.


Now, I couldn't leave the AFKs out. Obviously, there will be points in which players cannot play. Because of that, I have come up with the DEFAULT system.

DEFAULT system:
If the entire period of STRATEGY passes and a player has not made a decision, they will be forced to DEFAULT. If you've played Bravely Default, it's very similar. Every month that the DEFAULT system is active, your army will become steadily more fortified, to a certain cap. The DEFAULT score is a percentage value. Here's an example.

Army 1: 700 units.
Army 2: 500 units, DEFAULT score of 150%.

In this case, Army 1 would actually LOSE the fight, assuming there are no other bonuses. The final army strength, as of now, is represented by: (UNIT) x (DEFAULT) = (STRENGTH). There will be more bonuses of other kinds, though.

Here are just a couple of systems, they are very rough and could use defining. I will be coming up with more. But first, games.

[The City [EclipseZwolf]]

Just a slight comment on that system. You are giving yourself 30 minutes to dissect the actions of players and respond, as well as handle immediate times and events occurring. That time frame is already short enough to have you typing up in depth responses to players, let alone making additional decisions on the fly. Plus players spend a long time thinking about actions. I could see you spending 30 minutes per player. This is assuming you don't have to do anything smaller and more in depth for players who are officers or vagrants. I think your time estimate on how long this will take is severely underestimating the scale of what you are attempting to do.

Ghost has done battles in their season (hosted on another site) that have involved groups as small as 2 people. One two person duel, in this case me against Sea, took probably 2 hours of discussing actions with Ghost and ghost actually typing up what happened and then us responding to each others tactics.

[The Viscount]

You're right, that is going to be hectic. However, a few things will make a big difference.

1. Most battles will be number-based. Tactics will have some factor in the outcome, but not too much. Also, there might not be situations where two battlers will need more than one PM to solve a battle. One person attacks, the attacker says his tactic, the defender says their tactic, the numbers are quickly crunched, and an outcome is made. Don't worry, I'm good at maths.

2. Unless someone PMs towards the end of STRATEGY, then I have at least part of STRATEGY to roughly plan out what happens. With that said, I'll probably have a HUGE document with the entire list of scripted events. Those events will be so detailed, I'll probably have some that are going to be like, "Move from City A to City B between June and July of any year." So yeah, I'll have some events ready, and some will need tweaking.

3. While one player/group thinks, I move onto another one and handle them at the same time, on a first-come-first-serve basis. Simple enough, yeah?

4. If there is something that takes longer than the original 30 minutes to take care of, the action can carry on into the next month. In that case, I'll probably add like a half DEFAULT bonus for the time, so that players don't have an idea of, "In doing this important thing I am leaving myself open, I better stop." Of course, if they specifically order all of their soldiers to do something that's not defending, then I'll probably not add something.

Of course, all of these are not set in stone. No matter what though, I'm going to be structuring the times. I'd just prefer not to have 1 month be 2 hours, because then, only like 3 months will be done per day and this truly will be an Eternal Conflict. I might try to run an Experimental Map or something of the sort to see how that might work out though.

Once again, more details will come as I come up with them. Eventually, after I refine the ideas and make enough to allow for a whole season, I will compile them and create a full-on application. This is, once again, to help me get and refine my ideas.

[Daedalus]

I like the basic premise, but as much as I understand the need to keep it simple, reducing the battles down to simple numbers with minimal tactical impact somewhat guts the idea of it being a "strategy" game to me. It becomes more about resource management. I'd probably still really like to play in it, and like I said I understand the need to make it simple, but if there's some way to bring the tactics back into it while keeping it quick, I'd be much more interested in it.