[Campaign] Some campaign Mechanics

[Limitteditemeater]

In the campaign, I am currently designing I plan to add 2 new mechanics in quite a few missions. These are controls points and trade routes. First of control points:

Control points are the circles of power. They are across locations on the map and give 100 gold and wood every minute. They grant vision of the area and are crucial for winning and all that. You can build either a small gold mine or small lumber mill on them doing so will grant you an extra 100 resource depending on the buildings. The AI will try to reclaim these control points so they should be defended.

Trade routes: In some of the missions a trade route will spawn heading to your base or the enemies these each come from set locations and have a small escort. Once they reach your original base they will disappear and give you 500 gold and wood for every pack horse(on land) and transport boat (on sea). Normally there will be 2 of those in a trade route. When a player destroys an enemy trade route they gain 500 gold and wood for every pack horse and transport boat slain. When a trade route spawns on the player's side the AI will sometimes send out an attack force.

Please tell me what you think

 

[Pyrogasm]

I like them, they seem like interesting mechanics. Control Points promote expanding your bases even when you don't 'need' to and maintaining your outposts even after they've depleted their gold mine/trees (like might happen in regular melee matches) rather than letting them be sacrificial fodder to slow your enemies down. Caravans promote protecting a route rather than a circular area or something else vanilla like that. If properly implemeted I think they would be fun.

My only concern is that it seems they give a lot of resources and it may become tedious to keep constantly managing trade routes and defending your control points because the resource income from doing so is actually better/more consistent/whatever than gathering by normal means. I think you have to strike the right balance where it's worth it to seek out these extra resources but you don't feel you HAVE to because it's so much of a boost.

 

[Limitteditemeater]

Alright will do there are 1 or two levels where you dont have a gold mine and low lumber so might keep them as they are on those levels but lower the resources on other levels

 

[Pyrogasm]

In that vein I think it would be smart to introduce both control points and trade routes in a level where you cannot mine gold mines and chop trees normally, so players don't ignore them as options when they are available. Basically remove the Harvest abilities from workers in that map and make sure there are enough CP and TR to sustain the mission you have planned there. That would ensure players are acquainted with the mechanics before being thrown into a mission with objectives + normal resource harvest + 2 new forms of resource harvest right off the bat.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Sounds interesting, maybe give the control point other abilities like hiring guards or building towers near itself.

^ That's a good one.

 

[Limitteditemeater]

In that vein I think it would be smart to introduce both control points and trade routes in a level where you cannot mine gold mines and chop trees normally, so players don't ignore them as options when they are available. Basically, remove the Harvest abilities from workers in that map and make sure there are enough CP and TR to sustain the mission you have planned there. That would ensure players are acquainted with the mechanics before being thrown into a mission with objectives + normal resource harvest + 2 new forms of resource harvest right off the bat.

Good idea, originally the introduction of the mechanic was going to be on an island map with minimal resources from gold mines and trees. But that idea is probably better.

Sounds interesting, maybe give the control point other abilities like hiring guards or building towers near itself.

^ That's a good one.

With your idea, I'll add 2 new buildings you can build on the control point such as the mini gold mine. One could be a barracks where you can train advanced troops for the control point and another one that gives bonuses to nearby buildings. Any opinions on that addition??

 

[Pyrogasm]

I think the upgrades should be exclusive, so you can only have 1 per control point. That also promotes holding as many as possible. You have to decide which ones should get the gold upgrade, which ones lumber, which ones barracks. I think the buildings-buffing upgrade should also make your workers harder to kill, like an HP + armor upgrade. Actually using upgrades might be the easiest way to do that, since they can be 'unresearched' now to reduce tech level. In general I would probably advocate the barracks upgrade being an aura buff to unit combat/movement stats rather than training advanced units to defend the CP. Depending on how many CP you have that could be a lot of micro to keep building/managing your defender upgrades and they seem to me more like things you should capture, upgrade, and then not have to worry about actively 'using'.

 

[Limitteditemeater]

Good idea with the worker's bit, for the 1 buildings per control point thing, how it works is there is a special builder called the Defence designer (possibly will make a new builder for controls points if the defense designer gets overcrowded with other buildings). Basically, the defense designer can build one of those options on top of the control point like a haunted gold mine. So only one can ever be built on top of it until it is destroyed by an enemy. I can see the Barracks having special units being a problem with micro so I'll change that to unit buffs. I'll probably make the unit and defense option use a 3 teir upgrade for all the auras and possible abilities. I'll probably give the unit and building checkpoints a starting aura that only effects the nearby region and the rest of their abilities/auras affect the whole map.

 

[Pyrogasm]

IMO it would be easier to just make the control point an immobile unit or building that has its upgrades listed on its comand card. That way instead of having to click a special builder and build in the right spot on top of the CP, you just transfer control of the CP to the capturing player so they can select it and click the upgrade they want. If a CP is changed to neutral or captured by another player, delete the old CP and make a new one in its place for the player/neutral passive. That bit is necessary because I don't believe you can undo a building upgrade. With units you could chaos morph or passive raven-form morph it to the proper upgrade but those can't have gold/lumber costs associated with them. Make a CP doodad you place under the CP unit so the image is still there once it's upgraded. If using a building you will probably want to remove its ubersplat (the ground texture beneath buildings that isn't the actual tile they're on-- human buildings have a grey stone one if I remember properly), which I think you can do in the Object Editor.

 

[Limitteditemeater]

Didn't think of making them upgrades some reason. Good idea will do that with them. Thank you for all the suggestions

 

[cleavinghammer]

Other upgrade ideas:

Caravanserai: Increases the number of horses per caravan (up to a limit) and increases their movement speed.

Dockyards: Increases the number of ships per trade fleet (up to a limit) and increases their movement speed.

Guard Outpost: Caravan spawns with guards, and creates guards near the control point.

Admiralty: Trade fleets spawn with escort ships, and creates escorts near the control point.

Trading Post: Exchange gold and lumber.

 

[Limitteditemeater]

Good idea didn't think of making them interact with eachother will add some of those in

 

[Lordlycan]

Trade routes and caravans are interesting but it should come at a benefit to both parties currently involved in said trade routes. So you kinda need 3 parties at least to make 1 trade route work. And it will take some serious effort in order to balance it from you're non player controlled races. because there's many many ways to abuse it on the players end and fuck over AI's trying to make use of them.

You could also play around with transporting Food next to lumber and gold and limiting the amount of pig farms a player can build for one race. While another ace on fertile lands can have more farms and food to trade off. In such a way. Raiding a caravan from Food + gold. Will give upkeep to the player who had the food sold off and the other player not getting the food will get his gold income. But in order for trade to work and make it interesting you kinda want to be able to trade up to three things. Sure you can play around with harvesting crop and the likes as well. But the basic foundation of it is to make and actual trade with it. And as such it might be more beneficial to raid either due to a lack of one resource. You might even drop meat when raiding a food caravan and have a building that "eats" meat every x seconds to not go into upkeep.

 

[cleavinghammer]

If it's a campaign, I don't see how 3 players will be involved though.

 

[Lordlycan]

it's about economics with three parties. If you think of it like good design you first set it up it would work with players then alter the AI to do it like them but with some easy cheats) This allows you to give the player the opportunity to play with each race in your campaign without having to make much changes because. If you set it up "correctly" first you don't have to do a lot of changes to a system that's integrated already.