Walt There needs to be a cap on the number of live, player-controllable ships at any given time.
Perhaps there could be some sort of supply limit that caps what a player can have spawned in at any given time? Number of crew? Total ship value?
This is already sort of achieved by having the smaller control points run out after a certain amount of money. You can only get so many new ships out of them, and once they run out players have every incentive to fight over the center point (thus contesting it, and preventing additional income). Even if one player is determined to bunker up on his depleted small control point, the game will end pretty fast if only the middle control point player has income. Is that enough of a restriction to keep the number of ships reasonable?
Walt There needs to be some way of cleaning up dead/junk ship debris
Junk could take damage over time a la Arena mode? Weak black hole in the center that slowly sucks in junk?
Damage over time sounds good to me. If the damage is quick enough this would also help fix one problem with nukes, where tiny pieces of debris can get caught in their launch tubes causing the nukes to blow themselves up.
Walt Is there a gameplay reason you want a big asteroid in the middle of the point, or is that just a lore justification?
Random idea: What if the asteroids (and thus the capture points themselves) were movable, just really really heavy? You could build ships explicitly for the purpose of moving the asteroids. Not sure if interesting or exploitable.
Yes, but not a major one. I liked having the physical, weapon-blocking asteroids because
1) I could see players flying missile bunkers into deep crevices in the asteroids to use as cover (assuming the asteroids aren't randomized) This would both be really cool and provide a minor defender's advantage.
2) Cosmoteer has never had terrain before, and I hope it will impact fights in an interesting way.
If movable asteroids/points is exploitable, it would probably involve a player moving all their control points together so that they're easier to defend. But if the asteroids are really heavy, most likely it'll end up having very little impact. It's more realistic though and has potential for cool niche strategies, so it sounds good to me (as long as those niche strategies stay niche).
(I'm also all for having the asteroids be durable-but-destructible, but I think you mentioned before that it would hurt performance a lot)
Walt This isn't really possible to do without reworking the background code, and even if I did that, I think it would look really weird.
If we want a lore justification for the center capture point, then maybe it should be a small space station or something like that? Unless you really think it's important for the center capture point to have no obstacles.
I don't necessarily have anything against obstacles in the center point, but I originally had the point empty because I don't know what effect they'll have on gameplay. It probably won't have much of an effect, but I figured caution is better. I also liked that it made the center point a little more vulnerable from all sides, instead of being able to stick your back to a wall.
Walt I feel like there should be a short countdown timer (10 seconds at 1x?) before a player is eliminated, to prevent situations where a player accidentally strays out of their last contested CP for a brief moment and then loses.
Maybe when you have no control points you take damage like the RoD? (and get a big red warning message?)
Walt Also, does it really make sense to prevent players from spawning near their own ships? That would make it harder to spawn in fleets of small ships.
Yeah, I don't think there's any reason to prevent players from spawning near their own ships if there's no enemies near.
Walt Is this to encourage players to ultimately have to fight over the center point?
IVIemories My other concern is that this mode definitely feels like something that is supposed to take a while to play out (contesting objectives back and forth). But for a 16 player tournament, 10 minutes is realistically the longest amount of time I can have per battle
Walt I share this concern. Battles could theoretically last forever
A lot of the reason the small points run out is to limit how long battles can go. With the example settings the small points run out after 5 real-life minutes with the game at 1/2 speed, and after that the game is basically guaranteed to end within a couple of minutes, unless the winning player is intentionally taking their time. If there's lots of fighting and contesting the small points will last longer, but if there's lots of fighting and income is contested then the game will probably end pretty quickly anyway. Will that be enough of a restriction?
I think absolute worst-case, if one player is just sitting in the middle with a gajillion credits and not willing to move out and win, the hosts could just say "ok, player X has 20 times the fleet (plus income) as player Y (with no income), let's just call it a game."
Walt Is there any room in this game mode for modifying ships during the battle? (Like you need to counter someone's design but don't have exactly the right pre-designed ship to do it.)
I see no reason there wouldn't be, though I haven't thought in depth about it. Repairing could be an option too.
Ultranova Well, what if the player was able to choose spawn locations based on their control points. Around the control point would be a spawn zone, where ships are allowed to spawn/warp in.
Walt If players don't start with ships and can't spawn near CPs, then might it be an exploitable strategy to quickly spawn in the fastest ship you can design as close to the enemy's CP as possible, and then race to capture their CP before they can get their to defend it?
IVIemories I am slightly concerned that this mode might heavily favor fast ships over slower ones since it would be possible to quickly capture a point and move on to the next but that's just my conjecture.
Walt The 500 meter restriction only applies to enemy/contested/neutral points and enemy ships. You can spawn as close to your own CPs and ships as you want, as long as that's not too close to a non-friendly CP or ship.
I think one thing that's really important to get right with this mode is the defender's advantage. If it's too strong then it just turn into a tug-of-war map, but if it's too weak then nobody will bother trying to defend anything. Things that play into this include:
how quickly can you reinforce your own capture points, compared to how quickly enemies can arrive to capture them? For example, if players could always instantly spawn in their own control points that would be a huge defender's advantage - an enemy ship would have to warp in and fly all the way to your point, and then you could show up with the perfect counter just as they arrive, spending juuuust as many $$ as you need to win and no more.
who gets income from a contested point? (right now nobody) If the defender gets income from a contested point, that increases the defender's advantage because the attacker gets no value out of an attack until they've completely won. If nobody gets income, then the attacker gets 50% value just for attacking, and the other 50% if they win.
capture point terrain? (tends to favor the defender, who has time to take ideal positioning) Terrain makes it more difficult to be flanked, as well as making fights a little slower because you can hide behind the terrain. No terrain opens up the battlefield, reducing or removing the defender's advantage.
Regarding ship spawning: whatever we think is best will probably be a temporary solution, until blink drives are added into the game. If FTL-ing in can use the same mechanics and rules as blink drive then I think it'll be a lot more fair to let players warp in wherever.
So what do you think about...
central point stays empty, with no terrain (but hopefully a cool graphic. Maybe some kind of gaseous nebula ships can fly though?)
ships can spawn as close to your own CPs and ships, as long as it's not too close to a non-friendly (including neutral!) CP or ship
Got to go rn, if I missed responding to something let me know.
Sounds good to me!