Drongo
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Post by Drongo on Aug 3, 2017 8:06:03 GMT
I personally don't like the way Antzzz attacks are an all-out commitment. You either win and crush them totally, or you lose every last ant.
I would love to see a system where you attack and do maybe three rounds of damage per attack.
So for example: Attacker has the initiative (is calculated first)... by multiplying ants by all bonuses (tech, terrain maybe, random events, etc)... as per the below formula:
ATTACK = [number of attacking ants] x [all modifiers for attacker] DEFENCE = [number of defending ants] x [all modifiers for defender]
ROUND1: [ATTACK] - [DEFENSE] = [number of defenders killed] ROUND1 counter attack: [DEFENSE] - [ATTACK] = [number of attackers killed]
This process is then repeated with a recalculation based on the number of ants left.
If the attacker kills all the defenders, then the attacker wins and is awarded a prize (such as colonisation, resources, etc)
If the defender kills all the attackers, then the attack is thwarted and maybe some form of reward is offered to the defender - for example they have a new modifier buff that is applied if they immediately counter-attack the attacker's nest (representing the defender's army being able to follow the pheromone trail back to their nest or similar.
If neither attacker or defender completed wipe out the other at the end of three rounds, the attacker withdraws back to the nest and both players lick their wounds.
I also feel that there should be an XP system where ants can go up several grades... so like yd can go d, then td in Antzzz, except more than just 3 tiers, and for every caste of ant. Maybe 10, maybe even unlimited XP tiers... so you could just keep ranking up ants that have been around for years doing battle after battle are up to like level 10,000 or something. This, of course, would be one of the modifiers applied in the above formula when calculating attack/defense.
This system would remove or at least reduce the concept of "wiping" nests in one shot... which to be honest I think is stupid in Antzzz. A nest of sufficient number of ants should be able to put up a serious defense even against hugely overwhelming attackers.
What do you think?
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yogi
New Member
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Post by yogi on Aug 5, 2017 0:55:17 GMT
"If the defender kills all the attackers, then the attack is thwarted and maybe some form of reward is offered to the defender"
I like the risk in fourmizzz. If you miss calculate you may lose your army. So that encourages people to be more careful. If losing in attack won't kill you then people will just crash and pray they win with no real consequence If they don't. Just a thought.
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Drongo
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Post by Drongo on Aug 5, 2017 1:00:37 GMT
Hi yogi, welcome! Yes you make a good point.
In the system I was proposing there is still risk - you lose a LOT if you miscalculate... just not ALL you send. Well, actually, if you send a tiny army against a huge enemy then you'd still lose all... but if your armies are both evenly matched then they both take damage but both aren't completely destroyed.
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Post by InMyPants on Aug 5, 2017 13:03:28 GMT
Hi, good idea you have, lots of work to make it happen!
I think you should be able to arrange your ants. In "ant castes" you a sample battle where the casualties were 1/2 workers, 1/2 soldiers. I like this better than the current system of young dwarves always dying first, but I think the best way to do it would be to have a number of sections based on army size, and you can organize your ants into these sections.
So maybe a defensive army could be organized: 1st section- 1/2 dwarves, 1/2 doorkeepers; 2nd section- all dwarves; 3rd section- the more vulnerable ants
Also, I'd really like defense to be a viable option
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Post by InMyPants on Aug 5, 2017 13:07:02 GMT
Oh, and all 3 sections would fight together, just the 1st section would die first. Maybe the 3rd section doesn't fight very effectively until the other sections are gone.
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Drongo
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Post by Drongo on Aug 5, 2017 22:50:34 GMT
I see what you're saying... I like it. So you'd break your army up into predefined divisions, and put them in order of layers that you want to fight first.
Firstly, remember that according to the proposed Ant Castes and Battle system, different players could choose different species to play, and each species would have different benefits, which might include more varied castes, while other species might only simply have workers, and soldiers.
But you could specify which of your ants was in each wave, and so control which ones you lost more of and which ones were kept for "round 3" of battle (if we were to break it up into 3 rounds, as suggested).
This gives the player much more strategy.
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biter
Xenomorph
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Post by biter on Aug 5, 2017 23:37:45 GMT
That sounds like a lot of work. What if i just want to send a million ants to attack someone cuz I'm too lazy to figure out divisions and stuff? ?
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Drongo
Administrator
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Post by Drongo on Aug 6, 2017 0:11:54 GMT
Well that could easily be solved by having the game "default" or "suggest" the waves, and then the player has the OPTION to manually fill the divisions themselves. It could even be done in such a way that the player pre-sets their preferences for these waves so that the default is according to settings that the player generally prefers... and then can be manually tweaked battle-by-battle IF the player wants to.
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Post by Flatnose on Aug 6, 2017 19:29:24 GMT
I think its absolutely insane to think 3bill ants would kill 3bill ants that just doesnt make sense to me imo if either side didnt win by a certain "round" theyd retreat to fight again another day maybe you could properly structure your army with like a rearguard and front guard and so on far before you actually attack so that when you do actually attack certain portions of your army are set to auto retreat should things go south? the draw back leaving the rest of it to die but atleast you saved the "crucial" part
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omnipotentman
Xenomorph
"Crap. I'm meant to get started on that assignment. I'll just log into Antzzz first..."
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Post by omnipotentman on Aug 7, 2017 8:46:48 GMT
Maybe you should turn the battle system into something like Total war. ' Total War: Antzzz'
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Drongo
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Post by Drongo on Aug 8, 2017 10:29:51 GMT
I think its absolutely insane to think 3bill ants would kill 3bill ants that just doesnt make sense to me imo if either side didnt win by a certain "round" theyd retreat to fight again another day maybe you could properly structure your army with like a rearguard and front guard and so on far before you actually attack so that when you do actually attack certain portions of your army are set to auto retreat should things go south? the draw back leaving the rest of it to die but atleast you saved the "crucial" part I completely agree.
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Post by MrMEC on Aug 13, 2017 7:57:38 GMT
Not necessarily related to attack math, but the subject heading. I think there should be terrain changes that are regional and constant for everyone. For example, you could have a crevice that slows down the ants unless they have a bridging upgrade, a uneven terrain patch where their speed is decreased, or hostile creatures that can eat some ants along the way.
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Drongo
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Post by Drongo on Aug 14, 2017 8:01:39 GMT
Yep I was also thinking that terrain would be a nice addition - this would mean that some sort of base map with actual features on it that armies interact with would be built. I'm not sure if this is something that is easily done using the type of coding that Murgle was talking about, but since it's been awhile since I've seen any input from Murgle maybe this is not an issue afterall.
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murgle
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"Discovering the truth about ourselves is a lifetime's work, but its worth the effort" -Fred Rogers
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Post by murgle on Sept 7, 2017 1:00:42 GMT
Nice idea! I definitely like the 3 round limitation too, thats a clever way to introduce draws. (and gets rid of the problem that is very apparent when you have 1000 doorkeepers attack 1000 tanks, just try it)
infinite XP levels might be a difficult one, (imagine if you had 10 million ants and each one was one rank progressively up to 10 million. thats 10 million individuals that have to be kept track of individually by the game because they each have their own different rank) but we could at the very least have more than 3. (unless someone can come up with a solution to the 10 million individuals problem. maybe if XP was tied to something like a division rather than per ant? ideas are appreciated)
Its not impossible but this would work better for a more traditional RTS game, (which I plan to make in the future, but one game at a time) but for this one I think we could actually get away with doing something akin to battleship (with the whole choosing a X/Y coordinate and hoping you get a hit) if thats what we want, rather than having armies just stationed either en route or in an anthill/nest, there could be additional information stored which gives the actual coordinates of the army its self along a route, so instead of it just being a traveling from point A to point B, it would be that but along C route too, and if two non-allied armies collided on the same point of their routes at the same time, it could lead to a fight. It might complicate the game a bit though by increasing the amount of fights that happen, but if we also made it so defending wasn't such a terrible option and we heavily reduced the gap between small and large players then I'm pretty sure that would balance out and be fine. There MIGHT be an issue with lag though, on a small scale it wouldn't add much but 1000+ players all moving their armies around and colliding into each other could be a problem, but theres only one way to find out for sure! (and that way is to try it and see if it actually works or not)
We could either let players micromanage their entire armies route, or have some predefined routes available to choose from. (maybe you could choose a shortcut or the long way for example) or even both. and we could either make fight reports generate immediately (which might be an issue for players who like sleep), or after they arrive. (which I think is best just because of the whole sleep thing but maybe sleep is overrated for ant gamers)
and if you ask me I think the map tiles should be hexagons instead of squares. (SQUARE DIAGONAL CORNERS WITH A MOVEMENT COST OF 2 ARE TOO EXPENSIVE BUT IF THEY HAVE A COST OF 1 THEY'RE TOO EFFICIENT WHHHYYYY *cries*)
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Drongo
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Post by Drongo on Nov 9, 2018 2:02:38 GMT
Regarding attacking distance and efficiency as per the last paragraph in your post, Murgle. I believe the simplest solution would simply be to calculate the distance between source and target points using a basic geometrical formula to calculate the hypotenuse between the two points. Should be a very quick calculation, and then this distance plus other variables such as march speed, maybe species, etc, all contribute to give the "end time" of any one attack launched. Which then just counts down until completed. When complete the battle result is calculated.
On a different sub-topic - the types of "attacks" or "actions" that a player could perform might include:
Raid Forage Area (another name for Hunting Field)... player can order a number of soldier ants to raid an area of the map, which both kills the workers and takes their gathered resources from that area... with no hope of defense by the defender.
Raid Dome... player can invade the enemy nest's dome, taking resources and killing workers and soldier ants. Defender can defend with their own military, which calculates battles based on the two army's sizes, stats, etc. Neither army can be completely wiped out. But obviously a more powerful army does much more damage than the weaker army does.
Raid Nest... player can invade the enemy nest and snatch eggs, which increases food and water resources taken, and also significantly reduces the layings of the defender's nest. Defender can defend like dome, but with additional antzzz-style defense stats due to the depth of the raid into the nest. It is possible for a vastly superior force to actually kill the defender's queen which can result in that nest no longer being able to lay new ants (and will therefore eventually die once all its workers and soldier ants eventually die out - unless the player has multiple nests and is able to repopulate the nest).
(more to come... ideas welcome)
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