Drongo
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Posts: 98
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Post by Drongo on Aug 3, 2017 9:07:50 GMT
The current system in Antzzz is core to the game but not very realistic.
No ant colony storms another ant colony and ends up with part of the defender's territory - especially if the attacker is miles away.
The resource that is attacked for (and traded to the winner) should be food. The same reason why ants attack each other.
Attack another player's hunting field to reduce it, but not to TAKE it.
So the system I propose regarding Hunting Field is this:
A player expands their hunting field by populating it with worker ants and soldiers to defend the workers.
More workers = more hunting field.
More soldiers = fewer workers killed by things like spiders, etc (a bit like Antzzz but in an ongoing amount, not "per hunt").
An enemy ant nest may attack another player's hunting field's worker and soldier population, and therefore reduce their hunting field gathering ability, therefore reducing the food income of the nest. Reducing the food income of the enemy reduces their ability to lay more workers, soldiers, dig deeper nests, build armies, etc... so attacking an enemy's hunting field (population) is a constant struggle between nests... but one nest does not TAKE the hunting field of another as happens in Antzzz.
So Player1 might have 1,000,000 workers and 250,000 soldiers "out hunting"... giving them a hunting field of 1,250,000 (visible to every player).
Player2 might have 10,000,000 workers and 10,000 solders "out hunting"... giving them a hunting field of 10,010,000 (visible to every player).
Player3 might have 100,000 workers and 1,000,000 solders "out hunting"... giving them a hunting field of 1,100,000 (visible to every player).
Who is strongest?
Who has the highest income of food?
Who is growing fastest?
Player1 is gathering 1,000,000 workers worth of food every day... and has a quarter of that as defenders (consuming food but killing lots of nasties like spiders and praying mantis).
Player2 has far more workers and is gathering food fast, but far fewer soldiers, so the hunting field population is much more vulnerable to both attack from enemy players as well as losses to the normal "every day" threats of praying mantis, spiders, etc.
Player3 has a very slow income, and a much higher food cost for the solders on the hunting field, however the workers are much safer from attack and lose far fewer per day to the normal losses to spiders, praying mantis, etc.
Different players will choose different strategies, and in groups/alliances some players will decide to have very different ratios to other players.
The above workers/soldiers are not the TOTAL of each player (there are others building nest, caring for larvae etc - different discussion), only the total on their HUNTING FIELD gathering food from the "forest floor".
Your thoughts on this?
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yogi
New Member
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Post by yogi on Aug 5, 2017 1:00:48 GMT
So attacking to reduce a player's hf instead of stealing it.
Takes away the main team element. And core reason for players such as myself to play. Mind you I've still got to read the rest so there might be a team element there still.
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Drongo
Administrator
Posts: 98
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Post by Drongo on Aug 5, 2017 1:04:36 GMT
I was thinking that like most competing systems in nature, if one side attacks the other side to reduce the other side... then this benefits the attacker because they now have a smaller competition.
So for example if we have two teams/alliances... with say 100 members each.
One alliance is aggressive and attacks the other constantly, reducing their hunting field to maybe 25% of what it would otherwise be, then the attacking alliance now has a large hunting field (and therefore income/laying speed/ant growth, etc) while the alliance being attacked only has 25% of their income... making them weaker.
So while there's no actual TRADE of hf from the losing alliance to the winning alliance, the winning alliance is still bigger now and therefore stronger and more likely to continue winning into the future.
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yogi
New Member
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Post by yogi on Aug 5, 2017 1:17:38 GMT
I can see that working.
Did also remind me of one thing though. At the end of a war on fourmizzz the winner of the war will take say 20% and give the rest back. In this case if there is a NOW type Alliance. They would likely destroy the enemy into nothing ensuring next to no growth for the competition. And will continually attack them.
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Drongo
Administrator
Posts: 98
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Post by Drongo on Aug 5, 2017 1:21:12 GMT
I believe you refer to inter-player politics and agreements... these are separate to the actual in-game rules... they're more like "gentlemen's rules" or "unwritten rules"... they aren't actually enforced by the game... they're just agreements between players. There's nothing to stop this or a whole bunch of other things from happening in the new game.  |
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biter
Xenomorph
Posts: 18
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Post by biter on Aug 5, 2017 1:55:37 GMT
What about if when you attack another players hf and win you carry their bodies back to your nest as food but if you lose the defender gets all the bodies as food. That way of you attack someone and lose you have actually helped them. So make sure you dont lose! XD
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Drongo
Administrator
Posts: 98
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Post by Drongo on Aug 5, 2017 3:59:24 GMT
I like it!
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Post by MrMEC on Aug 5, 2017 5:18:10 GMT
If the soldier ants are killing threats like bugs and other anthills' attacks, shouldn't they be a net neutral, or even a small net positive, on food supply? It seems they would be able to feed themselves (even if only a small % or at certain ratios)
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Drongo
Administrator
Posts: 98
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Post by Drongo on Aug 5, 2017 7:51:02 GMT
Hi MrMEC! Yes exactly. The system I'm thinking with HF is similar to the one in Antzzz, except instead of selecting a hunt size and army size and the game telling you how long it takes, you instead assign a certain total size (a scale, that you can change up or down at any time) and this controls the income of food - kinda like a hunt every "tick" of the game. If you have lots of workers, they bring in lots of food. If you have lots of soldiers, they consume a lot of food but protect the workers from attrition (attacks from day-to-day predators), and also from attacks by other players. As the amount of workers and soldiers sent out on hunting increases, so too does the amount of dangers they face. So if a player sends out say 1,000,000 workers and no soldiers, then these workers will begin by collecting 1,000,000 worth of food each day, but each day they'll be reduced in number by attacks from predators that eat ants (and, of course, attacks by other players). If the player sends out say 1,000,000 soldiers as well, then the food the workers collect will be less (as the soldiers need to eat food to run around swarming on things and nipping at lizard toes and praying mantis faces), however their mere presence will greatly reduce the loss to workers. Note that there will ALWAYS be SOME losses. It is impossible to reduce the loss to your workforce to zero... so there will be a fine line you walk between good income and acceptable losses. Some players may even wish to try a strategy of simply flooding the hunting field with workers and no soldiers, and replacing losses with new workers laid using the food collected instead of burnt on soldiers... the game will need to be balanced of course to ensure that it is a working system. As you say, there should be some income of food brought in by soldier ants swarming and actually killing predators (random events for example), but in most cases they'll simply be a deterrent to predators looking to make quick meals out of worker ants that are busy collecting other things like seeds, honeydew, dead carcasses, jelly beans, sugar spilled on kitchen benches, etc. Maybe SOME of the species chosen (see Ant Castes and Battle thread) like Army Ants for example or other larger aggressive ants actually bring down and cart off to the nest live prey, so that soldiers sent into the hunting field have either much lower cost or as you suggest are actually food-positive. So that is one of the benefits of choosing that particular species of ant to play, while one of the negatives might be that each ant costs more food to both lay and maintain, forcing a player of that species of ant to always be out on aggressive hunts or risk starving to death... |
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Post by flatnose on Aug 6, 2017 19:09:13 GMT
I dont have time to read all of this as of right this very minute buuuut
if what you mean is you actually use hunting field to hunt for food then hell yeah however the more areas of contest the better imo you should still get both wood and food and hf and anything else we can throw in for another area of control maybe termite mounds for none player xp that doesnt suck? in antzzz one person gets 200bill hf and now suddenly they dont need to deal with anyone or care what they think and I HATE that
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Post by Albastross on Aug 8, 2017 6:46:05 GMT
I like the idea of HF being a 'thing' your ants are on instead of a 'resource'. But I'm wondering about something, lets say we have 4 ant hills: A,B,C,D. They are layed out like this:
B
A D
C
And player A wants to attack player D, but B and C have controlled HF between them so A can't go straight through without walking on either B or C's HF. Would there be no incident take place? Or would A's ants attack one of the players in a small skirmish just passing by. Could A choose to walk around B or C and increase their attack time but avoid additional fights? One last question/point: Would B and C be constantly fighting each other because they have HF that borders each other or would the ants just not care unless B attacked C or vise versa?
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Post by Albastross on Aug 8, 2017 6:47:27 GMT
Posting screwed up how I wanted that diagram to look. Here's a more accurate one.
.B
A.D
.C
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Drongo
Administrator
Posts: 98
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Post by Drongo on Aug 8, 2017 10:12:54 GMT
@ Flatnose - I agree ... the more areas of contest available in the game the better the game will be... more diverse attacks and different theatres of war... I like it.
@ Albatross - You want the map to actually be a map... like in a real time strategy game or something. This moves a lot away from the style that antzzz is in... this will depend heavily on the type of structure built into the game, which is Murgle's area of expertise. I agree in principle that a map should have areas of control - it could really open up a lot of options... you could begin to have newbies hidden behind a protective wall of giant players, or you could have enemy alliances move to surround one victim alliance and shut them off from re-inforcing the victim, etc. It really is a nice dynamic in the game... let's see what our coder has to say about this.
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Post by Opasan on Aug 8, 2017 10:24:12 GMT
Hmm interesting
If B-C are in aliances with non-attacking pact they will not fight; if they are in war they are fighting auto and if neutral there is only 5% to fight (like when you send your army in wild and there is some chanse to fight some random enemy.)
Similar with moving over someone teritory, if allied you can, non-att pact yes, neutral only 25% of both armies will fight
Explanation: head of the marching army will fight and try to free path for other; they can kill those ants defending HF on that small part of HF, once they are cleaned it just continue through HF and went out; not fighting with whole defending army.
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Drongo
Administrator
Posts: 98
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Post by Drongo on Aug 8, 2017 10:35:26 GMT
Yep I was thinking this also... perhaps it could be "simulated".
If an attacking army passes over or near an ants nest, then that "terrain" nest has a larger than usual attrition death rate in their hunting field ants... so rather than 1,000,000 ants on their HF coming back that day with "you lost 1,000 ants to praying mantis and spiders and stuff" instead it might say something like "A huge force of ants from [playername] passed through your HF, killing 12,500 of your workers before passing through"... so like collatoral damage.
Likewise, if the attacking army is passing over a lot of ants nests on its way to the intended target then it receives a lot of losses in transit.
This would result in several dynamics, such as for example
1) a nuetral player stuck between warring ant-hills is indirectly affected (either lots more ants dying in the HF, or way less food due to recalling their workers from the HF while the others battle it out).
2) players would avoid long treks to an enemy, or paths that intersect known huge players, due to the losses that it would encounter on the march
All of this I'm sure could be handled by a simple database HTML game like antzzz... but again, this is a question for Murgle.
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