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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  The Gaming Graveyard  |  Game Design/Development  |  Topic: Research feature in tycoon MMOGs 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: Research feature in tycoon MMOGs  (Read 2616 times)
Sairon
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Posts: 866


on: May 22, 2006, 06:46:35 AM

I've been thinking quite a bit about what a research functionality could provide to a game. You're all probably fairly puzzled to what I'm getting at, since this sort of mechanic wouldn't make sense in most of dikus currently available.

First of all for this to work good the game would have to be fairly guild centric. The implementation I'm thinking of would require a city building feature, much like the one in Shadowbane. In fact, keep Shadowbane in mind because that's the game in which this would make most sense.

The speed of research would be decided by the amount of Research Centers you've built, which must be filled with NPC scientists that needs to be paid. We don't want these to scale linearly though, since that would favour farming and super size guilds immensely. Instead, you need exponentially more Research Centers for every one you build in order to gain more research speed. The best way to gain a really high research output would be a combination of a decent amount of Research Centers + controlling resource in the world which grants a fixed amount, totally unaffected by your Research Centers.

The research interface would be made up of an tree like structures. At the beginning only the entries at the absolute bottom of the trees would be visible, and selectable. For example, we could have the entries Warfare, Production, Transportation and Protection. Every entry would be accompanied with a description of what it does and Research Cost. Warfare when fully researched would provide the possibility to construct basic siege structures/units. Additionally when fully researched 2 new options directly above in the tree becomes visible, Catapult and Ladderman ( you know, the units available in stronghold which helps units up on defensive walls  tongue ). Researching Catapult enables construction of, you guessed it, Catapults. There would also naturally be research options which don’t just enable construction of different things. Under Catapult for example there could be, lets say, Balls of fire. When researched ballistic projectiles would do area damage and increase damage to buildings by 100%. There could also be technologies which grant access to production of special items and all sorts of stuff.

The speed at which you traverse the trees should be slow. The very basic stuff in the bottom of the trees would have a fairly low cost, but entries at the top would take weeks even for a guild with a very high research output.

Research would be tied on a guild basis, meaning that if the guild is disbanded, then all the research is lost.

One problem is that since it will get very hard to get a relatively super research output the system strongly favours guilds which start early. If you start out a long time after release you will most likely never catch up research wise to guilds that started at release and have maintained a decent research output. However, the system does allow for specialisation, so there would probably still be branches which aren't explored yet. An option could be to start granting low tech technologies for free once the game has been out for a time in order to allow newly form guilds to somewhat catch up.

Discuss!
tazelbain
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Posts: 6603

tazelbain


Reply #1 on: May 22, 2006, 07:48:48 AM

Quote
The speed of research would be decided by the amount of Research Centers you've built, which must be filled with NPC scientists that needs to be paid. We don't want these to scale linearly though, since that would favour farming and super size guilds immensely. Instead, you need exponentially more Research Centers for every one you build in order to gain more research speed. The best way to gain a really high research output would be a combination of a decent amount of Research Centers + controlling resource in the world which grants a fixed amount, totally unaffected by your Research Centers.
Make them spead out the RC.  If they want fast research they are going to have defend a massive amout of territory.
Quote
One problem is that since it will get very hard to get a relatively super research output the system strongly favours guilds which start early. If you start out a long time after release you will most likely never catch up research wise to guilds that started at release and have maintained a decent research output. However, the system does allow for specialisation, so there would probably still be branches which aren't explored yet. An option could be to start granting low tech technologies for free once the game has been out for a time in order to allow newly form guilds to somewhat catch up.

Each time a research is completed, it becomes less costly until becomes free.

I feel the primary concern of putting any game mechanic in an SB-like enviroment is the abilty frount runners to lock others out. In this system, beyond the normal advantages the frontrunner has, they'll be able to use their more advance tech to burn down enemy RC, preventing others from getting the tech needed to challenge them. I think you'd need some way to raid the frontrunner's RC and steal some research for yourself.  So the Big Dog gets big rewards, but becomes a big target.

"Me am play gods"
Sairon
Terracotta Army
Posts: 866


Reply #2 on: May 22, 2006, 09:11:38 AM

Quote
The speed of research would be decided by the amount of Research Centers you've built, which must be filled with NPC scientists that needs to be paid. We don't want these to scale linearly though, since that would favour farming and super size guilds immensely. Instead, you need exponentially more Research Centers for every one you build in order to gain more research speed. The best way to gain a really high research output would be a combination of a decent amount of Research Centers + controlling resource in the world which grants a fixed amount, totally unaffected by your Research Centers.
Make them spead out the RC.  If they want fast research they are going to have defend a massive amout of territory.
Yea that could also be an option, however that would still favor large sized guilds since they have more manpower to spread.
Quote
Quote
One problem is that since it will get very hard to get a relatively super research output the system strongly favours guilds which start early. If you start out a long time after release you will most likely never catch up research wise to guilds that started at release and have maintained a decent research output. However, the system does allow for specialisation, so there would probably still be branches which aren't explored yet. An option could be to start granting low tech technologies for free once the game has been out for a time in order to allow newly form guilds to somewhat catch up.

Each time a research is completed, it becomes less costly until becomes free.

I feel the primary concern of putting any game mechanic in an SB-like enviroment is the abilty frount runners to lock others out. In this system, beyond the normal advantages the frontrunner has, they'll be able to use their more advance tech to burn down enemy RC, preventing others from getting the tech needed to challenge them. I think you'd need some way to raid the frontrunner's RC and steal some research for yourself.  So the Big Dog gets big rewards, but becomes a big target.

I like how a tech decrease in cost when someone research it, would probably work better than granting them for free at one point. That would also encourage people to research techs which aren't popular, since popular techs would get cheaper and eventually turn free.

Stealing techs could work as long as they don't get copied, ie the one you stole them from still has it when geting robbed. This would also introduce a tactical element, where should we store our techs? Store all techs in the same Research Center and put up a really strong defense, or scatter them across many locations.

If there's some form of rock papper scissors involved with defense vs siege technology could also become a really cool dynamic in warfare. Like seen in most of the modern RTS, if you adapt your defense / warfare to your oponent you will yield superior results. If you research deep into siege weapons which are good vs a particular sort of defense, and don't use the early techs in that line, then mount an attack when your worst rival thinks you've teched down something else. This would also somewhat discourage the super size guilds since they would easily be infiltrated.

To make this really intresting you would have to create a lot of content not ready from the get go, which could really pose a problem since it would require a lot of time and money. I guess developers could use it to their advantage too though "We have this really cool research feature where a good chunk of our content lies. We have this and that units jadda jadda.", and then just patch the content at the top of the trees at a later date since players won't reach there for a long while after release anyway.
tazelbain
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Posts: 6603

tazelbain


Reply #3 on: May 22, 2006, 11:04:54 AM

Yea that could also be an option, however that would still favor large sized guilds since they have more manpower to spread.
Yes, but a spread out uberguild is much less daughting than an uberguild consolidated in their fortross of doodness.

Quote
Stealing techs could work as long as they don't get copied, ie the one you stole them from still has it when geting robbed. This would also introduce a tactical element, where should we store our techs? Store all techs in the same Research Center and put up a really strong defense, or scatter them across many locations.
Right, I was thinking that you would steal the research for the tech, not the tech itself. Basicly, you shorten your research time or, if you do lots of raids, get it all for free. Any on-going research whould be temporalily interupted. In playtesting you could  balance the amout research stolen in a raid.  A guild could minimize the loss in a raid but at dramatic increase in the costs.
Quote

If there's some form of rock papper scissors involved with defense vs siege technology could also become a really cool dynamic in warfare. Like seen in most of the modern RTS, if you adapt your defense / warfare to your oponent you will yield superior results. If you research deep into siege weapons which are good vs a particular sort of defense, and don't use the early techs in that line, then mount an attack when your worst rival thinks you've teched down something else. This would also somewhat discourage the super size guilds since they would easily be infiltrated.
I think you could go with Evil Genius as an example here.  Yes, going down the tech trees gives better stuff, but it also gives you a larger variety of "legos" from which to choose from to make your own clever defenses and more tools to crack enemy defenses.

Quote
To make this really intresting you would have to create a lot of content not ready from the get go, which could really pose a problem since it would require a lot of time and money. I guess developers could use it to their advantage too though "We have this really cool research feature where a good chunk of our content lies. We have this and that units jadda jadda.", and then just patch the content at the top of the trees at a later date since players won't reach there for a long while after release anyway.
It worked ATITD.  And if you provide feedback to tell the players which ones are implemented and which aren't, they'll naturally take care of it.  Plus, there would probably always be easy to implement (like small boosts to production) techs if they manage to finish all the exotic techs before you have time to implement more.

"Me am play gods"
|3o3dha
Terracotta Army
Posts: 33


Reply #4 on: May 23, 2006, 11:39:12 AM

I think it would be even more intresting if there was a limit to the amount of tech tree's one could start in.
Or one could only research a maximum, say x, of technology's, which you have to research "down" if you want to start another one.
So if you guild has x technology's, and it wants another one, it should take time and/or money to switch.
In the line's of WoW's talent system.

Or you can only actively use 1 or 2 researched functions of the same tree line at any given time. Switching between them would take time (and money?)
This system could be seen as the Guildwars skill system.


Or you could tie it to the resource system: Each use of a certain technology takes an amount of x-resources or a combination thereof.


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