Be Excellent To Each Other

If you had a little company and wanted to design the best turn-based build-and-kill game ever, what would you include?

You just want to steal our ideas and make a fortune, don't you?

Advance Wars is THE best turn based game EVA.

Be careful though Grim... Nintendo are almost as rich as you, so they have an army of Samurai Lawyers at their disposal.

fruit vs vegetables, where you grow your own army of either fruit or veg and battle them against the evil opposition to see who really owns the Smith's farm.

Customisation. Don't just give me 10 things I can build and kill the enemy with, give me 100 components that I can play with in order to create the most appropriate enemy-killing things for my style of play.

This is an excellent point, and was done to very good effect in Galactic Civilisations II. The ship designer was almost a game in itself.

Naked War is the best turn based war game, I reckon.

I was thinking that 4x games historically do that best, yes.

Yes, but I never make money from my stuff*, so that's okay.

*except savages, but that was an accident

Make sure I can rename all my units should I want to.

I've been playing the X-Com games, and watching all of you lot die horribly! Muwahahahahaha!

Apart from Joans, who is an alien killing MACHINE!

Ooh yes, I like that.

Ensuring that you can win fights by being better despite being outnumbered ( flank attacks or bonus for support or surrounding the enemy or whatever).

Not having every go turn into a mid-game war of attrition when you end up slowly grinding the enemy back, when it's obvious you've already won but it'll take you another 20 mins just to capture every last flag / destroy every last bit of base.

I miss read your initial post Grim...

Basically make Advance Wars with gubbins.

More troop types ie there were two in AW infantry and mechs. If you had say, suicide bombers that are cheap to produce but take longer to brainwash train, it would add an extra dimension, (they'd take out big units in on go.)

Actually an option of making all units better by having a longer 'training' time would be awesome, but would take much balancing.

Make it Spacey like Star Craft too.

Make it each level start with you with X amount of point to spend on units.

No pointless farming spice or some shit for troops. GRRR GRUMBLE GRRR.

Ah now (Z), my thinking was that you would be able to fiddle with the variables of the units (speed, range, toughness, etc) and the game would adjust the resource cost and the training time accordingly.
It's going to be spacey and wizardy.

Sounds more like an optional game type to me, buddy.

Orcs.

Actually I think Runcle's idea is the best game idea ever. You would have to grow hideously beweaponed courgettes and projectile launching broccoli and such like, before waging battle. A bit like spore but make it not nearly as dull.

*spurts*

Will it have treasures?!

That reminds me - anyone got any good names for a futuristic race and a wizardy-race?


Treasures you can keep between battles, no less.

Robots with magic laser swords. I copyrighted that already.

I demand a special devasting attack for the space race called a Beteor Shower. That, possibly, rains down badgers and fried breakfasts on the enemy.

Which levels were best in Advance Wars? The ones where you've got 10 units to complete the map or the ones where you just kept spamming infantry till you won?

*fires empty shell*

Will it have Holly Willoughby?!

Darthmauls versus Dumbledorks.

Zardys Zappers V Crasters Casters

Awesomesauce.

& it should have a slow mode. Not easy mode. Just slower. For us spacky handed peeps.

Special attack: DOUBLE TEAM (yes, that's her with the black hair).

Um - slower turns?

Erm. Yes?










I'll get my coat.

Will the wizards be fighting the space robots in space, or will the space robots be on Earth shooting at castles and wizardy towers? Or both? Coz that would be cool. Also, make each side have a fancy Head Robot / Chief Wizard unit that can do spangly stuff but is rubbish in a fight. And turrets. Lots of turrets.

I like the idea of a spangly character who is a girl in a fight. The wizards and robots will fight on the land, somewhere. Something to do with those Krazy scientists fucking about with time.

Try to keep things fairly simple. Don't throw a hodge-podge of really complicated ideas in that ruin it. Try to keep it balanced.

Make sure your odds system isn't fundamentally flawed (Far more common than you'd expect, but you should be able to find some literature about it in many places)

Also, make one of the space robots look like Tic-Tok, my avatar.

You'd think I knew what that was... Do you just mean "chance to hit" and that sort of stuff?

Or something like, y'know, the angle-grinder being the most powerful weapon by far and there being no reason to use any other weapon. Stuff like that.

THE MIGHTY SPACE NAZIS REGIME VS THE ECO-PAGAN-COMMUNISTIC HEGEMONY

Watch in awe as WET LIBERAL PAGANS WIZARDS use the law of diminishing returns to their advantage as they smash the gigantic ROBOHITLERS with devastating HOMEOPATHIC Water Spell attacks.

Sit bolt upright as BIGPHARMA DOCTORS infiltrate the Hegemony to use devasting MMR VACCINE SYRINGE CANNON ATTACKS to cripple the minds of the hippies.

The Nazis could chop down forests to power their factories whilst the Pagans have to plant more trees in order to worship them to get mana. OMG GAMEPLAY MECHANICS.

I've very reasonable fee's if you need a head writer.

Make every weapon and item useful.

Make beating the odds possible (as someone said above, a small squad with superior tactics should have some chance of beating a large one). Similarly, limit things somehow so that even a super-equipped team will have some kind of weakness (especially in multiplayer). The x-com 80-item limit is probably a decent example.

Make any AI cunning, or at least operate in an unfathomable way - the X-COM games, particularly the first, were great for this - even after a decade of playing, the exact effect your actions have, and the exact reasons for their movements are never clear. I suspect looking at the relevant code would show that it's actually extremely simple and nothing like as 'alien' as it looks, but the illusion is there.

Vary the objectives, or give multiple victory conditions, at least on some maps, to allow for suicide missions, pyrrhic victories and sabotage or assassinations even against enormous forces.

Great sound. Animation and graphics are going to be necessarily limited. You'll need variety or nondescript music (or none at all), and some very satisfying gunshots, explosions and death screams. Hearing sound cues in the darkness during the enemy turn can be handy and atmospheric, too.

Fragile soldiers. Even the hardest bastard in the world shouldn't be able to wander around without fear. Having to pump tens of rounds into enemies is no fun, except in rare circumstances in single player (eg: TFTD's lobstermen, and they have a weakness, and you can later turn the tables on them, making it worthwhile. In a short-term context though, they'd be infuriating, and in multiplayer no fun), and having to protect your soldiers should be of paramount importance.

Chryssalids.

unconsciousness, or crippling, or immobilisation of some kind - do you abandon your man, or risk another soldier to save him? Do you kill your enemy or try to injure him, making him bait? Do you finish him off, removing the threat, or save your time and ammunition, and interrogate or capture him?

Jagged Alliance style aiming - you can take a pot shot, or pump more time units into aiming - one more or five, it's up to you.

Make WoW in space. With spaceships.

I always suspected as much.

Oh, and wtf!?!

advance wars look
on the mac (as there is no turn based war game for it)
with nice forum integration/online achievements

Make it so that you can use the environment properly, eg bullets travel further from high ground. Actually, even better would be a distance:hit ratio, so that the further away a shot is taken from, as well as less chance of hitting, it does less damage as well. Maybe couple this with alternate firing modes for units, eg long range firing can be used twice, but may not cause as much damage/may miss more, or short range "guaranteed" hit for less damage/leaves you open to a counter hit/uses way more energy.

The whole air shoots ground, ground shoots ranged, ranged shoots air scenario has been done to death. Do something better.

Proper support structure for your army, eg massive wizard protective shields that protect your forces, but use up a lot of mana.