Ok first off i wanna say i saw this game on Jay is Games and I'm VERY impressed. At first i thought it was going to be a bit bland, but i wasted a good 2 or 3 hours playing it and modding it as much as i could through the settings.xml file. While i was playing i had just thought of some different things that i think would make the game better / more enjoyable.
First off is different kinds of gameplay. I'm sure you are already working on this but i feel like i should point it out. Some of the modding i did was to simply make the game 2X, 3X larger with twice as many CPU's. IMO it made the game MUCH more enjoyable. The default amount of enemies and asteroids makes the game too easy, once you get a few asteroids with 2 or 3 trees on them you win, it's just a matter of time. So heres some game modes i think would be cool. Also i was thinking for some of these you could have a menu where you could mix and match. So you could play on a Massive level but with only 1 AI, or 20, change how many units you start with, the price of trees, etc. etc.
1. Small, Medium, Large, Extra large, Massive. These would primarily change 3 things. The first is the most obvious, how many asteroids there are in the map, the second would the amount of CPU's playing, and the third would be how many starting units you get. Possibly for the Massive *when i say massive i mean like 500 asteroid games* you would also start with more than one asteroid... which leads to the next game mode.
2. Scattershot, This would work better as an option for other games but this is what it is. Each army starts on 4 different asteroids randomly placed around the map. It would work better for Large and up games but would work the same on each. Nothing fancy, nothing crazy, but i feel like it would make the game much harder. And instead of 20 units on each asteroid you only get 5 on each. It would force players to be very careful about what they do with their units at first, and i think it would make for much more intense game play fighting on 4 and up fronts at once, conceivably much more, opposed to usually 2 or 3.
3.CTF. Good old capture the flag. The way this would work is that each player's starting asteroid would have some sort of seed or something *sticking with the whole tree thing* displayed on it. The goal of the game is to go and take over that asteroid, then fly your army back to your home asteroid. If you steal another teams seed they have say 3 minutes *change for balance obviously* to steal it back or they instantly die. You can decide if when you eliminate the other player if all their asteroids become yours, rogue, or simply die. *This would only work with a game play addition i will mention a little later*
4. Assault. This would simply be that if you lose your starting, or all your starting *if using scattershot option* asteroids, you lose instantly. You could also set up special maps for this where its a symmetrical set up for the asteroids and there is only a set number of players *2,3,4 etc.* for each map. The same thing with whether the enemy's stuff becomes rogue or yours or just dies would have to be decided. *again would work better with a game play addition i will mention*
5. Teams. This is more of an option that would be turned on and off but its obvious, you would be on teams with another cpu. All the members of a team would be different *significantly different* shades of the same color, so it's obvious they are teamed but you can easily tell them apart. You can see what your allies see, you can help defend one of their asteroids, but you can't take them. You can move units there etc. but they won't try and take it over, unless of course an enemy takes it and then you fight them off. If 2 allies units are attacking the actual asteroid, the last unit that hits the core would take over the asteroid.
6. Discovery. This would be sort of a fog of war kind of thing. You can only actively see asteroids that are 1 jump away from one your units are currently on. It only takes one unit to see nearby asteroids but if you don't have a unit there it works like fog of war, you can see it but nothing ON it *much like now*. The main difference is that this mode would randomly select the size of the map and hide the white sun... thing, in the middle of the map. This way you wouldn't be able to tell WHERE you are in the belt, how deep it is, how many asteroids there are etc. An enemy could slink right by your defenses and attack from behind or something. This could be improved on with the introduction of different buildings. Like a radar that lets you see 3 jumps from the asteroid its on etc. etc.
So like i said some of these would be standalone game types, others would be turned on and off *discovery / scattershot* but they are just some ideas to make them more interesting. And it would be cool to get a single player game with a story line. WHY am i commanding a bunch of... fly bug things to take over asteroids. The single player game could incorporate all these game types.
~~~
Ok so now here are some gameplay ides that i had. The first one is the one i kept mentioning above.
1. Being able to attack units that are flying. There is nothing that i hate more than when 150 units go flying by 400 of mine bouncing off the asteroids, wrapping around them, and not being able to do anything about it except follow them until they FINALLY *it usually takes them like 30-40 seconds* decide to attack. You should be able to tell units to attack ones that are flying by. Just like drag and instead of ending on an asteroid end on the group of units and yours would just fly off and follow them attacking. The enemy units, depending on if they were set to aggressive or passive would either stop flying and then there would be a big swarm of units fighting in the space between asteroids. Or they would simply ignore the threat going to the asteroid they were told to fly to, and then carry out the standard way of fighting once there. *This would obviously be another gameplay element of setting units to aggressive or passive, and would only effect how they fight in mid flight. If two armies are flying through the air and pass near each other, and they are both aggressive. They will both immediately attack. If one is passive and one is aggressive, the aggressive one will attack and follow the passive one. If they are both passive, they will simply shoot passing glances as they fly by each other, but will not pursue.
2. Grouping asteroids. This would work just like selecting multiple units in other games work, except you would do it like it is now, with whole asteroids. You could either hold ctrl, click on the asteroids you wanna move units from, then using any of the selected ones left click, drag, and let go and all the units from those asteroids would move to where you told them too. Then with holding shift you could free draw a box around the asteroids you want *dragging a box wouldn't work so hot since the asteroids are all scrambled* and then it would work the same. If you have selected asteroids you could hold ctrl, and hit 1-0 and assign them to groups. Then just hit say 1, and right click some where, and all the units from there would move there.
3. Rally Points. This would allow you to set your units to go to a different asteroid as soon as they were spawned. you would just hold alt, click, drag, let go, and boom. Any new units go to the new destination. This would be grand because a lot of the time spent in the game is simply dragging units from far away asteroids up to closer ones on the front line, it would save time and let you focus more on the attacking.
4. New structures. Structures would be built just like they are now, with sacrificing units. I really enjoy that part of the game, especially in the beginning when 10 units is a pretty hefty chunk of your army. You need to decide if it's worth the gamble or would it be better to take over 1 or 2 more asteroids... But anyways. You could have radar systems, defense towers, structures that would boost nearby units *within a certain number of jumps*, and wall structures. They would all take up a "tree" slot of an asteroid. They would all also "grow" like the trees. Each one would simply be a different kind of tree *maybe like defense ones would be evergreens, etc.* The radar would really only be useful for the discovery game play. The defense towers would launch little drones at any enemy units passing by or attacking the asteroid *possibly attacking enemies assaulting an asteroid one jump away as well....* The wall one would be sort of complicated but very awesome in my opinion. In order for it to work, 2 asteroids within 1 jump would need to have the tree growing on it. When you select the wall to grow you would have to select a nearby asteroid. The tree would then grow half way to that asteroid. If you do it between 2 asteroids on both it would block that path. If two walls are ALMOST touching it wouldn't totally block it but only a few units could get through at a time, thinning out the line and causing choke point. The trees could be killed just like all the others so it wouldn't be a YOU CAN NEVER GET THROUGH AGAIN, sort of deal. However it would either force the units AROUND to a more deadly route *defense towers all around* or hold them up buying you precious seconds... For all the structures the longer they have been around the more powerful they are. So a defense tower at first may only launch one drone, eventually launching 20 or something. The drones would but very fast with mid damage, and very low health. So with 2 or 3 large defense trees they could rip through an army by sheer number, but a couple wouldn't do too much damage. Radar would let you see farther the bigger it got *+1 jump, +2, +3 jumps away*. And walls, once touching, would also get thicker up to a point over time.
5. A way to destroy asteroids. This would either be done through a VERY hard tree to grow. *It could work like the walls do where you need to link 5 or 6 asteroids together for it to work* or it could be done through overwhelming force or special units. There could be asteroids that glow gold or something once they are discovered. One in every 10 units from this asteroid will be golden, and this unit can inflict special damage to an asteroid, if 5 these units hit an asteroid it is completely destroyed, including any units fighting above it. You could up the anty and say if it was part of a super weapon complex or maybe a wall complex, those asteroids would either also be destroyed, or all the trees would be blown off... You could do a lot with this, make it very hard to do but very devastating. Maybe just any asteroid one jump away loses all its trees and units and its energy is dropped by 50.
6. A way to change the units produced from an asteroid. This would be another tree that you grow, and would effect the stats of the asteroid. Obviously you could grow trees to effect the yellow, red, or blue of the asteroid. Growing all 3 would be pointless but say you want an asteroid to make faster and hard hitting units you could grow a blue and red tree. This would lower the HP of the units but increase damage and speed. The longer the tree grows the more it affects it. To keep units from becoming over powered you could say only one tree of each type can be grown on an asteroid. It, of course, would take up a tree slot.
7. A minimap. This would just be handy so you could see what was going on far away, maybe radar could effect it in some way?
8. A bigger alert when under attack. Like a flashing light on the corner of the screen or something, i find that if you aren't zoomed all the way out to see what is going on everywhere you can get easily surprised. You could use radar to help with this, where maybe you only get the alert if the asteroid is in range of radar, otherwise you get the standard red ring around it but no real message. *More handy in large / massive games*
9. A speed scroller. Something to adjust the speed of the game, i don't really want it but it's just an idea.
~graphics~
I really enjoy the color of the units and everything tagged with them *asteroid background, the mine shaft things etc.* I just wish that asteroids maybe looked a little different. An asteroid with more energy may be bigger than one with less. Maybe you could put like craters or some kind of texture on them just to give them a more... asteroidy feel opposed to grey blobs.
I think bigger and louder battles would be cool, just larger lasers, a bigger event when an asteroid is taken. Maybe units with more health would make a bigger bang when killed, and units with more attack would have a cooler looking weapon and units with more speed would blur or leave some sort of small trail behind them.
Just more Eye candy in general, You guys have a great game with mediocre graphics, which i prefer over a really fancy looking crappy game. But if you could just up the visuals a bit it would be FANTASTIC.
I thought it would be cool if units actually grew off of the trees that produce them. Instead of just popping into existence the units would act as the "leaves" of the tree, and when ready would pop off and fly away, to be replaced with another bud that grows into another unit.
A better way to see the difference between units when zoomed out. I noticed that faster units had longer wings, and units with more health / damage had bigger bodies, but thats really hard to tell when zoomed way out. Especially on my modded mega map.
~~~~
Well i hope you appreciate some of my ideas and I'd love to see them implemented in a future version or something. If not at least it was fun coming up with ideas. If you have any questions on how something would work or whatever I'd be happy to answer. You guys have a great game here, with a little polish i think you could wrap it up and sell it if you wanted to for 5-10-15$ a pop, i know I'd pay for it once it was totally done.
~~~~
I have one quick question. In the settings.xml file, what is the point of the min="0" max="6" or whatever, lines. From what i can tell they don't make a difference whatever they are. And only things that have 2 separate lines with min and max like this
<int name="EnemyFactionsMin" value="6" min="0" max="6" />
<int name="EnemyFactionsMax" value="12" min="0" max="12" />
actually vary. This was just puzzling me...
~~~~
Edit:
Oh i forgot to say, the game is REALLY quiet for me. I'm not sure if its just my system, but i need to turn my sound WAY up to hear anything. The sound is pretty good except for one thing... what is that scratchy highpitched tone that you get when you zoom in close to the the action? Whatever it is it gives me a headache and i can't stand it, IMO it's gotta go / get replaced... all the other sound is nice, the looping song could be better, or get looped between 2 or 3 different tracks to mix it up *preferably a lot more*
