4X Defense

From Zanecorpwiki

The goal is to make a casually playable tower defense game seeded with ideas from the 4X genre. See More Tower Defense for additional ideas.

Contents 1 Basic Play 2 Field 3 Turns 4 Resources 5 Influence 6 Fog of War 7 Creep Play 8 Tower Play 9 Aesthetics 10 Development 10.1 Phase One 10.2 Phase Two 10.3 Phase Three

Basic Play

The board consists of a field divided into squares. One player is towers, the other is creeps. In the classic defense games, the creeps seek to traverse the board and the towers win if they can hold the creeps. In ATD, creeps seek to capture the board, eliminating the towers. Towers seek to establish dominance over the field.

Field

To keep the game casually playable, the entire board should be visible without scrolling. In practice, this limits the size of the field. As a guess, a 40x40 field is probably the upper limit, with 20x20 more practical (a go board is 19x19).

The board size factors into game length and would be selectable. Larger scrollable fields could be used for super casual and even multi-session play.

Turns

There are both real time and turn based defense games. The additional layers within ATD indicated that turn based system may be more appropriate. As a matter of development planning, the engine may support both modes and the final determination could be made by play. The game may even support both modes.

Hybrid modes are possible as well. A basic real time game with the ability to pause and issue commands. Frequency of commands based on experience?

The tower player allocates money to research, upgrades, tower building, and tower repair. The creeps play allocates money to research to research, creeps, and healing. There may be special purpose towers and creeps with abilities that cost money.

The nature of creep planning makes it necessary (?) to enforce a turn based system for any casual gaming experience. Creating and directing battalions in real time is inherently twitchy if the game has any reasonable speed to it. This does not hamper single player modes with the CPU taking the creeps from being real time, or twitchy games. Casual human creeps, single or double would require a turn based system.

Resources

Money would be the basic resource. Building a mine on a resource square would produce a certain income per-turn, subject to improvements and aging of the mines. Taking a cue from Galactic Civilizations II, bonus resources that improve industry and research could also be added.

To keep the game casually playable, resources should be clearly denoted on the board. Hovering over the resource will display all applicable data.

As enemies are defeated (creeps killed and towers destroyed), a certain amount of salvage would be earned.

Influence

The distribution of creeps and towers determines the influence of the players. Towers can only be built in areas where the tower play projects sufficient influence.

Fog of War

Entirely possible to implement a fog of war. Problem is that it would handicap the tower play more than the creep since they are inherently less mobile and the cost of building to a point is higher. There are many ways this could be balanced--cheap radar ability, pay for information. Could be interesting, but not critical to the game play.

Creep Play

Creeps spawn at the beginning of rounds. The creep player sets up groups of creeps and gives them goals. Either capture/reinforce a resource, attack a tower, or re-enforce a position. Positions are used to decrease the tower player's influence.

A battalion is a group of creeps that moves together from square to square. Formations can be formed from battalions. Creep density and formation complexity are both attributes which may be changed by technology and/or experience.

Unlike normal tower defense, the creeps act very much like towers in everything but for the fact that they're mobile.

Tower Play

Tower players build towers to capture resources and expand their influence over the board. A tower consists of a basic framework buttressed by modules with different abilities. The number of modules in a tower is influenced by technology and/or experience. This makes the idea closer to castles than towers.

Tower types are an alternative to modules. The two could be combined as well.

Aesthetics

Aesthetics will be theme-able.

Development

Development can be laid out in such a way as to produce a playable game in the first phase and add to that to produce new/upgraded games later on. The plan laid out moves towards the goal of a general tower defense engine. This could be combined with rule sets to produce difference games and experiences.

The plans are both structural and specific. The specifics are always subject to balancing and game play results and represent a current best guess, not a hard goal.

Phase One

Goals: Basic tower defense game with resources. The first incarnation will support both real time and turn based modes. Only the tower player is playable.

Feature List

• three levels of towers: outpost, castle, and fortress with 1, 2, and 4 modules respectively, all have 60 hit points
• three levels of creeps with 20, 40, and 80 hit points
• tower modules:
  • gunner turret: low damage, short range, low rate of fire, cheap
  • machine turret: moderate damage, short range, fast rate of fire
  • sniper turret: high damage, moderate range, low rate of fire; snipers can also better target opposing units
  • missile: high damage, long range, low rate of fire, area effect which imposes minimum range
  • reinforcement: adds hit points to tower (+20)
  • library: increases research
  • mine: extracts resources
  • supply center: boosts damage of same and adjacent towers
• tower tech:
  • machine gun, sniper, missile, reinforcement and supply modules must be researched
  • improved munitions increase damage of gun based turrets (50%, 2x, 3x, non-stacked)
  • rifling increases gun range by 25% (stacks with rifling)
  • improved gun powder increases gun range by 25% (stacks with rifling)
  • improved explosives increases damage of missile turrets (50%, 2x, 3x, non-stacked)
  • improved guidance increases missile range (40%, 2x)
  • improved materials increases reinforcement (+20)
  • masonry training decreases tower build time and tower repair (10%, 20%, 40%, non-stacked)
  • mining science increases mine extraction rates (15%, 30%, 50%)
  • academia increases research rates (15%, 30%, 50%)
  • improved planning increases effectiveness of supply centers (10%, 20%, 30%)
• creeps:
  • foot soldier: moderate speed, 0 range, low damage
  • swarmer: fast speed, 0 range, low damage
  • catapult: slow speed, short range, moderate damage
  • trebuchet: slow speed, moderate range, moderate damage
  • phlanx: moderate speed, 0 range, no damage, tough
  • witch doctor: moderate speed, heals creeps in same square
  • shaman: moderate speed, improves damage of same and adjacent battalions
  • nerd: increases research
  • miner: moderate speed, extracts resources
• creep tech:
  • swarmer, catapult, trebuchet, phlanx, witch doctor, and shaman must be researched
  • improved counter balance increases damage and range of ranged units (25%, 50%, 1.5x)
  • improved axles increases speed of ranged units (20%, 50%)
  • improved metallurgy increases damage and hit points of non-ranged units (25%, 50%, 1.5x)
  • improved nutrition increases speed on non-ranged units
  • mysticism increases effectiveness of shaman and with doctor units (15%, 25%, 40%)
  • academia increases research rates (15%, 30%, 50%)
  • tactical command increases the number of creeps which can occupy the same square (3, 4, 5)
  • strategic command increases the number battalions in a formation (2, 3, 4)
  • drilling increases the ability of the defender to get determine where damage is allocated

As new technologies are developed, existing pieces can be upgraded. To keep it simple, upgrades are allocated some portion of money and the player select where to apply that money. With small amounts, it may take multiple rounds before an upgrade takes effect. With more money, multiple upgrades are possible in a single round. There are potentially many upgrades available at any time, even for a single module, so a wizard interface with a dedicated step is likely the best solution here (though player should have the ability to initiate and, until 'done', revisit the distribution step).

Phase Two

Goals: Towers AI (CPU on CPU for genetic play testing).

Phase Three

Goals: Creeps playable.