swagXDragonSlayer46YT
commented
1 year ago Chunk claiming
Rather than using a mod like FTB utilities to technically claim chunks, chunk claims should only be recognized areas in the minds of other players, rather than metadata managed by an all-powerful mod. Meaning that who claimed what is solely dependent on what people think is owned by themselves and others. This perception of claims can be reinforced with physical defenses, natural boundaries and in-world markers to send a message to outsiders, rather than simply opening the FTB utils map and holding down left click over everything (which is exactly what zak did lmfao)
Making chunk claiming dependent only on in-world structures makes things a lot more realistic and imaginative, and makes it so that the amount of territory claimed is dependent on how many resources a team has to maintain that claim, since bigger claims mean more resources spent on defenses and security if they want others to take their claim seriously.
Due to the 3-dimensional nature of supersymmetry with vertically stacked dimensions, claims could indeed be 3-dimensional with one group of people living right below another. Imagine a nation of disgruntled Beneath miners plotting to attack everyone above using their extensive cave systems.
Natural boundaries:
Players who have bases next to rivers or mountains may use rivers and mountains as natural borders, like how some countries in real life set their borders next to rivers.
Players may make bases in islands in the middle of a vast ocean. This means that invading island claims needs a naval force or an air force to traverse the ocean. There would also be ways to counter them like anti-air defenses and floating mines in the sea.
Physical defenses:
Uncovered GT wires are basically electrical fences Land mines Player sensors and turrets ofc Intentionally destroying resources in your own land so that enemies can't use them while advancing towards you Moats for early game players
In-world markers:
Flags that you can place Warning signs and anti-trespasser signs (with sound effects)
Zalgo239
BestMod
Objectives
First of all, what do we want from the multiplayer experience? Mainly we want to replicate real life geopolitical landscapes. The reason why we want this is that people like when their real world knowledge and intuition gives them accurate clues as to how a game will work.
This has its limites of course, we can't simply implement things like the ideological differences that dominated the Cold War. We have to engineer game mechanics that push players to create the situations we want.
Requirements
What do we need to get those complex situations?
Information
Let's start with information, controlling what information players are given is a very powerful tool. There are three types of information:
What must be added and what must be concealed?
We must conceal two major things:
Thse make it very easy to determine at what level of progression other players might be. Advancements can just reveal that someone just crafted a ballistic missile, or a death message could give away the construction of a space station. In a multiplayer game, not knowing what other players might be doing has a bigger impact than almost anything the others could be doing. The point of this is to encourage spying operations, finding ways to infiltrate bases and obtaining survaillance technology. It might also encourage infiltrating other teams directly. Just as we remove information we must add ways to obtain it, spy satellites, listening posts, radar stations and player detectors. These are also fundamental to control large areas.
Power Projection
Power is only useful if it can be projected, that is how we determine the power of real life countries. To do this we need ways for people to control large areas. This means the ability to claim chunks but also more. We need sensor to detect players getting too close, this allows controlling large territories without having to claim thousands of chunks (something that should not be possible on such a scale). Large areas mean a large amount of resources, therefore it is reasonable to assume players will expand their domans as far as they can, we can expect border friction to arise as an emergent mechanic. People will become aware of roughly where their control ends and where that of others begins.
War
Conflicts are to be expected, what we don't want is wars ending into simple swordfights. Wars must leave scars in the lands. We should balance the gameplay to make the outcome of wars dependent on the same factors as the real world. In the real world wars are often won with logistics (assuming similar technological levels). Therefore we must make logistics a vital part of military tactics, there are a few ways we can do this:
This creates a complex situation in which each side has to both protect its supply lines and destroy the enemy ones. It's also possible that players will try to destroy their own infrastructure when retreating, as to not give enemies an advantage (like with a railway)
Weapon design
The way a weapon looks and sounds like is vital to how the game is perceived, let me give you an example. In Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory multiplayer, where Allies (with allied weapons) face off against Axis (with axis weapons), the two weapon sets have identical stats. Everything except the sounds and the models was absolutely identical. But players complained that the Thompson was much more powerful than its counterpart, the MP40. And the server data showed that Allied players were getting more kills anyway, because even just the audio made the gun feel more powerful and encouraged more aggressive play. The players with thompsons were going for more headshots and getting more headshots as results. This shows how even a perfectly balanced environment can be influenced by something that has nothing to do with how the game actually works. In that example something as simple as a sound effect was altering the outcome of matches in an entire game. Keeping this in mind for our weapons, every attack must be epic and put on a grand spectacle. Players expect many things in a modern war simulation. They want rocket launchers? We give them that but add fixed launchers that fire entire barrages across large areas. They want to drive a tank? We give them tanks and also the ability to command multiple ones with AI. They want cannons? We give them artillery stations that can rain down hell from tens of kilometers away. Every attack must feel like you are unleashing a massive force against your enemy, while defenses should look more like they are doing just the bare minimum necessary to prevent damage (while still looking cool possibly) This will hopefully encourage highly agressive behaviour.
More to be added later via edits...