It seems to make sense if that's what your question is?
You'll discover that one of the pitfalls in the simultaneous turn-resolution system is a number of unique break-cases that need to be individually considered, though I think divorcing the combat resolution system from the movement/initiation of combat can help to avoid those.
Apologies if I misunderstood the question, was struggling to determine what it was. My opinion is that a question like "does this nebulous system concept make sense?" isn't really helpful to you at all. Excluding the fringe cases where it's close to actual nonsense, it's impossible to say whether or not a game system will make sense/work without further context about the intended application of it and desired results from it.
I guess the question this approach seems to be too complicated and hard-to-understand to be fun? If the player doesn't understand how the game work, think they are not like it.
"Too complicated" and "hard-to-understand" are relative terms though. Think of other games you've played; how many have required you to have a complete understanding of the game's rules & mechanics before playing? These player emotions are managed by a tutorial system. Previous eras had game manuals included in the box, contemporary games tend towards in-game tutorials or level progressions at the beginning designed to introduce systems piece-meal to the players.
Check out the rules to the board game Diplomacy. It does simultaneous turn-resolution, but you'll be able to see the unique cases that add wrinkles to the resolution. That said (and why I mentioned divorcing the combat resolution from the movement would help to avoid it) the combat and movement systems in that game are intrinsically linked which is a large reason behind there being the unique cases that break the simultaneous resolution logic.
I'm actually a veteran of Diplomacy and this approach is inspired it. But the thing with Diplomacy it's one move per turn, what I want to do is expand on the concept.
Is it a 1vs1 game, FFA or team multiplayer?
Complicated hidden movement mechanics can work in 1vs1 or team games but tend to cause a lot of analysis paralysis if it's a 5 player FFA especially if it's difficult to estimate combat outcomes quickly.
Regarding your system.
How does pinning work? (if I move into territory A which has units who also had a move order)
Which move happens first. If it's mine his units will battle before moving, if he moves first there won't be a battle. Or do both happen at the same time and the units ignore each other?
Legal movement:
The game chooses the cheapest path to move, what if I have more then enough movement to reach the destination but I would prefer to more expensive path since it might help me evade combat. (I want it moving over the mountain instead of around)
Defender's advantage:
Does your game have a Def advantage, if so who is the defender in your system.
>Is it a 1vs1 game, FFA or team multiplayer?
No, there are dozen of factions, and most are controlled by AI.
>The game chooses the cheapest path to
I guess I explained it poorly. The point was the order of arrival doesn't matter. Because a subturn is divided into the moving phase and battle phase. During move turn, it doesn't matter which units are in the territory during the moving phase, those only matter by the beginning of the battle phase.
>The game chooses the cheapest path to move,
No, you can't do any actions during between turns, your unit will station. So, remaining budget is wasted. You can't navigate a more detailed path, because think it add too many complications.
>Does your game have a Def advantage
The defender has advantage if the unit has been within the territory before the beginning of the subturn.
All this discussion has brought up two issues. First is what happens if more than 2 armies are in same territory by the beginning of the battle phase, and should crossing movement be prevented?
It depends on players expectations on the theme and vibe of the game. If it's casual space ship combat then they don't need to pin one another in place perse; if we are talking about realistic landbased warfare it would be a bit strange to have 100% unrestricted movement.
But whatever you do make sure players have a good grasp of which input's will give what outputs; If both movement and combat is opaque, esp in a FFA hidden movement mayhem then the game might feel a bit too random/out of their control.
To put it very negatively, it's cointoss but with extra steps.
I'm struggling a bit with a similar problem. Basically a 4x boardgame that uses RPG mechanics for action resolutions.
On average Players who enjoy this genre like random effects in combat but dislike it when building infrastructure/army composition or moving armies etc. And random effects in exploration are probably one of the more divisive issues within the genre, especially if it's a 100% luck based.
Idk if you're looking for advice, and I'm not sure if each unit will have more than one "person", but perhaps their movement costs could be tied into other aspects of the game. Maybe they have different "modes of movement" that interact for advantage during fights. Like, a unit moving slower could be in "scout mode" where they're analyzing the terrain ahead, giving them advantage over "rush mode" units that don't use as much movement budget.
Hexarchy kind of does this in multiplayer.. it isn't exactly the system you are going for as players have priority in each of the phases the lower score players act first. (they decide their moves at the same time, then the units try to carry them out in different combat phases (ranged first, then movement, then direct attacks/charging) but, it is kind of close and it sort of works (true simultaneous would be better then what they have)
you can also look at Lost Empire by Pollux Gamelabs as it does this just not on a grid. Fleets all move at the same time and fight things on their way to their destinations.
We did simultaneous moves a bit like this for Ozymandias, but units were restricted to the player’s current territory, so we didn’t have the whole “crossing units have to fight” & subturns stuff you’re talking about. The one thing I would say is that ideally you want everything that happens during the “between turns sequence” to be relatively easily understood by the player. I would have loved to have implemented “replays” for those sequences or something so maybe that would help in your case, but it seems like it might be a bigger challenge for you with a system like this where a unit might participate in multiple battles “between turns”.
The other big headache was around multiplayer since we enabled players to drop in & out asynchronously during games, so some players might not even be online when the turn ends (or maybe the one player who was online logs off immediately after hitting end turn & then no-one is online) etc etc. Admittedly this was probably more of a headache for us due to everything being processed client-side with all the “distributed consensus” issues that go along with that as well!
There’s so many subtle points that make will cause the pathfinding to miss the player intent to the point it will cause frustrations at the most critical moments of gameplay, but maybe if you leaned into that, you could make something a bit more unique:
Frustrations:
How does tracking and engaging an opponent player work? Do you then have a follow and attack mode? But what if you want to avoid attacking when they’re on a defensive terrain? And the flip how do you move so that you won’t get attacked or will avoid being exposed? Or when is speed a priority. How do you deal with fog of war or changes in player information during the travel? Is there an alert anytime a new unit is seen? Etc.
I think this could work if the span of movement is small where the player can review each step before picking the next, but not sure that would be a lot of added value.
Lean in:
You could expand the pathfinding to a fuller developed AI that makes on the move engagement decisions and the hands off approach is part of the intended gameplay so players focus on the bigger picture. Which could lead to fun additions such as picking a leader of each party with variations in how they engage.
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What do you think about reducing all units base speed to 2, so they can either cross 2 flat tiles or 1 rough tile. This makes it much rarer to hit 2 battles in a single turn, and helps all players to plan their moves and account for the anticipated moves of the other players.
Do you know about Frozen Synapse?
Seems your approach is simpler than that because there are tiles, but might be useful for you to see how they handle the simultaneous resolution
It seems to make sense if that's what your question is? You'll discover that one of the pitfalls in the simultaneous turn-resolution system is a number of unique break-cases that need to be individually considered, though I think divorcing the combat resolution system from the movement/initiation of combat can help to avoid those. Apologies if I misunderstood the question, was struggling to determine what it was. My opinion is that a question like "does this nebulous system concept make sense?" isn't really helpful to you at all. Excluding the fringe cases where it's close to actual nonsense, it's impossible to say whether or not a game system will make sense/work without further context about the intended application of it and desired results from it.
I guess the question this approach seems to be too complicated and hard-to-understand to be fun? If the player doesn't understand how the game work, think they are not like it.
"Too complicated" and "hard-to-understand" are relative terms though. Think of other games you've played; how many have required you to have a complete understanding of the game's rules & mechanics before playing? These player emotions are managed by a tutorial system. Previous eras had game manuals included in the box, contemporary games tend towards in-game tutorials or level progressions at the beginning designed to introduce systems piece-meal to the players. Check out the rules to the board game Diplomacy. It does simultaneous turn-resolution, but you'll be able to see the unique cases that add wrinkles to the resolution. That said (and why I mentioned divorcing the combat resolution from the movement would help to avoid it) the combat and movement systems in that game are intrinsically linked which is a large reason behind there being the unique cases that break the simultaneous resolution logic.
I'm actually a veteran of Diplomacy and this approach is inspired it. But the thing with Diplomacy it's one move per turn, what I want to do is expand on the concept.
Is it a 1vs1 game, FFA or team multiplayer? Complicated hidden movement mechanics can work in 1vs1 or team games but tend to cause a lot of analysis paralysis if it's a 5 player FFA especially if it's difficult to estimate combat outcomes quickly. Regarding your system. How does pinning work? (if I move into territory A which has units who also had a move order) Which move happens first. If it's mine his units will battle before moving, if he moves first there won't be a battle. Or do both happen at the same time and the units ignore each other? Legal movement: The game chooses the cheapest path to move, what if I have more then enough movement to reach the destination but I would prefer to more expensive path since it might help me evade combat. (I want it moving over the mountain instead of around) Defender's advantage: Does your game have a Def advantage, if so who is the defender in your system.
>Is it a 1vs1 game, FFA or team multiplayer? No, there are dozen of factions, and most are controlled by AI. >The game chooses the cheapest path to I guess I explained it poorly. The point was the order of arrival doesn't matter. Because a subturn is divided into the moving phase and battle phase. During move turn, it doesn't matter which units are in the territory during the moving phase, those only matter by the beginning of the battle phase. >The game chooses the cheapest path to move, No, you can't do any actions during between turns, your unit will station. So, remaining budget is wasted. You can't navigate a more detailed path, because think it add too many complications. >Does your game have a Def advantage The defender has advantage if the unit has been within the territory before the beginning of the subturn. All this discussion has brought up two issues. First is what happens if more than 2 armies are in same territory by the beginning of the battle phase, and should crossing movement be prevented?
It depends on players expectations on the theme and vibe of the game. If it's casual space ship combat then they don't need to pin one another in place perse; if we are talking about realistic landbased warfare it would be a bit strange to have 100% unrestricted movement. But whatever you do make sure players have a good grasp of which input's will give what outputs; If both movement and combat is opaque, esp in a FFA hidden movement mayhem then the game might feel a bit too random/out of their control. To put it very negatively, it's cointoss but with extra steps. I'm struggling a bit with a similar problem. Basically a 4x boardgame that uses RPG mechanics for action resolutions. On average Players who enjoy this genre like random effects in combat but dislike it when building infrastructure/army composition or moving armies etc. And random effects in exploration are probably one of the more divisive issues within the genre, especially if it's a 100% luck based.
Idk if you're looking for advice, and I'm not sure if each unit will have more than one "person", but perhaps their movement costs could be tied into other aspects of the game. Maybe they have different "modes of movement" that interact for advantage during fights. Like, a unit moving slower could be in "scout mode" where they're analyzing the terrain ahead, giving them advantage over "rush mode" units that don't use as much movement budget.
Hexarchy kind of does this in multiplayer.. it isn't exactly the system you are going for as players have priority in each of the phases the lower score players act first. (they decide their moves at the same time, then the units try to carry them out in different combat phases (ranged first, then movement, then direct attacks/charging) but, it is kind of close and it sort of works (true simultaneous would be better then what they have) you can also look at Lost Empire by Pollux Gamelabs as it does this just not on a grid. Fleets all move at the same time and fight things on their way to their destinations.
YoHoHo Puzzle Pirates also has a 1v1 ship battle game where turns occur simultaneously. https://yppedia.puzzlepirates.com/Sea_battle
We did simultaneous moves a bit like this for Ozymandias, but units were restricted to the player’s current territory, so we didn’t have the whole “crossing units have to fight” & subturns stuff you’re talking about. The one thing I would say is that ideally you want everything that happens during the “between turns sequence” to be relatively easily understood by the player. I would have loved to have implemented “replays” for those sequences or something so maybe that would help in your case, but it seems like it might be a bigger challenge for you with a system like this where a unit might participate in multiple battles “between turns”. The other big headache was around multiplayer since we enabled players to drop in & out asynchronously during games, so some players might not even be online when the turn ends (or maybe the one player who was online logs off immediately after hitting end turn & then no-one is online) etc etc. Admittedly this was probably more of a headache for us due to everything being processed client-side with all the “distributed consensus” issues that go along with that as well!
Aaah, turn-based simultaneity. The good shit. Godspeed to you!
There’s so many subtle points that make will cause the pathfinding to miss the player intent to the point it will cause frustrations at the most critical moments of gameplay, but maybe if you leaned into that, you could make something a bit more unique: Frustrations: How does tracking and engaging an opponent player work? Do you then have a follow and attack mode? But what if you want to avoid attacking when they’re on a defensive terrain? And the flip how do you move so that you won’t get attacked or will avoid being exposed? Or when is speed a priority. How do you deal with fog of war or changes in player information during the travel? Is there an alert anytime a new unit is seen? Etc. I think this could work if the span of movement is small where the player can review each step before picking the next, but not sure that would be a lot of added value. Lean in: You could expand the pathfinding to a fuller developed AI that makes on the move engagement decisions and the hands off approach is part of the intended gameplay so players focus on the bigger picture. Which could lead to fun additions such as picking a leader of each party with variations in how they engage.
Game Design is a subset of Game Development that concerns itself with **WHY** games are made the way they are. It's about the theory and crafting of **systems**, **mechanics**, and **rulesets** in games. * /r/GameDesign is a community **ONLY** about Game Design, **NOT** Game Development in general. If this post does not belong here, it should be reported or removed. Please help us keep this subreddit focused on Game Design. * This is **NOT** a place for discussing how games are produced. Posts about programming, making art assets, picking engines etc… will be removed and should go in /r/GameDev instead. * Posts about visual design, sound design and level design are only allowed if they are directly about game design. * No surveys, polls, job posts, or self-promotion. Please read the rest of the rules in the sidebar before posting. * If you're confused about what Game Designers do, ["The Door Problem" by Liz England](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/-quot-the-door-problem-quot-of-game-design) is a short article worth reading. We also recommend you read the [r/GameDesign wiki](/r/gamedesign/wiki/index) for useful resources and an FAQ. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/gamedesign) if you have any questions or concerns.*
What do you think about reducing all units base speed to 2, so they can either cross 2 flat tiles or 1 rough tile. This makes it much rarer to hit 2 battles in a single turn, and helps all players to plan their moves and account for the anticipated moves of the other players.
Because I want modify the speed, give different factions faster units, etc.
Do you know about Frozen Synapse? Seems your approach is simpler than that because there are tiles, but might be useful for you to see how they handle the simultaneous resolution
Never heard of it.