SUBTERFUGE Forums

I have been playing this game for a while, and I think something amazing as an option would be a speed game mode. This would be an option for created games for players with L2 clearance. What does everyone think? Is this a good idea? Should we ask the petition the devs to implement it? If it was, I would buy L2 immediately. Anyone have any more thoughts on this?

Welcome to the forums Legolas (best character IMO)
Ah.. the old "The game is too slow and faster would be fun" The plausibility of your suggestion all depends on how much faster you want it to be. Currently, the average distance between bases is id say 12 hours, give or take. A helmsman can make that in 6 hours. So if you let a martyr/helmsman appear next to your queen's base and don't you schedule a sub to defend overnight, bye bye queen. Overnight attacks are the worst thing to happen in this game, and they can and do occur when a sub travels at X2 speed.

Now, imagine every single sub traveling at an additional x2 speed. That 12 hour time i talked about earlier is cut in half, and then half again. A martyr being able to reach your queen in three hours is a scary thought. The normal X1 speed is, in my opinion, the fastest this game can fluidly run at without pauses, in my opinion.

You may ask? "What if the game is fast enough to finish within a day, so the whole 'sleep' thing doesn't ruin you?"
A game where subs land in minutes, not hours. That's an interesting thought. Playing Subterfuge for 3/4 hours straight, with no breaks would be very intense, not to mention stressful. To cram a 10 day game into 4 hours, it would need to be at x80 speed. The 12 hour travel time, cut down into one and a half minutes. Not even enough time to react, much plan an antiquate defense. Also, having any form of speed specialist would create subs that, in all practical matters, would teleport to their destination.

The concept of a sped up subterfuge looks fun on paper, but in reality is crushed by math (Like many things in this world).

Godspeed on your future travels, legolas0011.

nojo wrote:Crushed by math

Im sorry.... please don't get mad at me for this....

Math. Is there anything it can't crush?

Soft squishy hummus.

Alternatively though, why compres it done to 3 hours? If the game is played over the course of a day, then take it down to 10 hours. A 12 hour journey would drop down to 1 hour, which is still reasonable if you check every 45 minutes or so. It would require you to have a day where you really aren't doing anything, and maybe there would be some changes, especially with speed based specs, but it still might work.

Clearly speeding up the game itself would be problematic, but what if we are approaching this from the wrong angle? There might be a better way to speed up Subterfuge without just speeding up Subterfuge. I suggest that we could change subterfuge into a turn based game. I know this would require changing everything in the game itself, but for the fun of a thought experiment, hear me out.

(I've been playing a lot of Civ 5 lately so picture that for most of everything)

Instead of having the game automatically play out through time, every person would take their actions and click the end turn button. Once everyone has clicked it, everything moves and the next turn commences. Basically, the game fast forwards several hours then freezes for everyone to input their actions before fast forwarding again and repeat. This would also give it a bit more of a board game feel, which is what most people who want a faster Subterfuge want it to be like.

Instead of showing the time it would take to travel from one base to the next, it would show you how many turns it takes to travel. I'm still trying to decide just how many hours equals 1 turn. It shouldn't be too short so that everyone constantly hit the next turn button without doing any actions because they are still waiting for subs to arrive but not too long that factories produce every turn. Also, the time in between hires is an important thing that needs to stay balanced.

What do you guys think? Some flaws I still see is that smugglers and helmsman are still problematic since they would be close to impossible to react to. Additionally, it would be recommended to only play with people you know, hopefully who are in the same room with you, similar to a board game. Otherwise it is just a less balanced version of Subterfuge.

Zyxe, you're idea is very similar to that of turn-based Neptunes Pride 2. There's two game modes for NP2, the first being a normal time game where attacks are sent round the clock, and the other beige turn based. Everyone can schedule their orders, and then once all people have sent (or else a certain time has elapsed if someone didn't schedule orders) the orders are enacted. It's a good way to finish a game very quickly, if all people are active.

I think it could be very useful in laying a game of subterfuge, because then you could talk to people before attacking and it could go quicker. The faster people set up their attacks, the faster the game goes.

If the balances could be tweaked out, I would LOVE this game style.

I remember everyone talking about Neptune's Pride, but I never really looked into it.

zyxe wrote:I remember everyone talking about Neptune's Pride, but I never really looked into it.

Please dont. It gave me aids