Time investment and queued actions

Strategy, feedback, or anything SUBTERFUGE-related
Tue Nov 25, 2014 10:08 pm

  • Super general design thoughts:

    I assume that the length of the game is partially to allow players to not be constantly on the alert and consumed with the game. Which is really cool, but there still seem to be fairly frequent occasions where you have an hour's window or so to make a crucial decision. For example, I had an opportunity to make a defense by hiring a double agent, but I had to hire, launch, and waypoint the double agent within about an hour and a half from when the hire became available, which happened to be 11:30 PM in my time zone. (Even if I had the ability the queue the hire for when it becomes available, I would also need to be able to stick that specialist on a sub immediately.)

    More generally, it seems that battle lines tend to form around a cluster of outposts which have similar distances to each other (varying by two or three hours), which means that the ideal defensive move generally has to be made within that window. (Not that big of a deal for strictly driller combat, but with the number of specialists that have drastically different effects based on whether they are defending or attacking, it can become a huge deal.) And these are scary because they can't be queued—they're conditional on actions performed by another player.

    Haven't the faintest idea what to do about it, though. I can only ramble in a deranged fashion.
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  • So, with regard to scheduling actions, that's coming soon. It's been on our list for a long time and that's what I'm currently working on.

    In terms of needing to make response moves within a given time window, push notifications (which I noticed are broken at the moment) help with that. You get notified any time someone makes a move against you.

    Where it will really become interesting is when players can schedule orders and intentionally schedule launches at night to get a head start and make it more difficult to defend. :)
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  • Yeah, push notifications will certainly help, but only during the time when I am actually available to play. And yeah, it's going to get weirder once actions can be scheduled. :?

    (I assume a notification would trigger as soon as I become aware that someone has made a move against me? i.e. a ship appears in my radar range headed for one of my outposts?)

    Will scheduled moves be able to operate on units that don't exist yet? i.e. drillers not yet produced, specialist not yet hired?

    (Also, another queued action I would have liked to be able to make: waypointing a sub off of an outpost without picking up 100% of the drillers there.)
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  • yeah, notifications happen as soon as you are aware of it. that said, whenever anyone launches a sub at you, even if it's from outside your radar range, you can see it, and you will get a notification.

    the way scheduled orders will work is that you scrub into the future using the time machine and issue whatever order you want based on the PREDICTED FUTURE. so you will be able to send drillers that don't exist yet and specialists that haven't arrived yet, etc.
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  • That's awesome. (I'm busy geeking out about how if you spend most of your time in a predicted future, it's basically a game about time travel. Which is awesome.)
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