The current challenge mode is perfect. But this idea, I think, would make it MORE perfect. =p
Essentially, the idea is that you can create an objective that must be met by the opposing side. For instance, perhaps the goal is to protect (or destroy) a certain ship within the fleet. Perhaps they must survive the encounter with a certain number of points(or pilots) remaining. Perhaps they must manage to get(and keep) a ship in every one of several influence points on the map for a certain period of time. I’m sure there are other objectives that could be added.
Does anybody else believe this would be a fun addition? Perhaps not?
Influence points wouldn’t really be possible, given you have no direct control on ship movement.
Assassination type missions would be a bit impractical, for the same reason.
Being able to force more stringent victory conditions like ‘don’t lose more than 50% of your fleet’ or asymetrical deployment conditions like ‘max spend of 50%’ would be very interesting though. One ‘flaw’ of GSB is that I’d go as far as to say it’s impossible to make a challenge that couldn’t be beaten within 2 attempts by a ruthless opponent (exploit ship positioning, use tailor made ships to exploit that particular challenge (that might be nearly useless against most other challenges.)) If challenges could be issued with a deployment limitation as simple as only having a % of the points to spend then all of a sudden defeating challenges in creative ways would get a lot more interesting - rather than being a ‘cheap’ way to beat them.
It would make challenges… Challenging.
Currently I usually first limit myself to using deployments that would beat many challenges, and attack head on - ‘play fair’… Then once I’ve beaten the challenge ‘straight’, if I think it’s a interesting challenge I’ll then try to beat it again with a much smaller, tailor made and deployed, force.
That’s basically what supply limits does, isn’t it? Basically you can’t just beat the challenge by making a custom anti-THIS spam fleet, you have to work within the limits of what supplies are allowed.
But anyway, yeah, greater control of what happens in the mission could open up a lot of stuff.
I mean, ideally, we just need the developer to create a custom scripting language so we can program our ships in intimate detail! Barring that, some “scenarios” might be interesting, like…
The challenge fleet spawns on the right side and makes a straight run for the left side of the map. If it makes it with > 50% of the fleet intact, you lose.
or
The challenge fleet is actually a series of 3 fleets. You must design a fleet that can beat all 3 (perhaps your fleet would be restored between fights… or maybe the challenge fleet can actually come in waves and you have to survive to the end).
or
Design our own “infinite challenges”, like those infinite battle maps we have, where you get to specify, within limits, what can spawn in each wave.
Kinda depends on what direction the developer wants to take the game – enhanced challenges or is he working towards a wider game which incorporates GSB as the combat portion?
Well, sort of. My personal preference though, is to keep the player’s choice as wide as possible, but increase the difficulty by limiting their overall spend… Rather than just be able to build, say, a frigate swarm fleet then just ‘delete’ rocket fighters from the game by setting the supply limit to 0. But then I suppose my approach would be limiting in a similar way - it’s hard to beat a good frigate swarm without using rocket fighters, so it’d be nigh on impossible to do it any other way if you had a reduced overall spend available.
Drool
I’d be happy with just some basics like setting a minimum engagement range, seperate to the maximum; ‘keep moving after formation breaks’; ‘fire on fighters, but don’t chase them’; ‘fire sheild breaking weapons against ships that still have sheilds up, fire armour breaking weapons against ships that don’t’
Actual scripting would be awesome, although I don’t think we’ll see it, since the game is supposed to be a ‘pick up and play’ sort of game, so shouldn’t be that complex.
I really, really like this idea.
I think there’s been some organised challenges like that, where you are only supposed to post a challenge that beats all the challenges already up in the series. I think the fact battles are not deterministic messed this up a bit.
Could be fun. Or even a type of challenge where you put up, say, 3 deployments that spawn in waves (each wave warping in to join the battle either after a set period of time, or coming on as reinforcements when your fleet falls to 10%… The latter would be great fun - trying to beat someone’s 3 waves without needing your 2nd and 3rd.)
It’s the former. The whole point of GSB is that it doesn’t have anything attached to it. It’s just… Gratuitous Space Battles.
Reminds me of Dwarf Fortress. Another one-man game. If you like GSB it might be worth checking out. I warn you that the graphical interface is not, in fact, graphical at all and will probably turn you off entirely if you aren’t already used to ASCII-map type games like Nethack, but the interesting part is the feature creep.
Some of the features in that game are mind boggling and he just keeps adding more and all of them are so good. Features that you would never, ever see a game shop try just because game shops are all about turning a quick buck and to hell with trying interesting ideas.
Like the dwarfs in Dwarf Fortress have hit locations. Not just like “arm”, “leg” but more like “left eye”, “spleen”, “right index finger”, etc.
For a long time it seemed like the demands of creating a program were outpacing anyone’s ability to create them – too much graphics work, too much UI work was required to make anything that anyone would even try playing.
Now maybe a combination of better tools and disenchantment with the un-inventive gaming industry is going to bring about a return of the solo and small-shop games, bringing innovation back to the scene.
I sure hope so. Lord knows I’m tired of playing Warcraft VII and Quake XXIII.
I agree this would be nice. I posted something related WRT planets—an idea to make planetary bases that might be the subject of special victory requirements—attacked must bombard planet, or wreck a specific outpost, defender defends, etc.
Been wanting more varied victory conditions like this. Would love to see challenges were you have to do stuff like:
-survive for a certain period of time while outnumbered
-defeat the enemy in a certain amount of time while outnumbering them
-destroy a certain ship type in the enemy fleet (take out all fighters/frigates/cruisers)
-at least one ship with plasma/missiles/something must survive (to bombard a planet/moon/station/whatever)
On a perhaps unrelated note, could we have the reverse of supply limits where you have to bring a minimum amount of certain modules/weapons?
