I thought I would start listing all the features required for team games, in priority order, for us to discuss and debate before I implement them. I will edit this first post to reflect the current state of the design.
Team Game Design
The objective of a team game is to allow players to join forces with friends and be able to trust them %100. A group of allies whose goals are aligned and will share victory. The team games should still have a little intrigue and suspense as teams make and break alliances with other teams throughout the game.
Map Generation - Need to be able to create maps where the player starts are not shuffled so we know the starting position of each player.
Player Colours - Need to change the way player colours are assigned to players so that all players on a team can be the same colour, but use a different shape.
New Join Game Screen - that separates each of the team and presents the open positions for each.
New Leaderboard - that separates each of the teams, totals the teams stars, presents the team victory conditions.
Victory Conditions - the game rules need to total up each teams stars and compare it to the required victory count.
Rewards - players should be given a new stat - team victories and team rank. I think we’ll keep these separate than normal ranks.
Formal Alliance - on by default for team, off for everybody else.
No AI for AFK players if there are teammates still playing. Give stars to teammates.
Re enable star direct star gifting so that you can give stars directly to teammates. (but only teammates)
Team Summary dialog that shows the total E, S, I, Stars and Ships of each team.
Team Stats in the Graphs.
Players define the name of the team after joining. Default is Team 1, 2, 3 ect.
When one player in a team is KO’ed the whole team is defeated. I want this to discourage having weak team members. A team needs to protect all players.
Optional
Trade with team only option? (Trade with team cheaper?)
Team only tech trades AND cash transfers. Ditto with Automation players … who can (and should) certainly trade among themselves … and should be auto-aligned so no damage when they run into each other.
Decide if team members should be placed in adjacent systems
Or should be randomly scattered
Or should be interleaved (in a circular this might be team 1 player 1, team 2 player 1, team 3 player 1, team 1 player 2, team 2 player 2 etc)
As for identifying the teams the options are to give all members either the same colour or the same shape.
I think I would prefer the team to all be the same shape.
Teams are more likely to be made up of players who know each other, work/live together, I suggest disabling the same IP address warning as it is more likely to occur and is far less useful.
You could even have an option for a single person team, ie in a game with 3 team members you could allow a single person to control the whole team, giving the 3 home systems.
You could also have the option for a team member to take over if a colleague goes AFK.
I can see the need for some new custom team player maps.
The first which comes to mind is the 2 team, battle field map, which is just the two teams lined up against each other across a virtual field.
Other layouts would cluster the team members together around the battle field with more space between the teams.
Along with the locations of the home stars on the maps you will need a way to tag groups of stars as belonging to the same team, for each applicable team size. Even a 8 player game has a number of configurations (letters equal teams, 1 letter per player)
Aaaabbbb, aaabbb, aabb, aabbcc, aabbccdd
We just had an issue where a player AFK’ed in the team game … so maybe add an option at game creation time to allow more than three strikes you are out.
Note that until that is added as a “per-gate” option (rather than what I believe is a global code setting), it would be extremely useful if Jay could add something like this to the code:
AFKTurnsTimeout=3 ;Â Â Â # Current Code
If (GameID=6537227089739776) {
AFKTurnsTimeOut=9; # Added Code
set HulkWeapons=9999999 # LOL! ;-)
}
Would it be a good idea to have a delay in the AI tech sharing after someone goes AFK so that in all games if it happens accidentally someone can be reinstated before their tech gets shared with the AI for anyone to nab? It would only need to be a delay of one turn, or 24 tickes in a real time game.
I’d also add a suggestions that other teammates can submit for you … or better yet, have some sort of (optional) team login credentials so that other players can jump in if need me.
In a real-time game, a 3-way combo of US, UK, and Aussie would be awesome as you could have 24 monitoring!
I saw you suggested teams share their logins in the in-game thread. That is fine if people know each other and aren’t using something like google or facebook to log in. It’s a bit to personal to give that info to a stranger or online acquaintance. A team login would negate this but then you might have issues with someone a bit power hungry deciding they can do best and taking turns for people without their permission (again assuming people are playing with strangers).
Yea, I totally agree that the login credentials have to be NP specific - not google/facebook/etc.
I agree you run the risk of a power-hungry player getting outa-control … but I would suggest that in a team game, if you have that problem, then you aren’t working together and therefore have bigger problems.
I.e. speaking from experience, the team that works together the best will probably win … and have the most fun!
I would prefer teams have a single color, so a quick glance at the map zoomed all the way out shows teams, not a mass of colors.
I think having the option to pool cash, upgrade each other’s stars, and control team carriers could replace sharing login credentials.
I believe one of the items on my wish list was seeing each teammate’s research status. Points and time to completion. Maybe next research set to begin after current research completes.
If playing in a locked team (preset formal with others locked as enemies) could we just do team tech? No need to share it. A player’s research points get contributed to individual priorities, but points and bonuses are applied to collective research. For example Hulk, LDG and I are on a team. Hulk is working on Weapons, LDG on Terraforming and I’m on Manufacturing. It increases our team totals for those research amounts. Then, if I finish early, I can switch to Weapons with Hulk and our combined points progress Weapons research even faster.
I’m afraid I must disagree with my ex-teammate here. The most challenging aspect of a team effort is coordination among different players with different egos and different styles and even different time zones. To allow sharing of login credentials in order to share control of each others game interface is to short-circuit the whole team-building process. Anyone who has ever been a teammate of the The Incredible HULK has a direct appreciation of exactly how much skill is required;)
I agree with Brian on same color with differentiated shapes like Square/Triangle/Circle.
I disagree with Brian on the pooling of resources/etc and agree with wfmcgillicuddy for the reasons he stated. And WRT to his “smiley”, I feel better to over-communicate so no confusion, everyone is tossing out ideas, and then discuss/agree on a course of action … even if it isn’t my choice!
The reason I suggested sharing login credentials was if you KNOW you are going to have problems logging in, it kinda sucks to let your team down.
A good way to implement the team colors option would be for the game creator to select how many teams they would like to play, how many players on each team, and how many players total will be playing. The game will divide up the teams evenly and assign each team a color. Instead of the system choosing shapes and colors for each player, it would be much easier for the player to choose the color and shape they want to play in the beginning.
When a player joins in the game, they have a small form where they choose the color and shape they want to play. This will also work a lot better in regular games than the way it is designed now. They would choose from a drop down menu instead of scrolling down until they see a join option.
Before the game starts the map can be shown as circles with different colors showing starting locations. 3 player teams might show as 3 sets of red circles, another team might be 3 sets of Blue circles. It can continue like this until all players have different positions across the map. When the game starts, the map can change to show the symbols and colors each player has chosen.
Reading the thoughts on teams being the same colour or shape, I have changed my mind from my earlier post and now think teams being the same colour would be the better option.
