Conquest of Planets (WIP) {Update: Jan 14}

[nva225]

Hoooly crap you made hard mode hard 

I didn't even think it was possible to beat it at first. I had a good 4 or 5 completely failed attempts at first.

Then finally amidst a game of frantic offensive/defensive clicking, I managed to take out the evil blue menace. If you're wondering whether you should make it harder, I would say you've gone far enough, at this point. Really quite a challenge now, enjoying it

As a side note, however, I depending mostly on rapid right-left alternating clicking to send units, since there was no good way to send ships fast enough using the current controls. I noticed you have changed both left and middle click to sending only half the ships at once. I know I kind of said I liked the left click to send half the units, but it doesn't work so well if you deselect every time you do it. The only way I could select fast enough was to abuse select-all rapidly. I would say either switch left click back, or stop deselecting after the click.

Also, have you actually beat the current hard mode? Curious.

[CaptainJester]

Hmm, I don't know how this would affect the gameplay, but it seems a bit unlogical from a real world perspective. Also I fear this could lead to some frustration in the heat of the action.

Yes I could see it leading to a lot of frustration in later stages.

I think your original idea is good, so I will give it a shot.

[CaptainJester]

Some more changes.  Now each planet you own independantly generates ships.  There is still an overall limit.  I only have 4 bytes left, so the computer won't get smarter, but it is fast in hard mode.  It also now starts with 5 planets in hard mode.

Middle click will no longer work now.  You can use Shift-Left click to send half your ships.

I'll see if I can squeeze some more space into it for more improvements.

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[cylab]

There is still an overall limit.

By (gameplay) design or because you just didn't change it?

[CaptainJester]

By (gameplay) design or because you just didn't change it?

By design.  I still want there to be a limit.  Let me know if you find it too hard with a limit.

[cylab]

An overall limit would still cause the random appearance of ships, once you reached that limit and some of your ships are destroyed. Maybe make that a production limit per planet instead, so you are forced to move your ships away to get new ones. This way you can collect your forces on the front while being able to produce more reinforcement at your base planets.

[CaptainJester]

An overall limit would still cause the random appearance of ships, once you reached that limit and some of your ships are destroyed. Maybe make that a production limit per planet instead, so you are forced to move your ships away to get new ones. This way you can collect your forces on the front while being able to produce more reinforcement at your base planets.

You can still collect your forces at the front.  It's just that each planet independantly creates ships at a certain rate.  Bigger planets produce ships faster than smaller ones.

[cylab]

I was refering to the fact, that you can't know where the new ships appear, when you have an overall limit.

- maximum limit reached  -> no ships get produced
- you loose some ships    -> somewhere (don't know what rule) a ship appears
                                        -> somewhere else a ship appears
- maximum limit reached  -> no ships get produced

this imho leads to unpredictable gameplay

[SwampChicken]

Bigger planets produce ships faster than smaller ones.

Thats not what I saw, my best planets (that were pumping out ships at an astonishing rate) were the tiny ones.

I put it down to it being easier to build stuff in lower gravity.

[Abuse]

However you are handling the mouse input for selection & sending orders is realy flakey, i'm finding it's frequently missing clicks.

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[CaptainJester]

However you are handling the mouse input for selection & sending orders is realy flakey, i'm finding it's frequently missing clicks.

Yeah, I tried to fix it, but it still is not as responsive as it should be.  I'm still going to see if I can get it going.

[CaptainJester]

I was refering to the fact, that you can't know where the new ships appear, when you have an overall limit.

- maximum limit reached  -> no ships get produced
- you loose some ships    -> somewhere (don't know what rule) a ship appears
                                        -> somewhere else a ship appears
- maximum limit reached  -> no ships get produced

this imho leads to unpredictable gameplay

The game I am basing this on does this as well and I didn't find it hurt gameplay.  That's also why I put in the select all planets with the right mouse button.

[CaptainJester]

New viersion uploaded.

 - fixed mouse issues (still a small bug, but works a lot better)
 - some planets were not generating ships properly, ie they stalled

Thanks for all the great comments everyone.  It has helped a lot in fixing bugs and improving gameplay.

[cylab]

That's also why I put in the select all planets with the right mouse button.

Actually I didn't know that.

For me it ruined the challenge alltogether:
 1 conquer 5 or so planets
 2 hold the shift-key for the rest of the game
 3 position the mouse over the next planet you want to conquer
 4 right click, left click
 6 go to step 3

This way you get the level done quickly, even on hard...

[CaptainJester]

Actually I didn't know that.

For me it ruined the challenge alltogether:
 1 conquer 5 or so planets
 2 hold the shift-key for the rest of the game
 3 position the mouse over the next planet you want to conquer
 4 right click, left click
 6 go to step 3

This way you get the level done quickly, even on hard...

I was thinking the same thing.  Is it too easy with it in? or would people complain if I took it away?

I will take it out to make more challenging.

[CaptainJester]

Another update:

 - removed right click to select all planets
 - made 6 difficulty settings.

So now the controls are:
 - single click to select 1 planet
 - drag to select multiple planets
 - click target to send all ships from selected planets
 - SHIFT click to send half ships from each selected planet.
 - you can also press 'R' at any time to restart the game

[zeroone]

I beat level 1.  Interesting game.  I really didn’t have much of a strategy though.  I just selected a bunch of my planets and arbitrarily clicked on one of the gray or blue planets until all the blue ones were gone.