An insectoid Third Race?

[wyrmmage]

So, Derfmancher and I had a pretty awesome discussion, and we've discovered something: we both really, really like the idea of having an insect-like race. We're not sure exactly why this is, but I have a feeling it's due at least in part to the fact that we've both read some awesome books, and watched some awesome movies, that showed us, in beautiful, gore-packed glory, exactly what a swarm of angry, deadly insects can do to a pack of ill-equipped units

Of course, most of my exposure to military-sci-fi has been through things Derfmancher has lent me, which probably has to do with it, too

Anyway, here are some reasons why an insect-like race could work well if they were our third race:

• Deadly insects are cool. I know I already said this, but it's true
• It makes sense that the population of insects could explode in a very short amount of time. This goes well with how the units vs time is supposed to work for the third race: that is, the third race should have only a few units early-game, and lots of units late-game.
• Currently most types of units, within a race, have rather-unique looks. Having a race made up of one type of insect would give us the chance to design units that are similar-looking, which would help to differ the third race from the Core and Chronolith. I know this isn't huge, but I think it would be nice

Derf had an interesting idea that we expanded on: the race has a unit that increases its population cap, rather than a building. I'm going to call this unit a "queen," but that's just because that's what Derf and I were referencing it as; it really could be anything.

Each queen you build raises your pop cap by a set amount, just as if you were building a pop-cap-raising building. The interesting thing here is that the queen is actually a fairly-powerful unit, to the point that it's a good idea to use it in combat. As you build queens, the cost per queen rises exponentially. You might start out paying 15 matter for your first queen, but by your twentieth you might be paying 350.

The effects of this could be very interesting. You're provided with a variable pop-cap, but it has its price. You're encouraged to constantly attack things because once you lose a tons of queens and units, its incredibly cheap to rebuild them, and you're discouraged from sitting around creating a game-ending mass of units because it's insanely expensive to do so.


What do you guys think? If possible, we'd like to avoid naming specific books, movies, and such that we like the ideas in, due to problems with copyright-infringement



P.S.
While reading the last segment of Derf's and my chat log, I realized that we had actually talked about it taking an exponential amount of time, rather than resources, to build a queen. You're therefore forced to either build more buildings capable of producing queens, which could be pricey, or to constantly sacrifice your queens so that you can build new ones more quickly.

[Giggleanthropisticon]

Hmm, I suppose it could work. I've been mulling over an idea of a unit with multiple brains, I don't look forward to putting it in an insect, but I can make it work after some time for maturity and a half-hour of split-thought . I'll get back to this.

[Derfmancher]

I was going to say.. we talked about time, not matter.

Giggle, what about one brain shared between many units (The 'queens')?

[Giggleanthropisticon]

You mean (sardonic response give, received, removed)?

[Derfmancher]

... We are trying to avoid using references.

[wyrmmage]

Ya.......

I have no idea what that is, though, so I'm pretty much unaffected

[Derfmancher]

Ill give you a hint.. 3 races.. Squeal came out yesterday.. Giggle loves it..

[wyrmmage]

ah; I should have known

Anyway: Giggle, I'm still not sure exactly what you thought of the ideas mentioned in the original post; any comments?

[Derfmancher]

Heres a thought.. what about having all of the buildings look alike when they are built, but then they "grow" into another building after more investment. Retarded? Good?

[Derfmancher]

Giggle?

[wyrmmage]

Giggle?

Heh, ya, I totally giggled when I read your last post.

Sorry. I couldn't help myself


Anyway, I think it's a cool idea. What if you could morph a completed building into another building, at a reduced cost? If the structures are somewhat-organic, it would kind of make sense

If we still like the idea of having buildings that just produce a unit every certain amount of minutes, this could make for some crazy tactics, too, because you could build a ton of buildings that produce one type of unit and then quickly switch them to producing another type of unit, in order to catch your opponents off-guard.

[Derfmancher]

I like it.. although we would have to be careful about the time/resources of the building mutations.

I wouldnt want a player to be able to build the basic production building, and then mutate it into the most advanced one for 50 Matter.

I think there should be a few 'tech' buildings that are required to get further up the "tree".

My thought is this: A few levels of buildings. To mutate a building into another one on the same level is cheap, and quick. To mutate a structure up one level costs more, and takes longer. Mutating a building up two levels is more expensive and slower (but you get to skip building a structure on the middle level)

Also.. How many units do we think the race should have?

[wyrmmage]

I like your idea of being able to skip a level of building; that could be pretty cool

Do we still like the idea of having buildings that create a unit every certain amount of seconds, instead of paying for each unit?

I know we had a poll awhile back that asked how many units people wanted each race to have. It looks like most people wanted to see either thirty or fifty units per race, which I think is pretty much what the other two races have, especially if you count all of the various forms of each unit.

[Giggleanthropisticon]

Aha! Found my cables

Having the builders be able to build one "primary" building, which then morphs into all other buildings and then, once the primary building morphs into a tech level 1 building, that building can morph into a tech level 2 building, but we could also have it so that the primary building may directly morph into a tech level 2 building (if the building required to unlock the tech level 2 building is already built somewhere else), so this action is at a higher cost than morphing it twice (perhaps 50% more than the cost of morphing it twice), but takes less time than morphing it twice (possibly 25-50% less time than morphing it twice), might work. What do we want the requirement to be, to unlock TL2? One specific building; two or three buildings, or have one building from TL1 unlock 1-3 buildings from TL2 and another building from TL1 unlock 1-3 other buildings from TL2, like this:
Also, do we want to look at 2 or 3 tech levels? I think 4 tech levels is too much and 3 is probably dependent on how many units we have.
The main problems I see with this method, is the cost of time to create something and also the difficulty for the enemy to destroy the primary structure, because a player with this race could spam-block their enemy with primary buildings, if the primary building is too hard to destroy, but has such little cost. It might be too hard to react quickly with this race if the primary structure takes too long to build or costs too much. I suppose we might be able to have the primary structure cost a large amount, then make its morphing possibilities have a very small cost (we could even have the first unit-producing building cost no additional resources beyond the price of the primary building).

Another method could be to have the builder make one, primary building and that building can then create other buildings on TL1, within a certain distance of the main building. Then, when the primary building creates the building(s) required to unlock TL2, primary buildings and/or TL1 buildings can then create TL2 buildings within a certain distance of themselves (if we have 3 tech levels, then TL3 buildings can be created within the build radius TL2 and TL1 buildings and the primary building). Sort of like this:
Now, while this might look complex, it will be simplified for the player, so that when they click on the building they want to create, a highlighted area will appear everywhere the player may build the selected building. So if the player has a setup like the one above, and they select a TL2 building to build, the screen will look a little like this:
If the player has this setup and wants to create a TL3 building, the area will expand to this:

One of the situations with this method, is if the player wants to create a TL1-3 building, then they have to create a primary building first, which takes more time.

Also, do we want to have defensive buildings, and if so, should the defensive buildings be made from the builder, morphed from a primary building, or created by another, nearby building?

It takes an exponential amount of time, rather than resources, to build a queen. You're therefore forced to either build more buildings capable of producing queens, which could be pricey, or to constantly sacrifice your queens so that you can build new ones more quickly.

Constantly sacrificing your queens, so you can build more pop-cap-increasing queens is actually redundant, unless you're meaning that the pop-cap increases every time a queen is trained, but doesn't decrease when/if the queen dies. Also, if the queens don't decrease the player's pop cap when they die, then it seems unfair, because once a player makes a queen, other players can't employ the strategy of destroying their enemy's pop-cap supply (against players using the Third Race). Also, if queens are fairly useful in combat, then the player ("Player 1") will be making many queens to increase their pop cap, but keep them at their base so their pop cap doesn't go down, which means whenever another player ("Player 2") attacks Player 1, Player 1 is going to always have a second army protecting their base. Think of it this way, imagine all the structures a player would create as the Core or Chronolith to increase their pop cap and the fact that all those buildings do are sit defenselessly at the player's base, while in comparison, all the pop cap units of the Third Race have the ability to relocate, hide, attack, and defend.

I don't see anything going against still having buildings that constantly produce units, because I think we can continue to count on the ability to balance this aspect out through the strength, speed, and weaknesses of this tactic.

[wyrmmage]

Giggle, I love ya, man

I like the idea of only being able to build a higher-level building within the range of a building one lower than it.

What if we made the base building cost a fair amount, but it's a defensive structure? If we did that, then we could make it so that whenever you wanted to upgrade a building, it wouldn't cost very much, but you'd be sacrificing a defensive structure, so you'd have to be careful.

You bring up a good point about the queens. I've had an interesting idea (or maybe this was my original idea, and I just forgot it XD) that I think will prevent the problems you mentioned, though. What if when a unit is built, it's bound to a queen? I don't mean physically bound, but when a queen is produced, it would create a certain amount of open population slots. As units are produced, they would fill those slots, and then those slots are never freed. This would make it so that you would have to kill your queens, and you might as well do that by sending them into battle with your units that are about to die, because if you keep the queen back at home, it's no longer contributing to the population cap, but it is making it take more time to build more queens. I haven't seen any other games that do this, but I think it's a cool idea.

Of course, then players could just send their queens out to die, while keeping the units bound to them back at the base. Therefore, we would probably want to make it so that you would have to have enough queens available to support the current population, otherwise you would be prevented from building any more units.