#Spy action moddability?

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

hoary sonnet
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Several months of dev work, sorry. 🙁

modern cedar
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diappointing

hoary sonnet
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Like it's all technically doable but it involves rewriting many hundreds of lines of code into a data-driven system. And I actually have a design for a more interesting espionage system that I'd rather replace the current one with, if I ever get around to it.

nimble spoke
hybrid oar
modern cedar
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interesting

nimble spoke
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The curiosity is killing me.

hoary sonnet
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Unfortunately I seem to have written down fewer notes on the design than planned, but let me try to remember what I can. Two big problems as I see it is that espionage in games:

  • It never feels like actual spy work. It doesn't feel sneaky. It's all just progress bars and probabilities.
  • Doing an effective spy action feels good, but having it done to you feels godawful because it comes out of the blue. As a result, games tend to go through a cycle of revamping their spy system to be new and exciting, and then neutering it due to negative user feedback.
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So the general idea was to instead do a poker-like game happening over time. Information gets revealed gradually, and people can wager and bluff. This would allow for things like:

  • Bluffing to win a round that you would have lost on the strength of your cards.
  • Tricking your opponent into overspending resources on a round that you can afford to lose.
  • Building up resources between rounds to expend when it really matters.
  • Most importantly, giving players a sense that being the victim of a spy action isn't out of the blue - they did lose a round of spy poker, after all.
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The main design difficulties I'm seeing are:

  • How rapidly does this game progress? It has to happen alongside the rest of the game. If it's too fast, it becomes a stressful interruption where you keep on having to play spy poker when you want to be blowing things up. If it's too slow, espionage ends up not mattering.
  • Who is playing spy poker against whom? Having as many simultaneous games happening as there are other empires would obviously be completely overwhelming, so the game has to pair off empires. How does it do that? Can empires choose or influence who they play against?
  • I lost the fking list of cards which I really thought I wrote down, argh.
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And the main reason I haven't implemented it are that it'd be a major piece of work on a relatively niche mechanic, so arguably that work would be better deployed elsewhere. Right now, espionage in A:CtS is... OK, I think? Not very exciting or impactful but also not a disaster.

hoary sonnet
hoary sonnet
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@nimble spoke @hybrid oar 👆

hybrid oar
hoary sonnet
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Well as stated those would be replaced

hybrid oar
hoary sonnet
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And yeah, I agree it's over-engineered. I guess the question is if there's any part of this that could be grabbed and integrated into the existing mechanics to make them less boring...

worthy delta
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Hmmm... in a good way. There are a lot of things in the game that need to be gradually updated/changed. But that's a lot of work.

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You shouldn't go too far. The same reputation system without indicators. It's conditional... you fight or trade with someone, making pacts that you can break at any moment, without any particular consequences, if you know what you're doing.

hoary sonnet
worthy delta
# hoary sonnet I don't quite know what you mean by this

Well, it's not really a nitpick, but rather about the conventionality of diplomacy. It's hard to explain, but I remember hearing someone say they wanted to see more elaborate diplomacy like in other games. But the main topic was about indicators. Well... how do other neighboring countries relate to you? And how do others treat you? And so on.

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but that was a long time ago. -w-"

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sorry to bother you

hoary sonnet
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No worries

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It's an intentional choice that the diplomacy isn't about how much other countries like you, because I think that leads to boring gameplay.

worthy delta