Hey Micky, thanks for the feedback I didn't find it rambling at all! Ok I will try and break it down so we can discuss your points!
Pangea and Great plains are the only ones that show up for me.
Got this bug when clicking the sentry bots icon. I could build them just fine though after clicking ok
Thanks for telling me you still have the maps as intended, that is good! It just leaves me stumped as to what I have done to my version!
Ugh that flipping button bug! I keep thinking I have fixed that one! What I think it is is that when I made the button there were some stray pixels outside of the 64x64 size, I just need to remake the button and refind the picture because I accidentally lost the work version of the file!
Thanks for this, this is a big area of the gameplay that will need testing and refining to get it just right.
I ran some tests early on to see if the AI used range, and it did, I set 2 stacks next to each other and then declared war and watched them blast each other! Obviously we need to try and do something with the AI that will maximise it's use of this, or perhaps that will maneuvre into position as well.
Fortunately we now have someone on this team with the coding skills to potentially help me achieve these things!
One addition that I would love, is the 'Surround and Destroy' Feature from ROM:AND, as well as trying to develop some AI rules that help it make use of this, so that we see smaller stacks engaging in surrounding moves, rather than seeing 2 big stacks ripping each other apart with miniguns!
One thought I was having for 'buffing' melee units was to give them more powerful promotions than ranged, Like the 'Slayer Perk' in Fallout that just allowed you to decimate everything you touched.
With ranged I would like to add an 'accuracy' mechanic that some mods have, where a ranged attack is not always guaranteed to work, but that will again be quite a large addition, that I require the good grace of others to achieve.
Another thing I was thinking about was making melee units better in certain terrains, like forests, where visibilty is lower, and the ability to hit someone without a large BANG! is a bonus. As well as urban environments like 'towns'(improvement) So in those CQB (Close Quarter Battles) environments, melee units will take less damage from ranged attacks, as well as attacking bonuses when taking them out in those areas representing the ability to ambush and to take out enemies without giving away your position (Like every good Commando movie!
). Hopefully with things like this melee will begin to emerge as a viable and beneficial part of combat, that fulfills a distinct role compared to the ranged combat benefits.
I am glad you enjoyed the snipers!
Hehe, although I will be working to limit the availability of snipers in future releases, either by simply making them national units, and/or as we develop our economic concepts, placing high and difficult resource restrictions on them as well.
Which i think makes sense as snipers are a very specialist soldier, and very few people have the natural skillset required for a real sniper.
In an attempt to make them somewhat less effective, and only truly devastating in ideal conditions.
As well as maybe trying to get the AI to hunt them with extreme prejudice
or perhaps giving some units a 'flank' attack against them, so they cannot simply hide in a stack, so that once you close the distance on the sniper they become very vulneralbe as they have only a strength of one in combat, so as soon as they are engaged they are dead.
Hopefully this will provide the kind of offset that gets them used more sparingly in future versions, rather than your city killing tactic that you described.`
In the future 'Leech' will become 'Cannabalism' and will become a much rarer feature of the game, only available to certain units or factions, and/or come with some negative impacts, like everybody hating and wanting to hurt you. (Like in Fallout)
I think that actually non T51-b power armour units can actually capture cities as well, as the arrive after 'conquest' tech.
I am working on trying to create a generally more aggressive AI and destructive existence in the game, I just have to learn how and what works. This was one ofthe Reasons for the introduction of Deniable Ops. I wanted to create a kind of Cold War environment, where everyone is actually fighting each other, just no one is sending tanks into each others cities.
There were three reasons why Conquest is set so late, one is Story, the other is Game Play and the third is Realism.
Story: In F1 and F2 there is no real full scale war, in F1 Mutants and BoS are kind of involved in a Shadow war, with the BoS trying to contain the mutant threat, but not really having the resources to eliminate them completely. Until they hire a brave hero to do it for them!
In F2 it is the Enclave and the BoS that are involved in a Shadow War, again both sides are skirmishing with each other and engaging in clandestine operations to further their agendas (Enclave Enslaving, BoS engaging in Tech Espionage) But neither really has the resource advantage to engage in a fullscale war or occupy territory that they forcibly conquer.
It is not until NV that we hear of a fullscale War between BoS and NCR and then NCR and The Legion, but that is something like 3 generations after F1. Which in our game time would be somewhere in the region of 5000 turns (I only did the quick math just now)
Game Play: If cities can be conquered too early, then the 'crush rush strategy' will I am sure be lavishly employed, and people will start complaining that by the end of era one there is no one left to kill! (As there are only 8 factions, which will expand once the game is developed, but that won't be for some time.) Also as the factions become more distinct, certain factions will have benefits and advantages at certain points in the game, so those with a leg up at the beginning, will likely always wipe out their opponents quickly, as the idea of the game is that everyone will start very close together, rather than being protected by large open areas of terrain early on.
Realism: It really is not easy to oppress and control a group of people against their will outside of your own backyard, even then it is not easy, so making conquest come later is trying to represent the fact that beating a city is only one small step in the process, and it requires immense cultural, political, economic and military planning and expense to actually take 'control' of something.
Just look at what the Coalition has gone through in Iraq and Afghanistan in terms of the resources and manpower used, for what could only be defined in the most generous terms as a 'limited success'.
The fact is the only real reason to go to war is control, but if you don't have the resources and logistics to make that control stick then there really isn't much point taking that risk, instead you just want to destabilize your opponents power base by knocking out their infrastructure and enslaving their people in a Shadow War.
My hope is that this will create a much more anarchic environment, where war is constant, and the only reason to make it official is the final step of absorbing your enemy. (this will obviously require some work though)