4 ms·

Any game with modeled communication delays. For instance, you control ancient Greek armies from a central headquarters, and there are delays in sending orders a

Any game with modeled communication delays. For instance, you control ancient Greek armies from a central headquarters, and there are delays in sending orders and receiving information, because you need to wait for horseback riders to cross the intervening distance.

mikkergp 4y ago
I had a similar idea, for siege combat. You play the general/king of the castle, and it's all first person. The only way to interact with the battlefield is by talking directly to the people who will do the work, so you can either send pages, or talk to your generals, if there in the throne room or you can otherwise get to them. Maybe there are telescopes you can use to see beyond your sight lines.
rprospero 4y ago
I briefly worked on a game like this in space. It was a 4X game where the primary mechanic was the hard speed of light. Not only did it take years for your message to reach a colony, your knowledge of the state of the colony was equally out of date. Part of the idea was that each player would never see the absolute coordinates of any star or another player’s names for anything, so it would be nearly impossible for two players, talking outside the game, to figure out if they were allies or enemies in game. What killed it was that players basically had to be able to send free form messages in game, to handle the complexity of negotiations this situation would require, but it would be far too easy and rewarding for two players to just share an email address, which would allow FTL communications and break the game. The only effective solution was a human GM filtering every message, which was awkward when the timing of message delivery was THE core mechanic.
- metabagel 4y ago
  That's a great idea for a game.
- withinboredom 4y ago
  You’d have to work around the delay by using an escape hatch. Like allow FTL information to still travel between space, assuming you’ve sent the other half of the entangled bits and only allow a certain number of messages (maybe a few megabits worth per delivery). So, allow players to communicate in real-time, but it costs time and resources to set it up, and maybe near the end of the tech tree. FWIW, there was an old Star Wars Rebellion game that did something like this. It was pretty cool. It came out in the late 90s IIRC.

mikkergp 4y ago

I had a similar idea, for siege combat. You play the general/king of the castle, and it's all first person. The only way to interact with the battlefield is by talking directly to the people who will do the work, so you can either send pages, or talk to your generals, if there in the throne room or you can otherwise get to them. Maybe there are telescopes you can use to see beyond your sight lines.

rprospero 4y ago

I briefly worked on a game like this in space. It was a 4X game where the primary mechanic was the hard speed of light. Not only did it take years for your message to reach a colony, your knowledge of the state of the colony was equally out of date. Part of the idea was that each player would never see the absolute coordinates of any star or another player’s names for anything, so it would be nearly impossible for two players, talking outside the game, to figure out if they were allies or enemies in game. What killed it was that players basically had to be able to send free form messages in game, to handle the complexity of negotiations this situation would require, but it would be far too easy and rewarding for two players to just share an email address, which would allow FTL communications and break the game. The only effective solution was a human GM filtering every message, which was awkward when the timing of message delivery was THE core mechanic.

metabagel 4y ago
That's a great idea for a game.
withinboredom 4y ago
You’d have to work around the delay by using an escape hatch. Like allow FTL information to still travel between space, assuming you’ve sent the other half of the entangled bits and only allow a certain number of messages (maybe a few megabits worth per delivery). So, allow players to communicate in real-time, but it costs time and resources to set it up, and maybe near the end of the tech tree. FWIW, there was an old Star Wars Rebellion game that did something like this. It was pretty cool. It came out in the late 90s IIRC.