Author Topic: two tribes [gamemode pitch]  (Read 1780 times)

two tribes [working title]

so i had an idea for a gamemode and i wanted to openly pitch the idea before i start developing it to see how well or poorly received the pitch is. generally gamemodes are the only projects i can ever finish unlike weapons because they are interesting to make and this idea has been in the back of my mind for ages

preface
two tribes is a two-team arms race gamemode with elements of base raiders, trench ctf, factorio, rimworld and other games where amassing large amounts of wealth is the primary objective. in two tribes, two rival teams start off on opposite ends of a nice scenic natural map [with trees, rivers, mountains] and must exploit the resources of the land in order to develop and tune their respective team base. killing the enemy team is a secondary objective, and all players will respawn shortly, making raids important only for hindering the enemy team's progress or the acquisition of the enemy team's goods and resources. the design goal is to generally encourage the players of each team to cooperate and specialize in order to see their tribes' success, which could take between 30 real time minutes to an hour.

idealized game loop
i play a lot of colony sim games like rimworld and dwarf fortress and obviously draw a lot of inspiration from these games. i want players to achieve the same sense of accomplishment when their tribe mass produces nuclear warheads and nukes the enemy team all because the players collaborated and formed a cohesive warlike society. of course getting to the point of mutually assured destruction takes some work.

the arbitrary goal of two tribes and the game-ending condition is when one of the [two] tribes amasses enough resources and goods to construct a spaceship and leave the god-forsaken planet (not ripped from factorio). every other aspect of the game is a means to the end. whether you're harvesting trees to construct a fence for your team base, building an automatic miner and a piping system to supply your gun factory with enough metal to produce a stuff ton of rifles, or laying down a farm to harvest narcotic leaves to mass produce combat-enhancing amphetamines, every action contributes to the eventual success of your tribe and the hindrance of the enemy tribe.

the more resources you supply to your tribe base, the more technology becomes available for your tribe to produce, ranging from neolithic sharpened sticks to space-age power armor. how you acquire these resources is up to you, whether you safely harvest them from the map or form a raid party and steal them from the enemy tribe. sabotaging the enemy can also slow down their rate of technological progression, giving you and your tribe an edge in combat and a head start towards the finish line.

mechanics
ok so that's a lot of text and its probably hard to follow. and believe me its hard to explain. but maybe the mechanics section will make more sense

the two tribes have a spawn point and opposite ends of the map. you play the game like any other fps in blockland. you can break trees or rocks to manually harvest resources to construct tools, fortifications, or you can pool it towards a research fund which gradually unlocks more powerful technology as more resources are supplied. all buildings and tools are shared by the whole tribe as it is a collaborative team game, so your friend's uranium processing facility is also your uranium processing facility (yay). you can also wield weapons, consumables (like drugs, health stuff, etc), and armor to increase your combat effectiveness, and form loose raiding parties with your teammates to attack enemy players or enemy structures.

eventually hand-harvesting resources becomes unsustainable, so after 10-15 minutes you unlock automatic resource harvesters, such as mining drills, which you can place on parts of the map. these harvesters net more resources the farther away they are from your spawn, adding challenge as you need to set them up in dangerous territory to operate efficiently. with automatic harvesters, the resources must be pumped using pipe bricks back to your base in order to be distributed. think base raiders money printer but with conveyor belt. this addition of logistics makes it easier to automatically accumulate wealth but poses its own logistics challenges, like efficiently moving resources or keeping your supply chain defended from enemies.

why?
a lot of wealth-accumulating games have their own respective downsides. base raiders is a pretty well-refined gamemode but the lack of an end condition and cohesive teams leads to constant skirmishes for wealth and eventually one mega-gang which controls everything and ruins the game for everyone. two tribes sets out to remove that by forcing the existence of two teams. also if one team gets too far ahead in the game the losing tribe will occasionally be rewarded with goodies in order to get them back on track.

the goal is to make a truly collaborative team game where every player feels like their individual actions are directly contributing to their team's long-term success but give them the chance to individually work for themselves and maintain freedom. its kinda ambitious but with the right execution it can be made into something fun



if you some how make it through this wall of text and understand vaguely what im trying to propose, give some feedback please

one thing you'll have to deal with is griefers through the enforcement of two teams. the real question is why not just make it one team and pve? with base raiders, gangs only form between members who trust each other not to grief, while with two teams, players could conspire to go to opposing teams and grief the team they want to lose/assist the opposing team. i dont really see a reason *not* to make it 1 single team, using individual trust system, and having individuals deposit resources at the global HQ to progress

everything else sounds fun/good - the main challenge will be designing a progression system that is both complex enough it works, and easy enough that people can pick up. probably need to take a page from factorio where the individual mechanics themselves are simple but layer over each other to create complexity. the other challenge will be making said progression system work in blockland since anything involving big numbers or lots and lots of objects has the potential to just kaput itself.

sounds epic, just having an hour long round for a game that probably wouldn't allow mid-game joining would be very hard to get new people if they have to wait like 30 minutes before the next round. you'd prob have to have some pre-spawn mini's

sounds epic, just having an hour long round for a game that probably wouldn't allow mid-game joining would be very hard to get new people if they have to wait like 30 minutes before the next round. you'd prob have to have some pre-spawn mini's
OP dosent really specify about if there is a late join restriction. I'd say it'd be pretty easy to just spawn new people in after a brief tutorial so they can start helping collect resources and such. I would think the hard part is team balancing if people leave. If you spend 15 mins setting up a long distance ore dill for your team you don't wanna get balanced over to the other side after you finish it. Might be able to add like a player rating system where the player that has brought in the least stuff or owns no drills or whatever could be eligible for team balance.

thank you

one thing you'll have to deal with is griefers through the enforcement of two teams. the real question is why not just make it one team and pve? with base raiders, gangs only form between members who trust each other not to grief, while with two teams, players could conspire to go to opposing teams and grief the team they want to lose/assist the opposing team. i dont really see a reason *not* to make it 1 single team, using individual trust system, and having individuals deposit resources at the global HQ to progress
i experimented with a pve version of this idea once and i found that not only is it hard to really make good and smart enemies, but the whole experience just feels unmemorable. a teamvteam system would ideally create natural pressure to conquer and advance because you don't know what the enemy will do next

griefing is a challenge and im not sure how i can get around it but for an alpha i'm just going to make it so there's no building trust. i was thinking that each player is allowed to take a certain percentage of the communal resource pool for their own endeavors, but if their usage of the communal resources results in a net loss (ie they hoard resources, build useless structures, die alot) then they will probably have their allowances cut until they can contribute to the tribe. its very arbitrary and im sure theres a more natural solution but i havent come across it yet. if you have any ideas about griefing please let me know because im at a loss

everything else sounds fun/good - the main challenge will be designing a progression system that is both complex enough it works, and easy enough that people can pick up. probably need to take a page from factorio where the individual mechanics themselves are simple but layer over each other to create complexity. the other challenge will be making said progression system work in blockland since anything involving big numbers or lots and lots of objects has the potential to just kaput itself.
the beauty of a game that isn't 100% focused on building factories is that i can abstract and simplify the stuff out of the whole automation sector. i was thinking that pipes would connect resource-producing and resource-consuming structures as a sort of virtual group where the pipe system can hold infinite resources of any type but they cannot be physically withdrawn. if you wanted to you could just connect every structure in the tribe to the same pipe system and the only challenge comes from the lack of arbitrary systems so if one pipe breaks then every single structure will be starved of resources.

there's a lot of opportunity for different systems but i want to naturally take the simplest one so that players can focus on what matters (the strategic positioning of structures) rather than the whole factorio-esque hierarchy of product-vs-ingredient.

sounds epic, just having an hour long round for a game that probably wouldn't allow mid-game joining would be very hard to get new people if they have to wait like 30 minutes before the next round. you'd prob have to have some pre-spawn mini's
ideally you'd join the game, make a server-command request for a gun, some armor, and resources, and collect them from the tribe resource pool and immediately be a part of the game, on par with everyone else. any excess resources, be it raw wood, ammo, even guns and drugs, would go into a community pool so that new/respawning players have access to some surplus goods. if at any point the surplus is lost (raid, demand exceeds supply) then the bottleneck will need to be sorted out by the rest of the team
« Last Edit: March 30, 2020, 05:41:40 PM by PhantOS »

im going to attempt to make a prototype tonight with basic automation mechanics and structures lets see how good i do

sounds like a fun thing to code
wouldn't mind helping if needed

i think it'd be pretty neat if there were enemies in the game like factorio, so defenses would be useful even if the other team isn't attacking

yea i was thinking about having animals roam around that can be hunted but will retaliate as a pack, or random events and such

i still think you can pull off the pve, but if you really insist on teams w/e. dont think it'll break the gamemode.

as for resource allocation, what you could do is that for every resource collected, x% automatically goes to "team" and is redistributed among team members. this would be a constant value so you'd always get at least 1-x% of the resources you collect, but if theres fewer teammates, you get more of the auto-donated stuff back.

yea i was thinking about having animals roam around that can be hunted but will retaliate as a pack, or random events and such

for animals you'd prob want the factorio evolution thing so they challenge players at all times

heck what if the bot ai for the animals got better over time like they just started off like bot zombies but later on they develop like group tactics and stuff

I like everything here. Lmk if you need a map

I like everything here. Lmk if you need a map
thanks. im going to prototype first so i dont want a lot of effort put into any maps. but if you happen to have any valley-esque 4x4 style maps lying around i could totally use that as a test map

When two tribes go to war, one is all that you can score.

thanks. im going to prototype first so i dont want a lot of effort put into any maps. but if you happen to have any valley-esque 4x4 style maps lying around i could totally use that as a test map
Might have some on old comp but would be no problem to build something specifically for this if you have a plan for the terrain