Re: Prestige and Fruit (was Re: [glob2-devel] Gameplay guidelines)

[Eli]

On Sep 14, 2005, at 1:18 AM, Andrew Sayers wrote:

> > For example, there might be three kinds of food: One that makes you
> > tougher, one that makes you faster, and one that makes you eat less. I
> > don't like the penalties because then if you had more kind of food,
> > they'd just counteract and make you have no benefits either (removing
> > any usefulness in variety.) On the other hand, if globs eat one of 
> > each
> > food, and one increases their armor, one their speed, and one their
> > stamina[1], then you'll be a lot more powerful than an opponent whose
> > globs eat only the food that makes them faster.
>
> I knew I should have put numbers to my example...
>
> For the system I proposed, the idea would be that, say, oranges give 
> you
> +10 speed and -5 armour, while salmon gives you -5 speed and +10 
> armour.
> So eating both gives you +5 both.  An alternative would be that if you
> eat opposing food types you only get the benefit, so eating orange and
> salmon gives you +10 speed and +10 armour.
>
> The benefit of this system is that combinations of foods actually
> interact with each other in useful ways, so it's not just about who
> captures the most types of food - collaborating teams can actually
> out-match other teams if they have the right combination of foods.
>
> That works the other way round as well.  If your team has a salmon
> breeding near its town and mine has an orange grove nearby, you might
> choose to just conquer my town and keep both resources for yourself.
What are the gameplay benefits of that system? It seems it would 
promote resource micromanagement. For instance, you'd often want *not* 
to have your globs eat salt. So every time you found a salt deposit, 
you'd have to manually put forbidden area on it (unless the inns would 
have lots of little checkboxes for what foods are allowed there... 
which is also a nuisance.) My way, you only have to forbid areas if 
getting a certain kind of food is wasteful or puts your globs in 
danger, like you already do.


> <snip>
> > Hmm, after all that, the idea is less complex than I thought: Ditch
> > fruit, split wheat in three, and make the kinds of food/materials 
> > given
> > to globs/buildings effect those things' performance.
>
> Replacing wheat entirely with types of food is an interesting idea.  
> I'm
> not sure what I think of it yet - I'll need to sleep on it first :)
>
> While I'm thinking, what are the gameplay benefits of this way of doing
> it?
It has to be to fit with my system. Swarms are made with wheat, and 
they'd have to be buildable  with any of the foods to prevent one food 
from being too important. So, in all uses of wheat, "Any food" is a 
better alternative. There's no reason that one of the suggested foods 
can't be called "wheat", also. It could be the one that raises your 
stamina, such that it would be the common food, more effective at that; 
living off non-wheat makes your globs unduly hungry, relatively.


> > [1] We need a way to refer to it other than "Makes them eat less" all
> > over the place. Besides, "stamina" is a good word for the amount of
> > time you can go in one stretch.
>
> "Stamina" has connotations of fighting for me.  Like the amount of
> damage you can soak up.  How about "food capacity"?
>
>         - Andrew
Stamina does not have connotations of fighting for me. In fact, the 
only context in which I've actually seen it used is referring to how 
long a person can run. In computer games, it's been used for the amount 
of damage you can soak up, the amount of spells you can cast, the 
amount of actions you can take before resting, and --- surprise, 
surprise --- how long you can run.