That's a theoretical mechanics discussion. After losing all hope for pox I started to consider actually making my own game for the genre in more-or-less near future. I'm already certain about most mechanics, yet not about one of most important things - ap/turn/round system. Pox system is great, and it's one of main reasons why I personally had been enjoying pox. However I have to admit, that it's now terribly outdated because of it's impossibility to scale - adding more players or merely more units to the board is a real pain. However there's a possible alternative - scripting instead of direct orders: Each round consists of 2 phases: Scripting phase is limited with real time, all players edit scripts for their units simultaneously. Resolution phase is divided into certain timeframes, all units act simultaneously as well. Scripts can be of 2 types: Direct: specific actions that you want to be executed this round General: at the first timeframe of resolution phase and after each next action unit "decides" what to do - attack/defend/move/etc Both types have manageable priorities Example of scripting in human-friendly terms in typical pox situation (2 vs 2 units around a midfont): we must have the font contested by all means do some damage with EnemyUnit1 as priority target, however if we can't kill it but can kill EnemyUnit2, do it instead we can lose expendable FriendlyUnit1, but FriendlyUnit2 is very important, and should be defended by all means except losing the font our FriendlyUnit2 has a particular offensive ability very suitable for current situation, so it should try to use it unless he has to flee/defend itself we want to cast AoeSpell if we can damage both enemy units and don't damage any of ours This very example in ui terms: we have default behaviours, so we just arrange their priorities: Contest Font1 Defend FriendlyUnit2 Attack EnemyUnit1 Attack EnemyUnit2 (+kill modifier) Defend FriendlyUnit1 (note that this exact order could be offered by default in most situation by ai, so you don't even have to do anything). now we add direct scripts to use FriendlyUnit2's offensive ability (right after keeping him alive in priority), and add no-priority (check goes every frame) direct AoeSpell default behaviour for AoeSpell is to damage all selected enemies without damaging any friendlies, so we just add it and select both 2 enemy units Now example of resolution phase: enemy starts with stunning our important unit with a spell and targeting it with both units since we want to keep it alive, our less important unit "tries" to stay in font and block enemy units somewhere in the middle of the turn we have right conditions for our scripted AoeSpell, and it triggers by the end of the turn our important unit "feels safe", and executes his offensive ability he "knows" that he can't kill more important enemy unit, so he targets less important one which was already damaged with our spell and less important unit, and finishes it This is very basic presentation of the system, but imo it's enough to show that this way with default/preset scripts we can have as much players and units as processing can handle. And now the question which was the purpose of this thread: would you prefer scalable but less controllable/predictable scripting system, or unscalable but direct turn/ap system like in current pox?
Current Pox system is better. Directing AI to do your bidding sounds frustrating and arcane. There are certainly scenarios where that could make for an interesting game, but Pox is not one of those. Pox has drawn inspiration and philosophy from both TCGs and Minis, and both of those genres depend upon player control. Throwing in AI direction as a proxy method destabilizes decades of design warrants. Cool idea, not for Pox.
Mod always had the ability to move threads, and this is more suited for off-topic because it is only partially related to talking about Pox itself. I will move it back because this is one of those board-line type of discussions.
have you ever played frozen synapse? sounds like the same sort of thing you're going for, on some levels edit- for what it's worth, my take is that this is actually a pretty massive change. it turns the gameplay on its head, and i'm not really sure the two are comparable they're both doable if done well though
@Senshu thank you for moving it back @Dagda Never heard about it, gonna take a look, thank you. I understand that it's a huge change, but the main question still remains — is it better to have good old sytem but be permanently stuck with 1v1 and about of dozen units manage-cap, or nowdays when gamers are mostly used to 3v3, 5v5, 12v12 and so on, scaling is more important than control precision?
I moved the thread to off topic as it was focused on a potential new game (so wasn't actually about pox) However as people seemed to like the thread Senshu has allowed it to come back to General Chat.
