Fire and Motion

I'm linking you to an article about productivity, which is interesting in itself. I happened to be thinking about military sim games when I started reading it though, so in my head I was thinking how the military strategy aspect applies to games and game design.

[From Joel on Software] When I was an Israeli paratrooper a general stopped by to give us a little speech about strategy. In infantry battles, he told us, there is only one strategy: Fire and Motion. You move towards the enemy while firing your weapon. The firing forces him to keep his head down so he can't fire at you. (That's what the soldiers mean when they shout "cover me." It means, "fire at our enemy so he has to duck and can't fire at me while I run across this street, here." It works.) The motion allows you to conquer territory and get closer to your enemy, where your shots are much more likely to hit their target. If you're not moving, the enemy gets to decide what happens, which is not a good thing. If you're not firing, the enemy will fire at you, pinning you down.

I remembered this for a long time. I noticed how almost every kind of military strategy, from air force dogfights to large scale naval maneuvers, is based on the idea of Fire and Motion. It took me another fifteen years to realize that the principle of Fire and Motion is how you get things done in life. You have to move forward a little bit, every day. It doesn't matter if your code is lame and buggy and nobody wants it. If you are moving forward, writing code and fixing bugs constantly, time is on your side. Watch out when your competition fires at you. Do they just want to force you to keep busy reacting to their volleys, so you can't move forward?

There are two aspects of this I found interesting, and the military strategy aspect is the obvious one. I'm not sure I have ever seen any games where this is directly modeled, though I think I have observed it indirectly. In a two player game of Battletech, one player might choose to "take cover" from the opponent by moving into a good defensive position. This might help the other player "Fire and Move", or it may not, depending on how and when the first player finally decides to attack. There is no automatic advantage just for "laying down fire" aside from the odd lucky shot.
In many-players games of Battletech, such as the storyline battles that take place at the Cons (often 8+ players per side), Move and Fire really starts to express itself. Sometimes one side takes advantage of cover, avoiding line-of-site to the other team. Any player who ventures away from cover then become the only target for the other side, and so quickly gets their Battlemech destroyed. Consequently, no player wants to be the first one to venture out from cover. There may be some brave rallying attempts, but always some players cautiously hang back, leaving their braver teammates to face a hail of concentrated fire. This is not written into the game, it's a consequence of psychology and players putting their own performance (not getting damaged) ahead of the team. Fire and Motion works for the team that is able to restrict the actions of the other; Not because it is a rule of the game, but because it takes advantage of group psychology. If the team in cover would all move out to attack as a coordinated unit they would stand a decent change of success. In a two players game each side is fully coordinated, but with many players per side coordination is a serious issue.

The other interesting aspect is that of game design, and the idea that creating something - anything - it a lot better than sitting around and just thinking about it. This is one of the main points Ian has been pushing in his class.

[Hat Tip 2 Paperpools]

Skaph Tips and Tricks --- Part 2

Today a few more tips for the game Skaph.
[Previous Posts on this game: 1) Intro 2) Tips & Tricks Part 1]

--- Tips & Tricks --- Part 2 ---

Spending Your Level-ups:
With every level increase, you get three level-up picks to improve certain aspects of your game. I have a suggestion ...

1) Increase your Resources. The resource extraction level-up increases the production of all your resources. That means every hour, every day, 24/7, you get more resources to build your bases. None of the other choices give you back so much. The only down side is that the bonus you get is rounded down rather than carried over, so you need to invest a fair number of picks to get best use of this, but it is well worth it.

2) Build more bases. You automatically get more bases as you gain certain levels (3,6?,9?), but the Bases level-up lets you build an additional base for every 5 picks you put into it. When you get to the level where you can build new bases, you should save 2 pick so you can have 5 at the next level, and build another base right away.

3) Go back to #1 and #2. None of the other level-up choices are worth considering. Here is why Resouce Extraction (RE) is better than everything else: Protected Resources-->[useless] You save a tiny amount when you get raided, but you could more than make up for the loss with RE, and eventually you can build Bunkers to do this job better. Max Resource Storage-->[useless] Same reasoning, for the little bit extra you can save you could be building other building with have the same effect. More Energy-->[barely useful] With RE you can build more tiles and more reactors instead. Sensor Power-->With RE you can build more tiles and more reactors sensors instead. Long Range and Short Range-->[barely useful] These are tempting, because they booth your firepower, but with RE you can build more firepower instead. Also, these only benefit you when you attack or are attack, where RE helps you all the time. Hangar Space-->[barely useful] With RE you can build more tiles and more reactors sensors hangars instead. Extra Points--->[doubly useless!] Long Range and Short Range do the same thing, AND they boost your firepower at the same time. Unit maintenance, Unit build time, Building construction time, Building strength-->[useless, useless, useless, and useless]. Resource recovery, Unit recovery-->[barely useful] These might help a little if you do a lot of raiding, but only then.

4) Economics. Skaph is basically a game of economics, and the best thing you can do is increase your resource production. Did I mention that yet?


Combat:
There is much to describe, but not much to tell. That is, the detail of combat in the game take a bit to explain, but there is not much you can do about it. The only real rule - more is better - but you didn't need a guy with a degree in statistics to figure that out. Still, there is a little bit more to it.

1) Straight to the point. Combat is linear, meaning that if you just have one type of unit is a combat, the total attack strength of the opponent destroys units up to the total resistance of all the units, rounding down.

2) In proportion. The only random part of combat is how damage is allocated amount difference groups of units. It appears that units in your force are randomly selected to be destroyed, and combat ends when the total resistance of the units absorbs all of the attack strength. The allocation of damage is proportional to the types of units is your force, but different units have different resistance. This means that by including some Boga (no offense, high resistance) in with a group of Veen (light combat mecha), the Boga will absorb proportionally more damage, letting more of the Veen survive. This might not be the most efficient way to attack, but it can help a smaller group of Veen make a successful attack against a well defended target.

3) In Veen we trust. Veen appear to be the most efficient combat unit in the game, interms of the combat strength received per unit of ore spent. You might be better off with a large number of Veen rather than a smaller numbers of more expensive units. I still can't build all the different Skaph (mecha?), but I suspect this will still hold true when I can.

In part 3, a discussion of strategies, and maybe some help from a suicidal duck.
[a small update: I never did write part 3, my interest in the game ran out.]

Skaph Tips and Tricks --- Part 1

I have been playing SKAPH, a browser based game for several months now, and a month has passed since I first wrote about it. Since I've been spending a lot of time playing lately, it seems like a good time to offer advice to new players. Skaph is a little bit Sim City, a little bit Civilization, and a little bit ... well ... Viking raiders greedily pillaging each other. Here are some tips for play.

--- Tips & Tricks ---

Resources:
1) Concrete is Precious. Concrete is the most important resource in the game, and if you have enough concrete (and a bit of money) it will enable you to do anything else you want to do. Protect it, use it wisely, but most importantly use it before someone steals it from you.


2) Expand. Multiple bases are key to increasing you resource production. Build new bases as soon as you can, and put 2 or 3 concrete plants on each. You are automatically allowed a new base as you gain certain levels (3,6?,?), and you you should save some level-up choices to have enough (you need 5 each)for extra bases as you gain levels too.

3) Float Resources. Use Bogas (cargo mecha) for short-term storage of resources so that you base won't stop producing as it reaches the maximum limit. These Bogas are vulnerable to your human neighbors attacking them, but if you keep them in groups of 1 or 2, and keep them out of detection range of enemy bases. You can also send 'slow' transport/transfer mission between bases. One or two Bogas are generally undetectable, and the resources they carry are safe while in-transit. This is especially helpful for overnight (or work-day) missions; time the arrivals so the resources are there when you will next log in.

4) Transfer not transport. If you haven't noticed already, your Bogas cannot transport resources to a base once that base has reached its maximum storage (the resources just stay in the Boga for the return trip). However, you can transfer Bogas full of resources and exceed this limit. This is one thing I wish could be changed, because all it does is create busy work, forcing me to use two transfer missions in place of a single transport mission.

Building:
1) Be flexible. Sometimes you will want extra hangar space, other times you might need to maximize your cash production. Don't be afraid to tear down building you don't need at the moment and put up those you do. Advance Hangars and Gen Mines are conveniently the same size, and make an easy swap.

2) Plan ahead. Plan space for big things. As you progress through the research tree, you will eventually want to build a large building like the Advanced Research Facility (ARF), or Advanced Armory, which both have a 4x5 footprint (20 tiles), and the Extended Research Facility (ERF) is even bigger (6x7 = 42 tiles!). If you plan ahead where these big buildings can be built, and fill the space with buildings you can afford to tear down later, you will save yourself a lot of time and concrete. An extra concrete plant (or two) is a great choice for this, because it will help you build up your base, and tearing it down will free up most of the space you need for the big build.

Research:
1) Turn it off. If you aren't doing research currently, power down your research facility and use the power for something else, like powering Turrets and Rocket Towers.

2) Tear it down. I'm presently saving resources to research the Extended Research Facility ($10000, 2000 oil, 2000 ore, 5000 concrete). Once I had over 2200 concrete saved up, I realized that the concrete plants were maxed out and not doing anything useful. I was still very low (<500) on oil and ore, so I tore down the concrete plants and put up ore mines and oil pumps instead. This will cost me an extra mission to transfer replacement cash /concrete from another base, but will save me 4-5 missions by mining the oil/ore in-base, rather than transporting it.

[UPDATE] In part 2, I will discuss some different strategies more tips for the game (strategies in part 3).

Dice Wars

Here is a nice little Risk-like strategy game: Dice Wars


Battles are resolved by highest total dice roll (ties to the defender), with a winner take all result. Replacement dice are given based on the number of adjacent territories you control, and are assigned randomly. A sound strategy is to leave paths of weakly defended territories open to your biggest piles of dice, inviting other (computer controlled) players to attack you so that you can counter-attack with greater force. You also want to set up paths for your opponents to fight each other, so they do not spend all their efforts on you.

[Updated 11/10]

Facebook Games Finances, Revisited

In a previous post I detailed methods for determining the best way to invest your "money" in many of the game apps on Facebook. I worked out a few more details on how to account for some other costs I had not yet considered. That gets complicated though, so I think I will start with the conclusion and give the details later.

Here is the problem: You can buy "lots" that give you a permanent income, and you can buy 1, 5, or 10 lots at once for a fixed price for each lot. The price per lot goes up for every lot you already own, so buying 10 lots at once save money - if you can afford it in the first place. Is it better to buy lots one at a time, thus increasing your income a little much sooner? Or, should you save your money for the big purchase of 5 or 10 lots later on?

Here's the scoop: Again there are two (three Sir!) three things to consider: your current income, your savings or Cash-on-Hand to spend, and the amount of income you will gain (per lot) from a new purchase.

1) If you have NO savings, then the strategy is very simple. If the income gained from the purchase of 1 lot is greater than 10% of your current income, then you should purchase 1 lot as soon as possible. If the gained income is less than 10%, then you should save up to purchase 10 at once.

2) If you have some savings, but less than needed to purchase 5 lots, and the income gained from 1 lot is greater then 10% of you, then you should purchase 5 lots as soon as possible. If you have more than enough save for 5 lots, then wait until you can buy 10.

3) If the income gained from the purchase of 1 new lot is less than 10% of your current income, then you should always save up for a purchase of 10 lots.

4) If you won't be playing again for a "long" period of time, don't be afraid to buy anything you can, because it ALWAYS pays itself off eventually.

If you noticed (in 2) there is a fuzzy line between buying 1 and buying 5, you are correct: There is more to it, and ways to determine exactly what you ought to do and how soon you should do it, but it requires a lot of nasty calculation. The advice above is simple, requires only trivial math, and always works. I'll give those nasty details next time (but not tonight, it's late).