There are going to be two modes of play: RPG and RTS. I decided that the best way to not have to include the whole kitchen sink for those who don’t want it don’t have to have it. I also have decided on creating some premium features that may interest some players for a small price. I don’t feel that charging for something that should be free is a good thing but hey. I’m not going to charge that much for as much time I’m putting in to creating this game. Also, I’m going to allow people to test all of the features before I charge for them. At the most, I’m going to only charge three dollars for a month until I get better graphics and a client side to work off of.

Alliance and Groups

Alpha 2 was a let down because I didn’t have time to implement groups and alliances. I didn’t feel I could implement it and have it work the way I wanted in that version. In this version, I am more clear on what features I want to implement and how they work together.

Groups

1. Creation

Any one can create a group but it has to be unique and there will be a number of forms the leader will have to fill out. The point that everyone can create a group will give way to many groups forming. I also want to have the option to merge groups, if the two leaders agree to merge. If the leaders decide to merge they will have to choose which one will take over the leadership because there can’t be more than one leader for any group or alliance.

2. Merging Groups

Groups can merge if they don’t have enough members on their own to be official or if one group defeats another group and decides to own that group. If one group has a hostile take over then the members in that group belong to the group that beat them and they can’t leave for a certain amount of time.

3. Group Vision

What I envision the group purpose to be is just for attacking, protection, and group wars. That will be all there is to groups and there won’t be any free exchange of money, mecha suits, and metals. If members want to exchange materials then they will have to pay money and commission to do so.

4. Job Coordination

What I will allow in the group is the free exchange of job services to other group members. That means if there is a banker then he can be the banker and store the money for the group and exchange the money for free. The same for the other job services and this will be the only exception. This will set up a queue and restriction for members and supply verses demand.

A group may have a lot of merchants but may want a banker but there may not be any banker available so they either have to find a independent banker or use a banker in another group and pray that they don’t become enemies. In my vision, I see a lot of mixed and matched job services in all groups with those that have an abundance of one type to take advantage of other groups.

5. Official Group Amount

This is likely to change in the game as the game grows and starts out but the minimum will be 3 in the early stages and will immediately jump to 5 and then 10 when the game grows large enough. If enough people complain then I will lower the amount to no less than 5 and the amount will be no higher than 20, if the game ever grows that large (which I doubt).

6. Group restrictions

• A group may not ever beat down an individual player not in a group unless that member has attacked a member in a group.
• A group member may not attack another group unless the group leader has declared war on that group or the group is in the list of enemies.
• A group and members may not attack another member or group in the same alliance.

Alliances

1. What is an Alliance?

Where as a group is a pact formed by members of players, an alliance is a pact of groups by group leaders with the alliance leader. This means that a regular player can not join an alliance and will have to join a group in an alliance.

2. What is allowed?

The free exchanged of services and items between groups and coordination of groups to attack other alliances. The alliance has more control of the groups but not the members of the groups. I also want to allow inter-alliance group battles if the alliance leader agrees to it first and sets the option for such an event to occur.

3. My Vision

My vision is to have all of the alliances that come up to battle it out until there are only two or three alliances left and have them as the story for the next version of the game when I add more features and update the story. In nature the relationship will be relatively simple except in the attacking field, where it will be really complex and will require a lot of rules and checking on my part to make sure everything works smoothly. I also have to create a lot of options for the group and alliance leaders so that they can maintain and control everything easily.

4. What I Fear

That it will become a stalemate with no one attacking each other because they are either allied or because the other alliance is more powerful. I want battles to be able to take place but I also want restrictions so that a newbie doesn’t get gang raped as soon as the player starts. I will have to balance the action and controls out carefully in the alpha stage and more so in the beta.

RTS Mode

This is the first mode I’m going to create and finish because it is like the second alpha. I figure many people are going to be just interested in all out war with a few friends so this mode will give them what they want. The main story is that you are trapped on a planet and trying to survive. The main focus is protecting the players base. I want to do a sort of map version like in alpha 2 but couldn’t because of time involved. I want to have the player fight through the land and protections to get to the base. It would make it really hard and that is good. It will simplify a lot of things for the game.

I want my game to be different from the other games. They have special things that make them great but I want mine to be great for a different reason. Feature focus will be based on map based attacking and this is where I want to add some premium features for the RTS mode.

Base Design

1. One Planet for attacking and maintaining.

I feel that there is to much to do and if I have one planet then people will focus more on macro managing what they have on that one planet and not have to manage every planet.

2. One Base

For premium feature, I may allow the player to put up to 2 bases but in different spots so that the player will be harder to completely destroy. For other players, I think the main focus should be offense and defense for the bases so the player will have to be able to defend the player with everything his has. This will require me to restrict the players into classes and levels and only allow players in a range of attack. That is, for the noob players, after that they are on their own. Once they get out of Noob class and join the elite ranks, I’m not going to protect them and they can be able to be destroyed, if the player isn’t careful.

3. Capturing and Buying Land

Buying land is going to be a high price to pay but players will be able to capture land and depending on the amount they want to capture, they may find it extremely hard to come by.

4. Maintaining Land

The player will have the choice of setting up a wall and depending on the perimeter size, it could cost a lot. When the player gets more land then they will have to fill in the spots that are missing walls. The enemy could spot the holes and get through that way.

The player will also have to buy defensive terrets and bunkers for each piece of land they have. They can either have a small amount of land and many terrets and bunkers or a large amount of land and a small amount of terrets and bunkers. There will be a limit to how many mecha suits can attack one piece of land and how many terrets and bunkers can occupy land.

5. Cities

I want to implement a city and popularity sim type sub game inside. I don’t know exactly how I’m going to do this but it could be pretty complex and I may not even finish it in time to put it in this version. I may have it in the next version. The point of having cities and people is that it draws in taxes and that gives the player income for buying new mecha suits. Every player starts out with a village to produce income for new players.

New sims will be created each night and will go to each village based on characteristics and the sims mood. The sim won’t have any other function besides income and will mostly want protection and that will depend on the players settings for protecting his cities and villagers. The player will also have an amount of fear that will keep villagers inside the country and there will also be death and birth rate that could grow a village with many people or destroy it if no villagers are coming in and the death rate is higher than the birth.

I will have more customizable features in the RPG mode than the RTS because I don’t want people to worry about managing the sims. The only settings they will be able to set are protection or fear. Some sims may like the fear, if they are protected enough. Another setting will be spending money on news and vacation spots. I will have to think more about this when I implement it. It will most likely expand to a new post.

6. Purpose of the Base.

Mining and commanding the mecha suits. The base is required to be in the game and once it is destroyed the player loses and has to start over. Mining depends on the land and there will be different materials at different locations. The metals will be random with some rarer than others and therefore won’t be as accessible as the lesser metals. Metals are used to produce mecha suits and more power metals equals better and more powerful suits.

Colony Design

1. Maximum Colony Amount

Like the planet base, I want the player to only have one colony because it wouldn’t benefit the player to have more than one. Having a colony allows the player to start an alliance and coordinate groups that are inside that alliance. Inside the colony will be different modules that the player either has to activate or buy and more modules will be added as the game progresses and the need comes up.

2. Blaster Module

All colonies start out with this module but it is at level 1, which isn’t very powerful. The player can pay money to upgrade the level to max out the damage done by the blaster cannon. The blaster cannon can help with an attack on a section of land to either weaken it before the army goes in or after an attack has occured. The blaster cannon won’t fire on the player’s armies if they are inside a section.

3. Spycam Module

The spycam allows the player to see what a section of land has, the limitation is that it can only see so far. The enemy may have installed protections to hide what a section of land has. Upgrades to the spycam allow the player to see more land and beat the spy defenses the enemy may have set up. What I won’t allow is the player to see more than 90% of the enemies land no matter how weak the player is. What I mean is that there will allows be a section of land that will always be hidden away from the player by the base. It is the sections outside of that perimeter that will need to be protected.

4. Bank Module

Alliance bank system that allows all the groups in the alliance to use the bank to store their money. There will be a limit to how much each group can store in the bank. The bank will also be accessible to all group leaders and the alliance leader to give to other alliance groups and group members.

5. Metal Storage

Similar to the bank but this allows the storage of any number of metals in the alliance so that if one member has the ability to mine a special type of metal then the other members can (either pay or) use the metal. I will have to set up some options for the leaders so that they can control the distribution of metals and not have all the members go crazy with all the metals.

6. Mecha Factory Module

One of the benefits of having a colony is producing Mecha suits from metals mined on the planet free of charge and done as much as the Alliance member has the materials to create mecha suits. It feature is available to everyone in the alliance but I may allow permissions to be set up for alliance and group leaders that want to revoke the use for punishment of some kind (I may give this feature to as a premium feature).

7. Stations

These are smaller, cheaper versions of colonies that only include the blaster and spycam functions that anyone can buy that belongs in an alliance. It floats around the colony and can’t be destroyed by any means.

8. Others

It depends on the players needs, I may add the feature here if it is something big and should require a colony to preform and would benefit an alliance better. The colony is good for the player but it also allows a lot of cool stuff for alliance and groups so I will have to make the decision on whether I want just the player to use the feature or if I want to allow everyone in the alliance to use the feature. There will be more modules as the game progresses so I have to make room in the design for them.

Moon Base Design

1. Purpose

Each player starts out with one moon base and each moon base creates a mecha suit each day. The Mecha produced is just a shell and needs parts to be brought from the market to be useful in battle and defense.

2. Upgrading

Since the price of buying a moon base is high, I will allow the player to upgrade the base to produce between 3 to 5 maximum mecha suits a day for each base. What this means that the player will have to upgrade each base individually to produce more than one mecha suit for each moon base.

3. Options

The moon base allows the player to pick a type of mecha suit to create with some of the more powerful types costing a little extra to produce.

4. Purchasing Moon Bases

The player will be able to buy new Moon bases and there will be no limit to the amount of moon bases a player can have. Probably have it on the same page as maintaining the moon bases.

Market

Mecha

The player won’t be able to buy mecha suits in the RTS mode and the RPG mode so this won’t be in the market at all. I have decided that this is one of the problems with the second alpha and won’t be included in later versions.

Weapon

Each Mecha will require a weapon with some types fitting certain types of mechas. The power of the weapon will depend on the metal used to make the weapon and metal the ammo is using. I will have to determine the pricing for the weapons depending on the factors listed.

Armor

Each Mecha will also require armor and will be fitted when they go into battle. There won’t be a special armor fitted for each mecha type so one size fits all approach will be applied. It isn’t cost effective to otherwise.

Metals

I want for players to be sell and buy metals in an exchange market where the amount of metals available depends on the amount that people sell and the price goes is dynamic to the amount of metals.

Land

Layout

I want to show the player how much the player has taken over and show the cities position in the players land. It will be a graphic, poorly designed but it will function fairly well for it purpose. I also don’t think the player will care all that much how the graphic looks like.

Cities List

I also want to list the cities, the names (allow the player to name the cities), the position, and the size of the city. In more detail I want to show the popularity and how much money the city is taking in. I also want to give an indication on how well the city is protected against attack and how the people feel about their ruler.

Managing Land

I want to allow the player to click on a section of land and buy buildings that will protect it against attack and help keep the spies and spycam out. It won’t be on the map but on a separate page that lists the sections and how many buildings are in each section.

Limitations

The player will start with large sections and will eventually fill up the space allocated for the player. The player will then have to upgrade the map to make the sections smaller so that the player can get more land. I may make the process automatic and allow the player to see just around his base and zoom in and out. I will have to see what features I can put into the map and decide where I can go from there. I may make some features premium, if they end up being too difficult and time consuming.

Attacking

The player can gain land by one of two ways: attacking land near the player or attacking another player. If a piece of land that belonged to a player holds a city then the player gains control of that city and it is added to the players list. The citizens gain a fear factor bonus for a short time that effects the birth and death ratio depending on how the player handles the citizens of the captured city.

Attacking Land

Attacking land won’t be so easy because a player can only send so many mecha suits to battle for a piece of land. The inhabitants don’t take to kindly to someone attacking and trying to take their land. The defensive for land is random so it may be the hardest ever and won’t happen or it will be fairly easy. The only thing is, is that with more land the player owns the harder it will be to attack to get more land. The defensive will always be within the range of the attacker with random values plugged in on whether the attack succeed or failed.

To attack land, the player just specifies how much land the player wants to take on at once. The larger the amount the more difficult it is going to be.

Attacking Player

There are restrictions on who the player can attack and they are listed above in the group and alliance section. If the player can attack the other then they have to specify an amount of land to attack and then the calculations will be determined by the defensive rating on that section of land and the mecha stationed in that area and the amount of different mecha the player is sending in. The player will be able to place the mecha suits in formation or use a saved formation for the piece of land.

When the player takes the base, then the player takes control of what is left of the mecha suits, the money, moon bases, and the colony, if there was one self destructs. Reason is that it will cost a lot of money to buy a colony and I don’t want someone who saved for a long time at the expense of not building defensive to lose all of that hard work because someone got “lucky.”

Spying

I want to implement this better in this version and allow the colony (if there is one) or station to use the spycam to help the sentinals to seek out the stats of a piece of land. If the spy succeeded then the information will be recorded for the player and they can make a decision on whether to attack or not. Depending on the strength of the spying, the enemy may or may not find out who the person is. The only option that will be available will be espionage and the strength of it will give more or less details about a section of land.

Story

The story will tie into the RPG one but this one will be on a new planet and have a different goal in mind for the players. There won’t be any missions to complete and this mode will only be about focusing on taking over as much land and gain power over the other groups and alliances as possible. The alliances that win in this part of the game will carry over in the next version. People will have to join the alliances based on here.

Conclusion

There are some factors that have made me conclude that I may keep this version of the game running as long as possible and side by side with the next version. The reason is that since the next version will be based off this version, it won’t have some features in this version that will be in the next one. I may still support this version and add features to it long after I complete and start the second version of Mecha Asylum universe.

There are some details not listed in this design document and the reason is that this document is about the pages and options that will be available to the player and unique to this mode. Jobs and mecha types will be discussed in a later post. I now have a roadmap for the Mecha Asylum Alpha 3 version to go off of for the RTS version.

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