Planetfall’s operation system was adapted out of the magic systems from the Age of Wonders (AoW) series. We looked back at the series at how magic changed over the instalments and what the impact of the various systems was. My task was to help shape the new operation system (so the old magic system), which needed to be re-invented after going from a fantasy to a sci-fi setting.
Looking back at the AoW2 magic system
Our starting point was the magic system from AoW3. This was the most recent, streamlined system and had the practical benefit of already working in code. Beyond that, we looked back at the earlier instalments of the Age of Wonders series for other direction of the system, notably AoW2 which has a domain system for casting spells.
In AoW2, the player could only cast spells within the domain emanating from their leader, this lead to more interesting strategical decisions than the later system.
AoW2’s magic system was interesting because the player had to make the decision to attack or defend with their leader. When defending, a player would place their leader in a wizards tower, extending their casting domain (range for the spells that they could cast) over your cities and magic relays. When attacking you had to give this up to bring your casting domain with you.
Image of AoW2, the blue line symbolises the edge of the players casting domain
AoW3 streamlined the magic system, removing the domain but still bound the casting of spells to your leader. For Planetfall, since the leader is no longer a type of wizard, we decoupled the entire operation system. Next, we started experimenting with bringing back some form of casting domain. First we gave the leader, heroes, claimed sectors and tier 4 units casting domain.
With Planetfall, one of our goals was to make lower tier units longer relevant, we achieved this by giving them upgrade slots and placing the highest tier units in a supporting role.
Experimentation and problems
The strategic gameplay that we envisioned needed all above-mentioned units to have a casting domain. This unfortunately changed almost nothing in the game itself, with the only exception being that players could no longer cast damaging operations on enemy cities with just vision from a scout. This deprived the player of a valuable harassment tool so we needed another way to project casting domain.
Next we tried introducing satellites in a space layer above the map (this was still in the game from an earlier iteration). The satellites could be produced by a city and provided operational coverage and vision on the ground. Initially, this system seemed to work well as we were getting the intended interplay between the movement of satellites and ground armies.
Unfortunately, we stumbled on too many problems with the space layer system. E.g. it vastly increased the amount of units that needed to be moved in a turn, ground units had a hard time interacting with the space layer and scouting became too easy in the early game with satellites. We tried to give only partial vision for satellites to solve this last problem but even that proved too powerful. In the end, we couldn’t get the domain system (and the entire space layer) to work satisfactory. We did end up reclining the domain code for the sensor system.
Recycling a failed system to fix another problem
The AoW series always had a fundamental problem with movement. Units have longer movement range than vision. So when an army moves into (a previously unseen) danger, they can no longer escape.
By experimenting with satellites on the map (which revealed the map but didn’t give vision – they couldn’t replace scouts for various reasons) I noticed the domain system often extending beyond the vision range. This was normally useless because you couldn’t cast operations beyond vision range.
However I realised that we could fix a fundamental problem with army movement by giving the player additional information about units beyond their range of vision. All (non-invisible) units in sensor range that have moved that turn show up in red and stationary units show up in yellow. This gave the player adequate warning for their army movement.
Outside of vision, the sensor system shows a yellow icon for a stationary army and a red icon for a moving army.
Planetfall’s operation system
Planetfall’s operation system consists of 3 types of operations: Tactical – only affects the battlefield. Strategic, which effects the strategic map. And Doctrines, that have an empire wide effect.
Casting an operation in a tactical battle
After a lot of experimentation we split the operation system in 3 parts (tactical, strategic and doctrines), linked by a common resource, operation points, that limits the amount of operations a player is able to cast per turn. With doctrines being the most powerful, with special slots to limit the amount of doctrines the player can have active at a time.
Doctrines were introduced to replace very powerful end game spells from AoW3. These spells had an upkeep in mana but couldn’t be balanced for all play styles.
AoW always had a split between tactical and strategic spells. We introduced Doctrines for balance and as a way to introduce endgame spell effects to the early game and provide alternate play styles. For example ‘Battlefield Autopsies’, a doctrine for the Assembly, generates a fixed amount of research from combat encounters, enabling players to focus on aggressively expanding instead of upgrading their economy in the early game.
Aside from Doctrines, we introduced a lot more types of operations (strategic and tactical) that significantly alter the gameplay and feeling of Planetfall vs AoW3. For example, destructible cover and an increased focus on ranged units significantly differs the gameplay in Planetfall from the rest of AoW. Our new operations let the player call down bunkers or a local cover-destroying firestorm that significantly alters the shape of the battlefield. These operations can entrench the players position or strip the enemy of cover, ensuring a favourable outcome of the battle.
Results
In the end we managed to create a new operation system out of a combination of AoW3’s streamlined system, expanded with new elements that enhance and improve upon the system and underscored the newly introduced gameplay elements. We adapted the system for a sci-fi setting and managed to fix longstanding problems with the AoW series.
Summing up my core experiences from this task, in no particular order:
- System design
- Designed and created the new operation system
- Decoupled the system from leaders
- Created the sensor system
- Pushed for features in the system that would enhance gameplay
- Designed and created the new operation system
- Narrative design
- Found ways to make a magic system work in a sci-fi setting
- Content design
- Created tons of operations & doctrines
- filled out many research nodes with operations
- Balancing & pacing
- Made sure that operations felt fun and balanced
- Made sure to organically introduce new types of operations through the research tree
- Testing & QA
- Tested all operations & the system as a whole
- Fixed a lot of bugs (a whole lot of bugs)