Superhero Management Sim Game

[The Glyphstone]

I have read a few fanfics with alfred in them. In at least one he is basically a james bond expy. A secret 00 agent who has retired to a life of relative peace. He ENJOYS being a butler and caregiver for the waynes family. And when bruce decides to go all terror that flaps in the night, alfred runs him through all the training a 00 agent is required to have. Everything from combat, to infiltration, information gathering, death trap escapeology "No mister bond, i expect you to DIE" all of it. He is far from bruces only trainer, but he DOES put some serious polish on those skills and help keep him sharp.

Isn't that his canon background in at least a few continuities? An ex-SAS agent who now works for the Waynes as a butler and manservant?



It would be fun to have a superhero raising sim. Like Long Live the Queen (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Live_the_Queen_(video_game)), but instead you get a Batman - or whatever - who's just starting to become a vigilante.

Though I think it would work better if it were more like the relationship between old Bruce and Terry McGinnis in Batman Beyond, Bruce would have the knowhow and provide the equipment but lack an active role in the heroing (thus being the PC) and Terry would be his promising disciple.

Now I'm imagining a sort of superhero agency management sim. Take in new talent, allocate them appropriately based on superpowers and skills to fight certain villains or in certain environments, and guide them as they grow from street-level sidekicks to Cosmic-level badasses.

[Kitten Champion]

Now I'm imagining a sort of superhero agency management sim. Take in new talent, allocate them appropriately based on superpowers and skills to fight certain villains or in certain environments, and guide them as they grow from street-level sidekicks to Cosmic-level badasses.

I like it, you could do it like X-Men. Assign the Meta-humans to spend their time having classes, participating in a danger room-esque exercises to build up their combat stats, put them on teams, give them missions out in the world (though these would probably involve earning money somehow), occasionally have your school invaded by villains.

Be neat if members of your roster could die with mismanagement/bad luck, you could incorporate a marriage/affection system like Fire Emblem so pairing two characters on a roster for long enough will lead to coupling and thus future superheroes with stats derived from their parents.

Actually, you could do the whole thing like HIVE from the Teen Titans cartoon, where you're the villainous organization raising an army of young potential supervillains.

[Traab]

Isn't that his canon background in at least a few continuities? An ex-SAS agent who now works for the Waynes as a butler and manservant?




Now I'm imagining a sort of superhero agency management sim. Take in new talent, allocate them appropriately based on superpowers and skills to fight certain villains or in certain environments, and guide them as they grow from street-level sidekicks to Cosmic-level badasses.

A auperhero management agency would almost have to be very. . . manly? (http://thepunchlineismachismo.com/archives/comic/02222010) :smallbiggrin: And yeah, I think SAS is canon, or at least has been in one or more batman reboots. I just like the 00 agent idea. Lets face it, james bond training would be pretty effective for the kind of stuff batman has to deal with. Death trap escapes alone are required knowledge. And playing the part of a handsome pretty boy who is good with the ladies is a part of his civilian persona.

[Lacuna Caster]

Seriously? Is nobody else aware that I did a working prototype (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?475263-Let-s-Design-Justice-League) for this?

[The Glyphstone]

A auperhero management agency would almost have to be very. . . manly? (http://thepunchlineismachismo.com/archives/comic/02222010) :smallbiggrin: And yeah, I think SAS is canon, or at least has been in one or more batman reboots. I just like the 00 agent idea. Lets face it, james bond training would be pretty effective for the kind of stuff batman has to deal with. Death trap escapes alone are required knowledge. And playing the part of a handsome pretty boy who is good with the ladies is a part of his civilian persona.

The Agency is more of a rehab center/halfway home than a regular staffing agency, but otherwise yeah, appropriate.

Incidentally, now I'm wondering. Where exactly do the X-Men get all of their money? They can't really apply for government grants, what with Government-funded giant robots attacking their base every few months.


Seriously? Is nobody else aware that I did a working prototype (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?475263-Let-s-Design-Justice-League) for this?

Your idea was/is more of a tactical/strategy game, though, and I was at least imagining something more like a management sim. Rather than actively managing the heroes 'in the field', they'd be autonomous once you assigned them out to a mission, returning success-failure (possibly with consequences) based on how well you paired them against the particular threat.

[Kitten Champion]

Seriously? Is nobody else aware that I did a working prototype (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?475263-Let-s-Design-Justice-League) for this?

That's a turn-based strategy game though. I thought we were discussing something more along the lines of this (http://store.steampowered.com/app/314240/) meets this (http://store.steampowered.com/app/422130/).

[Lacuna Caster]

Your idea was/is more of a tactical/strategy game, though, and I was at least imagining something more like a management sim. Rather than actively managing the heroes 'in the field', they'd be autonomous once you assigned them out to a mission, returning success-failure (possibly with consequences) based on how well you paired them against the particular threat.

That's a turn-based strategy game though. I thought we were discussing something more along the lines of this (http://store.steampowered.com/app/314240/) meets this (http://store.steampowered.com/app/422130/).

Good Gods, people! I can do base management!

I mean, the original X-Com was about 50% management sim, or do you specifically not want to control heroes in the field?

(Oh, regarding RPG Tycoon- have you folks not played Majesty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majesty:_The_Fantasy_Kingdom_Sim)? Or the 1993 Stronghold? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stronghold_(1993_video_game)))

[Vinyadan]

Good Gods, people! I can do base management!

I mean, the original X-Com was about 50% management sim, or do you specifically not want to control heroes in the field?

(Oh, regarding RPG Tycoon- have you folks not played Majesty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majesty:_The_Fantasy_Kingdom_Sim)? Or the 1993 Stronghold? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stronghold_(1993_video_game)))

Just take Crusader Kings, rename it Batman Wings, and have the map represent quarters of big fat Gotham, and dynasties of superheroes who want to rule it and raise children and become commissioner.

[Lacuna Caster]

Economics? As in macroeconomic factors and alleviating world poverty type-projects? DC Superheroes are notoriously inactive on that sort of thing...
*sigh* Look, this topic was already discussed at nauseum (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?474719-Is-Superman-Too-Overpowered/page5), so all I can say is, for gameplay purposes, I don't think Batman mustering the resources and connections to eventually reform Gotham strains suspension of disbelief any more than the sysyphean task of fending off circus goons and eco-ninjas.


Yeah, I mean the point would be maintaining the agency/school and developing your roster rather than micro-managing their individual battle.

No. I just brought up RPG Tycoon because it was on the Steam page and seemed reasonably close to the concept Glyphstone described.
I think Majesty was one of the most underdeveloped gems of millennial gaming, so if you like the idea of indirectly managing teams of RPG avatars, it might be worth investigating.

So, would yourself or Glyphstone imagine battles playing out entirely off-screen, or might they be observable but unalterable, like in Deadlock or Gratuitous Space Battles? (I now have this mental image of 2d-isometric caped heroes busting into a seedy casino, complete with 'Paf!' 'Pow!' 'Whap!' sound-bubbles. What is wrong with me?)

[The Glyphstone]

I was picturing off-screen, if only to save on animation assets. But a simple, 2-D animated 'battle replay' with some stock hero/villain sprites and a handful of background environments would be really cool, now that you suggest it.

[Kitten Champion]

So, would yourself or Glyphstone imagine battles playing out entirely off-screen, or might they be observable but unalterable, like in Deadlock or Gratuitous Space Battles? (I now have this mental image of 2d-isometric caped heroes busting into a seedy casino, complete with 'Paf!' 'Pow!' 'Whap!' sound-bubbles. What is wrong with me?)

I was imagining all off-screen missions. Character sprites climb into their Fantasticar/Black Bird/Batmobile or simply fly/run/bamf off to the mission you assigned them (though sending them individually would warrant a higher risk and individual resource costs). Then a timer would appear somewhere on the screen to express the ETA for the various missions' completion and return next to the icons of the character(s) sent on it. During this time the player would need to monitor their fatigue levels which would steadily increase during their mission-time along with a health bar to show the level of injury potentially incurred underneath their individual icons.

When the character's health is too low, their average fatigue is too high, or it looks like the mission is going to fail based on the perimeters surrounding it, they may ask for back-up or to flee to give the option for the player to save the mission.

There could be an option for a Boom Tube-esque transport feature, which can instantly recall/deploy heroes but has a lengthy recharge time, that could be an early gift to the player as a save-me feature for risky/poor decisions that are blowing up in the player's face - with lower difficulty making the recharge time shorter.

Naturally you'd be able to upgrade ALL THE THINGS to make this process quicker and cost-efficient while expanding your roster to do more missions concurrently, and making more missions of higher difficulty available.

Although I actually had the same thought regarding infusing comic-ness into it - when the situation warrants it (new hero makes debut, new villain appears, character dies, character comes back to life, characters marry, big threat looming, big threat defeated, etc.) you'd get brief 2D comic panel-type sequence to show what happened, both to signify its significance and get the player a small reward for exploring more of the game's outcomes.

[The Glyphstone]

We could always just split off a separate thread, if we want to keep that line of chat going without threadjacking.

[Lacuna Caster]

...Yeah, might as well.

[The Glyphstone]

Aaaaaand split from the Bats vs. Spidey discussion in Media.

[Anteros]

I'm not gonna lie guys. This game you've designed sounds so boring.

[Grinner]

I might be misunderstanding the purpose of this thread...Are you looking to make a superhero management sim, or looking for one? Because I remember Double Fine once made a game along those lines.

[Lacuna Caster]

Just putting out feelers at the moment, Grinner. There are lot of possible directions you could take the idea. If you wanna give a link to existing games, though, feel free.

EDIT: I just found this Majesty Let's Play (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS4KmCBZ1FU&feature=youtu.be). My day is complete.


Just to recap from before the split: I was thinking that one of those Hanoko-style visual-novel games would actually be a pretty good match for Spiderman, given the romantic subplots and all.

@KC: What you mentioned about Bruce & Terry might not be a bad analogy, but I'd point out that Bruce actually does issue quite a bit of manual directions during Terry's missions. (Xavier or Manhunter arguably play a similar command-and-control role within their teams, which raises the interesting question of just how much mind-control shenanigans are involved... and then there's Amanda and the suicide squad.) But you already mentioned HIVE and Fire Emblem, so I guess you're familiar with the idea.

I'm a little skeptical about totally off-screen missions, but if you had those, I'd suggest just giving an 'action report' afterwards, rather than having to monitor fatigue/injury in the meantime (that feels like a rather unstimulating form of micro without the visual payoff.) But maybe I'm misunderstanding the idea?

Anyhoo, if I threw the basic engine for the project on github, would anyone else be interested in writing code or adding assets? I'd rather not be beavering away solo on this.

.

[The Glyphstone]

I might be misunderstanding the purpose of this thread...Are you looking to make a superhero management sim, or looking for one? Because I remember Double Fine once made a game along those lines.

It's a split of a side-digression from Media Discussions, about a theoretical superhero management sim.



I'm a little skeptical about totally off-screen missions, but if you had those, I'd suggest just giving an 'action report' afterwards, rather than having to monitor fatigue/injury in the meantime (that feels like a rather unstimulating form of micro without the visual payoff.) But maybe I'm misunderstanding the idea?

Anyhoo, if I threw the basic engine for this up on github, would anyone else be interested in writing code or adding assets? I'd rather not be beavering away solo on this.

Yeah, I wouldn't be a fan of off-screen micro like that either. Ideally, I could see the bare-bones of the combat mechanics being a series of Elemental Rock Paper Scissors-style traits and counters - matching the appropriate hero abilities to counter a villain/plot traits would raise your success chances - complete a mission and the heroes who you assigned to it gain experience and some sort of reward, failure means less experience and possibly some injury system that takes them off your roster for X days. More difficult missions have more traits, and give better rewards.

Example: A mission (let's call it a "plot") is opposed by a villain with [Fire] powers. He's leading a group of minions with [Brute] powers, and the plot (a bank robbery) has the [Urban] environment tag. Thus the plot's three tags are Fire, Brute, and Urban, and it's rated as a two-Hero plot, letting you assign two people from your roster. Success means the bank gives your agency a cash donation. To maximize your success chances, you'd want to assign a hero with [Earth] powers to counter the [Fire] villain, and a hero with [Tough] powers to counter the [Brute] minions. If your heroes had built up experience from previous missions, they might also have the [City-Fighter] trait.

Build the rest of the game around this mechanic, and/or make it more complex to taste. Recruit new characters to your roster, shepherd your novices to fights that suit their specialty. Spend money to upgrade your base. Deal with random events like natural disasters or surprise villain attacks on your stronghold.

[Grinner]

Just putting out feelers at the moment, Grinner. There are lot of possible directions you could take the idea. If you wanna give a link to existing games, though, feel free.

This (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Manager_of_Justice) is it.

[Grif]

Yeah, I wouldn't be a fan of off-screen micro like that either. Ideally, I could see the bare-bones of the combat mechanics being a series of Elemental Rock Paper Scissors-style traits and counters - matching the appropriate hero abilities to counter a villain/plot traits would raise your success chances - complete a mission and the heroes who you assigned to it gain experience and some sort of reward, failure means less experience and possibly some injury system that takes them off your roster for X days. More difficult missions have more traits, and give better rewards.

Example: A mission (let's call it a "plot") is opposed by a villain with [Fire] powers. He's leading a group of minions with [Brute] powers, and the plot (a bank robbery) has the [Urban] environment tag. Thus the plot's three tags are Fire, Brute, and Urban, and it's rated as a two-Hero plot, letting you assign two people from your roster. Success means the bank gives your agency a cash donation. To maximize your success chances, you'd want to assign a hero with [Earth] powers to counter the [Fire] villain, and a hero with [Tough] powers to counter the [Brute] minions. If your heroes had built up experience from previous missions, they might also have the [City-Fighter] trait.

Build the rest of the game around this mechanic, and/or make it more complex to taste. Recruit new characters to your roster, shepherd your novices to fights that suit their specialty. Spend money to upgrade your base. Deal with random events like natural disasters or surprise villain attacks on your stronghold.

I wonder if this would work well with a Football Manager-style mission. Like, you get to watch the misions and adjust tactics, but you cannot affect anything your hero(es) do directly.

[Kitten Champion]

@KC: What you mentioned about Bruce & Terry might not be a bad analogy, but I'd point out that Bruce actually does issue quite a bit of manual directions during Terry's missions. (Xavier or Manhunter arguably play a similar command-and-control role within their teams, which raises the interesting question of just how much mind-control shenanigans are involved... and then there's Amanda and the suicide squad.) But you already mentioned HIVE and Fire Emblem, so I guess you're familiar with the idea.
.

The Bruce & Terry idea was more with respect to a Hanako-style raising-sim - you've hit a retirement age (or maybe you're like Barbra Gordon and have been paralyzed/otherwise de-powered) and choose to raise a prospective successor to take your place. The game would about the decisions you make with regards to their lessons and the equipment you choose to provide them with - with various bad-ends you need to avoid and various conclusions to what type the end up hero (if any) they choose to become.

With regards to the Management idea,

I'm not entirely against some manual control of the teams - but the focus would be on managing the organization behind them as I think that's the game's premise.

Making the game focus on villainous league of evil or some other murky mercenary-type organization instead would depend on general interest I suppose, but I mentioned it because villains would have an in-built justification for resources they acquire insofar as they steal them or otherwise earn them illicitly. It would also lend itself to more tongue-in-cheek writing, I think. That and interpersonal conflict within your roster.



I'm a little skeptical about totally off-screen missions, but if you had those, I'd suggest just giving an 'action report' afterwards, rather than having to monitor fatigue/injury in the meantime (that feels like a rather unstimulating form of micro without the visual payoff.) But maybe I'm misunderstanding the idea?.

You wouldn't need to monitor fatigue/injury in real time, the UI would indicate whether your mission was going critical and provide you with options to abort - thus probably saving your team but losing fame/resources - or - if you've got resources to do so - salvage it. Ultimately you would get a battle report with the pluses and minuses available.

The idea of putting a timer on missions rather than just inputting them like a TBS-game gives you that sensation of juggling balls, but you wouldn't have to keep your eyes peeled on some HP bar while you presumably want to do other things.

You would then need to consider restoring health/energy once they've returned to base - if you've got characters just sent out on missions they'll likely need some degree of medical treatment and R&R available to them before they reliably can be sent out again depending on their stats - presumably the player would manage this through base facilities like med-bays, cafeterias, and their quarters.

I don't think the game should be completely transparent what the resource costs for every mission is going to be (since that's part of the risk of management), you'll be reasonably certain that someone with suitable skills/powers towards what the mission entails will expend less resources in doing so and similarly teams sent out would have additional variables in how they're composed influencing the mission (teamwork/affinity), but the exact figure would have some slight randomness to it. The general idea of sending detective hero to deal with stolen property mission, spy to deal with infiltration mission, ice/water hero to put out forest fire or deal with fire villain, etc. that should be intuitive kind of problem-solving the game should allow.

I don't think my idea's far off from Glyphstone's really.

[Lacuna Caster]

I've been having trouble thinking up a succinct response here, and I think there's a couple of things knocking around in my head that I might need to disentangle first.

I think we're roughly on the same page when it comes to the broad strokes of how base/resource management and cost/benefit analysis for away missions might work. I should stress that I'm fascinated by games that involve the player abdicating control in favour of fully or semi-autonomous unit behaviours, and stuff like relationship-simulation and generational legacy is something I'd love to see.

On the other hand, hopefully without too much self-importance, there's the sunk cost of my existing work on vigilance (i.e, the older prototype), and the question of what, if anything, I could salvage from that. At the moment I have working a 2-dimensional ant farm view of the heroes' base, the ability to assign bed rest, training, surveillance or research, a 'global map' of different geographical sectors, and infrastructural support for things like special combat powers, XP gain, etc. either done or nearly so. Standard stuff. There's also a good deal of work done on a turn-based ground-mission view with some stealth, fog of war and direct orders being given, and a decent foundation for villain AI.

I also kinda want to scale it back to be about Batman and other street-level toughs, because that's likely to simplify balancing, permit an initial focus on a relatively small set of shared core abilities, and might let me toy around with procedural mysteries.

If necessary, I could either strip out the turn-based tactical stuff completely and just give situational AARs, or adapt it so that unit behaviours were fully autonomous and/or real-time, and then focus on fleshing out base development and finance management. (Because I can say with earnest zero irony that nothing makes me happier than mixing up the dewey decimal system with psychic fireballs and kryptonite gas. I love me some magic-realist logistics.)

I'm toying with the notion of allowing direct control of a single character (i.e, the boss,) with the rest playing a semi-autonomous support role (i.e, you'd assign stances and priorities during missions or field them elsewhere, but have too many demands on your concentration to micromanage, and with the constant possibility of discipline dissolving over differences in ethics or objectives.) I like the immediacy and stakes of combat-derived drama, but I suppose it might be too much of a slippery slope.

EDIT: Another important point, now I think of it. Even a passive action-replay of missions has one major complication, because it means that any rock-paper-scissors dynamic now has to be emergent, rather than hard-scripted. Part of me very much likes the simplicity of describing (coding!) encounters on an abstract level, and I guess Black Closet could be a template there.


Alright, that's my thoughts anyway. The floor is open.

[Lacuna Caster]

Just take Crusader Kings, rename it Batman Wings, and have the map represent quarters of big fat Gotham, and dynasties of superheroes who want to rule it and raise children and become commissioner.
I also rather like this idea, (though I'm not sure how serious the suggestion is?) An early concept I had was that multiple supervillains (plus Batman) would compete to control organised crime in various districts of Gotham, with usurpation/escalation as a kind of generational shift over time.

EDIT: Link (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?428786-Let-s-Design-Gotham-City) to the older thread.

[Lacuna Caster]

Okay, one more thing and I'll shut up: There's a link to the source code here (https://github.com/Morgan-Allen/vigilance_proto). Anyone who wants to hack that is more than welcome, I just wanted to put it out there that there is a working foundation here for certain forms of gameplay.


Example: A mission (let's call it a "plot") is opposed by a villain with [Fire] powers. He's leading a group of minions with [Brute] powers, and the plot (a bank robbery) has the [Urban] environment tag. Thus the plot's three tags are Fire, Brute, and Urban, and it's rated as a two-Hero plot, letting you assign two people from your roster. Success means the bank gives your agency a cash donation. To maximize your success chances, you'd want to assign a hero with [Earth] powers to counter the [Fire] villain, and a hero with [Tough] powers to counter the [Brute] minions. If your heroes had built up experience from previous missions, they might also have the [City-Fighter] trait.

Anyway, from a purely theoretical perspective you could also tweak the relevant mission parameters to model a street-level vigilante operation- e.g, mooks could be [Gunmen], [Bruisers] or [Hostages], the environment could be [Industrial], [Ritzy] or [Park], and villains could be [Mobster], [Psycho] or [Ninja]. You'd still have the same basic mechanic- match up your agents' talents with the scenario to maximise odds of success. But, if folks really have their heart set on a more traditionally superpowered roster, I'd love to get some more detail on that.

If you want to fluff resource-acquisition, I think the best method is to go with something like the X-Com panic+satellites+funding-states model. Successful missions drive down crime, improve public relations, and make it more likely that governments will donate to the JLU/x-corp/wayne foundation.

[The Glyphstone]

Yeah, the specific [Tag] isn't relevant. It works just as well if you match [Gunmen] against [Body Armor] - which could be another means of customization, spending cash to give your characters temporary bonus traits through equipment like armor, weapons, grappling hooks, etc.

It could even play at both levels, really. At the start, your roster is Heroes For Hire, street-level characters fighting street-level crimes. As the game progresses, your roster and the threats you are contracted to face grow in scope.

[Lacuna Caster]

You wouldn't need to monitor fatigue/injury in real time, the UI would indicate whether your mission was going critical and provide you with options to abort - thus probably saving your team but losing fame/resources - or - if you've got resources to do so - salvage it. Ultimately you would get a battle report with the pluses and minuses available.
I think I have a better idea of what you're driving at now. I'll try and get back to that in a little more detail.

I'll just say that in theory you could also adapt this to other critical mid-combat decisions (e.g, rescue the hostage from fire vs. pursue a fleeing boss, or drop the child-killer off a roof vs. tie him up for the cops.)

What would yourself and glyphstone's thoughts be on character progression? I usually lean toward the skyrim-style practice-makes-perfect model, possibly with an added mechanic of explicit time-allocation for teaching, training & study. Would tags 'level up' over time?

(I just did a play-through of Black Closet, and one aspect which bugged me was that failing to solve cases can put you in a death spiral where you need to solve cases to get skill points, and failing to get skill points means you can't solve cases. I'd probably like to avoid that.)

[The Glyphstone]

A generalized experience-point system would work as a bare bones, I think - successful missions granting XP, and failed missions granting a smaller fraction of the reward - so even with repeated failure, your heroes 'learn' from their mistakes.

Hero level could affect both the number of talent/trait slots one character has, and what traits they can get in those slots. If the base-design includes a training room, this could be how/where a hero modifies the specific loadout of of traits they're bringing to a fight - say, a flame-based hero will always have the [Fire] tag, but with a training session could swap their secondary trait between [Heat-Proof] to counter a [Volcano] environment tag, or [Too Hot To Handle] to counter the [Gunmen] minion tag. A hero might start out with [Levitation], but with enough experience be able to unlock [Flight] as a alternate choice for that slot.

[Lacuna Caster]

A generalized experience-point system would work as a bare bones, I think - successful missions granting XP, and failed missions granting a smaller fraction of the reward - so even with repeated failure, your heroes 'learn' from their mistakes.

Hero level could affect both the number of talent/trait slots one character has, and what traits they can get in those slots. If the base-design includes a training room, this could be how/where a hero modifies the specific loadout of of traits they're bringing to a fight - say, a flame-based hero will always have the [Fire] tag, but with a training session could swap their secondary trait between [Heat-Proof] to counter a [Volcano] environment tag, or [Too Hot To Handle] to counter the [Gunmen] minion tag. A hero might start out with [Levitation], but with enough experience be able to unlock [Flight] as a alternate choice for that slot.

Interestingly, one thing I learned from working with other projects is that practice-based-advancement isn't particularly harder to program than generalised XP gain- what gets tricky is balancing growth for important skills used at non-standard frequencies. I wonder if there's an analogous problem here- e.g, how much XP do you get for research/forensics work vs. stealth/combat (given that, say, oracle & alfred can't do much else.)

The literal-minded-simulationist in me* says that swappable traits should probably be modelled with items, but I guess for a guy like Red Tornado that'd be easy enough to fluff.

Oh- I don't have a clear picture of what all the knobs and dials would do, but I photoshopped a UI mockup (http://s32.postimg.org/5jjim18ud/s_com_ui_mockup.png).

* approx. 85% by weight

[LibraryOgre]

Now I'm imagining a sort of superhero agency management sim. Take in new talent, allocate them appropriately based on superpowers and skills to fight certain villains or in certain environments, and guide them as they grow from street-level sidekicks to Cosmic-level badasses.

Minus the superpowers, this is actually part of Star Wars: Uprising. While you run normal missions on your own, your "crew" (ranging from stock characters to a few uniques with special skills) can run various missions, gathering resources, reputation, and experience. When your crew reaches a certain point, you can upgrade them, allowing them to gain more levels and take on bigger challenges.

It runs in the background of the "meat" of the game, which is an isometric shooter with delusions of being an RPG.

[Lacuna Caster]

On the subject of XP: I also think one can make a good argument for higher XP gain associated with *failure*, rather than success- it's a self-correcting mechanism from a balance perspective, and simulation-wise stiffer challenges do tend to be more instructive.


Minus the superpowers, this is actually part of Star Wars: Uprising. While you run normal missions on your own, your "crew" (ranging from stock characters to a few uniques with special skills) can run various missions, gathering resources, reputation, and experience. When your crew reaches a certain point, you can upgrade them, allowing them to gain more levels and take on bigger challenges.
That sounds rather interesting... but going by reviews the main game sounds like a rather pay-to-win experience. Is it worth it?

[The Glyphstone]

While it is true that you learn more from failure than success, I'd be leery of what that would do to verisimilitude/game balance. It doesn't feel right if the quickest way to make your heroes grow stronger is to deliberately set them up for disaster, rather than play the minigame of correctly matching skill sets to threats and enemies.

As far as stuff like research/forensics goes, preferentially they could just join the assortment of traits and threats - [Investigator] countering [Mysterious], as a random example. Alternatively, 'research' becomes a separate management element of the game, similar to X-Com, that lets you improve and upgrade your roster/base/etc.

[Lacuna Caster]

While it is true that you learn more from failure than success, I'd be leery of what that would do to verisimilitude/game balance. It doesn't feel right if the quickest way to make your heroes grow stronger is to deliberately set them up for disaster, rather than play the minigame of correctly matching skill sets to threats and enemies.

As far as stuff like research/forensics goes, preferentially they could just join the assortment of traits and threats - [Investigator] countering [Mysterious], as a random example. Alternatively, 'research' becomes a separate management element of the game, similar to X-Com, that lets you improve and upgrade your roster/base/etc.
Yeah, you could model research/forensics (at least for UI purposes) as recurring/long-term 'plots', and perform the same allocation of talent that you'd use for more acute crises.

I'm honestly not too worried about players setting up their PCs to lose- between injury, fatigue & permadeath, resource starvation or even game-over from crimewaves, there's no shortage of potential disincentives for failure. Training/tuition would be the safer option by far.

[LibraryOgre]

That sounds rather interesting... but going by reviews the main game sounds like a rather pay-to-win experience. Is it worth it?

I have been playing for months and haven't paid a cent. The puchaseable currency, Chromium, is pretty available in-game for free, and while not paying means more grinding if you want to complete a bunch of armory items, but you can play through the story without it... at least, as far as I've gotten.

[TeChameleon]

Hrm... I do think that an X-Com-style tactical/management split, or maybe something like what Mark mentioned with Star Wars: Uprising would work better just for having a broader potential audience; as far as I know, pure-stat management sims are a bit of a niche market. Well, that and Superheroes are all about the spectacle; you don't put on brightly-coloured spandex (or dress like a motorcycle gang/leather fetishist gang, I guess... or dress in colours that should be bright but have been run repeatedly through a brown filter until they screamed for mercy...) to not be seen... unless you're Batman, I guess. But he can get away with that, because he's Batman :smalltongue:

Speaking of Batman, as fond as I am of the Caped Crusader, a Batfamily super-sim (of whatever variety) seems a bit odd to me- a major part of the appeal of superheroes is the 'super' aspect of things, and no matter how good they may look in capes, superpowers have never been a major aspect of the Batfamily. That works for them, of course, but if you're going for Brand X supers, I don't see much point in not rolling with actual powers- maybe just go with the Astro City model; while you can look at the various Astro City characters and say 'right, these are based on the Fantastic Four' (the Furst Family) or 'hey, it's Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman' (Samaritan, Winged Victory, and the Confessor), they're... not. Aside from some loose thematic ties, they share little in common with their predecessors.

And since you're not beholden to the Justice League model, you really don't need to balance 'alien demi-god, other alien demi-god, actual goddess, infinite speed-speedster, concussed idiot wielding the most powerful weapon in the universe, super-King Arthur riding Cthulhu, and vaguely-ninja-ish normal(... again, -ish) guy that throws bat-shaped things at people'.

[spectralphoenix]

This actually sounds a bit like a web game with an idle component to me. You'd log on, do some missions, set everybody to train/gather intel/recover for a few hours, then log on later to reap the rewards.

[Lacuna Caster]

Your arguments are compelling, TC. But I do love me management sims and am instantly suspicious of appeals to popularity, so I'm torn. Basically, I need you, Kitten Champion, and maybe Glyphstone to fight to the death.**

Alternatively, we could maybe wait until the engine is in a more mature state and then think about adding some TBT or metahumans... if somebody will commit to playtesting.*


The Bruce & Terry idea was more with respect to a Hanako-style raising-sim - you've hit a retirement age (or maybe you're like Barbra Gordon and have been paralyzed/otherwise de-powered) and choose to raise a prospective successor to take your place. The game would about the decisions you make with regards to their lessons and the equipment you choose to provide them with - with various bad-ends you need to avoid and various conclusions to what type the end up hero (if any) they choose to become.
Oh, of-the-which-speaking, I finally got to playing LLTQ and I was just squeeing because of all of the skillz. I particularly like the way that emotion-levels feed into training efficiency, which I'm sure would have some useful applications in spandex soap-opera.

Anyway, I basically agree with all the rest of your post.

* (If it helps, I was thinking of eventually throwing in katana, zatanna and etrigan.)

** EDIT: It's late, but it just occurred to me this might be interpreted as a sign of annoyance rather than flippant black humour. It's the latter, honest!

[TeChameleon]

Your arguments are compelling, TC. But I do love me management sims and am instantly suspicious of appeals to popularity, so I'm torn. Basically, I need you, Kitten Champion, and maybe Glyphstone to fight to the death.**

Alternatively, we could maybe wait until the engine is in a more mature state and then think about adding some TBT or metahumans... if somebody will commit to playtesting.*

Oh, of-the-which-speaking, I finally got to playing LLTQ and I was just squeeing because of all of the skillz. I particularly like the way that emotion-levels feed into training efficiency, which I'm sure would have some useful applications in spandex soap-opera.

Anyway, I basically agree with all the rest of your post.

* (If it helps, I was thinking of eventually throwing in katana, zatanna and etrigan.)

** EDIT: It's late, but it just occurred to me this might be interpreted as a sign of annoyance rather than flippant black humour. It's the latter, honest!

... okay, I choose gravity at twenty paces. Next to a cliff. With me being the one facing away from it :smalltongue:

Also, if by 'Management Sim' you mean something like LLTQ, then I withdraw my earlier comments; I was thinking something more along the lines of one of those sports management sims where most of the interface is composed of graphs and numbers, and the entirety of the game is making those numbers go up or down >.>

Speaking of LLTQ, a glance at the wikipedia page has it striking me as being oddly similar to that old... Princess Maker, I think it was..? game. Odd to see such a quirky concept resurfacing.

I'm not sure about playtesting- I'm not confident enough in my computer skills to attempt to run the... whatever it was... that you mentioned. If it's easier than it sounds, I might be able to take a stab at it.

Etrigan strikes me as a very, very odd one to throw in there; I know that he's had some ties to Batman in the past thanks to operating out of Gotham, but he's a bruiser that can throw down with some of the top-tier powerhouses in the DCU- even Darkseid steps cautiously around him (at least as much as he does around anyone). Could lead to balance issues is all I'm really saying- ditto Zatanna, for that matter, given that her power is basically 'do anything she can say backwards'.

Don't forget that the Ragman and Sentinel/OG Green Lantern (Alan Scott) also call Gotham home, if you're wanting more powered characters to play around with that have a tie back to the main cast.

... that being said, how are you planning on building the characters? Just make Batman etc. and file off the serial numbers once you've gotten the game engine down, or..?

[The Glyphstone]

I suppose using gadgets/Bat-Family with the serial numbers filed off could work as a baseline playtest for the game engine.

Reading up on LLTQ, I can see some similarities, but at least in my vision, we're managing a team, not one specific character, so there's still a lot of divergence.

[Lacuna Caster]

Also, if by 'Management Sim' you mean something like LLTQ, then I withdraw my earlier comments; I was thinking something more along the lines of one of those sports management sims where most of the interface is composed of graphs and numbers, and the entirety of the game is making those numbers go up or down >.>
Wait! These games exist?!?

*disappears forever*

Speaking of LLTQ, a glance at the wikipedia page has it striking me as being oddly similar to that old... Princess Maker, I think it was..? game. Odd to see such a quirky concept resurfacing.

I'm not sure about playtesting- I'm not confident enough in my computer skills to attempt to run the... whatever it was... that you mentioned. If it's easier than it sounds, I might be able to take a stab at it.
Oh, the game itself (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9g64vkEiJ2iYVU2Q0pTRXVNT1k/view) is just a .jar file. As long as you have the JRE (http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jre8-downloads-2133155.html) installed, it should just be double-click and go.

Etrigan is a powerhouse alright, but the tradeoff is that chucking him into the mix risks horrendous collateral damage. He'd be the Hyde to jason blood's Jekyll, more or less- sort of a reflective extension of Batman's anger management. (I'm trying to pick out allies/companions that mirror pieces of his psyche or MO in the same way the villains do.)

My own plan would be Batman & Co. until the engine is down (since that lets me scrounge pretty art on the cheap), rebalance as needed, then file off the serial numbers and/or tinker with extra content or features. (e.g, the justice league or turn-based-tactical-noggin-bashing.)


I suppose using gadgets/Bat-Family with the serial numbers filed off could work as a baseline playtest for the game engine.

Reading up on LLTQ, I can see some similarities, but at least in my vision, we're managing a team, not one specific character, so there's still a lot of divergence.
The aspects I'd most like to borrow from LLTQ are the diversity of skill-sets (or possibly traits/tags) that handle both combat, magic and logistic/social problems, plus the off-hours training system. (e.g, do I send the young Ms. Cain to the fairgrounds and help her relax into civilian life, or do I upgrade the gymnasium and minmax her already scary reflexes?)

You'd probably need a smaller per-person skill-set so that the numbers aren't too hard to juggle, but in principle this can be done for a whole cast of wards & hangers-on.

[Grif]

Wait! These games exist?!?

*disappears forever*


Of course they do. And surprisingly addictive too, once you get over the numbers.

Don't you love them numbers?
http://www.gamershell.com/static/screenshots/0/3621/56943_full.jpg

This was my initial thought when you mooted the superhero management sim, actually.

[The Glyphstone]

Wow, that's about as polar-opposite as you could get from my original vision. I'd pictured something like the garrison-follower minigame out of the latest Warcraft expansion, but with enough time and effort to actually be interesting.

[Lacuna Caster]

Never played WoW, actually. Explain?


This was my initial thought when you mooted the superhero management sim, actually.
I do love them numbers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsTfvXnh47c&t=2m10s).

[The Glyphstone]

Never played WoW, actually. Explain?


I do love them numbers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsTfvXnh47c&t=2m10s).

Essentially, the trait-threat thing I described earlier. You collected or hired followers, who were represented as a character with a level,1-2 Abilities, and 1-3 Traits. Abilities would be things like Powerful Smash or Homing Arrow, that would counter things like Tough or Stealthy. Traits were the same for smaller bonuses, things like Jungle Fighter vs. Jungle terrain, Orc Fighter if the enemy type was Orc, or Elf Lover if the other minion on the mission was an Elf. Success earned you a mission reward and experience points for the minions you sent, failure only earned your followers like 1/5 the reward XP. Higher-level followers gained additional randomly generated Abilities and Traits, and could perform higher-level missions for bigger rewards.

It wasn't particularly fleshed out, interesting, or popular, but the basic concept seemed like it could be developed into an actual game in its own right instead of a half-baked appendage to an MMO.

[Lacuna Caster]

It wasn't particularly fleshed out, interesting, or popular, but the basic concept seemed like it could be developed into an actual game in its own right instead of a half-baked appendage to an MMO.

What would the polar opposition to what Grif is describing? Are we just talking about having fewer stats, or some differences in visual presentation?

At the moment, I'm thinking you could make the game work with 4 basic stats or competencies- intellect, evasion, social and combat. (You could break this down into finer specialties like engineering, medicine, intimidation or disguise, or possibly have certain action-types use an average of different stats.)

The main scene-types would include-
* Investment projects
* Research projects
* Social events
* Forensic analysis
* Study & training
* Tipoffs & headlines
* Surveillance & break-ins
* Combat & pursuit
* Interrogation
* Care & recuperation

For the rock-paper-scissors or tag-matchup system, I've got a couple of tags here, which could probably use some fleshing out...
Gunfire <=> Smoke Bombs, Body Armor
Bruiser <=> Evasion, Body Armour
Sonics <=> Darkness, Stealth
Daylight <=> Disguise, Day Camo

The Question would get a special bonus to forensics, research & disguise, Huntress would specialise in intimidation and the occasional execution, Canary in sonics and mentoring, Alfred in recuperation and social events, et cetera.

So... is that miles apart from what you were imagining?

[The Glyphstone]

Grif was initially imagining the sports-sim with like twenty different numerical stats, presumably making everything math and percentage-based. That's the 'polar opposite' of my original vision, not the ideas he was proposing here. I like the idea of 4 stats or so, that feels about right. Tags/Traits could be situational bonuses; not necessary, but if you get an advantageous tag pairing, it'll be a success chance bonus.

[TeChameleon]

Etrigan is a powerhouse alright, but the tradeoff is that chucking him into the mix risks horrendous collateral damage. He'd be the Hyde to jason blood's Jekyll, more or less- sort of a reflective extension of Batman's anger management. (I'm trying to pick out allies/companions that mirror pieces of his psyche or MO in the same way the villains do.)
I see what you're going for there, although I'm not sure that Etrigan is an ideal counterpart for that aspect- or rather, that Jason Blood is. There's more of a redemption angle going for him than Bruce is ever likely to experience, since part of the reasoning behind the Batman persona is to keep him from ever crossing that kind of line. That being said, I kind of like it thematically, and I doubt most people are going to nitpick it as deeply as I am- I suspect that the average response is going to be either 'oh yeah, this is that guy that showed up on Batman: TAS' or 'oh yeah, that's right, Jason Blood works out of Gotham' (depending on levels of nerdiness :smalltongue:).

Depending on how you want to run things, my expectation would be that Etrigan would become an option when seriously nasty stuff is going down- basically some equivalent of a hero-unit that is given for the duration of a mission/map/whatever that you can't normally get otherwise, although you might get a percentage-based chance of him popping out if you called Jason Blood in to consult on a maybe-mystical case.


The aspects I'd most like to borrow from LLTQ are the diversity of skill-sets (or possibly traits/tags) that handle both combat, magic and logistic/social problems, plus the off-hours training system. (e.g, do I send the young Ms. Cain to the fairgrounds and help her relax into civilian life, or do I upgrade the gymnasium and minmax her already scary reflexes?)

You'd probably need a smaller per-person skill-set so that the numbers aren't too hard to juggle, but in principle this can be done for a whole cast of wards & hangers-on.
As a semi-random aside, I assume that this kind of choice would mean that there would be inter-NPC relationship values as well? If you dumped Cassandra Cain in the gym and gave her no life outside of it and crimefighting, then Oracle would get rather aggravated with you, for example.

[Lacuna Caster]

Depending on how you want to run things, my expectation would be that Etrigan would become an option when seriously nasty stuff is going down- basically some equivalent of a hero-unit that is given for the duration of a mission/map/whatever that you can't normally get otherwise, although you might get a percentage-based chance of him popping out if you called Jason Blood in to consult on a maybe-mystical case.
That makes sense to me. (It'd be nice to model stress or affect-levels such that Jason getting sufficiently angry/desperate triggers his OVER 9000!!! moment, but I'd have to see about that later.)


As a semi-random aside, I assume that this kind of choice would mean that there would be inter-NPC relationship values as well? If you dumped Cassandra Cain in the gym and gave her no life outside of it and crimefighting, then Oracle would get rather aggravated with you, for example.
I'd definitely like some relationship-simulation between the various bat-crew members, but if you mean bonding with random civvies, then... I hadn't thought of that. I do like the sound of it, though.

Oh, not to nag, but did that .jar file run for either yourself or Glyphstone? (I've had problems with other folks running java games before, so if I need to package things differently it'd be nice to know.)

[The Glyphstone]

That makes sense to me. (It'd be nice to model stress or affect-levels such that Jason getting sufficiently angry/desperate triggers his OVER 9000!!! moment, but I'd have to see about that later.)


I'd definitely like some relationship-simulation between the various bat-crew members, but if you mean bonding with random civvies, then... I hadn't thought of that. I do like the sound of it, though.

Oh, not to nag, but did that .jar file run for either yourself or Glyphstone? (I've had problems with other folks running java games before, so if I need to package things differently it'd be nice to know.)

Downloaded it, played it for a bit. Definitely an excellent start.

As far as code to change, rather than simply stuff NYI - there needs to be some sort of flag on captive/unconscious enemies that makes them no longer block movement in the tactical combat mode. I had Superman and Wonderwoman both taken down by a single mobster with a machine gun because they got swarmed under with baseball-bat wielding thugs, and were surrounded by bodies pinning them in place.

[gooddragon1]

Isn't that his canon background in at least a few continuities? An ex-SAS agent who now works for the Waynes as a butler and manservant?

I don't recall Alfred ever giving Bruce any sass...

[LibraryOgre]

So, to expand on Uprising a bit:

Your basic crew member has 4 stats: Tier, Level, Background and Preference. Tier determines their maximum level; different characters start at different tiers, and you can only improve your tier twice. Level determines your raw ability. Background and Preferences are two different factors that help to determine if you're right for a mission.

The Backgrounds are
Diplomatic
Imperial
Criminal
Warfare
Technical

The Preferences are
Offensive
Defensive
Stealth
Espionage

Your basic crew only has these. So, I have a "Staff Cook". He started as a Tier 2, Level 1. He is now a Tier 3, Level 30. He will always be Warfare and Espionage... the idea is he signs on as a military cook and feeds information out based on scuttlebutt. If I want to update him, I have to have certain material requirements (Crystals appropriate to his Preference, Credits to pay for the change, and certain items improve to the point where I have "blueprints" for a weapon of that type of that Tier); that would let him become a Tier 4, level 31, and capable of improving to Level 45. At that point, a Staff Cook is stuck, because you can only improve two tiers.

Now, there are also some special/unique characters. The first crew member you get is Tryken, who starts as a Tier 2, Level 1, Offensive Criminal. But, because he is unique, he has a special skill: When a run is a "Gear Finder" run, he gets an extra bonus. Others get bonuses on "Material Finder" or "Crystal Finder" runs, or when paired with specific Backgrounds or Preferences; I currently have one character who gets a Bonus on "XP finder" runs AND when used in "Battle Missions", while another gets a bonus whenever on Material Finder runs AND gives an extra bonus to any Imperial characters.

My goal is to build my runs to be as successful as possible. Some runs are Dangerous, and if I fail at those runs, I may lose characters (normal people, like the Staff Cook, will simply die; special characters, like Tryken, will be captured, and it will take a separate run to free them). Normal runs don't have much more than an opportunity cost for failure... those dangerous runs not only cost me some form of game currency to undertake (be it credits, chits for the various factions, or whatever), but a dangerous failed run can cost me characters.

The game also has a limit on the number of characters you can have in your crew (expandable by spending Chromium, the purchaseable in-game currency). If you exceed that limit, you can either buy more storage OR retire some characters who have reached their useful limit, getting a bit of cash for them.

[Lacuna Caster]

Downloaded it, played it for a bit. Definitely an excellent start.

As far as code to change, rather than simply stuff NYI - there needs to be some sort of flag on captive/unconscious enemies that makes them no longer block movement in the tactical combat mode. I had Superman and Wonderwoman both taken down by a single mobster with a machine gun because they got swarmed under with baseball-bat wielding thugs, and were surrounded by bodies pinning them in place.

Thanks- I'll take a look, but I should mention that the entire turn-based-tactical mission mechanic has been... uh, disconnected, I suppose would be the best word, so I'll have to patch that for an older branch of the code.

[The Glyphstone]

If it's not in the current build, don't worry about it. Though playing that sample did a lot to sell me on the tactical combat element in general.

[TeChameleon]

I don't recall Alfred ever giving Bruce any sass...

Really? (https://dreager1.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/alfredownage.jpg) You don't? :smalltongue:

Haven't been able to download it yet (not a technical problem, just a real-life-interfering problem), sorry Lacuna :/

Although I do hold that the original idea was a good one- there's a reason that X-Com is widely regarded as a classic, after all (even with the kick-you-in-the-nuts-so-hard-your-testes-shoot-out-your-nose difficulty of the original sequel, Terror from the Deep... good times :smallbiggrin:) Being able to do that with the JLA would be pretty cool.

[Lacuna Caster]

If it's not in the current build, don't worry about it. Though playing that sample did a lot to sell me on the tactical combat element in general.
Good to know. It's not a difficult fix in any case, so I just patched it on a separate branch.

Haven't been able to download it yet (not a technical problem, just a real-life-interfering problem), sorry Lacuna :/
Whenever you get the chance, TC. I just need to know if it's working.

I *might* have a fresh build at some point over the weekend, and if that doesn't explode or cause cancer, and no-one else objects, I might think about plugging in the turn-based tactical again. Will see.

[Lacuna Caster]

Coding update: Progress has been okay so far, but no public release yet. (Combination of real-life events and fire emblem.) On the plus side, I'm *reasonably* sure it won't explode or cause cancer.

@Mark Hall: I appreciate all the detail on Uprising. Unfortunately, I don't have access to a mobile device with a proper screen & data plan at the moment (out of the country), so it might be a while before I can give it a whirl. :/

[TeChameleon]

So, managed to drag my sorry carcass to my computer and get things running- looks pretty good thus far, and runs impressively smoothly, although the League feels rather squishy. Also felt a bit lost as to exactly what was going on at first, but things are, by and large, intuitive enough not to leave me completely floundering, which is kind of nice.

Definitely looks like something that's going to trigger my 'WANT' buttons when it's finished :smallwink:

[Lacuna Caster]

Thanks TC. I appreciate all the feedback.

[Lacuna Caster]

Okay, so what do I have at the moment?
* Randomly-generated crimes in various city districts, with leads and scenes and persons of interest. (Well, just kidnappings atm... I need to add more.)
* Basic crafting/equipping of items & outfits.
* Assignment to different forms of training, with some first-pass XP and relationship bonuses.

I uh... kinda went nuts about the skill-set. I might trim it down a bit later, or rephrase it in terms of perks/traits (e.g. marksman/skilled marksman/expert marksman), but at the moment I've got about 20 trainable skills, which should allow for matching up personnel against particular missions or sub-tasks. (Plus a bunch of items which modify those.)

Intellectual & Social: Engineering, Informatics, Pharmacy, Anatomy, Law & Finance, The Occult, Disguise, Languages, Suasion, Question.
Combat & Ops: Stealth, Surveillance, Vehicles, Intimidate, Marksman, Close Combat, Gymnastics, Stamina.

http://s33.postimg.org/omrukk5rz/relations_pane.png


On the subject of Turn-Based-Tactical mechanics- I'm about 80% confident that I'll want to include these in some form or other, but I'm a little worried that doing so will actually make incorporating flying bricks more difficult. As I was saying to TC earlier, one of the problems I ran into when developing the earlier build was that, even when Batman has very high dodge/parry, it's difficult to make things physically challenging for, say, Wonder Woman without the eventual certainty of Bats or Robin taking a bullet to the nuts.

(He also suggested giving Batman better stealth & cover mechanics, and I would indeed love to work on those. However that's essentially another way of boosting those dodge-percentages vs. headshots. If it's 100%, Batman is invincible. If it's 99% or less, Batman is eventually dead.)

So as I see it, there's a couple of viable options:

* Handle the differences between Bats/Arrow & WW/Cap Atom on a fairly abstract, strategic level, so they're easier to gloss over. (e.g, Cap Atom has the 'flight' and 'invulnerable' traits, send him to deal with the alien juggernaut, Bats has the 'sneaky' and 'detective' traits, send him to extract intel from a military base.)

* Make sure that Bats/Arrow have at least, say, 25% of the hit points that WW/Cap Atom do, which basically requires iron-man level body armour and/or stealth tech. (And/or use Luck mechanics, but that's another kettle of fish.)

I'll probably squeeze out a public build over the weekend, and then I'll see what folks think.

[spectralphoenix]

Maybe you could take some of the luck out of things by giving Batman something like the deflect Arrows feat, where he automatically dodges the first attack each round? He would actually be better than Superman at taking out one enemy at a time, since he couldn't get hit while Supes would get ground down after taking chip damage each time.

Superman, meanwhile, could have some kind of "Willpower" mechanic where he can become truly invincible (or close to) for a few rounds, but only a few times per mission. Possibly combine it with a taunt effect or some kind of AoE damage so he can either take out a roomful of thugs or cover for the other members while they all take down a roomful of thugs. So his area of expertise would be arranging big fights where those few rounds of extra superness can be used to best effect.

I think ideally, the result would be that Superman is great at leading big heroic charges against swarms of badguys, but can get tired out if the fight drags on and he has to hunt down every last baddie. Batman prefers to take down enemies one by one with stealth and efficiency, but turns into a red smear on the wall if he tries to charge into a hail of assault rifle bullets.

[Lacuna Caster]

*Nods head* ...Maybe. I'd feel a little more comfortable waiting until tech-research into armour and gizmos levels the playing field a bit before introducing the hyperbeings, but in principle what you're describing could work. (There's actually something similar in X-Com, between the 'lightning reflexes' perk and 'combat stims' item.)

[TeChameleon]

One other option (that I can see being more annoying development-wise, unfortunately) is to introduce objectives beyond 'beat the stupid out of everything hostile in the area'. Sure, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern together may be able to swat that Jokerz gang like so many bugs, but are they going to be able to figure out where the bombs are planted on the dam from the clues in the hideout?

... or, and this is, as usual, just spitballing, but perhaps Batman's role as a tactician could be translated into buffs for the other characters? Forex, if the League is up against the Hyperclan, if Batman is in the group, he'll figure out that they're White Martians and give the others an x% bonus damage because he'll start tossing lit matches at them or whatever.

That would keep him off the front lines while still giving him combat utility.

[Lacuna Caster]

New release available from the github download page.

http://s33.postimg.org/co5jhdi5r/s_com_proto_screen.png

https://github.com/Morgan-Allen/vigilance_proto/releases/tag/v0.1


Very very bare-bones mechanics at the moment. There are only 3 basic crime-events (kidnapping, robbery and murder,) all with fixed scripting, a smattering of items, skill-training options, and effects on regional crime and trust ratings. Things I'd like to work on next:

* Improve the variety of crime-events, preferably using procedural methods. (I'd like to link crime-events into overarching 'master plans' as well, leading up to potential doomsday events.)

* Clean up inventory, and expand the range of items. (I might also tweak things so that armour has to be custom-made for each character, and abolish the weapon/gadget distinction.)

* Add tech research, lobbying and investment in regional districts' and their facilities.

The UI could probably stand a bit of expansion as well. Anyhoo, take a look, and if it feels at least nominally functional as a high-level 'grand strategy' game, we could discuss how to integrate turn-based missions.

[Lacuna Caster]

One other option (that I can see being more annoying development-wise, unfortunately) is to introduce objectives beyond 'beat the stupid out of everything hostile in the area'. Sure, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern together may be able to swat that Jokerz gang like so many bugs, but are they going to be able to figure out where the bombs are planted on the dam from the clues in the hideout?

Having some diversity of objectives during ground-missions is definitely something I'd like to include (mild development complications aside,) and I can certainly imagine Batman being able to dispense useful tactical advice or forensic intel to the chumps on the ground.

However, this does beg the question of why he can't just do that from his armchair in the mansion or the bridge on the watchtower (a la Batman Beyond, or Amanda Waller for the suicide squad.) Hmm.

For now... lemme get TBT for the street supers working first, and we'll see about the JLU.

[TeChameleon]

Having some diversity of objectives during ground-missions is definitely something I'd like to include (mild development complications aside,) and I can certainly imagine Batman being able to dispense useful tactical advice or forensic intel to the chumps on the ground.

However, this does beg the question of why he can't just do that from his armchair in the mansion or the bridge on the watchtower (a la Batman Beyond, or Amanda Waller for the suicide squad.) Hmm.

For now... lemme get TBT for the street supers working first, and we'll see about the JLU.

Er, TBT? Well, whatever it is, no worries and fair enough- I'm just the little voice on the internet throwing out (or possibly up >.>) ideas, this is your baby.

As to why he can't do that from a safe distance... that's never been Batman's 'thing'. He's always been much more Holmes than Poirot in his investigation methods.

... I actually have a hard time imagining Bruce doing the armchair detective thing, he's always been so hands on. Tim Drake might be able to pull a Poirot, but I just can't see Bruce doing it.

That and there's Bruce's drive to walk on Olympus, as it were- if he can't compete with the gods, he seems to feel he must be doing it wrong.

[Lacuna Caster]

(TBT == turn-based tactical. i.e, the detailed ground-missions view.)


As to why he can't do that from a safe distance... that's never been Batman's 'thing'. He's always been much more Holmes than Poirot in his investigation methods.
That's... kinda my point. Bruce would feel compelled to be on the front lines, chipping in with Clark and Diana. If you keep him out of harm's way entirely during a mission, he's not Batman. So... he needs to be able to take at least one or two hits from enemies capable of staggering Supes or WW. Or radically different mechanics are needed to handle the latter, or you fall back on abstraction rather than gritty simulation.


I do appreciate all the suggestions. I'm just trying to explain my reasons for caution in this area, rather than giving the impression of deliberately ignoring feedback. It's just... things that work in stories don't always work in simulations.

[TeChameleon]

Oog. I hear you on that last bit.

And I've never gotten the impression that you're ignoring feedback- I'm just throwing stuff out there to see what sticks, mostly, hoping that some small part of my blathering will trigger that 'Eureka!' moment (although hopefully without the running naked through the streets of Syracuse part :smalltongue:).

And yeah, the Batman-on-the-League thing has always been a tough one for any JLA games. Seems like they mostly just ignore it and he can punch Despero in the face just like Superman can.

Honestly, the best I've been able to come up with has been either the 'Batman-as-D&D 4e-Warlord' with him throwing out buffs or some other mechanical advantage representing his tactical acumen and researching skills, or else him having a power that ignored/negated armour, representing his knack for finding enemy weaknesses (and carrying said weaknesses around in his utility belt :smallamused:).

... come to think of it... y'know, I'm not sure I have much trouble with Batman being as durable as Superman in game terms; as long as you fluffed it right, I don't think most people would. Simply have his 'armour' power be titled something like 'acrobatic dodge', 'I am the Night!', 'one with the shadows', '127 Martial Arts', whatever. Or... hmm.

Would it be possible for you to set it up so that damage resistance and damage avoidance were separate stats? The late, lamented MMO City of Heroes had 'Resistance' and 'Defense', with the one being Superman-type 'bounce bullets off your nostrils' invulnerability, while the other was a more Daredevil-esque 'you missed... again'. As long as you made it so that most things didn't one-shot Batman, high Defense/damage avoidance would do the job most of the time, and without breaking versimillitude, I think.

Anyways, not necessarily something you have to implement right away, just following the thread of discussion off into my own little world, as usual :smalltongue:

[Fri]

Hi, I knew about this project from a long time ago, but never actually checked the progress, and I must say that so far it looks really good.

But I don't know your plan though. Are you planning to make a whole Justice League game, or just Bat-family? Because Last time I remember the thread was talking about Justice League sim. But I also somewhat remember a plan of making it just street-level superhero? From what I've seen, I think your other plan on making it wholly about street level super heroes is much cooler. And it would make balancing the theme easier for you as well.

[JeminiZero]

On the "Keeping Batman alive when fighting Doomsday" issue, you could take a page from the D&D 3.5 Rogue's Defensive roll ability. Of course reducing to half damage would still likely kill Batman, so maybe negate damage entirely.

E.g. Ultimate Lucky Dodge: X times per day, when Batman sustains a hit that would have killed him, he instead spends one use of this ability to miraculously roll out of the way.

"Impressive. No one has ever avoided my Omega Beam. I wonder if the other one is as agile." -Darkseid

[Lacuna Caster]

...Would it be possible for you to set it up so that damage resistance and damage avoidance were separate stats? The late, lamented MMO City of Heroes had 'Resistance' and 'Defense', with the one being Superman-type 'bounce bullets off your nostrils' invulnerability, while the other was a more Daredevil-esque 'you missed... again'. As long as you made it so that most things didn't one-shot Batman, high Defense/damage avoidance would do the job most of the time, and without breaking versimillitude, I think.

Anyways, not necessarily something you have to implement right away, just following the thread of discussion off into my own little world, as usual :smalltongue:

E.g. Ultimate Lucky Dodge: X times per day, when Batman sustains a hit that would have killed him, he instead spends one use of this ability to miraculously roll out of the way.

"Impressive. No one has ever avoided my Omega Beam. I wonder if the other one is as agile." -Darkseid


Oh, it's definitely possible to tweak the numbers and abilities to level the playing field- heck, with sufficiently advanced technology you can just stick Bruce in space-marine-getup and let him lob antimatter-batarangs about the place- and sure, with a little charity on the audience's part one can imagine Bats fluttering around laser beams until he runs out of dodgeness for the day.

The problem is whether a given fan's intrinsic desire to see him and Clark as BFFs will outweigh their love for one or the other's (semi) traditional portrayal as gritty street detective or omnipotent alien demigod. The overlap in that venn diagram is, well... not zero, but probably not 1.0.


Hi, I knew about this project from a long time ago, but never actually checked the progress, and I must say that so far it looks really good.

But I don't know your plan though. Are you planning to make a whole Justice League game, or just Bat-family? Because Last time I remember the thread was talking about Justice League sim. But I also somewhat remember a plan of making it just street-level superhero? From what I've seen, I think your other plan on making it wholly about street level super heroes is much cooler. And it would make balancing the theme easier for you as well.

Thanks, glad you like it. :) My plan at the moment is to just get the bat-family working and reasonably balanced and interesting. At that point I might start filing down the serial numbers and thinking about a justice league expansion.



Just as a general update: I have the essentials of district-development working in the background in the latest build, but I still need to work out certain aspects of the UI. (I'm not *quite* certain if investment projects should be on-demand or only available as semi-random events when properties come up for sale.) With some luck I'll have those sorted for the next weekend.


Anyway, the basic math (some of which still needs implementation) would be as follows:

* Crime comes in two main forms- corruption and violence. Violence produces low-level street offences, while corruption produces white-collar crime and makes it harder to secure indictments.

* Districts have ratings in 4 'social stats'- employment, education & culture, health & environment, and entertainment. Deficits in each of these average together to produce violence.

* Local businesses and amenities (such as parks, schools, chemical plants, prisons, etc.) have an impact on these (and other) stats. They also produce income for whoever owns the property. Income controlled by criminals increases corruption.

* Successfully catching & punishing criminals increases Deterrence, which suppresses open violence, and to a lesser extent corruption. This decays over time, however, so it's a temporary measure.

* Successfully protecting victims and minimising force increases Trust, which improves the likelihood of tipoffs. This may give you a chance to ambush perps or catch them red-handed, and counts toward evidence for prosecution. Trust decays if you fail to solve or respond to a crime.

* If you can put away (or put down) a crime boss, the properties they own are up for grabs. This gives you (and/or the city) a chance to redevelop and improve social stats.


To give a couple of examples:

* A Steel Mill increases employment by +3 and income by +2, but reduces health & environment by 2. (It also provides a small bonus to workshop projects.) With some time & research, it can upgrade to an Assembly Plant and then Robotics Lab (less pollution, less employment, more income.)

* A Tech Startup increases employment by +1 and education & culture by +1, but reduces income by -1. Given some time, luck and attention, it may develop into a Tech Company and then Tech Giant (more income), while granting a free gadget technology.

* The Neighbourhood Robins Camp increases Trust by +1 and Deterrence by +1. (As the name suggests, you might get the occasional supplemental vigilante this way. When they're old enough.)

[Fri]

Hah wow, that's even awesomer than I can imagine. So you balance both Bruce Wayne's role as Billionaire and Batman's role as vigilante!

[Lacuna Caster]

Hah wow, that's even awesomer than I can imagine. So you balance both Bruce Wayne's role as Billionaire and Batman's role as vigilante!

That's the plan, yeah. :) So far, my thinking is that you'd get 0-2 'serious crimes' per week by default, and the majority of those can be solved without major violence if you get some good tips and outsmart the villains. So you'd only have a major beatdown vs. 5-20 thugs once a month or so (which is what the turn-based-tactical view is about.)

It takes 6-18 months for an infrastructure project to complete, and 4-10 years for the full effects to take hold (not to mention the difficulties with neutralising supervillains). So actually cleaning up Gotham City might take, say.... 25 in-game years.

If a typical tactical-mission requires 15-45 minutes including prep, and you get 10 of those per year, then that's 30x10x25 = 7500 minutes playing time, or 125 hours for a full campaign.

I must be mad. MAD I say!

[TroubleBrewing]

This is a really, really neat idea, and that prototype is cool as hell!


* Crime comes in two main forms- corruption and violence. Violence produces low-level street offences, while corruption produces white-collar crime and makes it harder to secure indictments.

It's a superhero game, right? Why not add a third type- Evil? Evil causes fear in the general populace, reducing Trust.

[Lacuna Caster]

This is a really, really neat idea, and that prototype is cool as hell!

It's a superhero game, right? Why not add a third type- Evil? Evil causes fear in the general populace, reducing Trust.
Glad you like it. I was actually thinking it might make sense to have some kind of quasi-supernatural 'despair' or 'malice' effect, related to the 'curse of madness' that semi-officially haunts Arkham. Something you can fight but never really eradicate.

How were you imagining it though? Would 'Evil' plug into social stats in some way, or maybe related to supervillain activities or random atrocities? Or something else entirely?

(Going on a tangent, I've been kinda wondering how much openly-occult/lovecraftian elements should be included. I kinda like the idea of magic being a sinister, edge-of-perception sort of phenomenon, but I feel like Etrigan, Katana and Zatanna are too good to pass up.)

[Lacuna Caster]

Small interim release for the moment-

http://s33.postimg.org/407b4xten/construction_pane.png

https://github.com/Morgan-Allen/vigilance_proto/releases/tag/v0.2

Some basic facilities now available for construction (if you're willing to play through 50 weeks of the same mysteries to see them completed.) So yeah, probably some procedural mysteries, UI tweaks and added items up next.


@TroubleBrewing: I don't have any problem with Evil reducing trust, I'm just trying to think how it would emerge or be controlled within the simulation, and maybe spark some ideas.

[spectralphoenix]

It sounds to me like you evil would be a measure of the psychological effects of villains, while Crime would affect the economic status of the neighborhood. So the Riddler robbing banks might have a high crime value and a low evil value, while Zasz cutting up vagrants would have high evil and low crime.

[The Glyphstone]

Evil could, alternatively, just be a special trait of certain villains that causes increased Trust loss from their activities, rather than yet another stat to track. It's up to you, though.

[Lacuna Caster]

It sounds to me like you evil would be a measure of the psychological effects of villains, while Crime would affect the economic status of the neighborhood. So the Riddler robbing banks might have a high crime value and a low evil value, while Zasz cutting up vagrants would have high evil and low crime.

Evil could, alternatively, just be a special trait of certain villains that causes increased Trust loss from their activities, rather than yet another stat to track. It's up to you, though.
I think that makes sense. I agree with the characterisation too.

I'll *probably* be paring down the current set of skills a bit and/or converting them into perk-chains, but that's a little ways down the line. Maybe the 'urban renewal' as well. But once procedural mysteries and TBT are in place, I *think* the overall structure should be sound.

[TroubleBrewing]

It sounds to me like you evil would be a measure of the psychological effects of villains, while Crime would affect the economic status of the neighborhood. So the Riddler robbing banks might have a high crime value and a low evil value, while Zasz cutting up vagrants would have high evil and low crime.

This is more along the lines of what I meant. Villains like the Joker specialize in this kind of thing.


Evil could, alternatively, just be a special trait of certain villains that causes increased Trust loss from their activities, rather than yet another stat to track. It's up to you, though.

Depending on how granular you want to get, you could use Diabolical for increased Trust loss from Evil activities, Psychotic for increased Trust loss from Violent activities, and Machiavellian for increased Trust loss from Corruption activities. Having traits to modify how the villain is intended to be used makes for a much deeper strategy pool.

Or something like that.

[Lacuna Caster]

This is more along the lines of what I meant. Villains like the Joker specialize in this kind of thing.

Depending on how granular you want to get, you could use Diabolical for increased Trust loss from Evil activities, Psychotic for increased Trust loss from Violent activities, and Machiavellian for increased Trust loss from Corruption activities. Having traits to modify how the villain is intended to be used makes for a much deeper strategy pool.
I like the sound of those traits. I could definitely see certain villains habitually committing crimes that are openly sadistic & destructive. You *could* also tweak things so that 'machiavellian' just meant 'more likely to engage in corruption-raising crimes'.

If one wanted to customise things further, poison ivy could use mind-control instead of bribing officials, two-face could fixate on arbitrary revenge, and the joker might target everything *except* entertainment structures. That sort of thing.


Progress report: This is likely to be a busy week. I've been trying to work out some elegant ways to make mysteries procedural, and there are some potentially quite exciting approaches based on AI planning systems, but I don't want to rush in and do a half-baked job. What I might do for the moment is park that work on a separate branch and see if I can re-introduce the turn-based tactical mission view.

[Lacuna Caster]

https://s31.postimg.org/jux2k2vej/scene_working_again.png

Okay, interim report: No new build, but I do have basic ground-mission mechanics more-or-less working again. I still need to think a bit about the best way to glue that onto the mysteries system.


My thoughts so far are that mysteries follow after events, which may or may not be chained together into plans.
Events have:
* a location & point of origin (if travel was involved)
* a time & duration
* perpetrators & victims
* objectives & effects

On the villains' side, plans can be composed by chaining multiple events together, so that the effects of one satisfy some condition or increase the probability of success for another.

If you get a tipoff (or are just smart enough to figure out where the crime will take place, or lucky enough to be on patrol), and arrive on the scene before the crooks do, then there's a scuffle and you enter a ground-based mission view. If you arrive after the fact (or perhaps if they escape from the area) you get evidence to follow instead.

Evidence can be physical or testimonial, and tells you something about either the when, the where-from, the how-and-who-dunnit, or (based on effects), the why. Extract enough intel, you can narrow the possibilities and nail the perps.

There are some things I'm still fuzzy on how to implement- deliberate deception/framing, for example- but I think that should be sufficient to give decent diversity and some intellectual challenge to the 'detective work'.

[Lacuna Caster]

Say, out of interest has anyone here played Covert Action (http://store.steampowered.com/app/327390/#app_reviews_hash)? I was reading a rather interesting article on Rock Paper Shotgun (https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/07/30/crime-games/) about police games and it popped up in the comment section. It's a title that really looks like it could capture the MO of Batman and other street supers pretty well, and quite possibly adventurous super-agencies in general, so I should probly give it a closer inspection. (Plus it's early Sid Meier.)

I may actually have more free time than expected next week, so with luck I might have a proper build update. Travelling this weekend, so we'll have to see.


EDIT: Nope. Nose to the grindstone. I may grab some time to play Covert Action, though.

[Lacuna Caster]

Okay, a few things to say. Firstly, apologies for going so long without any updates. The work contract that was eating up my time finished up about two weeks back, and I've been unpacking my head in the meantime. I'm starting a new contract shortly which should be lower-intensity, but if you take a look at my github page you can see I have 3 or 4 different gaming-related spare-time projects going, so I need to ponder carefully which I want to focus on, since I don't think I can realistically keep more than one or two as a going concern.

So basically I need to kill some of my babies. (Or at least pickle them in jars and keep them on a shelf.)

On the subject of Covert Action- I've actually had a hard time mastering the car-chase and real-time-combat mini-games, so I haven't been able to get as much hands-on exposure as I'd like to the core detective-work. If I'm going to borrow those mechanics I'll either need to play harder or crib from the manual.

I'd like to at least finish up the procedural-crimes system for Vigilance and see how well that works in practice, then I can do a comparison with my other prototypes and see what looks most promising. Talk later.

[Fri]

great to see that at least you're still working in this.

And yes, you could cut cut down some planned thing, don't feel bad on it, it always happen.

Remind me, were you still thinking of putting a turn based strategy part on the game?

[Lacuna Caster]

great to see that at least you're still working in this.

And yes, you could cut cut down some planned thing, don't feel bad on it, it always happen.

Remind me, were you still thinking of putting a turn based strategy part on the game?

Thanks!

I do have a TBS element working at the moment, yeah- just haven't released it publicly. On my to-do list.

[Crow]

If anybody gets something like this going, I'd like to get on the list to play a villain.

[The Glyphstone]

If anybody gets something like this going, I'd like to get on the list to play a villain.

Its not that kind of sim. This is Gaming (Other), not Recruitment - Lacuna's writing a computer game.

[Fri]

Thanks!

I do have a TBS element working at the moment, yeah- just haven't released it publicly. On my to-do list.

Well, in my opinion, if you're strapped on time, you could scrap the tbs element at this moment, because with it you're basically working on two games at once, a simulation game ala covert action and a tbs game (which is harder to balance).

Also have you played Black Closet? I think it does a good way of doing randomized mystery case stories that combine both stats and narrative.

Basically in that game, you have cases you must investigate, and each case have multiple randomized branches and storylines that even if a case looks similar at the start it might not be the same case.

You solve it by ordering your minions to investigate it. Each minions have different stats that correspond to different activities that have different difficulties depending on the cases. You can brute force it (just doing all activities listed), but in my opinion, the elegance is, if you're experienced on the mechanic, you can actually see it more narrative/logically. Like, narratively in this case it has better chance that a solution can be got if you sneak around instead of asking around, so you order your stealthy minion to sneak around instead of your charming minion to ask around.

[Lacuna Caster]

Well, in my opinion, if you're strapped on time, you could scrap the tbs element at this moment, because with it you're basically working on two games at once, a simulation game ala covert action and a tbs game (which is harder to balance).

Also have you played Black Closet? I think it does a good way of doing randomized mystery case stories that combine both stats and narrative.
Black Closet was one of the main inspirations for starting the project (at least in it's current form.) So, yes. :)

I might consider cutting down on the TBS (well, TBT really, since it's tactical), but a couple of other players (Glyphstone, TehChameleon) have been tentatively favourable about it, and it may be some degree of beat-em-up is pretty intrinsic to the superhero genre. Have you played the older justice-league-themed version (https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9g64vkEiJ2iYVU2Q0pTRXVNT1k), out of interest?

Time is a factor, but it's more a case of sorting out the top idea in my mind (http://www.paulgraham.com/top.html), and maybe assessing where to find an audience.

[The Glyphstone]

I mean I originally didn't think it was necessary at all. When I actually saw a demo I thought 'hey, this could work', but I wouldn't be sad to see it go if that meant more time to develop the management sim game that was the original idea.

[Lacuna Caster]

Whoops- didn't seeya there! So, the new work contract I was on turned out to be only fractionally less intense than before, which is why I haven't updated for so long (again). But I'm free and clear now, and I have managed to get started on the procedural-mysteries-generation system.

I'm using a system that... loosely resembles a partial order planner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial-order_planning), restricted to unary predicates (i.e, you either have something or don't, rather than making fractional adjustments or modifying an entity's secondary attributes or relationships.)

Example: To pull off a bank heist, the villain needs a bomb to blow up the safe and an inside man to disable the alarms. They can use a manufacture-action to create a bomb or a buy-action on the black market. They can use a bribe-action or a blackmail-action to get an inside man. They can use a research-action or a setup-action to get dirt for blackmail, etc. And can easily leave clues/witnesses at each stage (which could create triggers for additional silencing, misdirection or delegation actions...) Still early days, so only the basics are working at the moment.

EDIT: As for TBT... we'll see. It's relatively familiar territory for me, since I played a lot of X-Com and a little Fire Emblem recently. I just need to work out the proper 'rhythm' for the game, and I can start adding content incrementally.

[Fri]

Hey Lacuna, just curious, have you checked Daily Cthonicle? (The game that I've been lping this past week or so).

It's recently the game that I feel charmed with. The gameplay is honestly not that solid, I consider it more a mood/storyline game, and it's not that close to the idea you're currently working (much less than black closet at least).

But the idea of a procedural generated supernatural investigation game is kinda close enough to yours anyway, and there might be some inspiration you can catch from it.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/490980

[Lacuna Caster]

Certainly looks interesting. I'll check it out...

[TeChameleon]

Hey Lacuna- just wanted to poke my head in to let you know that I'm still around and still interested; life has just been kind of kicking me in the head a bit lately, rather sharply reducing my ability to putz around on the internet as much as I'd like to :smalltongue:

Blargh... could've sworn I had an idea I wanted to toss out there, but... oh yeh.

Probably way past time for this, but I'll throw it at the wall and see if anything sticks.

Re. Balancing, assuming that any portion of the JLA idea survives; if you implement knockback and stun effects, you could play things the way a lot of the JLA animated features do; lower-tier enemies use high explosives to stun and knock around Superman (however briefly), enabling them to accomplish their objectives and get out. The same trick simply wouldn't work against Batman, since he'd (for the most part) just not be there when the kaboom hit.

Anyhoo, consider me still interested, and I'm planning on checking out whatever your latest build is when I've got a little downtime.

[Lacuna Caster]

Heya TC: I appreciate dropping in.
Stun and knockback effects are something I'm quite likely to include in time, and yeah, it's possible that'd help with balancing certain forms of metahuman powers down the road. I'll keep it in mind.

I've downloaded Daily Chthonicle, so once I'm done binge-watching Young Justice (again) I'll probly give it a shot...

[Lacuna Caster]

One last update before I disappear for months again...

I keep getting distracted by side-projects. I've actually spent the last month or two brushing up on my art technique, which involved going back through 3 old sketchbooks and correcting every single piece, along with a couple of new ones.

...but I should have a proper update (either to say, yes, here is significant progress and I'm definitely finishing this project, or no, not gonna happen) early in the new year. I'll probably start a new thread and/or PM some of the regulars then. Sorry for all the delays.