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[Tronno]

By now you should know that RN has one scanned article from Computer Games Magazine which includes a few comments from the devs. I have few questions:

"Garden estimates that a typical game won't run longer than 45 minutes." - I thought the original goal was to shorten them to 15 minutes. What happened?
"Attacks are arranged in a paper/rock/scissors scheme of blah blah blah..." - I'll use HW as a standard and propose that this description of the balance system is a tad oversimplified (I hope). Considering the many available abilities in the game, however, I fear that Relic has already gone down that dark path. Can someone please debunk these suspicions?
The research "levels" also seem too simple. Will the tech tree branch off into separate areas (horns, scale armor, etc.) or does it simply stick to a few groups of more advanced animals for every level?That was all to clarify whether iC will be another shockingly good blockbuster from Relic. :) If any of these questions have already been answered elsewhere, I apologize in advance.

[QuickSloth]

I've never heard anything about 15 minute games. 30-45 min is what I always read. Maybe somewhere there was a preview that said meaningful combat within the first 15 minutes, I don't know.

As for the oversimplified attack scheme, I think the abilities and technologies, as well as naval and air combat will take care of that.

I don't know if you've heard, but there is other researching besides just the levels. I think I read the Genetic Amplifier is a research station which increases specific aspects of your creature. I can't remember where though.

Hopefully I gave some useful info. :)

[QuickSloth]

Helpful quotes from Alex G at TEP: (screen from Gamer's Pulse)

Relic has also made some other changes to the game, previously unseen by us. A human image appears on the Army Builder so you can judge the relative size of your creation. And there's much more.

AG: We've got a number of iterative improvements we've made. We've shortened the games, they're now about a half hour, the average game. We've really tried to focus on the combat, make the game accessible to a wider audience.

Balancing the forces is an essential part of an RTS. How the heck do you balance a zillion possible combos?

AG: When you try to combine more than the two units, it gets really difficult to balance. You can have recessive traits in creatures that you can't see. Also, it makes unit identification really hard. That's why we limited it to two. As far as the balance goes, we actually asked ourselves that question for a long time. But we found a pretty innovative solution to it.

Basically, there's 52 creatures, but there are only about 30 abilities that those creatures share. Some example of those abilities are Digging, Stink Cloud, Poison Attack, Flying. Every ability has a counter. So basically, any creature that has a certain combination of abilities, always there's a creature that can counter it. Same balance model that nature uses, basically. There's a natural order to things.

So all the abilities are balanced. We've been playing it for ages, and we haven't found any uber-units. There was a problem originally with water-based artillery units, because you could park them off someone's base and just hammer them to death, but we've managed to balance that out no problem. There's no issue with that any more.


When you get into the game, naturally you want to get to build the cool stuff right away. New structures in the game, such as the recently added Genetic Amplifier (http://www.gamerspulse.com/previews_2002/PC/5052/screenshot4.shtml), will make this happen.

AG: Prior to adding this building, the way that you progressed through the tech tree is that you researched bigger and bigger animals, and then you were able to build bigger animals. The game felt kind of linear, there wasn't a lot of player choice early in the game. So what we've done is added a bunch of structures, and one of them is this Genetic Amplifier. You can research bigger creatures if you choose to, the other thing you can do is take your weak creatures and you can actually improve aspects of their performance. So you can give them a longer range, or better eyesight, that sort of thing. So you can take a Level 1 creature and make it as effective as a Level 3 creature. Or you can research up to Level 3. It's your choice.

Is that any good at answering your questions?

[AlphaPrimate]

"Attacks are arranged in a paper/rock/scissors scheme of blah blah blah..."

I think that means the same as fire hurts water, wind huts earth type of deal. Only with re-arranged. Such as archers hurt slow moving tanks and fast scouts hurt archers and so forth.

[Tronno]

Wow, thanks for the help. It seems I should have looked around more, but... too late now.

Again, thanks. :)

[garurulous]

i'm not sure if this is the right place to post my question, but here goes...
i'm still kind of confused about how the level of the creatures will be decided. i've heard some people say that part of it will be how similar the base creatures are. could someone clarify? i saw one creature that was skunk/bat and was only lv.1 . skunks and bats don't seem to be too similar to me, so i was wondering how that worked... thanks for u help :D .

[Aquarius]

It all depends really on the two base units, lets look further into the issue, shall we?

Okay a Baunk is a combination of a Skunk and a Bat. Both are very similar in the fact that they are both mammals. Now, they may be very different in terms of looks and ect, but a Bat is more closely related to a Skunk than it is to let's say, an Archer Fish. Or a komodo dragon. So if you have two vastly different units, let's say an Archer Fish, Gorrila it would of course cost more. (I'm assuming it would cost more, haven't really seen the real figures.)

Also, it all depends on which parts are in the final unit. Now, between the two the most obvious abilities are flight, and stink, right? Well, what if the unit just has stink? Or just has flight? It would of course cost less research time, and resources.

My two guesses, they may very well be wrong. But I'm pretty sure either both, or one explains it.

[garurulous]

aaah...i understand everything now! well, mayb not everything, but at least i understand better. thank u!!!