Victor Sullivan wrote:I think perhaps the functionality of the techs bonus-wise could stand to be changed to make things a little more interesting. While I like the simplicity of the tech pair bonus, consider another option. The second line of Level 1 techs bombard the "non-important" territories (we should probably come up with a different term for those territories, btw), the second line of Level 2 techs bombard labs/silos, and the first line of Level 3 techs assault bases. Perhaps instead of having a tech pair bonus, have bonuses that are related to their bombardments. So have like a +1 per 3 non-important territories for the first line of Level 1 techs (we could consider removing the territory bonus altogether, and have this be the source of territory bonuses, though I may prefer setting it such that only non-tech territories are apart of the territory bonus and have this be in addition), +1 or +2 per DNA Lab for the first line of Human Level 2 techs, and +1 or +2 per Nuke Silo for the first line of Alien Level 2 techs. Level 3 techs I think are fine without a bonus.
i see one big graphic problem with the suggestions you made for the gameplay. LEGEND SPACE
how on earth will i be able to explain all that and avoid having a wall of text to bore to death all the players?

and unfortunately i also see one big gameplay problem. right now the techs offer lots of little bonuses. basically there are 8 bonuses from the bases, 8 from the nukes and labs and 16 from the tech pairs. that's 32 bonuses. plenty for everybody to grab.
with your suggestion you will only have 8 bonuses for bases and 4 bonuses for tech + something. that's a drastic reduction.
in fact if you take away the bonuses for the starting bases you get from 24 achievable bonuses to just 4. this in my opinion limits the strategies and reduces the appeal of the map. with what you suggest only the people that hold the 1st line of tech 1 and tech 2 will get something.
and those bonuses will not only be very few but they'll also be very hard to get and hold. a whole line of tech is not an easy thing.
Victor Sullivan wrote:Some other things: I think the autodeploy on the bases should be reduced to 2. 3 seems very high to me. With a +3 auto, I feel like the losing condition would rarely come into play. Also, I think there should be a killer neutral between the second line of Level 2 and the first line of Level 3 (one killer neutral territory per line of tech, so 4). It doesn't have to be very high (maybe just 2-4), it's mainly to make more of a divider between techs and make the objective and assaulting the bases more difficult to get to.
i'm fine with reducing the autodeploy i'm not so sure on the killer neutrals though. how would that be explained? i mean the logic of the map. right now you have a linear progression which makes sense for researching a tech. but a killer neutral would basically mean that you research up to a certain point and then next turn you somehow lose a part of that research and have to do it all over again. it doesn't seem realistic.
“In the beginning God said, the four-dimensional divergence of an antisymmetric, second rank tensor equals zero, and there was light, and it was good. And on the seventh day he rested.”- Michio Kaku