Feedback Request: Assigning your party members on missions

[Zechnophobe]

Hello, so in my game you will get a large number of 'party' members, though most of them will be randomly generated. You, as the non participating leader, send your mages on missions. You sometimes control them on these missions. Either way, they are 'gone' from your party for a 'while' (based on the quest and whether you did certain side quests or not).

My question is, how would you want this to be handled? Are you going to want to keep track of these inactive party members? Should the duration they are gone be grainy or not? (That is, some number of game minutes, vs a few 'days' where a day is some progressive unit of measurement).

The assumption here is that management of your mages' time is an important mechanic that you should feel you have good control over.

 

[NoahJMina]

depends on how you would go about doing these missions. are they randomly chosen and are there multiple ways of completing that mission.

 

[Espon]

Makes me think of Final Fantasy Tactics where you send your troops out in little missions for x number of days and they gain experience and find treasure.

 

[Zechnophobe]

depends on how you would go about doing these missions. are they randomly chosen and are there multiple ways of completing that mission.

Missions are somewhat randomly chosen, but there are also 'main' missions that advance the story (they all must be done manually). They do not, for all intents and purposes, have multiple ways to complete them. Randomly generated quests with option victory conditions would be very taxing design wise. I might make the main missions have that.

 

[Jallelthalas]

I'd say have it be a similar system as done in Suikoden Tierkries. In ST (if you haven't played it before), you get up to like 108 party members, but you can only have 5 people in your immediate group (4 combatants, 1 support character that just generates a random effect [for example, randomly heals a portion of hurt character's health at the end of each turn]). You can send the ones you aren't using on side missions (some require certain characters to complete, some cause the player's party to get involved to recruit a new team member, others just give you gold and supplies to make more stuff), then there are also missions that advance the story. They did a day system for each mission and I felt it was pretty nicely handled. Days passed by by having the main character's group travel between locations. I could go for a game like that again. Does this sound like what you are getting at?

 

[NoahJMina]

i think it would be a great idea if the missions had a large variety to them for example:

find that item

find that place

find that person

find that enemy

find that secret

etc.

 

[Zechnophobe]

I'd say have it be a similar system as done in Suikoden Tierkries. In ST (if you haven't played it before), you get up to like 108 party members, but you can only have 5 people in your immediate group (4 combatants, 1 support character that just generates a random effect [for example, randomly heals a portion of hurt character's health at the end of each turn]). You can send the ones you aren't using on side missions (some require certain characters to complete, some cause the player's party to get involved to recruit a new team member, others just give you gold and supplies to make more stuff), then there are also missions that advance the story. They did a day system for each mission and I felt it was pretty nicely handled. Days passed by by having the main character's group travel between locations. I could go for a game like that again. Does this sound like what you are getting at?

Have not played that game, but that is very similar to what I was thinking yes. For a little more detail, you are playing a guildmaster to a guild of mages. The mages are all randomly generated, and you acquire new ones in various ways (side benefits from missions, recruitment, etc). I'm trying to get a good top level feel for the 'sending mages on missions' part of the game. It's probably the most complex to implement, so I want to get it specified in my head as best as possible.

Re: NoahJMina

The types of missions are going to be interesting to develop. I have this idea in my head that a mission can have multiple steps, and we'll string together mission goals (Go here, kill that, make this) with a lot of random elements. But each type of mission will need templating of a sort, so each different type of mission requires development time and coding. So yeah, I'd love LOTS of types, but I think have a few discrete types where the combinations thereof lead to a myriad of emergent types, is more what I will be capable of.

 

[Eschaton]

Sounds like a great way to use the party members the player doesn't like using in combat.  Although, I'd add a twist:  certain parameter scores determine the success of certain missions.  Example, you have this mage you hate using, so you send him on a mission... only for him to come back mission failed because he didn't meet the STR check.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Sounds like a great way to use the party members the player doesn't like using in combat.  Although, I'd add a twist:  certain parameter scores determine the success of certain missions.  Example, you have this mage you hate using, so you send him on a mission... only for him to come back mission failed because he didn't meet the STR check.

I have a twist planned for this, but it's in the positive direction. Some quests will have spells associated with them. For example, if you go to do a quest that requires healing, or helping people, then maybe 'cure all' spell gives them additional chance at success. I have so many skills though that I may need to make that skill types... hmm.

 

[estriole]

Make interesting or it will be repetitive boring task. Even I'm bored with ff tactics A2 (nds). >.<.

 

[cybrim]

If you can choose to actively go on these as side quests that would be cool. The ability to say hey, "this side quest sounds boring, I don't want to do it, however I would like the reward... so I will send you." or you get the assassin's creed 3 issue where, "hell I want to go to that place and kill people there... but I can only send people there and await their response..."

So combine the two to give it a unique feel and be able to meet people on their way back from their side quests. I would like this feature.