prestige

[erosson]

incentive for the player to restart. Thoughts:

• reset process
  • kill an enemy swarm to allow reset. in reset 2+, kill previous reset's swarm?
    • military strength based on territory/sec
    • something interesting to do with military!
  • anytime after this kill, press the reset button to reset
  • reset lore: evolution/mutation/natural selection. form a new brood from your swarm's most elite children, ensuring their offspring too will be elite
• reset rewards
  • flat production bonuses are boring, though they do scale infinitely. try to avoid them.
    • at least make the player choose between production bonuses for single resources. no all-resource bonus
    • larvae bonuses are especially interesting. easily implemented as free expansions; changes gameplay by enabling more/longer exponential growth
  • reset rewards should change how you play the game. first playthrough can have a single optimal path, but resets should begin introducing different playstyles and interesting choices
  • talents: mutually-exclusive reset bonuses
    • for example, choice of military unit. swarmling triplets XOR swarmling compounding XOR giant arachs produce arachs/sec XOR expansions improve devourer output XOR ...
• reset credit: based on number of expansions
  • or, one credit per reset? long resets feel punishing; have to make sure games are long enough.
    • maybe two reset currencies? one encourages long resets, one encourages short resets
      • make sure the optimal way to play for long-reset credits is to, you know, have long resets. easy to get the math wrong and make short resets optimal like so many other games

[erosson]

ignore most of what's written above. new plan:

• lore is still "evolve a new swarm from your current swarm's strongest children"
• reset currency: mutagen
• a conquest system with territory units prior to resetting would be nice, but not really necessary. leave it out, patch it in later if we really want.
  • we'll just have a mutagen tab appear with a reset button when the player starts approaching a time when they can gain mutagen from a reset
• math is something like: total mutagen per reset = f(total-meat-produced * ((1+constant) ^ expansions))
  • we're not tracking total meat produced yet! only have current meat, doesn't include spent meat (or reset-meat).
  • total-meat-produced gives us a familiar reset formula like many other games
    • this formula encourages long resets in adcap and cc. encourages short resets in deriv though. we want long resets, but our numbers are more like derivs. what's the difference?
  • expansions give us discrete breakpoints that make reset timing more interesting, and keeps territory relevant. "reset now, or wait until next expansion?"
  • f(...) is some sort of diminishing returns - sqrt(...), or (...)^(1/c), or log(...)/log(c), etc. experiment to find a good formula.
  • if we change this formula later, it's not the end of the world - next ascension will "update" the player to the new formula
    • no global reset necessary!
• unspent mutagen produces meat + larvae, for a quicker start
  • mutagen production cannot be upgraded! good for a quick start, but eventually force people to spend their mutagen, not hoard it. require interesting choices.
• possible mutagen upgrades
  • infinitely upgradeable
    • larvae production!
      • this should be the "default" way to spend mutagen
      • perhaps as a mutagen-tab unit
      • we could get away with only implementing this, at the start
    • individual meat unit production
      • not all-meat-unit production; or at least, that should be much slower
    • all territory production
      • perhaps as a mutagen-tab unit
    • mutagen generators?!
      • steeply increasing in price each, and generated mutagen doesn't carry across resets
      • should generally not be cost-effective, but it's an alternate approach
        • maybe these become cost-effective very late game, or with very long resets
        • ...actually resetting should always be faster though
  • limited upgrades
    • mutagen -> starting units/upgrades
    • cost reductions?
    • cost factor reduction for expansions?
    • energy cost reduction?
    • ability effectiveness
  • talents: limited upgrades with tradeoffs (the following numbers are off the top of my head, not balanced)
    • cloning vats: clone cap x8, but cost x4
    • larvae focus: larvae production x4, but meat tab production x1/2
      • meat focus: the opposite; meat tab production x2 but larvae production x1/4
      • careful, "meat tab production" is magnified with derivatives
    • organic larvae: clone larvae disabled! effectiveness of other spells doubled. maybe unlock a new spell/unit?
    • ???: territory production 10x, meat-tab production 0.8x
    • ???: hatcheries disabled, energy production doubled
    • ???: ...something with energy units
    • ...something with expansions
    • ...interaction between different tiers of meat units
    • ...upgrade certain territory units, downgrade others

Also, this will probably be v1.0, without a reset. happy with balance so far, no need for a reset

[erosson]

this issue is now an entire milestone and many separate tasks. https://github.com/erosson/swarm/milestones/1.0%20-%20prestige