Time travelling RTS (Achron) accepting Pre-orders | Hacker News Reader

Time travelling RTS (Achron) accepting Pre-orders

achrongame.com

2 pointsgridspy4 comments

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Interesting... a nice stab but I think there is a critical aspect missing.

t = 0 No one is attacking me

t = 1 I attack someone

t = 2 They wish they attacked me

t = 3 They jump back to t = 0 to attack me

t = 4 (0') They attack me, but there is no "me" to defend. The troops will just do their default actions.

So you have a lot of play against AI.

When they move to T0 and attack you, the changes caused by this attack move forward to the present in a "time wave" - you see these changes and decide to intervene by moving to T=1 and ordering your troops to intercept their troops.

The effects of this also move forward in a time wave, which they can see approaching on a little summary at the bottom of the screen.

As you modify the past you use up "chrono-energy" limiting the amount of influence you can have.

See http://chronofrag.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=36 for some more time travel strategies.

See http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=achron+youtu... for some videos of achron.

Yeah, I understand. But the problem is that if t = 0 and t = 1 are far apart, then by the time I jump back to t = 1' and defend, I could have lost a bunch of troops (for example).

I'm not saying it doesn't work, but I'm trying to think of this from a more "realistic" (within the scope of a time travel video game) point of view. In theory, at t = 0' (before I've jumped back) you'd want my troops controlled by someone with my skill, but not with my future knowledge.

Lets say I'm a great strategist, so good in fact that even when I'm attacked at t = 0' I would be good enough to fed off the attack. But, if I was asleep till t = 1' (as is essentially the case in what you are saying) I will get decimated. Jumping back to t = 1' doesn't help me then.

Obviously I have to accept limitations based on the fact that the players are in fact temporal beings, so I'm not saying the game mechanic is bad. I'm just stating a limitation.

You need to watch a couple of their time travel videos. The time travel is flexible and the time steps are tiny. Because you can move forwards, backwards, pause and fast forward time you can try several strategies until you find the best one for a given fight.

Your objection about spending a lot of time fighting AI is a valid one, it was my main objection too. It seems that it is so easy for the actual player to go back and tweak the battle if they didn't like the results that the AI complaint is moot.

Also, you can provide pretty rich standing orders and hierarchies for your troops. If anything, you will fight AI less than in a typical RTS - since a normal (not superhuman) opponent cannot manage all their troops at once, whereas in this game any opponent can slow stuff down until they can manage everything.

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