Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
ammunition; some games track it and some don't. In general, if ammunition is
cheap, doesn't do much damage, and is quickly expended (such as arrows or bul-
lets), you should give units an unlimited supply because it's not fun for the player
to have to look after it all the time. If ammunition is particularly destructive, such
as nuclear weapons, then you should make it rare and expensive and keep track of
how much is around. To summarize it simply, “Don't sweat the small stuff.”
SUPPLY LINES
A supply line is the route over which fresh troops and war materiel must be trans-
ported from their source to where they are needed, usually the battlefield. Cutting
the enemy's supply line is a classic stratagem of war; it leaves the enemy troops
without support and they often have to surrender when they run out of the things
they need. Seizing bridges is a high priority in land warfare because a bridge is
often a choke point through which troops and supplies must pass. Most computer
war games model supply lines correctly for the troops themselves; fighting units
do
have to get from wherever they are produced (usually near their headquarters) to
where the action is. Few games implement supply lines for items such as food and
ammunition, however, for two reasons. First, supplying materiel is an additional
task that players may not have the time (or inclination) to manage. Second, imple-
menting supply lines realistically means creating transport units and modeling the
supplies as individual objects. All this makes for a more complicated game engine
and requires additional CPU time to execute.
ABSTRACTING THE DISTRIBUTION PROCESS
To reduce these problems —yet still require the players to create the resources that
units need—you can make the production process concrete, but abstract the distri-
bution process. For example, the troops in
Warcraf t
eat food. The food is produced
on farms (which may be destroyed by the enemy, thereby reducing production),
but once the food is produced, it is magically available to all the player's troops
everywhere. The existence of the troops causes the food to disappear from storage,
but the food doesn't actually have to be transported to where the troops can eat it.
This decentralization of resources can permit unrealistic strategies if you do not
handle it carefully. In
Age of Empires
, for instance, a player can send a lone peasant
into a remote area to build a barracks, which has the function of creating troops.
Assuming that it is not spotted by the enemy, the barracks immediately starts pro-
ducing troops right on the enemy doorstep with no regard for supply lines or
resource distribution. Although this is an imaginative way to exploit the decentral-
ized-resources mechanic, it harms the players' suspension of disbelief because it's
so unrealistic.
In his regular design column for U.K.-based
Develop
magazine, Dave Morris sug-
gested another alternative that rewards a player for maintaining supply lines
without actually requiring her to personally manage the transportation of materiel
