A Massive Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy (MMO-RTS) game.
I know it's utterly unworkable. But I want it anyway.
Imagine an RTS game that ... just keeps going. Both in time and in play area. Something like the Minecraft map in scale.
You play a few hours online with other people, log off, come back, and then you're still playing on the same map with the same resources, buildings, and units. Other people may have advanced and tech'd up, and now you can too.
I have no idea how to handle combat when a player is sleeping or making dinner. Or any other real conflicts. Maybe a timer of some sort? Maybe catching them sleeping is part of the fun?
Ten years ago I used to play PlanetSide 2 a bit, which is pretty similar to what you descibe. Just gotta swap the RTS-part with FPS :)
But there is war waging back and forth the planetary map, 24/7. Well it was like this when I played, I have no idea what changed since then.
After a while, the constant back-and-forth appeared kinda meaningless though. First it was amazing being part of some coordinated move to take over 2/3 of the map, but the next day it was all gone and the cycle repeated itself.
Once you get the pattern, it is still fun of course, but the fascination wears off pretty quick, honestly.
There was/is a game called Shattered Galaxy that was best described this way.
Several factions continuously battling over discrete territories. There would be calculations throughout the day that would give certain bonuses to whichever factions were winning.
Every territory had a field commander that could request people join that had leveled up certain types of units based on how the battle was evolving.
There was also a form of player controlled government in each faction that could choose bonuses and allocate resources to various battles.
I've imagined this being more transactional. Like a constantly running game of StarCraft 2, where you're dropped onto a massive map, build up, fight for awhile, make alliances, have fun, do memes, then when you log off you have to do it all over again.
In Age of Empires you can share control, so 4 people can be controlling the same civilization, even giving conflicting orders. This could be done for for when people log off.
"I know it's utterly unworkable. But I want it anyway."
That takes me down memory lane. Years ago (around 2007), on an Athlon XP with 2GB RAM, we had the game server for a 2000+ unit C&C clone running. We also had the ability for AI to take over once someone disconnects. We even built our own binary protocol generator (think Protobuf) so that our Java Applet client could connect to the C++ server.
And then I accidentally became CEO of a startup. My friends finished university and then started working. And we all kinda forgot about it.
I had idea for such game, but it was meant to be realized as a 2d space sim. If you want your ship fleet to survive during logoff, you need to hide it somewhere in deep space between star systems (via series of semi-random jumps so no one tails you, unless they put stealthy tracker on your ships) or in a defended space station with some automatic defenses. You can design and make any ship or station you want, you just need to have enough matter for fabricator machines plus they take time and resources to build/repair. You have a hundred star systems with physically correct size and resources, plus lightyears of empty space between them.
I know it's utterly unworkable. But I want it anyway.
Imagine an RTS game that ... just keeps going. Both in time and in play area. Something like the Minecraft map in scale.
You play a few hours online with other people, log off, come back, and then you're still playing on the same map with the same resources, buildings, and units. Other people may have advanced and tech'd up, and now you can too.
I have no idea how to handle combat when a player is sleeping or making dinner. Or any other real conflicts. Maybe a timer of some sort? Maybe catching them sleeping is part of the fun?