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The Allegiance 10 year reunion inspired me to get back into the game and I am -- as you would expect -- getting my head handed to me on a regular basis. It is great fun though.

It got me thinking though about something that could be fun and might make the game more accessible to newcomers. The basic idea is to add a new game type: the microgame which would essentially amount to a single bomber run (or similarly well defined scenario) that is designed to last for less than 10 minutes. The primary intent it to let people get a quick Allegiance fix while waiting for a big game or when they don't have a lot of time.

The game would be designed for a fixed number of people (3-5 on a side?) and the scenario would start with people in position in ships. For a bomber run, for example, you might start with pilot, turret gunners, escorts (nan and other) on one side and an appropriate mix of defenders on the other. Bomber side wins if they blow up the outpost in less than 10 minutes, defender side wins if they destroy the bomber or keep their outpost alive for 10 minutes.

Other scenarios could be miner attack/defense, constructor escort/denial, capital ship/carrier assault.

If this seems like it might be a worthwhile addition, I'll see if I can find the time to take a look at the source and figure out how difficult it would be to do. The big caveats are I don't have a lot of free time and there are few things as scary as looking at code you wrote 10 years ago.

I think it could be a lot of fun. I don't play a lot of other games, but it reminds a little of UT's assault mode. Would be fantastic for things like cadet, could use it as a group training mission to focus on specific tasks like nanning/spiking a bomber/galv/stealth bombing/ etc.

The basic framework would also open up new narrative possibilities that could later be developed further to add a whole new dimension to activities like Zone Games or Allegiance Wars.

The micro-game idea would indeed be pretty awesome! Good luck coding it though

'yp, for some reason my sleep deprived brain parsed the topic title as something along the lines of "You have encountered Weedman@XT; hvy int; mini3; You will now decide the outcome of your encounter by a minigame of PONG!"

Anyway, this would be awesome for training purposes, but a couple things speak against it IMO:
1. Not many people would choose that over a DM on brawl.
2. For training, it isn't that much of a hustle to recreate any of those scenarios with minimal effort by using small map (for miner O/D training, just start with 10 miners).

As for implementation difficulty level, wouldn't it be pretty much like other gametypes? i.e. I believe it is possible to enable certain levels of tech (like in the No Development mode) already, so probably altering that code would suffice along with adding some custom win conditions... Then again, I know very little about how Alleg code works

Yet another thing speaking against you spending time developing this: there are some more serious issues the Dev team is struggling with at the moment, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be against you helping out with those

Training Core has drones. Maybe you can organize an Allegiance Left 4 Scrap.

Tkela wrote:QUOTE (Tkela @ Apr 27 2010, 06:39 AM) It got me thinking though about something that could be fun and might make the game more accessible to newcomers. The basic idea is to add a new game type: the microgame which would essentially amount to a single bomber run (or similarly well defined scenario) that is designed to last for less than 10 minutes. The primary intent it to let people get a quick Allegiance fix while waiting for a big game or when they don't have a lot of time.

Had that idea a few years ago for a tournament...

Tkela wrote:QUOTE (Tkela @ Apr 27 2010, 06:39 AM) ... there are few things as scary as looking at code you wrote 10 years ago.

Haha, I know what you mean. My arch-nemesis is my past self.

ogorass wrote:QUOTE (ogorass @ Apr 27 2010, 03:05 AM) 2. For training, it isn't that much of a hustle to recreate any of those scenarios with minimal effort by using small map (for miner O/D training, just start with 10 miners).

The minigame would be a hell of a lot easier to organize though, especially in the time periods this is likely to be played (early am/non prime-time).

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This is an excellent idea!
Badp put forward a similar idea recently, the Quick Core.
The project is pretty much closed, seeing how it would be hard to have people play a new core with new rules, even if it's based on CC.

Having a special game type might be a workable solution.