Needed: Large Road Tiles
Posted: Wed Apr 15, 2015 10:00 am
Even more so with cooperative multiplayer, it's useful for the player(s) to be able to designate "this is where the car drives"-places.
It doesn't have to have any game-mechanical effect at all (such as a bonus to car speed, or a reduction in car energy use), just really a visually distinctive effect, preferably a light colour so that it's visible at night, and with some contrasting dual-colour scheme so that it's visible against any terrain background, e.g. light grey with a yellow dotted line along the middle. Mainly it needs to exclude construction. If I've plonked down a Road Tile somewhere, that should prevent other coop players from building stuff there, unless the other actively chooses to first remove my Road Tile.
It also needs to be fast to lay. For this reason, I think it needs to be large. We already know that the game can handle objects that are 3x5 tiles in size, the Steam Engines. Refineries are larger still, 5x5 or 5x6 or something, I think, but the ideal Road Tile unit would be something like 3 wide and 8 long, if not 10 long, so it's superfast to lay down. But if that's too difficult then 3x5is quite acceptable.
It also needs to be cheap to make. That's perfectly balanced in that it gives no game mechanical benefit. So I'm thinking 1 Brick per 3x5 unit of Road Tile, or thereabouts (so 2 Brick instead of 3x10 units are possible), possibly craftabe by Assembly Machine only (since it'd a mid-game item anyway, as you can't get a Car without an Assembly Machine to make the Engine).
It doesn't have to have any game-mechanical effect at all (such as a bonus to car speed, or a reduction in car energy use), just really a visually distinctive effect, preferably a light colour so that it's visible at night, and with some contrasting dual-colour scheme so that it's visible against any terrain background, e.g. light grey with a yellow dotted line along the middle. Mainly it needs to exclude construction. If I've plonked down a Road Tile somewhere, that should prevent other coop players from building stuff there, unless the other actively chooses to first remove my Road Tile.
It also needs to be fast to lay. For this reason, I think it needs to be large. We already know that the game can handle objects that are 3x5 tiles in size, the Steam Engines. Refineries are larger still, 5x5 or 5x6 or something, I think, but the ideal Road Tile unit would be something like 3 wide and 8 long, if not 10 long, so it's superfast to lay down. But if that's too difficult then 3x5is quite acceptable.
It also needs to be cheap to make. That's perfectly balanced in that it gives no game mechanical benefit. So I'm thinking 1 Brick per 3x5 unit of Road Tile, or thereabouts (so 2 Brick instead of 3x10 units are possible), possibly craftabe by Assembly Machine only (since it'd a mid-game item anyway, as you can't get a Car without an Assembly Machine to make the Engine).