There will be Civilization-4 style peace agreements though. After declaring peace, two clans are bound by the peace treaty for at least a few days, and can’t declare on each other or directly attack each other. Which is good because it will automatically prevent your clan members from attacking the enemy when they are unaware that peace has been made - something which always frustrated me in Mech Wars.

I did plan on writing about other types of such frustrating things in the article but it got long enough just writing about death/recovery.

Anyway, good luck with the design of the system. Will keep an eye on things every so often.

In Mech Wars, diplomacy is actually important because you can have “full” war declared on your clan at any time. So it is important to have allies or whatever other political deterrents at your disposal to protect your clan. At the same time, there is going to be a system in The Project to ensure clans don’t only ever try and attack clans they know they can beat easily. That would just be silly, and I experienced that the last time I was playing Mech Wars.

NukeZone’s restrictions stagnate the game. I don’t want to go in to all the details on what I have planned for diplomacy and war, but suffice to say a lot of thought has gone in to it over the past couple of years and I think it will be a pretty good system. It won’t be ridiculously restricted like NukeZone, but it won’t be completely without restrictions like Mech Wars.

I don’t remember the exact detains of the Nukezone “declaring war” option, but it always seemed to me to be a way to balance the game out.

If one clan (org, whatever) declared war on another, members from both clans could only attack opponents with a networth of +/- a % of their own level. If the other clan declared back, then you could hit all targets, down to the smallest levels. If they didn’t, then the attacking clan generally beat the opponents down to a lower level, beyond which they either had to sell their own units to keep hitting the targets, or get bored and attack someone else.

The advantage of this was to increase the importance of arranging conflicts, as well as keeping relatively balanced sides. If there was some means of one side surrendering (with a public notice, for a set period of time, and prevented from attacking anyone in the clan they’d surrendered to) or both sides declaring a truce, it seemed like a workable solution. I certainly thought it could have been implemented in MechWars, and would have added to the diplomacy element.

Also, in Mechwars, you couldn’t destroy anyone completely; I gave up on Nukezone because it was just too much hassle rebuilding structures from scratch, whereas if you kept the tech and facilities, it was easier to rebuild an army. Never could quite understand the whole -paying- for Nukezone, either…

Yes it would, it’s called Deathmatch
Much better and more enjoyable than perma-death a’la Counter Strike (even if it’s just for a short round). Respawning isn’t a problem either, because in every decent deathmatch game the respawn points are fixed. As such you can predict where they spawn and move out of the way, or go in for successive kills. The target on the other hand can opt to delay respawn or simply move out of your way in time, so there’s no blame on the superior player either.

In terms of webgames like Mech Wars however, I do think respawning with a sizable force instantly isn’t such a great idea. Your solution seems to be the best, once you manage to strike a balance - and manage to convince players to try and return to the ‘real world’ as soon as possible.

Still… catering to the carebear isn’t the only means of creating a great game. It is for browser-based games imo, but not for most other genres. Many of the most enjoyable game experiences are true hardcore, unforgiving, games (EVE Online, 10SIX, Quake 3, etc.), particularly because you actually have something to lose. When something important is on the line, or when you’re down immensely, games tend to become a lot more exciting. Then again - I tend to like competition in games… and I’m usually pretty good at what I do, so I don’t lose quite as much as the average gamer…