WWID: Tablet Sci Fi Strategy Game

For the last few months, I've been searching for a particular game for my tablet/phone to suit a particular taste but have yet to actually find anything to satiate it.

I've mentioned before that I've been playing a pair of strategy games on my tablet device, Boom Beach and Clash of Clans. I've improved and empowered everything slowly but steadily over the months to where I am now, somewhere rather respectable but still room for improvement. I've learnt the strategies, I've joined clans, I've continued to fight back against NPC's and players constantly.

But the thing is, I want to round off the themes. Clash of Clans is Medieval Fantasy; Boom Beach is Modern; So where's the Future? Where are the Gauss rifles on my standard infantry? where are my Walker Combat Machines? Where is my Planetary Defence Solution?

I've looked at game after game and each time after another they leave me terribly cold, simply because there is so little actual strategy to them.

Like "Galaxy on Fire: Alliances". The theme is there, with different playable races changing certain passive effects. But... what is there to play? All i did was check in for upgrades and purchasing non-descript soldiers, or buy Aerial combat vehicles that have a Rock/Paper/Scissors effect between them.

Then you assign them to your Carrier ships, which you can build and upgrade to your hearts content, and then send them off to do whatever, occasionally having to catering their loadout to suit what combat they will be entering.

It was all so terribly cold, and I didn't like that. Not to mention you couldn't actually understand what your limitations were. It was all guessing.

Galaxy Legend was a step in the right direction, where combat was much more of a visual effect, but I really didn't have to do anything other than place my characters in formation and let them do their thing. Everything was much more graphic, I could see the building's upgrades and they all had a role, but it wasn't my home to really defend. It was a city that I was involved with.

The most fun I had was a game called Plundernauts. You were a Pirate in search of an incredible treasure. You had a ship and you outfitted it as you levelled up and improved it. The actual play of it was fun, you line out your ships directions and tap on who you want to shoot at with whatever guns are in range. You had to do strafing runs, trigger healing and shield tech to help you, while you navigated around walls and obstacles.

What turned me off was that to get better equipment, you had to do a random roll. You sacrificed 3 items, most of the time they were superfluous, like Toxic Ooze, Meteorite Diamonds, and a Cybernetics Array, and you would randomly generated a piece of equipment. The gun would go either really well, or really piss poor. And if you had three piss poor items, you could just sacrifice them back into the Armoury, and they'd randomly roll into one other item, which again could go either way. You always had to watch out what you were tossing into the Cauldron, because there would always be a ridiculous chance that you would come out with Junk.

While the game itself was really fun, that just turned me off. Mainly because I just kept getting flogged with more and more junk, and repeating the cycle again and again, spending more and more dosh into it until I just got fed up.

I'm still going to continue my search for a Futuristic Strategy Game that suits, but why not put down a wishlist of what I really want?

Home base. There's a couple of ways about this. The most common way I've ever seen in these strategy games is a large field where you place your buildings and defend them from there. Enemy troops simply appear from nowhere where appropriate and start their attack onwards. Mind, those have all been Medieval theme games. That doesn't seem like something a Future game would let happen, teleporting Warriors from nowhere.

No, I like what Boom Beach does, where you have a Landing Craft and the squad of soldiers assigned to that craft would begin their assault, which could always change depending on what beach they landed apon.

That's what I imagine a Future game to do. Dropships flying in and dropping off their cargo and bolting back to safety to their Carrier. Enemy bases would have their different methods of entry to their territories, but players can have the most basic option of having one wide side of entry or having multiple entries whereby they can spread their defences. Heck, maybe they could just keep the layout and change the theme. It'd be nice to see a change from certain environments once in a while.

Structures would be typical. Headquarters, Barracks, Armoury, Special Ops Facility. Then buildings that provide currency and building materials to further everything until they reach parity. In which case, I don't know what one would do with those materials once there's no use for them...

Soldiers are something I would like to see customisable. Samurai Siege had a feature where you didn't just level up the Warriors, you also leveled up and changed their equipment. So you could have Warriors that did large amounts of damage in single strokes, or trade in their swords to deal less damage, but in an AOE. Same with Commanders, they could either tell Warriors to target defensive structures, or just make them move and attack faster.

So why not have that for future soldiers? Change their equipment so they take on different enemies in different ways, like a choice between Kinetic or Electric damage? Changing the way they take on different opponents.

On top of that, Heroes. Deeply customisable characters that can again change the way the player attacks or defends, based on what abilities and equipment have been chosen. Supporting their fellow soldiers as they're sent into the field, or helping structures at home base in economy or defence. They would have something like a skill tree, or a general layout of bonuses that would get picked and chosen, but not fully filled out as to create a players personal play style.

Occasionally there would be specialised tactical events. Place your heroes on a grid layout and have them assault a story mission. No backup, just the Heroes delving into a ruin or an enemy structure over a turn based layout, to gain themselves a special bonus for the day/week/month.

Races. All players should have their choice of races which change the three main aspects of the game: Offence, Defence, and Economy. Each in their own ways, of course. It's either that, or just change their skins to match a basic layout, but that just loses the entire point of having different races.

Factions.  Much like Clans, you sign up to an alliance with friends, or strangers, and have wars between attacking NPC's or other random players that litter your local galactic regions.  Boom Beach has tribesmen offering you gold, with certain bases designed for specific resources.  So similarly clear out an NPC Enemy base and your farm your currency from there, and again certain defensible bases for building resources.

Then, once you get yourself to maximum level, where there's nothing left for you to actually purchase or upgrade, buy some aesthetic things.  Change the design of your soldiers, whether it's colour patterns or their actual design.  That, or you can start again with another base and a different faction.  Control several bases that perform different functions.  Something like that.

If I were able to code and do that art thing, this'd be a good project to work on.  But then, I have lots of projects of this kind I could work on.

Gaming Over Time

I mentioned a couple of posts ago about how I have been playing Cow Clicker games over the past year on Tablets, and I've continued to do so playing different games in that time, amongst other time consuming games like Jetpack Joyride and Sudoku 2. (It's no different to Sudoku 1 except that it looks spiffier)

What's interesting is how I've continued to play them.  Since I've been here, I've loaded up the tablet with Clash of Clans, Samurai Siege, and Boom Beach and continued to level up and maintain my bases, continuing to build upon and learn strategies to take on various bases while treating my own like a Lamb Roast, letting it sit in the oven, hours at a time, and basting it occasionally.  That's how these games work.

Same goes with Skylanders Lost Islands and Tiny Village, though they lack the fun of competing against people and their ingenious bases.  You just go ahead and check on it and come back every few hours, possibly more, to collect and repeat.

Jetpack Joyride does the same now, a bonus every day where you ride S.A.M. (the Strong Arm Machine) and you collect money more frequently while batting off Rockets that trick you into missing, and in the main menu a countdown is shown so you know that at 8pm, S.A.M. is ready to ride again.

It just threw me for a loop the amount of hours I've spent waiting on these games over the past couple of months.  I would wager that once I've upgraded and collected everything, i would have spent more time waiting on it than I've played Borderlands 2, which is over 600 hours as it is.

And that's just madness.

What if Blizzard made a Cow Clicker?

Click for more Minerals

I came across the term Cow Clicker a few years back when someone explained what it actually is, which turned out to be simply a joke from a guy about Social Games like Farmville by making a Social game where all you do is Click a Cow every six hours.  Ironically, it became quite popular.

I've been playing a handful of Cow Clickers similar to Farmville the last few years, starting with Tiny Village, a Stone Age themed town builder where the aim of the game is to build and build and keep going until there just isn't anything else.
After that I found Skylanders: Lost Islands.  Same idea, but with the added feature of being able to use my Skylander Figures to throw into the game.  I would send them on adventures, which were simply just countdowns with rewards of Gold after I had farmed for Energy, which I would then use for buildings that would either give me more money, energy, Kingdom Experience, or Gems which offered exclusive stuff.

I had left it in the capable hands of my mother, who to my knowledge has continued to build upon the villages and islands since.
Since I've moved to USA I hadn't even had an inkling of thought towards such Cow Clickers until one night at my Brother-in-law's house the TV was rambling off in the background while we played Cards Against Humanity with our respective spouses, and an ad came up for Clash of Clans.

It was a bit cute watching a skeleton run and run, dodging explosions and arrows while carrying a comical bomb in it's claws until it reached a rock wall, sat back with a sigh, and let the fuse go out.

Then there was something about Archers and Mr T on a Hog asking if he could join in...  It got me curious, so I downloaded it.  It's for free, so why not?

Only a few weeks have passed and I've levelled myself up a fair bit, thrown troops at enemy fortresses to attain whatever resources I can from them, while keeping my own resources and defences in check, trying out numerous combinations to optimise efficency while I wait for the countdown of structure upgrades allowing me to build more or better units and/or structures.

And from the same company I found Boom Beach, which all the same premises except using modern features and everyone placed on islands, attacked from a Gun Boat and Landing Craft, all of which you upgrade over time while defending your own base from the occasional attack, and so on and so forth.

It's a little fun, for a Cow Clicker, because you can be more interactive.  It's fun seeing AI bases and figuring out how to get around the defences while minimising casualties.

Anyone who knows me well enough knows that I'm a fan of Blizzard's Warcraft and Starcraft.  And I sit here looking at the games and wondering "What would an X-craft game be like if they reskinned this?"

Could it be as story intensive as either the Starcraft or Warcraft series?  Heck no, it would probably have someone going "Damn you meddling kids" and that's about it.

But the real drawback on this is that the game won't have the same strategy to it as the computer game normally would.  Though I'm sure there are ways around that.