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Multiplayer Specifics
24-03-2014, 07:44 AM (This post was last modified: 24-03-2014 08:01 AM by Veluu5db.)
Post: #1
Multiplayer Specifics
So there are quite a few people who have posted multiplayer ideas, so I thought I would just post some specifics about the most popular version I saw people mentioning:

Disease vs. Cure

Disease Upgrades: These wouldn't change from core gameplay.
Abilities
Transmission
Symptoms

Cure Upgrades:
Research - All of these upgrades would "reveal" information about the virus, one bit of information each. Things like what type of virus, is is cold resistant, hot resistant, air transmission, etc. That way the player playing the cure knows what type of containment/treatment abilities it might want to start working to unlock to slow/stop the virus. Whenever the "Cure" upgrades something in this area, the blue plane is sent out to a random infected country to "collect" that data. Which keeps the disease mechanics the same. It might be interesting for the "Cure" player to be able to select which country the plane goes to.
Containment - These are pretty straight forward. Contain the virus. Things like: close airports, shipyards inspection (close all borders could be the super-combo of closing all airports/shipyards), kill wildlife - and all of them would have progression tiers. An example would be for airports: T1 close local airports, T2 close regional airports, T3 close international airports. For ships things like: T1 close local beaches, T2 stop national shipping, T3 stop international shipping. Similar tiers of progression could exist for killing wildlife and a separate one for killing domestic animals: T1 - Kill infected wildlife / infected animals, T2 - kill non-essential wildlife / non-essential domestic animals, T3 - exterminate all wildlife / all domestic animals. Other types of transmission containment could also be included in this section. Upgrading containment will give hints to the disease (similar to the way it receives them already), and containment will only apply to countries that have actively engaged in "cure" efforts.
Treatment - This is pretty straight-forward. It could be a compilation of a laundry list of medical practices and applications used to boost health and stop germ / infection spread. Things like enforced vaccinations, wearing filter masks, a tree of physical quarantine progression for clinics and hospitals, etc. It could even get extreme to have a super option of "kill infected individuals" as sort of a panic-button last resort (which still might not stop a virus that has upgraded symptoms that cause infection after death). Treatment will slightly "debuff" the infection speed of the disease to give more time to find a cure.

I'm not sure what type of special perks could be unlocked that would act the same way for the cure as the "genetic enhancements" the disease is getting, but there are definitely ways to do it. Maybe perks like "before the game starts, select five countries participating in cure efforts" as opposed to the normal 1. And other perks like "Ships bleach their decks" (to require the disease to upgrade that level 1 function before it can spread effectively by ship), or air-plane filters - you know, the kind of stuff the disease get's hinted at in the current game?

Really the idea is to create a sort of chess-match between players. Both players will be getting little glimpses of what the other is doing, and it will be a push and pull match of the cure stopping the spread of the disease - which is still trying to kill everyone in the world. Neither player will be fully aware of what the other is doing (or what they are upgrading) besides the little hints they will be getting (the disease will) or what information is unlocked by the cure.

It would obviously take some balancing - but it would be an incredible 1v1 play option. Chess is one of the greatest 1v1 games in the world - and it's because of this type of push and pull play of each side seeing moves (but not really knowing the other side's strategy).

I also wanted to specifically add KingS7ayer's idea about having things (probably in the containment category) that are extreme panic buttons, like nuking specific countries. Also if interesting things like this are added - players playing the disease side could have an ability upgrade like "radiation resilience" to counter the issue of getting nuked. That would be a good replacement for the upgrades that "slow" down the cure.

Either that, or if the "slow" the cure upgrades remain for the disease, perhaps this would translate smoothly to the "Cure" side by upgrading those causing the research upgrades to cost more for the cure. And actually, perhaps the cure upgrading treatments is what causes the plague side to have symptom costs increase.

Just another method of implementing resistance into the whole thing. It would probably be best if this mode didn't feel too drastically different from regular single player gameplay.

Also - to mention other multiplayer aspects: an unlimited free-for-all would be an interesting way to go. Just completely eliminate the whole "cure" thing and just let multiple players (could be anywhere from 2 to 8 or something like that) get to separately upgrade diseases and see who kills the most people before the whole world is dead. Players would get in each other's way by killing off potential transmitters of their disease (like if one disease starts in Africa and kills most of the people before another disease is able to get into Africa and kill off people in the island of madigascar - say because the origin disease there didn't cross water well, but the entering one that did got blocked off kind of). That creates the potential that all the diseases might fail to kill everyone in the world. So it's sort of like a competitive co-op style of play.

Just another thought.
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