Hello, a game

[szopik]

Hello Fellow Roguelikers,
I've been a long time lurker, I have created a bunch of never finished roguelikes and other games. I live in Poland and play nethack and slashem from time to time (managed to finish the game with human knight, wizard and tourist). I managed to win an older version of doomrl twice long time ago. I also tried getting into rogue and adom but didnt have any success with it. From less popular roguelikes I liked domination(I played it for 2,3 hours total only because the game doesnt have lot of contents, but the concept was really good for me).

To fight my problem with never finishing and releasing any games, I've started creating a game based on very simple mechanics which is relatively easy to complete for me in short time. If one was to classify this game, it is a very simple RTS represented by primitive graphics.

There are buildings which can either produce soldiers or earn money and soldiers which can fight enemy soldiers or destroy his buildings. A building can be easily changed between producing soldiers and earning money at any time. For the money You earn You can build more buildings on the map. You cannot control Your soldiers directly, You can only order all of Your soldiers to either defend Your base, or attack Your opponents base.

There are levels which are increasingly more difficult (You need to start thinking at around level 6, I got to level 11 max), if You lose You just restart the level without any consequences. The game is written in Java powered by JGame engine(http://www.13thmonkey.org/~boris/jgame/) (this is actually the first game of mine which is not written from scratch) and You can play it in an applet on http://naprawysamochodu.pl/game/strato.html. Remember that the game is in very pre-alpha stage as only core mechanics is implemented for now (no start screen, nice UI layout, etc.). I would be grateful for any feedback regarding game mechanics, game difficulty (should it increase its difficulty with consecutive levels faster/slower?), or anything else.

[Hi]

it is fun except for one design flaw, it seems that once you create a solder it exists until it is killed, this allows small initial advantages to avalanche into large advantages (think of the solder factories as thrusters on a space ship).  If you add metaphorical friction by having soldiers die of old age then the game will be a little easier to play.

[szopik]

Hello Hi, thanks for comment.
Glad You said it is fun. Regarding Your point, the same goes to factories producing cash, if You quickly earn cash to build more factories You will even have a bigger advantage than with additional soldiers. I am struggling to make the balance of speed of earning cash vs speed of producing soldiers better. This shows me how difficult it is to properly balance a game, so many options seem reasonable.

I have several ideas on how to enhance the play, mainly:
- allowing upgrading of factories so they earn more money/produce better soldiers (but all will be of the same type, just stronger, so the the complexity doesnt get bigger; I can also go for leaving only 1 type of soldiers but making the production of them go faster in upgraded factories)
- special areas on a map in which factories earn cash faster, produce soldiers faster (for example: gold mine near which Your cash-factories earn money quicker)
- experience system with abilities (so all Your soldiers are faster, stronger, factories better, cheaper, etc). The player gets some experience after every level and then spends it on potential abilities. Soldiers dont get experience, this would not make any sense. I know it might sound lame, however, all in all, most 'ordinary' people like such feature.

I want to keep the game very simple (in terms of its complexity), so I will be very careful with deciding whether to implement any of them.
I would be thankful for any opinions regarding these ideas (and the game of course). If You have any additional ideas, feel free to post them, I would be very thankful too.