I've been playing a lot of
Dyson, (
forum
thread) which is an interesting little indie game where you
play as a strain of
Dyson Tree competing
with several other (AI controlled) strains. Each tree on a asteroid
(up to six) produce seeds, which act both as combat and
colonization units. It's interesting!
Borders between territories are so fluid as to be a entirely
irrelevant concept, since there's no cost for moving a fleet of
seeds through enemy territory; and it's impossible to tell where an
enemy force is attacking. In fact, it's fairly common for a fleet
to just be passing through to attack someone else, so it's a
manifest waste of effort to scramble defenders.
For example, Green's moving about two hundred seeds around the
interior arc as we speak. (Double metaphorically, since I paused it
to type this.) They're obviously going to attack me, since there's
nobody else in that sector, but where, exactly? I won't know until
they hit. And guessing carries a strong penalty, since you can't
belay a fleet in flight; so if you guess wrong you'll probably lose
an asteroid.
Above and beyond this is
asteroid composition which
affects the speed and toughness of seeds made by the trees
inhabiting that particular rock.
The asteroid composition mechanic is interesting, and I don't think
anything quite like it has been done; but as it stands there are
quite a few flaws. First of all, you can't tell what kind of a rock
it is without first clicking on it, and you can't even do that
without first exploring it, which effectively means sending a fleet
to it.
The result is that there's no way to tell at a glance how desirable
a rock is. And since there's no tooltips, there no way to tell how
valuable a rock is
period, unless you happened to have
memorized the relevant part of the tutorial.
This fades into insignifigance when you realize that this mechanic
really doesn't matter at all. In the startgame, you have no choice
as to which rock to capture, so different strains of seed, which
would be damn useful at this point, never come into play. And by
the endgame, you're marshaling thundering hordes of seeds, drawn
from dozens of different rocks, and so is your opponent. No matter
how unique each strain is, they average out once you've got three
hundred seeds.
But the basic gameplay is compelling, and it'll be interesting to
see what Dyson evolves into.