Player Interaction

Scott Turner (srt@sun-dimas.aero.org)
Fri, 21 Oct 1994 09:29:42 -0700

I've been thinking some more on the problem of player interaction in
Olympia. I'm of the opinion that Olympia doesn't provide the
appropriate mechanics to encourage people to cooperate with one
another. Since the only way to "enforce" an agreement in Olympia is
through the combat system, and the combat system makes it difficult to
do this, there's little player interaction. It has occurred to me
that perhaps the game itself could provide enforced agreements between
players.

The idea is that when 2 or more players want to cooperate, they each
enter a command that looks something like this:

ENFORCE
UNIT a0f
STACK g1e
UNIT g1e
ATTACK bz9
UNSTACK g1e
GIVE g1e 1 200
END

The game checks to see if each unit involved in the ENFORCE has
entered exactly the same set of commands. If so, then those commands
are executed. So if both [a0f] and [g1e] enter the ENFORCE as given
above, a0f will stack with g1e, they'll both attack bz9, and then g1e
will pay off a0f. If the ENFORCE is not the same, then the whole
thing fails in zero time.

Do people think this would be a useful mechanism?

-- Scott T.

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