Nexus Wars: Simultaneous Turn-Based Strategy

[1MangoMan0]

Hello,

I’m here to introduce Nexus Wars, my passion project, for feedback and, well, publicity Would love to hear your thoughts, praises, criticisms, and suggestions. I’m very proud of what I have accomplished thus far, and I think you will enjoy Nexus Wars. It is best played with other players, but since it usually has no active players, you can try it out in a single player environment to experience the basic gameplay.

Nexus Wars (Beta)

Summary

Nexus wars is a simultaneous turn-based military strategy game. Earn cash with mining units, construct various production buildings to train up your army, and stand against enemy players to score points and win the game. Players take their turns at the same time, which consist of a command phase and a battle phase. During the command phase, players issue orders to their units. When all players are ready or when time runs out, the battle phase starts, and units will enact their orders. This saves lots of time. No need to wait for seven other players to take their turn

Cool Features

• PvE

Monsters will spawn at specific spots on the map, which can either pose a threat, or be an opportunity to get ahead of opponents; When you eliminate a monster, you can either sell it for cash or respawn it under your command! Plus, they reward points when you eliminate them.

• Choose your empire

Currently, there are two empires to choose from, with hopefully more to come in the future: Conglomerate, and Fantasy. The Conglomerate feature straightforward gameplay with modern military technology and is good for beginners. The Fantasy empire features magic and mystical creatures like wisps, dragons, sea monsters and more with weird build orders and strategies to master. (Balancing the two empires so neither is too powerful has been challenging, lol)

• Powerful Customization

You can customize matches to your liking with lots of options, such as turn count, turn time, starting cash, scoring modifiers, and monster spawning difficulty. In the future, I’d like to add a standard queue option without customization options for a more streamlined gameplay experience. For now, if your lobby host keeps the default settings, everything should be good. If they decide to increase the monster spawn rate and difficulty to max, then you might have a hard time

• Map Selection

There is a growing selection of handcrafted maps to choose from, each featuring unique points of interest, strategic points of high ground, and naval combat opportunities. In the distant future, I would like to polish up and publicize the map editor for players to make their own maps to play with friends.

Check it Out (Link up Top)

Nexus Wars originally started out as a minigame in another project of mine, but some people helped me realize it would be a great standalone experience. That was two years ago, and although Nexus Wars is far from as developed as I would like it to be someday, it’s time for me to start pushing it out the door and see if it can really have an audience. You might relate to my experience as a developer in that I sometimes put on blinders and think to myself, “This game is awesome and people will love it,” oblivious to the problems that need to be solved before it could be considered a complete, playable game. I ask that you help me see those problems and provide honest feedback; it will be very much appreciated! Also let me know if you have an experience or project you’d like feedback on. I’d love to return the favor.

Thanks.

Screenshot

[BlueLegindDev (BlueDev)]

HI @1MangoMan0,

Great info on Nexus Wars! Everything you mentioning seems very interesting, however I have some questions in my mind.

So, how does this simultaneous shift work in the real world? With this one, in phase 3, when the battle is about to play out, do all of the players reveal and then it’s assumed that you knew what your opponent would find or does no one see the other until they fight? Additionally, how do each empire change gameplay – what is unique about them?

What I am interested in is how does the mechanical stuff interact with this stuff. I hope to hear from you soon!

[1MangoMan0]

Hi @BlueLegindDev,

Great question, hopefully I am understanding your question correctly, and I’ll try to give a little more explanation here.

Firstly, as far as seeing your opponents goes, there is no “fog of war,” meaning the whole map is visible at all times. I would have loved to implement fog of war, but it was an unfortunate tradeoff I had to make to reduce the complexity of development.

As for the command and battle phases:
During the command phase, you can see your own and also your opponents units, but your commands are telegraphed and are visible to you only; your opponents can’t see the commands you give, and you can’t see your opponent’s commands. You will only know what your opponent chose to do when the battle phase occurs!

For example, if I tell my knight to move toward their miner, a line of arrows will appear that shows where my knight wants to move, but my opponent won’t see that line. They will have to be smart and anticipate that my knight is probably coming, and tell their miner to retreat if they desire. During the battle phase, my knight will then move to the space I instructed. However, it could be interrupted by some other unit getting in the way, or even being eliminated, or some other cause.

As for the difference in empires:
The role of each empire has actually been a bit of a challenge for me to figure out, because I just kind of make whatever units come to mind and have them behave in a way that makes sense, haha. But overall, as mentioned in my post, the Conglomerate are a basic empire whereas the Fantasy have some weird things about them, which I’ll explain here:

Conglomerate: Can make a Barracks, Vehicle Bay, and Air Base to produce infantry, vehicles, and air units respectively. Every unit in the game has some stats such as max health, accuracy, evasion, armor, armor piercing, attack range, and movement speed. Aside from a few nuances, such as tanks only attacking ground units or snipers dealing more damage to air units, the Conglomerate empire doesn’t get very complicated except for having different units with different stats.

Fantasy: This empire has units with more unique abilities compared to Conglomerate. For example, the wizard fires bouncing shots and can be upgraded to have shots bounce even more. The wizard can also summon golems, wisps, and sea serpents. Then there are fire wisps, which summon another fire wisp when they eliminate an enemy. Water wisps deal more damage while they are on water. The fairy unit can teleport friendly units to other spaces. The nature wisp heals itself each turn. These examples are what I mean by the Fantasy empire having more unique mechanics which might be awkward for new players.

That’s a long answer, but hopefully it helps