Post by Water Dumple on Jul 5, 2008 20:50:26 GMT -5
Pikmin Wars is a text-based game where you build an army, attack other players, establish trade, make defenses, write logs, and so on—Based on Nintendo's franchise Pikmin. The rules of Pikmin Wars were first written by me, Water Dumple (Though they were a variant of another forum game). After that, they've been modified and edited by popular vote of the members. Feel free to request changes and make suggestions; who knows, the forum might like it! (Please read the rules once before asking questions, and have a look at the Suggestions board if you want to make a suggestion.) Overall, just have fun.
And, please, when you make your application, at least try to make it appear that you looked at the rules. It's pretty obscure sometimes. I mean, don’t be afraid to ask questions about the game in the Questions board--Just please don’t ask something that’s really obvious, or you may incite the wrath of Bubs, the forum’s Hairy Bulborb. And that's srs bznis.
NOTE: As we progress, we gradually find better concepts, better ways of doing things, changes that need to be made, and even entire new rules. Don't be surprised if we have a rule update, if we do it will be posted here. But it's not that common.
General Rules: Various points and guidelines that should be followed at all times. If you already know typical forum etiquette and generally how the game works, just go to Game Rules.
1) The staff deserve your respect. Treat them appropriately. While we’re on the same line, treat your fellow players with respect as well. Trolling, flaming, and so forth will be dealt with appropriately. If you're at war with someone in the game, look at them as a worthy opponent, not as an idiot you're trying to deal with.
2) Flower Commanders (Moderators), Perennial Managers (Mini Moderators), and the Emperor Dweevils (Administrators) may elect new authoritative figures with a vote by the other staff. 65% positive and the person in question is in.
3) A poor staff member may be ousted by a vote. Everyone who has been with the game for three weeks can vote.
4) Emperor Dweevils, and so forth have the power to downsize a type of troop or project you have if it's overpowered. We’re only trying to keep it fair. PM me or the staff to tell us about an unfair project or unit. We’re here to help! You can also tell everybody about it in the God-Mod Alert board (This is recommended). If you're accused of an overpowered thing, unless it's something ridiculous, you'll get a chance to defend yourself and for the members to put in their opinions, since sometimes problems are just due to typos (100 miles per hour is a lot faster than 10, for a typical typo example.)
5) Please keep stuff in the correct board--Keep questions out of the Complaints board, and so forth.
6) Be reasonable. 30 Orange Bulborbs vs. 100 Red Pikmin will naturally get by with few casualties.
7) Be realistic. Yes, we’re talking about a fantasy world here--but please, keep the Adamantium, plasma, nuclear missiles, and 10.0 magnitude earthquakes in another game.
Game Rules: How to play the actual game. See the bottom for log templates. This section is divided into two parts, a newbie section for everything a starting player needs to know about, and an advanced section with more complicated rules once you’ve got the hang of it.
New Player Rules: This section contains mostly the basics for the game, and not every single facet of Pikmin Wars. You can learn the rest by playing or looking at the Advanced Rules section, but this is all you’ll need to know for now.
1) Everybody is a unique, different army made up of advanced wildlife creatures and several technologically advanced units such as cruisers or airplanes.
2) Give all of your information in a basic log. It doesn’t matter exactly how you organize it, just that you follow the rules and get all the basic information in it. Have a look at other peoples' logs or the Example Logs at the bottom of this to get an idea for what they look like, it'll give you a good idea of how Pikmin Wars works.
3) You don’t need to post detailed descriptions of stuff in the log, just concise stuff. You will receive a mini-board in which you may post more about tech, troops, what your base is like, and similar stuff. More on all that later, don't worry about it for now.
4) Six external hours constitute a "Day" in the game. That means that one real-life day is four game days. 1 external day = 4 internal days.
5) To begin, make your army’s name and location. This can be any area from Pikmin or Pikmin 2, but it must be overground—No cave bases!
6) Next, make your Commander. This is a wildlife creature skilled in combat and a great leader. He cannot be a “Boss” creature, however; nothing much above a Fiery Bulblax or Gatling Groink. Note that while the commander can hold his own in a small fight, he is not a solo fighter and certainly not capable of defeating a whole squad of skilled enemies.
7) The general, main force of your army is troops. Troops come in three classes: Ordinary, Special, and Elite. These can range from the humblest of Pikmin to a fully armored Pileated Snagret with a weapon mounted on its head. It's really going to be about where you decide to focus your strength, as you'll see when vehicles and whatnot enter the mix.
8) You may begin with 55 troops of your choice. 50 will be Ordinary, and 5 of them may be Special (see below). Every in-game "Day," you may add 10 ordinary troops or a single Special soldier to your army.
9) Ordinary troops are weak things such as Pikmin, Dwarf Bulborbs, and Shearwigs. Special troops are anything as large as a grown Bulborb or a powerful animal, like a Careening Dirigibug. A general guide is that 1 Special=10 Ordinaries.
10) The troop caps are 500 for Special troops and 5,000 for Ordinary soldiers. Don’t bother about it, the cap won’t matter for a long time into the game. Elites work a bit differently, they're described below.
11) Making up your own species of creature for a troop is absolutely allowed, as long as it is reasonable. Just because you made it up doesn't mean it gets to be better than everything else, though it can be creative!
12) In your log, write down the projects you have going and how many days it will take to complete them. You may at first have three active projects going at once, but you can have fewer than three running at a time if you wish. The stuff you can get with projects is described below, as well as how to get more slots.
13) Leave a small description by every creature or project you have in your army. The main descriptions will go in your tech and troop sections, so just write something quick and easy. For example, a description for a weapon you were making could be “Hunting Rifles: Accurate Pikmin-used weapons that pierce light armor.” Or a Sheargrub's description: “Small burrowing insect with mandibles that are weak in combat but good at working through structures.”
14) It takes a 50+ Day project to get an Elite creature in your army. Elite creatures are bosses and the likes. These powerful guys can take on plenty of force and are usually extremely good at a single role, such as leveling buildings or defeating troops. However, they are definitely not invincible and should not be treated as such.
15) To build things, you need resources! Resources are in small, clumped units. A standard building, for example, would take around 400 resources to make. A tank could need 100. Resources can be things like Stone, Iron, Steel, and lots of other fictional stuff like Crawmadine and Pikminite. Look in the Trade board for more info on the stuff you can build with.
16) To get resources, you just buy them from a general store that everybody can access called the Universal Store. See the “Universal Store” topic in the Trade board to look at the prices of resources, and see farther below for information on currency. Things bought from the Universal Store arrive at your base immediately!
17) As an alternative to buying resources, you can simply salvage them in a project. The difference is that this takes time rather than money. Look in the Universal Store topic in the Trade board to see how long it takes for one of these projects and what you'll gain through them.
18) In the projects section of your log, state how many resources you'll spend building something. As mentioned above, things usually take multiples of 50 to make (150, 200, 250, etc). Based on the strength of the materials and how many you use to build them, your buildings, machines, and so forth may be stronger or weaker than others. Do your best to be consistent with the number you use, and look at other peoples' logs to get proportion. Example: “Manufacture 100 Anti-Tank Landmines (400 Iron)”
19) Begin with 1,000 Iron.
20) To start off, you may only have a few base defenses. More, such as walls and traps, must be built by themselves with individual projects. One project slot for gates. One project slot for bomb-rock launchers. You could, if you wanted, fill all of your slots with the same projects if you want multiple copies of them (Or build several weaker defenses with the same project). Also, don’t forget that defenses cost resources to build! Example: “Plant 10 Tank Traps (Metal structures rooted in the dirt that block big vehicle movement.) (100 Iron)"
21) Because you must build base defenses individually, they aren't easy to take down--If you attack someone, remember this! You shouldn't send five unarmed Pikmin after a fortified bunker, but ten Gatling Groinks and a light tank...
22) You can make projects to upgrade a type of something in your army, usually your troops. Example: "Upgrade Careening Dirigibugs to Zooming Dirigibugs (Better flying speed, balloons are harder to pop. Balloons regenerate faster.)" With this in mind, you cannot start with Zooming Dirigibugs, but must undergo an upgrade to get them. Note that since upgrades can affect an entire kind of troop and cannot really be destroyed like weapons or armor, they usually take a while to finish and affect only minor things like speed or stealth. Weapons are what you want for offense, and armor for defense (See below).
23) Start with a Weapons Storage, Resource Storage, Ammunition Storage, and Barracks. These are fairly generic buildings that just give you the ability to hold the appropriate thing without having it cluttered around on the floor. The storages have dispensers, and they all are made of Iron to start with. You can rebuild a destroyed one in an 12-Day project and 200 resources.
24) Machines can be built individually to provide heavy force in battle. There are three types: Vehicles, aircraft, and ships. Each one takes a while to make, with 20 days being typical. These can range from tanks to fighter planes to battleships.
25) Overall, machines are of heavy value and generally need something specialized to be destroyed, similar to Elite troops. Do not swarm Pikmin around a tank. That's suicide. Give troops some good anti-tank weapons like bazookas and use them effectively...that tank will go down easily. Aircraft in general have little armor but are fast and evasive, crossing any terrain with ease. Ships, being restricted to the water, are powerful and not easy to sink. No special crew is needed for machines, they come with 'em.
26) Although you have an unlimited supply of weapon ammo at your base, it takes a 20+ day research project before you can actually use a certain ammo. (Example: "Research Mortars: 30 Days".) Also note that machines can only hold so much at a time; so while your base has infinite, the machines will sometimes need to resupply at your base or a supply unit.
27) It is extremely important to keep your machines and munitions-consuming units supplied, as running out of ammo could be a death sentence for frontline troops or vehicles. A simple supply truck will do the trick!
28) Currency is Petals. Depending on what you own and what projects you have going, you can sell items and such for Petals or trade whatever you need. Petals also run your projects, so they're absolutely vital.
29) To start a project, you must spend two Petals to pay the workers for every day the project will run. So a 15 day project costs 30 petals. A 40 day project costs 80 Petals. Subtract the Petals when you start the project.
30) Your army begins with 300 Petals.
31) Every in-game day, you get 10 Petals. This can be increased to 15, 20, and even 25 per day by building "Petal Gathering Centers". Those are big assets: To build one, it takes a 60-day project, 400 resources, and 200 Petals.
32) If your base is next to the ocean or a body of water that connects to it, you get an extra 2 Petals per day, with an extra 1 to your total for each Petal Gathering Center installed. So instead of getting 10, 15, 20, or 25 Petals per day, you'll get 12, 18, 24, or 30! This balances out the extra danger of being attacked by sea that comes with a naval base.
33) Similar to a Petal Gathering Center, you can build something awesome called an Management Center. This gives you another project slot. You can make a total of three, so in the end you're walking around with an epic 6 slots. To make one, you need a 30-day project, 300 resources, and 60 Petals (Which is what you'd normally pay for a 30-day project). Only one Management Center may be in production at a time.
34) If you forgot, to begin, you just have to make an army application in the Army Applications board. (Who'd have guessed?) It will basically resemble your very first log; it's just to make sure you know how to play before you jump in.
35) Armies starting late earn a bonus for each month that has passed since the game started, and should add them into their application or first log. You earn a Management Center for the first month, but the months after that are Petal Gathering Centers. This is because of the low amount of petals, and not to overwhelm new players with too many projects.
400 ordinaries/40 specials
Management Center (Month 1)
Petal Gathering Center (Months 2-4)
40 days of defenses
That's all, folks! Unless you want to read the Advanced Rules, you can start playing. Have a look at the bottom for example logs and a few other notes if you want.
Advanced Rules: This is what you’ll be looking at after you have played for a bit. Basically, they're very important (Like how to attack another player) but you don't need to know them at first. If you’re just trying to learn the basics, look up at the New Player Rules.
1) You can have one ally and one peace treaty. Send letters to establish these.
2) Letters to each other are automatically received--It is extremely hard to intercept them. And if it’s email or the likes, they won’t be finding it. Your fellow players can read the letter and see your plans, of course, but in the game they can’t magically know what you sent someone. That’s known as using Out-Of-Game knowledge, and is illegal.
3) An alliance can be very useful to both parties involved. The two armies can make a joint attack on someone for extra force, or can send units to each other's base for temporary defense. They can pool resources to buy something expensive, and that sort of thing. A peace treaty is simply an agreement between two parties not to attack one another. You may break your peace treaty by attacking by surprise, but then may never establish another one.
4) Special weapons may be designed for your troops through projects. They can be unique to specific creatures. (Red Bulborb has special bomb rock cannon mounted on his head, etc.) Some common examples of troop weapons are swords or rifles. How about bayonets for both at once?
5) Weapons are made individually. Unless they're really high quality, you can make them in groups of 50 or more--Just make sure you spend the right number of resources on them! The exact same goes for armor, it's just that armor is defensive rather than offensive. Troops with weapons or armor generally perform much better than those without.
6) Tired of gobbing up project slots to make defenses and machines? Why not do it automatically with a factory? For a 40-day project, you can construct a factory to automatically make defenses or one type of machine (Land, air, or naval). The factory will then go to work making stuff on its own, but Petals and resources are still consumed by the factory. It works at the same speed as project slots, so if you have the money and resources, it's like getting a free machine or defense all the time. No more than two factories can be running at a time.
7) If you want your factory to be able to produce another type of machine, all you need is a 20-day project to upgrade its capabilities. Then it can build something else. (For example, if you upgraded a Docks with an Airfield attachment, then it could build aircraft instead of ships or switch between the two.) If you want, you can keep upgrading the factory so it can make defenses or any kind of machine! Note that it can still only build one thing at a time; it just has more options.
8) Aircraft can only be built using the following resources: Wood, Aluminum, Stainless Steel, Titanium, or Hocotate Freight Rocket Metal. Also, due to their speed and terrain-crossing capabilities, a typical airplane has significantly less defense than something like a typical tank. A 20-day helicopter will take less to go down than a 20-day APC.
9) Your total number of Elite troops can't take longer than 2,000 days to capture. This means that you could have forty 50-day Snagrets, five 400-day Titan Dweevils, ten 200-day Raging Long Legs...it's up to you. But when the total time of your Elite troops hits 2,000 days, your base can't hold any more.
10) Obviously, you can upgrade your stuff--But it can't total up to more than 400 days of upgrades and the original build time total. For example, you could make a 300-day Ranging Bloyster and give it a 100-day set of armor on its back. But if you also wanted to give it a 50-day cannon mounted on its head, NO SIR. 300 days is pretty long for a Ranging Bloyser anyway!
11) Mines can be dug to automatically give you resources (Similar to a factory). Mines give you a clump of resources every four days, but require NO Petals or resources to run. Each mine only gets one resource type, and you can't have more than one mine for a certain resource type. They're very valuable assets, though. Have a look in the Universal Store topic in the Trade board to see what you need to get a mine; the better the resource, the longer it takes to dig the mine and the more you have to pay).
12) Once you hit certain milestones in your number of troops, you get an officer to join your army. The officer is like your Commander, except a decent bit weaker. He can do all the things your Commander can, such as write logs and lead forces, but with fewer repercussions for losing him and with less risk overall. He works the exact same way, with a name and capabilities. Like the Commander, you can regain a lost officer in 30 internal days if you remain above the required troop count. You can get four officers total when you hit these numbers of troops--Officers come one by one as you hit each milestone:
1,000 Ordinary troops
100 Specials troops
5,000 Ordinary troops
500 Special troops
13) When you attack someone or are attacked, you must formulate your strategies before the battle. A Flower Commander will moderate your battle once he has the war tactics of the players involved. The Flower Commander will then write a paragraph or more describing what happened in the first part of the battle; this will be controlled almost entirely by the plans of the armies involved. After this piece of the battle is written, the two sides will send in additional plans as a reaction to what happened in the first part of the battle. This will go on for four or more mini-updates, when the forces are weak or when somebody decides to pull out. The army players and battle moderator do not all need to be online at the same time, but the battle will proceed much faster if they are.
14) If you don't know what your battle plans ought to look like, just ask the regulars! And don't bother about how much you gained or lost from a battle; it's all posted in an easy-on-the-eyes list after a fight.
15) You may not attack an enemy with a force greater than 125% the size of his. This is to prevent experienced players from easily wiping out new armies or getting shoe-in victories.
16) There are three kinds of attacks: "Raids" are the smallest. These are usually small hits at the enemy to take down defenses, steal things, prod key points, and that sort of thing. "Attacks" are pretty typical attempts to paste your foe and cause damage, and "Assaults" are full-scale strikes meaning to cripple or even wipe out your enemy. Note that since Assaults are often deathblows, you'll almost certainly not be able to pull one off on your first attack. Try working up the tree—Get rid of the biggest threats one by one with Raids, then weaken the enemy with Attacks, and then finally go for the throat with an Assault.
17) When an army is destroyed, the attacker receives all of the defender’s intact Petals, any resources not destroyed, and captured/damaged war machines, base defenses, etc. In a battle, all of these things can be stolen without the enemy army being destroyed, but the attacker will have to specifically try to steal/hijack them.
18) Victory in battle is rewarded with Requisition. You'll get a little bit of Requisition for every small success in a fight. Requisition is a valuable, intangible resource that can be used to increase income for free, and it's your choice what you want to get from it. Here's what gets you Requisition:
-Killing/capturing 50 Ordinary troops (Or 5 Specials): 1 Req.
-Destroying/stealing a 15-day machine: 1 Req. (+1 for every 15 days the machine took)
-Destroying 25 days of defenses: 2 Req.
-Felling a 50-day Elite troop: 2 Req. (+2 for every 50 days the Elite took)
-Collapsing a mine: 3 Req.
-Destroying a factory: 3 Req.
-Destroying a building: 1+ Req. (Possibility of more based on building's importance)
-Stealing 100 resources (Or their worth in armor and weapons): 1 Req.
-Defeating another player: 15 Req.
19) Every Requisition point you spend can give you one of the following, which takes effect immediately. It can't be used in battle or right before one, but can be spent any other time.
-20 Petals
-10 Ordinary troops (Or 1 Special)
-Double a specific mine's production for the next time it gives you resources
20) If you are on the defending side of a fight, you get 50% the Requisition you would get on offense. If you have an ally fighting with you, the Requisition is split between you.
21) Flower Commanders will sometimes make Random Events--These can range from an earthquake to an anonymous army invading the area. They will not unreasonably hurt you and may be an optional event--Like a tournament, for example. They are also one of the only ways to obtain the rare HF Rocket Metal, unless the Special Store happens to get a piece in stock.
22) You cannot have more than one base. For a 50-day project, you can move yours to another location. This, however, shuts off all of your project slots and factories since you can't work while you move.
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A) These are the number of days it takes for certain specific productions. (A general reference list).
40+ Days: Factory-Automatically builds something every certain number of days or builds a certain number of something every day. Once it is built, it does not take a project slot to run.
20+ Days: Ammunition Research-Lets you use a new kind of ammunition.
50+ Days: Elite Capture-Gives you an Elite creature for your army.
30 Days: Management Center
60 Days: Petal Gathering Center
B) This is an example of what a beginner's log might look like.
Army: Tank Team
Location: Perplexing Pool landing site
Commander: Mr. Chummington (Red Bulborb)
Log: 1
Day: 0
Money: 160 Petals
Requisition: 0
Troops
Ordinary
10 Red Pikmin (Fire immune)
10 Yellow Pikmin (Electricity immune)
10 Blue Pikmin (Water immune)
10 Purple Pikmin (Poison immune)
10 White Pikmin (High offense and defense)
Total: 50
Special
5 Red Bulborbs (Heavy frontline troops with high defense, good against troops.)
Total: 5
Elite
(None)
Resources
600 Iron
Machines
(None)
Defenses
1 Flak Turret (Has four flak guns good at shooting down planes and helicopters) (Iron)
Research/Upgrades
(None)
Buildings
Weapons Storage (Holds troop weapons) (Iron)
Resource Storage (Holds resources) (Iron)
Ammunition Storage (Holds ammo) (Iron)
Barracks (Troop area) (Iron)
Projects
1. Build a Management Center (+1 project slot) [30/30 Days] -300 Iron, -60 Petals
2. Research Tank Shells (Armor piercing shells for tanks.) [20/20 Days] -40 Petals
3. Build a Speed Tank (Fast and terrain-conquering tank, decent power but low armor) [20/20 Days] -100 Iron, -40 Petals
Log
Mr. Chummington: Setting up the base today. After we have enough tanks to hold some ground, we will begin manufacturing them for sale.
C) Example log 2 ready soon
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D) When your army is approved, you will receive a miniature board in which to put all of your stuff. When you get enough things, post these threads with the proper descriptions in them. It's not required at the very start, but you should have descriptions of everything you're using before you go into battle. “Logs” is, obviously, needed at all times.
-Logs (Where the majority of your information is; shows your daily progress)
-Tech (Write descriptions for each item of your tech, like machines and weapons and things)
-Troops (Write a description for each troop type you have; only needed for elaborate/made-up troops)
-Base (Describe your base and its locale here)
-Mail (If anybody sends your army a letter, they'll post it here)
If you do not have a Base section when battles are written, if you have some clever set up involving the terrain or the like, it's not going to be included. Also, troop and tech sections are practically required in battle. (So you have this “Blue Bulborb”...what's it do?) It doesn't take an incredible amount of time--Just say what stuff looks like, what it does, and how it can be beaten. For example, a Hairy Bulborb could be described as a fuzzy white Bulborb with lots of defense but lower attack power than Red Bulborbs. A Light Tank could be described as a tank with ordinary armor and speed, a cannon firing -Insert ammo type-, and a machine gun firing -Insert ammo type-. Generally, having these sections make it much easier for the players to tell if something you have is balanced or make suggestions, and it makes battle-writing much easier.
E) Don't get overwhelmed. If you just can't figure out this stupid game, you probably don't understand what it looks like (And that's understandable with my shoddy descriptions). Check out the example logs above! Ask the regulars! Look at their logs! There are plenty of ways to get a feel for how things work.
F) The goggles, they do nothing!