So, currently, I'm a little addicted to Magic the Gathering card game (and have spent too much money on it already).

It soon dawned on me that SC1 haven't had a map where the gameplay is focused on turn-based strategies (except Dragoncraft, but you don't actually fight with the units, which sucks).
The obvious problems are... obvious...
like how there isn't enough controllable variables that a map maker can easily manipulate, like %'s, dodge rates, and etc...
or how turn-based strategies is such a big departure from normal SC, even the UMS section, that players will probably be confused...

The biggest problem is that the rigidity of Turn-based strategy games is just doesn't fit SC1.

BUT I think I found a workaround system.

The map will work like this. Players are divided into 2 teams, and the objective is to kill the other team's base.

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So far, it isn't too different from micro games like Uberena and Random Unit Battle.

What I intend to do is have peons build buildings that each have their own effect.
For example, Hatcheries will automatically spawn a zergling every single turn.

Certain "Builds" that I am planning will be very "Game ending", but I feel that Hard counters is one of the perks of turn-based strategy games.

Of course, with building management comes Diplomacy/Area defending mechanics. Buildings on geysers will award the entire team extra resource.

Here are some that I've thought of

The buildings need to be able to have their own sub-gameplay mechanics that can be exploited and countered by smart-players

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Next, Special buildings (things that can't be built) will act as a Turn "Enchantment", where it's effects only lasts for that one turn in which you bought it.
For example, the psi-emitter will block all of the opponent's buildings functions for that turn.
Or make it so that all units spawned is an infested terran.
Or double the amount spawned.

These things will affect the entire team (opponents or yours).

Lastly, Units will be upgradable to Hero units, for a price, further giving more incentives to save the units.
Each hero unit will also have one ability.
For example, the Archon hero's ability is to take control of enemy buildings near it.
Dark archon, probably take control of enemy units near it, if I don't give it Mind Control (So no problems regarding controlling other people's hero units and stuff like that).

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Problems.

1. Where should units be created? Should it be from buildings, or have a buying system by moving civs into beacons. If I choose the former, what about buildings that are built inside the arena, how'd I control units being built from those? If the latter, there're too many units available to buy, and it's a clunky system.

2. How will I be able to inform the players of all these things, like building effects, special buildings effects, and hero abilities? Easiest way would be to make the game progress slowly, giving players more time to absorb the data... But that may crush "aggro" strategies.

3. Is thirty seconds enough?

4. The game inherently forces the players to stall, which I believe can be solved by having game-changing effects, such as maybe doubling the amount of units being spawned, and etc. But how far should I go? Also, what sort of things can counter it?

5. Should I give players specific Tech Trees, for example, only certain units/buildings can be made when you have other units/buildings? It helps to draw out the game and ease new players in, but the con to that is that it fucks up some strategies.

6. NEED MORE IDEAS!!

So yeah... I don't know... give me your two cents..
If you don't understand..... then read it again!

Ah, turn-based gameplay! I had this idea and made a map with it over two years ago?

OOOHhh I remember playing that game

I thought it was really cool and interesting, but I disliked the fact that people can mass like crazy and there aren't too too many unit variation.
I don't remember much about it though...

From your experience, what did you find most problematic about this set up, and any pot holes with my theorized system?
I think 30 seconds is too little tho, probably a minute.

Trying pseudo-turn based game (not 1 action, but XX amount of time) ... I don't like it.
It's slow, and boring (if the player doesn't understand will surely quit).
It's cheatable (blocking, running, becomes a fight against the timer, not to the enemy).

I could give you an example:

You fight with 7 zerglings, and the other team has 2 sunken colonys and 5 broodlings.
Zerglings attack turn
Broodlings block the way, thus sunken colonys rape zerglings and the timer goes down.
End turn: dead zerglings, dead broodlings, sunken colonies full hp.

Even if zerglings cost 2 or 3 times the broods, enemy has the advantage (micro + defense) even if that was zergling's turn.
How can you counter it? (fair turn-based)

btw I tried so far to make a real-turn-based game but it's a pain in th ass, because the amount of triggers and locations needed (even before to start the fight) are just too much, so well. Maybe your idea could work, I'd like to watch over it

I like your idea! It's pretty cool. Maybe 30 secs is too short tho. Especially because:

People would have to spend some time buying stuffs, and less experienced players definitely need more time. Players will be bored when they're ready and someone else isn't yet. If action timeis merely 30secs, players are going to wait more often. Also, for the same reason, having too many varieties will confuse new players. IMO itwould be better not to have something complicated like items with too many functions.

Besides I also love M:tG. It's a realy nice turn-based game.

Sounds like you answered your own question.

Have a help system available for use during the other player's turns. (Well, their own turn, too, but they shouldn't be reading then.) Displaying random tips as the game goes on worked for my map, but it was much less complicated.

This depends on how many things there are to do in a turn. In my map, it turned out 47 seconds went from being too long at the beginning to not nearly enough at the end. Rushing to get everything that you can done in time is part of the fun.

Having bonuses for attacking is nice. My map addressed this in a lot of ways. A player's upgrades applied only during their turn and had 1/1 otherwise. This gave a defensive advantage at the start of the game that shifted to an offensive advantage as the game progressed and players got up to 3/3 upgrades. Also, Tanks didn't have siege. And you needed to expand to get more resources and units, so good luck turtling when every beacon counts.

Up to you. It is how StarCraft works. Ultimately, this can't be answered without seeing it in action, in which case people will probably complain if it's stupid.

Massing did get to be problematic since every beacon spawned one marine each turn.
The unit variation was as much as TvT without air units.

If "this set up" refers to your ideas, they aren't nearly concrete enough to be critiqued well.
If "this set up" refers to my map... what I should have done is renamed the map to 37 and made the map a bit smaller and tighter.

Heal only units and not buildings. Or only heal buildings every 2-5 turns. Things with massive HPs that probably won't be destroyed in one turn are just too much to heal every round.

[47] only uses 239, which isn't a lot. A lot of those triggers aren't actually for the turn mechanics.

@ Kusari n Minimoose
Yes, that was exactly what I was thinking.
Buildings will not heal, but creatures will
Also, there will be game ending things added so that stalling can only last so long.

Please don't waste your time on a "real" turn-based game on SC... sc is just not built that way

@hints
I usually like having a fixed progression to ease players in rather than frontload text... but in this case, it may be the only choice.


So I've thought of one way to deal with the time problem (too little time to do damage vs. too much time so players get bored).
The game will start off with the first turn only 30 seconds, but each turn will add 10 seconds to the counter until a certain amount of time.

Also, during the non-action phase, I can make it so that if one team is ready, the other team will be forced onto a 30 second timer to do their stuff.
I would probably add a general timer of 1 minute, so that afk'ers won't ruin the game.

Hmm this sounds like an interesting mix between Nexus Wars and BattleCraft. Or that old UMS card game where people took turns summoning units to battle similar to Yu-Gi-Oh or Pokemon. Neat-o.

Beat me to it! God I wanna play that game again.

I like the idea. Their could be a few ways to go about this. You could have it so where you start off with a basic base, certian amount of resources, and have a choice of spending it on units, buildings to produce more advanced units in later turns, or saving it to buy more cheaper units. Maybe have it where a building.g produces a specific unit, maybe have a civillian to walk onto a becon or somthing to purchase that kind of unit...have a couple second delay so you don't spend all your money un intentionaly on that unit. Make sense at all?

Wasn't Fate and Destiny turn based?

Turn Based is nothing new sorry.
Nonetheless good luck with any turn based map you choose to make!

Here's some examples of turn based: (See attached files and/or links)

"47" made by moose around... 2009?
"Ataxx" (Note, Ataxx is a very early beta - attached file) made by me very recently
Spaceship Combat made by me early 2008.
"Connect Four" by Millenium Army, i dont know when he made this.
and a Chess map I dont know who made it or when sorry.

Spaceship Combat, I was a noob in many ways back then when I made it but it is a bit of a "flagship map" with 4000 triggers and it is basically a complete turn based game not based on an existing game like chess or connect 4 or anything. It has balance issues and one very rare bug but generally is interesting to play a few times if not atleast once.

Attachments:

There's also YuGiOh the map, which is turn based, and I'm sure there are others.