DESIGN DOCUMENTATION

Movement Systems (Proposed)

Pod Statistics & Squares Per Move

There are two pod stats that could effect movement: Speed and Weight. Weight is the sum total of all the Sizes of the shapes that make up the whole pod. Speed is an average taken of all the speed of thes shapes. If a pod is made up of these:

Sphere1
	Speed: 62
	Size: 54
Sphere2
	Speed: 60
	Size: 50
Tetrahedron1
	Speed: 91
	Size: 26
Cube1
	Speed: 50
	Size: 62

Then our pod ends up with a Speed of 66 and a Weight of 194.

The number of Squares moved per turn is a rough inverse of the Weight statistic. The heavier the pod, the less it can travel in one turn. With this system, light pods such as scouting pods, move much faster and stealthier than heavier attack and defense pods. The basic equation for tiles moved per turn is:

W_CONST = 2000; // weight modifier
S_CONST = 50; // speed modifier - halfway in a 1-100 scale of speed

(sqrt( (1 / weight) * W_CONST )) * (speed / S_CONST)

This roughly gives a fast, one-shape pod about ~16 tiles and a slow-moving, large pod ~5 tiles.

Initiative & Moving Turns

So, there are a variety of pods on the map with differing amounts of tiles they can stride in one turn. How do they move?

After selecting a mission for all pods on the map and after all players have pressed the TURN button, movement begins. Each active pod in the entire game is given an initiative rating, which in fact is simply it's Speed rating (the speed of the whole pod, not any shape). Faster pods will get first step priority, then moving on down the list until you move the slowest pods.

After the list is composed, the fastest pod in the list will move one tile of its alloted movement. Then next fastest will move one tile, and so on until all pods have taken a one-tile hop. If a pod has moved all of its alloted tiles, it is removed from the list (it is done moving). After all pods in the list have moved one tile, we go back to the top of the list and each pod moves its second square. Then the next square, then the next square, until all pods have exhausted all their alloted tile movements. At this point, the movement phase is complete and the player resumes control of the planning phase.

The reason each pod takes a step at a time instead of each pod moving all of its squares at once, or even having all pods moving a square simultaniously is to eliminate collisions and overlapping on the map. On map tiles, pods cannot "stack" or hop over each other. A tile can hold only one pod and combat takes place between adjascent pods, not like in Chess where you move on to them. This system also allows multiple combats to take place each turn for each pod. A pod may end up battling several others in the same turn (if it survives).