Game Mechanics
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Essential Mechanics
Most of game mechanics should be defined through experimentation. But before that, we need some game to make experiments with. And for that game we need some essential mechanics. Which I would like to propose now. They are, of course, open to discussion. Since these mechanics might be hard to change later on I will try to keep them as few and nonspecific as possible.
Time and Space
I want to propose using a two level representation of time and space, in the style of HoMM or X-COM. The higher level would present a strategic map of major locations with teams of heroes traveling between them. Lower level would be a "zoom-in" on a certain interesting part of the world, like your settlement or a certain team. That way we can both present the large scale events and allow some micromanagement.
Higher level
Time in this level can be either turn based or real-time with pause and time scaling (a'la Europa Universalis). I currently prefer the turn based time, as it simplifies the pacing and performance issues (and worked great in HoMM). So unless someone persuades me otherwise this is the approach we are going to try first. The length of a turn would probably be one day. Half a day is an interesting experiment to make as it would allow us to expose the day-night cycle. High level would probably be mostly used for managing the teams and performing simple actions, like trading with a random encounter. For more complicated gameplay the game would move into the low level. Which actions should be handled by which system will be decided later.
Lower level
This I envision as a cross between a RPG and a RTS. Player would be able to order the individual characters around to accomplish various tasks. It would probably use real time with constant scale and a pause for the combat elements. Player actions in that mode would affect the higher level either directly, like winning a battle or completing other discrete task, or through some extrapolation of player performance. Like if the player controlled wood choppers chopped one tree every 30 minutes, then they should cut about 16 during the 8 hours assigned to this task. That way the player would not need to micromanage everything - mostly just setting up the work flow and reacting to changing conditions and emergencies and these are the most interesting parts of micromanagement after all. The exact method of extrapolation remains to be decided.
Pros and cons of the system
This system should allow us to present the player with both the macro- and micro-scopic view of the world. An alternative way to do it would be to allow for dynamic scaling of the game wourld, but that would require the engine to do quite a lot of fancy stuff, like handling huge maps, dynamic scaling, LOD switching and map streaming - I don't think FIFE is capable of doing these right now. What is perhaps more important, this system requires the LD's to only do the micro-mapping of "the interesting bits" of the level - those where we will allow the player to zoom in. The areas in between will not be visible the whole time, so they can be auto-generated or instantiated from a template in case they have to be zoomed in to, for example during a random encounter.
Control scheme
Initialy, I think that the simplest way to control the heroes will be a direct one. You give them orders and they obey. Simpler orders you will give using the high-level view - for example travel, healing, simple resource gathering. For the more complicated ones, like settlement managment, combat, stealing or general "adventuring" you will have to go into the low-level view. More mundane tasks, like eating will be automated - the player will only decide how much each hero should eat and unless there are sudden food shortages, he should not be bothered with eating again. The exact mechanism of automation is left to be decided.
Morale
I would like to augument the direct control system with a morale system (inspired by the one Steel Panthers). It would work as follows - you do have a direct control over the heroes as long as their morale stays above certain level. If it goes below, than the heroes starts working on his own until you make something to make his morale rise. The morale depends generally on the well being of the hero but can also be influenced by a plethora of other factors, like the presence of a highly motivated leader, death of his friends and family, mind altering drugs and so on. This would add a whole new gameplay level of keeping your heroes under control.
