IPB

Welcome Guest ( Log In | Register )

 
Reply to this topicStart new topic
Strategy game idea: Counter Strike turned into RTS/RTT, No tank, no aircraft, no building
OrikoMikuni
post 3 Feb 2020, 4:03
Post #1



Group Icon

Group: Members
Posts: 74
Joined: 12 February 2019
Member No.: 19478



Although this look like more of a real time tactic than a real time strategy but my idea based on Company of Hero formula but with some major change.

-No vehicle, no aircraft, no production structure.

-You still have to capture some designed room/building and it will generate money for you to produce your unit. And since each location got a limited amount of money you can never turtle and or stay in one place and you must attack and capture constantly or you will lose the economic advantage to the enemy.

-Instead of producing unit now you will have to drop your unit into the rooftop of a building by helicopter or use the underground tunnel/sewer to get your troop out. Basically it is a way of using instant drop anywhere on your controlled area.

-The depth of the combat lies on the terrain and the environment of the combat. Because this idea rely purely on urban combat so you can expect your troop to fight inside room or sniping through the other building or you can even let your troop sneak through an underground network to cause a surprise attack on the enemy. In addition to that cover and positioning is the main point of this game, you have to place your army correctly considering your army never exceed 30 soldiers as this allow you to micro your army much easier instead of throwing your army into the wrench, and with the squad based system (3-5 soldiers per squad) you would got even less soldier to control as you will always control groups of soldier instead of individual one.

Factions and setting idea: I didn't think of this much but so far it is very simple, you got 2 sides: the government army (Powerhouse) and separatist (Subversive).

The separatist rely on bobby trap to ambush the enemy and underground network to product their army. They also got sniper as a way to balance out their weak frontal combat capability as their weapon is outdated and lack a strong firepower like their enemy.

The government army use heavy firepower to win the frontal combat, they also got a combat shield that absorb a limited amount of damage or a portable ram to break door.

This post has been edited by OrikoMikuni: 3 Feb 2020, 4:06
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
X1Destroy
post 3 Feb 2020, 9:19
Post #2


Guardsman
Group Icon

Group: Members
Posts: 2077
Joined: 22 October 2012
From: Terra
Member No.: 9379
Armageddon is here..............



This could work, if the entire map is a gigantic 3 dimensional structure rather than a flat 2d like a tradional RTS game. Looks like a more advanced version of DOW2 campaign, but with dispodable units instead of heroes.

Weapon balancing could be a problem though. MG team might be either OP as hell or completely useless if they have an insanely long reload time as weakness. Since it's mostly indoor and underground cqb, cover destroying weapons may fuck you up as much as it harms the enemy. Unless everything in the building is indestructible, tossing a grenade or two can collapse a path, maybe?

This could open to alots of interesting scenarios if RNG mapping is done. Like parts of the building switch its type of traps and spawning positions after a certain condition is met, but unpredictably. Like one of your guys suddenly change allegiance in the middle of a fight, and vice versa to the enemy. You can always find replacements, but something else could be lost or gained along the way.

Tech between two factions shouldn't be all that different, and to make it more fun you should be able to capture theirs gears, or destroy if you can't carry them over. There should also be a way to block the enemy temporarily without having to get someone to kill them. Collapsing a supply room to starve them, for example.

This post has been edited by X1Destroy: 3 Feb 2020, 9:33


--------------------
We Die Standing.
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
OrikoMikuni
post 3 Feb 2020, 11:20
Post #3



Group Icon

Group: Members
Posts: 74
Joined: 12 February 2019
Member No.: 19478



I'm actually thinking of an idea where you can interact with a few important furniture inside a room like light switch, blocking door with furniture, using door lock to either open the room or lock it down. And imagine playing a fight inside a high building with elevator and stair. So many potential to have with this kind of idea if it was actually real and feasible since you can virtually do many things and trick to the fight that caught them off.

As for MG I think interacting with the environment can either favor or hate them if you make it right, you can switch the light off and hide your MG inside a dark room and wait for them to enter your range. Bobby trap can serve as a powerful delaying tool especially when the separatist is the underdog when it come to frontal combat, collapsing a correct part of the build can block the whole path of your enemy if you do it right. But yeah maybe make the trap to explode manually also work well to create a blockade before your enemy try to evade it.

As for the map I think if should be small enough but has many layer from underground to high elevator so that your army can hide from the higher or lower floor undetected but still at least large enough to get your sniper and MG work well since they thrived having a clear sight of range to maximum their advantage.

Tech between sides aren't much different though, maybe only 2-3 different units (bobby trap vs shield infantry, cocktail vs flashbang grenade, etc...) but most of them would be the same for filling the necessary purpose. Looting would be a nice idea though, imagine stealing a MG after sneak attack on them. gun8.gif (but yeah if each of your unit can only see half of the vision in front of them flanking and turning off the room light would be fantastic to sneak attack on them)

On the side note this idea can work well with many setting from both serious and non-serious settings as it is mostly small scale gun fight so it also allow modder to make their idea worked in many kinds of setting they wished for (like reskin mod of your infantry for example).

This post has been edited by OrikoMikuni: 3 Feb 2020, 11:34
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
X1Destroy
post 4 Feb 2020, 18:00
Post #4


Guardsman
Group Icon

Group: Members
Posts: 2077
Joined: 22 October 2012
From: Terra
Member No.: 9379
Armageddon is here..............



Yeah. One of the main reasone that got me bored of modern games quickly is that almost none are made to be moddable anymore. And I mean real modding, not a texture change or value edit. It doesn't matter if you're a genius coder, if you only play make-believe games with tons of unit that look the same, like an infantry with 10k hp to act in place of a tank. Adding new 3d models with custom animations is the basic requirement, but for obvious reasons devs don't want that to happen anymore.

The vision affected combat enviroment thing is nice. Apparently true sight in RTS is possible now, unlike in the 2000s. It needs more tweaks though, like the vision of a standard infantry guy should be really blurred at distance, blurred but not impossible to see like the fog of war logic. A vehicle will obviously look at things much clearer due to sensors, but it can't see anything at the side or back for obvious reasons. But an open-topped one with multiple crews should not have that problem,

For this game, scout infantry having thermal optics should be able to see enemy position even in the dark. But he should not see everything around that isn't a living target. You could still surprise him with say, laying a trap that isn't explosive. And if he choose to use light to improve vision in the room, your guys too should also be able to see them. I always want stealth to be alots more believable. You should know what is coming at you, but not exactly what stuffs they have. And the thing to counter it could also help it if done right.

The very fact that modern strategy games prefer to have disctinct, cluttered visual effects, different models for units that are basically the same but with a different weapons, or removing certain mechanics to make it easier to counteract messy situations is a bad move IMO. Stealth isn't just about making a dude turn transparent. It should be more about confusing your opponent via equipments and tactics that are hard to predict.



--------------------
We Die Standing.
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
OrikoMikuni
post 5 Feb 2020, 13:26
Post #5



Group Icon

Group: Members
Posts: 74
Joined: 12 February 2019
Member No.: 19478



Stealth can be applied more realistically if there is a game engine implement the realistic view of human eye and environment. The thing about many RTS that I saw was the view of your unit, it is a circle instead of an arc shaped view. Normally human eye only see a view arc which prevent you from seeing anything behind your back unless you turn around. By sneaking behind your back your unit is already 'invisible' if your enemy didn't turn their back around before it was too late.

Mod these day can actually destroy a reputation of a bad game like Red Alert 3 if the modders managed to make a mod that surpassed the normal one in term of popularity, I think the dev would have a valid reason to prevent the community from ruining their income like how Grey Goo from Petroglyph trying to prevent the modders from prospering from the first place, and also copyright problem and other stuffs.

To be frank I actually cared more about the other problem actually, I always want to see a new RTS game trying to be casual friendly with Coop (like SC2 new direction after their bad experience with the eSport) and single player focused while having a good depth and good graphic visual. Such thing is impossible considering eSport is a flying money bank that many people love to chase behind which means there will always be a competitive scene of some sort and the game balance will be heading toward the competitive instead of the casual scene.

Right now the RTS future got 2 good directions to go:

-Competitive path: Mostly 1v1 balance and maybe 2v2 sometime. The complexity, gameplay design and depth along with balancing are important but after seeing Blizzard changing their direction to Coop it's mean RTS can't live well with too much focus for the competitive scene.

-Casual path: Single player, Coop, playing with friends, 3v3, 4v4 and even more players, etc.. I think single player and coop got the best future for casual because they never get stale if the missing objective keep changing constantly each missions.

But yeah this is up to debate because some people like competitive scene while other like the casual instead so having a RTS game that tried to balance between both side would be a huge headache to handle. (Like how people keep demanding Mental Omega dev to tone down the campaign difficulty and it turned into a huge argument between the casual and the competitive one)



This post has been edited by OrikoMikuni: 5 Feb 2020, 13:40
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
X1Destroy
post 5 Feb 2020, 19:56
Post #6


Guardsman
Group Icon

Group: Members
Posts: 2077
Joined: 22 October 2012
From: Terra
Member No.: 9379
Armageddon is here..............



The sight of vehicles in COH2 is a step in the right decision, but they still kept circular view for infantry. We will probably need another generation of RTS till most of the "realistic" functions become completely codable in an easy way.

That is true, and it's one of the reasons why we're seeing a decline in quality everytime a sequel came out. Apparently everybody only cares about short term profits after they made a good branch in the market. They don't bother to fix broken games and don't let anyone else fix it when they can just make another and cut support for the old ones. The other option is going game as a service model, and we already know how that turned out.

The casual path may actually be the best way to go at the moment. They are billions proved that you don't need a pvp-centric audience for the game to grow. The entire game is designed around not needing another human to aid you, and people still like it.

The PVP players don't stick to the same game for a decade. They move on to another when a game start getting less and less playercount. But the SP, coop group would keep playing until they are truely tire of it, and if the game is moddable it might never happen.

Esport is a trap that have killed so many of those who tried to get into it, but lacked the foundation to keep it going. IMO it is something that should not have exist. Perfect textbook balance, plus being nice to watch for viewers does not go well with creativity and real fun.

Imagine a 16 players game where you spent an hour building trenches, scouting, maxing tech then go to war with artillery spam and Titans A-moving. Plus all the players play a different factions each and each faction have like 6 sub-faction choices. And each player have a different winning condition too. There would be endless possibilities.

The esport, SC people would immediately ignore this thing and never look back. But the casual group, the tabletop collectors, the DOW1 players want exactly this. Otherwise Ultimate Apocalypse and Unification mod would not have kept going for so long. It was never balance that drew them in. It was because they can play theirs favorite imagined combat scenarios out in a computer game.

When devs stop caring about old fans but couldn't make a game great enough to draw in the esport people, things fell apart.

Mental Omega's campaign difficulty is not due to devs being all pvp first, though. It is hard because Speeder and his testers are insane. The current version is still really difficult, but it is actually doable now. The campaign in older versions was fucking unwinnable. The Epsilon campaign was and still is a micro fest full of puzzles. It's not even about strategy anymore, but trial and error until you know how the map was made and do it just like how the maker want it to.

This post has been edited by X1Destroy: 5 Feb 2020, 20:04


--------------------
We Die Standing.
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post
OrikoMikuni
post 6 Feb 2020, 12:14
Post #7



Group Icon

Group: Members
Posts: 74
Joined: 12 February 2019
Member No.: 19478



I still hate that obnoxious Terror Drone in the bush though, but yeah I think I'm getting distracted and off topic here.

Anyway here is a few idea from me to improve my initial idea:

-Some of the stuffs that need to be divided to be fitting with each side tactic and theme, I don't want to divide too much since each side should at least got enough stuffs to even the odd against each other. Portable battering ram would be a no brainer for any faction that love to go brute force, sniper should be on the weaker side so that they can at least engage with the enemy otherwise the brute force faction will be even more stronger if you can't put any decent defense if the sniper just keep sniping your troop one by one.

Smoke grenade and flash bang is hard to define, in some movies I used to see special force would throw grenade to either injure or blind the enemy before they enter the room, but the same time the subversive side can also turn it into their advantage for retreat of surprise attack. Cocktail is fitting for any low tech faction and you can also create a smoke screen as well.

Missile launcher and grenade launcher are the thing I afraid to add into my idea hence why I never want to mention it right from the start. For a long time I knew splash damage and huge damage can tip the scale of the fight very dramatically. And if you can't control the balance good enough, the one with many splash damages may dominate the game very hard if they can decimate your troop over and over again no matter where you hide. It's best for me to think my idea should never have too much explosive from the start to prevent such problem from happening.

-As for faction calculus I was thinking maybe 2 factions only (Powerhouse and Subversive) but implement the branching tech tree of CoH into it so that you can have an easier time designing your faction while keeping some of the techtree choice with the branching in game, also you can change the techtree anytime you want with some money and cooldown so that you can adapt to the situation while balancing it out by a decent cooldown time whenever you tried to change your techtree too fast.

-Because this idea consist of infantry only so you can expect all of them got near equal hp even if you can have a shield to soak some damage but you can still flank it with ease because the combat shield doesn't cover all angles to begin with. Having near equal hp prevent a situation where one side spam too much tanky stuff and become hard to kill if they are too good at doing brute force tactic. On that regard limiting the amount of shield infantry is necessary, maybe 3-4 only so that you can have a brute force faction with some protection but they can still be countered with flanking and other stuff.

This post has been edited by OrikoMikuni: 6 Feb 2020, 12:16
Go to the top of the page
 
+Quote Post

Reply to this topicStart new topic
1 User(s) are reading this topic (1 Guests and 0 Anonymous Users)
0 Members:

 



Lo-Fi Version Time is now: 28 March 2024 - 16:01