Ideas for new faction?

[AF]

Eldar webways in dawn of war and necron summoning had very nice dynamics to play with that Ive not seen replicated in spring. EEs hubs where nice too

[zwzsg]

Can you describe them for those who haven't played DoW?

[Pxtl]

I do like the idea of pylon-limited building teleportation.... although you'd probably want to leave static artillery out of that faction.

[Wombat]

TYRANIDS <33333333333333333

[JohannesH]

Although I do think that Nydus Canals weren't too useful in StarCraft, but that might be because StarCraft doesn't have the queuing to make it work.

Dont trust your thinking, when its so easy to see that every good player makes nyduses as soon as they can

[Pxtl]

Yeah, I suppose I never really had the crazy APM you need to play Zerg anyways. I've only watched a few pro games, but they're mostly Protoss in those... haven't seen too many pro Zerg games. I'm not surprised that with pro-level APM those micro-sinks are popular.

[Forboding Angel]

Are you talking about the nydas network (sc2)?

It seems to be more of a teleport transport than anything as far as I can tell.

[Pxtl]

No, just old StarCraft - haven't looked at SC2 yet.

[KaiserJ]

hmmmm

jumping units could be very cool.

on the topic of teleport, C&C generals ZH had a very cool ability for the GLA army... tunnel networks

you build a bunker / tunnel entrance that would connect to your network

the entrances work a bit like transports... put a unit into any entrance, and they are added to an array (i believe 12 units) that show up as "in transport" for all of the tunnels. click a tunnel, click a unit, and the unit leaves the tunnel...

so essentially you can have units entering the tunnels from anywhere and leaving from anywhere. only 12 can be in there at once, but if you're quick with your micro, you can send a neverending stream through the tunnels.

on top of this; the tunnels were normally constructed as a regular building, but this army also had the option of a "surprise attack" superweapon tunnel... which would spawn a tunnel anywhere you clicked... pretty cool to suddenly erupt from the ground within the enemy base; the ultimate porcbreak.

edit : Tyranids gtfo XD they are OP

[Pxtl]

@KaiserJ

Zswssg has such a "tunnel network" gameplay in Kernel Panic on the Network faction, although the Buffer is uncapped and can only hold a single type of unit (packets).

[KaiserJ]

woooooot!

i've never played that faction xD i probably should. v cool though, i can see how that would work, especially with bits only

[Forboding Angel]

Well on the realistic side of things, we should see if there are any lua devs reading this thread. I'm not against doing something exotic, but we need to make sure that we have the ability to go there first.

Liking a combination of the idea's I'm seeing here. I haven't really formed anything concrete yet.

One thing I would like to experiment with is the protossesque unit warping to pylons. I mean, that's just a thought in my head, I wouldn't be heartbroken without it.

Tbh google's idea is a good one I think, but tbh I think you might end up with the sort of situation that EE has now. You have to be really good and apm-y to play aliens effectively, and I can't play them at all, at least not worth a crap. So to me it seems like we'd be creating a faction that I can't use, and the thought of that makes me quite sad qq

[Google_Frog]

Tbh google's idea is a good one I think, but tbh I think you might end up with the sort of situation that EE has now. You have to be really good and apm-y to play aliens effectively, and I can't play them at all, at least not worth a crap. So to me it seems like we'd be creating a faction that I can't use, and the thought of that makes me quite sad qq

True that is the glaring issue of a morph/clone faction. The UI should be built to make it easy to manage.

What about this: Units that can morph/clone have a toggle button that switches between "Don't Eat", "Eat (don't do anything once I've eaten enough)", "Eat then Clone when full" (if applicable to the unit), "Eat then Morph to X when full"(if applicable to the unit) , (add as many morphs as needed). Instead of Spring's toggle button system each of these states would be a button with the attached buildpic and description. The active state is displayed as a highlighted button.

With this UI the user would be able to tell a group of units to wait unit they are full then do an action, though "Eat" with no action still gives the user the option to do that action later.

Some smart defaults would be chosen for each unit type so if a user forgets about a mex spot his units would not waste the resources. For example breeders could clone and single morph combat units could morph to the next level. If a combat unit has multiple morphs the default might have to be "Eat" without an action.

Some other AI improvements could be added. For example units that have just been told to eat that are near a mex and have no other orders could automatically move into the mex radius.

[zwzsg]

You have to be really good and apm-y to play aliens effectively, and I can't play them at all, at least not worth a crap.

Nah, just clone repeat and they behave like factories.

[Dio]

first of all:
i am not very expiranced with RTS games and my English isn't the best either. I have read some topics but there is no way to read them all. I will apologize, if the following content was already discussed somewhere else.
But maybe this array of senseless thoughts will inspire someone else to get an epic idea:

The following could be used as a special feature of a faction.
-units/buildings which can apply a boost of damage(dmg), defence(def) or speed (etc.) to other units/buildings near them
-maybe a kind of commander unit (or regular unit which is quite expensive) but not with emp but dmg/def/speed boost which can be applied for a certain area and time. Maybe that ability should just be able to be activated while the boost-unit is not moving.
Perhaps like: unit moving > deploying/immobility > able to provide boost.

Further thoughts based on that:
> permanently applying dmg/def/speed boost
> permanently exhausting energy/need of a certain amount of power to activate
>boost intensity/range proportional to available power

>applying boost for a certain time
>unit/building has to be charged with energy

>since the idea of organic units/buildings is interesting, x-units could be charged by ÔÇ£eatingÔÇØ other organic entities > apply boost/skill/morph/whatever

Like a faction which makes intense use of support units/buildings/skills

what kind of concept do you have? Factions differing by being based on dmg/def/speed/(balanced)/mobility (nomadic faction mentioned by PicassoCT )
or a completely new one?

I hope reading that wasn't a total waste of time for you.

Yours sincerely

[KaiserJ]

hmmmm lots of good ideas here!

welcome dio, good input from you :D haha im merely the modeller, i don't want to make any big choices about gameplay myself; but any input really is welcome

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZjVSkeo8wg

^ factory animation concept (still needs something for nano-emitters) maybe this will continue the thread of interesting ideas!~

[AF]

Rather than having YAFWNS (Yet Another Faction With NanoSpray), perhaps, we can have a different kind of assembly which isnt a frame with a weapon or spray nozzle pointed at it.

For example, we could have field emmitters containing a swarm of nanites, and show the unit fading in from nothing in the middle of a swarm sfx or hazey cloud.

Or even a warp in effect, with a vortex forming culminating in a snap followed by a small explosion and a white structure that fades out into the normal colours

[Dio]

There should be lots of ways to avoid YAFWNS.

What about buildings being droped from above (sky/space) by helicopter/dropship? (Lunar Corp like)
The landing zone should be marked and an engineer unit be needed next to it, to ÔÇ£coordinateÔÇØ the process. (the activity of such an unit could be indicated by a red light which will glow or whatever... ) A bar could show the remaining time till the building arrives.
Maybe the whole building should not arrive as complete one but in ÔÇ£stages of expansionÔÇØ(hope that's the correct term) or as a cube (or whatever) and unfold.

An ÔÇ£organicÔÇØ faction could just grow their buildings
like planting something which grows while consuming resources

@AF
Field emitter? Quantum mechanics in EvoRTS?^^ That sounds quite unique and interesting.
How should such a field emitter look like? (sorry, my poor imagination....)
Explosion? I guess, a burst of light would do it, too (or are you going to destroy what was just built ;D )

But I guess there would be a problem to solve:
The terran faction need their engineer units to construct buildings. Those units have to stay next to it animating their nanospray to indicate which specific object they are working on (am I wrong?)

If the buildings were warped in, there would be no need of engineer units for that faction. Furthermore would be no way to delay/abort the construction process by eliminating the engineer.

In my opinion that would result in a faction without engineer units or we have to find a way to bind those units to the construction while they are working on it.
Maybe the unit itself should consist(be animated as) of nano-particles/(nano-machines). If it's not doing anything it could look like a little ÔÇ£vortex of nano-unitsÔÇØ (or similar to those insect swarms from diablo II )If it's constructing, the entire building could be covered (or something alike) by the swarm.
(well, that's quite the same thing AF mentioned, isn't it?)

[zwzsg]

What about buildings being droped from above (sky/space) by helicopter/dropship?

S.W.S. and P.U.R.E. already do that. Well, not certain about SWS cause it hasn't yet been released. But anyway, point is, it's not original if other Spring game(s) have already done it.

[Forboding Angel]

Rather than having YAFWNS (Yet Another Faction With NanoSpray), perhaps, we can have a different kind of assembly which isnt a frame with a weapon or spray nozzle pointed at it.

For example, we could have field emmitters containing a swarm of nanites, and show the unit fading in from nothing in the middle of a swarm sfx or hazey cloud.

Or even a warp in effect, with a vortex forming culminating in a snap followed by a small explosion and a white structure that fades out into the normal colours

This stuff I could do quite easily, however, you gotta understand, behind the scenes it's still just nanospray. Unless some enterprising dev decides to go rip the guts out of the building code, that's not gonna change, but we can fake any number of effects.