Spring RTS Engine

So I was pondering the random nature of battle and I came up with an idea that I think would add even more strategy to our games...

My idea revolves around "Side Bonuses" which would be selectable at the start of the game. There would be a selection of bonuses, say 5, of which each player can choose one and only one at the beginning of the battle and his side would, obviously, get that bonus.

For instance, let's say we had bonuses of:

- Veteren Units (Every unit built automatically has increased experience)
- Metal/Energy Package (Player gets a bonus of 5000 m/e, or some other amount)
- Low-Cost Housing (Buildtimes reduced by 25% or something)
- Weapons Upgrade (All weapon damages increased by 25% or something)
- Mechanical Upgrade (All units have increased speed)

Those are just examples, and the specific amounts can be changed for balancing but you get the idea... each player would only get to choose one, and the bonus would affect his side only. Also, it'd be even better if these bonuses are moddable so that each mod can create their own bonuses to suit their mod better.

So like I said I think it could add a unique level of strategy and randomness into games... what does everybody think?

PS wrong forum.. someone please move this to Feature req's?

All weapon damages increased by 25%

HAW HAW HAW HAW HAW You're crazy.

Interesting idea though, but maybe with 5% boosts, not 25% ones.

It was only an example, Cadyr

Why not just make it so units do 100% more dmg on a one out of 1 chance. And give Peewees the ability to fly, Commanders fire Nukes, And of course, Lets not forget the Septuple annihilator Vamp.

okay, ignoring all the crazy talk up there ^ , I think this would be a very good mod-definable feature...

Any such system would be best if it's as flexible as possible - so even limiting the number of choices to one would be a needless restriction - let the modder define that too

I can see something like this being very useful for mods like War Evolution etc

Bit like W40K traits then? It could be very worthwhile in mods designed for it and impossible to balance in others.

Weaver wrote:It could be very worthwhile in mods designed for it and impossible to balance in others.

hence mod-definability...ie mods don't have to use the feature, same as 90% of all other suggestions on this forum...

yeah, mod should dfine how many and what they do... some choice could be

Damage Boost - %dmg
Speed Boost - %spd
Resource Extraction Boost - %xn
Resource Infusion (this would hav to be kept low, though ) - time, amnt
Health/Armor Boost - %hlth
Climbing Boost - %clmb

and such...

I think this could be very interesting, in a mod where all other factors were even, or the sides were divergent enough that a minor buff in one area would have little effect, whereas in another area it'd be a buy.

However, in the end, I strongly suspect that pro players would just figure out which settings were the least-balanced, and then never use anything else- think "Zerg with 10% resource bonus", or "Terrans with 10% defensive bonus" or "Protoss with 10% build-speed bonus"

Maybe it would be wiser to give bonuses in the form of more unit options, aka Emperor: battle for dune? or just more options in general (you can do special ability A or B) aka Generals .

Argh: No different than pros finding out that they should concentrate on mass-producing one type of unit because its better all-around...

Do it!

You'd need a script that can take your unit defs and create copies of all the files with a set of changes, then create sides that use one set of units each. Or you could beg the devs to add a feature where you can add some tags to the sidedef and Spring automatically creates those extra units at load time.

It an interesting idea. Your examples are a bit lackluster, but anyone who can comprehend understands what you are saying.

As long as the bonuses were mod definable I don't really see the problem with it.

Perhaps a side bonus that each player gets that is hidden from all the other players (including allies), so that certain things would have less likelyhood of being stacked.

People would just talk to each other.

not if they didn't want to tell the other team...I mean they *could* tell each other, but it'd take a lot more effort

besides, I think that's for the modders to figure out - though I spose there could be a tag for 'visiblebonuses=0/1' or something

Things like this are part of the reason mods really need their own interface menu on game load. Right now there's very little custom things a mod can define that lobby can actually tie into, basically just how many teams and a small icon for each. There's ALOT more mod specific things modders could potentially want players to be able to choose before the game starts.

Perhaps the lobby could include a special section in the battle screen for mod specific menus and settings? Then those settings could get passed to the game on startup along with all the other settings.