I personally have always liked modding, although as I've gotten older, I've become more realistic in my goals and what-have-you. Also more persistent. Originally, it was mostly mucking around with INI files for Red Alert and RA2, or liero (loads of fun), and then it was with tibed and generals (I use notepad for everything now).
This is the first mod where I've had a defined plan and everything written down. However, it has incorporated a decent amount of ideas from previous ideas I've had floating about my head.
Probably the most prevalent and recent is a Red Alert mod for C&C3, which I started thinking about after they released the mod SDK for C&C3. It was not going to be Red Alert, but in 3D, but more like Red Alert retold with a different playstyle and from a different perspective.
It would have told the story based on the Allied victory being inevitable, and have attempted to link Red Alert and Command and Conquer that way. Playing as the Soviets would have had you fighting a losing war, holding out in various scenarios etc. You'd find that Kane leaked plans for some sort of EMP weapon to Nicola Tesla, and you'd have to hold out etc. As the allies, you'd make various pushes into Soviet territory, and eventually do various peace-keeping operations after the war as Nod rises to power.
The gameplay would have substantially different from C&C3 or the original Red Alert. Both teams economies would have been derived from their control of civlian villages all over the place, rather much like the Rush resource mechanic currently in place.
Each team required power (facilitated by mobile generators) to run their turrets and RADAR.
All buildings for each team would be mobile, except for defence structures. The buildings would be dropped in via a cargo plane. This mechanic can currently be seen with the Stealth team. The Allies would be able to camouflage their buildings so that a soviet force may just ignore them. Alternately, the soviets could garrison one squad inside each of their structures, allowing them to be a little more defencive.
All defence structures would also be dropped in via cargo plane, tesla-coils rather violently so. The player would take their completed structure and order it in, with a rather similar interface to the standard C&C scheme.
Ordering in troops would be similarly facilitated. All of your production structures would have an exit waypoint, which could be deployed near any other production structure. A cargo plane would drop your troops off there. This was supposed to be a different take on the traditional Red Alert and C&C idea of "More production structures make production faster", as all your troops would end up at one place four times as fast if you have four times as many production structures, even if they're in different places.
Rather than the traditional idea of superweapons, the soviets would have mobile V2 rocket launchers and the allies would have howitzers. Both would be strategic level weapons that must be deployed before firing, and have a long reload time.
Something I did think about a lot, but eventually dropped, was the idea of logistics. Tanks would carry around 60 or so shells, V2s would carry one shot etc, and you've have to drive your stuff back to a supply depot, where little dudes would run out with ammunition and a wrench (for repairs, obviously).
Little dudes with wrenches notwithstanding, the aesthetic of the mod would have been a lot darker than Red Alert or any of its successors. Soviet tanks would be dark and belch smoke everywhere, Allied tanks would be cleaner, although similarly coloured, and the only bright things would be explosions and fires (from the inevitable firebombings).
The tech tree I thought about a bit. It could have gone two routes. One was via a global timer (set by the host of any game). After 15 minutes, you could get tech 2. After 30 minutes, tech 3 etc. This would mean that tech rushing would have no meaning, and really the only thing you could do was be more efficient with your early units so you'd have funds for later ones (or go for an all out rush).
The other tech would be a global kill amount, also set by the host. Say, after $15000 of units had been destroyed, the game would progress to the next tech level. This would also be good to more efficient players, and worse to less efficient ones. Obviously, in larger battles, the kill limit would increase.
Anyway, if you've read the rest of the blog, you can see where various things ended up from that mod.
In its infancy, when I first proposed the idea and talked to a couple of people about it, things were quite different from the way they currently are.
Stealth was originally going to use its basic anti-infantry infantry to deploy teleportation beacons anywhere on the map, which has sort of evolved into the Rush constructor mechanic, which enables what I like to call a cockroach strategy. The cockroach strategy is initiated when a player loses or is losing a base, so abandons the original base and quickly sets up another one elsewhere.
Rush was going to be able to construct weak sustainable economy structures which would each produce 1 power, and also be able to build a generic be-all-end-all turret (kinda like the gattling turret) that took up one power. Hence, one resource generator, one turret. This was replaced by the more different capture civilian buildings and get money, as well as being more conductive to rushing, and making them strategically seperate from turtle and stealth. Base defence is now afforded by units (as is stealth detection).
Anyway, that's all I can remember for now. There are obviously a lot more things, but currently they're not coming to me at the moment, and I'm out of time.
Next week: Hopefully some concept art and maybe even renders, as well as a status report.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
It's quiet out there
I have a question for whoever may be reading this. Is it appropriate that you must hunt down every last production building as well as every last builder unit to win a multiplayer/skirmish match? Tell me where-ever.
Anyway, the Stealth faction. The Stealth faction is designed to be very sneaky, obviously, and promote more strategic gameplay. One of the more difficult things to balance is spamming stealthed units, as the counters cannot so easily be moved to where the spammed units are. Hence, several things have been done to stop as much spam as possible.
The first is the economy, discussed earlier. The economy relies on active involvement from the player, rather than being automated. It also discourages spamming units, as spam is one of the least cost effective strategies, as once your opponent starts cranking out the counter, your kills/death ratio will drop rather dramatically, and thus your ability to spam will be nerfed in the future.
The second is the way the units are designed. While the other two teams may have some units that fulfill many roles, Stealth has almost none of these. Their units are very specialised, and finding a good all round unit to spam will be difficult.
Obviously, Stealth does have quite a few advantages also, although as unconductive to spam as possible.
Stealth's build mechanic is based of three Mobile Command Vehicles, or MCVs (C&C throwback, there). It's rather similar to the mechanic for the British Commonwealth in Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, although with a few differences. Firstly, they are functionally different. They are not intended to hold ground, but rather to provide a stealthy base of operations that can be easily moved to another area. Secondly, they are more dedicated. The Primary MCV only produces infantry, the Secondary MCV only produces vehicles, and the Tertiary MCV only produces drones.
The MCVs are stealthed when deployed, and count as vehicles when packed up. This is important for reasons discussed later. The MCVs also provide valuable information by 'listening in' on enemy movements. Thus placing your MCV slightly off the path of commonly travelled routes is a good idea, although you never want to get caught.
The first Primary MCV is paradropped in at a location of your choosing from around your starting location. Once deployed, your can start producing infantry. Each MCV is also able to build the other two MCVs.
Which brings us to the tech tree. The tech tree for Stealth is based around kills. You get more kills, you get more tech. Obviously, it's non-linear. To get the Secondary MCV, you need to purchase that off the tree. To get the Tertiary MCV, you need to already have the Secondary MCV, as well as buying the Tertiary MCV off the tree. You also need to purchase various specialist units which have their own tree starting with the Advanced Infantry.
The Stealth faction have more infantry than the other two teams (though not combined), and they play a more important role in the Stealth player's strategies, as well as their opponents'. All Stealth infantry are... Well, stealthed. This means that they are undetectable unless you have a stealth detector unit nearby. The majority of stealth detection is also based around infantry, which means that your opponents' infantry will now play a larger role in the battle too (as opposed to being relegated to useless in lategame).
The Stealth basic infantry are enough to see you by almost everything. Their AA infantry is the same, pretty much (it seems to be a point of commonality between the teams), their anti-infantry infantry is halfway between the other two, and so are their anti-tank infantry. Their basic anti-tank infantry also serve as better anti-fortification than their advanced anti-tank infantry, which keeps both units useful in both their own roles and in others.
Their advanced infantry sort of blur the line with the well-defined roles. The advanced anti-fortification infantry pack a powerful assault rifle and demolition charges, while the advanced anti-tank infantry have the same assault rifle and a deployable missile launcher. Neither are particularly spammable, since they are both very expensive for their purpose, and you can only have one demo charge on a building at a time. You also have to deploy the anti-tank infantry for it to kill tanks, and then pack it up to move on, so it's better for ambushing than going out and attacking an enemy army.
The third advanced infantry is the advanced anti-infantry. This infantry actually does much less damage per second against infantry, but does it at a long range. It is a sniper, and yes, it can shoot people out of buildings, important for harrassment against an opposing Rush player. It also has an ability called spot, which stops it from shooting, but allows it to see further into the fog of war, and also detect stealth units, which means that it plays a vital role (doubly so!) in a Stealth mirror match.
All of the advanced infantry must be bought through kills, in the same fashion as MCVs are. How much of these tier 1 options you'll be able to get at the onset of a game remains to be seen at this point. The tree is also undecided at this point.
Stealth vehicles operate in a different manner. Stealth does not have any tanks, which are defined as vehicles that can shoot while moving and crush infantry. All Stealth vehicles are based off the same chassis (except for the MCVs). They are divided into anti-infantry, anti-tank, anti-air, and anti-fortification. Anti-infantry is the only vehicle that fulfils multiple roles, providing the Stealth player with transport capability, which holds up to five infantry who cannot shoot out.
One thing I don't believe I have mentioned is that whenever a transport is destroyed, all the infantry inside are also killed. This applies to all transport vehicles, not just Stealth ones. The way this affects Stealth in particular is that it increases the importance of destroying transports before their payload is delivered. It gives a large hit of funds from the troops inside and the cost of the transport itself.
Anyway, there are several points of commonality with Stealth vehicles, which I have dubbed a 'chassis bonus'. Something I want to try in this mod is the idea that several vehicles can be based off the same chassis, and thus an upgrade that applies to a particular chassis effects all different variants of. Some example chassis include the Turtle HAT chassis, or the Rush Lightly Armoured Vehicle chassis.
The stealth vehicle chassis include the ability to disguise the vehicle. All Stealth vehicles can disguise. This is an important departure from the stealthy infantry. Disguising vehicles means that an opponent knows something is there, but not what is there. Obviously, using Stealth vehicles relies a bit more on the opponent than using infantry. You must attempt to bluff your opponent into believing your force is something else, to maximise killing potential.
The two most basic examples are disguising as your opponents' vehicles to get into an advantageous position and making your force look vulnerable to a particularly sort of attack. The first is the most basic, being usable in C&C Generals with demolition trucks. The second is slightly more complex. The example I use most of the time is disguising your AA units as AT units, so that the bad guys send out aircraft to quickly dispatch your units, and then you get a ton of loot.
There are sneakier things you can do with that. For instance, you could disguise one of your MCVs as one of their construction vehicles, and then try to sneak into their base (because it's probably the last place they'd look, but maybe not). Once deployed, you will no longer be risking anything as your MCV will be stealthed.
In larger multiplayer free for all games, you can try to make opponents attack each other, or maybe even break truces. The possibilities are many!
Stealth vehicles are also extremely fast, promoting hit and run behavior with their long ranged weapons. This tactic also provides high reward for fairly low risk. The thing that most Stealth players should have at the front of their minds is whether their actions will be rewarding while suffering as few losses as possible. Rush doesn't need to concern themselves with this, as their economy is self-sustaining and permanent. Turtle needs to think about it more, but bad decisions are not as quickly reflected in their economy.
The last pair of units are the drones. Stealth have two drones, both of which are stealthed. One provides AA support, and the other provides AT support. Outside of these roles, they are close to useless, other than keeping an eye on the battlefield below.
The upgrade system works similar to the patch system of the Novus. You can swap out various upgrades for new ones depending on what situation you are in. This is facilitated by the Tertiary MCV. The upgrades have their upsides and downsides, and obviously you have to weigh them up.
When playing against Stealth, you obviously have to use strategies that are a massive departure from the ones you'd use against Turtle and Rush. One of the goals of this mod is that build-order and strategy is not only dictated by which army you are playing, but which army your opponent is playing. Games where the teams are cosmetic changes or slight variations in heroes or special units can often get bland very quickly.
Next week, I'll talk about the history behind this mod, where various ideas originated etc.
Anyway, the Stealth faction. The Stealth faction is designed to be very sneaky, obviously, and promote more strategic gameplay. One of the more difficult things to balance is spamming stealthed units, as the counters cannot so easily be moved to where the spammed units are. Hence, several things have been done to stop as much spam as possible.
The first is the economy, discussed earlier. The economy relies on active involvement from the player, rather than being automated. It also discourages spamming units, as spam is one of the least cost effective strategies, as once your opponent starts cranking out the counter, your kills/death ratio will drop rather dramatically, and thus your ability to spam will be nerfed in the future.
The second is the way the units are designed. While the other two teams may have some units that fulfill many roles, Stealth has almost none of these. Their units are very specialised, and finding a good all round unit to spam will be difficult.
Obviously, Stealth does have quite a few advantages also, although as unconductive to spam as possible.
Stealth's build mechanic is based of three Mobile Command Vehicles, or MCVs (C&C throwback, there). It's rather similar to the mechanic for the British Commonwealth in Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, although with a few differences. Firstly, they are functionally different. They are not intended to hold ground, but rather to provide a stealthy base of operations that can be easily moved to another area. Secondly, they are more dedicated. The Primary MCV only produces infantry, the Secondary MCV only produces vehicles, and the Tertiary MCV only produces drones.
The MCVs are stealthed when deployed, and count as vehicles when packed up. This is important for reasons discussed later. The MCVs also provide valuable information by 'listening in' on enemy movements. Thus placing your MCV slightly off the path of commonly travelled routes is a good idea, although you never want to get caught.
The first Primary MCV is paradropped in at a location of your choosing from around your starting location. Once deployed, your can start producing infantry. Each MCV is also able to build the other two MCVs.
Which brings us to the tech tree. The tech tree for Stealth is based around kills. You get more kills, you get more tech. Obviously, it's non-linear. To get the Secondary MCV, you need to purchase that off the tree. To get the Tertiary MCV, you need to already have the Secondary MCV, as well as buying the Tertiary MCV off the tree. You also need to purchase various specialist units which have their own tree starting with the Advanced Infantry.
The Stealth faction have more infantry than the other two teams (though not combined), and they play a more important role in the Stealth player's strategies, as well as their opponents'. All Stealth infantry are... Well, stealthed. This means that they are undetectable unless you have a stealth detector unit nearby. The majority of stealth detection is also based around infantry, which means that your opponents' infantry will now play a larger role in the battle too (as opposed to being relegated to useless in lategame).
The Stealth basic infantry are enough to see you by almost everything. Their AA infantry is the same, pretty much (it seems to be a point of commonality between the teams), their anti-infantry infantry is halfway between the other two, and so are their anti-tank infantry. Their basic anti-tank infantry also serve as better anti-fortification than their advanced anti-tank infantry, which keeps both units useful in both their own roles and in others.
Their advanced infantry sort of blur the line with the well-defined roles. The advanced anti-fortification infantry pack a powerful assault rifle and demolition charges, while the advanced anti-tank infantry have the same assault rifle and a deployable missile launcher. Neither are particularly spammable, since they are both very expensive for their purpose, and you can only have one demo charge on a building at a time. You also have to deploy the anti-tank infantry for it to kill tanks, and then pack it up to move on, so it's better for ambushing than going out and attacking an enemy army.
The third advanced infantry is the advanced anti-infantry. This infantry actually does much less damage per second against infantry, but does it at a long range. It is a sniper, and yes, it can shoot people out of buildings, important for harrassment against an opposing Rush player. It also has an ability called spot, which stops it from shooting, but allows it to see further into the fog of war, and also detect stealth units, which means that it plays a vital role (doubly so!) in a Stealth mirror match.
All of the advanced infantry must be bought through kills, in the same fashion as MCVs are. How much of these tier 1 options you'll be able to get at the onset of a game remains to be seen at this point. The tree is also undecided at this point.
Stealth vehicles operate in a different manner. Stealth does not have any tanks, which are defined as vehicles that can shoot while moving and crush infantry. All Stealth vehicles are based off the same chassis (except for the MCVs). They are divided into anti-infantry, anti-tank, anti-air, and anti-fortification. Anti-infantry is the only vehicle that fulfils multiple roles, providing the Stealth player with transport capability, which holds up to five infantry who cannot shoot out.
One thing I don't believe I have mentioned is that whenever a transport is destroyed, all the infantry inside are also killed. This applies to all transport vehicles, not just Stealth ones. The way this affects Stealth in particular is that it increases the importance of destroying transports before their payload is delivered. It gives a large hit of funds from the troops inside and the cost of the transport itself.
Anyway, there are several points of commonality with Stealth vehicles, which I have dubbed a 'chassis bonus'. Something I want to try in this mod is the idea that several vehicles can be based off the same chassis, and thus an upgrade that applies to a particular chassis effects all different variants of. Some example chassis include the Turtle HAT chassis, or the Rush Lightly Armoured Vehicle chassis.
The stealth vehicle chassis include the ability to disguise the vehicle. All Stealth vehicles can disguise. This is an important departure from the stealthy infantry. Disguising vehicles means that an opponent knows something is there, but not what is there. Obviously, using Stealth vehicles relies a bit more on the opponent than using infantry. You must attempt to bluff your opponent into believing your force is something else, to maximise killing potential.
The two most basic examples are disguising as your opponents' vehicles to get into an advantageous position and making your force look vulnerable to a particularly sort of attack. The first is the most basic, being usable in C&C Generals with demolition trucks. The second is slightly more complex. The example I use most of the time is disguising your AA units as AT units, so that the bad guys send out aircraft to quickly dispatch your units, and then you get a ton of loot.
There are sneakier things you can do with that. For instance, you could disguise one of your MCVs as one of their construction vehicles, and then try to sneak into their base (because it's probably the last place they'd look, but maybe not). Once deployed, you will no longer be risking anything as your MCV will be stealthed.
In larger multiplayer free for all games, you can try to make opponents attack each other, or maybe even break truces. The possibilities are many!
Stealth vehicles are also extremely fast, promoting hit and run behavior with their long ranged weapons. This tactic also provides high reward for fairly low risk. The thing that most Stealth players should have at the front of their minds is whether their actions will be rewarding while suffering as few losses as possible. Rush doesn't need to concern themselves with this, as their economy is self-sustaining and permanent. Turtle needs to think about it more, but bad decisions are not as quickly reflected in their economy.
The last pair of units are the drones. Stealth have two drones, both of which are stealthed. One provides AA support, and the other provides AT support. Outside of these roles, they are close to useless, other than keeping an eye on the battlefield below.
The upgrade system works similar to the patch system of the Novus. You can swap out various upgrades for new ones depending on what situation you are in. This is facilitated by the Tertiary MCV. The upgrades have their upsides and downsides, and obviously you have to weigh them up.
When playing against Stealth, you obviously have to use strategies that are a massive departure from the ones you'd use against Turtle and Rush. One of the goals of this mod is that build-order and strategy is not only dictated by which army you are playing, but which army your opponent is playing. Games where the teams are cosmetic changes or slight variations in heroes or special units can often get bland very quickly.
Next week, I'll talk about the history behind this mod, where various ideas originated etc.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Turtle up, superweapon bait
I have recently had my wisdom teeth removed, and thus am hopped up on drugs. This shouldn't affect my writing ability, however I have been informed that this will not be a legally binding document. oubw4lknm
Before I start describing the turtle team, I would like to say a few words on turtling in general. In competitive gaming, only new players turtle. Turtling leaves the initiative in the hands of the enemy, which is of course one the many steps on the road to defeat. However, turtling remains very popular in single player (especially in campaigns, where the bad guys already start with an army), and in 'comp-stomp' games, where several players face off against computer controlled players.
One of the reasons for this is that computer controlled players are fairly predictable. If they run in to your defences once, they will likely do so again in short order. This gives the players a feeling of security, and once their defensive line is perfect (or such that a bad guy won't be able to get through with predictable attacks), can start moving out of the base, or spamming superweapons and what-have-you.
Against a human player, though, their imagination often gets in the way of the idea of a perfect defensive line. Thus, turtling is much less popular than attacking and rushing. So, how to make it so a turtle team has a fighting chance against a player of isn't turtling? Well, I tried, and thus far I believe I am fairly successful.
Firstly, their economy (discussed previously) lends itself well to turtling. Unlike Rush, its economy is not spread out, but concentrated in specific areas. This means that the area to defend allows it to be economical to defend heavily. Their economy has another effect, which comes a little later.
Secondly, almost all of their buildings can be garrisoned. Even the humble power plant (which turtle must build many of) can often be a formidable bastion. The bad guys have to weigh up the pros and cons of attacking any structure, or perhaps even send a sacrificial unit to figure out what you have in a building (possibly revealing your bluff, if you haven't dumped anything in there).
However, there is usually a strategic choice involved, as you often do not have enough money to build enough infantry to defend everything all the time. The obvious choice is to garrison the outer buildings of your base, or put AA infantry inside the inner buildings.
The turtle team is also the only team with defence structures, superweapons, and offensive support abilities. Superweapons and support abilities are obviously "free damage", although all support abilities can be shot down be enemy AA. This is obviously part of the end-game scenario, where the map has dried up.
Rush and Stealth both have permanent economies. So long as there are civilian structures left on the map, Rush can get money. The act of getting money does not reduce the amount of money there is. Stealth can get money until the point where there are no opponents left on the map, and have an effectively infinite resource pool from which to draw.
Turtle, however, runs out of money. There is a finite amount that can be carried away from battle. There are a few reasons for this.
Firstly is it is encouragement for a turtle player to take initiative. The turtle player should know that it cannot turtle indefinitely, and at some point must venture out of the base into the murky wilderness beyond. Either that, or set itself up into an endgame position with superweapons and long ranged artillery.
Outside of the base, a turtle army is far from helpless. Indeed, their tanks are much tougher and heavily armed than their counterparts. Against a Rush player, the Rush player should be aware that in head-on confrontations, the turtle player will likely get the first shot, a shot which would rather harshly impart justice on any foe. However, they do not have any anti-infantry vehicles, and thus must always have accompanying infantry to support their slow, powerful tanks.
Something else that a Turtle attack force is vulnerable to is flanking, as their turn rates are quite slow. Thus, a Rush light tank wouldn't expect to win against an HAT, it may be able to do considerable damage before getting blasted, rather than none.
As mentioned before, Turtle are the only team to have superweapons. One 'superweapon' is shorter ranged, cheaper, does less damage, and takes up less damage. This is the Anti-Fortification Tower. Its main use is area denial, and sustained bombardment. It fires once every twenty-seconds, and can be fairly devestating against the bad guy's base.
The other superweapon is the railgun. This is more standard than the AF Tower. It has a 3 minute reload time, but when it fires, it will take out all units and lighter buildings in an area on the map (it has infinite range).
Those two weapons are part of the turtle's endgame. The other two are the super-heavy vehicles, unlocked through the support abilities tree. The super-heavy IFV is basically a mobile building that doesn't produce anything. It has five garrison slots. The other super-heavy vehicle is the Railgun Carrier, which carries a smaller version of the superweapon. It acts as a sort of artillery/MBT. Both superheavy vehicles are extremely tough.
Turtle infantry are definitely a part of the bread and butter of a turtle player's strategy. Other than being relatively versatile compared to the tanks, they are also part of defence and are Turtle's main source of stealth detection. Artillery infantry serve as the only cheap artillery on the team, and can also serve a variety of battlefield roles with the appropriate upgrade.
Which (finally) brings me to the upgrades for Turtle (which I think I forgot to cover for Rush). Turtle has 8 upgrades in total, divided into four sets of two, of which players can have 1 of. Since the upgrades are permanent and irreversible, they are a major strategic decision. For instance, one pair of upgrades deals with the HAT chassis.
The HAT (Heavily Armoured Tank) Chassis upgrades apply to everything with an HAT chassis. That is, the HAT, the AA variant of the HAT, and the HAT Constructor, the Turtle builder unit. The options are an anti-infantry machine gun, or self-repair. Each of these improve HATs in different ways. As HATs are very slow, it takes them a while to get back to base and repair. Thus, the self-repair module increases sustainability, as well as time. However, HATs are also not very good against infantry (indeed, the constructor and AA version can't even target them). So thus it is a step-up in versatility (as well as DPS).
That sort of choice can affect the direction of the game. Once an opponent knows which upgrades have been taken, then can start changing tactics to take advantages of your weaknesses. Say an opponent knew you had taken the self-repair module. They might push just that little bit harder to destroy vehicles on low health, so that those vehicles will never get a chance to self-repair.
The upgrades happen sequentially, and get more expensive the further up the tree they are.
The turtle aircraft are mostly fit for a close air support. While they are relatively fast, they have a short sight range, so they are none-too-good for scouting. They are decent against all targets, but must return to base to reload.
Also, the rush upgrade mechanic:
Rush gets its upgrades from killing enemy units. There is a limit of four upgrades in total, but they do not cost anything, and are not mutually exclusive with each other. This makes them less limited than Turtle upgrades, but you have less control about when to get them.
Sorry if this post is a bit rambly.
Next week: Stealth Summary
Before I start describing the turtle team, I would like to say a few words on turtling in general. In competitive gaming, only new players turtle. Turtling leaves the initiative in the hands of the enemy, which is of course one the many steps on the road to defeat. However, turtling remains very popular in single player (especially in campaigns, where the bad guys already start with an army), and in 'comp-stomp' games, where several players face off against computer controlled players.
One of the reasons for this is that computer controlled players are fairly predictable. If they run in to your defences once, they will likely do so again in short order. This gives the players a feeling of security, and once their defensive line is perfect (or such that a bad guy won't be able to get through with predictable attacks), can start moving out of the base, or spamming superweapons and what-have-you.
Against a human player, though, their imagination often gets in the way of the idea of a perfect defensive line. Thus, turtling is much less popular than attacking and rushing. So, how to make it so a turtle team has a fighting chance against a player of isn't turtling? Well, I tried, and thus far I believe I am fairly successful.
Firstly, their economy (discussed previously) lends itself well to turtling. Unlike Rush, its economy is not spread out, but concentrated in specific areas. This means that the area to defend allows it to be economical to defend heavily. Their economy has another effect, which comes a little later.
Secondly, almost all of their buildings can be garrisoned. Even the humble power plant (which turtle must build many of) can often be a formidable bastion. The bad guys have to weigh up the pros and cons of attacking any structure, or perhaps even send a sacrificial unit to figure out what you have in a building (possibly revealing your bluff, if you haven't dumped anything in there).
However, there is usually a strategic choice involved, as you often do not have enough money to build enough infantry to defend everything all the time. The obvious choice is to garrison the outer buildings of your base, or put AA infantry inside the inner buildings.
The turtle team is also the only team with defence structures, superweapons, and offensive support abilities. Superweapons and support abilities are obviously "free damage", although all support abilities can be shot down be enemy AA. This is obviously part of the end-game scenario, where the map has dried up.
Rush and Stealth both have permanent economies. So long as there are civilian structures left on the map, Rush can get money. The act of getting money does not reduce the amount of money there is. Stealth can get money until the point where there are no opponents left on the map, and have an effectively infinite resource pool from which to draw.
Turtle, however, runs out of money. There is a finite amount that can be carried away from battle. There are a few reasons for this.
Firstly is it is encouragement for a turtle player to take initiative. The turtle player should know that it cannot turtle indefinitely, and at some point must venture out of the base into the murky wilderness beyond. Either that, or set itself up into an endgame position with superweapons and long ranged artillery.
Outside of the base, a turtle army is far from helpless. Indeed, their tanks are much tougher and heavily armed than their counterparts. Against a Rush player, the Rush player should be aware that in head-on confrontations, the turtle player will likely get the first shot, a shot which would rather harshly impart justice on any foe. However, they do not have any anti-infantry vehicles, and thus must always have accompanying infantry to support their slow, powerful tanks.
Something else that a Turtle attack force is vulnerable to is flanking, as their turn rates are quite slow. Thus, a Rush light tank wouldn't expect to win against an HAT, it may be able to do considerable damage before getting blasted, rather than none.
As mentioned before, Turtle are the only team to have superweapons. One 'superweapon' is shorter ranged, cheaper, does less damage, and takes up less damage. This is the Anti-Fortification Tower. Its main use is area denial, and sustained bombardment. It fires once every twenty-seconds, and can be fairly devestating against the bad guy's base.
The other superweapon is the railgun. This is more standard than the AF Tower. It has a 3 minute reload time, but when it fires, it will take out all units and lighter buildings in an area on the map (it has infinite range).
Those two weapons are part of the turtle's endgame. The other two are the super-heavy vehicles, unlocked through the support abilities tree. The super-heavy IFV is basically a mobile building that doesn't produce anything. It has five garrison slots. The other super-heavy vehicle is the Railgun Carrier, which carries a smaller version of the superweapon. It acts as a sort of artillery/MBT. Both superheavy vehicles are extremely tough.
Turtle infantry are definitely a part of the bread and butter of a turtle player's strategy. Other than being relatively versatile compared to the tanks, they are also part of defence and are Turtle's main source of stealth detection. Artillery infantry serve as the only cheap artillery on the team, and can also serve a variety of battlefield roles with the appropriate upgrade.
Which (finally) brings me to the upgrades for Turtle (which I think I forgot to cover for Rush). Turtle has 8 upgrades in total, divided into four sets of two, of which players can have 1 of. Since the upgrades are permanent and irreversible, they are a major strategic decision. For instance, one pair of upgrades deals with the HAT chassis.
The HAT (Heavily Armoured Tank) Chassis upgrades apply to everything with an HAT chassis. That is, the HAT, the AA variant of the HAT, and the HAT Constructor, the Turtle builder unit. The options are an anti-infantry machine gun, or self-repair. Each of these improve HATs in different ways. As HATs are very slow, it takes them a while to get back to base and repair. Thus, the self-repair module increases sustainability, as well as time. However, HATs are also not very good against infantry (indeed, the constructor and AA version can't even target them). So thus it is a step-up in versatility (as well as DPS).
That sort of choice can affect the direction of the game. Once an opponent knows which upgrades have been taken, then can start changing tactics to take advantages of your weaknesses. Say an opponent knew you had taken the self-repair module. They might push just that little bit harder to destroy vehicles on low health, so that those vehicles will never get a chance to self-repair.
The upgrades happen sequentially, and get more expensive the further up the tree they are.
The turtle aircraft are mostly fit for a close air support. While they are relatively fast, they have a short sight range, so they are none-too-good for scouting. They are decent against all targets, but must return to base to reload.
Also, the rush upgrade mechanic:
Rush gets its upgrades from killing enemy units. There is a limit of four upgrades in total, but they do not cost anything, and are not mutually exclusive with each other. This makes them less limited than Turtle upgrades, but you have less control about when to get them.
Sorry if this post is a bit rambly.
Next week: Stealth Summary
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Obviously, since this is a mod and not a fully fledged game, there are a number of things that I would have liked to have done but couldn't because of engine limitations or hardcoded settings. Some of these were unrealistic from the get-go, for instance, the Stealth Basic AI Infantry would have been able to hack an enemy's superweapon, giving the Stealth player the ability to prematurely fire off the superweapon's next shot (but only after it has finished loading, obviously). Some other things have been a little less obvious, its inability to being implemented only apparent after trying to code it.
The latest being the Turtle technology mechanic. Originally, they were intended to have 4 sets of two upgrades, and from each set they could choose one permanent upgrade, forgoing the other. However, thanks to the Zero Hour engine being unable to handle mutually exclusive global upgrades, I have had to change this. Now, Turtle must select their upgrades in a specific order (which I have yet to decide, but I suspect it will go basic infantry, vehicle, advanced infantry, other... Vehicle and advanced infantry could switch).
Anyway, on to the economy mechanics of the game.
Pretty early on in designing this mod, I decided that each team should have different economy mechanics. The main reason for this is that I thought it would be cool, and also unique. As it turns out, Universe at War had 2 different economy models, and quite a lot of modern games have different resource collectors for each of their teams.
However, in all those games, even Universe at War, each team's economy is comparable to the other. Well, sure, the Masari have those resource collector buildings, but that's the most different team. I wanted to make each economy as different and unrecognisable as I could. These economic models should change the strategies of each team. I will start with the Turtle's resource model, as it is the most similar to the standard RTS economy.
Turtle has 3 different resources, although most people won't think of the second two as resources, even though they are resources by definition. The first is money, the second is power, and the last is Generals points. The other two teams do not have to manage power. The last two are pretty simple, and anyone who has played RTS games before should be familiar. Power is a non-cumulative sustainable resource, and Generals Points are a cumulative non-sustainable resource. Power is generated by Turtle Power Plants, and Generals Points are gotten by killing enemy units. Good, now what about money?
Turtle gets its money in the same way that all C&C Generals teams do at the start of any skirmish game. You have a supply zone, from which you collect supplies, and then those supply collectors have to make their way back to your Resource Operations base, whereupon you receive your funds.
To mix things up a bit, you cannot individually order your supply collectors, but they are automatically rebuilt for free from your ROB if they are taken out by an enemy raid. This obviously means that you don't have to concentrate as much on your resources, as the enemy will have to destroy the ROB before you need any active input.
This method of resource collecting makes money a cumulative non-sustainable resource. This means that, yes, Turtle has a limited amount of money they can collect during a game, between fifty thousand and two hundred thousand 'moneys' a game, so long as they acquire at least one more supply zone.
The limit means that a Turtle player cannot hide behind a wall of turrets and buildings living off exponential economic growth and superweapons. They must, at some points, venture out of their base and attack their enemies, or at least set up a winning position before their money runs out.
The fact that their entire economy can be contained around these supply areas means that Turtle only needs to defend these relatively small areas to avoid harrassment. Conversely, a hypothetical opponent can camp these locations to attempt to prevent the Turtle player from getting income from these locations, although this is unadvisable as a Turtle's force is generally more powerful in engagements that they choose.
Rush's economic model is different again. They do not have to deal with power, only money and General's points. Their method of income is dependent on how many civilian buildings they have garrisoned. The structure generates money over time (presumably from the ether). This means that money for Rush is a cumulative sustainable income source.
This economy model opens the door for a large number of strategies otherwise not present in the RTS. For instance, one could perform a scorched earch strategy by retreated and destroying all civilian structures that were behind your front line, or advancing and doing the same. With a Rush mirror game, the thought process becomes a bit more complex, as civilian buildings you destroy are also a hit to your economy.
This economy model is a slight nerf to your rush, as you can immediately rush your resources, rush your opponents, but most likely not both. Since you use your military units, as opposed to seperate resource collecting units to get resources, you can't do both.
In a Rush mirror, players must also weigh up whether it is better to destroy the building, or attempt to capture it for their own use. Obviously, other players have to make the same choice, but have less incentive to capture buildings.
Without considering an opponent, a Rush player must also decide whether to split up his forces and gain the most income for the most risk, or put all his eggs in one basket, and have many infantry in one building. This decision is mostly at the start of the game, as later in the game other things influence your decisions, like how your opponents are going about taking down your economy.
The Rush economy is intended to be the easiest to 'boom', but also the easiest to harrass. This makes Rush a more high-risk faction to play and build on, rather much like the rest of its strategy. The economy is permanent, so barring outside influences, Rush can continue to produce units forever.
The last economy is Stealth's economy, which is hugely dissimilar to the standard RTS economy. While Turtle is similar to many many games, and Rush has a similar one to the latest Relic games (and some older games, most likely), Stealth doesn't really have an analagous economy model. They only get money (and General's Points) through killing. You kill an enemy unit, you get money equal to the value of the target. This is the only way to get money, is by killing.
This economy model promotes stealthy strategies and tactics. You should employ hit and run attacks, or ambushes, in order to maximise your kills to death. If you don't, your money reserves will dwindle down until there is nothing left. This obviously discourages spam, since it's difficult to get more money to replace losses, and once your enemy counters one unit, it's uneconomical to keep producing that unit.
This economy is also a nerf. One of the things often encountered in RTS games is that stealthed unit spam is much more difficult to beat than regular unit spam, simply because the enemy can't employ force concentration correctly. Thus, this economy means that you cannot be a stealth player in a larger multiplayer game and slowly build up an epic force of unstoppability. You have to win using non-standard strategies, and not win through attrition (as most RTS games are won by).
The economies are intended to be as different as possible. This does mean that the goal "get more money" is not synonymous with "harrass enemy's economy". This also means that economy harrassment is different depending on who you are facing, and thus increases the importance of scouting at the start of a match.
Here are some other notes:
A resource is cumulative if you get some of the resource now, and can later spend it so long as you have production structures or upgrades to spend it on. A cumulative resource is money from C&C Generals, or Requisition (and power) from Dawn of War. It is non-cumulative if once the resource gatherer/structure is down you may no longer use the resource points acquired. For instance, power in any C&C game (barring Renegade), or Population Cap in Starcraft. You need more overlords!
A resource is sustainable if it can be acquired indefinitely. For example, money in C&C generals, Requisition and power from Dawn of war etc. A resource is non-sustainable if there is a point at which you can get no more of the resource. For instance, General's points in Generals, Population Cap in Starcraft etc.
Anyway, next week I'll dump up a summary of the Turtle Faction.
The latest being the Turtle technology mechanic. Originally, they were intended to have 4 sets of two upgrades, and from each set they could choose one permanent upgrade, forgoing the other. However, thanks to the Zero Hour engine being unable to handle mutually exclusive global upgrades, I have had to change this. Now, Turtle must select their upgrades in a specific order (which I have yet to decide, but I suspect it will go basic infantry, vehicle, advanced infantry, other... Vehicle and advanced infantry could switch).
Anyway, on to the economy mechanics of the game.
Pretty early on in designing this mod, I decided that each team should have different economy mechanics. The main reason for this is that I thought it would be cool, and also unique. As it turns out, Universe at War had 2 different economy models, and quite a lot of modern games have different resource collectors for each of their teams.
However, in all those games, even Universe at War, each team's economy is comparable to the other. Well, sure, the Masari have those resource collector buildings, but that's the most different team. I wanted to make each economy as different and unrecognisable as I could. These economic models should change the strategies of each team. I will start with the Turtle's resource model, as it is the most similar to the standard RTS economy.
Turtle has 3 different resources, although most people won't think of the second two as resources, even though they are resources by definition. The first is money, the second is power, and the last is Generals points. The other two teams do not have to manage power. The last two are pretty simple, and anyone who has played RTS games before should be familiar. Power is a non-cumulative sustainable resource, and Generals Points are a cumulative non-sustainable resource. Power is generated by Turtle Power Plants, and Generals Points are gotten by killing enemy units. Good, now what about money?
Turtle gets its money in the same way that all C&C Generals teams do at the start of any skirmish game. You have a supply zone, from which you collect supplies, and then those supply collectors have to make their way back to your Resource Operations base, whereupon you receive your funds.
To mix things up a bit, you cannot individually order your supply collectors, but they are automatically rebuilt for free from your ROB if they are taken out by an enemy raid. This obviously means that you don't have to concentrate as much on your resources, as the enemy will have to destroy the ROB before you need any active input.
This method of resource collecting makes money a cumulative non-sustainable resource. This means that, yes, Turtle has a limited amount of money they can collect during a game, between fifty thousand and two hundred thousand 'moneys' a game, so long as they acquire at least one more supply zone.
The limit means that a Turtle player cannot hide behind a wall of turrets and buildings living off exponential economic growth and superweapons. They must, at some points, venture out of their base and attack their enemies, or at least set up a winning position before their money runs out.
The fact that their entire economy can be contained around these supply areas means that Turtle only needs to defend these relatively small areas to avoid harrassment. Conversely, a hypothetical opponent can camp these locations to attempt to prevent the Turtle player from getting income from these locations, although this is unadvisable as a Turtle's force is generally more powerful in engagements that they choose.
Rush's economic model is different again. They do not have to deal with power, only money and General's points. Their method of income is dependent on how many civilian buildings they have garrisoned. The structure generates money over time (presumably from the ether). This means that money for Rush is a cumulative sustainable income source.
This economy model opens the door for a large number of strategies otherwise not present in the RTS. For instance, one could perform a scorched earch strategy by retreated and destroying all civilian structures that were behind your front line, or advancing and doing the same. With a Rush mirror game, the thought process becomes a bit more complex, as civilian buildings you destroy are also a hit to your economy.
This economy model is a slight nerf to your rush, as you can immediately rush your resources, rush your opponents, but most likely not both. Since you use your military units, as opposed to seperate resource collecting units to get resources, you can't do both.
In a Rush mirror, players must also weigh up whether it is better to destroy the building, or attempt to capture it for their own use. Obviously, other players have to make the same choice, but have less incentive to capture buildings.
Without considering an opponent, a Rush player must also decide whether to split up his forces and gain the most income for the most risk, or put all his eggs in one basket, and have many infantry in one building. This decision is mostly at the start of the game, as later in the game other things influence your decisions, like how your opponents are going about taking down your economy.
The Rush economy is intended to be the easiest to 'boom', but also the easiest to harrass. This makes Rush a more high-risk faction to play and build on, rather much like the rest of its strategy. The economy is permanent, so barring outside influences, Rush can continue to produce units forever.
The last economy is Stealth's economy, which is hugely dissimilar to the standard RTS economy. While Turtle is similar to many many games, and Rush has a similar one to the latest Relic games (and some older games, most likely), Stealth doesn't really have an analagous economy model. They only get money (and General's Points) through killing. You kill an enemy unit, you get money equal to the value of the target. This is the only way to get money, is by killing.
This economy model promotes stealthy strategies and tactics. You should employ hit and run attacks, or ambushes, in order to maximise your kills to death. If you don't, your money reserves will dwindle down until there is nothing left. This obviously discourages spam, since it's difficult to get more money to replace losses, and once your enemy counters one unit, it's uneconomical to keep producing that unit.
This economy is also a nerf. One of the things often encountered in RTS games is that stealthed unit spam is much more difficult to beat than regular unit spam, simply because the enemy can't employ force concentration correctly. Thus, this economy means that you cannot be a stealth player in a larger multiplayer game and slowly build up an epic force of unstoppability. You have to win using non-standard strategies, and not win through attrition (as most RTS games are won by).
The economies are intended to be as different as possible. This does mean that the goal "get more money" is not synonymous with "harrass enemy's economy". This also means that economy harrassment is different depending on who you are facing, and thus increases the importance of scouting at the start of a match.
Here are some other notes:
A resource is cumulative if you get some of the resource now, and can later spend it so long as you have production structures or upgrades to spend it on. A cumulative resource is money from C&C Generals, or Requisition (and power) from Dawn of War. It is non-cumulative if once the resource gatherer/structure is down you may no longer use the resource points acquired. For instance, power in any C&C game (barring Renegade), or Population Cap in Starcraft. You need more overlords!
A resource is sustainable if it can be acquired indefinitely. For example, money in C&C generals, Requisition and power from Dawn of war etc. A resource is non-sustainable if there is a point at which you can get no more of the resource. For instance, General's points in Generals, Population Cap in Starcraft etc.
Anyway, next week I'll dump up a summary of the Turtle Faction.
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