Hopes and Dreams for Unvanquished!

[Kreative]

So since TremZ forums are probably going to die soon, I would post the ideas that were brewed up before the initial Unvanquished alpha 1 release. These mostly come from the Hopes and Dreams for TremZ thread, but a few came from some smaller threads such as the RTS/FPS. Would be a shame to see them go to waste. So I'ma gonna copy + paste most of the ideas that were brewed in the thread and see what new ones can be made.

Base upgrade points.

Back in the day, there was a discussion about letting individual players on each side use their evos/credits to make minor improvements and upgrades to certain structures. For instance, a player could go and collect 1,000 credits, and then upgrade something specific about that structure (dmg rate, hp, fire rate, etc.)

This could be nice because it would essentially be a /donate for your team's base.

The only thing that will encourage forward base building is the near-instant return of build points after building death. Trickle return may help balance main bases, but it ensures that no one will ever build forward bases. I get yelled at whenever I try fwd bases, but when they work they are a major killswitch.

Also you almost never see human fwd's. I think this could be remedied by increasing repeater cost to 6BP but giving it 30 local BP's to play with, instead of the usual 20.

I also like the idea of repeater stacking - building a second repeater ontop of an existing one. This doubles the size and BP of the first repeater, for the cost of 2 repeaters.

Also I have a revision of the human building upgrades that I suggested earlier:
VALIANCE - structure keeps working up to the moment it blows up. [ 200cr ]
BATTERY - structure keeps working for 10 seconds after RC goes down. [ 500cr ]
SHIELDING - structure takes 50% less splash damage from any source, even FF. [ 450cr ]
UNION - Ret/Tesla distributes 1/4 of the creds it makes among current builders. Doesn't count toward stage advancement. [ 300cr ]
ENHANCED RC - equips RC with a single tesla discharger. Retains weak spot. [ 6000cr ]

The upgrade costs have been reimagined to deal with the fact that income for upgrades only comes from killing enemy buildings, and the avg building is worth 200cr/ 1 evo. Obviously, it's just a starting point for any testing.

Still, if absolutely zero camping is your goal for TremZ, I have another model that should appease you and still allow this upgrade system to work:

Upgrade points can only come from destroying enemy structures

See? To gain upgrade points, you must rush the enemy and kill their base. That way, upgrade points stay scarce, and rushing is encouraged. Whenever an enemy building is killed, the granger/ckit pool has a point added to it.

While I was reading upper posts I was thinking..
Why don't we allow players to donate credits as UpgradePoints which can only be used by builders? That would be very nice. Builders would have build points and upgrade points.. In addiction, once the base is ready, builder class would be still used

That's what this thread and the feedback section are for. I personally don't mind the idea of upgradable buildables since in order to upgrade them, you'd have to attack enemy structures. In order to encourage forward building, the closer to the OM, the more credits you will get. Also, it won't be if you kill an acid tube or a trapper, you'll get an upgrade. In most cases, the winning team will have the upgraded base allowing them to feel safe leaving their base for extended periods of time to rush, while the losing team has the weaker base and will be overwhelmed ending many of these deadlock camping games.

Sudden Death

As for sudden death, I like the idea that after 15-20 min in, BP regen rate decreases until it hits 0. While it's like this, you can move any current structures, but you cannot build new ones. (eg: Armory dies, you can replace two turrets to rebuild armory. RC and OM take longer to rebuild as time goes on (or each time they are killed)).

The key with the new SD is that BP regen won't hit zero. There's a limit of how low it can be. For example, a round lasts 45 minutes. if default RC regen is 4 seconds per one BP, let's say we have a 30 minutes mark (2/3 of the round timelimit), the RC regen is at 12 seconds per one building. which is 300% of the original. At this point humans cannot rebuild their base as quickly as they do, nor do aliens. This is how low the BP regen can be, once it reached 30 minutes mark it will stay there.

However, let's say default RC BP regen reaches 4 seconds at 15 minutes mark. (1/3 of the round timelimit)

In the beginning RC BP would be 1 seconds per one BP to encourage players to play aggressively as building since you can replace repeater quickly as BP for repeater regens very quickly. (At this rate it is 25% of the original)

The old SD gives a round an abrupt phase which will turn the game into a camp fest until SD comes, which does not allow rebuilding. That's a very big problem because both sides cannot recover (which may be possible) from one glancing blow, which leads to a killing blow.

The new SD, or so-called SD, is aimed towards giving players more strategic options such as whether or not deconstruct one of their RC base structure to support a recently downed repeater in late game. The early BP advantage is to ensure the game did not turn into a 1-sided steamroll early on.

Research Station

Now there's one good idea.

Another idea would be some sort field research station, available from s1 and name varies from the team type. Everyone can spend creds/evos for tech they choose. The techs are costly, but global, and affect the whole playtime.

Of course, the effects varies from health boost to damage, rate, range etc etc, standard base elements. Some techs can give new abilities. For example, changing acid tube's attack, making it more directional, but more powerful. Some maps directional can be good, sometimes bad. So, everyone should think the consequences of their chosen tech.

Don't how game breaking this might be. Can be awful, can be awesome. I don't remember much of games where tech path was very important. Except Allegiance.

Donate

I see explanations don't really help. Perhaps offering an alternative is more acceptable. You could have donate but instead of the exchange rate being 1:1 it could be something like giving away 3 evos gives 1 evo for another player and similar for credits. Then a player with max evos/money could still feel that they contribute by killing but wouldn't allow him to carry the team too much.

Map control

What I would like added is making map control vital. RTS games generally do this by having resources in the map and there is a constant competition who has the most resources. Tremulous is different in that you get resources from kills only. I think a way to have a need for map control but still not alter the game too much is to make stages map control dependent.
It could be nodes in the map natural selection style or something else. What is important is that there is a need to be in multiple locations in the map at the same time. It can be tricky to balance but i think it can be done. Aliens tend to have advantage because of their mobility but if humans can have strong defense it could work.

Stages should be more meaningful. Human S1 and S2 is ok because there is a real difference. Otherwise the effect should be boosted. Games should end because the other team has stage advantage. It should be rare that both teams end up having s3 before the game ends. It would only happen if the teams are truly close to equal in skill.

[Kreative]

Assortment of many ideas

After the initial release, when you guys add more weapons, you could do what Duke said and make some weapons unable to be purchased until you "upgrade" your armory. \\

Another thing, (I know there's a thread for this already) is making a new use for the Defense Computer. You can go up to the Defense Computer, allocate some "upgrade points" towards new defensive structures that you can build. With this, you can add a "Research Computer" with the Defense Computer to allow for research on things like new weapons and items, or morph the current Defense Computer into a Research Computer. This can expand upon the building upgrades idea by making you have to Research into a specific building upgrade before you can use it, which can take a little while. It would make it less overpowering.

The next idea I have is having assigned squads, where players can elect a squad leader (which is optional, you wouldn't need to have one or be in a squad at all?), the Squad Leader can then pull up a minimap (discussed briefly on these forums and on the tremulous forums), say "Attack Here" or "Build Here". Of course, this system could easily get hectic, but with enough testing and tweaking, it could become quite a nice feature for more experienced players in competitive games, and new players in public games.

Going back to the Research and Defence Computer idea...I'll briefly summarize the old system of building upgrades discussed in other threads...

Basically, you go out, kill enemy structures for upgrade points, those points would go to the builder, and he would then be able to use them on a structure.

What about instead of having them just bloop to a builder and him assigning it to a structure instantly, the builder would have to go to a Research or Defence Computer, choose what upgrade he wants to spend these points on, wait for the upgrade to be researched, then be able to use it on a structure? IF it's a structure upgrade of course. For this to work efficiently though, the builder is probably going to need more than 100 BP, so perhaps adding a structure that slowly generates more BP over time. I won't get much on it in this thread, since there's already a thread for new buildings somewhere else, but briefly you build it, over time you get more BP, but it's capped at a certain limit so you can't build a completely overpowered base.

Let's get it poppin`.

[kharnov]

"Probably" going to die soon? They're already dead, but that's besides the point. :p

Feel free to resurrect old discussions, although I'd prefer for the original posters to remake their threads here.