Hello everyone.
So, after talking with Thudo over at Discord, he suggested I show the rest of you my idea for a gameplay mode that occurred to me few days back. I would like to hear what you have to say about it, from gameplay point of view, from technical point of view and anything else.
Without further delay, the idea:
A couple of days back an idea for a DoW playing mode came to me so I wanted to share it with you to see what you think about it and to hear would it be possible to implement it.
Idea would be to change the way game is played completely and turn it from RTS into something, well, something else.
Skirmish would start as usual, player chooses a map, chooses a race and loads the map. For purpose of this explanation lets say player choose Space Marines.
Upon start of the skirmish, player would be offered a choice of what unit (emphasis on single unit) he would like to control. The game mode would use only infantry and heavy infantry, no vehicles or other relic units.
Given he chose Space Marine race, player can choose any of SM infantry and heavy infantry squads except the obviously useless in combat such as servitor or servo-skull. Player chooses tactical marines squad.
This is the only unit player has and controls, so there is no base building, domain expansion or army creation, just one unit.
Now, once the game starts player is free to wander the map and capture SP, CL and relics and every time player captures:
1. STRATEGIC POINT - heavy weapon load out changes
Example: Player in our imaginary skirmish takes his first SP with his squad of tactical marines and it instantly receives, lets say, plasma guns, or heavy bolters. Every time player captures a SP weapon load out changes, so if the squad first got plasma guns, there is chance it will receive again plasma guns as weapon upgrade given that weapon upgrade would be random, but it would also have a chance to get either heavy bolters, rocket launchers or flamers.
I would be interested to hear would it be possible to upgrade the whole squad with heavy weapons instead of only standard 4 marines?
2. CRITICAL LOCATION – squad receives one ability out of three possible. One squad can have three abilities at any given time. Squad has chance to receive any ability which belongs to the race squad belongs to, in case here, tactical squad could receive any ability found within SM race, such as Word of the Emperor, Orbital strike and etc.
3. RELIC – in this moment I don’t have some clearly defined role for Relics, maybe it could add a hero, one from race hero rooster, or something else. It is open to suggestions.
Capturing of SP, CL and Relics would be instant, there would be no listening post/equivalent addons and given the fact player would control only one squad, even small requisition income would be enough to reinforce squad which suffered casualties. Reinforcement would be done as usual. The point of instant capture and no add-ons would be to direct player towards more aggressive play and constant move, where SP are seen as more of weapon appropriation points and not just resource providers.
Point of the game would be to win by wiping out all other squads on the map, and now that I think of it, I guess this could be a play somewhat resembling kill-team behavior. Maybe even the name of the playing mode could be Kill Team.
Problem I can see currently is the issue of race HQ. I would presume no skirmish can start without present hq but that creates the issue of it being attractive as a target to enemy given its stationary nature.
I would like to know is it possible to remove HQ from the map completely. The way I envisioned the gameplay, player would have only that one squad (and maybe 1 additional hero) on the map, no other squads or buildings.
Or there is an option to make HQ able to garrison units and be used as a structure for deep striking. Deep strike ability would be available as soon as unit goes into the HQ. Or, if making HQ garrison-able is a problem, maybe the deep strike ability could be given to the squad but would became usable only when unit is very close to the HQ.
Deepstrike ability would be really useful in a team vs team gameplay and in free for all situation could speed up game more. In case HQ gets destroyed, player squad would not be removed from the game.
So, what do you think? Is this doable? This way of playing seemed interesting to me as you don’t have to fuss about resources, base, army building, just pure combat as making it with what you receive on random. Does this seem as something interesting and fun to you as well?
I OVERALL DESIGN I
(Agreed so far and suggestions)
1. Player controls only 1 squad (AGREED)
2. There is a HQ in game for purpose of squad choice but is removed once player has chosen his squad (AGREED)
3. There is no SP and Relic add-ons (AGREED)
4. SP, CL and Relics are capped instantaneously or at 5x of normal capping speed (TBD)
5. Entire squad is upgraded with weapons after capping SP, not just 4 members
6. Squad will have 10 members max (AGREED)
7. Providing player with ability to compose his own squad
8. Capping SP grants weapons upgrade (AGREED)
9. Capping CL grants new ability (AGREED)
10. Capping Relics grants a hero or something else, open to suggestions
11. All squads have deep strike ability for purpose of make game even faster, recharge time 30 seconds.
12. Squads keep their vanilla stats
13. There are only three abilities per squad
14. After capping 3 CL and getting 3 abilities, capping CL for a 4th time means one of the abilities will be swapped randomly for some other
15. Leveling up (AGREED - already within Unification)
16. Weather effects (AGREED - already within Unification)
17. Issue of ammo feature - as explained in more detail in post #5 of this thread
18. Last Stand with squads (AGREED)
This is not the final list of features, suggestions are welcome
FUTURE PLANS
(by Brother Gambit)
So let's short this out. I will post the BIG plan, but note that it is only a SUGGESTION!!!
1] We make the Kill-Team win condition. And PERFECT it. Then...
2] We proceed with Last Stand. This is MUCH more complex. Within our skills of course. But probably.. "Without" our free time!
3] We proceed with the DoWDOTA and Space Hulk Win Conditions.
NOTE: Last Stand, DoWDOTA, Space Hulk will require SPECIFIC maps! They will be Map-Based, like Survival Mode. Kill-Team can perfectly use the existing Skirmish maps of the game.
Edited by ZmajOgnjeniVuk, 05 September 2018 - 07:36 AM.