Discussion: GamePlay and Units Ideas

BTW I Was Thinking About Putting Satellites To Build Limit 2, And Well You Can Control Them , But Only See Their Shade, Like A Small Erased Blimp
And Well They Have 2 Abilities : Reveal An Area Without Movement Of The Satellite And Take A Satellite Image That Will Remane With You Till The End Of The Game...

So Whatcha Think

I don't see any need for a shadow but everything else sounds good. I think a satellite should be high on the tech tree. It could be worked into the story line pretty easy where you don't start out with a satellite.

James100 wrote:BTW I Was Thinking About Putting Satellites To Build Limit 2, And Well You Can Control Them , But Only See Their Shade, Like A Small Erased Blimp
And Well They Have 2 Abilities : Reveal An Area Without Movement Of The Satellite And Take A Satellite Image That Will Remane With You Till The End Of The Game...

So Whatcha Think

I think it's an interesting idea, the problem is that the "sky"/height limits are taken to it's max (planes will fly higher in comparison with ZH), so that would bring some probs (planes would most likely start to "attack" satellites, and some other difficult-to-explain bugs which are inherent to ZH.

Jarhead wrote:I don't see any need for a shadow but everything else sounds good. I think a satellite should be high on the tech tree. It could be worked into the story line pretty easy where you don't start out with a satellite.

Definitely, the Satellites will be a later "unlockable" (for the higher ranking players), think of it as one of the ultimate Recon units.

besides that the units come from aircraft and helicopters could also reach a road on the edge of the map. Sudden Strike for example.





I do not know if this was planting.

The only purpose of the satellite is for the radar, so it would never actually be "on the map". You fire an anti satellite weapon, then the radar goes off. Making the movement of troops and vehicles taken much more cautiously.

AceofCombat wrote:besides that the units come from aircraft and helicopters could also reach a road on the edge of the map. Sudden Strike for example.

I do not know if this was planting.

Yeah, the player can deploy units in remote areas of the map (it's a great way to hide artillery), but we may include a deployment limitation to avoid having players dropping units on top of other players ("unit spamming").

Jarhead wrote:The only purpose of the satellite is for the radar, so it would never actually be "on the map". You fire an anti satellite weapon, then the radar goes off. Making the movement of troops and vehicles taken much more cautiously.

The main problem in this case would be coding (to having the adversary radar being taken offline after firing the ASW, plus we may have specific electronic warfare units for that purpose (jamming and other "electronic" applications)).

I wasw just wondering if this particular counter measure will be included in TAOW ships, or if the Phalanx is going to be the sole countermeasure in the game for the warships?


080520-N-4774B-083 PACIFIC OCEAN (May 20, 2008) Super rapid bloom off board countermeasures (SRBOC) rockets launch from the amphibious assault ship USS Tarawa (LHA 1) during a test of the ship's anti-missile defense system. Tarawa is on a scheduled deployment to the U.S. 7th Fleet area of responsibility operating in the western Pacific and Indian oceans. U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Daniel A. Barker (Released)

Source - U.S. Navy:
http://www.navy.mil/view_single.asp?id=59160

There will be some other defenses (like the DDG-1000's special close in weapon systems which consist of two Mk110 57mm guns), I would like to watch some additional applications like chaff (launched from the ships, might be an interesting future concept to include on our Naval Mode ), Phalanx and Medium/Long Range AA missiles will be used on the "big boys" of the fleet (classes above Frigates) while smaller ships like corvettes would be perfect contenders for smaller countermeasure systems .

i like to see that there's being talked about this subject
a pleasure to read !!!

Thanks F-16

I have a quick question for you. Will there be any Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) units in the game to diffuse IEDs and VBIEDs (vehicle-borne IEDs).

Or VBFIEDs as I like to call them. (Very Big F***ing IEDs)

Allowing us to safely avoid collateral damage when taking a booby trapped tech structure, for example, or parked car bombs.

If so, I was wondering if you had any thoughts as to how the EOD unit was going to be deployed?

At the moment some units like the Buffalo MRAP would be perfect for that role (it can do similar roles in real life), some engineering units will most likely take care of explosive ordnance disposal (specially infantry or some other specialized vehicles ).

Darn it. I forgot about the Buffalo. Sorry for the fog of war that settled on my brain today.

That's the perfect unit.

No prob

MRAP's will be capable of doing many tasks (to make them more "desirable" over Humvees, not to mention the extra armor).

If I remember correctly there is no power in the mod as far as I know, but considering U.N. civilian population idea, wouldn't it be nice to have exsisting "power plants" on maps which can be contolled in exchange for money, but then again TAOW isn't using money,
It would be cool to have different power plants like coal, gas, nuclear... especially nuclear, that would be a good reason to bring back the spy to sabotage power plants so when someones troops get close to take it BOOOM!!!!!!!
By the way, what kind of problems have you guys been having with coding and such so far?
What do you guys want to see in the mod that won't be included?

Jarhead wrote:If I remember correctly there is no power in the mod as far as I know, but considering U.N. civilian population idea, wouldn't it be nice to have exsisting "power plants" on maps which can be contolled in exchange for money, but then again TAOW isn't using money,
It would be cool to have different power plants like coal, gas, nuclear... especially nuclear, that would be a good reason to bring back the spy to sabotage power plants so when someones troops get close to take it BOOOM!!!!!!!

There will be many kinds of tactical locations, power plants surely sound like interesting and possible capture points (which will hopefully have a certain tactical advantage ).

Jarhead wrote:By the way, what kind of problems have you guys been having with coding and such so far?
What do you guys want to see in the mod that won't be included?

At this moment the team is focusing on including vehicles ingame (meaning they have to be coded independently), this is to bring the beta asap .

The trouble we have will be posted on the special contributing thread.

I was wondering, does anybody know if the viewing angle can be moved to a 1st or 3rd person over the shoulder view which would be different for different units?

I'm afraid not (such cam angles would need to be built integrally on the game engine itself), even though, Marc haves some great tricks on the camera angle department as well (*cough* cinematic camera *cough* ).

Its too bad we can't switch form general perspective to FPS. That is like the game of my dreams. A RTS that can switch to FPS, with a little touch of RPG. That way you could hop around kick some @$$ while improving each units "stats" and effectiveness. I think that would make people a little more cautious about using or loosing their units.
I wonder if there is a game that could import all these great units you guys have made (if that even sounds appealing) to make something like that happen. Just an idea.

I know what you mean, when I first saw the trailers of Command & Conquer Renegade (the C&C first person shooter), I thought it worked like that FPS and RTS concept at the same time, unfortunately that was not the case

I wonder if there is a game that could import all these great units you guys have made (if that even sounds appealing) to make something like that happen. Just an idea.

Hard to tell, having played tons of modern RTS games, to include such a system would require some extraordinary effort (and a lot of luck / expert coding personnel).

I suppose some mods might be exploring such capabilities with C&C Renegade (should be quite possible in that game), I'm not sure if any is doing that though

I was wondering, has anybody put much thought into the tech tree? I have about a million ideas for this, but what I picture and what can actually be coded are often 2 different things. Anybody have any idea on what to expect from the mod? Any ideas?

Great Idea But To Have A Tech Tree We Must Have Cameos
We Don't Right Now, I Mean For Every Unit
We're Currently Focusing On This Method: Modeling ---> Skinning ---> Rendering ---> Coding ---> Cameo

Yup

But fear not, we've paid a lot of attention and dedicated a lot of time to fully and carefully plan TAOW's "tech tree" and "Customization Logic/System".
Since there won't be any Strategy Centers, buildings or labs, the main "tech tree control" will need to change to the General System.

To explain our own tech tree concept I'll have to go into details and explain two main and vital logics:

• Rank / Unit / Specialization Logic:

Players will unlock extra armament and units as they rank, ranks will be obtained like ZH (by killing enemies) and by completing objectives (which will add extra "Points" to increase the 'General Meter'). A higher rank automatically unlocks certain units.

After achieving a higher rank, players are able to get much more specialized support by choosing a specific "Specification Area".
Let's say that you get to the Class 2 Ranks (aka 'Pier 2'), you will be able to select a specialization like:

- Special Forces;
- Air Support (divided in several sub classes like fighters or helicopters);
- Unmanned Weapons (UAV's / UCAV's / UGV's, etc.);
- Armor (Main Battle Tanks and further upgrades);
- Engineering / Logistics (supporting role);
- Artillery (Mortars, Howitzers or Multiple Rocket Launchers);
- etc...

Basically the player will choose a "route" or "path" to unlock much more higher qualified units (special to each Specialization).
When combined with the following logic, I'm talking BIG TIME CUSTOMIZATION!!!

• Class Logic:

Marc came up with this excellent concept, basically we'll have three types of "Classes" per unit that a player can deploy, a higher class will have integral enhanced upgrades (many of them which are unique and can't be "purchased" or obtained by normal means), unique weapons (fantastic to arm certain planes with other weapons like the F-22A with JDAM's, the Harrier with Rocket Launchers or the A-10C with Sensor Fuzed Weapons just to name a few

Basically with this system we are able to deploy many kinds of units and their further specialized variants, just imagine the possibilities: planes with extra armament sets to respond to specific situations, infantry with enhanced armor and extra gear, tanks with many integral goodies, the possibilities are limitless!!! Specially when applied with the first logic, this will basically give the player the possibility to command extremely customized forces, well beyond the basic possibilities of Upgrades (which will be included as well to add further customization ).

I was looking at another forum trying to find an anwser to a recent coding problem I ran across someone who was trying to apply the A-10 strafe to other aircraft. This is a good idea, atleast for aircraft mounted with guns. Now most probably wouldn't be very accurate in real life anyways but it would make a nice little feature that ads to the game.

Definitely, a perfect example is the Harrier in TAOW, the Harrier is able to use it's cannon in passes / gun runs (great for hit'n run tactics) or can be set to "hover mode" to use it's cannon (extra accuracy) until the enemy is finally destroyed (useful if the Maverick missiles were used).