Discussion: GamePlay and Units Ideas

The only thing I don't like about Col. Burton is that he can run and remain undetected. Besides that whats the problem with him?
Not like he can take out a a helicopter with a bow and arrow?

Jarhead wrote:The only thing I don't like about Col. Burton is that he can run and remain undetected.

I don't mind that one even. It's nice to have a unit in zero hour that wont automatically pop up on radar if he moves. It adds a bit of spice to the game.

Jarhead wrote: Besides that whats the problem with him?
Not like he can take out a a helicopter with a bow and arrow?

Good point.

Amen Tusker. I mean, if your going to have infantry why allow them to become obsolete after the first tank rolls off the line. They are all ready the weakest unit on the map. Why not improve their survivability by impoving them in other ways like the nature of their movement and level of detectability. Any decent soldier will try to remain undetected when the enemy shows up on the scene to gain the advantage of suprise. When a unit goes prone it should go stealth. In the case of SEAL's a rebreather system would be a cool upgrade if codable to allow for stealth swimming since thats kind of a SEAL's speciality as far a delivery.

Jarhead wrote:Amen Tusker. I mean, if your going to have infantry why allow them to become obsolete after the first tank rolls off the line. They are all ready the weakest unit on the map. Why not improve their survivability by impoving them in other ways like the nature of their movement and level of detectability. Any decent soldier will try to remain undetected when the enemy shows up on the scene to gain the advantage of suprise. When a unit goes prone it should go stealth. In the case of SEAL's a rebreather system would be a cool upgrade if codable to allow for stealth swimming since thats kind of a SEAL's speciality as far a delivery.

you're absolutely right !

greetz

Jarhead wrote:Amen Tusker. I mean, if your going to have infantry why allow them to become obsolete after the first tank rolls off the line. They are all ready the weakest unit on the map. Why not improve their survivability by impoving them in other ways like the nature of their movement and level of detectability. Any decent soldier will try to remain undetected when the enemy shows up on the scene to gain the advantage of suprise. When a unit goes prone it should go stealth. In the case of SEAL's a rebreather system would be a cool upgrade if codable to allow for stealth swimming since thats kind of a SEAL's speciality as far a delivery.

Too true
Every soldier in general will be able to become camouflaged by going into prone position.

How about a spy unit that is kinda like a zerohours bomb truck in that it can disguise itself as other units. With one small exception. There is a subtle difference in appearance between the spy unit and the original. Take for instance a civilian. Normally a civilian would have no noticable weapon. But a spy disguised as a civilian might have the butstock hanging out of a coat or some other noticable difference that may or may not be spotted for TAOW's lofty birds eye perspective. But by taking the time to zoom in and examine a unit for a second you might verify wether it is a spy or not. This would mean that it would not be detected as a spy automatically by radar or other automated detection.
Other considerations even though TOAW as I understand is not scheduled to use a power system such as existing in map hydroelectric dams or other power sources to fight over. It would be nice to utilize such a building such as a hyro dam to regulate water levels, such as lowering the water to unveil money which I know TOAW is also considering excluding or maybe intel of some kind such as unlocking otherwise unavailable units such as the opponents sunken naval or amphibeous units or just destroy the dam to flood the map.
Now if you can do things like make sunken "junk piles" with specific technologies attached then there could even be a purpose for a navy deep sea diver, or even a good reason to hold a certain point on the map because you don't wan't the enemy to have your technology. A unit gets a unique upgrade when finding intel, that allows it to upon reaching some kind of base/boat/command unit unlocks a new technology. It would definately take some work, but in the end I think both would make very good units that are both diverse and very useful.

is the Swedish Archer howitser included?
It's the fastest Howitser that exists! It can be ready to fire in less then 30 seconds and the most important:
it is self propelled, and it can go trough any terrain If it is included, it would definately be an upgrade for the PZH 2000 or so( or a higher class in TAOW-terms )

=>The excalibur shell can be used too

And a USV, the protector ?


And the Sensor Fuzed Weapon, as a high upgrade for the F-15E Strike Eagle


Actually everything seen in the discovery chanel's program Future Weapons

greetz

Jarhead wrote:How about a spy unit that is kinda like a zerohours bomb truck in that it can disguise itself as other units. With one small exception. There is a subtle difference in appearance between the spy unit and the original. Take for instance a civilian. Normally a civilian would have no noticable weapon. But a spy disguised as a civilian might have the butstock hanging out of a coat or some other noticable difference that may or may not be spotted for TAOW's lofty birds eye perspective. But by taking the time to zoom in and examine a unit for a second you might verify wether it is a spy or not. This would mean that it would not be detected as a spy automatically by radar or other automated detection.

That might happen on special missions

Jarhead wrote:Other considerations even though TOAW as I understand is not scheduled to use a power system such as existing in map hydroelectric dams or other power sources to fight over. It would be nice to utilize such a building such as a hyro dam to regulate water levels, such as lowering the water to unveil money which I know TOAW is also considering excluding or maybe intel of some kind such as unlocking otherwise unavailable units such as the opponents sunken naval or amphibeous units or just destroy the dam to flood the map.

Indeed, it would be very interesting to have certain interactions between some objects and the environment, I'm not sure if it can be achieved on a capture basis (x captures y and a special action occurs) but one thing which some mappers have proved is that it is possible to create maps which have special scripts which allow to include things which aren't normally possible (like flooding certain areas on a time basis).

In this case it might be a mapping matter (with some extra coding support).

Jarhead wrote:Now if you can do things like make sunken "junk piles" with specific technologies attached then there could even be a purpose for a navy deep sea diver, or even a good reason to hold a certain point on the map because you don't wan't the enemy to have your technology. A unit gets a unique upgrade when finding intel, that allows it to upon reaching some kind of base/boat/command unit unlocks a new technology. It would definately take some work, but in the end I think both would make very good units that are both diverse and very useful.

That could be a potential objective on a naval mission (retrieving an object from an enemy sunken ship) but about the junk pile system (upgrading units in real time upon pick up), it will be removed (ships will be upgraded with normal upgrading and the class system).

F-16FightingFalcon wrote:is the Swedish Archer howitser included?
It's the fastest Howitser that exists! It can be ready to fire in less then 30 seconds and the most important:
it is self propelled, and it can go trough any terrain If it is included, it would definately be an upgrade for the PZH 2000 or so( or a higher class in TAOW-terms )

=>The excalibur shell can be used too

We haven't still considered the ARCHER, but chances are that it might appear .

While the EU won't have aircraft like the B-2 (stealth bomber) or the Tu-160 (Russian Strategic Bomber), it will be very expanded in other areas, Artillery is an example so I'd say that the ARCHER system might eventually appear.

F-16FightingFalcon wrote:And a USV, the protector ?

That's a truly interesting vehicle, I'd say it might appear as an unmanned defense/recon nautical unit.

F-16FightingFalcon wrote:And the Sensor Fuzed Weapon, as a high upgrade for the F-15E Strike Eagle


Actually everything seen in the discovery chanel's program Future Weapons

greetz

The CBU-97 Sensor Fuzed Weapon will be included, at the moment it was confirmed for higher class versions of the American A-10C (the F-15E is also a very probable platform for these weapons ).

cool

i like uav's, usv's, ugv's ... they are very necassary in modern warfare, for scouting etc. (but you know that eh )

greetz

oh and btw, check 5:37 in the protector movie, there you'll see the IMS (look it up on google for further information ), some qind of improvement over landmines(very interesting for TAOW )

I think it would be interesting to have FLIR on certain vehicles, that when activated turn an area in front of it black and white highlighting soldiers normally hidden by camo. Then have a rebreather upgrade to allow infantry to hit the surf and hide in the water. Even if the visual FLIR effect can't be done, the upgrade itself would be great, especially for helicopters and quick recon over water (in search of things like the sea shadow or other stealthy type marine vessels).

Another idea I've been thinking through is making it more desirable to take over an enemy rather than destroying them in some cases, not only to gain the technology and units they could produce, but add something that you can only have when controling the combination of the 2 armies. Kind of like unlockables. The nicer the unlockable the greater the temptation to overtake instead of destroying.

F-16FightingFalcon wrote:cool

i like uav's, usv's, ugv's ... they are very necassary in modern warfare, for scouting etc. (but you know that eh )

greetz

Absolutely

In the near future unmanned weapons will do major combat roles (from surveillance to attack).

F-16FightingFalcon wrote:oh and btw, check 5:37 in the protector movie, there you'll see the IMS (look it up on google for further information ), some qind of improvement over landmines(very interesting for TAOW )

Indeed

Jarhead wrote:I think it would be interesting to have FLIR on certain vehicles, that when activated turn an area in front of it black and white highlighting soldiers normally hidden by camo. Then have a rebreather upgrade to allow infantry to hit the surf and hide in the water. Even if the visual FLIR effect can't be done, the upgrade itself would be great, especially for helicopters and quick recon over water (in search of things like the sea shadow or other stealthy type marine vessels).

I think we'll incorporate a very similar feature , specially on recon helicopters (to possibly help to detect camouflaged units or to increase the vision range at the expense of revealing itself on the enemy radar).

Jarhead wrote:Another idea I've been thinking through is making it more desirable to take over an enemy rather than destroying them in some cases, not only to gain the technology and units they could produce, but add something that you can only have when controling the combination of the 2 armies. Kind of like unlockables. The nicer the unlockable the greater the temptation to overtake instead of destroying.

A very similar system which we want to include (not sure if it's possible at the moment though ) is the POW System (to capture enemies in order to gain special bonuses).

As we know many have tried to create such a system with limited success, if we somehow manage to implement it in TAOW we may be talking a large "less-than-lethal" warfare implementation (unfortunately chances are definitely against us on this one ).

Snake wrote:

Jarhead wrote:Another idea I've been thinking through is making it more desirable to take over an enemy rather than destroying them in some cases, not only to gain the technology and units they could produce, but add something that you can only have when controling the combination of the 2 armies. Kind of like unlockables. The nicer the unlockable the greater the temptation to overtake instead of destroying.

A very similar system which we want to include (not sure if it's possible at the moment though ) is the POW System (to capture enemies in order to gain special bonuses).

As we know many have tried to create such a system with limited success, if we somehow manage to implement it in TAOW we may be talking a large "less-than-lethal" warfare implementation (unfortunately chances are definitely against us on this one ).

yeah, this looks quite interesting to me too, i allready noticed it when i told the "dog" idea too

They wanted to implement the POW system and a functional naval mode in Zero Hour but they probably had to abandon those due to deadlines (to release the expansion in the planned release date, that's too bad , I personally wanted more naval maps/missions).

Snake wrote:They wanted to implement the POW system and a functional naval mode in Zero Hour but they probably had to abandon those due to deadlines (to release the expansion in the planned release date, that's too bad , I personally wanted more naval maps/missions).

yeah, but that will change with TAOW

Oh yeah

The Naval Mode is perhaps my biggest ambition for TAOW (me and Marc talked a lot about it in order to plan it), I hope to release important information on the Naval Mode in the next updates.

So whats new with TAOW? Its been pretty quiet around here.

We're finalizing the preparations for the next update .

Can't wait. It's always a pleasure to come here and see the new stuff you guys have cooked up.

Thanks mate

Unfortunately I don't have a specific release date at the moment, the next Mini Update will be released as soon as I get the last "materials" .

Thats alright. I like the suprise of showing up and seeing new material. I'm sure it will be great stuff. You guys are pretty consistant at making impressive stuff.

Thanks

What about a recovery diver upgrade for surface ships, so when an enemy gets killed it leaves a junk pile which a deep sea recovery diver can detect and exploit. If technology could some how be tied to the junk piles then this unit could serve a dual role, finding and recoverying enemy technoloy but also attach the ability to blow up your own technology if necessary, so that it does not fall into enemy hands. Makes a good reason for sea units to be in close proximity-->naval battles and upgrades/compensation.

Jarhead wrote:What about a recovery diver upgrade for surface ships, so when an enemy gets killed it leaves a junk pile which a deep sea recovery diver can detect and exploit. If technology could some how be tied to the junk piles then this unit could serve a dual role, finding and recoverying enemy technoloy but also attach the ability to blow up your own technology if necessary, so that it does not fall into enemy hands. Makes a good reason for sea units to be in close proximity-->naval battles and upgrades/compensation.

Unfortunately there are a series of trouble with depth (a common problem with subs as well), the junk piles may be probably used but as a sort of a mission pick up objective (but for the naval mode I'm afraid there are a series of problems which would make it rather unrealistic like junk piles which would be stuck in the middle of the sea).