Ideas about mass, what are your thoughts?

[SeraphimLeftNut]

Looking for your reactions. Has this already been done in some mod before?
Do you have better ideas? Is this idiotic?

I hope this interests some people and perhaps to leads to new ideas and even new maps/mods/game types.

Guiding principle: create new targets, increase importance of map control, don’t subtract only add to gameplay (any changes to gameplay have to be minor).


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Civilian artifact: (something that perhaps can be included on new maps)

Characteristics: Infinite health, 1 second capture by a T1 engineer, produces mass, direct LOS for all players(can’t hide it), transportable, lowest attack priority.

Mass production:
A number of possibilities, but I think it should be something similar to 5% of the total mass output by the player that owns the artifact. Perhaps it can be upgraded to produce 10% and 15%, etc. but these upgrades are lost when given to ally or captured by enemy.

Initial spawn:
Well protected civilian bases.

Can be used as a handicap:
Give to noobs during training, or to enemies who think they lost to you only because of luck.

Variation:
The artifact is not transportable and placed in a hard to defend position.
There are two artifacts and one player must possess both in order for them to function.

Gameplay possibility:
Imagine one of these in the middle of setons. As the two middle players come in to suck up the mass they can attempt to secure it with some t1 aa for an incoming transport for a side player to capture it. At first it would produce less than +2 mass, but after it is upgraded by a back player to T3 and in late game it can produce ~+40 mass, which could make a noticable impact, although would not be such a huge advantage as to make the game pointless for the other side. It could also lead to interesting missions to try to retrieve it or to ruin the upgrade by an engie capture.
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Map control produces mass/Flags.

Flag Unit: Low health, low power drain, low cost, LOS by this unit gives the player the possession of that region.

Basic idea:
Divide the map into a large number (100+) of regions. A region that has direct LOS from a flag has the potential to produce mass, 0 to 0.1% of total mass output by the player by default. As the game progresses some regions will have more battles than others, the total damage dealt in a region by either enemies or allies will make the region more valuable. Regions that have nuclear strikes or ACU kills will produce 5% of the total mass output of the player that possesses that region. The total bonus produced by owning all the regions should be capped at something like 10% of the total player mass output.

Some details:
If a region has multiple flags, either enemies or allies it splits the bonus. As the game begins, the bonus should not be noticeable and only after a significant amount of damage has been dealt in a region does it begin to gain value. As the value of regions increases it should eventually be capped by the 10% maximum bonus from all regions. As that maximum level is reached the bonus ratio between the different regions continues to evolve as the battles continue. i.e. Holding the region that was the place of the initial battle will be less and less valuable as time moves on.

[ColonelSheppard]

sounds like a mid ZoneControl/GW and normal gameplay
I dont think there is something like this already.

[rockoe10]

I like it! Kinda reminds me of Domination from Call of Duty: Black Ops. "Flags" that you have to capture around the map and provide some form of benefit. Love it!

[ackack47]

This reminds me of Red Alert 2 where you could capture civilian structures on the map that gave your certain bonuses. Bonuses like a vehicle repair station that had AA on it. An oil derrick for a steady resource income, and I think a hospital.

[discoverer2k4]

sounds interesting


... what do you think about the classical capture the flag game mode?

1.) You have 1 flag in the middle of the map and each player has his own flag in his base (your own flag has a range of 0.5 km radius to define where is your homebase). You can capture (reclaim) the middle flag with an engy/acu/scu, after this your acu etc is highlighted red or shows a beacon for all players so they can see the position of the flag - so it will be very hard for you to come back to the base. The captured flag has to be brought back to your homebase (just get into the range of your hombase flag). After this you get 1 point for capturing the flag in the mid. The player who earned at first 5 (or in game settings adjustable) points wins the game.
If you lost the mid another strategy could be to capture your opponents homebase flag and bring it to your base. The player will immediately defeated.
And of course you can defeat your opponents by destroying their ACU.

That brings some more win strategys to the game
you permanently have to keep an eye on your base and of course a teleporting acu/scu can capture a flag quite fast in your homebase, so you have to make some defense.

A flag should not be destroyable as long it isn't captured from an engy etc.! As said, the engy will take over the flag properties and if he gets destroyed before coming back to your base the flag is lost and respawns in the mid after some seconds.



2.) If this is not possible, because each map would need a "flag marker" than one could just spawn a "flag building" with the acu at the beginning in the homebase and than the goal is to capture the opponents flag as often as you can to win or destroy his acu or something... you earn points for capturing the opponents flag (same as above with mid flag)

3.) or the ACU itself is the flag. At the beginning of a game there will be a defending team who gets the one and only flag and an attacking team. After 10 minutes a counter begins counting from 100 to 0 (-1 ticket per 30 seconds; everything adjustable in game settings). The attacking team has to capture the flag from the defending ACU (maybe get in fire range and in case you hit the flag-acu you get the flag transfered to your acu - the flag can't be re-captured from the defending acu within 5 seconds so the attacker has to run away quickly or need to have mobile shields) after this the counter stops for the attackers and the points count down for the defending team.
A bit like the Battlefield game mode.
One could reduce the damage of the ACU to ACU a bit for this game mode otherwise a game will end very quickly.
One strategy will be definitly to turtle with the flag-acu in the base and in case of a 4vs4 the other 3 acu's try to defend offensivly against the other 4 acus...


sorry for grammar and so on -.- I'm german
at least I know how to write tutorial

[rockoe10]

AHHH!!! I like these ideas! Is there a skilled Mod designer willing to put in the work for these mods?????