Skip to the summary if you are easily bored. Preface: How it begins This is a rather broad suggestion, so let's start with a little explanation. The current victory condition in Empires is to blow up the enemy commander vehicle (CV). It's straightforward and doesn't require a whole lot of effort either to understand. What could possibly go wrong with such a perfectly simple objective? Well, for starters, it makes the CV quite a liability, in part due to the CV's own nature. It's mobile, meaning that it can be stolen away, or get lost, or fall into the deep end of a pool. It also gets stuck, either by poor driving, 9mining, or griefing. It's destructible, meaning that it can be ninja'd by a grenadier, rushed by a tank, or just end up on the enemy's side of the battlefield. Even after all else is lost, the CV can still go "beep beep!" and run around for 5 minutes, evading death as long as nobody gives chase. There are a few other annoyances as well, such as the lack of warning when the CV is under attack. This suggestion is all about solving these problems through the most direct route possible: By taking the focus of victory away from the CV. Part 1: Finding a new objective Bear in mind that there already are a couple victory conditions besides destroying the CV, and they're even more fundamental: Deplete the other team's tickets, then kill them all, or destroy the other teams' spawnpoints, then kill them all. The problem with both of these is that the last living person is usually in the CV, necessitating its destruction first; also, depleting tickets can take a long, long time. However, the spawnpoint method does have some potential. If their spawnpoints are gone, killing the rest of the team is only a matter of time, which is how we'll design our victory condition. Victory Condition: Destroy all of a team's spawnpoints. A 20-second defeat countdown for that team will start. To cancel the countdown, that team must gain another spawnpoint by building a barracks, making an apc or capturing a flag with a spawnpoint. Planting a barracks will pause the countdown until the barracks is fully-built (cancelling the countdown) or destroyed (resuming the countdown). When the countdown finishes, that team loses. Part 2: Dealing with the commander The CV needs to be indestructible in order for any other objective to shine. There is simply no way around that. However, a completely invincible CV brings other issues, thus the CV's indestructibility needs to follow behaviors that allow it to be vulnerable to attack without being a permanent loss. The following behaviors should do this. Note that even if the CV is irretrievable, a team can fight on as normal, but will suffer in a war of attrition as they cannot place new buildings or gain new research. 1. The CV can be damaged by weapons as normal, but will not be destroyed when reduced to 0 hp. (Think Buddha.) 2. If there is a commander in the CV when the CV is at 0 hp, he will be ejected when the CV is shot. 3. The CV is still usable underwater, and will not take decay damage. However, it cannot drive underwater. (Amphibious CVs? Hah!) 4. The CV is still usable when upside-down or askew, and will not take decay damage. Summary - A team loses after 20 seconds of having no active spawnpoints. This can be averted by activating a new spawn (building a barracks/APC). - CVs cannot be destroyed, but commanders can still be killed. Pros: - No surprise ninjas. - Epic late-game battles. - Losing team can hold out for ticket victory. - Possible to recover from a sudden loss. Cons: - CV stuck in water is silly. - No surprise ninjas - Losing teams don't get surprise wins. - No fast tactical victories. Alternatives: - Different Gamemode - CV as building - Ticket bleed with no barracks or CV. - Manufacture more CVs.
By "comeback", do you mean rushing a tank into the enemy base in the hopes of killing their CV before they kill you? Funny, I never thought anyone actually enjoyed that. :p Ah well.
back in the day, there was an old star wars based RTS. That game, if the enemy lost control of all of then command centers, they had a 45~ second timer in order to get a new one down before they automatically lost. Natural Selection had a similar system where when aliens lost all of their spawns, they would take damage and eventually die. to some peoples amusement, however, that could be circumvented by little structures that healed you for the same amount of HP you lost. anyhow, I like the thought. it would definitely give more reasons not to lost every single spawn point to a single person.
It was 0 tickets and they had 60, we pulled them down to 0 tickets, mass revived a LOT, scrambled one last wave of heavies and rushed them as the sudden death counter hit 0. Good times.
I think that this might actually be an interesting idea -- as a map-specific option for individual maps that want to implement a new game mode. Basically, it would be nice if mappers could create maps that include comm vehicles and a commander, but don't have "destroy the comm" as the objective (obviously, with a new map-specific objective instead, like capturing every flag, destroying / constructing a specific brush, planting explosives, or whatever.) There could be many ways to handle it... perhaps the CV could be destroyed, leaving that side without a commander, but the map wouldn't end until the map-specific objective was completed (sort of like the VF in glycencity -- losing it would be devastating, but not an automatic fail.) Alternatively, it could respawn at a specific point after a certain amount of time (it'd be neat if whoever died in the CV when it was destroyed spawned in it again, just to keep things running smoothly). Risking the CV would still be dangerous, because you couldn't build anything until it respawns... Hmm, problem with that, of course, is that it would encourage the enemy to 'capture' the CV with the commander out, then not destroy it (in fact, destroying it would be to their disadvantage, if they manage to capture it without the enemy comm inside.) This is probably best solved on a map-by-map basis, since we're talking about something very map-specific... perhaps there could be some immediate map-specific reward for destroying the CV (extra tickets on a map where tickets are the time limit, say.) Or there could be a 'call CV' button to summon it (after a long delay) if it is empty and remains empty. Or whatever. This would solve most of the problems of an invincible CV, anyway... I don't like the way it was described above. Having deep water basically 'hold' it for the entire game seems silly, when other threats aren't so dangerous. Honestly, you know what? If you want to make the CV simply ignore damage, I have a better idea: Immobilize it totally. On maps where the CV is invincible, it cannot move. Again, I should emphasize that unlike the original poster, I see this as a very map-specific setting that could be used to create interesting new kinds of maps, not something to be used on any existing map. For instance, one obvious question is 'what if the enemy captures the area surrounding the immobile CV' -- obviously, on these maps, you'd usually place it near a 'fixed spawn', which wouldn't be open to capture. In fact, the area with the CV could be made accessible only if you spawn there -- there would be a room with the CV, a spawnpoint, and no doors, so if a new commander is needed they can spawn there, but the CV is never under a threat or accessible for CV-rush tactics. But... hey, actually, you could do that now. So none of this is really needed. Still, it'd make a slightly unintuitive and 'hacky' looking map (you can see new players being confused by the extra spawn, say. And it would make it impossible to lose by loss of spawn-points.) if it wouldn't be too hard, a map-specific setting that makes the CV immobile and invincible would be nice, at least.
I'd just change the CV. To be honest I'd have commanding work from radars. Any radar can be upgraded to a command post, the command post has all the functionality of a radar, except it has much more health, it can also function as a spawn point and is designed to allow infantry to fight from it (not really a bunker, but more of a structure with lots of cover around it) and a sheltered spawn point inside it, and an ammo/health supply. The command post is very difficult to destroy, although it is slow to repair, it should be about twice as tough as a wall section but much more difficult to repair under fire. You'd need four or five engineers to make it invincible to three medium HE tanks for example, so a large force can still quite easily destroy it. Engineer repair tools should be more effective against it though, three enemy engineers should be able to bring down a CP in about 30 seconds, so if you're actually getting overrun it wouldn't stand a chance if you don't reinforce it. Basically it should hold out as long as you are fighting the enemy off, but once you stop and they close in, you would be hard pressed to hold the fort as it were. You can have multiple command posts at any one time, so these can be used as a self-contained forward base if you like. They are however expensive. If you have none on the field, you can purchase the upgrade for free, (so if you lose your base you can make another as long as you have money) the second one costs 1000 (in addition to the cost of the radar) and each subsequent one costs an additional 1000 resources, so you are limited to how many you have and eventually they cease to be cost effective. A barracks and armory would be cheaper, although weaker and without the functionality of the radar. When you place a radar, it should display two bounding boxes, one for the radar, and one for the upgrade, I'd have the CP be about the size of a VF, so a big structure, the CP cannot be sabotaged. The overall effect of this is that it stops comms running around after losing, it means that as long as you are in the game you can still actually spawn and fight, which is more fun for the players. It means that when the game starts, the base is already set up, so you can get out and fight straight away. It retains the mobile ability of the commander because he can still set up a CP wherever his main base is. It prevents comm rushing, and it removes the problem of players not protecting the CV and its vulnerability to ninjas and tank rushes. At the last it prevents games from ending quickly, it means you will always get a game, because you need tanks to kill the enemy base, so all matches will involve some sort of substantial fighting. All of those are common complaints and this should resolve all of them.
sounds an aweful lot like star craft terran command posts with their sat dishes that pop off to the side. ^_^ in that case, radars should also spawn nuclear silos next to them, and scouts should be able to upgrade to target spots for nukes to hit from unreachable distances................ just kidding.
I've never actually played starcraft. I like RTS games but I've never played starcraft. I thought it sounded a bit like NS because they can place comm chairs where you need them, although they don't have spawns bound to them.
Listen to Ikalx. That suggestion needs a thread of its own. (So does Aquillion's.) You could still do that. You'd just need to keep a barracks up rather than prevent them from destroying your CV. I can do you one better! Have a brush entity that works as a commander seat. You could put it anywhere and into anything... Even a commander vehicle prop. :p Adding a Con and Alternatives.
I know I know, I really must try it sometime, TA too because I like supcom and both TA and SC are staples of RTS gaming.
CV RUSH! SQUASH THEM ALL! You've probably seen many more games where a team could still win, or was winning, but their CV went kaput. You could vary the time if you wanted to, but I think 20 seconds is more than long enough to place a barracks or construct an APC. Any more than that and either your team isn't even trying or your base is so full of enemies that you're on the fast track to defeat.
