So, I wrote this 2 years ago and it wasn't as detailed as I thought it was, but I wanted to put it up for discussion anyway. CnC Style expansion: Cnc Style expansion stands for the way a commander can control the map by placing buildings. Current Empiresmod (refers to the original Empiresmod) system is that of games like Total Annihilation, where placement of structures is completely free, only based on terrain and fog of war/unit radius. The new system would be that of Original Command and conquer (generals excluded), buildings can only be placed inside of the radius of an already placed building, or a new expansion can be made by an expansion unit. There is also another very well known rts system, where expanding is possible by Capturing or taking hold of pre positioned entities scattered through out the map. Examples of games that use this are: Herzog Zwei on the Sega Genesis, One of the first RTS games ever, in this game there are tactical buildings spread over the map, these could can be captured by putting capturing units inside them, these captured buildings would then serve as a forward base to construct more units etc etc. The WarHammer? RTS game series also used this system, where pre positioned points could be captured and upgraded to serve as tactical locations or forward bases. Note that this system is a very crude way to dictate map control. I will come back to this somewhere below for an alternative. How it roughly should work in Empiresmod: Build radius around infantry is removed (not being able to drop buildings where your infantry is) Only building radius and the CV radius will allow you to drop a new building. Buildings excluded from this system are: Walls, Armory and refineries. The excluded buildings will work as they do in current empires, you can drop them anywhere on the map aslong as infantry is nearby. They will not have a build radius themselves from which new buildings can be constructed. Which buildings give what range/radius to drop new buildings? Well the maximum (100% in below examples) still needs to be decided over, I'm thinking somewhere around 2000 units to allow for extending your base, or base creep strategies. Barracks: 90% Vehiclefactory: 40% (the reason why is too much to type here, but it has a reason) Radar: 100% Turrets: ~25% The CV would require a deploy time of some sort for expansion, a 20 second timer before he receives the build radius around the vehicle. Alternative Expansion: I have looked into the refinery positions, and came to the conclusion that on current maps, all viable expansion locations have a refinery nearby, it even went so far that everywhere where there is a refinery could suit a base expansion, with this I concluded that if the whole CnC style expansion was too forced, or would cause heavy turtling, refineries could be used as tactical buildings to expand from, they could be upgraded at a cost to include a build radius, there would then be 3 ways to expand a base: 1) CV expands by driving to location, then deploying to receive a build radius, where new buildings can be constructed from. 2) Base creep, Extending from your main base to a new location 3) Upgrading Refineries to tactical positions, where a new base can be created around, or combined with base creep. Effects on gameplay: This idea is designed around that in current Empiresmod, Expansion is key, by doing it this way, it reduces the effect of forceful map control by placing high hitpoint structures all over the map, it also slows down start game and CV rush tactics to gain early map control. It will also stop one engineer being overpowered, by having him at a random location on the map, where he is able to construct a turretfarm by himself in less than a minute, or to drop a rax behind enemy lines (or even next to the base of the enemy) without having any strategy around it except getting one engineer at that location, this is unbalanced: build rate of the engineer vs kill rate of many units, other issues with this is the spawn protection that comes from barracks, its ease of repairing from the inside and the high hitpoints it carries, which pretty much makes the enemies barracks inside of your base just as strong, depending on the amount of productive players at that position. Other reason why this should be implemented is because it will create a bigger gap between a "battlefield"-"nomansland" and a "base"-"forward base" There are a lot of pros to this system, it will also allow us to make changes across the board, from raising HP of buildings etc. Points of interest: Map control - map control is less chaotic, not based on snap decisions, map control has to be fought over, more creative thinking is required, yet cuts down on the learning curve and forceful attitude of cv rushing. CV cannot rush ahead of his units and build a barracks before his units reach the point. Front lines - only one expansion unit (the cv), 2 front line assaults are very hard to achieve, refinery lockdown by map control is less harder to achieve as not all chokepoints can become forward bases all at once. Early game - Early game is not dictated by acts of the commander. CV Rushing - CV rushing is a part of Empiresmod, the commanders that know it will use it extensively, this will tie it into the gameplay and restrict its effectiveness which I consider Overpowered. (if you want examples, ask me) Turtling - Bases are more important, with that expanding. But on the flipside, turtling becomes a more viable strategy and not overshadowed by forceful CV rush map control, bases become the essential center points of your team. More points, more gameplay reasons, more balance reasons, etc etc, contact me, this is the compact version of why it will improve balance and gameplay, I really missed out on a lot. Development (whether or not it will be implemented) of this has high priority as a lot of other changes will be made around this. Coding/Gameplay points of interest: -The CV's build radius overwrites that of the enemy, could be looked into to achieve this, maybe by giving structures this same radius? Overriding enemies units should be standard with this as base expansion should be dictated by your own build radius, not by whether there is an enemy around or not, if the terrain is free, you should be able to drop it if you have the first required build radius. - requirements to drop a building on rough terrain could be softened, making it easier to drop buildings on rougher terrain, if needed, the fundamental of a building can be made bigger or the model of buildings can be altered to accommodate for this. I forgot some of the other points of interest, which could solve how to implement this, but I forgot right now, will add them later if found necessary.
Hmm...we actually looked at this for Cold Trap but then ended up scrapping it. The reason was, people like to build anywhere, and think it's one of the main good things about Empires.
You can build anywhere, this is just a way of enforcing better rock-paper-scissor between RTS strategies. As it stands now, turtling is non existant, for Empiresmod to be a true RTS-FPS hybrid, it needs some way to allow for the 3 main RTS strategies to be evenly effective.
You can build anywhere as long as the commander is there...so...you kinda put the CV on the front line, don't you? Won't there be an increase of Commanders going to one area, deploying then building up a base around them - without their team being around?
Coders have to rewrite a bit of code to make this work. Then we'll just trigger a cvar and it'll work like in C&C. I want to treat it as experiment because we can't predict its consequences good enough.
Yep, Its supposed to tie the CV into the expansion equation. It isn't meant to remove rushing, either rushing map control or with firepower. It should be perfectly viable to have your cv be used in the same way it's used in the current Empiresmod.
Spawn more overlords. You must place zerg structures on the creep. Sounds like a decent idea. tbh can't see it ever being coded in.
ya I like it too but, it seems like are codders are too far and few to find time to code this little bit in AND keep going with the current updates and fixes. Look how long it took to get 2.25. If you can find an external coder or do it yourself im sure they won't have any qualms of adding it in just to test out the lolz.
We're recruiting, up a few coders since December and have a team of people to handle balance/scripting which also helps to free up c coders. This would be a bit of an undertaking, but actually it wouldn't be all that hard... We are already using a radius based build permission centered on infantry, this would just be reducing that radius to 0 and putting the same type of radius on to building (throw radius value in script files and move on). Of course code is always easier described than done, but the real question is not "if" or "how" or even "how long", it is "do we want to do this?" I personally think it changes gameplay significantly but not in a better or worse way, just an alternate way. I think it pulls in a relatively common component from RTS games, and because of that (and a serious lack of currently realized cons) I like it a lot. On a side note, either grens go to JPL and coders go to BSID, or most outside of BSID don't want to talk to me... because I have another member interested in joining the team, and thus far no one from outside of the clan (Scardybob never talked to me about joining although I was/am incredibly excited he joined up). What gives?
If it really is possible to code this now, then I say go for it while you still can. It would be bad for Empires to go another few years kinda as is, realize that another expansion system might work better, and then realize that you can't even try anything different because you can't make that kind of coding change easily. If a kind-of working version of this suggestion could be put into test servers as a toggle-able option, then we could actually see if it works or not instead of debating around it. P.S. Clan theory: Clan, as centers of dedicated videogaming, might have higher ratios of geeks to non geeks, and therefore more coding-capable people.
i love it, i can see some ways how it could go horribly wrong, but i think the gain it could give in terms of everything overweighs the loss it could give when we end up having f*cked up empiresmod
Could you explain how you believe it could go horribly wrong? With the alternative (upgrading refs to expansion nodes) the system will practically allow almost the same situations as in the current empiresmod, for instance on mvalley the expansion to north might be slowed down, but it is just as easy to do. The difference is that you will have a small window to fight over it -> either because of the ref upgrade penalty, or cv deploy penalty. Base creeping can allow more freedom in certain situations, your building capabilities are not restricted by enemy units or the radius of your friendlies, so a creep push will be more effective than you have in the current game (if your units build the structures of course). This means that an actual base creep strategy is much more effective and can be expanded more steadily over the current empiresmod system. In the current empiresmod, base creep strategies simply stop being effective once you reach a heavy chokepoint, as from there on the efforts to expand and clear out the enemy far exceed the effort to occupy the area and restrict the enemy from being able to build there. It does happen of course, and the CV currently overwrites the enemy radius restricting you from building. While if you imagine being dependent on base creep to expand, from your start base, it sounds flawed considering the FPS element, but I believe this won't be the case as you combine it with cv expansion and ref expansion, from an already established forward base, the base creep turns into an effective push that could even solve stalemates instead of cause them. I also doubt base creep goes against the FPS element, as in having your engis waste time on expanding a base by building a structure every x map units. After a while I predict that base creep will be used as it is supposed to, like you see people use it in pure RTS games. In Pure RTS games you don't base creep to an expansion, you either relocate or use a expansion unit / tactical position, to expand to that position, and if that position is near a choke or enemy base, you proceed with base creeping towards it, slowly gaining/pushing more map control. The deply time of the cv is one way it could go wrong, it can indeed cause griefing and ninjaing, but these are problems that are inherent in almost every game mechanic, and need to be fixed in other ways, the merits are far better than the griefing / boomtank downsides.
Minor fullibble (not a real word) idea here: Have the current build-able area for your team displayed on minimap,with enemy building areas only revealed if scouted or conflicting with your "territory." This way players would have a nice visual display of the current conflicting areas, the "front lines."
what about having "concrete" decals show where you can build accourding to the building range like, you place a building, and in its range of build-able, the floor becomes coated in concrete texture
Concrete costs res, it should coat the floor with ammo boxes instead. You mean like creep but with concrete? That would be alright, but on urban maps it wouldn't do anything. I'd prefer an overlay when commander is about to place structure.
Could you actually not do that, but make it so that infantry can build in an area that's somewhat close to their buildings. Shit. I mean...if an infantryman is close to his buildings, he outputs a building radius. If he is too far away from his base, he outputs no building radius. So like on duststorm, if he runs to the centre from BE (SW?) base, then you can place a barracks outside the centre, on the SW side, but not further than that. This is like...this is something to reinforce the base creeping, but extend it slightly. Just an idea i'm throwing out, because I think it might help. CW has given a lot of devs to Empiresmod over time. They usually just be studying and then come forward and says "I canz help"...so that's probably why you don't hear from us much. If you need anything though, just pm me...I don't do much, so i'm happy to help
