[Tower Defense] Builder Alliances - redesigning Line Tower Wars

[Robbepop]

This won't be an idea proposal but a complete map thread for the upcoming game which I am going to develop. This thread shall be the entry for discussion.

I guess you have all heard of Tower Wars or even played it at least once in your life.
It has a simple gameplay: Every player got a maze which he has to defend by building a maze of towers to block incoming waves of attackers sent by other players.
Tower Wars is one of the many WarCraft III classic custom maps and has countless different versions and variants like Team Tower Wars or Line Tower Wars.

Problems with the old design

The latter itself has many derivates made by many different persons and some years ago I created the first version of Line Tower Wars - Evolution which is still updated today.
However, since I started enjoying this game over the years and course I noticed more and more flaws in its gameplay mechanics and general gameplay rules.

The list is long, but to give you an expression:

*click*

• Static pool of towers for all players: Why not random or tech-tree like?
• Static pool of sendable creeps: Why shouldn't players have different creep pools?
• Players are too dependent on sends of their previous players.
• The game doesn't end for all players at the same time which leads to community fragmentation.
• The game may end too fast for new players and disallow them to gain more experience.
• Winning a game is too reliant of a single source (= Income).
• Especially for Line Tower Wars it is not possible to play in teams.
• The situation with the current creep tiers leads to only a few usable creeps at any time of the game. It would be better if the usable creeps pool would be larger or even constant at any time of a game.
• End games take too long when good players are batteling each other or may even end in a pat, often.
• etc. ...

The idea for a redesign

This critical view over the current gameplay of Line Tower Wars maps and my years long experience creating those games has driven me to reevaluate and redesign Line Tower Wars from ground up to fix all the things I do no longer like about it.

With the redesign I am trying to adress all the mentioned problems above and more.
Since this rework for Line Tower Wars is pretty heavy I wasn't sure if it is a good idea to name it Line Tower Wars afterwards which could lead to confusion of old-school players wanting to play classic Line Tower Wars with all its flaws. So I am still searching for a good and proper name, but at the moment I will just stick with "Builder Alliances" as this name fits best to my current state of my ideas.

The whole thing will be built on top of the newest Line Tower Wars - Evolution map.
I am currently working on v2.40 which should be the final version for the old-school Line Tower Wars and a first preparation for redesigned version of "Builder Alliances".

The new Design

First of all I wanted to fix all the mentioned problems above.
So let's go through every list item and contribute an idea to solve the issue:

Possible Solutions

Problem	Possible Solution
Static pool of towers for all players.	Introducing more different custom towers as there are much more tower required when dealing with balancings of possible random sets for every player to give players different towers every game.
Static pool of sendable creeps.	Revamp of the current tier-based system and introducing a new race-based combinatory system where there could be for example four different races with a constant unit pool and a player may choose 2 and combine their units together in every game. Maybe one could also give every player a random race. To make every creep type usable at any time it is mandatory to upgrade them over time for some costs.
Players are too dependent on sends of their previous players.	This can be fixed with two things. First of all creeps sent by oponent players should no longer provide bounty on kill. Second there should be automated creep waves spawning periodically at any players base. These creep waves are controlled by a neutral computer and may provide gold and other boni for players upon killing their units. For further replayability those spawns should be random but with known configurations.
The game doesn't end for all players at the same time which leads to community fragmentation.	This could be fixed with new gameplay rules when a player is defeated or a game ends. This can be done in a similar way the things work in my map "Spider Empire" where every player starts with his own empire and instead of defeating another player the "defeated" player will join alliances with his defeating player and play for him as a vasall. It then should still be possible for the vasall player to win the game by serving good for his "master". The game is won when there are only two alliances left and the only alliance defeats the other completely. When a vasall of a certain alliance is defeated by a player of another alliance that vasall then continues to play for the new alliance. Defeating the master of an alliance also takes the complete ownership of all his vasalls.
The game may end too fast for new players and disallow them to gain more experience.	The solution stated above would also solve this problem entirely as noobs would then be a vasll for another experienced player and learn playing the game more instead of losing the game and stopping to play.
Winning a game is too reliant of a single source (= Income).	Due to the other proposed solutions it will become much harder to only focus on income as a player got another major task to get all the automatically spawning neutral bonus gold etc. by building a better maze and shift focus on that thing instead. This also causes all players to have more equal base defenses.
Especially for Line Tower Wars it is not possible to play in teams.	With the gameplay mechanics similar to "Spider Empire" mentioned above it should also be easily possible to play as predefined teams together. So a team version like "Team Tower Wars" would be unnessesary.
The situation with the current creep tiers leads to only a few usable creeps at any time of the game. It would be better if the usable creeps pool would be larger or even constant at any time of a game.	The solutions mentioned above will fix this problem entirely already.
End games take too long when good players are batteling each other or may even end in a pat, often.	In the current Line Tower Wars players steal lives from other players which leads to massive amount of lives in the end of a game bundled on a few single players. So it would be a better idea to remove the life steal and go with a hitpoint-based system for players. So every player got a much larger pool of hitpoints which may he regenerate or heal up to a maximum amount and when an oponent creep leaks his maze it will damage the player's hitpoints by a certain amount. When the hitpoints reach zero the player will be a vasall of his defeating player and his hitpoints should reset to default again to provide him with a little shield for some time. This should end games much faster as it is harder to mass lives or hitpoints.

Tower Types

more to come ...

Tower Types

Icon	Name	Category	Description
	Barricade	Barricade	Costs almost nothing and is therefor very useful to build your initial maze. Can be upgraded to any other basic tower in the game.
	Arrow Tower	Allrounder	Very basic tower, shoots arrows at single enemy ground or air units.
	Gatling Tower	Allrounder	Attacks single ground or air units and increases its attack speed with every hit against the same target.
	Sniper	Allrounder	Attacks very slowly but with a huge range. Never misses its target and has got a chance to deal tons of damage on an attack with a head-shot.
	Ranger/Hippogryph Rider	Allrounder	Attacks ground units only but is capable to temporary ride its hyppogryph in order to attack air units only.
	Spell Tower	Allrounder	Has a very strong but slow attack against single units. Can cast Fireball or Blizzard to stun or damage units.
	Siege Tower	Anti-Ground	Basic anti-ground tower. Its splashing attacks are very slow but have a long range.
	Sharp Tower	Anti-Ground	Damages all nearby units in melee range at the same time on an attack.
	Tentacle	Anti-Ground	Has a very fast and powerful melee attack which has a chance to stun enemy units on hit.
	Ogre	Anti-Ground	Has a very strong melee attack which damages units in a huge area around the Ogre. Has twice as much hitpoints and can sleep to restore them. Can fart ...
	Impaler	Anti-Ground	Has an impale attack which throws enemy units to the sky.
	Flame Thrower	Anti-Ground	Can throw flames which deals a huge amount of damage as long as it has got a non-empty mana pool.
	Discharger	Anti-Air	Attacks single air units ultimately fast with a discharging lightning attack. Has got a huge attack range.
	Photon Tower	Anti-Air	Attacks multiple targets at the same time, can burst out a Photon Blast to hit all surrounding flying units.
	Lightning Tower	Anti-Air	Attacks with lightning strikes from the sky which deal damage to air units nearby the target.
	Net Thrower	Anti-Air	Throws nets at flying units which may ensnare them on the ground for some seconds.
	Wall	Anti-Attacker	Basic anti-attacker tower. Has got a huge amount of hitpoints and damages melee units attacking it.
	Footman	Anti-Attacker	Has an offense and defense stance. Attacks much faster in offense stance but has much more hitpoints in defense stance.
	Paladin	Anti-Attacker	Has a low range attack against ground and air units. Can completely restore the hitpoints of other nearby organic towers. Can shield itself with a Divine Shield to prevent all damage to it for some seconds.
	Mana Barrier	Anti-Attacker	Has a mana shield which regenerates very fast. Can consume its whole mana to overload its shield and burst out area damage.
	Explosive Cask	Anti-Attacker	Deals tons of damage on destruction to nearby enemy ground units.
	Command Aura	Aura	Increases the attack damage of nearby allied towers. Does not affect a few special towers.
	Fortification Aura	Aura	Increases the armor of nearby allied towers.
	Frost Aura	Aura	Decreases the movement speed of nearby enemy units.
	Mind Aura	Aura	Increases the mana regeneration of nearby allied towers.
	Thunder Elemental	Elemental	Attacks ultimately fast and has a great chance to deal bonus damage and stun its target for some time on an attack. (Permastun is possible!)
	Death Elemental	Elemental	Attacks are slow but do splash. Can activate a huge explosion around itself which burns mana every second and deals damage too all units within a large area around this tower.
	Earth Elemental	Elemental	Has a very powerful melee attack, a huge amount of hitpoints and can stomp the ground to stun all nearby enemy units for some seconds.
	Unholy Elemental	Elemental	Has a very powerful single target attack against ground- and air- units. Reduces the armor of nearby enemy units passively.
	Water Elemental	Elemental	Has a decent splashing attack which slows units on hit.
	Tech Elemental	Elemental	Has got a long attack range, attacks extremely fast and shoots missiles at multiple units at once. Is able to focus fire to deal additional damage to units within the target area.
	War Elemental	Elemental	Has a medium single target attack but is able to roar for battle in order to highly increase the attack damage of its owning player's towers.
	Fire Elemental	Elemental	Attacks very fast with splashing burning missiles. Is able to further increase its attack speed temporarly.
	Demon Elemental	Elemental	Killing an enemy unit summons a demon minio fighting for this tower for some time.
	Holy Elemental	Elemental	Has the ability to make all player's tower invulnerable for some seconds.
	Scout Tower	Utility	The only tower able to detect invisible units.

Screenshots

All Towers (updated 14th Oct. 2015)

Basic Towers (so far - more to come!)

Keep in mind that nearly all of those towers have got 6 stages each.
I will describe the towers and their special abilities in a later update.

Elemental Towers

Elemental towers are the strongest towers in the game and thus a player can only have one of them at the same time.
Choose wisely and combine their strengths with your other towers and your maze's structure.

Tower Categories

A builder is able to build a cheap barricade for blocking the path.
This barricade then can be upgraded into any basic tower.

Conclusion

Many of them are developed much further than stated here but you should get an idea of what I want to do with this game.
I really hope you like it and I am looking forward to your comments. =)

Regards,
Robbepop

 

[Leo Akastenix]

How abt allow them to choose a faction, a faction will give them specific units and towers!

 

[Robbepop]

I was also thinking about this. However, tower collections are something nearly every TD already has. I want to create something new and with the current system it could be even possible to create several different modes how players receive different towers etc.

Regards,
Robbepop

 

[Leo Akastenix]

How abt going with options.. like

For T1 towers the player can choose from x,c,v,i,k,l (choose 4)
X= Long Range, High damage
C =so on..
V =..
I =....
K =..
L =..

 

[Robbepop]

The tower categories are the following:

• All-Rounders: can be used against any targets.
• Anti-Ground: strong against ground units.
• Anti-Air: strong against flying units.
• Walls: strong against attacking units, protecting your other towers.
• Auras: empower your other towers or debuff oponents creeps.
• Elemental: strongest towers, players can only have one at a time.
• Mine: one-time-usage but very strong and costly.
• Utility: misc category for everything else, like a scout tower etc.

I am planning to create several towers for every of these categories.
And at the moment the following game modes are actually planned:

• All Pick: all towers are available for all players
• Random: one (or two?) random towers per category are available for all players (different towers for different players). It should be possible to repick randomly.
• Tech-Tree: players start all with the default towers for every category and may research new towers when needed.

 

[Robbepop]

*bump*

added a "Pictures" chapter in the presentation post and added a few screenshots.

 

[Ardenian]

In my opinion, it was a good decision to rename it, I am sure it will be a lot different than LTW.
I will see whether I can come up with some ideas.

 

[Robbepop]

Hiho,

yeah I too think that it is better to rename it to remove any confusion about similarities and differences.

I updated the initial post with some of the already implemented tower types. However, this list isn't complete and misses many already implemented tower types such as all aura, utility and elemental tower types. Besides that I am still adding other new tower types from time to time.

Regards,
Robbepop

 

[Chaosy]

I would suggest a hidden tag for the huge

I will read through this laterz.

 

[Robbepop]

I would suggest a hidden tag for the huge

I will read through this laterz.

Hiho, looking forward to your response about the current implemented tower types. =) I may change the table later but at the moment it doesn't seem to be too big to me. However, it will get bigger in the future and then a hidden spoiler will be required. Regards, Robbepop edit: added the missing elemental towers and scout tower to the list and made the list hidden. edit2 (13th Okt. 2015) I have completely redesigned the tower model behind the scenes which will allow the following tower modes for players: All Pick: players can build all tower types. Tech Pick: players start with basic tower types and may research new ones individually. Random Pick: players receive one random tower type from every category and may reroll their towers a few times.

 

[Robbepop]

*bump*

I have uploaded a new image featuring all currently implemented tower WITHOUT their upgraded versions.

Also I have finally finished the systems behind the scene to allow for Random Pick, Tech Pick and All Pick modes.

Regards,
Robbepop

edit:

planned tower types:

Mothership (Anti-Air): passively releases several flying minions which attack nearby enemy air units.
Cloud (Anti-Air): has a low-range attack range but attacks with lightning strikes hitting multiple air units in a chain.
Boomeranger (Allrounder): low-range tower with bouncing attacks to hit multiple targets and which can bounce to the same target multiple times.
Prism Tower (Allrounder): prism tower which can bundle the fire of several other prism towers to attack the same target with combined force.
Panda Stoner (Wall): has many hitpoints, can taunt enemy units and attacks with rolling stones which damages all ground-units within a line.
Static Tower (Wall): releases a chain lightning to every unit attacking it. stuns units on attack for a short amount of time.

please tell me what you do think about those planned tower types. =)

 

[Robbepop]

Hiho,

it is me again.
I haven't had much time lately to update this map, however, it is still in development and I will continue working on it as soon as possible.
I reiterated some design decisions from above and came to the point that maybe the King & Slave mode may be very imbalanced early on in the game and would lead to very short games.
So for example it is a huge bonus if a player is able to defeat another player early on and then fight together against the others, especially when there are only three players at all.

My new idea is based upon a score system where players receive score points upon defeating other players. So the more one player actually defeats another player the more score points he earns. It is that simple. Game does not end after a player got defeated. The player will receive another life and all oponent units in his area are cleared.

What are your thoughts about this? Let me hear it!

Regards,
Robbepop

 

[Ardenian]

Game does not end after a player got defeated. The player will receive another life and all oponent units in his area are cleared.

I myself see a problem with this. Games using this kind of style often tend to have that 'Oh I died ? Anyways, I respawn'-tendency.

I would suggest giving different game modes as option.

 

[Nordmar]

Since it's a better version of LTW (in theory) you might just wanna name it LTW 2.0. So you keep the oldschool LTW players but at the same time it's obivious a totally new version.

I like the idea that any mob can be useful anytime but you haven't posted much more information on this so there is not much else to say.

Static pool of towers for all players.

This "problem" (I don't see it as a problem but it can be quite boring so I see why you marked it as such) can hardly be changed but I have two creative ideas:

1. After every round/wave the player has to choose a new race and the already built towers get replaced by towers from the new race (the purpose of the tower stays the same..so anti air tower of human will be replaced with an anti air tower of nightelf)

2. The player gets every round automatically a new race. The already built towers stay as they are but your building menu adapts to the new race you got. So you have new towers every round. To minimize the randomness you let players know what the races will be for the next x rounds. This is usually used for waves (next wave: air, in 2 waves: invisibile, in 3 rounds: ground)

I hope you get the idea.