Customisable RTS Development Thread

[Wazzz]

This is a concept I've been tweaking with for a while now. The basic idea I had was how a game would operate if you could customise your armies to be how you wanted given certain guidelines. So, with some ideas of what limitations should be in placed, I decided on numerous things that are not yet final but are pretty exciting to me nonetheless.

As you know, you can 'customise your armies'. How this works is where it gets a little less open ended (don't want everything to be infinitely open, after all, not for the initial release anyway). Some units will be fully customisable. That is, you can choose everything from the weapon they use to the special bonus they gain to set them apart from other units created to fill the same role. Others, however, will be completely inflexible. And, of course, you will have different shades of grey in between.

A unit list of the Human race can be used as an example of how these flexibilities can change:

Unit List

Human - Most basic unit, available in all tiers. Mounts, ranged units and casters are available when a medium sized town is owned. Only basic melee units are available (so far) given small towns (most maps will start you off with a small town). It is planned that you will get 5 different Human units of your creation.

Seraph - Higher level infantry unit, requires a medium sized town. These will have the ability to leap across the battlefield using their mechanical wings. Other than this addition, they will have the same versatility as a regular Humans unit with the exception that they cannot be used as mounts.

Pegasus - Highest level infantry unit, requires a large sized town. These have the same ability as the Seraph, but will be mount only.

Cannon - Artillery unit, inflexible (for now)

Steam Tank - Heavy mechanical unit, may have various add-ons which players are allowed to choose between, primarily the weapons used.

Airship - Heavy flying transport unit, may have various add-ons which players are allowed to choose between, such as choosing between more weapons or the ability to hold more units than normal.

This is 6 different units when written out like this. However, one of those units is repeated 5 times and are all fully customisable. This becomes 10 different units, 7 of which are customisable to the extent that you choose what roles they play to a fine point.

The variables which you may customise on the most part are:

Attachments

Weapons - Blunt, Slash/Hack (varies with race, no difference in DPS), Bow (for Humans it's a Rifle), Wand/Magic Thingydo (Spell Guns in the case of Humans), Polearm. The Blunt and Slash/Hack weapons may be used as one handed weapons or two handed weapons. Polearms may be given that option, too.

Armor - Light, Medium, Heavy. Light offers fastest units but lowest damage resistance, Heavy is the polar opposite. Medium is a compromise between the two for more versatile units. Simple.

Secondary Items - Shields (various shield types), Mounts, Spells (may be combined with Wands, currently unsure). You cannot use these with two-handed weapons.

Gadget/Added Bonus - These vary with races. Basically, they add a little bit extra to each unit, whether it be a small bonus to damage dealt or a flame effect on attacks.

Additionally, there will be a town system implemented. You start with your starting towns (suitable name) and expand by conquering more towns. The bigger the size of the town, the more stuff you can get, as well as the better. Some towns add extra bonuses, such as a Dock Town adding the option of getting a shipyard, or the Forge town, allowing one tier higher to be built at it in terms of units.

The aim of this project so far is to complete Humans for a beta release. After that, races should be added so long as there is demand for more. If there is no demand for more, I'll probably add it anyway as this is a game that I want to play. I will not bullshit you, this won't be one of those games that is played and loved by everyone, primarily because the larger majority of the gaming society will most likely not understand the attraction of such a gameplay style (prove me wrong, CoD fans).

So far, the system has been created for customising units, but has yet to be replicated. The income system has been planned out. Techtrees for all races have been considered, but Humans take priority.

Leave your feedback, ideas, good luck comments, whatever you want down below. Under the condition you abide by the rules.

UPDATE: Techtree change, see here for details on the Steam Tank.

Cannon has been replaced by a second option for the Steam Tank.

 

[noob]

This remember me one idea I already posted in idea factory http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/idea-factory-462/small-human-war-simulation-idea-204591/

 

[GhostThruster]

Not good idea.
It will either render all the units as OP heroes and ruin any sort of strategy (JUST like the heroes in Wc3) OR it will be too boring and hard to micro all these little individual units. And you shouldn't mix this kind of town system (which I take may end up similar to Control Points in DoW) with this level of detail for micro-ing all your little humans. I know you probably don't understand what I am saying, but then at least remember this;
nobody gives a fuck about complex systems and little details, they only care about the fun. I'd rather play a Footman Frenzy than this.

Just my 69 cents.

 

[Switch33]

I thought this was going to be squad based sorta. But the whole idea that you threw in "towns" is a tad confusing cause I've never heard of a squad based game that relies mostly on "town" conquest.You should change "towns" to "outposts" in my opinion since "towns" just gives off more of a feeling that the game is more melee than it is squad based.

It could be an really interesting game if you find some unique ways to do some of these ideas though like only being able to upgrade units based on how many outposts they own. Also their upgrades to new units could be dependent on which specific "outposts" they own. This whole idea actually somewhat reminds me of tech wars/peon wars which were big hits for wc3 for a while.

It will either render all the units as OP heroes and ruin any sort of strategy (JUST like the heroes in Wc3) OR it will be too boring and hard to micro all these little individual units.

There was a squad based game that was made on The Helper that was amazing. I thought it was a really good balance between strategy and function for the members of the squads. I don't remember what happened to it but it was really neat. For example priests would attack allied units to heal them.(Simplistic yet strategically beneficial AI goes a long way for squad based games.) Most people who play wc3 are mostly focused on playing with a hero and it's good to switch it up with squad type gameplay since it can be a whole different strategy.

nobody gives a fuck about complex systems and little details, they only care about the fun.

Yes, nobody does give a crap about em if they aren't implemented well. Which is one reason why my map is going to take a lot of time. (A bunch of the time is going to developing the ideas/rules on how the game should function.)

 

[GhostThruster]

First off, your post is a bit off-topic, you notice?

Secondly

There was a squad based game that was made on The Helper that was amazing. I thought it was a really good balance between strategy and function for the members of the squads. I don't remember what happened to it but it was really neat. For example priests would attack allied units to heal them.(Simplistic yet strategically beneficial AI goes a long way for squad based games.) Most people who play wc3 are mostly focused on playing with a hero and it's good to switch it up with squad type gameplay since it can be a whole different strategy.

AFAIK this map is not squad-based. Even so, I am not talking about the strategy and function, I'm talking about how this customizing system will fail because people would rather train a preset Rifleman unit off the bat, especially considering he has to micromanage his entire army as well as keep his towns in place. EDIT: It turns out your paragraph is valid. I misunderstood because of a certain assface who failed to mention a big piece of info.

Lastly

Yes, nobody does give a crap about em if they aren't implemented well. Which is one reason why my map is going to take a lot of time. (A bunch of the time is going to developing the ideas/rules on how the game should function.)

Um I don't care about your map.

 

[Wazzz]

ah there's a point i forgot to mention

the map WILL be squad-based

i KNEW i was probably forgetting something but the initial post was getting far too long as it was so i left it for the time being to see if i could add some... sex appeal

and i see GT is having the same initial concerns i had with the idea, but i assure you efforts to balance it out as much as possibly have already been made and will continue to be made. i promise you i will make this work to the best of my abilities.

as for never hearing of a town system such as this one combined with a squad-based RTS environment, that's part of the reason i'm doing it. mainly because i'm surprised it hasn't been done before, as i feel confident i can make it work. however, it has been done in the more basic form of Dawn of War. i'm essentially replacing strategic points and the likes with towns.

 

[GhostThruster]

ah there's a point i forgot to mention

the map WILL be squad-based

OH.

Thank you assface, for making me look like an idiot.

 

[Wazzz]

♥ u 2, sugarpuff

anyway, the idea behind balancing the races is that there will be obvious limitations to what you can do. if i, for example, made it you could use two-handed weapons combined with a shield or a mount, there would be no reason for going with one-handed weapons. also it's kind of illogical to have such a combination.

to me, balance would come from what players choose to do with their initial choices within the game. some might use their starting barracks opportunities to produce the same unit, which could be designed as a versatile core unit that can do most jobs semi-effectively.

alternatively, they could open up with just one unit production building, creating the perfect scout unit. after scouting out what their opponent is doing they could then use their second starting option for a suitable counter.

another option would be creating the perfect unit for capturing towns. 'perfect' is not taking into account that later on there will be better units for the job, but they will be effective in their roles of taking down towns and capturing them.

as for capturing towns, i'm probably going to make it so that towns are captured by destroying the core structure. everything else is converted to the capturing player, wiping the slate clean and allowing you to start over again with producing the structures you want. a good incentive to protect your towns, i believe.

 

[GhostThruster]

Wait wait wait, if units are in squads, does that mean each item will only appear on one unit?

 

[Wazzz]

nope, due to illidan(evil)x's system the items work perfectly within squads

seriously i love that guy he is the most uber modder i've known ♥

 

[Switch33]

OH.

Thank you assface, for making me look like an idiot.

In my opinion you did it to yourself. You pretty much said in your first post that this map is gonna fail without even seeing much of anything besides the beginning information. Then you tried to troll my post even when I didn't do anything wrong besides assuming that it was squad based(which ended up being right).

And even if he didn't mention that it was squad based outright if you read the post it still somewhat gave out the feel of squad based- he talked about certain units being "mounts, ranged units, and casters"- or fulfilling certain roles in the groups; yet not being any heroes.
Especially this part was a good hint:

This is 6 different units when written out like this. However, one of those units is repeated 5 times and are all fully customisable. This becomes 10 different units, 7 of which are customisable to the extent that you choose what roles they play to a fine point.

(Although the reason I knew mostly was from the svekerman's recruit thread where he stated it was going to be squad based)

A lot of people on the hive are getting annoyingly troll-like edgy it seems.
Some examples?
Requiem's thread, Svekerman's recruit thread, and even for a small bit of wc3 Paranoia's thread.
I'm just saying in general people just need to settle down and stop jumping to conclusions that just aren't there. And learn to at least have a conversation rather than jerk fest on who's right or wrong.

Also yah illidan(evil)x was one of my favorite modders as well. He was very successful in completing almost all his projects(only one he didn't complete was the red alert one) that included a lot of custom content. He made some truly awesome models for his maps as well.

Also Dawn of War is a great game. I used to play that game for a while. Think I lost the cd for it though heh. In my opinion a squad game could definitely be really popular and the town idea with squads sounds worthwhile, but generally usually the first few test maps usually show if its going to be formed well or not for combat.

 

[Wazzz]

Yeah, I've been thinking about how to tackle this gameplay style for a while and I'm getting ideas that will hopefully continue to satisfy.

Mind you, some of the ideas may require full co-operation from modellers if I were to make them the best they can be.

Of course, I will be taking the approach of making the map playable and ready for release before I get too many people on board. Once the Humans are completed I aim to add in other races as I desire, so that the project itself will continue to be in development after the initial gameplay has been created.

But that aim is for later. For all we know I may end up releasing the project with Humans and then just not add any more races in, despite having ideas for them. In the meantime I'll focus on making the Humans as enjoyable as possible =D

What happened on Sverkerman's thread is unfortunate. I figured that if people joined that team, they must have wanted to work on a project quite badly, no matter what it meant. Threads like that bring in the less experienced members of the internet and aim to exploit them. Which is why I wanted to attempt a power shift, so that people could join a project that is already in the works. After all, it seemed people were getting a bad impression of the modding community from that alone, so why not aim to fix it?

Of course, Bramblecow sees it as... well, I'm not quite sure what he sees it as. As far as I can tell, he wants to protect the integrity of a user who has none by attacking the integrity of all the users attempting to reason with him, including mods. Hopefully he will see the error of his ways.

 

[GhostThruster]

Quote me. Quote me, and show me when I said this map was gonna fail. I merely complained about the system, which was a)misinterpreted because I thought all the units were individuals therefore requiring a near impossible amount of boring micro and b)my personal opinion anyways.

I stand by my reply to your first comment. Most of it was irrelevant, you talked about changing the name of towns to outposts. Then you went on about some random mod on TheHelper. To top it off, you advertised your own project. Yessir, that is the most intelligent and on-topic comment I have witnessed since yesterday.

Though yeah, a fail for me for not realising this was squad-based (he even posted it before and started a similar project).

EDIT: @Wazzz: Hey, how will you add different races? Coz if all units are customizeable, then each race basically can make the same unit with different aesthetics.
Brambleclaw is a tryhard. He acts like a super senior admin, yet has the IQ of an acorn. His dumbassness has been seen before on other threads.

 

[Switch33]

Not good idea.

nobody gives a fuck about complex systems and little details, they only care about the fun. I'd rather play a Footman Frenzy than this.

So none of this sounds like your saying the project will fail? Honestly do you even read what you post yourself?

I mentioned towns sounds kind of strange aesthetically since the game generally revolves around what is in almost every other map with the same idea called as "outposts" or "control points." I was just pointing out that it being named "towns" at least made it sound less squad based. But it doesn't really matter; it's his map he can do whatever.

Also I wasn't advertising about my map; i only made a small side comment. I didn't explain anything about my map really in that post. I was only pointing to the fact that the concept of how a map should function is sometimes just as important as the map itself. I'm hoping my elaboration here has cleared up what I meant to be getting across.

And quotes are useful because they provide breaks in the text along with real words that another user typed; would you rather i just summarize and misinterpret like you seem to be doing?
Edit2:(Sorry about this comment; it did somewhat sound a tad rude in taste.)



Edit: As for different races there could be many different ways. Especially if you make certain units hybrids between different roles for the specific races. I.E. Druids for night elf serve as both a healer and tank somewhat even in regular melee.

Theres a difference between saying things like this:

Of course, Bramblecow sees it as... well, I'm not quite sure what he sees it as. As far as I can tell, he wants to protect the integrity of a user who has none by attacking the integrity of all the users attempting to reason with him, including mods. Hopefully he will see the error of his ways.

and this:

Brambleclaw is a tryhard. He acts like a super senior admin, yet has the IQ of an acorn. His dumbassness has been seen before on other threads.

Ghostthruster is pretty clearly trolling. And I'm not taking anyones side-- usually during debates between other users I stay out of it. I'm just saying as far as things go people can have their opinions and they are fine as long as they aren't so trashy or thrashy about them.

 

[noob]

EDIT: @Wazzz: Hey, how will you add different races? Coz if all units are customizeable, then each race basically can make the same unit with different aesthetics.

if all units are customisable we can always make customisations specific to races

 

[GhostThruster]

Hmmm, I guess it would diversify the race. But it would also restrict the customizations.

Also, Wazzz you can take a look at this for some inspiration http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/maps-564/8-augmentationwarfarev1-3-a-174168/ (^^ made a few of the icons for that map)

 

[Wazzz]

ah now therein lies the point of interest!

i shall divulge some ideas i've had for the Dark Elf race.

with the Humans, you will notice there are a few units that don't customise as much as others. this gives us a nice clue, for there will be units that don't even have customisation capabilities.

one thing i want the Humans to be known for is their versatility. they will probably be the most customisable race in the game.

some ideas i've had for the Dark Elves is that instead of having 5 Dark Elves that are fully customisable (like the Humans), you will only get 3. An early unit for the Dark Elves will probably be the Minotaur (cliche'd, hence why the 'probably'). The Minotaur will be a tank unit in nature, but will have less capacity for versatility. You will be able to select it's weapon (choosing between one-handed or two-handed will be as simple as whether or not you want it to have a shield, and you will only have melee options) and a 'gadget', but nothing else. It replaces the armour choice with a natural thick hide and will only be slightly slower than regular units.

Other unit ideas, such as the Harpy (basically a Dark Elf version of the Seraph) and the Hydra (beast unit that has 0 room for modification), have been considered, too, allowing players to employ completely different strategies with various races.

For example, you will be able to open up with the Minotaur for a greater class of Tank unit. These will be more expensive than most starting units and will have a slightly higher upkeep, but have the stats to support this. How you use them is up to you (basically choosing between whether or not you want them to be more defensive or more offensive, but also choosing what they excel against to a slightly finer point), of course.

Other ideas I've had include that of the Orc race, where you may start with some Goblins. Instead of having Goblins being useless pieces of shit other than for swarming, these will be mounted units only. They will probably be allowed to implement shields in additions to their mounts (unsure yet), adding a little to their versatility. This will make them great candidates for a really early scouting unit.

I have recently thought about how only one-handed melee weapons may be used for mounted units, but you will also be allowed to use two-handed ranged weapons such as the rifle. While I thought 'should i change this', i'm now thinking it can be fixed by simply reducing the effectiveness of such weapons when on mounts (for they will have lower accuracy or something like that). What do you guys think?

 

[noob]

And seraph can be humans with an gadget: mecanical wings

 

[Wazzz]

well the mechanical wings weren't going to replace the gadgets, just basically remove the option of having them use mounts.

quick update, i've had a bit of a mental breakthrough
i was pondering what to do with regards to two-handed weapons and mounts, as treating mounts as secondary items means that you can't have shields or two-handed weapons or any of that good stuff with mounted units

which also means you can't have ranged cavalry

so i decided to treat mounts as their own additional option
that is, you will be able to have mounts with the same capabilities as regular units

THE KEY DIFFERENCES ARE:

PROS:
- Greater speed
- Greater health

CONS:
- Greater expense
- Lower numbers (possibly)
- Weak to pole-arms

The weakness to pole-arms is basically to make it difficult to pull off an all cavalry army. As well as the tier system limiting you in that aspect, too.

Basically pole-arms will be good against all 'large' units. This obviously includes cavalry, but to a finer point it will include some other units such as Minotaurs and Ogres. Some units will be large but won't suffer the weakness (such as Steam Tanks, Trolls and Hydras).

 

[GhostThruster]

When you think about it, Cavalry don't really ever use two-handed weapons. I think you could remove the ability to use a 2h weapon too.

 

[Wazzz]

that is true, which is why i was thinking of no two-handed weapons at first
but yeah, i can easily arrange it so that you can't use two-handed melee weapons but allow two-handed weapons such as the rifle or bows and shit. not sure about magic attacks, probably allow them though, too.

 

[Mechanical Man]

Why you don't want ranged cavalry?

 

[Wazzz]

That's the thing, I do want ranged cavalry. But it recently occurred to me that with my current system, it was impossible to have ranged cavalry.

What I'm possibly going to do is make it so that cavalry units can't use two-handed melee weapons, but then again I'm thinking they should be a possibility. I've seen it done in Mount and Blade, after all, and there's nothing wrong with a little extra variety, I guess.

 

[Mechanical Man]

In Mount&Blade you have 1 slot for horse and 4 weapon slots, where you can put melee weapons, shields, ranged weapons and ammuntion.

 

[Wazzz]

yeah but i'm talking about the capability of using two-handed melee weapons on horseback, as well as one-handed melee weapons with shields

 

[Crayons]

heyo wazzz. this is a nice project you got here.

I love the idea of the special type of towns.

@the people who are questioning balance: herd of this? http://asia.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/spartaancientwars/review.html?tag=summary;read-review

Good luck on your project. I hope it's not another one of those "never to be finished" project

 

[Wazzz]

oh yeah, i think we'll all agree on that one haha

never heard of that game before, going to check it out though

town system will be the hardest part atm, as i have not figured out how to make it work how i want it to
may need some tweaking

 

[Crayons]

it uses the select a weapon system.

play it as a reference

 

[Wazzz]

already got most of that system figured out, but it is good to see a game implementing such a system

definitely check out how they do it

so far, the games that i've seen which allow customisation of units are Earth 2160 and Mount and Blade, the former being more shitty and the latter being more RPG

this spartan game looks more like what i'm doing though =D

 

[Crayons]

avenge it then. the reviews sucked.

 

[Wazzz]

Played Ancient Wars: Sparta, felt the reviews were fully justified (as their arguments were valid), but loved the game nonetheless. For now, anyway. It is very fun and one thing that will turn most people away is how complex it can get, but that's the way I like it.


UPDATE ON LE PROJECT:
Couple of points.

1. Equipment System

One-handed weapons are to be used in conjunction with any secondary item, with the exception of the Wand. The Wand will disable the ability to use Shields.

Two-handed weapons disable secondary items. Duel-wielding gives the same effect, so some units will duel-wield, others will use two-handed weapons.

Any such combination for a regular unit can be used on a Mount, which means Ranged Cavalry will be a reality. However, I'm wondering whether or not Ranged Cavalry will become overpowered. If indeed they do present an issue, possible implementations to balance this out will be:
a) Chance to miss on attacks, due to being ranged and on cavalry, or
b) Lower attack speed, due to being ranged and on cavalry and all that good shit

2. Town System

I have informed you of the Small/Medium/Large Town idea. Now I will expand on it a little more.

The buildings you can get for towns will be Utility and Production. Production gets you units. Simple as that. Utility, however, is a little more various.

Utility buildings include:
- Housing
- Gunsmiths/Stables
- Blacksmith
- Towers

Housing provides income. You will want as much of this as you can get away with.

Gunsmiths provide access to ranged weaponry (I will probably make ranged units available for small towns now, too) while Stables provide access to cavalry (not available in most small towns). Basically, they allow for more equipment in a town.

Blacksmith grants upgrades for your units equipment.

Towers provide defence.

I am still unsure as to whether or not I will make Stables and Gunsmiths a requirement, or whether or not I will throw in a requirement for melee infantry, too. If I do the latter, there runs the risk of players getting no requirements for units and not being able to produce any units from that town. However, if I do the former, getting housing will be all too easy and spammable.

 

[Skycraft]

This is an interesting project I will subscribe to this now so I can keep track of it's amazing progress!!!
Keep up the good work Wazzz!!

 

[GhostThruster]

Will the town system include a build system like in LOTR: BFME and Halo Wars?

 

[Catch_ya]

Not good idea.
It will either render all the units as OP heroes and ruin any sort of strategy

Bullshit, you can't predict how this map is gonna turn out, especialy not from the information given.
Now you said 'all units', all units overpowered, makes no units overpowered, which doesn't prevent stragety. Otherwise there would still be stragety, if there is no variation in units then it would be boring also. You can always add counters as well.

 

[GhostThruster]

...bit late.

When, WHEN did I attempt to predict how this map is gonna turn out?

Firstly, I stated the system and system idea was poor judging from what info he had (tho I was mistaken in thinking it was not squad-based). Secondly, Wazzz had the same thoughts initially. Thirdly, you're acting as if I am picking on Wazzz. You don't have to attack me like I am some evil troll intent on the destruction of Wazzz's modding days. And I've already argued with Switch33 on this. You can happily ignore me or just leave.

 

[Wazzz]

nothing like BFME (although i only played the second BFME, was that build system any different?), and never played Halo Wars, only saw a bit of it on youtube, and it did not go into the building of things to great depth (only some unit production)

i'm thinking that some utility structures should include racial structures, such as one race could have 'tunnels', for example

this would allow them to hold units in their town and transport them to other towns with tunnels

 

[noob]

Mecanical Wings can be a mount

 

[InfernalTater]

Off-topic:
Enough, enough, can you people stop arguing about GhostThruster's first post, 3 pages later? He already stated that he was made to look like a dumbass with that post, as he didn't know that it was squad-based. So don't insult him for a comment that he's already changed his mind about. Unless you people are just that much in need of someone to insult in the hopes of making yourself look better.

On-topic:
We could at least let a thread for an interesting project like this stay clean and allow the uninterrupted production of this map with a great idea. This map will certainly need as much work effort as it can get to pass off an idea this complicated and still be fun to play.

I might help with terrain, or coding, or making attachments, but I've been getting less active on videogames lately, so you'd probably be safer with other, more reliable people.

I'll be glad to help with ideas when I can, though.

As for what you've got so far, I'll contribute my opinions on the attachments:
Yes, mounted units should not use 2-handed weapons; it's hard to control a two-handed weapon without your feet on the ground.
Bows/guns for mounted units would have really been great for hit-and-run tactics. If your melee troops are mounted, and your ranged troops have to be on foot, that would make the cavalry somewhat useless, as it would have to move slow to stay with the rest of your army anyway...
Cavalry using a 1-handed weapon and a shield sounds perfectly fine to me.
Wings on mounted units? You'd need to attach them to the mount, because if you attach them to the troop, it wouldn't make much sense for him to fly up and somehow not leave the mount.

As for towns: I think it would be really neat if you made a small town center model with attachment points on the ground around it, for you to randomly attach different mini-buildings to in order to actually assemble a little town. Towns with different attached buildings would grant different types of units or bonuses/techs/structures.
I hope this game turns out great, it really sounds awesome so far. I hope it has a good terrainer.

If you need terrain, attachment models, or models for resources, feel free to ask. I've made a gold mine model that looks almost identical to the gold mines in age of empires II. Of course, the only sensible way to mine from them would be to have the miner attack them with a pickaxe, rather than somehow walking inside of the mound and coming out with gold.
I'm not very active, on once every couple of days or so, so you'll probably be better off using someone else to do the terrain, but if you need me, I'll be here.
Other than that, I'll be glad to provide my ideas anytime.
Btw: A tower and wall/gate system similar to age of empires II would be great. We've already got models on hiveworkshop capable of creating just that.

 

[Wazzz]

Regarding units:
I think I can see a compromise. I can always disallow two-handed melee weapons (which I would have the mounted units use with one hand), but still allow ranged cavalry. That way it makes a little more sense.
The wings are going to be on the mount yes lol, it's a Pegasus, essentially.

The theme of the Human race is a combination of the two most overused themes - Celestial (angels and pegasi and the likes) with Steampunk (everybody knows steampunk :3)

Regarding towns:
I see you have the same idea as me ^^
Yeah I was thinking that small, medium and large towns could perhaps all have the same base model, even, as the primary difference will be how many buildings you can construct in the town.

Reagrding resources:
I'm very glad to see some more support, and will no doubt find some use for you :3
I have some assistance so far with models, so I will see how that goes for now.
As for terrain, I really really do suck at terrain, and the more help in that department I have, the better :3
I do have a map that I'm going to use for the initial beta release (created by Rui, who gave me permission to use it for this project).

Basically, I'm so bad at terraining, and I like the idea of letting fans of the gamestyle create their own maps using my creations and my universe, I will allow the public to create their own terrains for the mod so they can play the game they want to play in this gamestyle.

While they do this, I will continue to update the universe with more races and the likes, so then it's a matter of transferring data across maps :3

 

[GhostThruster]

@Wazzz: The BFME building system is essentially like addons. It will look the same way as putting attachments (as TLI-Inferno described), except it will function better.

Basically, 'towns' get building plots (dummy units) around it, and you can upgrade the building plots into buildings. I've got 2 maps similar to that system, I'll see if I can find them.

letting fans of the gamestyle create their own maps using my creations and my universe

I like it ^^ Perhaps I could do a terrain once you're finished ;]

 

[Vengeancekael]

The Wand will disable the ability to use Shields.

I thought wands were like small sticks and stuff D:

Ranged Cavalry will be a reality.

*orgasm* *orgasm* *orgasm* *orgasm* *orgasm*
Stop it Wazzz, this is too much for me!
Subbed.

 

[GhostThruster]

Wands are more like 'offhand' weapons, at least in most RPGs and I assume in this project.

I'm not sure about ranged cavalry... perhaps you could balance it by slowing attack rate, or perhaps immobilising ranged horsies for a second after they attack (I base this off real life, as I imagine it would be harder to fire bows/rifles whilst your asscrack is sitting uncomfortably on a tall animal). Do not implement an accuracy system; this will make ranged cavalry more determined on luck than skill, a no-go for strategy games.

 

[Wazzz]

Well I was going to treat wands like a one-handed weapon, but the only exception is that you can't have it with a shield. Which I may change, unsure about that, but the only secondary items allowed so far are the ones enabling spells (such as Healing, Turn Undead, etc.)

For the Humans, their wand will be a handgun, inspired by spellguns, but instead of casting spells, they will fire bullets of fire. Something like that. Counts as magic damage though.

Ranged Cavalry will be balanced. I was thinking of lowering the attack rate, perhaps for all cavalry even, but more so Ranged Cavalry.

 

[Mechanical Man]

I don't see why ranged cavalry should be imbalanced. Obviously it should be more expensive, then also the range should be reduced (you can't use longbows, arbalests and long rifles from horseback), so the foot ranged have no trouble catching them, and less damage, which takes in account their low accuracy.

For example, early version of godfall campaign had outriders having armor resistant to ranged damage and special abilities to fight siege weapons. This is an example, how not to do ranged cavarly. But they were successfully implemented in many games like age of empires without being unbalanced.

 

[Wazzz]

That is true, I am a little afraid of ranged cavalry before even having implemented them.

I do like the idea of reducing their range, actually, so I will do that instead. For now. If they are found to be too powerful still, I'll come up with new ways to implement them.

That fact of the matter is that they will have the same health statistics as any other cavalry unit (which is sufficiently more than that of a foot soldier, but this is balanced by the cavalry being more expensive, so you get less of them. Might also make it so you get less of them in a squad than you do foot soldiers).

I've been thinking of other races, too, but am focusing all my attention on the Humans for now. Once the Humans are complete, I will release information on what I plan for other races and how they will be unique. Of course, suggestions for them will be taken into account as well :3 (technically speaking, suggestions already are being taken into account).

 

[Deolrin]

Interesting.
I'd like to see this progress.
Posting to subscribe.

 

[Wazzz]

UPDATE:

Got some new models made by Dionesiist for the Humans, here's some screenies for your enjoyment:

foot soldier

cavalry

 

[Skycraft]

they look the same!

 

[Dionesiist]

I can always switch some textures around.

 

[Wazzz]

i personally like continuity, but am glad the paladin's head was implemented due to it already having several accessible ingame textures to muck around with

if only there was a way to change texture paths of a single unit ingame without the need of importing various models :3