(Before I Mention them I just realized the music that plays is from Zathuras menus screen!)
NOTE: This is meant for the creator as he might better understand what Im saying as some of what I will be saying may be confusing to people who just play the game and want to see what people are suggesting. Another note, some of my ideas may extend off of ideas I have listed, or was later listed, I might also mention an idea someone else or you may have mentioned, but that just means I support your idea and the more people that support the idea the better chance it may be implemented.
Here is a HUGE list of ideas that could improve this game.
1. For custom maps allow people to set the size of the map. Like be able to set the width and height if the map (Up to a max size of course).
2. Allow buildings to have a "Build Priority" were we can say how often the building gets construction packets, instead of every building equally building.
3. Allow us to control were mortars shoot within their range, and I dont mean make it shoot 1 time and then attack somewhere else I mean make us set a patch of land that will be targeted and shot upon until that order is cancelled.
4. Have like a Blacksmith or Research Bay structure that we can use to upgrade buildings' Attack and resistance to creep.
5. With the blacksmith idea you would need to have something to place on the field in order to mine resources that would be used to purchase things like upgrades and buildings. Of course you would start out with a small amount of resource in order to build mining buildings and other things. (I really hope you do this as this will allow for more things that can be done and would add to the difficulty)
6. Have computer controlled players that at the same time could be rescued and then controlled by you. You could also have them be your enemies as well!
7. Have a building that can increase the packet rate.
8. Along with attack and defensive upgrades, include upgrades that specific buildings have that can only be upgraded when you have a specific building built. Like for collectors, it could have 2 upgrades, 1 would increase its collection area by 1, and the other could increase its link range by 2 blocks.
9. Have different Terrains, I mean all the planets cant be a grayish color. Have like Twighlight, Desert, Jungle, and Plains terrain.
10. Have a few more elevations.
11. With the Story mode (Which in my opinion, I would like it to be called Campaign mode), before you actually start the game have like a Mission briefing room that would display all the information needed (Maybe have it animated, It could be like starcrafts format if you have played it). It would be nice for the characters to talk about what you need to do (Sure I can read but its cooler if the game has people talking to one another while explaining the goal.)
12. (This would go with #13, Part D) Make it so parts of the terrain are ramp like, this ramp terrain could have buildings built on them but the buildings could be destroyed faster as the creep would climb up the slope.
13. Have more varieties of creeps, other than Airborne and the basic ground. Here is a small list of Creep ideas:
A. Gusher Creep Emitter: Instead of a steady supply of creep being emitted, it would output more creep than a basic creep emitter but, it would output it every period of time, like every 8 seconds it would "Gush" creeps.
B. Spreader Creep Emitter: This would work very differently from the basic emitter, how this creep would work is the more of this creep there is on the field the faster the creep would grow.
C. Spitting Emitter: This creep would flow more towards 1 direction then any other. Of course it would expand all around but only 1 direction would rapidly grow.
D. Amoeba Creep: This creep would be an evolved form of creep that could walk or crawl around, and it would use ramps to climb through the terrains towards your buildings, and instead of exploding like the Air creep does it would instead "Eat" your buildings. These creeps would need some proper AI of course, they need to prioritize their targets, by that I mean if they were attacked by a building they would target that building as first to be destroyed.
E. Climbing Creep: This type of creep probably be best to be with the gush emitter. This creep would be a difficult creep to deal with as instead of creep dieing every so often only to be replaced by new creep, it would survive until destroyed but it would also slowly move about on the map and could slowly climb to new elevations instead of overflowing to them. Of course it would move climb faster if going through a ramp but it would be much slower climbing the walls.
NOTE: For players to differentiate what type of creep it is, Each emitter would need to look different and the creep should be colored.
14. Have more things to do besides having to charge the warp zones. Here is a small list of ideas for missions and some of them could be combined for more complex missions.
A. Must survive X amount of time.
B. Must protect a specific building until its done being constructed.
C. Must Research specific data
D. Must collect enough of a specific resource
E. Must limit X amount land the creep can cover
F. Must build X amount of a specific buildings
G. Must collect something on the map (Like the life pod level)
H. Must eliminate all creep.
I. Must build on prevent creep from reaching specific elevation
J. Must rescue buildings on map.
15. (This goes with #14) Instead of warping to a new planet, you could have multiple levels on a single map, like lets say in 1 level you had to kill the creep emitters on the map, after that level the map would change but could show some of the previous levels map and you would basically start all over with just the city or you would start with some buildings.
16. Instead of "Capping off" Creep Emitters they would be destructible, but they would have to take X amount of hits.
17. Game could use a better interface. Here is a small list of ideas:
A. When clicking on a building, the bottom part should display the name of the building, a Health bar that shows health both graphically and numerically, a bar displaying how much power it has, how much damage the building deals (If it deals damage), its connection range (Range in which other buildings can connect to said build), and a some buttons that have specific commands. Again here is a list of buttons that buildings could have:
--a. Move Building: Instead of clicking a building and then selecting a spot to land, as you may only want to disarm the building but could accidentally move the building somewhere as well, you press the button then select where to land.
--b. Upgrade ? ? ?: For buildings that offer an upgrade(s)
--c. Target Land: (For Mortars) Press this button then select an area within the buildings range that the building will repeatedly attack until stopped.
--d. Stop: Stops whatever the building was doing. (Also for canceling upgrades as if something is upgrading it cannot be moved, but still may attack if its an offensive building.)
--e. Attack Pattern: Allows player to set what an offensive building prioritizes, whether it be to target deep areas filled with creep, or for it to target creep thats a nearby other buildings within its range.
--f. Deactivate: Simply stops building from attacking until reactivated.
--g. Recycle: Instead of destroying the building it would be recycled for 20% of what it costed. (This is if you do resources other than energy)
B. Have a Minimap in lower right area of screen.(This is for #18)
C. Instead of having 3 buttons in the lower right corner, which are Exit Game, Options, and Help. Have a single button that says Menu, and when clicked it would pause the game and open a screen in which you would have the following options: Save Game, Load Game, Options, Exit Game, and Exit Program.
D. With options here are some more option ideas that would be useful along with the ones already listed: Game Speed (have this so we can set the game speed to our preferred speed, Like as far as being able to slow game down 10% to speeding the game up by 50%), Sound Effects Volume, and Game Quality (Make it a bar and not buttons with, low, med, high, and best).
E. Change the build list area to be composed of 2 menus, 1 for offensive structures, 1 for support structures. When 1 of the menus is selected a list will slide up from the left side of the interface and list all the buildings that can be built along with their costs to build them, and when a building is highlighted, somewhere in the lower middle of the screen it could give a brief description of what the building is, as the small amount of information thats given now when you highlight a building is written incredibly small and is hard to see.
F. Either on the very bottom of the screen or on the very top of the screen have it display Energy Collection Rate, Energy Consumption Rate, Staruation (Whatever this is), Resources mined/harvested, and Total Elapsed Time.
18. In some places I mention buildings and how much they deal, by that I mean that creeps should have Health. The creeps could take X amount of damage, but the longer the game goes the creep would slowly get more resistant to damage, of course the creep wouldnt get to be completely resistant to damage (As that would make the game way too hard). Or how damage could work is the deeper the creep is the more damage in 1 area it takes to remove it. For example: If creep fills up 3 elevations, it would take more hits from a building in order to destroy a layer of creep, than an area of creep that only fills up 1 elevation.
19. Now in the Game interface idea I mentioned a Minimap, also the first idea was to have different size maps. Instead of the whole map being onscreen at once, maps can be scrolled through.
20. Here is a list of ideas for additional buildings:
OFFENSIVE:
NOTE: All offensive buildings have splash damage but some buildings like Blasters have a smaller splash radius than a Mortar, The smaller the splash radius the less damage that building deals unless otherwise noted.
A. Thunderwave: Requires alot of energy to fire off with a very slow attack rate, Zaps a large area of creeper dealing less damage the further away from where the shot hit.
B. Electrostatic Mine: Has no attack range, when creeper hits the building it explodes destroying a large area of creeper. Building is fast to build.
C. Pulse Blaster: Faster to build than a normal Blaster, and can be upgraded into a Blaster. Shoots plasma pulses that destroy less area of creeper than a normal Blaster, it has the fastest fire rate, but is quickly depleted of energy.
D. Laser Beam: Has a high damage rate but has the smallest splash damage, Has no fire rate, rapidly drains energy, medium attack range.
E. Scatter Missile: Mortar upgrades into this tower, slow fire rate, medium damage, medium splash, same attack range as mortar. Scatter missile fires 4 missiles that land in random area within range, but its only random to a point, missiles will always hit creep but that doesnt mean every shot that hits the creep will be very effective. This building also can target an area within range but shots will have a range within the selected targeted area were the missiles will land randomly. Each missile deducts a small amount of the buildings energy.
SUPPORT:
A. Fractal Wall: Similar to the blue wall pieces that stops the creep from advancing, but its not as effective. Offensive buildings cannot target creep if behind the wall, just like the blue wall pieces.
B. Static Wall: Fractal Wall upgrades into this. When the creep comes into contact with this wall it destroys creep within a 2 block radius, this wall must stay connected to a power source in order to power the offensive effect. This wall needs alot of energy to charge it, and has a long reload rate, which give the creep time to damage the wall. This wall can take alittle more damage than a regular fractal wall, and up to 3 touching Static walls pieces work as one, so if creep touches the wall all 3 pieces will discharge at once and will all charge at once (this is to prevent the walls from being indestructible). Again offensive buildings cannot shoot through the wall.
C. Habitat: Gives more people to the city which helps improve packet production rate by .05% for every habitat.
D. Town: Costs alot of resources to produce and alot of time to make. this building is as big as the city and can be lifted to move around the map. The town acts just like the city by producing power. This can be used to build in more areas. Selecting the town will display total collection and depletion information of the town and any other power sources connected to it, unless its connected to the city which then the Collection and Depletion information will be combined and displayed as normal.
E. Storage Facility: Stores limited amount of resources, resources are limited by how much storage you have. The city would come with an initial amount of resource capacity.
F. Refinery: Increases how much energy is delivered in a packet by .0025, these must be built so that they touch the city. If the city is lifted the refineries will be destroyed.
G. Research Bay: Allows damage upgrades for offensive buildings and resistance upgrades to take more damage from the creep. Also has a few additional upgrades.
21. Here is a list of Upgrade ideas:
A. Firearms Research: Found at Research Bay, can be upgraded 3 times, allows all offensive towers to deal more damage.
B. Structure Research: Found at Research Bay, can be upgraded 3 times, allows all buildings to take a little more damage.
C. Storage Management: Found at Research Bay, 1 time upgrade, Storage Facilities get 20% more capacity.
D. Advanced Cells: Found at Storage Cells, Individual upgrade, allows Storage Cell to hold 10 more energy.
E. Productivity: Found at City, 1 time upgrade, Speed buildings effect increases by 2.5%
F. Bigger Hull: Found at Drone building, individual upgrade, Drone bombs 10% longer
I know its a huge list and I ran out ideas to mention, but im sure ill get more ideas
eh.. yh i also want CW2! We probably have to w8 a few years though.. :P
I recall someone else that started out here in an almost similar way.
question, did u happen to c the list i made, or did u come up with this stuff on ur own? (serious question, im just curious)
Its good to know that even though a lot of stuff has been thought up that even more stuff can still be thought up.
Great list, keep on thinking.
Yes i did think up each one, and I only read a few peoples.
k thats cool, though go to the suggestions page and look for a topic by me that says "suggested/requested ideas list" or something like that, i cant remember wat i called it, the descriptions of evertyhing where in other posts to keep each one shorter, but someone deleted them all except for the list
It sounds to me (after reading the entire list) you want to make this like a standard rts; collect resources, upgrade buildings, have certain objectives and the such. Some are more feaseable for how the game currently works (like destructible emitters), while a lot of your suggestions centers on completely re-doing most of the fundamentals of the game turning it into the mass of RTS games I have played. This game is supposed to be very different than the average RTS.
Being able to have a build priority would be nice, especially if you are over-taxing your network. You also suggested about deactivating a building. They already have this feature for military buildings. There is a disarm button which will have them not attack (but receive ammo packets) and the deactivate button which will make them not receive ammo packets and not attack.
Besides the few I said I don't know how well most of the ideas listed would fit into how this game is but if this were to be turned into a standard RTS, these would be ways to do it I suppose. I like how this game is way different than the typical RTS in mostly everyway.
A lot of good suggestions. Although, a third of what I read already exists in the game.
For example:
Quote7. Have a building that can increase the packet rate.
"Speed" the red, diamond building. You get half a dozen of them built. And I lose track of where the cursor is. And items build super fast.
Or 17d. Wouldn't "Deactivate" accomplish the same thing?
Speed DOES NOT increase packet rate! it only increases the speed at which packets travel!
Isn't packet rate reliant on if you have the energy for it? You can't hasten construction. I believe I remember Virgilw writing that you can't increase the rate a packet would go to construct something because it takes so much time to construct it regardless if it has extra materials so it just comes on schedule. Ammo packets already are sent faster if you have the energy.
yes virgilw said that, but i think he wants a building that raises the maximum number of packets per sec that can be created
The only way to do that is to increase your energy; it can't send out more packets if it doesn't have the energy to.
When I defeated Loki without thor, you should have seen how many packets was being sent out! I had almost fields of reactors supplying a massive armada of blasters and mortars. I noticed that you need to have energy storage though to be able to feel the maximum effect if depletion would be 20+. Combined with speed, it was crazy and after a short while, easy to overwhelm the creeper without thor. BTW, I enjoyed the message you get for winning without using thor ;D.
the maximum number of packets that can be sent out per second is 32, u need a storage unit to get this, but the guy that made the topic wants a unit that raises this, and when i say per second i mean per second, by how the game shows
Why would you need more than 32 packets per second being sent out? These aren't very large maps but I guess if all of the different things he is suggesting were to be implemented, it might be neccasary (unless if the "towns" he was talking about could be secondary producers for packets).
sorry if i sound less than welcoming but at least half of these ideas have already been given (and you dont have to look far to notice), while several others arent in the cw spirit (such as mining and upgrading)
Quote from: Aurzel on January 11, 2010, 04:09:34 AM
sorry if i sound less than welcoming but at least half of these ideas have already been given (and you dont have to look far to notice), while several others arent in the cw spirit (such as mining and upgrading)
Agreed, half have been suggested, someone already "tried" to compile a list of them.
Most of them, I can see being in CW... it would make it just totally wacko.
Though you will see a few suggestions(maybe 1) in the new version,
_k