CW3 Suggestions Redux

[The Paul]

So the wife and I recently said to ourselves, "You know what was really fun?  Creeper world," and played it a bit.

And in reflecting we thought, "CW2 was a pretty fantastic game on a lot of levels, but there are a couple things we wish it had."

1)A little bit better control over what the Code-missions /random map generator spits out.  Like if I could tell it "No drones," but also check a "Surface Access" box or something, to insure there's enough destructible terrain that the creeper can always chew its way to the surface, eventually.  Stuff like that.

2) Some kind of virtually infinite "galactic conquest" mode.  Humanity settled across most of the galaxy, and then the Creeper destroyed nearly everything, and the tone and theme of the second game suggested an attempt to go out there and take it back.  Maybe there could be some sort of collaborative effort where some group of players all submit scores and results to the same galaxy-cleansing campaign.

3)Some sort of carry-over between missions.  Some kind of experience points or currency that could be earned from playing a mission, something that would create a bit of a sense of continuity mission to mission.  It could be used to unlock new maps or modes, or make a bunch of tiny, not-very-significant upgrades that carry over mission to mission.  Not game breaking stuff of course, not stuff you'd need to be able to play through the story.  More like the kinds narrow advantages and small percentages you can squeeze out of something like the skill trees in League of Legends.

...so it'd be awesome if some of this appeared in Creeper World 3

[Grauniad]

Code Select Expand

Hello The Paul (and wife) :) Rare to see a team playing... Welcome to the forums.

[quote author=The Paul link=topic=11850.msg87448#msg87448 date=1358616420]
1)A little bit better control over what the Code-missions /random map generator spits out. 
Yep, I also wanted that but it wasn't to be.  Right now all worlds are pre-generated. Virgil is quite pressed for time to bring something out, so I'm not sure we're going to see him find much time to devote to this aspect. It does have merit though, so I'll mention it to him again. :)

2) Some kind of virtually infinite "galactic conquest" mode. 

There has always been a lot of requests for "co-operative campaigns" but I'm not sure that is very high on any list. There are a number of issues with communicating between the various players states,, etc. Not unsolvable, just a lot of work for one man to solve and maintain, as well as support all the weird issues that may be reported.

3)Some sort of carry-over between missions. 

I believe something might be in plan for this. :)

[lurkily]

I really like the idea of a time slowing weapon.  a weapon that allows you to deliver more shots to the creeper as it advanced per second without a corresponding fire rate increase.  But such a weapon would really change the balance of the game, so what I've read seems correct.

I really think this is a red herring.  It seems and sounds powerful, but I don't think it is.

The problem is, it would not deliver more shots to creeper as it advanced as you mention, it would only slow the advance.  Striking a balance is dependent on creeper emitted/second and creeper destroyed/sec.  If the latter value doesn't balance or overtake the former value, then no amount of slowdown or time freeze will prevent you from being eventually overwhelmed. 

I can't see any scenario in which a time slowdown/freeze would help you destroy creeper at a higher rate than normal.  It might even be counterproductive - it would inhibit creeper from flowing into the kill zone, making mortars less effective.

Adding more PC's/mortars also slows the advance of creeper, and has the added benefit of actually destroying it.  Time manipulation is awesome as a game mechanic, but it needs effectiveness to match, or it's nothing but a novelty.

[koker93]

Lurlkily I think you are overlooking the aspect of a time weapon that is most important.  A weapon harms your enemies.  None of the CW universe of weapons does harm to player weapons, only creeper.  So time would slow down for the creeper, not the players towers.  I think the player advantage would be obvious.  If you and I were in a foot race, but time was moving 3X slower for you, I would win the race while you sprinted in slow motion.  If the creeper advanced 2X slower, well that would make killing it incrementally easier as the time effect becomes more pronounced.

[lurkily]

Lurlkily I think you are overlooking the aspect of a time weapon that is most important.  A weapon harms your enemies.  None of the CW universe of weapons does harm to player weapons, only creeper.  So time would slow down for the creeper, not the players towers.  I think the player advantage would be obvious.  If you and I were in a foot race, but time was moving 3X slower for you, I would win the race while you sprinted in slow motion.  If the creeper advanced 2X slower, well that would make killing it incrementally easier as the time effect becomes more pronounced.

Doesn't matter.  This isn't a race.  It's a rate-based fight - this competition is a war of attrition, not a marathon.  If you destroy X creeper per second, but X+1 creeper is emitted in that time, no amount of time slow-down will help more shots impact per second, or destroy more creeper per second.

Think of it this way - one nation produces 10 tanks a day, and the other nation only manages to destroy 9 of those tanks a day.  Slowing the advance of those tanks does nothing but buy more time.  Because they haven't slowed production, or sped up destruction, of those tanks, the advantage against them will increase at the same rate, even if the battlefront moves more slowly.

[Ronini]

Lurlkily I think you are overlooking the aspect of a time weapon that is most important.  A weapon harms your enemies.  None of the CW universe of weapons does harm to player weapons, only creeper.  So time would slow down for the creeper, not the players towers.  I think the player advantage would be obvious.  If you and I were in a foot race, but time was moving 3X slower for you, I would win the race while you sprinted in slow motion.  If the creeper advanced 2X slower, well that would make killing it incrementally easier as the time effect becomes more pronounced.

Doesn't matter.  This isn't a race.  It's a rate-based fight - this competition is a war of attrition, not a marathon.  If you destroy X creeper per second, but X+1 creeper is emitted in that time, no amount of time slow-down will help more shots impact per second, or destroy more creeper per second.

Think of it this way - one nation produces 10 tanks a day, and the other nation only manages to destroy 9 of those tanks a day.  Slowing the advance of those tanks does nothing but buy more time.  Because they haven't slowed production, or sped up destruction, of those tanks, the advantage against them will increase at the same rate, even if the battlefront moves more slowly.

Very nice analogy. Yet, it is slightly flawed. It's not just numbers produced, that matter. Among other factors, location of these numbers is also important. Let's say you dealt with 9 of 10 tanks a day. Over a week, that's 7 tanks that the enemy can do damage with, once they arrive somewhere they can do damage. Now, your cause seems hopeless in the long-run. But then, you fire up your new experimental time-slow-down-device, which stops dead (slows down) the additional tanks, enabling you to push back the battlefront a significant bit, in the course increasing your production capabilities, so that now you can destroy 11 tanks a day. See?

Further: Why not time-freeze the enemies tank factory, so for a day or two they only can produce 5 tanks? Having a weapon that cuts an emitters emission rate in half (stopping it entirely would certainly be OP) for a brief amount of time, could make all the difference.

Again: Yes, maybe you could overcome the emitter by sending in additional troops, but if there is just no room for them, they won't accomplish anything.

It comes down to two things: how big would the costs of the time-weapon be, and how do you deploy it. If you have a Bertha firing on a field of very shallow creeper, it wouldn't do much, that 2 or 3 PCs couldn't do better and cheaper.

If anything, the time-freezing unit would prove t be rather too useful than being pointless.

[J]

If you have a continuous stream of tanks attacking you and you freeze 2 of them, they would start moving again with the next 2 tanks so you have twice as much tanks to kill for a short time.

Using this weapon against an emitter can be very powerful, since the creeper can't move away less creeper will be emitted (only if the AddCreeper command is not used).

[Kithros]

Arguing that being able to slow down time would be pointless would be akin to calling CW2 repulsors or shields useless, or in more obscure cases saying that 'the start time on an emitter doesn't matter'. Hopefully all of these things are quite obviously not true. That said, I do feel like a time slowing/stopping unit would overlap very much with what (CW3) shields already do, and as such probably wouldn't be worth the effort of implementing.

[lurkily]

Arguing that being able to slow down time would be pointless would be akin to calling CW2 repulsors or shields useless,

enabling you to push back the battlefront a significant bit, in the course increasing your production capabilities, so that now you can destroy 11 tanks a day. See?

We're actually in total agreement here.  What you guys and I are both saying is that, like a shield, it buys time, no more - no more or less than I've been claiming all along.  The claims that it can allow you to deal more damage to creeper is a red herring - the creeper in the field may feel like it's being blown up faster, but it would also perceive (if it has intelligence at all) more creeper being emitted behind it at a higher rate.

I don't think that's enough to justify titan class, personally.  It's not effective enough for the class of unit and for the class of power that people here seem to desire from it.

If you have a continuous stream of tanks attacking you and you freeze 2 of them, they would start moving again with the next 2 tanks so you have twice as much tanks to kill for a short time.

And yet, you don't have more guns shooting at those four tanks.  If you've played TD games, you know that bunching up enemies are only useful for AoE weapons - for other weapons, it only makes it more likely one or two will begin to slip by.  However, the analogy fails at a certain point.  Due to the nature of creeper, it won't "Bunch up" like units in a tower defense being affected by a 'slow area'.  Creeper inherently spreads out.  I don't believe you'll see increased effectiveness from mortars.

If anything, the time-freezing unit would prove t be rather too useful than being pointless.

I don't see how it can be more useful than shields - they both do the same thing.  They prevent creeper from moving into a certain area.  Shields actively push creep out, while this technology simply slows its passage, but they're both aimed at buying time before creeper pushes through a certain area.

But the people pushing for time-freakiness seem to expect such game-breaking advantages that they need to tack on titan-class and massive costs to balance it.  I don't think it's going to be that useful.  It's a grandiose awesome concept, but that doesn't always translate into a useful concept.

EDIT: Ro has some ideas on how to improve the concept - as I said, it will need more before it's something worthy of a new titan class.  That's the direction you guys should move in, I think - how can this be made more interesting?  Right now, it's less interesting and useful, I think, than a titan that allowed you to manually paint fields for energy would be.

[J]

Arguing that being able to slow down time would be pointless would be akin to calling CW2 repulsors or shields useless, or in more obscure cases saying that 'the start time on an emitter doesn't matter'.

Shields and repulsors are helpful if you still need to build up your economy. Shields are also helpful a millions of creeper are released in a short time or if you want to build a nullifier close to an emitter. It buys some time to build up your own economy or to kill the creeper economy (an enemy structure).

If you have a continuous stream of tanks attacking you and you freeze 2 of them, they would start moving again with the next 2 tanks so you have twice as much tanks to kill for a short time.

And yet, you don't have more guns shooting at those four tanks.  If you've played TD games, you know that bunching up enemies are only useful for AoE weapons - for other weapons, it only makes it more likely one or two will begin to slip by.  However, the analogy fails at a certain point.  Due to the nature of creeper, it won't "Bunch up" like units in a tower defense being affected by a 'slow area'.  Creeper inherently spreads out.  I don't believe you'll see increased effectiveness from mortars.

Freezing an area for a short time still builds up creeper, it simply doesn't attack the player immediatly, but spread over the following ten minutes (so that's still ten minutes more creeper).

A titan that pulls creeper to the center of the explosion for a short amount of time can be very helpful (improved mortar/bertha efficiency). It doesn't release all creeper at once but the fields will weaken until they are gone. It has a lot of overlap with te feeze titan, it keeps creeper in place for a short amount of time, but this is helpful to increase efficiency of other units. I would suggest low build costs (80-120) and energy consumption about the same as the bertha for this unit.

[Ronini]

If you have a continuous stream of tanks attacking you and you freeze 2 of them, they would start moving again with the next 2 tanks so you have twice as much tanks to kill for a short time.

Using this weapon against an emitter can be very powerful, since the creeper can't move away less creeper will be emitted (only if the AddCreeper command is not used).

Indeed. Yet, if slowing or stopping these two tanks allows you to destroy them (e.g. allowing a weapon with a too slow a rate of fire to fire an additional shot), rather than having them slip through, it turns out to be useful weapon.

As to the time distortion field holding up a bigger wave of creeper: This would only happen if the creeper had nowhere else to go. There is no reason, why it shouldn't spread around the field.

The main benefit this time distortion weapon would have over conventional weapons that are able to immitate its effects in large enough numbers is that its field can be deployed anywhere on the battlefield, regardless of where the generator is located. I understand that there most likely won't be time to include such a device, since it would require extensive testing regarding size of the field, duration of the effect, charging time and building and charging costs.

It is only after a number of these tests that you could really say wether or not the weapon would be useful.

[lurkily]

I think what I'd prefer to see is something more like a landmine - a region you prepare, perhaps with terraformers, that will slow creeper flow, like a slow-flow field.  The region would decay and lose effect with time, but it would be a handy 'tank trap' type of effect while it lasted.  And as part of the terraformer, it wouldn't require epic effect like a titan would.  (Not like terraformers aren't expensive on their own, though.)

It'd be a lot like laying out barbed wire to slow down infantry.  They'd cut through it and be unimpeded soon, but it would give you the time to blunt the initial assault.  Being associated with terraformers, they would be limited in where you could access the terrain to place them, but they needn't be on the scale of titan units, either.  Thus, expectations of epic-scale destruction wouldn't be frustrated, either.

J has a point - slow fields would be much more useful used against emitters, to soft-cap their production, rather than to be used in conjunction with PC's or mortars as a direct weapon.  Honestly, I'm not sure that's a use of them I'd like to see.  In the region of an emitter, altering the way creeper flows is much more influential than altering that flow on the front lines, or in the open.

Freezing an area for a short time still builds up creeper, it simply doesn't attack the player immediatly, but spread over the following ten minutes (so that's still ten minutes more creeper).

I don't think creeper will flow uphill because time flows more slowly.  I suspect it'll just flow around the killzone, instead of flowing into it or through it, until creeper is more elevated outside the killzone.  In other words, much like it normally acts, only slower.  (EDIT: Perhaps you're talking about applying the region directly to an emitter, rather than to a front line closer to your base?)

Indeed. Yet, if slowing or stopping these two tanks allows you to destroy them (e.g. allowing a weapon with a too slow a rate of fire to fire an additional shot), rather than having them slip through, it turns out to be useful weapon

In the tower-defense comparison, this is true if waves are limited in size - for instance, maybe you only have to destroy 50 units in total and then you are scot free until the next wave.

This isn't true here - they never stop coming.  When there is no beginning or end to the flow of enemies, a TD is more about being able to kill more enemies per second than are introduced to the track per second.  If you can't attain that, you are waiting to lose.  The best use of slowdown in a TD like that is to create a killzone where enemies bunch up for AoE effectiveness.  Creeper actively resists bunching like that.

Also, keep in mind that there isn't a single discrete unit in creeper to fire a second shot at - the TD comparison is useful in certain things, but only goes so far.

[Mr.H]

I think we're diverging from one of the aims in this new thread, concision. Why write an essay when two sentences will suffice?

As a suggestion:
Map Of Eternity
Long Version:

Spoiler

This is a special map which doesn't end, instead you can scroll on forever into randomly generated spots of emitters and the like. These can be found on Dyson stars(a structure completely encompassing a star with massive, MASSIVE, surface area for civilization as well as huge capabilities to harness the solar energy. In this map type the difficulty will ramp up as you progress, you can also unlock technological advancements and artifacts, whats-more all those city-builders can create vast metropolises using their tools of trade riddled with energy efficiency and production(highly necessary when the difficulty ramps up. One option is to send waves of creeper in which emitters land, spores launch, and general disaster ensues on a location where you try to survive a exponentially difficult creeper assault for your remote new civilization. This map is for nice long plays, network-lovers, and intense game-play. Customization of difficulty, disable/enable terrain features, and the like are all available to the player.

[close]

Short version:Endless map with incremental difficulty of creeper assault, story-line based on Dyson sphere and attempted colonization. Customization terrain features and difficulty. Explore, unlock technology, and increase the defensive capabilities of your system.

[Grauniad]

I am of the opinion that these interminable suggestion threads be curtailed. Rather have a thread for each suggestion that will have a natural lifespan.

If anyone wishes to harvest those threads and produce a synopsis, I will sticky the synopsis to the top of the board.

That way there can be a reference post maintained by an individual so inclined, and discrete conversations.

[BGMFH]

I agree with Grauniad, this type of thread is hard to follow.