Railroad

[Twi]

Well, I only have one, at the moment.

Railroad Units: Make faster moving units, BUT they have to stay on a path  (hence the railroad). Said path could be just set or buildable, but it would cost a bunch of money. This way, you can move stuff around more easily, which would help in any level where you might have to move your forces quickly across long distances to fight widely-spaced threats. I haven't decided whether this should be applicable to all units or just weapons and whether the path should be able to go over terrain differences freely; be able to go over terrain differences but doing so is more expensive; or have to stay on the level, so on and so on  Or, you could just have a bunch of railroad cars you can put stuff on to...

EDIT: If you really wanted to be radical, you could have your whole base be on such railroad cars. However, I honestly don't think this would work so well with moving Collectors, but it would be interesting.

[archn]

Why is your name in the subject of the post?  Why not just title it "Railroad"?  ::)

[Twi]

Cuz I might add stuff.

[Twi]

Double post, but do you even have an opinion?

[archn]

Well I didn't but I'll go ahead and form one.  I was just merely stating that every post in the suggestions seems to be "OP's Ideas", (like "Blaze's ideas" instead of a creative name), just thought it was a little like "i want the credit for this"... just funny hehe...

As far as the idea goes, I think it's a valid idea, but I don't really see how it applies in this game.  When I think of Railroads and the idea that you mention, I think of the game Civilization, where it's more like a turn based game and the settlers can move one square, road movement increases that to up to 3 squares, and railroads are unlimited squares, and that it really makes the game interesting as you advance though the ages, and I like the idea.  However, I think for this game that the maps are just too small as it is for movement to really become an issue.  What kind of movement are we talking about exactly?  The movement of the blasters or their ammo or the building packets or what?  Are the railroads themselves buildable, or is it a special new unit that you're building that can only move over a certain terrain?  When you say that the level of terrain differences make it more expensive to build, then I assume you're referring to building the railroads themselves instead of a super-blaster.

I don't know.. The idea really seems good for a lot of games, but this game, to me, (in my opinion) just doesn't seems like it would fit here.

Now I could be completely wrong here, as I usually am when it comes to a lot of things, but until I see an idea in front of me in graphic form, I won't be able to see how it would work here in a way to provide the user any reason to build them (As the games seem kind of short, so spending all this time/energy in a map to create a huge network, instead of investing it in an army) in the first place.

Maybe if you could elaborate to provide more details, it could help me.

[Twi]

I've played Civilization, by the way. Good series.

The basic idea is:

Units attached to Railroads moves faster than plain old flying, but it has to stay on said path. Links will  work as normal.  The railroads should be buildable, otherwise this idea isn't very useful. And yeah, level of terrain differences makes the railroad more expensive (ramps and such). You might also use them as bridges across really big valleys (which would probably be even more expensive than ramps), which would work perfectly well in 2D, as long as you don't want to put units on top of one another.

Now, if you just made 'railroad cars' the ONLY place to put units, that would make for a very different game, and certainly something you don't see every day. I'm not sure that it would make for good gameplay, but I find it an interesting concept. It'd probably be more useful if there was some finite resource scattered in clusters across the map (when it's mined out, you can just move on to the next resource area and don't have to defend large areas you aren't using), or if there were areas you had to go through but REALLY don't want to be in, which can be done to some extent already, but not that much.

These railroads might be destructible. If they're indestructible, then that would make it easier to regain lost ground (and set up your Collectors, et cetera there) or salvage parts of doomed bases (obviously, weapons can already fly, but your Drones and parts of your infrastructure could end up in danger.) You can just scoot your buildings back into position, in the first case, and away to safety, in the second case.

Mostly, though, if you want to make your infrastructure and OC mobile, for whatever reason, this is a way to go. Yeah, I know, the maps are kinda small. I'm pretty sure that we're going to get bigger ones.  If we don't...well, Virgil could really use more people.

[glengainer]

Also
You could have a railroad car with a mortar on it going around in circles on the tracks firing into deep creepers instead of having to keep moving it
or
have a blaster on tracks and let it fire when it move back and fore letting it defend more ground

[Twi]

Some more related ideas:

Well, it occurs to me that if these railroad cars are the only means to place things (maybe the ground is heavily electrically charged and would fry the electronics or something, but the cars happen to be the only thing that's insulated, but that's just one explanation story-wise),and the levels are long enough, you might develop a shiny mobile base and want to keep it.

So maybe you should be able to have a starting train and train station (railroad layout under your feet) that carries over between levels, which you can upgrade between levels with points (or money) awarded for, probably, a combination of speed and the number of Totems capped.

Whether you should be able to replay levels and get completely new points, like experience (so people don't get stuck because they did badly), be able to replay but only increase their original points value by doing better, or not getting any points whatsoever from replays is a bit beyond me, but I'd go with the first option. Set a limit on the building somewhere, though. Like, it can only take up some amount of space (the square '5' from the map editor when using the terrain editor seems like a good area).

There's also the matter of linkages. The cars' linkages will probably just take the place of the usual ones, and poof. Relays work as  normal.

The way I see it, there are two ways to deal with moving the cars. One is to just have each be capable of it's own movement. The other is to need 'engines' to pull things along, and those engines can only pull one direction. If you want to go back, you have to build a different engine or shunt yours (they can move themselves both directions) around.

The way I came up with building the paths is to have special units that can link to the ground and do so. Railroad-building trains, if you will.

Also, this whole railroad thing gives me an awesome idea:
Railroad-guided rockets. That's right, railroad guided rockets. You just put one at the rear of your train, and when the Creeper is catching up to you, you launch it, causing it to follow your tracks (pardon the pun) into the Creeper, where it goes off with a serious bang, taking a large, large amount of Creeper with it. It has only one usage, the vehicle itself is what explodes. I suppose it's more like a bomb on flanged wheels...

[crazyone76]

Also
You could have a railroad car with a mortar on it going around in circles on the tracks firing into deep creepers instead of having to keep moving it
or
have a blaster on tracks and let it fire when it move back and fore letting it defend more ground

two words:automatic drones

[Twi]

Eh,

Also
You could have a railroad car with a mortar on it going around in circles on the tracks firing into deep creepers instead of having to keep moving it
or
have a blaster on tracks and let it fire when it move back and fore letting it defend more ground

two words:automatic drones

What does that have to do with anything?
I've got railroad-guided bombs already mentioned, and besides, stuff on tracks can't fly. WHich would make island maps a bit more difficult, since it's harder to move your forces from island to island.

[Twi]

Personally, I think this would make a great spin-off game of Creeper World, but it'd be best to make a game about the length of the Creeper World Training Simulator to see how people react to it. THat way, if it works, Virgil can go ahead and incoperate it into a full length game with the programs already in order. If it doesn't work, he hasn't wasted much time and can proceed with the usual Creeper World games.

[UpperKEES]

I like some of your other idea's, but I can't see how a railroad would really contribute to the game as it is now.

And regarding a test game: once you've completely implemented such a concept (mechanics, graphics, etc.), you've already done 90% of the work, so you're not just gonna try every idea like that.

[Sqaz]

I like some of your other idea's, but I can't see how a railroad would really contribute to the game as it is now.

And regarding a test game: once you've completely implemented such a concept (mechanics, graphics, etc.), you've already done 90% of the work, so you're not just gonna try every idea like that.

If and only if the maps get bigger, faster movement would be nice or just movement of non-movable structurs (like drones, reactors)

[UpperKEES]

It would also make a difference when the exact location of certain items (like reactors, speed nodes and storage) would matter. At the moment it doesn't make a difference where they are located, as long as they are connected to the network.

Besides this it's kinda weird when a blaster would travel faster by rail than by air. (Although it's faster to get from the centre of Amsterdam to the centre of Paris by train, because of the check in/out and location of airports.)

Currently most movements I make in CW concerns bunnyhopping (groups of) blasters. When I move over longer distances, I use the 30% faster movement upgrade.

But most important: when I move military units over a longer distance, this will always be into creeper territory, so how do I get my railroad there first?

And at last: why spend my precious energy on a (destructible) structure that will not allow me to move my units over mountain ranges and through creeper pools, while I can fly them over for free? I'll make sure I do something else in the meanwhile if it takes some time....

[Sqaz]

Maybe flying should be slower so moving on railroads would be better especially on bigger maps.
(Or make flying slower by demanding all the weapons to check in before flying  ;D)