Untitled Teamplay Mod Thread

Some of you have already seen this, as I posted about it a while ago, but since then I have fleshed out the idea, so here it is:

After watching The Matrix: Revolutions, I was struck by the number of places that mods could be created therefrom. Having seen none mentioned anywhere, I offer up this to you in hopes of comments and critiques.

Picture this:
A lone mech jogs along a ridge, his feet auto-adjusting to the rough terrain. He looks around as he runs, but sees nothing and continues on course. As he passes one of the few trees in sight, two people emerge from behind it. The one in the rear readies a rocket as the front one takes aim. Letting fly with a rocket, the two return to their hiding place behind the tree as the mech falls forward from the impact of the glancing hit. Looking out, they see him begin to rise, and re-emerge for another shot. The mech is struggling to get up, but rocketeers finish first, and their second rocket sends the mech up in a burst of flame.

Such events would be commonplace in this mod, unless proper teamwork was employed by the players. Each of the vehicles and classes is strong in its own area, but without working together, all of their weaknesses will be instantly lethal.

Classes and Vehicles:

Pilot
The pilot carries only a pistol (essentially useless), for his weaponry is of the vehicular class. He is the only class able to drive the vehicles of the mod, which makes him invaluable. In-game the pilot is effectively non-existent as he "becomes" the vehicle he drives.

Rocketeer
The one infantry-based class, the rocketeer is the game's heavy fire support--it is the only class/vehicle capable of one-hit vehicle kills (although this is made difficult). However, due to the fact that is completely human, they are very vulnerable when firing and traveling.
Possible mutation: rocketeer team: two people working together, a loader and a firer. They, obviously, must work in concert to achieve anything.

Hacker Attacker
Bad name aside, these guys would be the equivalent of the assault troop from BF1942. They carry an automatic weapon (the only infantry man to do so) and they are the only class that can capture bases in the Conquest-type mode.

APU Mech
As depicted in TMR, the APU (perhaps "Armored Patrol Unit," I don't believe they said) mech is a fast moving, lightly armored mech with two machine pistols for armament. The APU in this mod would be a similarly designed vehicle, good for covering/suppressing fire, especially anti-infantry.
Two control modes:
Dual Arm: Similar to standard shooter controls: one crosshair, click to fire. Excellent for area fire and "is there someone there?" fire.
Free Arm: Much different than standard. Each arm independently auto-aims at the nearest target and the corresponding mouse button (left arm - left button) controls firing for that arm. This is good for close quarters combat or combat in which more than one enemy is involved.

-Reloading Bot
The APUs in TMR carry a huge supply of ammunition, as is necessary to feed their machine pistols' high rate of fire. This comes into the mod as the APUs' ability to fire non-stop. However, when they do run out of ammo, they need to get more from the base. This can either be accomplished by returning to the base or by calling for a reload, which dispatches a runner from the base pushing an ammo cart. The skilled player will plan ahead and estimate the time he can get from his current ammo reserves and call in advance. The catch is that the pistols can't be reloaded until they expend all of their ammo, and the reloaders are
easy targets.

Hovercraft
As depicted in every Matrix, the hovercraft is an essential element of Zionite forces, carrying powerful guns and the EMP pulse generator. In the mod, their strength would be slightly lessened, for the sake of balanced gameplay. The one flying craft, their strength would come from their dexterity and survivability (difficult to shoot down), and their ability to use the EMP, which disables every vehicle within a certain radius. The EMP is one-time use (per hovercraft), but is very powerful in its destructive capability. It is a multi-seat vehicle, with positions for gunner (perhaps two) and pilot. Controls are similar to the Banshee from Halo, but somewhat less responsive, due to the hovercraft's large size and large inertia. HCs aren't particularly weak to any one weapon, but are equally susceptible to all heavy weapons (APU, rocket, etc.).

Gameplay
Needless to say, the game is very team-oriented, due to the relative weaknesses of each of the units. Therefore, the team will need to appropriately divide and use their (example allotment) one hovercraft, two APUs, and three rocketeers. The game will probably be slow-paced until the forces (if the team is smart enough to work together) meet, at which point a giant battle will ensue.

Another twist implemented changes the way vehicles are used. Instead of pressing E like in BF1942 or Halo to enter a vehicle from nearly anywhere around it, the player must get into a vehicle from directly next to the door (or cockpit) of the vehicle. This means that the player will need to use either terrain or the ramps at which the vehicles spawn to get out (otherwise dying a falling death) and enter. This means that if a player's APU (for instance) is incapacitated while standing, it will remain there for the duration of the game. This also means that in order to leave a vehicle, a player will either need to crash it in some fashion or use a ramp/stairwell, which could lead to some interesting problems in CTF or conquest.

Map Design
The maps will need to be both wide open or otherwise vehicle-navigable, as the balance is centered squarely on the interaction
between the classes and vehicles. However, in addition to this, they need to have places for smaller units to go--i.e. hiding places and crawlspaces (not necessarily literally) for rocketeers to lie in wait for APUs and HCs. A few examples that came to mind are a Ventilation (or whatever they're called) shaft map based on the shafts that the HCs navigate through in the movies,

which would allow the HCs to navigate (in their native environment, no less), but also have places for the APUs and rocketeers to work. Another was inspired by Halo's Blood Gulch (as I'm too cheap to buy it, and that was with the demo). Like BG, it would be set in a canyon area, but this would be a U-shaped (or similarly shaped) canyon that had clearly been through a lot--lots of foxholes and cover, perhaps a tunnel network for rocketeer navigation (which might necessitate an assault/anti-infantry infantry class). The map would also allow HCs to fly over the divider, giving oppurtunities for sneak EMP attacks.

Game Modes
Needless to say, there would be the standard DM and TDM. Also possible would be a Capture the Flag mode, although the usage of
vehicles might make this difficult. The mode that would truly make the best use of the teamplay mechanics would be a mode similar to BF1942's Conquest mode, wherein each opposing team needs to capture control points, each of which would grant different bonuses--one might offer repair stations, another an EMP recharger, etc. This is where the hacker attacker would come into play, with his only-capturer status making him vital to protect.

Conclusion
In stepping back to look at this, I see some potential issues:
-Hacker Attacker class may be adding to much needless depth to the mix
-Hovercraft: unbalanced?
-Infantry/Vehicle Scale

This is how envision the mod starting. If people like it, expanding to include the machine faction could be done (and I already have some, in my opinion, neat ideas there).

The Machines

Classes
Sentinel: Needless to say, the sentinel is the backbone of the machine army. They are fast moving and lethal, and the machines depend almost solely upon them to achieve their goals. In the game, a player playing as a sentinel (as most machine players probably would be) would control not one sentinel, but a small swarm of 5 - 10 sentinels. This shift would mean that the player's sentinels form more of a cohesive body, and introduces some ambiguity as to the distribution of Machine players (more on that below).

Sentinel Bombs
Ability of Sentinel players: Convert one sentinel from their "fleet" into one of the flying bombs of the films. Needless to say, this destroys the sentinel in question, and does considerable damage to its target. The bombs, like a rocket, are dumbfire, so they are essentially useless against infantry (why would you waste them on infantry anyway?) and are intended for use against APUs and HCs, each of which would take considerable damage (perhaps including death) if hit. However, because they are dumbfire, there is an oppurtunity for skilled pilots to dodge them.

Sentinel Sub-Classes
Because of the limited nature of the machine's army, the sentinels in-game will be divided into sub-classes which maintain the balanced teamplay requirement.

Sentinel Scout
Lightly armored, but very fast moving, these sentinels are sent ahead of the main body to find out what is in store for the swarm. They might also be used as decoys if they were wielded by a crafty player.

Sentinel Swarm Mother (craptastic name intended to invoke the Zerg from StarCraft)
These are basically the sentinel engineers--they can repair the sentinels in a very limited way. Players controlling a swarm mother control only one sentinel, as opposed to a swarm, and the SM is distinctly different from other sentinels, which could make it a target.

Standard Sentinel
The standard sentinel, the only one that can attack, attacks (as seen in the films) by attaching to a target and boring through its armor plating, then "eating" whatever is inside, leaving the vehicle in shambles. They have no ranged attack, and rely on strength of numbers to get close enough to attach.

Sentinel Gameplay
When playing as the machines, players will need a different kind of teamplay then when playing as the Zionites. Because of the nature of the sentinel army (i.e. it's sentinels only), the strength of the machine players comes from their ability to fly together in one huge swarm--i.e. one player's swarm plus one player's swarm equals two players' swarms. One flying solo, every hit that a sentinel takes hurts that player, but when flying in a giant swarm, damage is much more distributed due to the spreadout nature of each individual playerswarm, which means that a teamswarm will grow exponentially in power as each player "attaches" himself to it. This makes the tactics of a machine team about working together (very literally) to take down one enemy at a time, a process which would be much like focus firing in strategy games.

Sentinel Gamemodes
Needless to say, they would be playable in all the gamemodes. However, in a DtHC game, the Sentinels would gain a mother ship (as seen in the attached screengrab) from which their sentinels would spawn. This mothership would be destroyable, and its destruction would result in a game win for the Zionites. The mothership might have small defenses, but its strength would come from a very thick skin.
In a conquest mode, the machine objective would be to raze the Zionite outposts, and the mothership would be a mobile fortress that floated around the battlefield spawning sentinels. The Zionite goal would be to destroy the mothership or hold their positions for/in a certain amount of time.

Anyway, I hold up this idea to you folks for your critiquing. Feel free to bring up any concerns, comments, questions. I would prefer it if you only post with detailed thoughts--no "this sucks," or "this rocks," if you don't mind.

Wow, I think it's a great idea

Thanks! Any more detailed feelings on it anyone?

yeah you could have gameplay like teh specialists... uber sweet game

Thanks! Any more detailed feelings on it anyone?

...wtf man thats what a fucking compliment gets me? ...

I'm sorry. That wasn't very tactful of me. Thank you very much Hatebreed.

Just out of curiousity, do you have any more specific concerns or suggestions?

wow nice idea man

Thanks very much to you too. Have any more specific stuff?

Based on some detailed feedback and coversation (here, on HalfLife2.net), it is likely that the mod will lose its Matrix roots to offset any copyright issues. Rest assured the core gameplay will remain the same, but the names and appearances will be changed.

Updated Design Document

There's the updated and compiled and expanded design doc. What do you think?

(Sorry about the triple post, but I also wanted to get back up the list since the last post)

- Edited By longbow On Thu 11th, Dec 2003 @ 8:58:36pm
- Edited By Longbow On Fri 2nd, Jan 2004 @ 11:31:47pm

That link doesnt work 4 me
btw, nice idea

Thanks. Here's the contents of the DD:
Design Document: Untitled Infantry/Vehicle Team-Based Mod

-Platform: Half Life 2-

Picture this:

A barren industrial wasteland. A light mech jogs along the highest junk heaps he can find, wary of enemy movement. He sees nothing, as usual, and continues his patrol run. To his right, just out of his line of sight, a small dark cloud is moving closer. Soon a low rumble can be heard, and this soon grows to a roar, as he turns his body to see what is coming. As he sees what is looming, he raises his machine pistols and opens fire, but even the full force of his dual weapons cannot slow the oncoming flow of machines, and in seconds he is overwhelmed as he radios "Swarm, northeast quadrant!" to his superiors.

Human Faction

The mech seen above is one of the vehicles available to the human faction. The humans’ strength comes from their diverse units and vehicles. However, because of the rock-paper-scissors nature of the units, the human players need to coordinate their actions very well.

Human Units

IMP Mech (Insurgent’s Mechanized Patrol)

The Mech is a light armored patrol unit designed to take on small threats but more important, survive long enough to report back. In game, this is manifested as a fast mech with fair armor that can take down unarmored targets with near-impunity and offer strong suppressing fire, but is vulnerable to massed assaults and heavy weapons.

Size:

-Four times the height of a standing human, ~6 tons.

Armaments:

-Dual Machine Pistols (one on each arm)

-High rate of fire, low damage per hit

Armor:

-Light, but impervious to small arms

Controls:

-Dual Arm:

In DA mode, each of the mech's pistols is aimed at the same point, controlled by the user with standard mouselook functionality. This is useful for suppressing fire and fire at unconfirmed targets.

-Free Arm:

In FA mode, the mech’s pistols operate independently, auto-aimed by the computer at the two nearest targets. The pistols are fired with their corresponding mouse button (left pistol—left button). This is useful for close quarters combat and occasions when the mech takes on multiple hostiles.

Notes:

-Reloading Bot: Although the mech carries a large quantity of ammunition (and can fire as long as he has ammo), he will eventually run out if he survives. When he gets to the stage where he is out of ammo, he has two options. One is to return to a base, where he can dock with a mech station, the other is to call for a reload bot, an AI controlled “player” that carries ammo to mechs in the field. A mech can only be reloaded when he has used up all of his ammo, so mech players must carefully balance their time in the field with the time they need to maintain effectiveness.

Hovercraft

The hovercraft in the game serves two roles, depending on gamemode. In Destroy the Hovercraft (detailed later), the hovercraft serves as a floating command center, and in standard gamemodes, it serves as a fast attack craft

Command Center Hovercraft

This hovercraft is a heavy, slow moving vehicle. It has heavy armor, but lacks most weapon capabilities, armed only with a weak, inaccurate machinegun. It also has eye-in-the-sky battlefield command abilities. It serves as a mobile spawn point (the only spawn) for both vehicles and humans (see S

Size:

-Very large. A mammoth of the battlefield

Armaments:

-Light machine gun

-medium rate of fire, low damage per hit, inaccurate. Unlimited ammo.

Armor:

-Very heavy. The toughest unit in the game bar none. Impervious to light arms fire, takes slow damage from larger weapons but still requires a concerted assault to destroy.

Controls:

There are three positions on the command center hover: pilot, gunner, and commander. The pilot controls the movement of the command center itself, and is responsible for keeping the craft in a position where it a) can spawn people into effective locations, and b) is out of harm’s way. The gunner (surprise, surprise) mans the gun. The commander is detailed below.

-Pilot

-The pilot controls the craft using the WASD keys to control directional movement (also with mouselook, needless to say) and LMB and RMB to control elevation (LMB: elevate, RMB: descend). The craft is affected by inertia, and a good pilot will operate around that and plan ahead.

-Gunner

-The gunner’s role is one of sitting waiting for enemies to come in range of his gun. Needless to say, he controls with the mouse. The gunner’s role is therefore not important.

-Commander

-The commander is the eye-in-the-sky, the coordinator for his entire team. His role is to manage contacts, look for enemies and direct his team’s troops. He has a tactical display that shows his units and the units that have been designated by the scouts (see below). Within a certain radius enemies are revealed. He is able to use a waypoint system to direct his units. He is able to select them and give them waypoints, which appear on their screen as beacons. The interface for this control is very similar to an RTS—left click to select, right click to give waypoints.

Fast Attack Hovercraft

This hovercraft, used in all gamemodes besides DtHC, serves as a fast attack craft (hence the name ). It is fairly well armed conventionally but also carries an EMP emitter (see Armaments). It is used for support, and introduces a constant threat (due to its fast speed) to enemies.

Size:

-A fast attack craft—not large, but large enough to carry weapons and the EMP.

Armaments:

-Light machine gun. Accurate, medium rate of fire, medium damage per hit.

-Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP)

The EMP is a devastating weapon. It can disable any active vehicles (see below for active/inactive description) bar none (keep in mind this isn’t used during Destroy the Hovercraft matches). EMPs are one-time use, meaning that they can only be used once per hovercraft. The hovercraft will destroy itself with the EMP if it fires it while active, meaning that it is either a suicide mission or it must shut down while in flight.

Armor:

-Light armor, susceptible to most enemy fire. It’s strength lies in its maneuverability, which makes it difficult to destroy.

Controls:

There is only one control seat on this vehicle, that of the pilot, who also serves as gunner. It is a fast, responsive vehicle, and the pilot must be quite skilled to achieve results. Using the same controls as the Command Center HC, but much more responsively, it must be used in a weaving, dancing manner to utilize its strengths (Ctrl shoots). The EMP is also controlled by the pilot.

Infantry Classes

Pilot

The pilot is the only class able to use vehicles, and is primarily there for that ability. However, when “dismounted,” he can utilize the SMG he spawns with to serve as an equivalent to BF1942’s Assault class. Serving in this way, he isn’t likely to survive long, but it does give him a (small) fighting chance if his vehicle is disabled (see below).

Size:

-Human

Armament:

-SMG

Armor:

- Standard infantry armor: effectively useless. The infantry’s strength comes from their abilities and skillful use thereof, not toughness.

Controls:

While on foot, standard WASD. In-vehicle controls vary from vehicle to vehicle.

Electronics Field Agent (tentative name)

The EFA serves slightly different roles based on gamemode. In DtHC, it serves as an extension of the CC’s line of sight and power—it can add target designations (think of the radio tags used to mark gorillas in the wild) for the commander, and can launch probes that latch onto enemy vehicles and hurt control sensitivity—a mech hit by a probe might lose be more difficult to aim or have variant speeds. In standard gameplay, it is a miniature CC in and of itself. Since the CC is completely gone in other modes, its role is to designate targets (a beacon appears over it on nearby players, and it is temporarily marked on all player’s HUD minimap.

Size:

-Human

Armament:

-multi-purpose projectile launcher. Two types of ammo: radio beacon and zapper.

Armor:

-Standard infantry armor: effectively useless. The infantry’s strength comes from their abilities and skillful use thereof, not toughness.

Controls:

-Standard shooter controls. F to change ammo types.

Rocketeer (tentative name)

The rocketeer is the heavy support for the human side. Carrying a rocket launcher (aren’t these names insightful?), they support the mechs. Their rockets have limited homing ability, so their strength is primarily against the larger members of the machine side (see below). Due to their relative weakness, they must remain hidden or protected at all times.

Size:

-Human

Armament:

-Double-barreled rocket launcher. Two rockets can be loaded at once, but are fired one at a time. It is slow to load, but the rockets are fast and lethal against heavy armor. Only four rockets can be carried at any given time, making judicious, effective use a must.

Armor:

-Light infantry armor. The weaknesses here are compounded by the sensitivity of the rockets (carried on the back) to fire of any kind.

Controls:

-Standard shooter. To reload both barrels, rapidly press R twice.

Machine Faction

The machines have limited diversity in their units and their strength comes from force of numbers. If done well, this can be a brutally effective strategy, but it requires good coordination on the part of the machine players. All but one unit is a variation on the standard model (name pending divine inspiration), so the teamplay required for the machine faction is a different kind of teamplay than the humans employ.

Machine Units

Standard Model (got a good name idea?)

This is the backbone of the machine army. While there are slight variants, this is the version that most will be playing. Like the sentinels in the Matrix (which inspired them but are copyrighted) they move in swarms and use melee attacks. When playing this unit, a player controls a small swarm (5 – 10). The teamplay comes from the ability of machine players to combine swarms. The smart teams will combine all their units into one swarm and attack en masse, as each additional swarm makes the group exponentially larger. This power growth is due to damage distribution—when flying solo, all damage inflicted on a swarm is inflicted on that player, but when flying in groups, the damage is distributed and all players are likely to remain active (see below for repair info). The standard machine unit also has the ability to convert one of its swarm members (one-time use) into a dumbfire projectile of greatly increased speed. These bombs are damaging, but not lethally so, and not quick enough to be undodgable.

Size:

-slightly smaller than a human per unit.

Armaments:

-melee laser. Only effective at close range, but very effective

Armor:

-Strong, light damage from light weapons, medium to heavy damage from hovercraft and IMPs.

Controls:

-WS for accelerate/decelerate (W does not need to be held to keep moving forward—the level of acceleration remains the same until altered by pressing a button). Mouse controls direction, firing of laser. Right mouse activates the kamikaze attack.

Scout Model

This model is lightly armored but very fast. It lacks weaponry though, and is used for tactical maneuvers. Scouts are smaller than the standard model, but because a scout player controls more than a standard player, the total volume of machines is roughly the same. Because of its great speed, it is adept at scouting, decoys, and can be used to lead a pack and take fire for the weapon carrying (and slower) standard editions. Use of scouts is not essential, but if done well can add an element of strategic depth beyond the basic gameplay and give bonuses to the machine team.

Size:

-Smaller than standard.

Armaments:

-None.

Armor:

-Light. Medium to heavy damage from infantry, heavy from vehicles.

Controls:

-Same as standard.

Swarm Mother (names anyone?)

The Swarm Mother is the swarm’s repair station. It cannot repair very much health per machine, but it can repair them, a trait that human vehicles lack. It is larger than other machines and is controlled in singles—one per player. Since others control mini-swarms of machines, the swarm mother is effectively a miniature spawn point to replenish a limited number of destroyed units. The swarm mother is large, though, and makes an ideal target for rocketeers.

Size:

-~Three times the size of a human.

Armaments:

-None

Armor:

-Heavy enough to be impervious to infantry fire, but very vulnerable to vehicular fire.

Controls:

-Just like the Hovercrafts, as the Swarm Mother is in a similar performance category.

Hovercraft Equivalent (for DtHC)

This craft, purely for DtHC, is basically similar to the human one except for cosmetic differences—looks different and has a different command interface.

Game Modes

Conventional Modes: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag

These modes follow the standards for their implementation. They use the fast attack hovercraft and follow all standard rules.

Conquest Mode

This mode is similar, in some ways, to Battlefield 1942’s system. It maintains the base capture system, but the mechanics with the swarm and humans are different. Where a swarm player (or players) would capture a control point in BF, in this they destroy it. This destruction is permanent, unless the humans rebuild it (only in some maps, see below). In some maps, the machines start with the single base and must pillage the rest of the map, in others the humans must rebuild across the map without losing all the bases. Whenever all bases are controlled by humans or destroyed by the machines that side wins. A ticket system might also be implemented to allow games to end quicker and more efficiently.

Destroy the Hovercraft, the mod-original game mode

In this mode (employing the command center hovercraft), the objective is to destroy the enemy command center hovercraft. This is the mode where the strategy is at its best, as each team needs to coordinate well in order to achieve anything at all. Each command center is able to trundle around the battlefield, always maneuvering to get the best location from which to defend itself and attack the enemy. Battlefields might have distinguishing traits and non-symmetry, but control points are nonexistent.

General Notes

Vehicle States

In connection with the EMP, vehicles can be shut down, putting them into a state of non-movement and vulnerability. However, doing this neutralizes the EMP’s lethal effects. The hovercraft carrying the EMP must shut down or crash. The pilot of a vehicle hit by an EMP isn’t killed—after all, it was only his vehicle that was affected. He can climb out and carry on activity as an infantryman with his SMG.

Respawning

Respawning in this would be implemented in this way:

When a character dies, he/she is added to the reinforcement queue. This queue is shifted into play on a minute by minute basis, making it possible for large offensives to capture large areas, but not neutering the defensemen.

Sorry about the lack of formatting--the cost of leaving HTML.

- Edited By longbow On Fri 12th, Dec 2003 @ 5:17:19pm

Nice Work Longbow ^_^

I like the idea - though it has some similaritys to other games right now like unreal 2 XMP - and Team Fortress.
But I seem to like the mechanics you brought up like the weapons and vehicles.

I like the mech ideas and the new mode "command center hovercraft" - would be interesting to see a command center running around and guys having to jump on it fighting inbetween modes etc

If I may - I think it would be cool if you had a extra mode where you play it but instead One Team instead of trying to destroy it -

You have to capture the hovercraft command center and have to jump on it and secure some critical areas.
Within a certain time limit of course.

The other team spawns from a vehicle base so its easier for one to respawn and get into another vehicle again and go on for the chase after the base.

So things are fair.

Then once the time limit is up the base which wasn't captured that team wins.

The teams sides switch (if the other team base is captured and the other team wins sides still switch) Then the other team - you have to capture the other teams base.

Now a base - the commander can decide to switch to hovercraft mode or find a spot and plant the base. itself on the ground.

When the base plants itself on the ground, its defense is much greater then a moving command center base.

Very nice idea and I hope you consider it. (I gave you a freebie idea suggestion)

If you want more information on how that would work or concerns message me.

Thanks. Always glad to see positive feedback (I know it can be a chore to read through that much stuff).

As to your idea, I think it has some potential, but I don't want to get ahead of myself . . . Oh crap, I already have. Anyways, I'll think about it. Again, thanks.

think he put some thought into this?

I try.

Wow, thanks, cHIs. How helpful!

Why can't anyone actually help?

Looks damn good !

ummm... where did the bumpasaurus come from lol thats funny though LOL!!

The Bumpasaurus is my attempt to make you laugh, while I get my thread bumped. So far I've gotten 3 out of 4 replies that are useless. Can't you people just read the posts and give me some feedback?