Transport Ideas

[mysticflame]

I had a Couple of Ideas on how to get the units for the factions across the map easily and quickly.
Combine:
Dropship Pads
Units Can be garrisoned inside with a maximum of 10 units per Pad They call in a dropship to pick them up and take them to a different pad on the map that has been constructed.The Dropship flies high enough to stay out of range from rockets so there is no disturbance.

Rebels:
Underground
The Rebels can make a sort of makeshift subway that they can run through without disturbance and can transport 10 units per Subway.
Antlions:
Antlion Tunnels
The Antlions Burrow underground (deeper than the rebels so there isn't a disturbance) & make tunnels to the other Tunnel Entrance and can only transport 10 units at a time. They Can look like something has broken through the ground or dug out of it and there could be pheromones floating out of the hole indicating that there is a tunnel there.


I have made it 10 and it takes a couple of seconds for them to arrive at their destination to make it balanced a bit more.

Comment Please and i hope you agree.

[MCJJ]

I had a Couple of Ideas on how to get the units for the factions across the map easily and quickly.
Combine:
Dropship Pads
Units Can be garrisoned inside with a maximum of 10 units per Pad They call in a dropship to pick them up and take them to a different pad on the map that has been constructed.The Dropship flies high enough to stay out of range from rockets so there is no disturbance.

Rebels:
Underground
The Rebels can make a sort of makeshift subway that they can run through without disturbance and can transport 10 units per Subway.
Antlions:
Antlion Tunnels
The Antlions Burrow underground (deeper than the rebels so there isn't a disturbance) & make tunnels to the other Tunnel Entrance and can only transport 10 units at a time. They Can look like something has broken through the ground or dug out of it and there could be pheromones floating out of the hole indicating that there is a tunnel there.


I have made it 10 and it takes a couple of seconds for them to arrive at their destination to make it balanced a bit more.

Comment Please and i hope you agree.

Dropship Pads:
Maybe the Team could implement that when time comes for the vehicles (especially aircraft) to be included in the game. It's nice though, but a possible over-abuse of this tactic can make gameplay quite annoying for others. To balance this, perhaps add a downside. I dunno what it could be, but you think about it.

Underground:
While keeping true to the style of the Resistance soldiers, wouldn't it be a little bit too good to be true for like 10 rebel soldiers getting in a tunnel and out of it with all of them alive?

Maybe add a downside that doesn't encourage Rebel players to overuse the underground system? I mean, headcrabs, zombies, and antlions are like almost everywhere in HL2...

Antlion Tunnels:
Very good idea, it makes travelling for antlions very easy. Although the entrances/exits can be blocked by heavy stuff like cars, why not make the tunnels weak enough to be destroyed in a single grenade blast or to be sealed for good?

Anyways, you decide. This is your idea, not mine. Keep thinking about it. You might find some more interesting stuff about these suggestions you thought of and maybe the Team will think about it and do something like this.

[pandango]

Or maybe it could be that you aren't really in charge on where you can go to. that the mapper has to create these points for each Faction?

[MCJJ]

Maybe, but there's a high possibility that a talented Modeller can make the stuff for these suggestions.

(i.e Imagine a Dropship Pad with a Dropship Pod sitting there, then suddenly an uncontrollable Dropship (part of the model/building) comes from nowhere, picks the Pod up, and moves to somewhere in the map, and drops off the Combine inside. Another one is that the tunnels, someone can just make a building model of an entrance to a tunnel. Put like five units into the tunnel, and depending on where the exit is, put them to the other end after a set time. (Like delete x units there, then add x units here after set time) For the underground its the same like the tunnel above.)

[mysticflame]

Dropship Pads:
Maybe the Team could implement that when time comes for the vehicles (especially aircraft) to be included in the game. It's nice though, but a possible over-abuse of this tactic can make gameplay quite annoying for others. To balance this, perhaps add a downside. I dunno what it could be, but you think about it.

The Dropship could take a about 15 seconds to get to the pad and instead of flying high fly low enough the be shot down and after every 10% of damage a soldier inside could die until the dropship explodes. Each Rocket Could do about 5-15% damage each hit

Underground:
While keeping true to the style of the Resistance soldiers, wouldn't it be a little bit too good to be true for like 10 rebel soldiers getting in a tunnel and out of it with all of them alive?

Maybe add a downside that doesn't encourage Rebel players to overuse the underground system? I mean, headcrabs, zombies, and antlions are like almost everywhere in HL2...

I Suppose that there could be about a 10%-25% chance that one or some of the rebels don't make it through the tunnel due to antlion breaches.

Antlion Tunnels:
Very good idea, it makes travelling for antlions very easy. Although the entrances/exits can be blocked by heavy stuff like cars, why not make the tunnels weak enough to be destroyed in a single grenade blast or to be sealed for good?

The Tunnel entrance can be clearly visible and just have about 10-20 health and can be block by a heavy objects moved onto the hole making it inaccessible and 1 grenade can easily destroy it. There Could be a chance for them to run into a rebel tunnel and some die trying to pass it through a breach in it.

[SkedarE]

Love the transport idea. I think with the current HL2 node programming, a unit may even be build-able, which would be much more easier than setting specific nodes for every map for the drop-ship to spawn (without getting stuck clustering with another combine player's drop-ship call-in), as we've managed to make air units move around where we want to before by clicking there as usual.

The antlion and rebel tunnels could be programmed to create underground nodes in a straight line to each tunnel entry/exit, or it could simply let the units go underneath the map and only go up and down from these particular tunnel points built. Problem with my theory is I can't figure out how to stop rebel units going directly over to the combine base underground and start shooting their base down where the combine wont be able to do anything about it. Happened in the HL2 Wars Version 0.5 in the beach mission in the rebel base. Might need to create another impassable barrier on the under-side of the ground/terrain with programming although not sure how.

1. Don't think the HL2Wars team would go into such detail though as to program chances of losing troops on transit from their transport hub/drop-ship. I think the drop-ship can go anywhere but can be shot down with RPG's, killing all occupants and the drop-ship defence, automatically sending the drop-ship off-map to delete itself.
2. The hubs would require building another on the other side and could therefore not be used to directly assault a heavily defended Combine base, unless they were stupid enough to build right on-top of one of these hubs. Up-side would be no loss on troops in transit, providing simple and effective reinforcements/evacuees for all rebel bases.
3. Antlions are weak against heavy units and thus can just burrow and go anywhere on the map, being melee mostly and only usable in mini-games like the rebel mission in HL2 Wars v0.5 as they cant attack striders or gun-ships.

[KalliKobra]

Maybe even a Resistance transport vehicle like the 7-seat truck from Synergy that can up to 7 Rebels

7 seat truck from HL2 and drivable in Synergy

images.jpg (9.15 KiB) Viewed 1319 times

Or the Combine APC:

Combine APC

images (1).jpg (5.25 KiB) Viewed 1319 times

[Sandern]

Love the transport idea. I think with the current HL2 node programming, a unit may even be build-able, which would be much more easier than setting specific nodes for every map for the drop-ship to spawn (without getting stuck clustering with another combine player's drop-ship call-in), as we've managed to make air units move around where we want to before by clicking there as usual.

For some reason people seem to keep thinking the mod uses the base hl2 code. However it doesn't use nodes at all. It uses the navigation mesh with a fully customized new AI.

Tunnel gameplay could be interesting, but I'm not entirely convinced yet that it adds much.

I would like to add vehicles, but then we also need to decide how they will be implemented. So we could either go for a C&C/Starcraft approach where vehicles rotate around their axes and are basically just a normal unit. Another approach is to make them more realistic like in Company of Heroes, where vehicles actually steer (although they can cheat a bit if they get stuck/don't have enough room). Doing this also requires adjustements to the maps, to ensure vehicles can always find a path to drive and can't get stuck on things.

We would also need a modeler/animator, which might even be harder to get...

[SkedarE]

Love the transport idea. I think with the current HL2 node programming, a unit may even be build-able, which would be much more easier than setting specific nodes for every map for the drop-ship to spawn (without getting stuck clustering with another combine player's drop-ship call-in), as we've managed to make air units move around where we want to before by clicking there as usual.

For some reason people seem to keep thinking the mod uses the base hl2 code. However it doesn't use nodes at all. It uses the navigation mesh with a fully customized new AI.

Tunnel gameplay could be interesting, but I'm not entirely convinced yet that it adds much.

I would like to add vehicles, but then we also need to decide how they will be implemented. So we could either go for a C&C/Starcraft approach where vehicles rotate around their axes and are basically just a normal unit. Another approach is to make them more realistic like in Company of Heroes, where vehicles actually steer (although they can cheat a bit if they get stuck/don't have enough room). Doing this also requires adjustements to the maps, to ensure vehicles can always find a path to drive and can't get stuck on things.

We would also need a modeler/animator, which might even be harder to get...

Well the navigation mesh and abandoning of nodes is perfect. Perhaps allow vehicles to make full turning circles AND allow them to get stuck. Things like this could turn game advantages making for interesting matches.

Unit positioning and movement, whilst already an essential part of RTS games, is very important for HL2 Wars. Take Overrun mode for example. Players don't last very long if they sit their units in one place and tell them to attack whilst zombies/antlions are tearing your ranks apart. Don't forget grenades as well and the strider cannon. You want to micromanage movement in this game in order to secure vital victories throughout a match and vehicle positioning and maintenance shouldn't be an exception. It adds environmental and strategic elements to match.

[Surrealistik]

Both factions should have an APC of some kind; the Rebels might have a scrap armoured 'Battle Bus'; basically a roving bunker that can carry a lot of rebels. It has no armaments of its own, but the rebels within can fire. They could also have a lighter, faster transport; a scrap armoured truck for example, with a machine gun turret with a smaller troop capacity that is cheap and fast to build.

The Combine APC would feature a heavy pulse turret (it can be upgraded to have a rocket launcher in addition). It has a smaller unit capacity than the Battle Bus, but is faster and more durable, with heavier armour (while probably being more expensive and slower to build too).

Both 'heavy' APCs, the Battle Bus and Combine APC could be upgraded to heal and resupply troops in and around them.


Also, I like the idea of the Rebels getting a late game teleportation technology similar to the Chronosphere in the Red Alert series. Perhaps it may be limited to teleporting Rebel units between pads with a small cooldown and teleporting a Rebel units on a teleportation pad to any area but at the cost of an extra long cooldown. The cooldown is cumulative, increasing for each unit teleported (larger units add even more cooldown). Seeing as this was according to the game canon a major advantage of the Rebels over the Combine, it should definitely feature in Lambda Wars. Certain units may be too large to be teleported at all.

The Combine however, would get their flyer/dropship synths to compensate that can go pretty much anywhere and are armed (heavy pulse turret) and heavily armoured.

[JJ]

Simple steering where vehicles just rotate would be better. The maps have lots of cover and things to get stuck on and they can't run over these things like in company of heroes so realistic steering would be too frustrating.

With vehicles in consideration transportation like teleportation or dropships doesn't seem that necessary. The game now is already fast paced with just infantry. I've never felt the need for mass transportation like that.

[Surrealistik]

Pace is also contingent on map size and layout.

That said, aerial transports and teleportation are more than just about raw speed, it's also about surprise and outmaneuvering your opponent; attacking vulnerable spots from unexpected angles.