Community idea's for a possible SW:GB 2

[jcb231]

I like the engine the way it is....better graphics and sound would be nice, but I like the fundamental concept of the game....I don't want to increase the scale to planet level. I like the idea of fighting small, base-to-base battles.

[Crazy_dog no.3]

It could work like this: On a RM, u select which planet u want to be on and select your civ. Then u can build the civ's bases on that particular planet.

I mean a Naboo player on Naboo would get towns like New Centrif and Theed, while a Rebel Yavim 4 player would get Falcon Base and Massasi Base.

 

 

The engine could be easily licenced considering Microsoft's deals with LA.

[Leto]

hmm dunno, fighting on a planet scale seems a bit..... big?

 

if it's planet scale u'll need a larger pop.... then again y not elminate the pop thing. games like EE Red Alert 2 etc didn't have a pop..... well it did but it was so large u never bult up to it

 

yes mb in SWGB 2 we don't have a pop limit anymore

[CorranSec]

OK. Would it be possible for somebody to elaborate on the AoM engine for me?

Are there fights between small units? Eg. bands of troopers, archers, whatever? does the view change when two bands meet? Would air units be possible?

I see the advantages: The Death Star attack, Battle of Mon Calamari, Battle of Coruscant, are suddenly possible.

Disadvantages: I, always thinking about air combat, am wondering if it will just be cap ships and no fighters?

Do units stop and form up into those irritating lines? Are there heroes? What's the pop cap?

...... i need to know more about this game.

[Darth Windu]

corran - if you want more info, go to the official site. Also, RoN would be much better because it uses aircraft as an integral part of the game, AoM doesn't.

[Leto]

don't think there's air to air combat in AoM........ prob like Warcraft III and SWGB where the planes hover and attack......

 

heaps better if the engine was built to accomdate (sp?) air to air combat.

 

anyone seen the videos for RoN? looks pretty good IMO.

[Crazy_dog no.3]

About the city problem: I think it should just be similiar to GB. After all, u can't build planets.

[General Nilaar]

Basing a Star Wars game off of the Rise of Empires engine might be a good idea, but it wouldn't be GBII. That's a totally different scale it sounds like. Let's keep this to the traditional RTS type game.

 

1. First I'd like to see Lucas Arts create their own engine for the game. Hopefully a semi-3D map like we saw in Total Annihilation. The terrain looks natural, but it doesn't interfere with gameplay like the true 3D games. No zooming in or out or twisting the camera. Just a default "commanders view". The only useful view in a RTS game IMHO.

 

2. This engine should allow air-to-air combat, fighters that swoop and make straffing runs. Like we saw in Total Annihilation and Force Commander.

 

3. It should de-emphasize the economy aspect. We want to fight battles not run a city. There should definetly be some kind of economy, but I shouldn't have to run back to my base and plant farms in the middle of an epic battle. The epic battle is what the game is all about, anything that subtracts from that should be gotten rid of.

 

4. Improved graphics, but don't get carried away, we still have to be able to have players play this on a 56k modem. Too many companies forget that. Graphics can impress without being full 3D.

 

5. Time to move away from the Zone. Create your own client in the style of something like Battle.Net but hopefully even better. Microsoft is holding LA back, they are a competitor in the RTS genre after all. It's not an accident that the Zone has been slow to respond to needed changes.

 

That's about it. And no I don't want to see Star Destoryers participating in ground battles. That's just silly. If you want that then what you really want is a space based RTS game with capital ships as the main unit. A cool idea. I would like to see that too. But as a completely seperate game.

[CorranSec]

OK. To respond to Nilarr's points.

 

1. ummm.... sounds ok, but view change would be good. What if one of your wonderfully rendered 3D mountains gets in the way and you can't see your men! not good....

2. Yes! Yes yes yes! Yay! Go air to air!

3. So you're thinking a "warcraft 3"-ish kind of thing? ummm.... I wouldn't support it. This kind of style is popular for some, but for others, economy is what RTS is all about. Have you seen the thread on these forums about warcraft 3? Some people hate it, some like it, but everybody who did post is a GB player. What we have now is fairly balanced, and an economy/military game, with equal emphasis on each, is what I think would appeal to the general populace.

4. Yes.. the graphics on GB and even CC aren't exactly great.

5. This has been discussed before, and correct me if I'm wrong, but most people are getting extremely displeased with the Zone and would support a Battle.net sort of thing.

 

Hey! cap ships are fuun! Sure, maybe an SD would be a little weird, but in space that'd be good, and there's heaps of smaller ships- freighters, frigates, maybe some cruisers, that could easily deal with being in atmosphere. Surely you can deal with the present "air cruisers?"

 

aand....... basically, most of the stuff you've discussed has already been raised. Don't waste your breath-uhh, typing fingers-on completely going over a point that's already there.

[jcb231]

I think the balance between economy and battles is pretty good right now....although I would like the ability to put some things on auto-pilot, such as farming....can't my farmers just automatically replant the farms without my having to queue them up all the time?...I hate that.

 

Also, I like the idea of some capital ship usage....perhaps, like the ghosts/nukes in starcraft, a specialized unit could "call in" an orbital strike on a target. The orbital strike would cost money and time to build, so you couldn't just rush of ten in a row or something...they would be big, decisive actions.

[Ansible]

Game Engine: Empire Earth

[CorranSec]

Mmm... Jcb, I agree with you. The balance now is good- it's a tried and tested and working mix of economy micro-management and battle.

Farms, though.... some people only want to farm for a little while, what if you need carbon quickly (and you've clicked the replant farm button heaps,) you can undo it all, and so on. This is part of the economy part of things. Some things just require careful management.

Well... I liked ghost nukes. very fun. evilness.

but this shouldn't stop us using cap ships! at least the smaller kinds.... if they're small enough to dock on planets and maybe stations, they can be in ground maps. That's my opinion anyway...

[jcb231]

CorranSec--what I'm proposing for farming (and many other management tasks) is an option that allows a player to auto-pilot them....so if I want I can tell the worker to just replant endlessly, without having to check my queue each time. And the carbon is just deducted automatically each time, until I run out, and the game lets me know that the farm hasn't enough carbon to replant. That'd be cool. Other resource collection tasks are automatic (workers wander to the next tree/crystal/berry bush/ore patch after they use one up), so why not farming? If a player wnated to micromanage their farms they could, or just set up a limited replant queue, or they could just put the autopilot on for a short while, and turn it off when they wanted to change the farm or wanted to conserve carbon.

 

In terms of capital ships, I prefer the option of air cruisers, plus maybe slightly larger air cruiser type ships, and some orbital strikes executed as per my previous post. I don't want to move super star destroyers and such around the battlefield.

[Darth Windu]

I was thinking, i would also like to see-

-unlimited building queue's like in AoE: Rise of Rome

-tech upgrade queue's so you dont have to constantly check on what you have and havent researched.

-merge the Anti-Air Mobile and Mech Destroy, and replace the Mech Destroyer with a 'mini-assault' mech

 

Ansible - Empire Earth has already been surpassed in terms of gameplay, graphics etc. Other games such as Age of Mythology or Rise of Nations would be much better, but stillo they should create their own engine.

[jcb231]

Windu--I agree with your first two points about unlimited building queues and some sort tech checklist, but I still (as on the other thread) disagree with the mech thing.

 

I also seem to be one of the few people who thinks the engine for this game should NOT be a 3-D engine...I just think that the "commander of the battlefield" type view seen in the current game is the best possilb eway to view the action and contians all the info a player needs.....I don't like having to deal with camera movements and such in 3-D engines, as evidenced by my dislike of Force Commander. I want to be able to easily spot all my units in an area with one click on the map.

[Darth Windu]

Well in respect to the engine, i would like a limited 3D engine that gives you a 3D world, but not so much that you have to move the camera around all the time. There is a compramise in an engine similar to the Star Trek: Armada 2 engine where you could use either 'tactical view' which was full 3D, or the 'strategic view' which was 2D.

[eizo131]

After ten minutes of reading I said screw this so I will post something. Like someone said let some civis be able to dig under walls.seing over walls with troopers is cheat artillary units should only be able to do that. Make Jedi masters attack weaker. I was killed by 10 jedis in my last game....... And fix the names of things ie someone said insted of trooper stormtrooper. last but not least ad more civis like MANDOLORIANS and add more unique units like gunships.

[Kryllith]

Nah, don't even let artillery see over walls. If you want to make it so a ground unit can see over walls, make it so the scouts can. This makes the scouts more valuable in the later tech levels and gives more weight to their roles as scouts.

 

Kryllith

[Kryllith]

Actually, now that I think about it, I'd suggest a couple collaries to only having the scout see over the wall (other than air units, of course). First, I'd suggest that any unit should be able to see a turret or fortess behind a wall, since these are usually large enough to be able to fire over the wall anyway (at least, I would have them be this way; it's a bit pointless to build turrets just behind a wall if it can't fire over it). As for artillery (and perhaps assault mechs), maybe they could see over smaller walls... say light walls and medium walls (or maybe just heavy artillery and heavy assaults could see over medium). Thus come Tech 4, artillery would be reliant on scouts (or air) to fire over heavy-shield walls.

 

Leaving the scout next to the wall wouldn't even need to be a requirement. If the scout passed close enough to see buildings, the artillery could then target the building even if the scout wasn't in visual range anymore. It's not like the building is going to up and move, afterall. But if you want to use artillery against troops behind a wall, the scout or air will have to be there to keep the artillery updated on troop movements...

 

Kryllith

[General Nilaar]

No, camera view changes wouldn't be needed with a semi-3D terrain like Total Annihalation. The mountains didn't get in the way with that game. It wasn't anything like Force Commander.

 

No, I don't want the game to become like Warcraft 3. I don't mind economy building, but if the game lasts till tech 4 and I have plenty of resources I don't want to have to worry about econmy. I'd rather be concentrating on my battle plan. I should definetly have to worry about it in the early game. I really like that automatic farming and research queueing suggested above. That's the kind of thing I meant.

 

Someone mentioned the Madalorians up above. Wasn't the idea of the Mandalorians done away with? There's just Jango and Boba Fett in the canon Star Wars universe. Or am I wrong there?

 

As for new civs, I'd like to see the Chiss myself, but I think we really have enough civs to be honest. I'd suggest working on making them more different from each other. Though CC has already done that somewhat.

 

I have no problems with Air Cruisers, but that's as much as we need I think. Don't need to get any bigger than that in a ground based game.

[General Nilaar]

How about changing weather? If your on a desert world you might have to be careful of sandstorms, on an ice world there would be snow storms to worry about and water might freeze over (and may have a chance of breaking if you try to move something heavy over it). Some plantets might have Ion storms which could ground all aircraft.

 

A day/night cycle might shorten the sight ranges of all units (except units specially equipped with night vision). You could then equip your towers with spotlights to help with base defense.

 

Many of the above are ideas stolen from Tiberian Sun. Good ideas that could have been implemented better.

 

How about fighting in a more inhabited area? With small towns or cities? There could be useful buildings in those areas worth occupying.

[Darth Windu]

Those are some good ideas. Really what i think Lucasarts needs to do is look at the warcraft series, Command & Conquer series, Age of Empires series along with some of the new games such as Rise of Nations and Age of Mythology, take the best elements from each series and blend them together in a lucasarts built engine made specifically for star wars.

[Crazy_dog no.3]

I like the weather idea. Like long ago there was a fan- made mission set in the desert were units took damage from " sandstorms". Maybe a more advanced system.

 

Also disable units seeying through walls.

[Kryllith]

I think it's important to note that if we put a limitation of units seeing through walls, then there should also be a limitation for units firing through walls. The notable exception, of course, being those buildings that would stand higher than walls (fortresses and turrets).

 

While we're at it, why limit it to just walls? Forests, mountains, and the like should also be impentrable to both sight (except for scouts and air, through the jedi "sight beyond sight" would probably work too) and fire (except for "attack ground")

 

Kryllith

[Darth Windu]

agreed about the walls. I also think that the only units that should be able to fire over walls are those which have weapons that have a parabolic course, and of course air units. I also think that the canon should be removed from the game, and in its place increase the range and firepower of artillery (assault mech beats it in every field) and of course increase cost.