Galactic Gates: A Universal Solution To Major Problems

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

It could be, but really, it shouldn't.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

Shouldn't which?

The giant intergalactic weapons? Like the meteor?

Or the covering a planet face in rocket troopers? Like in every RTS ever made?

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

Well, this escalated quickly. As much as I would like to, I don't think I can reply to ever post since I last checked.

Going to roughly go post by post, and take some general ideas from what everyone has said. Going to be messy, sorry :cry:

- Remove the resource flow idea. Teleportation should really only occur in lengthy games (a product of large maps as well). For those that want to keep isolated economies, make a structure for resources early game, and one for teleportation late game. There is another thread about this. So use that unless it relates to gates.

- Make teleportation bloody expensive, or have it restricted in some way as to prevent massive armies from easily instantly travelling huge distances.

(Added numbers)
1) What? No. What if there are no more rocks to fling. Also ruins a great number of potential game features.
2) I never said remove them... also didn't you just suggest not having invasions?
3) ???

- My idea 'required' a gate at each end to commence a transfer, so no gating into your enemies base. I suppose some more costly teleportation method could be added which didn't need a destination gate.

- Other forms of transportation won't be irrelevant. Gating is expensive. Normal transport methods (dropship, naval barge, airlift) will be much more feasible, and better able to adopt to changing events.

- I only phrased the title this way since 'universal' fits so nicely, and didn't have enough space for the title I wanted.

- To further balance the transportation, perhaps a 'travel time' could be introduced? Go in one end, and 30 seconds later pop out the other. While travelling, no further commands could be issued, so a wise opponent could take advantage of this delay by attacking your base after you ship your best units away.

- Perhaps the cost of teleporting a unit is directly proportionate to its mass? Could make an interesting dynamic in how teleportation works. I haven't really thought about this one much though. Makes sense though, based on the assumption teleportation involves transferring matter (and not some weird 'moving space around it' concept).

- Yes, these are all IDEAS. It's not like I'm stating facts where everyone needs to either agree or disagree. Input on these ideas is more helpful than a yes/no answer. Even I voted for "Needs some work..."

- I put that option there for this reason alone

- Personally, I think finding and targeting an enemy's homeworld is a great mechanic. If you can pull off something which compromises their homeworld, they really deserve to be scattered and left weakened.

- For planetary invasions, I was sort of envisioning the idea of building in orbit around a planet in preparation for an attack. I really have no idea how this will work, so suggested a way it could be done via gates in orbit.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I'll try to edit my post to reflect the opinions here. Going to still leave 'potential features', like resource flow, but make them more of an alternative idea.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

Some ideas I have on the topic, a lot just compiling the ones I like:
· Cool down time - I think this could stop units being spammed at the enemy
· Visual warning - This would help balance the power
· More mass more power - stops people from sending an overwhelming amount of units to a single point
· Planet to same planet - if balance well this should not be a problem
· Interplanetary options - I think having as many options as possible would would promote the type of fighting that everyone wants (except the strange space fighting people)
· Commander gate blocker - to prevent commander sniping you could say commanders have or can build teleportation blockers, that prevent anyone from gating in too close to them.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

It seems that the current "in" thing on this forum is to make sweeping generalisations about every RTS that aren't actually true. The Warcraft series' limited resources and multiple limits on army size meant that holding the entire map just wasn't feasible (or necessary). It also didn't really do much with this fact. Strategy is about decisions, and if the answer to "where should I defend" is "everywhere", it's not really a decision worth considering. Anticipating likely locations for an enemy drop and taking steps to hold those locations should be the standard MO, not turning entire planets into fortresses.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

^This^

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

teleportation, is tricky, i like the idea of assaulting with transports to establish a beachhead, and then building a portal on an enemy world to open up passage for ground units from one of your other worlds, but if they do theat i'd really prefer if it were a real portal, ie. two way movement open to all sides, cause i'd really like to counter assault through the enemy's own portal. you could set it up so it requires huge ammounts of power to keep open and because its a TA style power draw system where you draw on power as a stored resource balanced against power produced it could work really well

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

The taking of an enemy gate could have much potential. It would depend on there being a capture system, which would make sense considering TA and SupCom.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

The suicide system control k whatever would have to be lengthened for that to make much sense here though. It would be pretty awesome. Or if you get a unit to an active gate and go through it while its active you could then link your own gate to the ones you see, and then assault them from your own gate. (only need vision of a gate to make a connection, then activating it is a toggle which drains energy, and anything sent through also costs additional energy)

Yes this is just an idea

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

Ooh, good idea. I'll add it to the list of things I'll change in the first post.

I imagine it could be something like stargate, where you can get illegal incoming transfers. Perhaps you could overload the gate and force entry? Sounds overly complicated though. May just be easier to make capture times fairly short, and can't self-destruct while being captured (stops any countdown).

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

Damn I love stargate.

I'm moderately embarrassed to say that I have seen every episode of every stargate series

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

How I envision 'Unconnected gating' or gating to a place without a receiving gate is like this:
1) It would be much more expensive than connected gating.
2) When units enter the gate there would be a warm-up phase for each unit. Units in this phase can't be controlled, so no calling them back out from the gate. If the gate is destroyed before the units have completed their teleport, the units (with an exception for the commander) are lost.
3) At the destination an appropriate graphic (rift, quantum fluctuation etc.) is present for as long as the above mentioned warm-up phase is active until the unit of course has completed the teleport.
-
And of course this system should have a mass energy equivalence.
The more mass the more energy it will take to complete the teleport.
And if you don't have enough energy, the warm-up phase will just take its good time.. giving the enemy even more time to prepare or find you. :twisted:
That would discourage people from sticking all their best units in the gate when they don't have the economy for it! :mrgreen:

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

Teleporting without a receiving gate is a total no-go. It makes assaults depend on gateways without the need to establish forward bases on nearby planets, thats exactly what is NOT supposed to happen as it breaks all antiair- and antiorbital defenses from early to mid game.

Gateways are supposed to connect your bases and economies in late game, not to be used in an aggressive manner. Get your units to the nearest planet or moon, but from thereon, you must rely on classic tools like unit cannons or transporters.

This also needs to be considered when defining the actual mechanism behind the gates: A gate may not be placed or used for pulling in inbound resources or units, unless a proper base has been established in advance. The logic consequence is, that the transport of units or metal must always consume resources from the local economy on the receiving gate. This is the only reliable way, to ensure that units will never be teleported straight behind the enemies lines. Teleporting in without an established gateway is unacceptable, no matter how huge the energy costs would be, considering that we will have planets with almost UNLIMITED energy resources (fusion reactors on gas giants, geothermal on vulcanic planets).

As for outgoing gates: Whether they also consume energy or not, is a different decision. A symmetric energy consumption makes it easier to create a stable economy, since both ends of the transfer will have to keep up with the energy, reducing the risk of an energy shortage when reversing the direction of the gateway. But having the energy cost only at the receiving portal would work as well, it also has the benefit of making retreats from a planet possible when the local economy has already been destroyed.

Now for resources: Don't just connect the resources of planets. Keep the economies local and think of the gateway of more as something like a remote fed metal generator instead of a free transport. Invest excess energy to pull metal from planets with a positive economy to planets with a negative economy.

Why? So you can't just put all your economy on a single, heavy defended planet. If a planet is neither metal rich nor energy rich, then it is not supposed to be either. The value of a planet can be characterized with four attributes: Metal deposits, (time/space/metal) cost of building power plants, defense potential and building space. Allowing energy to be spend to pull in metal already reduces this to three dimensions only (resources, defense, space), but completely sharing resources in a global economy would reduce this to mere two dimensions only, the various planet types would essentially become all the same in terms of gameplay.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

Err.. that is exactly what it is supposed to do. To have an expensive counter to such turtling.
Well, unless I can have interplanetary weapons which can't be shot down with the AA or orbital defenses.

Well, having a receiving gate on an enemy planet would be difficult to maintain for not to setup... Behind enemy lines?? How the **** would you defend a gate in the midst of enemy units all trying to destroy it???
The only way to do that would be to teleport without a receiving gate.
But understand that teleporting units into a bunch of enemies would be totally unfeasible.
Especially since they will know you are coming.

No, if the local economy has been killed then escape through a gate should not be an option.. really, what would power it??

I agree with this.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

I'm sure that there WILL be interplanetary weapons which can be used to overhaul AA defenses, so you have a short time window in which you can start an assault from a NEARBY celestial body.

I know only one game, which allowed to spawn / "teleport" units behind the enemy lines, C&C 3 Tiberium Wars. And to be honest? It was useful for only one task: Taking out a single important target with a single suicide attack. This would be fatal if you could just teleport enough units to one-hit the commander, rendering every kind of defense useless. This perverts the concept of "i can break your defenses by outnumbering you" to "your defenses are pointless". Well, SupCom 2 had a similar mechanism with the unit canon, but it had limited range, limited fire rate and you couldn't exploit fire rate by just building more of them because of the limited space and resources in most maps. Also maps were a lot smaller, the game relied on giving your enemy a chance to destroy the unit canon in time. It would have been terrible if that canon would have stayed in place for hours.
It would just allows for a tactic which can't be countered which is very bad.
It also allows for conquering a whole solar system from a single base which is also bad as it gives you a tremendous influence range without exposing any vulnerable forward bases or even the need to establish such.

You are worried about turtling? Being able to teleport to any spot on every planet removes the need for forward bases, you are able to spend all your resources on the defense of 1-3 planets, the rest becomes irrelevant.

There was a good reason, why the expensive ACUs and SCUs in SupCom were the only units capable of teleporting to random spots. Even though they consumed a lot of energy and had a long precharge for each teleport, it made them very powerful as it made them capable of breaking any(!) line of defense for a fixed energy cost. Or even going suicidal.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

I just thought of a fun way to use this if there are black holes, but this should work just as well with gas giants and stars.

First find a gate that the enemy uses regularly, then construct another gate right in front of it and constructed another in just outside the gravity well of the black hole/gas giant/star, when the enemy dents troops through the first gate and then link the two. when the enemy sents troop throught the gate, warm yours up, or if one has the resources leave I on at all times, and when the troops get through the gate the instantly go through yours to the black hole/gas giant/star and get pulled to there death.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

Hah, something like the mothership vortex ability in starcraft 2? May be interesting to use, but I don't think it really fits. Teleporting should be consensual IMO.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

I said fun, not fair


Also, just think how incredibly difficult it would be to pull of in game

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

I just posted something like this in another thread. Talking about EMP nuke effect.

Talked about this earlier too.

SC2 also had an Aeon Experimental teleporter unit if I remember correctly. It was a large temple building that required the placement of a second, smaller building which could be positioned at will, unlimited times by the player. The catch was that it was a two-way teleporter. Meaning the enemy could use it as a direct gate into your base. I find this particular attribute relevant. Even the teleporter in SC2 was not open ended. It just breaks the game otherwise.

'nuff said.

Re: Galactic Gates: The Universal Solution To Every Problem

The teleporter in SC2 could be considered game ender. When you had the economy to build it, the game was about to end anyway. So it didn't matter whether you just rushed with experimentals or used some more "advanced" tactics, that unit was just like the quadruple damage shield disabling EMP artillery or the instant death unit magnets. Those units were all just for fun, the developers of the game never had to care about battles which could possibly last longer then 2 hours or spanned across multiple skirmishes on various planets. Once you reached experimental tier, the game was over.