Assimilation Game Mode

So, the thing with 40 person FFA battlefields, where you have planetary combat which escalates into interplanetary later, is two fold.

As the scale increases, your ability to control the units goes down. And drastically.

Secondly, the dead guys have nothing to do except watch and chat. And while this is usually fine by me (explosions are pretty), actually playing would be nice.


So, assimilation game mode. Starts exactly like an FFA, no teams, last man standing wins.

The trick is, every commander you wipe off the map drops a control core. The player who reclaims the core then gets that commander he just killed on his side. Both of them share control of the same units and resources. The dead guy gets a win if they win (but with however many deaths as also part of the record).
If that two-commander side dies, it drops both their cores which can be claimed. If a player just wants to watch and chat, he can resign, which will permanently remove his control core from the map (he becomes a spectator).

So a 40 man FFA to start off, eventually devolves into a team FFA. And players can choose who they will let onto their team (only the original guy can claim cores), so if they just crushed some useless enemy, they can just shoot his core down and force him to spec. Original player might also get the ability to kick conquered enemies (force to spec) if they try to screw him over, permissions settings might also appear if needed (allowed to issue construction, self-destruct, restricted number of units controlled, etc.).
Surrender options might allow you to merge your side with an opponent (counts as loss for you).


So this solves both problems. As the scope gets bigger, you gain more commanders on your team (the fallen you have crushed now serve you!), which improves the micromanagement situation.
And it gives the dead players something to do and still be involved in the ever more epic escalation of destruction.

even with less players the idea of "joining" the victor of a battle might be an interesting idea as long as the game is itself takes long enough.
The problem of defeated players appeared often enough in our rts sessions as we liked to play games with longer runs. Incorporating this into a surrender option, as opposed to waiting for him to kill your last mangy units, would make sense.

The interesting question would be how to define and manage unequal shared control over the joined team of the victor and the puny remains of the loosing player.
Kind of hierarchical teams, would be a novum in rts games as far as I know.

Another option for a loosing player would be to take over an AI player (if any left or there at all); with a few restrictions that might be a viable option.

This is actually an interesting idea for dealing with larger games. You could make it so that only the original commander can control resource allocation while the defeated players become tactical subcommanders who can only control combat units. In addition you could have the primary commander promote subcommanders as the new primary in case a game goes long and someone has to step out. As long as the current commander can terminate the subcommanders to prevent a bitter loser from sabotaging the game, then it should make for more viable big games.

There is the risk early on of having two people against one person being an extreme advantage in battles but that could be justified as the reward for eliminating another player early on. I do think that the winning commander shouldn't inherit the units/buildings of the dead commander otherwise it really lends itself to cheese strats.

This is a legitimately interesting idea.
You would have to be able to talk to the people who are alive in your 'team', though. Otherwise it would just defeat the purpose.

Glad you guys like it!

I was thinking something along these lines:
1. The original player is the only one who can claim or shoot cores. (no one else can issue orders to units regarding cores, cores are immune to AoE damage)
1b. Parking a unit next to the core allows you to chat to the player "in" the core.

2. The original player has access to a panel that is a grid of check boxes. This is basically every player on his team (minus him) and their permissions settings. Check their box to give them permission to do X.
2b. A default line, which new commanders will get, might be an option
2c. Permissions would be something like: Allowed to command scouts/combat/specialist/constructor units, allowed to command factories, allowed to command superweapons, allowed to build new buildings, allowed to trigger self-destruct
2d. Diplomatic options (surrender, resign, ceasefire, taking in cores) are original player only

Ally team chat. Exactly the same as usual team games.

Perhaps point 1b from above would share your team chat with that core.

Very interesting idea. But should be a option i dont think you always want to play like this.

There is a mod on sc2 which uses this same concept and even though it is interesting and fun im afraid there is a simple flaw which breaks the game mode and that is that if the player you control doesnt want to be in ur team then they will just let someone take them back to the other team. Now if you add the fact they could potentially control ur army it just gets even messier as ur giving them the right to suicide ur units. An example of this is lets say this corrupt player spreads out all his units to all his allies commanders then leaves his commander vulnerable. The enermy then comes in and takes control of the commander. This would lead to them killing every commander on the old "allied" teammate's team.

This should be made as a mod.

I don't think Uber should be spending time making niche gamemodes (despite the merit of each) when the community could be doing this, and crowdsourcing ideas and implementation.

Convince Uber that exposing the code that governs victory conditions and unit control is a good thing, and we'll make this ourselves in no time at all.

Idea is great, but it has problem as people are bad. In other words - you may just end up siding with someone who has established external contact with other player (your opponent) (via skype, mumble, teamspeak or whatever). Like, they was going to team-up as soon as one will die, but you got there faster. And this man could be just not that honest to refuse giving information about your moves to his friend.

It will work, but only for very rare parties with all players knowing and respecting each other. So, scale is too low to be primary goal, I agree with BulletMagnet

Cool idea, but I think it would work better in a large scale free-for-all format. Teams will form from assimilated commanders.

While thinking about how a lan party would work, I am up for any idea that keeps everyone playing until the end of the match. All we need is a good way for latecomers to join an in progress game and we are set.

While this would work great for FFA games, It wouldn't work on a team game. A while ago someone brought up unit donation as a way to keep observers in the game. If one of your teammates dies you could toss some engineers and a few units on a distant island or planet, give them control, and say "Start up a secondary base for our team".

That's probably the best solution

This sounds like a very interesting game mode. Perhaps the question of personal control should be solved by allowing a commander to refuse to join a winning side. That would, following earlier examples, leave his 'control core' on the battlefield, perhaps to be rescued by a friend, and defended by whoever defeated him.

This means that both players have a choice as to working with the other, and that control cores would become valuable objectives for other players, as they contain a potential ally. At minimum, defending a core would deny an ally to your enemies.

Hmm, it does sound rather intressting, but wouldent the game mode get the "snow ball" effect realy early? (One side manage to take down 1-2 enemy commanders, suddently they have 1-2 more players and can just crush the other team)...

Well i guess there are ways to diminishing it, the captured commanders offcourse starting blank on the other team (No buildings etc), a shared unit cap for each team instead of each player, etc.

I like this idea. Those of you who are talking about it being a mod are spot on though. It's not something that the retail version of the game requires - just the ability to change win conditions and player alliances etc.

If the number of times a player can drop the armoured 'core' of their ACU and have it captured by an enemy player is limited, it may impact the decisions of the more disingenuous player. Though the truth is that there are a lot of players who will see having their core captured by a player they don't know as having 'lost' and will do whatever they can from beyond the grave to influence the game in the favour of another friend playing in the game rather than their new in game ally.

A limited set of controls for captured players could possibly limit the damage a player could do if they started to act in the described manner. However, a more simple kick function would be easier to implement and arguably more effective. Provided that the kicked players ACU didn't go nuclear when he was ejected from the game. That way if he starts being a ****, you can boot him from the game with no consequences. Though that feature in itself is open to abuse.

I guess it's less of an issue because technically the defeated player has already lost once and has been given a second chance by the conquering player. If he chooses to waste that by playing in such a manner then he deserves to be kicked, but should that be up to just one player? So there's potentially a problem to fix with the fix to the original problem.

Great idea! I see multiplayer matches feeling very "enders game" once you get a bunch of sub-commanders working under your command

The idea wasn't that he'd get his commander back. He'll just get shared unit control.

Reading the responses again, I feel like I should make this clear. Capturing a core provides the capturing player no material gain. It does not spawn a new commander for the captured player or anything like that. It just gives you another set of eyes and hands on your "team".

Of course, making it respawn the destroyed commander could be an option, but frankly, an extra com matters little compared to an extra controller-of-stuff.

I think it woud be idea to have an acutal "sub commander" unit.
Like an ACU but lesser than. Two or more ACU's could cause an imbalance.
Perhaps just an Engineers body with a differn't colour scheme (and maybe light weapon).

Also I agree that all the buildings on the newly captured side should be destroyed.
Forced to rebuild.

An interesting idea that requires a great deal of work in developing a permissions system, allowing a player to have sub-players with limited permissions. Assigning specific units, types of buildable units and structures, limited resources from the entire side's pool, limited area of operations, etc. to players has a lot of potential for very big RTS games.

This type of permissions system (possibly in conjunction with a custom rank system) will be a requirement in large-scale MMORTS of the future. But it seems like a lot of work for a relatively small gain for PA, as I doubt the player count in an individual PA game is going to be so large that customizeable subcommander permissions are necessary/helpful.

You're over thinking the system (at least from my point of view). If the new vassal player spawns as an engineer/subcommander on the same team (but not the same as) the ruling player, then all we need are event triggers, and for shared control and "team up with x player" to be events. The vassal player only gets a subcommander at best and no resources, naturally putting him at the mercy of the ruling player (assuming resource sharing works like every other RTS ever where players can give but not take). More permissions would be cool, but not necessary.

Nice idea, but the problem I see is enslaved enemies working the long con. Sure you have the option to kick him out, but I have a feeling most trolls might just pretend to go along with it, and at the last second of a major battle pretend to help, but in reality they just want you to lose and lead troops the wrong way, start friendly fire, etc.

I would be too distrustful of people I defeated joining my side, so I'd probably just boot everyone to spec. I'd only use this if playing with a group of friends, not randoms.