What game modes should we start with?

TRANSCENDENCY

A persistent massive co-op mode against a very strong AI controlled enemy. Concept loosely based on Sword of the Stars' AI Rebellion and the SupCom 2 Cybran mission The Trouble With Technology.

Outline:

After a long struggle GALAXY X has been conquered by FACTION Y. In an attempt to get an edge in the wars in other galaxies, GALAXY X is reconfigured into one giant research facility, its focus being the field of TRANSCENDENCY. Here is where things go wrong. PLANET Z achieves TRANSCENDENCY. PLANET Z turns upon its ruler, rapidly spreading to neighbouring planets and systems, stripping them of all resources.

TRANSCENDENCY has the following characteristics:

- follows the Scorched Earth principle; destroys resources and planets that might otherwise be useful for the enemy; a conquered planet will be stripped bare
- trades permanent resources for production speed
- has a unique unit, an experimental engineer capable of small-scale terraforming and rapid assimilation
- in ground combat, focuses on assimilation rather than brute force
- all units are stronger, faster and more efficient
- ... (suggestions)

Goals:

- FACTION F must find a solution to overcome TRANSCENDENCY
- the solution involves a special research project (ie. AI Virus) and deploying it on PLANET Z
- Players represent (s)ACUs within FACTION F; they must work together in a massive persistent game in order to withstand TRANSCENDENCY or risk being assimilated

On working together:

- I envision a co-op with hierarchies, where the lower ranked players can specialize in simcity and logistics to help the research project and supply the veterans, while others will be defending a system. The veterans go head to head at the front in the enemy systems and must lead the lower ranks.

Will this be fun for the non-veterans? I don't know if this type of gameplay works for an RTS focused on battles compared to other types of games that involve for example trading and bounty hunting such as EVE online.

Why the name TRANSCENDENCY:

- Transcendency is the next step of evolution as seen in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
- AI Rebellion is to humans, as Transcendent Rebellion is to AI.
- Because zombie mode sounds cliche
- Because it subverts the general notion that transcendency equals peace
- There used to be a 4X game called Ascendency

All these options sound class.

In addition how about some more control over teams
eg. Can Team:
Have shared vision
Have shared radar
Have share resources
Give units, or possibly share control
Friendly fire on or off
etc.
On the friendly fire hopefully the player assist AI will be smart enough not to destroy friendly building/units, nothing worse in SC/FA than turning up to help a team mate to find that your own tanks just took out half his shield generators.

Positive and negative interest rates on your stored metal. Spend or hoard behaviours encouraged accordingly.
Robot zombies - robot virus whereby bots killed by the zombie ai turn to the ai team.
Total sharing of income, amongst all players on every team. Want to stall the enemy income - blow up your own generators. Makes it an even playing field, good for beginners v experts.

No help mode. No tips and no "your base is under attack" messages
Team swap - swap units with another Plyer on your team every x minutes.

double post - text removed

It'd be good to have some options for limits to donation. On Forged Alliance Forever we keep falling into the trap of killing an enemy commander, everything donates to the team mate, and suddenly they have a much easier time snowballing their economy.

Maybe a solution to this would be for the base to sit there neutral, the idea being that the allied team need to use engineers to capture the structures rather than getting them outright.

I don't know how other people feel about this; we aren't exactly the best players, so maybe we're missing the obvious counter that means killing an opponent commander can never be a disadvantage.

On FAF you have a choice: either Full Share so that when you die all your stuff goes to your team, or Share Until Death where everything you made (even if it has been given to a teammate) dies when you do.

Works very well, PA should have a similar feature.

Cold War Proxy: each player or AI has an allied NPC nation about halfway to the center of the map/system that must be kept protected both from other players AND the other NPC nations. Losing your allied NPC command structure or Commander loses the game, so it would work a bit like running a King Of The Hill game for all players at once. Could complicate things by making it impossible for anyone but NPCs to build on NPC planets. Could FURTHER complicate things by giving players themselves relatively small access to resources; instead, they get a percentage of their NPC's resource collection.

Thoughts?

I would like a setting where u can revive your Commander.
Some standart Game modes would be enough:
Deathmatch: Kill all Buildings
Assasination: Kill Commander/Some special thing
Some other Ideas:
Greed: Get x number of Ressources
Capture: Steal "Data" from opponent for great advantage or score.
Dominion: Control area/Planets/Special points
Collect: Collect "Data" on Planets to win

I also vote for the Gate Exodus condition.
It reminds me of PERIMETER - the most unique RTS ever seen.
Just imagining building additional ACU(or readying it to withstand teleportation), building and charging the gate, and getting the hell outta there...

For the love of God add escape pods for commanders. You are blowing up whole planets correct? Some guy can just go for an asteroid quickly as possible, ship his commander off, and blow up the whole planet. Therefor making assassination mode almost impossible to play.

No!

I want to know, where are you getting all this balance information from about a game that technically doesn't exist yet?

If going straight for asteroids becomes a First Order Optimal Strategy, you don't think Uber might look at rebalancing them?

Mike

I love some of the creative ideas in here! Besides the normal 'kill enemy commander' and 'kill all enemy units', I'd love to see a, 'destroy the marked planet' or 'destroy your opponent's capital planet' mode. Something that forces the player to build towards a specific use of units/tech.

Ooh, ooh, I just thought of something someone else probably already thought of:

"IN THE NAME OF APOLLO":

Two teams start on two indestructible planets. The commanders for said team are invulnerable. The goal is to land units on the enemy home planet, build massive engines (or activate existing engines ala KOTH), and launch their planet INTO THE SUN.

This could be done like TF2's payload mode (which I realize I am ripping off as I type this), where there is a time limit, with one attacking, and one defending team, or like dual payload, where each team is attacking/defending at the same time.

sorry, no time for reading through the whole topic, but did you think of capture the flag yet?

could be pretty epic, especially with multiple planets. Invade planet A and steal the flag, move over planet B and planet C to your homeworld planet D to score

So maybe you should include some creative gamemodes like this one aswell and not only mutators of standard gameplay.

Another possible mode is warfare/onslaught from Unreal tournament -> You have to conquer multiple power nodes which are connected to eachother to create a power link from your base into the enemies base to make it vulnerable. Since we use planets here a planet could serve that powernode role.

Or the domination gamemode how we know it from battlefield: Capture more nodes than the enemy to make a counter tick. Planet could serve here as nodes aswell, so the goal would be to conquer more planets than your enemy until his counter runs out.

Tower defense style. Large asteroid approaches planet, launches a bazillion waves of units, and in the end throws the asteroid at you too.

Maybe we should think of more casual gamemodes too. I mean the most popular mode in Starcraft is still BGH vs AI.

^^going with that you could call it "Armageddon", a co-op or SP mode with no AI controlled units, where all you have to do is stop the impending asteroid/planet from destroying your homeworld within the time limit. Essentially a builder's/immersionists gamemode.

Edit: I guess AI or no AI could be a setting within the Armageddon mode.

Juggernaut Mode

1 or 2 players (depending on how many players are in game) have a head start
with structures and tech?
and the other 4 - 8 players can not advance in tech level
and have to cooperate in order to make one of the juggernauts die
if 1 juggernaut die's the game ends

Invasion Mode

is basicly horde against the AI
the AI tries to catapult units onto your planet in ridiculous numbers
and you and your buddy's (2 - 6 players) are trying to defend the planet at all costs

Dooms Day Mode (Apocalypse Mode)

2 planets are about to colide with each other on each planet there are at least 1 - 4
players (FFA or Team Death Match) time limit 30 min before impact
players can build KEW's to buy themselfs more time but can NOT stop it from happening
if there is no winner its a tie and no one wins

Siege Mode (Capture Mode)

number of planets doesnt matter
scattered around the map there are capture points
the more capture points you hold the more points you get
it can be a quick game mode
point(s) limit can be customized

Awsome mode
...
... ?
...
... !

Sounds like a few people have suggested modes along the line of being a survival mode. I think it would be interesting to have a co-op or single player mode against a very powerful AI that is on a different planet and the players would have to survive against many attacks, assaults and invasions from the other planet. The players wouldn't be able to go off their own planet or have interplanetary transportation, meaning they would have to make the best of their limited assets.

The end would be one last massive assault and Pawz has a good idea for the end as well, a few asteroids heading toward the players and would have to be destroyed or be invaded by instead limited interplanetary transportation.

I was thinking on a variation of a zombie style game.. where you land on an enormous war moon, and you need to fight your way to capture several control points vs another player. As you go along, the war machine planet absorbs any dead units and after a certain point of 'critical mass' a zombie AI starts birthing waves of units - the longer you take to fight and defeat the other player, the more powerful the AI player becomes. At certain amounts of mass absorbed by the ground, the AI could activate defensive complexes and bring heavy artillery etc to the fight.

All my yes! I love co-op vs AI games like this!