What game modes should we start with?

Oh I saw this topic a little too late. I hope that devs are still reading it.
I played thousand of hours in various RTS games and I have 1 advice.
PLEASE PLEASE put a "funny" mod.

People don't play competitively and are really afraid with the standard "kill all" setup. They play once, twice and then go solo to avoid being stomped to death.
RTS is a very demanding genre, way more than FPS. It's more difficult, more frustrating, scary.
I have no problem with it and play ladder, 1vs1 and such thing...but if you give only "normal" modes only "hardcore" players will go multi.

What are the possible answer to that problem? Giving coop modes.
Give the phantom mode and tweak it to be really polished. It can be THE mode that pull PA to the top.
With friends I played many hours on "Loup-garou de Thiercelieux". It's a french cardgame derivating from Mafia (an old russian card game). It's TON of fun. Really.
Phantom mode is a basic transcription of this game. One (or multiple) player having a bonus and have to kill everybody while the other players guess who it is.
If you want to test the card game, I think they now sell it in the US
http://www.loups-garous.com/ (The website is horrible)
It's named The Werewolves of Millers Hollow.
17 USD...buy it...test it with the team one night (and prepare some beers and food because the night will surely be long )

Then find a way to put it in PA. If you manage to make this Phantom+++ mode happen...I bet 17 USD (hehe) that it will blow peoples mind and skyrocket PA to something really viral in the gaming world.

Now 2 things...I hope that Mavor will read this...and that he buy this little cardgame

I really like that cardgame (if it's what I think it is), but how would you put that in the game? :| Not that I'm opposed, just really curious. Some modder could probably make it work though.

I agree that there should be several casual-friendly modes. Some ideas.

-Sandbox mode. You know, like Minecraft. This fills lots of niches including roleplay servers and pretty much everything people use Minecraft for, within the limits of the engine. But maybe you can take it the next level into...
-Multiplayer map design. If the editor is realtime like Cryengine maybe you can have several people editing the same custom map simultaneously, with full functionality including triggers etc. How cool would that be? It would kickstart the mod scene for sure. In fact, I think it could revolutionize modding in general. Is multi-user realtime out of the question for the modtools Uber?

Phantom is a good transcription of the cardgame. The problem is that in FA we can only play with 8 players so the roles are fairly limited. 1-2 werewolves (the phantoms) who produces x times more resources...they have to kill everyone while the rest have only to kill the werewolves. The rest is guesswork and "oops but I was sure you were a bad guy...sorry for the nuke"

In PA we can play up to 10-20-whatever number of player (until the server burns) so there can be way more roles like:
-The Werewolves (Phantoms - whatever you call them). They must kill everyone, oldschool way. They get a beefy bonus production. But they must hide it or they will be hunted by all the other players. We can give them other abilities like throwing asteroids every 10-20 minutes on selected planets if they manage to team themself secretly up
-The Peasants (Normal players). They get nothing and have the goal to kill the werewolves.
But inside the Peasant group we can add some subroles like:
*A hunter. When he dies, he can nuke another planet (hopefully the werewolf)
*A witch. When somebody dies, she can give a time-limited production buff to someone (hopefully a peasant).
*A Farseer. Every 20 minutes, he can see the economic production of one player and guess if he is a good or a bad guy

All those are only example but it could give a very funny mod where everybody is chatting and getting paranoid while the werewolves are plotting against everyone.
It has not to be a perfect transcription of the cardgame but when I see how Phantom games on FA can be fun with only 8 players and 2 roles...

One that I think I've not seen yet but might be interesting, especially for FFA and short games:

Sudden death
Big map, Commanders start reasonably far apart, first player to deal the killing blow on another Commander wins.
(Only possible issue is Commander rushing, hence the big map and distance, because it has to be a 100% lose for this gametype to work.)

Oh, another one that might be copied over, my favorite game mode in GTA2:

Tag

One player is "It". All the other players get info on where his Commander is and it's their job to kill him. It gets a massive resource boost to help protect himself from the coming onslaught. It gets points for how long he survives, once his Commander dies, he is no longer It. Whoever dealt the kill on the Commander is now It, and can expect enemies incoming.
Players can only attack whomever is It, and the previous It gets a fresh Commander and keeps any stuff that wasn't demolished.

Either the player with the most collected It time or the first one to have been It for X time in total, or X time at once, wins.

Possibly needs a 5 minute setup before It is determined so that the first player doesn't get an unfair advantage.

this topic is so long, cannot read it...

ill throw in my ideas for victory conditions anyway


Annihilation
Assassination
Sandbox

all three like in Supcom

then:

Domination: Conquer 60% (70%, 80%, XX%) of all planets and hold for 5 (3, 8, 10) minutes
Economy: Reach a specified economic goal like gather 1 million metal, or get income of 10000 per sec
Kill-Count: in a FFA, kill X enemy commanders first

sounds pretty cool

Of course ppl play competetively!!! I have no problem with it... its hard to start and you need to get used to the game, but if u got it, its the most fun part of the game!
Ofc some varity and fun mods are nice to have... but competitive play is the most important longterm factor in an MP based RTS.

Yes people play competitively, but MORE people play non competitively. Look at League of Legends - the proportion of people who play coop vs AI is much much larger than the number of people who play 5v5.

A good coop experience combined with fun ways to enter the pvp scene, and a good competitive experience would definitely tick all the right boxes.

You sure? oO
i dont think so. In League of Legends nearly everyone i know plays 5v5 instead of Coop....
lets be honest, the bots really suck in LoL. I do think there are way more players playing PvP(look at the recent stats!). Only some new players play Coop or some people trying new stuff.
And if its realy true that alot of players play coop... i think thats more because the bad community.

The popularity of AI War: Fleet Command proves otherwise.
The fact that there are more PVE than PVP servers in MMOs shows it as well.
It isn't because of community. It isn't because of PVE bosses. It's because playing competitively and aggressively isn't for all players.
And your friends playing all PVP just shows that you choose your friends based on comon interests, which is good, but absolutely useless for statistics.

in the context of game modes, I would be most interested in variations in team interactions.
Someone already mentioned available options for shared radar/resources/control.

Something I haven't seen in RTS games (or other multiplayer games) is a hierarchical approach to team roles. E.g., in the simplest way, one teammate who takes the role of a controller, who doesn't manage an own army in itself (perhaps aside from a commander moving between team bases), but instead manages the interaction between teammates (resource distribution/allied troop movements/coordination etc).
That would require additional UI elements and interaction options, to give him enough to do in quiet times, but I think it would be worth it.
Some things would also depend on how important some game mechanics are, e.g. intelligence gathering. If there are enough option to explore, scout, spy and manage team knowledge of enemy distribution, the intelligence game would also fit into that concept.

Sure, this or similar approaches to team roles would require for a teammates to play well with others, but at least in certain situations it would be a fun concept.

Something to help get casuals and none harcore gamers into Multiplayer could very well be some kind of ongoing Teamplaygames with 2 to 3 or 4 Teams and the posibility too respawn.
Look at Planetside2.
Why not trt something similar for PA? Though not in the size of 1000 Players but maybe 32-64

General

Players tend to like games with 1 direction of attack, ie a bridge, like setons clutch and kuyser lutien (DoW), so some pre-built interesting maps would be good - procedural generation is great but some stock good maps are essential imo, if only to set the standard for the modding/map creation community.

i like the re-spawn idea, but i would add the option to allow a team to build a commander, and then another player can join the game as that commander. game gets too big to manage, get another player in and give them control of a base. this is more general for team games than a mode per say.

Modes

Command and Control - you control the commander, factories snd engineers, and so what is built and where, but only the ai can control the military units which you have built (the ai cannot build) - the army does not always do as you have planned - influence its strategy by careful building.

Whole-game-length unit cap - when a unit is destroyed the cap-use is not reduced, so its a cap of how many units you can have over the entire game, rather than just a cap on how many units you can have at any one moment. - makes units more precious, raids more useful, and never throw away units.

Beware the Unknown mode - when you start you dont know how many players there are, if you're in a team or not, how many planets, or what the victory condition is (have a random standard condition out of those available). team chat, global chat(?), resource sharing etc are all disabled until you meet a member of your team. people will still use team speak, so will need to make it impossible to tell what team you are on (if any) until you meet them, but you can still chat if you like - plan for every eventuality and hope for the best. scout without being seen. - you should be warned if there are any unit exclusions though.

The maze - randomly generated maze, players getting chased by the ai, get to the centre without dieing. build stuff to scout, and help protect your passage through the maze, rearguard action. more of a mod than a game mode.

sounds fun

Interesting thread discussion

I could go on and on and on about what could be in the game modes

Most are listed however.

A mode with random events/anomalies (such as random planet destruction due to bad anomaly on the planet) or moons falls out if it's gravity from another planet, random location of Worm holes? Black holes? Meteorite showers? That have a negative or positive effect on a planet.

I would defiantly love more team based modes too.

I do think a nice tutorial series and/or a "training campain" just a series of games of one game mode with an AI which gets better if u win or easier if u loose until u reach the highest difficulty could help new players to get into PvP and competitive play.
Competitive play is the most important part of an long living multiplayer game.
its fine to have PvE and other modes, BUT if everybody is to scared about PvP and only play PvE the game will eventually die pretty fast unless new content is made regularly.
Instead of focusing on alternetives PvP should made better to understand.

I would be okay with just a CTF game mode. Get a flag in the enemy base, bring it to your base. Might be interesting with lots of planets and having to construct a means of spacetravel to actually get it back to your home planet.

As for lobby settings, I feel an "unlimited resources" option is a must. If nothing else, to allow people to mess around with the units and configs in sandbox mode.

If we're talking about entire game modes, I would like to have a Chicken equivalent for co-op. But as mentioned above, PvE game modes (especially chickens) tend to develop bad habits in newer players who may think that porcupine is the only way to go.

Here is an idea for a Tower Defense type game.

There is one automated production base for each player. It contestant spawns groups of troops that march to that players base. If they reach the base those units become under control of that player giving him an advantage of free units.

Those units have to traverse a set windy path that gives opponents ample places to set up ambushes or defense towers. Have the units be rather strong against air units to prevent Air Blobs from being too powerful on these maps or make air units unavailable.

So each player not only have to manage and protect their own base, they have to either protect their creeps and/or destroy their opponents ones.

As long as the automated bases are very heavily defended against attack or in a location players can not get too, the game is about playing tower defense from both sides at once.

Don't know if this was posted yet, but Adventure Woah let me explain...

Farly default except on random interstellar bodies (planets, moons, asteroids, etc) there is a random level of AI stationed there as a "security system" for who knows what. That particular AI(s) are deactivated and never activate until they detect another player either on their planet or what not and activates all its lines of production to attack the responsible player.

So have randomly spawned AI hidden on your game worlds.