Free-play suggestions

[Ben Kenobi]

I was thinking of what I would like for TU2's free-play mode, and first off I think it's really necessary to be able to play skirmishes in any the game types that were in TU1 and any new ones that will be in TU2 (hub, hub/network, seige, etc..).

Second, I was thinking you could add a conquest mode that looks something like the level map you posted on Sept. 7 only perhaps more of a square, since the sectors you see in the sky are square. I think this could increase play time quite a bit.

Then I thought, "why not multiple sectors?". Basically that could work by having blue start with one (the one from the story? or maybe this could be just generic "blue vs. red", to keep things simple) red start with a couple, maybe some uncontrolled or virus. I was thinking you would build cap ships (e.g. the Revelation) or smaller landing craft to invade other sectors. You could then (using your "user powers") go from front to front and fight the different battles in different sectors.

A downside of this would be that it adds a lot of strategy (which many people seem to want to avoid) and could potentially get boring, seeing as how long a single battle can take. However, the main opposition you express is that it makes the battles to complex, but this wouldn't really change that. If this is too much for one game, it could be something like the Mechwarrior series, where they made Mech Commander as an RTS to supplement their previous FPS's, but I think at least single-sector would be a good idea, since you're already considering doing that for the story.
Also, I know you are hard-pressed for time and couldn't devote too much to this, but I would be more than happy to help develop the idea.

I could go on longer but I just wanted to give you a good idea of what I was thinking. love the game, btw - looking forward to TU2.

[Phantaminium]

Your mistaking the Tron world for being the Tank Universal world, the only "User Power" you have in the game is to reconnect after going offline.

As for the suggestion, are you saying you'd like to see a part of the game where you can play a "CTF" game or a skirmish with an objective instead of the main story? It would be interesting I guess, but the map maker I think that is still being made would be enough to cover what I think your saying.

or are you saying something different?

[Ben Kenobi]

Your mistaking the Tron world for being the Tank Universal world, the only "User Power" you have in the game is to reconnect after going offline.

By "user power" I was just trying to abbreviate. I was thinking some sort of fast transport or remote control of the tank, the point is, you can go from an ended battle in one sector or space to a different one in a short time, so you can participate in any battles you wish. However, it might make it more interesting if it did take time to travel, so you have to pick your battles more carefully.

As for the suggestion, are you saying you'd like to see a part of the game where you can play a "CTF" game or a skirmish with an objective instead of the main story? It would be interesting I guess, but the map maker I think that is still being made would be enough to cover what I think your saying.

I don't think that's what I'm saying. By free-play, I mean separate from the story, just generic conquest, no storyline. you would fight on/for random, arbitrary sectors and there would be "blue" and "red" (possibly "purple", too) maybe identical, maybe with pros/cons.
From what I gather, the map maker is for single map skirmishes, I'm thinking of having multi-sector conquest. the sector overview would be similar to that of the main story, but randomly generated. The multi-sector idea would be another layer of the conquest, but might be too large scale for this game.

[ADMIN]

Ben

Interesting ideas - thanks for the feedback.

At present the plan is for a strategic map that covers the one 'sector' in which the game takes place (and a little bit of Gorgon's sector) - the editor is on hold until the second game's single player content is complete.

The strategic map is where various simple actions are available; attack, defend, create pipelines, etc. The player will have a selection of 'hero cards' . Drag the player hero card (George) onto an area and the area will be loaded as a 3d battle level Total War style. Once the battle is complete, the game will return to the strategic map screen. You're right about the sectors visible in the sky as being more square than oblong, but I'll probably leave that as is for the sake of continuity with the first game.

I should say that the idea is that each sector is its own world with its own set of physical rules and as such they're inaccessible to one another. Gorgon has managed to jump sectors because like a vampire, he was invited by Telox. In fact the universe is a sphere of sectors around a central sun. This cluster of worlds is a virtual representation of a cluster of embedded systems somewhere in the 'real world' - the sun is the systems' hypervisor. Doesn't matter where these embedded systems are - could be a sewage pump station somewhere - it's not important, but that Gorgon represents some malformed code attempting to spread between these embedded systems. On that basis it wouldn't fit the gameworld to be able to jump between sectors.

[Ben Kenobi]

Okay, yeah, I guess that wouldn't work then.

I noticed a couple other things:
When enemy tanks pick up power shards and you then kill them, they don't drop extra shards. This will be more obvious if the enemies can use power-ups too, so maybe they could have a power shard inventory too, and drop half of them or something like that.

Perhaps add a scope upgrade or some such thing so you can zoom in on far away enemies (for shards) to help gauge shots better.

You could make the viral tanks (or whatever they have) sort of falling apart or something.