Space-Ground

The land-based version of Allegiance, under construction.
sambasti
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Post by sambasti »

Well first off, let me mention how I imagine it:

All ships are available both on space and on the ground. However, for spaceships to dock on the ground, you need a base with a hanger, this could be bought as an upgrade for individual bases by the commander, or we could make it so you need to buy these bases individally. Space ships like figs and ints, wouldn't be able to slow down and stop on planets, or they would crash and you would end up with a Pilot character (we talked about tech tree here) This pilot carrier would have nothing more than a pistol and would otherwise be like a pod. In other words, space ships on the ground would be way to fast for normal combat. They would also be a lot weaker. (make ground weapons have high modifiers vs spaceship) An expection would be the TT, which you would use to bring in troops from space. Of course, there would be specific planetary vehicles, like planetary GS and carriers, which could fly on the ground. These may or may not need a hanger depending on balance.

Going from space to ground would be crossing a simple line. You wouldn't be able to see it, but your cockpit would give you a message that you were entering the atmosphere. All ground maps would have matching space areas, and you would end up in the corresponding ground sector. If you docked your int at a hanger, that hanger would now have 1 int. It wouldn't spawn spaceships automatically, the only thing it would spawn would be TTs, which could transport you to space. I am not sure if you should be able to teleport from a ground station to a space station (through transfer screen).


Balance Factors: To prevent overpowering, space ships will have horrible manueverability on the ground, and will be suprisingly weak. They also will have a high minimum speed. This wouldn't affect ships meant for ground fights. (TTs could land for example)
Imperio59
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Post by Imperio59 »

I'm not opposed to the possibility of having ships fly on the ground, but I don't think they should be fight-worthy. My explanation for this is two-fold:
1) If you want people to play the ground game, giving them the ability to use spaceships there will give players less incentive to use the ground stuff unless you a) severely nerf ships on the ground or b) severely overpower other things to counteract them.
2) The ships from Alleg. are big, heavy and bulky. They won't "fly" in a gravitational atmosphere.

I see the main problem will be that you will be trying to incorporate space into the ground, where the whole point of space/ground division is to keep the two separate.

Landing should not be a problem, but it would be a set animation to land at an occupied/bought base, then you would assume your grunt form (or whatever you picked from the menu).

There should be limits to how many people can play in space at a given time so both forces (ground and space) are kept pretty even. This should go up as population increases, such as:
up to 4 players on each side, can have as many players on each side.
5+ players on each side (or 10 on the server) you start to increase the number of people required to fight in space.
The cap could be organic, such as allowing players to win a battle simply by destroying everything in space or on the ground. That would force people to play both sides and keep forces even matched, and open the door to endless strategies.


For a first release though, I think we should keep it on the ground. Alleg. already exists for the space junkies, we can make it a land game at first with an Alleg. feel to it, then add space later.

I know too well from experience that a game as large as this one requires a) many models, b) many animations, c) many sounds, d) many modelers that can animate and give you a finished product without needing to be babysitted and e) someone to make the tough decisions to cut things off the block.

Not to mention a dedicated fan-base to keep people going :D
Last edited by Imperio59 on Sat May 23, 2009 5:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
Valiance
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Post by Valiance »

I am strongly against having airborne units aswell as ground units; i think it would make it suck horribly, unless you made air vehicles retardedly bad, as in, ridiculously worse than present day air vehicles.
I think if space is really needed, it should be implemented so that when you are killed, you spawn in a space station and you can aim at the battlefield from space and then shoot your drop pod at wherever you want, and you see a vid of it flying to a planet (just a loading screen in disguise; it would probably take alot of effort to have constant level from a planet to space lol).
As far as space combat is concerned, i would say make it so the pod shooter gun thing can be destroyed, but the base cant, and once it is destroyed it can be nanned, but until it is fixed, no players can return to the ground battle, so whoever takes out the reinforcement supplier thing has a distinct advantage over the fight below. In case it wasnt obvious, im saying you can fly spaceships for those parts
Air-vehicles could be implemented like Banshees and Hornets on Halo 3, ie, not all that fast and there is a weapon that can take them down with ease.
I realise how off topic i have gone with this post =P
Last edited by Valiance on Sat May 23, 2009 9:15 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Makida
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Post by Makida »

I say, sectors should be gigantic habitation domes with impenetrable walls, on an otherwise inhospitable planet. This perfectly justifies not having any air vehicles in a futuristic setting, except maybe some slow hover-things.

I think when the game launches an animation should play of HTTs from whatever faction you're playing as heading towards the planet, covered by a fleet of Allegiance ships, though. :P That cut scene be all the space travel we need. (Oh, well, TTs themselves could fit the setting rather well as slow hover-things, though.)
Last edited by Makida on Sat May 23, 2009 3:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
sambasti
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Post by sambasti »

Well, I already mentioned that space vehicles would suck on the ground, having really bad hulls due to the fact that they were meant for space, and having a high minimum speed to prevent real attacks. This would allow a straffing type attack, but you would still have the atmospheric counter to prevent the ship from being on the ground for too long.

The ships that I mentioned would be normal on the ground would only be things that we intended to be used on the ground and would usually not work in space. (like a hover carrier wouldn't be able to go to a spacestation)
Valiance
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Post by Valiance »

Yes, but that is one of the problems i have with this idea, it is totally retarded that spacefighter ships would magically be weak against small arms because they are in the atmospheric conditions and it is stupid that they would magically be slow (yes, i know air resistance would slow them a little bit)
I know it isnt going to be realistic, very few games are, for example, drag and noise in space make allegiance better and more playable and are pretty damn neccesary, whereas weakening space ships that would under no cirumstances be able to fly against gravity is $#@!ing stupid and if anything would lower the quality of play. The only way i can see air vehicles being incorporated into this in any way successfully is as slow hover vehicles or as drop pod type things.
Separate Land and Air combat if the latter really must be put in.
What im trying to say is you could incorporate air vehicles and balance them, but it would wreck the game on many levels; it isnt even close to realistic for an aircraft to get taken down by a ground trooper, an aircraft can carry bigger guns (and bombs to blow the @#(! out of bases) than a ground trooper; so why wouldnt it?, aircraft are more fun to use than people on the ground (well... most people seem to think it is; i prefer ground based combat tbh), so everyone would just be in aircraft, unless you put a price on them, in which case only the very best would ever get to try aircraft, which is unfair, and if you enjoy fighting on the ground, you would just get slaughtered over and over by air vehicles, which is not fun, unless of course you nerf the damage of aircraft abismally, wehich ties in to my 1st point. just drop the idea of ground units fighting air units.
Last edited by Valiance on Sat May 23, 2009 7:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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sambasti
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Post by sambasti »

Thats exactly the point, I want to balance it not by making them slow, but by making them fast, very fast, so fast that you cant aim at the ground vehicles. The logic behind this is that in order not to crash, the spaceships need to be doing at least 80 mps, which would make it almost impossible to take out a ground unit going 20 mps.

The air vehicles meant for the ground would be hover type.

I want to make air vehicles so unmanueverable on the ground, that their only use is to fly to the nearest hanger to change into something that can actually kill.
Arson_Fire
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Post by Arson_Fire »

Why even include space ships?

The focus of the game is atmospheric combat, taking it into space just stretches it too thin. It would end up like Universal Combat.
Last edited by Arson_Fire on Sun May 24, 2009 12:50 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Makida
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Post by Makida »

Arson_Fire wrote:
QUOTE (Arson_Fire @ May 23 2009, 08:50 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Why even include space ships?

The focus of the game is atmospheric combat, taking it into space just stretches it too thin. It would end up like Universal Combat.
I agree. Focus on the ground combat. Have a few hovercraft thrown in, but don't try to combine Quantus with Allegiance's space-based gameplay. Some models can be re-used for the sake of saving time as well as underscoring continuity, the TT model for virtually all factions, for example would work great for a hovercraft in a ground-based game. But I don't think it's a good idea to have anything like transferring between space and the ground, etc. Of course I might be wrong, and after all I won't be the one writing the code... :P But I think it's best to focus on ground combat exclusively.
Valiance
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Post by Valiance »

Ah... i didnt think of that sam. So an aircraft travels so fast that if it aims at a ground unit, assuming it cant stop still in the sky like alleg ships can, and assuming that it only has forward firin guns, it would often ram the ground by the time his target was dead or have to pull up and go in for another run because it would move so fast. This would work, but i am still against it for most of the reasons in my 2nd post.
Last edited by Valiance on Sun May 24, 2009 3:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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