Moar Game Modes

Aiphee posted over here about a fortress siege game mode. That's a great idea.

More generally:

I think Zero-K is ripe for adding a variety of new modes. Wargamers call these scenarios. You could think of them as adversarial missions to use Anarchid's term.

The standard ZK scenario is two or more teams spawn commanders all at once and the last team standing wins. But Zero-K is more than just "total annihilation" - it's a beautiful machine for building armies and fighting battles. Why not allow for a more interesting variety of battles? Why not create scenarios not just for singleplayer AI missions but for multiplayer battles?

Steve Jackson's tabletop wargame Ogre comes with four basic scenarios, one of which is the standard slugfest of "two armies fight, last one left wins". But the other three are more ambitious. "Breakthrough" has the attackers trying to get from one side of the map to the other, with the defenders in the middle trying to stop them. "Raid" has the attackers trying to destroy as many fixed targets (buildings) as possible and then escape back the way they came. And in "Train" the attackers are trying to destroy a moving target, while the defenders are trying to keep it alive until it can escape off the map.

In each case, wins and losses are determined by victory conditions specific to the scenario and are not simply "kill all the enemies". For example, in Train, if all the defenders die but the train escapes, defenders win. And if the attackers all die but the train is destroyed, attackers win.

Wouldn't it be great if we could play out these kinds of battles in Zero-K?

Most tabletop wargame scenarios specify what the size and composition of each player's forces are. That of course runs completely counter to the RTS philosophy, where much of the strategy is in both determining your force composition and acquiring the resources necessary to build your force in the first place. But I think there must be a way to retain the "S" portion of RTS while still enjoying a variety of missions and objectives.

For Breakthrough and Raid, it doesn't really make sense for the attackers to have a potentially infinite supply of forces determined by the amount of territory held (i.e. the standard territory->mexes->income->forces) since the objective isn't to hold territory. So for those scenarios, perhaps the attackers can each plop a factory (so that they can build whatever units they choose), but can't build mexes and are limited to their starting metal plus whatever they can reclaim from the map or the enemy. Whereas the defenders get mexes in their starting areas, but not elsewhere, so that they can continually produce units and change up their composition but don't need to expand (since expansion isn't integral to the scenario). For Breakthrough, victory is determined by how much metal worth of units the attackers can escape to the other side with. For Raid, it's a combination of how much of the defender's static assets they destroy plus how much metal worth of units they escape back the way they came with.

Just some ideas here. What are your ideas?

How about a game mode without unlocks, with ingame customizable commanders, communism and reclaiming allied stuff on? Call it "How it's meant to be."-mode.

Quite true. I'm hoping to inspire someone who has time and interest.

quote: And in "Train" the attackers are trying to destroy a moving target, while the defenders are trying to keep it alive until it can escape off the map.

Give me some time to get my current projects done, some unwilling testers, and a map to mess with and I'll see what I can do. It'd be a welcome change of focus for me instead of making trolly maps and gadget(s).

Any suggestions for the map?

I like a Planet/PlayerBase-mode

You need Planet-sized maps: about 1/2 or 1/3 of Epic_Shore's length, some space for player-bases (max 1 mex spot there which spawns m-units instead of pure m)
We need m-units -> something like dirtboxes containing 100m or 1000m

The base is at some place without any (but maybe a few) metal sources around.
- To use metal in your base, you need to build special metal-units with your constructors and unload them in your base. Some nanos reclaim these at the same rate as your factory there produces units.
-> You will never lose all factories, but you need m in your base.

Enemies can make fighters to intercept m transports (to bases).
But it is usually better to attack the commanders and their "descendants" which try to expand.

--- start animation/situation ---
You have 1 Heavy Transporter at your base - with com loaded - which is per default ordered to fly to your team's start box and unload the commander.
In the air, there is a Vamp/Avenger fight. They shoot down each other and all transports (transports are invulnerable with com oboard OR not enough fighters to kill them instantly). Only 1-3 fighters per ally-team survive and defend your start box - but are unselectable.

--- extensible game mode ---
Players can have custom pre-build bases (config file per player, m-cost limit, validity-filters, some requirements enforced.)
* Energy buildings in your don't contribute to your energy bar, but you need energy equal to nano towers's drain (for full efficiency) and in range of defenses (DDM, Anni, etc) to make them working
* Your base has at least 1 razzor, 3 LLTs and 3 MTs and a cheap terraform-wall around, gunship factory, 3 solars, 6 wind, 1 nano, whatever else you like and can purchase.

[color=grey]

quote: so much wishful thinking unless somebody actually does it >.>

Mostly it lacks idea-feedback, an idea what the community wants and devs working together, not just make their own thing.

We have very few documentation and much hacks.
Sometimes you also need to look into 1000s of forum posts, undocumentated code, custom variables (localisation for lua-exectution speed-improvement)...
You need knowledge about Lua and C (opposites in many ways), OpenGL and how Spring itself implements something, as it is not OOP.[/color]

What happend to Ivica?

Btw, Spring itself is quite OOP-ish, and most of ZK infra is on .NET which considers every primitive type as subclass of Object.

If you don't want offtopic, you don't write offtopic. Not in grey, not in white, not in background-colored teal. You collect your entire will into a laser-focused blast of determination, and don't write it at all.

quote: Asymmetrical gameplay should have an asymmetrical map. How about Chicken Farm? The "train" and the defenders start on the plateau, the attackers start in the hills. The defenders can make a base if they want, but that won't do them much good, since they'll have to leave it to follow and protect the train and move ahead of it to clear a path. The attackers can build ambushes and blockades in the hills, or they can attack the base to try to cripple the defenders' economy.

I can start this pretty soon. Next day or so I can start the skeleton work. Its your idea tho so I expect some help with ideas for it. Eg: What sort of unit should we use? Should it be armed or unarmed? How tough should it be? How fast should it be? Should there be mutlipul units? (eg like a mace train with each previous mace guarding the one in front of it :D) Stuff like that you need to take into consideration. But if you want to PM me with such ideas, that'd be nice.

Excellent start. I'll likely jot down the coordinates of each point in the track tonight. AI-controlled would either have to be Null AI in team 3 or something or Gaia (neutral-aggressive) player but we can fix the alliances quite easily I believe. Perhaps even add an attackers reinforcement function -- a little air raid or something with Avengers or ambush points (such as tick mines or something). Other information:
- Should we add a bar on the right of the screen to represent the health of the train?
- What sort of escourts should we have?
- How heavily escourted should the train be?

My thoughts on the train's properties:
* 25,000 or so HP (tough)
* Mild repair on it (~30 HP / Sec or 1 hp per frame)
* maybe something to reduce damage by 1/4th?
* Light-to-moderate Armament (maybe just some attack drones)
* around 2.5 speed (Moderate?)
* Always visible / Uncloakable
* Personal Shield, maybe? (3500 strength, very low regen)

basicly its a moderately fast moving armoured target that can kind of sort of hold its own against light raids. Sounds pretty cool on paper imo.

[Edit]:
Potential Issue:
* What if attackers porc the road? Should the train stop moving (fight) or drive right into it (lol, move)?