by Karatorian » Fri Apr 27, 2007 1:34 pm
- Weapon: Railgun
Alt Ideas
I have some suggestions for alts that I'd like to see in the game. The first one is minor and I hope it can be implemented along with the Alt Rotator. The others are more drastic and will most likely have to wait for later.
Alt Names
The first suggestion is to make sure the Alts all have individual names (rather than things like "Battle Station") and to use them. So they should be listed on the alt selection page and used in the battle report pages. So that when a bot transformes in to a dragon, it says they transform into a "Dragon", rather than saying they transform into an "Aerial Animal". I know this is just a minor asthetic thing, but it would be nice. (Also, perhaps the Space Shuttle class should be renamed "Space Ship", and the shuttle designation reserved for the actual Space Shuttle itself.)
Alt Categories
The second change is a little more major. I noticed a few of the Alts are in strange categories. For instance, the Dump Truck is a Truck, but I feel it ought to be a Construction Vehicle. (This one is pretty debateable, though.) A more clear cut example is the Casette Player being classified as a Weapon. It's pretty clearly not. However, I'm not sure how it should be classified. Perhaps as a Cassette? I realize these sorts of changes could have real game play impact, so perhaps it's a bad idea, but it would be nice to be a little more consistant.
Triple Changers
Finaly is a really major change that almost definetly needs to wait for V2 (or even later). I suggest the introduction of Triplechangers and Gestalts. Of course, these would be really involved and could require a lot of work to impliment and balance, but it would add some more of elements that make Transformers so cool.
I'm not entirely sure how each of these features would work, but I do have some ideas.
A Triplechanger would presumably have access to more Tactics and would cost a signifigant outlay of Energon, Experiance, or both to add to a Protoform. Perhaps to reduce the cost for players who want to make a Multichanger for asthetic reasons, rather than tactical ones, the cost could be based (to an extent) on the Tactics it added to the existing TF.
In this way, it would cost a given base cost (just to keep it from being free, so not all bots end up Triplechangers), plus a cost derived from the actual tactical gains of adding the additional Alt (to keep it balanced). If a need was felt to limit the number of Multichangers, perhaps it could require the purchase of some sort of item (like Weapons and Armor) that has a limited stock.
Gestalts
Gestalts get a little more complicated. At it's core, a member of a Gestalt Team is a specialized Triplechanger. They have thier normal Bot Mode, their normal Alt Mode, and thier Gestalt Part Alt Mode. This aspect would work somewhat like a normal Triplechanger. As for how the Gestalt itself would work, I'm not entirely sure. I suppose one would need to look at the real TF gestalts to get some idea as to how the stats combine.
Basically how I see is that the gestalt's power would be realated to the stats of it's componants, but obviosly not a simply the sum of it's stats, as that would be drastically overpowered. As for how it'd work in battle, it gets a little complicated.
Things are simpler in an Arena Battle. If a gestalt member enters the Arena, it fights alone, so the Gestalt function doesn't matter. As the Gestalt itself is the equivelant of a higher level character, it could enter the arena as one bot at the higher level. Once the fight begins, there are two ways the rules could be implimented. The first, which is the simplest, is to say that the formalized rules of Arena battling require it to stay as one bot. The other option would be to allow the Gestalt to act as it does in a Mission (see below).
The tricky part is balacing a Gestalt on a Mission. Basically, the way this would work is similarly to the way Tactics do currently. As a tactical option, the Team could combine into the Gestalt (provided all members are present and not in a Stasis Lock). From then on it fights like a usual bot, or uses the Tactic to split back up. Perhaps some stat or stats (such as Intellegece or Skills) could effect how often it changes. This tactic would be fairly slow, at least to combine, decombining might be faster.
It could join a lower level mission as individual team members, or a higher level mission as one bot. How it joined would effect how it began the battle. So if it entered as individuals, they'd start out seperated and if it entered as one bot, it'd start out assembled. However, a Gestalt entering a battle preassmbled may not really fit the TF fiction very well, so perhaps when it enters the battle as one bot, it automatically uses it's first action to assemble itself.
As for how Damage and Experiance work, I suggest it simply be split evenly when they are combined. So they take damage individually when the are seperate, and have the damage spread between them when they are combined. This should be split such that if the Gestalt takes X% damage, each Team Member takes X% damage. When any part of the Gestalt enters Stasis Lock, they are forced to dissasemble. Experiance should work in a similar manner.
Other Ideas About Alts
I think it'd be cool if Alts where a little more intergrated into the game. For instance, when a bot currently transforms, it stays in that form only for one round and is assumed to change back immediatly. I think it'd be interesting for the bot to stay in it's Alt until it specifically changes back.
I also think it'd be cool to have Alts have abilities similar to Bot mode and for Bots to have some abilities simlar to an Alt mode. For instance, in the current game, only bots can use unarmed attacks and weapons. While I think it's good to keep unarmed attacks Bot only (and possibly Animal Alts), some Alts should get weapons. A lot of the real transformers (especially 'cons) have weapons in alt mode. I suppose that's what the Strafe Tactic is for, but it'd be nice if they could have actual weapons equiped.
Bot mode could also get Tactics. Perhaps an Unarmed Tactic that would boost unarmed damage. This is of course, after the unarmed attacks are powered down with the weapons change. Furthermore, it shouldn't bring brawlers back up to thier current level, but make it a balanced and viable strategy. In other words, the Experiance cost of increasing the Unarmed Tactic would be appropriate to the gain in damage.
If these sort of things where implimented, then a TF could enter combat in either Bot mode or Alt mode. Possibly selected at random, or at the choice of the player.
Bot Icons
One nice detail that could be added, even if none of my other (complex and far reaching) ideas are implimented, is an icon for bot mode. This could be a simple icon (or a few choices) that uses the same color scheme as the alt icon. It could be displayed in the battle reports where the Alt icons are. This would be a nice little detail that could possibly be added to the existing codebase.
Weapon Ideas
Auto Stocking Weapons
I don't know what you've got planned for the new Weapons system, but I've got an idea that may relive some of the issues with weapons being out of stock.
Rather than having Weapon stocks be based on a fixed number that's incremented manually (as they apparently currently are), weapon stocks could be based on a percentage of TFs in the game. So, for instance, if it was decided that at most 1% of the TFs should have a Fusion Cannon, then the number of Fusion Cannons would be the number of bots divided by 100. As the number of bots goes up, the number of cannons goes up. Once enough bots are made to have another FC, it gets added to the Store.
Open Market
One feature that might be interesting, would be to have an open market of sorts. So characters could sell or trade Weapons and Energon to each other. This could allow people to sell Weapons they're not using and not loose money in the process. It might also encourage hoarders to part with some of their arms. Many online games have such a system and they're usually pretty popular.
Melee Weapons and Strength
As the change to the weapon system is reducing the power of Unarmed attacks, perhaps Strength should be tied into damage with Melee weapons. I don't know how the current weapon system works, or how the new one works, but it makes sense to me.
As I belive Melee weapons are currently tied to Skills, perhaps the Skills part should affect the accuracy while Strength affects the damage.
This would make Strength do more than just control how much Armor you can wear. (I know it will still affect Unarmed attacks, but it's been made clear that brawling is unlikely to be a viable strategy with the new weapons system.)
Dual Weilding
Perhaps weapons could be defined as one handed or two handed. That way, TFs could dual weild if they wanted to. Doing so would proably require high Skills or Firepower or both (depending on the weapons), but it would be a cool option.
Time of Implimentation and Reverting
I agree with the opinions expressed by others that the new Weapons system should be rolled out and given a test run before making the jump to V2. It should really get some testing and tweaking. That way, any changes needed in V2 will be known ahead of time and it will be one part of the new code base that's got know working status.
As for handling the change over, I think a compromize could be reached. The Weapons will obviosly be reverted and credited as Energon. As for character stats, they should be left as is so people who don't want to rebuild all thier TFs don't have to. For a limited time, a special revert that allows reimbursment of Armor cost and dosn't change alts could be made availible. (While it may seem like a waste to code such a feature that'll only be in use for a short while, such code could come in handy in the face of future changes also.)
As for Alts, would it really be unbalanced to simply let players keep them on a revert and have the option to change them later if they wish to do so? If such a thing where implimented, then all the hubbub about reverts and lost Alts would vanish like dust in the wind. It could also spark new life into badly configured TFs with rare Alts.
I know the Alt Rotator was supposed to address these conserns, but it seems inevitable that some players will want to hold on the thier current Alts (if only for character continutity reasons) and wouldn't be willing to risk the (possibly very long) wait for the Alt to come up in the rotation.
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