Hard Light Productions Forums
Modding, Mission Design, and Coding => The FRED Workshop => Topic started by: shuttleatlantis on December 08, 2009, 09:48:40 am
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CruiserSiege is a little concept I had a few days ago and am now putting into action. It's a single mission designed for multiplayer and based around two Leviathan-class cruisers, one belonging to the GTVA and one belonging to the NTF. Both cruisers sit at the center of a group of sentry guns. "Behind" the cruiser is a Pharos, which slowly heals nearby allied players. Fighters warp in near the cruisers periodically, starting with weak ones like Lokis and Ulysseses and progressing up to Perseuses and Myrmidons, and eventually all the way up to Erinyeses. Bombers will occasionally be added as well.
Now on to the interesting stuff. All players will fly Myrmidons (for a technical reason) with the secondary banks full of TAG-A missiles. You can fire a missile to activate a "spell", with each secondary bank representing a different "spell". There will be several "sets" of spells, and each player may chose one spell set at the beginning of the mission (by flying towards a navbouy which represents the spell set). Every few kills, you will "level up", which increases your shield, primary weapon energy, and spell energy regen rates.
The following are the currently-planned spell sets:
Siege: Focused around destroying bases. (By "bases", I mean the cruisers and their sentry guns, as well as several smaller neutral bases which may be captured by either side.)
-Subspace Artillery: Warps in an Amazon, which rams into the nearest enemy ship.
-LRB: Fires a long-ranged beam cannon from your team's cruiser at your target.
-Confuse Turrets: Temporarily converts all nearby enemy turrets to your side's control.
Engineer: Builds various defensive items.
-Create Turret: Creates a turret at your position.
-Repair Station: Creates a cargo container which heals all nearby allied players.
-Science Ship: Creates a Faustus which causes all nearby allies to regenerate spell energy much faster.
Assassian: Focuses on stealth and damage. (Duh.)
-Stealth Mode: Turns you invisible to sensors and stealthy temporarily.
-Escape: Teleports you to your base a few seconds after being cast.
-Overchannel Shields: All enemies within a very small range lose a substantial portion of their health.
Transformer: Can switch between fighter and bomber forms.
-Myrmidon: Turns you back into a Myrmidon. Cast while in Myrmidon form to restore weapon energy to full.
-Artemis: Turns you into an Artemis. Cast while in Artemis form to restore afterburner energy to full.
-Call Aide: Summons a Myrmidon/Artemis to assist you. Which you get is determined by your current form.
Curser: Focuses on limiting the enemy's ability to fight.
-Scramble Sensors: AI ships will not target you.
-Pacify: Disarms all nearby enemy fighters.
-Shockwave: Hits all nearby enemies with an EMP-type effect.
Support: Focuses on healing/buffing allies.
-Healing Aura: Heals the hull, shields, and subsystems of nearby allies by a small amount.
-Morale Boost: Raises the AI class of AI ships in a large area.
-Diversion: Creates two Myrmidons next to all nearby allies. They do no damage (Training laser) and have the same name as the player they spawned next to. (So if you use Diversions next to Alpha 3, you will get two Myrmidons named Alpha 3 for the AI.)
Warper: Focuses on rapidly moving about the battlefield.
-Deploy Warp Point 1: Creates a cargo container called "Warp Point 1". (If Warp Point 1 already exists, it is moved to your position instead.)
-Deploy Warp Point 2: As above, but with Warp Point 2.
-Activate Warp Point: May only be used while near one of the Warp Points. Teleports you to the other Warp Point.
I will, of course, take suggestions for spell sets. That's actually the main reason I'm posting this.
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Sound interresting and innovative. Even though I have no idea how you want to actually do it, I'm looking forward to it.
I think setting the hulls to 1% would be too strong for the assasin. Maybe it would be better to alter the ability to completely drain the shield energy (or if that's too weak, also drain weapon and afterburner reserve) instead.
Or maybe setting the subsystems to 50%.
And I'm not so thrilled about Fire Missle of the Transformer either. Maybe it could transform into an Ares or a Tauret instead?
I also thought it might be a good idea to limit the number of players who can become the same "class" to make sure there's going to be some diversity in each team. Having all players as the same class sounds .... not so funny. It would also make it easier to balance the mission. If one class is overpowered, simply reduce it's availability to one or two in each team.
I assume the objective is to destroy the enemy cruiser. Will it be only vulnerable when all the turrets are destroyed or can you ignore the sentries and concentrate on the cruiser right away?
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I think setting the hulls to 1% would be too strong for the assasin. Maybe it would be better to alter the ability to completely drain the shield energy (or if that's too weak, also drain weapon and afterburner reserve) instead.
Or maybe setting the subsystems to 50%.
*facepalms* I'll change it to subtract a big portion of HP and drain shields.
And I'm not so thrilled about Fire Missle of the Transformer either. Maybe it could transform into an Ares or a Tauret instead?
The problem is I can only use ships with three secondary banks. A player in Ares or Tauret form couldn't use their third spell, which would be pretty dumb.
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So... will this be for multiplayer right?
Sounds awesome.
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Yes, this will be for multiplayer.
Btw, I REALLY need some more spell set suggestions. >.>
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Something like a flare to blind people (fade out to white?)
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Good idea, and one which I'll definitely use. But how to implement?
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Probably something convoluted regarding checking ship facing a certain point and then applying the cutscene fade-out to white for 3-4 seconds...but...it won't affect the AI, and I've never FREDded for multiplayer so I have no clue if it's even going to work.
You can certainly blind yourself...but who wants to do that?
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Do you need a fear/immobilize effect? Say, you can disable a certain ship's engines and weapon subsystems, then reset them after x secs?
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@Droid803: Ah, thanks. Guess I just didn't see the fade SEXP.
@above: Good idea. I'll combine that with the blind spell to create a Curser spell set.
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Something like a flare to blind people (fade out to white?)
Could you rather make it a blackout or overlay the screen with distortions.
It really hurts my eyes (literally) when the screen sunddenly flashes to white, especially in a game like FreeSpace were the background is rather dark.
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Something like a flare to blind people (fade out to white?)
Could you rather make it a blackout or overlay the screen with distortions.
It really hurts my eyes (literally) when the screen sunddenly flashes to white, especially in a game like FreeSpace were the background is rather dark.
Sounds like mission acomplished then.
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I don't know about you, but I don't consider physical pain fun. But computergames (and the mods for them) should be fun.
So the "mission" would only be accomplished by making me feel pain, if it was to make sure I don't play it.
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I don't know about you, but I don't consider physical pain fun. But computergames (and the mods for them) should be fun.
So the "mission" would only be accomplished by making me feel pain, if it was to make sure I don't play it.
I just think it would be perfect for the assasssin class to blind people completely :pimp:
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Hm... That's actually a very good point. Is there any way to make the screen fade to black?
EDIT: Gah. Wouldn't the fade happen for all players? I'll need to replace the blind spell. >.>
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Yeah you can make it fade to black....but it would probably fade all the players...unless you find a way to make it specific to a player.
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That would be impossible as far as I know.
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That's unfortunate :(
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I've got it. Scramble Sensors has been removed from Assassian and given to Curser. Assassian has received a spell that teleports him back to base instead.
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Rather than tele to base, how bout turn it into a blink? Short distance, random teleport within a limited range seems perfectly fine for the 'Sin.
Hmmm. Because it would be sad if a fighter flew over where you would appear, possibly causing a crash.
I think pacify/stun seems pretty much the same thing. Either way they will be unable to stop enemy fighters during the period of time. Maybe a hostile only EMP effect to scramble up their targeting instead of the stun? Because stunning in space is just lethal.
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How about an ability that causes all enemy ships in a certain radius to be hit by a massive EMP?
Edit: I should read all posts before answering....
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Maybe a healer that repairs hull/subsystem damage to all friendly fighters in an area around the user.
Leecher could reset recharge time for "spells" for enemy ships or drain/recharge afterburner and weapons energy.
Summon a fighter/bomber wing.
Increase skill level of allied AI ships for a time.
Create a shockwave to knock other ships around and maybe cause damage.
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Rather than tele to base, how bout turn it into a blink? Short distance, random teleport within a limited range seems perfectly fine for the 'Sin.
Tele to base is pretty different from a blink spell. If you just blink a short distance, then you're still in combat, and possibly disoriented, making it useless as an escape spell. Actually, a blink spell would be pretty useless in FreeSpace anyway: There's no way to let people choose where they want to blink to.
However, you just gave me an idea for another spell set.
@Above: The healer idea is win. I was already toying with a summoning spell. I think I'll change Transformer's third spell to summon a "clone" of his current form. I also really like the "Increase skill level of allied AI ships for a time" idea, that's definitely going in.
EDIT: Random idea for Engineer: Maybe I could make everything (except his turrets) work for both sides? That way, if you're not careful, your enemy can "capture" the items you built.
EDIT2: Btw, the first post has been updated.
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Hellgate's Engineer had a drone that slowed down an opponent's movement speed, and singled it out to the engineer. Maybe something like that could work? Deploying a drone to single out targets and slow them slightly.
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Define "single out targets", please.
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I'd like to know what that's supposed to mean too.... In Hellgate Londen the bots chose the first target they could get a hold of and stuck to it untill it was dead or out of range.
And the drone didn't slow down anything, it just attacked.
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A no/low damage, low refire, high visibility weapon, that would be obvious from a distance and cause the engineer's targets to focus fire on the target in question.
The inhibitor bots did actually slow. I'm not talking about the single large one where you give a gun/armor, I'm talking about your first level skill that creates three flying drones around your head.
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I know that the bots worked. I just pointed out that it was the bots, not the drone, that slowed down the enemy.
The only classes I didn't play to 25 or higher in that game were the Blademaster and Summoner. Actually the Engineer was my 2nd favourite class after the Evoker.
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Ditto. My Engineer just hit Nightmare before the SEA servers' collective plugs were pulled.