screw the lounge. I'm drunk anyway. so the game is "pitch an RTS design." Here are the rules to abide by: 1) As per almost any RTS, you have to do at least two forms of harvesting. like Oil and Gold, or Energy and Money... 2) You must include at least 3 "factions" 3) You must give an idea of unit types 4) The premise should be original (so no chinese/usa/gla, no vague starcraft clone, etc.) I'll go first. My RTS is about the bug world. You have 3 factions to choose from, and a 4th group that you don't play as but instead interact with. The 3 factions are Bees, Spiders, and Ants. The 4th group is kind of a catchall Insect group that represents powerups that are attainable within the environment. For example, you can find a praying mantis and gain a powerful new unit. Or you can get a cockroach which is incredibly hard to kill and rather quick on the ground. Stuff like that. The major tweak on gameplay that will set this game apart will be the maps. First of all, you start with 1 grunt/peon type of your particular faction. You and your opponent(s) start relatively close together, and have an over the shoulder view of the grunt in a very large map (a neighborhood, a section of forest, etc.) The more units you get, the farther away the camera will be allowed from the base (you can zoom in and out to as far as is permissable to see your base) Your first job is to set up your "nest." You want to keep this a secret from your opponent, so you both sprint off as soon as the game starts and try to find a good spot. If you play as the bees, you want to find some place like the underside of a deck so you can evolve wasps. You have primarily flying units, and have a queen that cannot die or you lose the map. You must harvest pollen and honey, and your stronger units are killer bees, yellowjackets, wasps, white-faced hornets, etc. While you have the air advantage, your home is also noisy and easiest to find. You are fierce. If you play as the spiders, you have the most fragile bases and must spread them out (the webs must still be within a specific distance of each other.) Each web will represent a new spider, which is one unit. Thus you may have multiple webs to use as resource gatherers, and then other webs spread out with defensive/offensive units. Spiders must gather flies (which slowly accumulate in a resource gatherers web) and poison. I think for poison they will actually have to collect water, so as to give them a localized resource to guard. Your stronger units will be black widows, brown recluses, tarantulas... Some of these don't technically use webs, but in my game each spider must have a web of some kind because if the web is destroyed the spider dies immediately. Thus the spiders are the power house units, but have an exploitable weakness. The ants are the most plentiful faction. They have the most number of units, but are the weakest and must win the war by numbers. They of course build ant hills, and must harvest the most diverse of resources. They basically collect energy, but they harvest it from dead insects/animals, dropped food (sugar especially), leaves (with leafcutter ants), wood (with carpenter ants), etc. The stronger units are the army ants, fire ants, bullet ants, flying ants, killer ants, and whatnot. They are generally only succesful in swarms of large numbers. The fun part of this game I feel will be the 3d neighbor hood. You start out as a tiny insect, and you then have to search around a giant map to find a spot to start building your base. Only when your base is developed will you have the option of that traditional RTS view. Also, any unit can get anywhere, it's just that bees can fly in the air. Ants/Spiders can still climb to the nests of their opponents. Good level design is crucial for this, as it is in any RTS. For this though the maps really need to be huge in order to enforce the feeling of smallness as a bug.

Sadly I (and many others) wouldn't be able to play it because of my little girl-like fear of spiders =/

The 3 Factions:
1) The Cyborgs
The cyborgs seek to convert themselves and all other sentient being entierly into machines. They believe that the ultimate purpose of sentiance is to merge all minds into the one super mind. The Cyborgs are fanatical in their approach.

The cyborgs need a lot of raw materials to build their mechanical constructs.

Basic Units:
Mechanical Infantry
Mechanical infantry are newly created cyborgs. These units aren't fast moving, but they can cross almost any terrain without significant hinderance. Also they can get in close to enemy units and exploit this weakness of the Artillery types units

Raider Tanks
Thesea are vehicals that have the mind of a sentient creature as the core processor. This means it does not need any crew as the tank its self is the cyborg. The extensive trama to the sentient creature from the radical change of physical form menas that not all transfers are successful and so are less common than the Mechanical Infantry. The advantage of these units is that they are fast. This means that they can manouver to intercept infantry type units quickly. Their weakness is that to get this speed, they lack significant armour, its enough to be effective against infantry attacks, but artillery can easily penertrate it.

Smartillery
This uni is a long range weapon. Like the Raider Tanks it is actually a machine fused with the mind of a sentient creature. Although this unit has a long range attack, it is only lightly armoured against close ranged attacks.

Basic Defences:
The Cyborgs have 3 main types of sdefensive buildings:

Laser Turret
This, like all cnstruct of the cyborgs integrates a living mind with a machine. The Laser Turret is a fast fireing weapon that is good at destroying large numbers of lightly armed units and so is effective against all infantry type units.

Rail Canon
The Rail canon has a much slower rate of fire than the laser turret, but it does have a much greater power. It is good at eliminating heaver armoured targets, but large numbers will atill overwhealm it.

Laser-Ion Beam
The Laser-Ion beam is an advanced weapon designed to directly attack and destroy incoming ordinance. It has a very slow rate of fire, but it can destroy an artillery shell while it is still some distance from impact. This defence has by far the greatest range, but its slow rate of fire makes it very vunerable to even small numbers of attackers, but as it can destroy artillery shots, it can protect an area from bombardment.

2) The Bioengineers
The Bioengineers use genetic engineering to clone and modify any living organisms that they encounter and convert them into slaves. Although they do occasionally use cybernetic implants and augmentations, they do not use them to near the extent of the cyborgs.

The Bioengineers do not need much in the way of rew materials or power, but their units are slow to reproduce, dispite growth acceleration technologies.

Basic Troops:
Cannis Superioris (infantry)
These units are genetically enginered canines standing 1.5 metres tall at the shoulder. They have been given more inteligence, increased size as well as a stronger muscular/skeletal system. Through a cybernetic implant, partillay to ensure control, they have shoulder mounted laser weaponry. As canines, they still retain their pack mentality and are therfore more dangerous as a group.

'Sectoid (Tank)
The 'Sectoid is genetically modified 3 metre all insect. Their exoskeleton is reenforced with armour plateing, giving them excelent protection from small arms fire, however this means that they do have trouble crossing some terrain. Although they don't have any long ranged weaponry, they are faster than any infantry units. Thier powerful jaws can tear through infantry very efficiently. They don't have much tast for non organics so are not effective aginst them.

Skorpian (Atrillery)
The Skorpian is an artillery canon grafted onto a large arachnoid, posible a genetically modified scorpion. These are huge, 15 metres long and reenforced with heavy armour. Their weakness is their slow movement rate and vunerable joints which infantry are good at exploiting.

Basic Defences
Hornets
The Hornets are effective at killing small units like most infantry. They do this by flying from their nest and swarming over them. They do not travel far from their nest as thier controling cybernetics does not have a long range due to the large numbers.

Modified Rail Canon
This technology was stolen from the cyborgs at some stage. It is essentially the same system, but without the integrated inteligence. This maks it slightly slower to fire.

Missile Interception System
This defence system uses swarms of maller missliles to target and destroy incoming warheads. When an attack is detected it fires missiles at it untill it eventually destroies the target. The system is innaccurate, but the amount of defence missiles will eventually find its target. It is a much less certain defence than the Laser-Ion Beam ,but it can handle a much higer nober of attacks, althoug a few will occasionally get theorugh the defence system.

2) The Nanotechnologists
The Nano technologists are the most peaceful of the 3 factions, but they must defend themsleves from the other two factions. The nanotechnologists are edonistic.

The Nanotechnoligists are limited by poweras their technologies become inert without it. So long as they have power, they are almost indestructable, being able to regenerate all buildings even if they are completely leveled. Any units within their regenerating field of nanites will also heal over time, but any enemy units will continiously take damage while in it.

Basic Troops:
Grenader
This troop is a basic infantry troop. It uses "Grenades" of Nanites and a small power core. The power core only lasts a few seconds, but during that time the nanites will start to destroy any thing they come into contact with (unless it is putting out the correct IFF signal). Because they must throw thei weapon, they are only useful at short ranges, but they can travel over almost any terrain.

Light Tank
This is a light anti-infantry tank. Resembleing more of a jeep than a standard tank fram, it is fast and has twin mounted machine guns. It has a small power core that allows it to self repair as well as create new amunition as needed in the field, making it mobile and indipendent. However due to weight restrictions and the mass of the power core, it can not have large weapons, so is ineffective against armoured targets.

Cloud Nine
This weapon is a standerd looking artillery piece, however it fires a shell loaded with nanites and a power core. The amount of nanites and the size of the power core means that it can do more damage to a target than the smaller handheald grenades of the infantry. As with most long rage weapons, its weakness is the inability to target nearby enemies leaving it vunerabel to infantry attacks.

Basic Defences:
The Nanotechnologists don't have any defensive buildings, however all buildings have a defensive field of nanites. These nanites need power and become innert without it. While active the defensive field will repair the building, even if it is completely distroyed (it must therfor be in the defensive field of another building to get this effect). Also any friendly troop within the field will be repaired quickly and any enemy units in this field will take damage. The more power availabel, the farther this field will extend and the faster repair work can be done (up to a maximum speed).

Resources
There are tow resource in the game
1) Materials
2) Power

Materials are used in the construction of troops and buildings, where as power is needed by building to operate. Most buildings will have a low power mode which will halve the power needed to operate, by any construction will occure much slower (around 25%) also with the nanotch building this will turn off their defence nanite fields.

All materials will need to be transported from the gatehring locationsd to the specific buildings that need them. With each cvollection building, some transport vehicals will als be built. These transport materials automatically as needed and will attempt to distribute the materials evenly (unless specified by the player).

Supply lines can also be built that will allow materials to be transported instantly between locations, but as these are buildings they can be subject to attack and can be fairly expensive to build.

Power also needs to be transoprted to its destination, but all buildings have a power link that allows a shortranged transmittion of power. If a futehr distance is requiered then powerlins must be built and, like Supply Lines, are subject to attack and damage and also have the cost associated with their construction.

Each faction requiers a diferent ratio of power and materials for their operation (construction, etc). The Nanotechnologists require the most power and only a small amount of materials (the nanites can use almost any matter to build tehir devices), the Cyborgs require an even amout of power and materials whereas the Biotechnologists require much more materials than power.

There are several forms of powerplant that can supply power. Reactor type powerplants can convert materials to power and can supply a lot of nergy, but require a constant supply of materials to operate (ort it stops produceing power). Collector type powerplants can produce a steady stream of power, but do not supply a large amount of energy.

Materials are gathered by Gatherer Buildings. The amount of materials gathered is dependant on the relative position of the Gatherer to the centre of the material deposit and the density of the deposit. The closer to the deposit centre the better the operation of the gatherer.

These Material Deposits are invisible to the player, but a survey unit can reveal the density (the amount that would be gathered) of the deposit at that location. Over time the density of teh deposit will slowly be reduced, but it will never entierly vanish and some can even slowly regenerate over time.

The radius of the deposit will cover the entire map, so anywhere the player places a Gatherer it will generate resources, but the closer they place it to the deposit's centre the faster they will gather materials.

As a game option, these material deposits could be randomly placed on the map or be located in perset positions.

The main gameplay tweaks of this game is the resource collection and distrabution system. There is more choice for the player in how they manage their resources and their positioning of their Gatherers. The other tweak is the fact taht factions have the ability to defend against any attack form (infantry, tank or artillery), but large numbers (and good strategies) can over overcome these.

1.) resources

A. Humans
B. Ore

2.) factions

A. The Saucermen

The Saucermen are little humanoid lifeforms with a knack for invention, but flounder on design. They rely on humans to do their work for them (as they are incapable of heavy labor.) The downside of Saucermen is that to get reinforcements they must construct homing beacons to get another ship full of Saucerment. The time it takes another ship to answer the disress call is random and the ship inexorably crashes into the beacon, destroying it. Because the ship crashes the number of survivors is also random.

B. The Plauge

The Plague are constantly evolving organisms created from a self-consuming form of interstellar bacteria. The Plague use humans as incubators to spawn units as well as food for the existing units. If the Plague do not have any humans to spawn from or eat they can always cannibalize eachother. The problem with The Plague is their voracious appetite. The most important unit metabolizes ore into food to nurse the living.

C. The Cog

The last great invention of man. A machine built for problem solving that is self programming and able to assimilate other mechanical parts. The Cog uses humans as a power source. Humans, however, are not the only means of power. The cog can create solar arrays and burn ore to maintain power levels. The Cog can create units that detach from the core, but they must take a power supplying human(s) with it, which effectively decreases the amount of power in the core.

3.) units

A. Saucermen Units

Saucermen units consist of different constructs that require the control of a number of operators. The constructs can only be operated by Saucermen, and the better the construct, the more it needs.

Examples:

Greenie: Your basic Saucerman, carries a small ray gun that can hypnotize humans or do minor damage.

Cyclone: A recumbent, around-the-body unicycle. Requires only one Greenie to operate. Armed with small phase beams capable of doing moderate damage, this unit's main strength is speed. Pretty useless if the gyros go out though.

Man-O-War: A transport unit that Greenies can tether to in order to power-up their ray guns to do more damage. The tether cables have a limited range and the intertial dampers need some work. Requires 3 Greenies to operate and can transport/power up to 10 Greenies at once.

Mothership: The ultimate Greenie gunship. Armed with six turrets on its underbelly (ground attack only) and has the ability to house Flying Saucers when not in use. Requires 20 Greenies to operate.

B. The Plauge Units

Plague units are all living creatures that rely on interspecies evolution to create new units.

Examples:

Nester: Nesters gather ore from the surroundings and attach themselves to humans to humans to bring them back to the nest.

Hatcher: Hatchers are essential for the Plauge to evolve. A Hatcher's eggs are a combination of bacteria and ore. A Hatcher can lay eggs in an in a Nester to create a *(insert basic attack unit name)* or in another Hatcher to make two Hatchers, or in a human to create Maggots

Maggots: Maggots can coccoon-up to turn into Nesters individually or in pairs to turn into Hatchers.

*basic attack unit*: Has only a melee attack, but is great for scouting (as long as they dont starve.) Two of these can coccoon together to create the next unit.

C. The Cog Units

The Cogs units operate out of a Core. The Core consists of large machinery powered (mostly) by humans. The core can construct other smaller units that detach and take a power cell with them. To create larger units the Core needs to have a steady power supply and enough ore. All cog units can return to the Core at any time.

Examples:

Drone: The drone is the only Cog unit the does not require a human power cell to operate outside of the Core. The drone acts as a small scouting device until it finds a human to gather. Once it harvests a human, it is brought back to the Core to be assimilated into the power grid.

Rex: A bipedal Cog unit with a rotating machine gun turret. Requires only one human to detach from the Core.

Hawk: Small flying unit that attacks with small explosives (ground only.) Requires two humans to detach.

Barrier: Creates a small electrical fence between two Barriers within range. Unit stays burried until another comes within range. Requires three humans to detach.

4.)premise

These 3 factions battle for supremacy over a small planet. The Saucermen crashed into it on a routine probing mission, The Plauge came hurtling down from an asteriod, and The Cog is an invention of man bent on domination.

and thats that.

except im not anonymous...^ wtf

RTS concept: War between Archmagi.

Five sources of magic:

Life, Humanity, Death, Elemental, Nature

For each source, the player has FACTION with and CONTROL over that source.

The sources are arranged in a pentagram:

       HumanityLife             Death    Nature Elemental

so each source has two ADJACENT and two OPPOSITE sources.

Gaining FACTION with any one source costs you FACTION with the two opposite sources. The opposite is not true -- losing faction with Nature does not grant you faction with Humanity or Death.

A given Archmagi starts out with a beginning FACTION and CONTROL with each of the Sources. This biases the Archmagi towards one set of units and spells.

The map itself contains resources that provide additional tools to boost your FACTION and CONTROL.

Units require both FACTION and CONTROL over resources. Some units produce large negative faction effects -- using Enchanters who mind control people, and Mages who tear at the elemental fabric, make you unpopular with that particular Source.

Enchanter: CONTROL over Humanity, FACTION with Elemental.
General: CONTROL and FACTION over Humanity. Leads an army.
Paladin: FACTION with Life and Humanity.
Necromancer: CONTROL and FACTION with Death.
Berzerker: FACTION with Nature, CONTROL over Humanity.
Mage: FACTION with Humanity, CONTROL over Elemental. -Elemental FACTION.
Elementalist: FACTION and CONTROL over Elemental.
Druid: FACTION and CONTROL over Nature.
Priest: FACTION and CONTROL over Life.

etc.

1) 10 resources to harvest (Faction and Control over each Source), of which 2 to 8 will be useful for any given Archmagus. Some resource-sources can be used for more than one purpose (for example, a village could provide a stream of CONTROL over humanity, or you could sacrafice it for FACTION and CONTROL with Death).

2) To start with, an Archmagi of each Source.
The Archmagus of Humanity is the Chancellor of the Mage's guild.
The Archmagus of Death is The Lich
The Archmagus of Life is the High Priest
The Archmagus of Nature is the Storm King
The Archmagus of Elements is the Tyrant of Fire

None of them really like each other.

3) Grunts, Spellcasting units and Fortifications.

Grunts are just that -- usual RTS melee units.

Spellcasters act like local mana batteries. In order to cast a spell in an area, you need a force of spellcasters with mana in their pools nearby. You don't order a Spellcaster to cast a spell -- rather, you the local Spellcaster's mana pool when you cast spells. They are peons to your mighty magics.

Fortifications are things like Castles, Treants, Volcanos, Deathmists, and Cathedrals. They provide strong points that have to be either avoided or destroyed. Maintaining Fortifications requires a constant supply of Control over the element in question -- you have to pay rent.

[Edited by - NotAYakk on October 13, 2006 2:39:00 PM]

Quote:RTS concept: War between Archmagi.

That sounds like another idea I have had for an RTS.

MMORTS concept: Rift Wars - War of the AcheMages

Background
Long ago in the mysts of time, all the world was not shattered. But then came the Wars of the Aincents. The titanic battles shattered the world and scattered it through the voids. The remains of the world are now known as the Realms.

Long after the Wars of the Aincents, powerful mages, known as the Elders, discovered how to tear rifts through the very fabric of the void and travel through them and visit the other Realms. needless to say this brought about a new war: The Wars of the Elders.

The Wars of the Elders have long scince passed into the histories of myth, but a new generation of Mages, The Archmages have arrisen and once again the fabric of the Void is being torn assunder as they draw their power to them in preperation for the wars about to begin...

Overview
In Rift Wars each player is an Archmage, striving to expand their power and influence by defeating other Archmages and claiming their Realms for themselves.

Each player can have a maximum of 7 realms that they can control (the explaination of this is that it takes power to maintain the link to another realm and the Archmages are not powerful enough to maintain more links than this). Each realm is equivalent to a Map in a normal RTS. The player can build a base and train units on it.

However, to maintain a base will require the player to supply their population with food and other necesities. If the population does not have these, then they will die from starvation. So the player must juggle resource gathering and the need for defence within their popualtions.

The player will be able to transport population (civilians/plebs, troops, etc) and resources (food, ore, etc) between any realm that they have a link to (including other player's realms - trade, tribute, etc). This means that a player can set up a realm to be a reasource production centre and then have them transport it to the realms that need them.

Attacking another player will entail linking to them from one of your realms. So that you can send troops accross the Rift into the other realm. Doing this opens up your realm so that any other player (who is online) can then link to the originating realm. Even if you have no link to another player's realm you can place a beacon on it that will allow other players to link into that realm (this is so you can advertise a game). If a player does not link to another realm or post a beacon, then they can not be attacked (they are hidden by the mists of the Void).

Each realm will also have a special power that can be accessed by the Archmage player so that they can cast spells at their opponents or aid their own troops. As there will be many different powers, No player will have access to them all.

To claim a realm, a player m,ust first destroy the curent player's "Arifact" and construct their own. If a realm is left without an artifact and then ther are no links to it, it is lost to the void.

Occasionally a random realm will be generated and a beacon will be placed on it. This realm is not owned by anyone, and so it give the player's a free for all to link to it in an attempt to claim it as their own and therfore is a source of new territory (the rate of this should be able to be set by the server hosts).

If a player logs off while the are connected to a realm, they will be able to log back on and reconnect, if they have any of their troops or population still alive on it, or they have an Artifact built on the realm (only 1 artifact can exist on a realm). If none of these conditions exist, then they have lost the realm and it can be claimed by another. These conditions are considdered a beacon specific to that player. This prevents a player logging off to deny another player victory, as all players will still be linked to the realm.

At any time a player can cancel their own links/rifts, or cancel another player's link fi they don't have a beacon to that realm (ie: they don't have any population, troops or artifact) to the realm. Canceling a link this way takes a few seconds, enough time for the first player to send troops accross, or, in some way, make the link more secure. Of course, if a player has a link to your reaml, there exists a valid beacon to their ream as well, so that would be enough to keep a link form being dispelled.

The player trains their population in various skills. The higer the unit is in a skill the better they will be in it. There are three ways to improve skills. The first is to actually have the unit perform tasks using that skill. This takes a long time to build up the skill. The second way is to train them in a Guild hall. Training in a Guild hall is faster than using the skill, but it is limited by the skill level of the scroll used. The last way is by another unit. This type of training is 1 to 1 only, wher as the guild hall can accomodate several students at once. Training by another unit is not as fast as the guild hall, but the trainer can train skill up to their level in a skill that they have.

The scrolls allow a player to store, copy and trade skill levels. When a player has a unit with a skill they wish to record on a scroll, they send that unit to a scribe house (a building) and then select the skill and the level of the skill they wish to scribe. The scribe house will then, after a period of time, produce 1 scroll with that skill level on it. The scribe house can also copy a scroll, so that if the original is lost, the player can have a backup, or they could then trade that scroll with another player.

A scroll of a particular level is only able to train a skill of one level lower and advance it to the level of the scroll (so a scroll of level 25 could only be used by a unit with a skill of 24, not 23 or below).

Scrolls can be lost/destroyed, stolen (if an enemy captures the building in which they are stored), etc. This means that players must protect their scrolls as they might loose them and then they will not be able to train units in the Guild halls.

Scrolls can also be used to train aprentice mages that will be able to cast spells. New spells can be found on monuments (created by the Aincents and the Elders and scattered across the realms) and coppied as a level 1 of that spell by an aprentice mage using their scribe skill.

The player will need to make the equipment for their troops, in their worksops (depending on the skills of the unit assigned to it will determine what can be made there). Other items for the population can also be made in these buildings (tools, etc). Troops will be just normal population, trained in military skills and equipped with weapons and armour. So the unit types are dependant on what the player chooses for them

Buildings will not be "owned" by a player, so that if they loose their realm, the buildings might not be destroyed. The winning player will gain control over them and the native population of the realm (but first must build an Artifact to estabilsh their control). A player only has controll over the population of a realm while they have an Artifact built. When their artifact is destroyed, they will have a grace period where they can start to build another, which keeps their control over the population (but does not give any other benifites of the compleded artifact). This grace period ends once ther player either logs off, looses all direct links to the realm, or another player completes an Artifact. At that point they are no longer in control of that realm.

Any population from another realm that is lost, but they are in a different realm, will shift their home realm to another realm of that player, prefering the realm that they are in. If they are in enemy territory, then it will be a random realm