One of the things that's been on my mind, is that while I love TD maps/games, I've always found 'survive the endless onslaught' missions within full RTS's to be a bit of a pain. There was one in the Soviet campaign of Red Alert 2, and I believe the final mission of Warcraft III was something like this as well. I think the key difference is essentially what Kest was talking about in his last post.
Quote:Original post by Kest
Personally, I think most of the appeal of this type of combat is that it's self-sustaining. You don't have to run around, micro-managing everything during the battle. You strategize, lay things out, then sit back and watch the enemy die by the thousands.
I think the promotion of this philosophy would be important. Letting the player run around as a real-time unit during the battle would be great. Just don't allow them to tweak the base defenses during the fight. Especially not repair or ammo-reloading type actions. Rather than have them click or engage every object to "repair" or "reload" it, the objects should repair and reload themselves, either over combat time or at peace time, by spending some type of resource.
It's just my opinion, but I think this is why most people like this type of game over typical combat. It's more about strategic design than combat management.
Yeah I think even if the game itself has some complicated concepts in it, the actions the player takes have to remain relatively simple. Micro-management is boring for a game like this, and the complete absence of units (except for the one main unit) is probably a good thing too. The tactical set-up has to be the most important thing, because it's usually the most enjoyable thing.
One thing I hadn't thought of, but really like the idea of, is the ability to redirect the attacking forces. Obviously it would need to be limited in some way so that you can't just barricade yourself in, but the idea of... I dunno something like collapsing a tree across a path, or flooding a road etc to force the troops to take a different route, sounds really cool.
Modularity of towers sounds like a good idea too. I'm undecided atm with regards to being attacked from different directions. At first I think it sounds good, but then again, it could take away from the fun of just building one ridiculously well defended path, which is of course the main idea of a TD. I'm inclined to stick to just one path for the attackers.
Oh and yeah, I couldn't agree more that balance is essential. I too have played TDs that are OK, but ruined by being either too hard or too easy. Balance will be a massive task.
thanks for the ideas so far!
metal
