Orbital Weapons Platforms

[Asahammer]

Hopefully the title was enough to get you reading this, either because you think it sounds incredibly cool, or incredibly stupid. In any case, the important thing is that you're reading.

I love this game, and I've only been playing it for two days. I could say a lot of nice things about it, but I'm here to bring up the only thing that seems to be missing: Indoor combat.

The whole game is like solid RTS, just in FPS form - almost entirely outdoor combat. That's mainly what the game is intended to be, and that's fine. I do think the building layouts should be complicated a little bit, to add a greater interior dimension, but that's not what I'm really here to talk about mainly.

I'm here to propose something which will add an epic indoor combat experience without touching the game at all - it will be totally optional (though obviously it will have a purpose).

I propose adding in Orbital Weapons Platforms, whose role is to do the scanning for airstrikes and ion/nuke bombings.

I'll describe the idea below:

Contents:

1. Description of the platforms

2. Methods of entry

3. Defensive systems

4. Destruction

1. Description of the platforms

The platforms themselves would feel like starships. They orbit the planet, and have corridors, hallways, some little rooms. Preferably, if possible, each platform's exact layout would be automatically and randomly generated at the map's loadup, if such an algorithm would not be too difficult. Otherwise, perhaps it would always be the same, or perhaps it would switch between a few different layouts, or each map could have its own layout for the platforms.

As I said, the existence of the platform is prerequisite for a team to use airstrikes and nukes or ion cannons.

2. Methods of entry

There would be two ways into each platform, which brings us to how the team attacks: The teleporter and the airlock.

Teleporter:

The teleporter would be the way the team which actually owns the platform can get onto the ship, to set up defenses or to respond to an assault. There would be a teleporter base on the ground in each team's base. To activate it, one would press E while facing the control panel, and, after a 5-second countdown, everything on the teleporter pad would be beamed to the teleporter on the ship.

The enemy team could use the teleporter after an engineer or a technician/hotwire hacked the panel. However, hacking the panel, while it would happen relatively quickly, would not offer permanent control and would only begin a single 5-second countdown. In other words, if an engie hacks the teleporter panel, there is a countdown, the people on the pad are beamed up, but then, if he wants to beam up another group, he has to hack it again.

There would be pros and cons to using both the teleporter and the airlock. The pros of the teleporter are that it provides a stealthy, silent entry. No alarms are set off, because the beamup is, apparently, authorized. The cons are that the infiltrators have to make their way across two decks before getting to the engineering deck where the reactor room is (which is their destination).

It may be asked: What if a team's transporter base is destroyed? In that case, no one can get up to the ship, but the disadvantage to the enemy team will be that the platform's defense systems will go onto high alert and be a lot more difficult to defeat (covered later).

Airlock:

Both platforms would have an airlock on their exterior, and each team would have a shuttle launch pad at the rear of their base (obviously, this could also be destroyed). Inside the launchpad there would be a console where anyone can purchase a shuttle for 1,000 credits. After being purchased, a shuttle is raised up from a door in the floor and mounted on the launching pole, where a set of stairs leads up to it.

The shuttle could fit 6 people including the purchaser/pilot. Everyone would get in, and the pilot would press W to launch (which would involve lots of lights and sirens and fanfare and a moving door in the ceiling of course).

The shuttle would go into the sky, showing a trail of fire to everyone down below. Upon arriving at the enemy platform, the shuttle would lock its airlock to the ship's, and the door would open. However, 5 seconds after docking, alarms would sound, the airlock (exterior AND interior doors!) would seal, and a missile would blow the shuttle off the airlock, so everyone would need to get off the shuttle and inside or else they would either be killed on the shuttle or trapped in the airlock until the alarm state was over.

At this point, the alarm is sounding on the surface, emanating from the barracks or Hand of Nod of whichever team's ship was invaded. It would cycle 10 times, and a voice alert letting the team know their platform had been invaded would play 3 times.

Since this raises so much hell, you might be wondering, why on Earth would you want to use the shuttle? Well, the advantage is that the airlock is on the same deck as the reactor room. However, the disadvantage is that the defense systems (covered in the next section) have advanced warning, so you are going to be facing an army of angry robots very fast, which will give the enemy team some time to get to the reactor room ahead of you. So you have to decide which approach is best.

3. Defensive systems

The platforms have automated defenses, namely, wall-mounted gun turrets, robots, and alarm panels (the last are not automated but the purpose will be made clear). The robots and the turrets will all have a light on their top: Green means normal mode and is shown when the device has not detected anything strange. Yellow means scanning, in other words, the device may have seen something, but isn't sure. Red means threat detected and/or alarm active (they are both the same, actually). If the defenses are red, they will be attacking you, and the alarms last for 5 minutes before things calm back down.

It would be possible, but very, very hard, to get all the way from the teleporter to the reactor room without setting anything off.

The alarm panels may be used to activate red mode manually, in case, let's say, a person is patrolling their team's platform and spots an enemy - he can hit an alarm panel to turn all defenses on red mode and set off the surface alarms (defenses automatically going onto red mode also set off the surface alarms, of course). But of course, if the enemy can kill him before he can hit a panel, their cover is maintained.

You can activate alarm panels on the opposing platform yourself, if, for some crazy reason, you actually want to.

4. Destruction

The way to destroy the ship is by shutting down the reactor coolant systems. To do that, one has to hack one or two panels in the reactor room (I'd say, one in the main chamber, and another in a crawlspace). Shutting off the coolant is an immediate alarm trigger and will result in every robot on the ship making its way to the reactor room, to say nothing of raising all hell on the surface with the enemy team. You can prepare for one hell of a 30-second-long fight. The opposing team need only hit an emergency reset panel one time to ruin all your efforts.

Assuming you succeed, the ship will explode like a star going supernova, and everyone on the surface will be treated to an animation of a huge, flaming mass crashing somewhere on the horizon, exploding, and a massive shockwave shaking the entire map!

I think this would add a unique dimension to gameplay. It would affect nothing of the game below, because you can just as easily play the game as it currently is with no changes - but for those who want it, this could be a very interesting sideline.

-Asahammer

[Android]

I have only skimmed your suggestion, mostly due to time constraints, but I do have some comments.

First, I agree that interior of buildings is rather lacking. However that was a feature of the original renegade in multiplayer, and I like that they hold true to that. Would be interesting to have expanded building interiors for some maps.

Second, I saw some mention of teleporters, however teleportation does not exist within the C&C universe, especially since Renegade is supposed to be set somewhat in the present.

[SOVEREIGN_]

this sounds like a new gamemode

[Asahammer]

Android: Fair enough, maybe a ground-to-space teather "elevator" then?

Sovereign: Just because it's detailed doesn't mean it's a new gamemode. I am a detailed kind of person, and flesh out my ideas. Beyond all the dramatic flair, it's actually pretty simple. The furthest one could go would be to perhaps call it a mini-game of sorts, but nothing more.

-Asahmmer