User:Jbeta/FPSRTS spec draft

This is not a full spec. It still lacks design of the actual buildingt/tech trees and contains some ideas that haven't been discussed yet.

General characteristics

Objective

A team must try to eliminate all other teams by destroying their command center.

Number of teams

Map-defined, but there has to be a limited number of tech trees, so supporting 2 to 4 teams seems reasonable.

Beginning a round

All teams begin with two essential buildings: a command center and a player spawnpoint.

When a round starts, all players spawn as regular soldiers. In each team, players can apply for the commander position during a short period of time by pressing a hotkey. After this time expires, the commander is choosen at random among applicants, removed from the map and taken to the commander screen.

If noone applied for the position, it will be left empty: it is possible for a team to play without a commander, but they will still lose if the command center is destroyed.

If no commander is in charge, any player can request a new nomination at any moment throughout the game.

Also, at any moment, any player can start a vote to kick him out of the position for the rest of the round, then start a new nomination.

The commander

Abilities

The commander can view, and has control over, the map area within a certain radius of any of his team's units (that is, both players and buildings, radius varying depending on what kind of unit it is).

This control comprises a set of abilities, most of which require money to be used.

Creating buildings

The commander can place a building site, which can become a building if players work on it. The money it costs is spent on site placement, and can't be recovered.

To build, players can just stand near the site. While building, health rises from some small initial amount to max health, and a progress percentage is shown for all builders and for the commander.

The building is not functional until it reaches max health. The site can be attacked to lower progress, but it can't be destroyed. Once finished, the building can be used whatever its health is, until it's destroyed.

Tech tree researching

The commander can spend money unlocking team upgrades, divided in the following categories:

• Vehicle research
  • New vehicles
  • Vehicle upgrades

• Weapon research
  • New weapons
  • Weapon upgrades: rate of fire, damage, added effects...

• Structure research
  • Defensive structures: walls, turrets, mines...
    • New
    • Upgrades: resistance, rate of fire...
  • Spawn structures: barracks, garages, airports, naval bases...
    • New
    • Upgrades: respawn speed, capacity...
  • Ability structures: structures unlocking research or use of certain commander abilities (even unlocking research of other research branches)
    • New
    • Upgrade

We'll have to design 4 different, balanced trees, each of which could contain exclusive branches and

Dropping weapons, armor and health

The commander can drop any pickup he has unlocked through research.

Marking points in the map

The commander can set and remove blips in the players' map, representing warnings or orders. A small set should be enough: attack, defend, move, destroy. This shouldn't cost any money.

Commander interface

The commander will be able to move around the map in RTS cam mode. He will be able to see only within a certain radius around his units.

All of his team's units will be marked with blips on his F11 map. Players requesting support or buildings being attacked could have their blips blink.

A few displays should be visible at all times. Those would be the amount of money, commander station health...

The cursor should always be on. On left click, units can be selected so their name/health is shown on a display. On right click, a pie menu would be shown listing the commander actions:

• Build: Shows the building browser
• Drop: Shows the pickup browser
• Research: Shows the tech tree
• Mark: Pops up another pie menu with all possible mark types

The players

Spawning

Dead players spawn one at a time (on a fixed interval) in a random spawning building.

Player interface

There are no displays apart from the GTA HUD on screen for players.

A hotkey pops up a pie menu listing commander-related requests:

• Weapons/ammo
• Health/armor
• Orders
• Kick commander

Resources and money

The commander acquires money by controlling resources. To control one, he must finish an extraction building on top of the resource.

If it is already occupied, it can be destroyed and taken by the other team.

Buildings

We could design a single structure tree that worked with all our tech trees.

Command center

The building holding a team's commander. If it is destroyed, the team is automatically eliminated. It can be repaired, but no new instances of this building can be built.

Player spawnpoint building

A building allowing players to spawn. If all of these buildings are destroyed, dead players can't respawn. In this situation, a commander must get his team to build a new one immediately, because he won't be able to defend his station if there are no players left.

Resource extraction building

A plant to get money from map resources.

Vehicle spawnpoint building

A building housing vehicle spawnpoints. These should be separated in land/air/sea buildings.

Static defenses

Walls, turrets, traps...

Research buildings

Buildings allowing research of certain tech tree branches, or allowing use of certain commander abilities.