So I've had a dream of a 40k MMO FPS forever.
But not your standard "COD 32v32 blah blah blah" with a 40k veneer....but an actual FPS war simulation set in the 40k universe.
So it starts with the races. The intent is to make them as true to their 40k tabletop counterparts as possible, which means drastic differences.
Space Marines - Few but godly. Literally 8 feet tall. Their advanced technology and genetic tomfoolery give them all sorts of unique advantages in FPS setting. Their hud automatically acquires and points out targets to them. They have their nav points, ammo redoubts and everything. They slowly regen health. They can breathe underwater. They remain unaffected by wounds until they're almost dead. Their armor deflects many lower end small arms like pistols and gives them a fighting chance against much heavier weaponry. However they're sort of slow and lumbering, and they field drastically fewer troops than the other races.
Orks - Numerous and powerful. Orks lack all the fancy armor, fancy weaponry and mechanically assisted advantages of the Space Marines. But they're very tough without any help, quite strong and they field numbers in excess other races. Their crude weapons malfunction a lot but they're as effective as anything else other troops field. The more ork players that are in each other's vicinity, the more WAAAAGGGHHH they generate, which increases their speed and damage absorption.
Eldar - Fast and finesse'd. Eldar troops are quick but frail compared to Orks and Space Marines. However they have the greatest technological advantages of any race. Their basic troops carry rapid fire weaponry (shuriken catapults of all kinds), and they have many specialist troops (the Aspect Warriors) who while few in number carry top of the line gear and use it well. Using invisibility fields, Eldar Rangers and web way portals, the Eldar excel at fast strikes and battlefield mobility, while being slightly less effective in straight up fights.
Imperial Guard - Numerous and well-equipped. The Imperial Guard would serve as the basic template by which the strengths and weakness of the other races would be judged. They would play much like your average player in a FPS. While being weaker individually than the other races, massed together their combined fire power can bring down any of the other races. The Imperial Guard would have less rigid restrictions on gear and how its distributed among the team, and have an easier time doing extra-battle things like calling in artillery or resupply. They'd also have the widest variety of vehicles.
(Obviously there are more but I'll stop here.)
So the races are dramatically different to start with, something a lot of FPS avoid because people don't like the impression they're on an uneven playing field when they go 1v1 against someone. But 40k is all about vast inequalities between the races and I want to see that come out in a FPS.
Next is the simulation aspect of it. This isn't meant to be trivial 20 minute matches where players just throw themselves into it because there's no long-term considerations. These are BATTLES. Games would be intended to last about an hour (although smaller versions could and should be scaled in.)
When games are set up, the theater is picked and the two races in conflict are set up by the server. This sets how many people can play in the game at once. If it's Space Marines vs. Orks, it might be 12 v. 32. If it's Imperial Guard vs. Orks, it might be 32 v. 32. If tech could push the player counts even higher, it would be so.
There is a "setup" period before matches begin, where players organize themselves. One player plays the role of commander (ala Battlefield 2), and isn't actually present on the battlefield. The commander does several things:
-They set the # and distribution of available class types for their team. Say they have a cap of squads, the commander decides if most of them are (for Space Marines) assault squads, tactical squads, devastator squads, ect....
-They have reconnaissance over the whole battlefield via sattelite (or machine spirit imager, whatever.) They give orders to squads, drop them supplies, artillery, strafing runs, ect...
-They manage the team's reinforcement waves.
If there's no one playing commander, these functions are semi-automated, like class distribution and managing reinforcement waves.
On the non-commander player's end, during setup, people choose which classes they want to play, based on availability set by the commander. Player rank is given top preference. Rank also unlocks different or better versions of gear within each class, which players also set up. (Do I want a missile launcher with a targeting spirit, or a heavy plasma gun with a Mk II plasma recharge pack on it?) They organize themselves into squads and get ready to launch.
The battlefield is won ultimately be reducing the enemies' reinforcement counter to zero. (Again, like Battlefield 2.) The reinforcement counter is affected in two ways:
-Which team has dominant control of the objective points of the map. The team with weaker control loses reinforcements over time, while the dominant team does not.
-Every time new squads are reinforced, points are deducted from that team's reinforcement counter.
How many respawn tickers each race gets relative to the other is a matter of which race they are. Space Marines would get the fewest respawn tickers, while Orks and Imperial Guard would get the most.
Respawning would not be like it is in other games. In other games, you wait less than 30 seconds to come back to game. In order to really drive home the importance of not playing like idiots in a war simulation, respawn will be a long time. Like, default of 4 minutes. There would be a modifier applied to each race's base respawn time to reflect their troop numbers. So like, the Imperial Guard and Orks would be pretty fast by default, where as the Space Marines would be slow.
Hear me out on this. In a tactical war game, even a FPS, people need time to think tactically. That doesn't happen in a lot of new FPS. You die, you spawn, there are guys right in front of you, you kill or you die, move on to the next point. Maybe you flank while you do.
This is all a result of the lack of consequence for dying. People don't care ultimately if they die, they just want to shoot a few people dead before they do.
So in this 40k game, death serves many purposes. It slows people down a little. It gives them time to consider the larger tactical picture. And it gives them, their friends and their commander time to reorganize.
Here is where managing reinforcement comes in for the commander. The commander can look at the respawn queue at any time. They can see which squads are formed up and ready to go. Rather than waiting for the server default timer, the commander can spawn them now (like Red Orchestra 2), at an increased penalty to their reinforcement tickers. An automated commander would do this when casualties and people waiting to spawn are at a certain level.
Squads: Squads are really important to 40k both in fact and in style. This is another reason for the delay in respawning. You want squads sticking together, but that's hard to do with the fast-paced nature of today's FPS, people dying left and right, ect...The compromise has been to have players spawn on other members of their squad. But that's not realistic, all that tactical or very 40k.
So in this, squads form and break apart sort of dynamically. If you're part of a squad and you die, you're out of that squad and you're back in the reinforcement Q with other people who died, forming new squads. If your whole squad is wiped out, that squad is just "gone", and you and your friends are all back in the reinforcement Q where you can reform together. Some thing would need to be in place that would arrange players who are friends (probably through the account system) into squads automatically when possible.
When squads deploy, it would be in classic fashion. A ship would touch down and your squad would disembark, your drop pod would fire from orbit and smash into the ground, you'd teleport in....all that jazz. The whole sense of GOING INTO BATTLE is something most games today utterly lack, and it's part of the tension IMO. Nothing is crappier than spawning in the middle of the action to me.
And of course, eventually there'd be the other trimmings:
-A body-part based damage system where you become less effective the more hurt you are, and dismemberment while fighting on is still possible.
-A gear system that does the best of 40k wargear. Power Swords, terminator armor, multi-meltas, displacer fields, ect...
-Battlefield assets that can be taken or destroyed to impede the enemy commander and their war effort.
-Psykers with battefield-wide abilities like psychic storms or demon gates or something.
-NPC bots to fill out the battle when and where necessary.
-Jets, fliers, hover vehicles.
-Bikes, buggies, war trukks.
-Tanks, APCs
-Walkers, dreadnoughts, killah kans, wraithlords.
-Terrain destruction, orbital bombardments, ect....
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Topic: Games you wish existed (Read 926936 times)