Warlords Single Player ideas

[EvilleJedi]

Please discuss SIngle Player ideas here

 

currently a Hoth to Endor campaign is in the works, the contents of it are locked(and the details are a suprise), but other campaigns are possible, however some things do not work very well as campaigns in this game, this includes the bacta war (pretty much all of the rogue squadron books), the battle of Yavin and unfortunately the majority of the Thrawn campaign (though the feasability of these is being considered, there are simply not enough large fleet battles)

 

 

HERE ARE THE ABSOLUTE KNOWN LIMITATIONS AND THINGS THAT WILL NEVER BE POSSIBLE (if people would please enforce these when some newbie gets over zealous that would be appreciated)

 

ANYTHING YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IN WARLORDS SKIRMISH OR IN SINGLE PLAYER HW2

 

 

the campaigns that may be posible are a clone wars camapign, a dark empire campaign, a warlords campaign, a new jedi order campaign

[Evaders99]

To add to what Eville said, this means no big in-game Death Stars or anything - unless someone wants to figure them out

 

If there's something you seriously want to see from the movies or Expanded Universe, tell us.

[EvilleJedi]

and really what we are looking for is more of objectives, timing, fleet compositions and dialogue

[DarthFelth]

Grand admiral thrawn stuff starting with him taking the katana fleet

[Vero]

We could try a couple Zinsj battles...there were a good 2 or 3 battles in "Solo Command" if i remember right. Get Zinsj's fleet to hold off for however minutes and have the republic try to get to his SSD or something like that.....and maybe the battle for Mon Cal in one of the books with the world devastators or the battle at Bilbringi in " The Last Command"

[SlugMan]

I don't know my Star Wars history that well, but how about some fictional battles out in the outer rim. Perhaps a Rebel/New/Old Republic task force that was cut off from the main fleet, stumbles across some Imperial outposts which is secured and eventually guides them to the construction site of a super capital ship, SSD maybe?

An Imperial campaign could be task place during the destruction of the Old Republic, stopping Republic attacks and assaulting planets and bases, same during the times of the Rebels.

[Stotherd]

Will the campaign have restricted techs for each level?

[Evaders99]

Campaigns will be historical, there will probably be no issues of research.

[hamish1985]

can you do something with the likes of the hapan? just there been nothing viual about the hapan battle dragons and stuff and they look like they could be an interesting battle platform. i know i'm new to this and it been ages since i done anyting on the history of the star wars galaxy. but one thing i always find disappointing about real time strategies is the lack of limited ships and better strategy missions, like starting with a small group of good ships and having the ability to only produce smaller fighter style ships but no capital ships. taking them in against a slightly larger group of capital ships (not to the stage of it being imposibvle to win but not a simple take in all your forces and obliterate) so that you aint just the one who can produce more ships faster, you need to think about how to hit them and cut off resources and stuff, more strategy than combat.

[Evaders99]

What we are thinking, scenarios will be more tactical. No resources or productions to worry about. There will be chances for "reinforcements", but these will be scripted to require certain goals to complete. If you've played Force Commander, it would be akin to the Command Point system.

 

I don't think the Hapans will play a big role. There's really not enough background into them... but I'm sure they'll make an appearance.

[CarnorJax]

The mod is called Star Wars - Warlords, so why not make a campaign about an imperial Warlord?

You begin as a young star destroyer captain during the... imperial warlord time (after the clone emperor , not sure).., whose home base / home planet / home fleet has just been detroyed. Now you have to fight against other imperial warlords for the control over the remaining Empire. You make new allies, new enemies, start raids on the new republic, kill the warlord who destroyed your homeworld/homebase/whatever, and after lots of battles you reunite the empire (or at least you take control over your own sector, happy end)

What do you think? Sound more interesting to me than just replaying historical battles.

[Evaders99]

It's already planned. But since its much easier to setup historical scenarios, we will be doing that first. Then once we get more experience into it, we can develop purely original Warlords campaign

[CarnorJax]

So there will be a Warlord Campaign, yay!

I think it would be nice to tell the story in little cutscenes, just pictures, like the scenes in the original hw2, always loved that style. That way you could even show some cool characters. Ok, only prob is you need someone who can draw that stuff...

[Evaders99]

We would need someone with time to render the cutscenes. But its a cool idea.

[Nath]

Here are a few thoughts on the single player campaign.

 

1. Perhaps RUs/tech level/available ships for construction should all be based more on (or exclusively on) your mission performance and how far you are into the campaign. Of course, they should also carry over from mission to mission. I've always disliked the concept of jumping into an area of space, not knowing how to build anything but the most basic ships, and then after an hour of harvesting and research, you are pumping out SSDs (are you using the RUs to build the human crews too?).

 

Having your Superiors provide tech/new ships/resources based on your performance is a far more realistic proposition.

 

Note: A big advantage of giving RUs based on mission performance would be that you would have to place fewer resources (if any) on the map = better PC performance. IF you have to place RUs on the map, please make fewer asteroids that contain MORE RUs

 

2. You could disable/limit ship construction DURING actual missions. You would instead use mission points (gained by completing missions and sub missions) towards purchasing tech and refitting/replacing/upgrading ships between missions. This would still allow a player to spend his points on construction a fleet composition to match his or her combat style.

You could still allow reinforments during missions based on mission conditions if necessary.

 

3. A Flagship could be used to represent your character's command station. If this ship is destroyed/captured, you lose the mission. As you gain better ships, you can transfer your command to a better vessel between missions.

 

4. Maps up to max manageable size (10 000km or 2 000km depending on your definition of manageable) are going to be necessary for that truely grand fleet scale. Of course, if the maps are that big, missions will have to be either defend or attack goals. Too much size for wandering encounter type mission battles...unless of course you could get the AI to properly use SENSOR PING...or make a long range sensor that works like PING non stop.

 

5. Giving the player strategic choices between missions would be a nice touch. I don't just mean buying new ships/tech between missions. Here is an example to help clarify what I mean.

 

Your character is assigned a mission to defend a research station. If your character succeeds in the mission and say losses only 10% of his fleet value, then your superiors could still consider your fleet to be at an acceptable level of combat strength without need of refit. Instead of the next standard mission in the campaign story line, the next mission could instead involve a choice for the player...

 

Mission choice 1. Your characters successful defence of the research station has diminished the enemies local strength, while preserving your own. So you can now lauch an attack on a suspected/known shipyard while your opponent is weaker than would normally be the case. This mission would have some Op/Espionage and Map info that could be used to assess chances of success. For example, the info could indicate that the shipyard has heavy anit-fighter/corvette defences. If the player tends to favor the purchase of starfighters/corvette type ships, then he would be ill equiped to deal with this mission. If successful, the next few missions might have a reduction of a certain type of enemy combat ship.

 

Mission choice 2. Your characters successful defence of the research station has diminished the enemies local strength, while preserving your own. So you can now lauch an attack against a suspected/known enemy mining station while your opponent is weaker locally than would normally be the case. This mission would have some Op/Espionage and Map info that could be used to assess chances of success. For example, the info could indicate a heavy resource/asteroid zone surrounding the mining base. Large ships would be hard pressed to navigate the asteroids (maybe put into the game collision damage). But fighters and corvettes would be better able to deal with the environment and make a successful attack run. The results of successfully capturing/destroying the mining station would be a reduction of resources for the enemy for the next main campaign mission = either less enemy ships or enemy ships have less hull strength or don't repair automatically or have less speed or something like that.

 

Mission choice 3. Your characters successful defence of the research station has diminished the enemies local strength, while preserving your own. While you can now try to make use of the temporary strength imbalance to further increase your strategic advantage, you instead decide to report to your superiors and play the political game with them and try to capitalize on your prestigeous victory. The result of this action is that you are given new tech/ships earlier than would have occured in the campaign storyline...or can purchase new ships for a reduced cost...or something like that.

 

6. I don't know if anyone has been seriously working on a Death Star ship, but having Endor without one might be a bit dissapointing for some. I don't see how you could have a fighter attack on the core of such a ship, there would be so many internal collisions as the Death Star rotated around. Maybe you could make a weak point on the DS that would have the standard crazy shielding, but would be vulnerable to a strike force mass torpedo attack...do damage through the shield with local shield failure like the game mechanics allow for already. If that point is destroyed, then the Death Star is destroyed as well.

 

7. Something that I would love to see implemented is blast radius. Right now, you can have ships all around an Executor SSD that is about to blow up. The SSD blows up and the nearby ships don't take any damage from the explosion...even if they are almost touching the exploding ship. Implementing blast radius damage from exploding ships and rockets like they did in HW Cataclysm and FreeSpace would bring a new level to fleet maneuvers.

 

8. Another neat thing would be the ability to go kamakazi with your ships. If you are grossely outgunned and are about to lose a vesel, you can have it ram an enemy ship to take it out as well (especially if exploding ships have a blast radius). Hmmm, but the problem here is what is preventing someone from making the cheapest crappy ships, and just using them to ram their opponents more expensive vessels. Probably not a viable idea for this type of game.

 

However, hopefully asteroid fields will have collision damage.

 

9. Lastly, it would be great if you could fail a mission and it isn't necessarly an automatic replay. If the campaign could allow for the occasional mission failure, that would add a serious level of realism. Of course, some missions would always be non negotiable...such as 'Don't die' type missions. But some missions, like defend station/escort vessel/kill enemy admiral and so on could allow for failure WITH penalties.

For example

1) If you fail to defend a vital research station, you might get access to a new tech later in the campaign than would normally be the case.

2) If you fail to defend a military shipyard or mining station, you might get less RUs to go toward ship purchase/construction

3) If you allow an enemy Admiral to escape, he could show up later on in an additional enemy ship that gives targetting bonuses to your opponents fleet.

4) If you destroy/save a neutral vessel, you could bring a new opponent/ally into the campaign (such as a merchant guild or alien race).

 

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I hope some of my ideas are of use. I love what you guys are doing with this Mod. Thank you.

Edited March 27, 2005 by Nath

[Evaders99]

1. Already decided to implement

2. Already decided to implement

3. Undecided at this point, some missions would require a 'defend the headquarters' objective, probably others won't

4. Maps hopefully won't be too big, less they take forever to load, play, and generally just lag down the system

5. Unfortunately there's no built-in command to select the next level to load as far as I've found. I will try some workarounds, as I have time.

6 (you repeated 5..). Death Star probably will not be in any level (other than perhaps as a background)

7 (ditto). Something you'll have to ask Eville for

8 (okay everything past here is numbered wrong...). There is no way known to enable kamikazi as a player action. Some missions may involve the AI using kamakazi, as there is a script action for that.

9 (ala, . Ditto response to 5

[MikeAndIke1001]

i know there is no one guy who gos though all those battles

but you sould make it start as like a x-wing pilot then work way up to admiral in the battles

and he gets in better ships on the way up

[Evaders99]

This is from a fleet commander perspective, not a pilot perspective. The goal of the player is not to "fly X ship and destroy Y target", it is to "use X ships to destroy Y target" - its an entirely different scope

[MikeAndIke1001]

no no no no

you know how there in squads first you start off in comand of say 2 _-wing squads and then they give you promotons though the levels and yea like that

[Evaders99]

You won't receive "promotions" per say, rather you'd get reinforcements for the objectives you completed in the mission.

[MikeAndIke1001]

yea like turning a squad into a fleet or something like that would be cool

[Krytos]

I finshed the single player example the other day, not to shabby Evaders. My only quam is the things like cutscenes whenever a TIE Bomber wing attacked - loosing the hub got a bit annoying after a while.

 

Appart from that, it looks like you can do a lot with the single player campain. Looking forward to your next one

[Evaders99]

One of these days, I'll actually finish another scenario ...

[nikolaia]

a tthing that might be too interesting would be the Campaign aggainst the Ssi-Ruuk.Like the Yuuzhan Vong they're a completly different Race and their use of massive squads of battle droids reminds to the Kadeshi in good old HW days.It woud be a good campaign to play with both sides(PS.:or maybe you would like to make a Bakura Scenario only)

[Evaders99]

Perhaps one scenario maybe, just for Bakura. Though they may make an apperance as they did in NJO...