I posted my ideas in a thread, New Game Type, in relation to having a hero unit in Armada II Fleet Ops that, if destroyed, would make you automatically loose. It was mentioned that this type of game was impossible to impliment in Armada II without reverse compiling the game. Thus, I had an idea that would skirt along what is possible to make gameplay similar to the hero being everything idea.
So, anyways, this modification to the mod we already have can be integrated in. The way it would work is to have certain maps that allow this type of gameplay and for those maps, you must turn on Map Units. When the game starts, you have one ship, and that's it. That ship is your hero unit and certainly a ship you need to take care of. Your hero ship can construct any base structure but at the start it can only build your main base. After your main base is online, the main base can build smaller construction ships that can build everything except other main bases. In order to build ANY structure, you need to have your hero ship (it is a preresequite for everything) and in order to build anything other than a main base you need to have a main base. A suggestion, in case you really want to make this a loose-loose situation if you loose your hero ship is to have all other ships in the game require you to have a hero ship first.
So, why would you risk your hero ship if it is that important? First off it is the most powerful ship in the game, being that it is so important and it is the guardian for your base. Second, the ship has a special weapon which is similar to shockwave weapons in the normal Armada II that can severely damage base structures and ships (including your own, so watch out where you fire that thing) and it doesn't take all that long to recharge the special energy required to use that weapon. The drawback to having this powerful ship is that the other races have these ships as well! No hero ship is more powerful than the others, they are all balanced exactly so thus if you don't watch it you can very easily loose your ship while trying to take out your opponents.
How is this done? My idea is that the tech tree will be duplicated (in whatever configuration file Armada II reads) and that the duplicate tech tree will have the bizzare preresequites and at its' head will be the hero ship. The hero ship builds that tech tree's main base, which builds that tech tree's construction ship, and so on. The model files won't need to be remade because the old ones are being used, with slight modifications.
Anyways, this idea is more along the lines of Total Anihalation, where you have a commander which has some awesome fast firing weaponary as well as a DefGun (which kills units and base structures, friendly or foe, passing right through the units until the DefGun burst fades away, note this weapon recharges pretty quickly). Essentially, yes, the game ENDS if the commander is destroyed.
This is also merged with the idea of a mod I had installed a while back, which featured two Star Wars races going head to head. You started with a Star Destroyer or equivilant at the beginning to defend your base however there wasn't much need to use it until you got your base to a point where you could build other Star Destroyers, so the point of having this massive unit at the beginning was moot.
Yeah, this is kind of a dirty hack to put in a new game type and also I bet it will make people who create maps a little confused (they will wonder why there is two of everything, those two looking the same and acting the same... and then then wonder why one isn't working!). Also, if the odf files (I don't know much about these) have to be duplicated to make this new game type work, this could easily make the modification double in size! Still, I wonder what you think of my idea and if you think it is a workable idea anyways...
PS -- Hopefully this message will not self destruct in 10... 9....
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