I've had conceptual ideas for a much improved terratory idea since the Ostfront days and I've been giving them a lot more thought as of lately.
So digging right into it, those who are computer scientists probably already have a conceptual idea of what I am about to talk about with the keyword 'dynamic'.
Background
So, what is wrong with Territory as it stands right now? Well lets take a map for example, in this case fallen fighters. While playing as Axis the allies will often flank to the left of your spawn and try to close you in. One would think that securing this area SHOULD be an objective of the axis, as not holding that territory often results in their loosing the round. so the obvious solution is to just add a territory to control on both sides of the park, then we are done right? Well not really, because there is this other area on the map..... And the list goes on and on and on ( Think integration ye math twats!). Until eventually the WHOLE map is covered in small little cap zones.
Thus dynamic Territory is born. Well somewhat.
One other and somewhat related reason to have a dynamic system is that maps become stale with time, they are methodical. Due to the locked down cap zones you cap x before y. Go route z to get to Y, bla bla bla. Its gone from a game to a recipe. That is something that I would like to at least partially alleviate. In order to do so something has to become dynamic, we can either make the maps randomly generated
. Orr better yet, save that headache for later, and just make the areas fought over dynamic.
The Concept
500 Cap zones on a map is only the conceptual direction and the proof that static caps are well, static. Battlefields change, no two fights on a battlefield should ever be the same. This is the beauty of large games like ARMA.
So, Dynamic Terratory, we have the basic conceptual ideas for what it should do, now to the nitty gritty and the parts of it that I have not thought of that you can add in your own ideas.
I imagine this mode working very much like zerg creep in starcraft. Each Team is tasked with securing the map, or atleast as much of it as possible. Moving around the map secures the area around you, and the game dynamically spots locations where players are holding up. These become 'stronghold' type positions that the enemy forces must clear out in order for the surrounding area to be capped ( gee sorta like Territory eh? ). This system could even be mixed with Fixed points that must be capped, which are basically static cap zones.
The 'creep' would be represented on the map by grey for axis, red for allies, and white for no mans land. Because strongholds basically point out where two or more enemies are located these are not automatically spotted for the enemy. They are discovered when your forces advance into that area.
Communication Hop: Just like the radio system of delayed updates it is players in the area of lost terrain who know of it first, then their leader, then the commander, then all team leads, then all players( On map ).
The map would also only show area behind known enemy strongholds as coloured by enemy colours. The system should give away as LITTLE tactical information as possible. The area in front of you is white no mans land until you meet hostiles, then that information goes through the communication chain, and that area becomes 'contested' on the map. At which point ( after that communication hop again ) both teams know that terrain is being fought over. This could be represented on the map by black.
Im going to get some map pictures and make some illustrations as to exactly how I imagine this working.
This playmode would also be intended for slightly longer maps, say perhaps an extra 20-50% time per map.
Design
- System recycles old stronghold positions when defenders move out of them.
- System dynamically pinpoints strongholds of 2 or more players who are defending as 'stronghold' postions, and allocates these as objectives for the enemies to attack. These will be swapped out for more forward ones, so players will only have objectives to take the closest stronghold areas.
- The Commander can designate squads he has to take certain stronghold areas.
-Players can spawn somewhere inside their own 'creep' area. ( Discuss ) Should this be at commander designated locations, should it be anywhere inside the creep zone, or should it be at strongholds? OR your idea here.!
- Strongholds enforce the creep around them, remove the stronghold to capture the surrounding area, or 'creep' to keep with the nomenclature.
- Encircling an area of creep makes it start shrinking at a faster rate, players cannot spawn inside this encircled area. Stronghold postions inside the encircled area still need to be removed. Note this brings in the possibility of large pincer maneuvers, However these can backfire and go horribly wrong the attackers. ( The more you bite off the harder it is to chew, although technically this means you *COULD* encircle the fallen fighters square and cut off the other team inside. )
- Map makers can choose static objectives for maps, and add that to the dynamic system, or let the players have total freedom over which area they choose to hold and how they choose to engage the enemies.
- The ending win is determined by total map control area.
Example:
So for example, a map like danzig would have the two final capzones of the propaganda house ( command center ) and the Park ( Langer Market ). The allies and axis would spawn in their current areas. The fight would ensue over the bridge area, with the dynamic system taking over and bringing up objectives to clear out the bridge heads, then the buildings across the street, this is much how the battle evolves now in the game already, the difference is that this is now the objective and people will actually clear the territory BEFORE moving up. This also allows the germans to pick a variety of defensive postions.
Will they off the hop lock down the command center and the road that goes from it to market, the left flank area building( back alley ), and a send a small contingent in the park? Basically locking down the left side of the map. Or will they fight as the game dictates now by locking down the bridge head areas?
Great idea, but where do I come in?
Look for the few Discuss tags I have, and chip in on the following stuff.
- How should flanking be handled? If team A has a line of strongholds holding their front together, and another team gets around that, are they deploying their own creep and as such taking the map behind the enemy forces. Or do you force creep to be contiguous? If not does encircled creep do anything special? ( I would guess no spawning in that locked in area ).
More to come on this tomorrow when I get up.
A Further Elaboration on how it works:
Lets just keep using danzig because I've already got pictures of it. The allies and axis get their first spawns much as they do now, and run to the bridge head and a battle breaks out. Things like MG nests and buildings with riflemen in them are allocated either by the system or earlier by spotting to be stronghold positions. ( spotting would be quicker then letting it be done for you ). The further up the allies push, the further back the axis spawn. The allies continue to push up, securing the bridge head, and then getting across the street and clearing the buildings. At this point they have pushed the axis spawns back to where they are after the bridges have been capped.
Assuming we have two static cap zones where the market and comm center are these must be capped in order to win. ( Map makers can choose whether the static caps = win, or just extra points and it is still total territory control ).
The allies then move up through the far left flank, the basement, and the far right flank. Supposing now we are around that picture I posted beneath this. They must clear out the stronghold in the basement in order to move further. Similarly they must clean out the half building by the comm center in order to start moving into the comm center by the front road side.
Switching sides at this point, if the axis want to retake that Comm center, they must not only get inside it, but clear the area around it.
Lets break from this text simulation for a moment to observe the flow of this battle. How many times in Stalingrad did some Russians sit beside a wall for a moment to secure that area AND the street on the other side of that wall AND the apartments on the other side of that street? ALL from sitting across the street and hiding behind a wall? Think about this for a moment, its preposterous when you consider that sitting around in a corner actually means SECURING the area!
Capturing an area meant just that, going through every room, killing every single enemy you could find, only after that was that area yours. That is exactly what this fluid/dynamic mode seeks to simulate.
Now lets jump back into the simulation and say that the Allies make a hard push on the area of the park while leaving the CC open. The axis send an assault team through that cap and secure the middle apartments behind the allied forces. The information that the CC is no longer their territory is delayed in getting to the allied team because they have no troops there(Discuss)*, and their spawn is pushed back to the very first spawn area because of the axis controlled area that would be right infront of their further forward spawn. Thus a small assault team can pull a flanking manouever and alleviate stress on the defending forces buying them a few minutes.
* Should forces of one team be informed in real time when un-ocupied area is being capped by hostile forces? I am tempted to say no, but then what happens if they 'have' CC and cap park, and dont win because they really dont have CC? Are they then informed that the defenders of CC have not responded and it is assumed they are over run?
So digging right into it, those who are computer scientists probably already have a conceptual idea of what I am about to talk about with the keyword 'dynamic'.
Background
So, what is wrong with Territory as it stands right now? Well lets take a map for example, in this case fallen fighters. While playing as Axis the allies will often flank to the left of your spawn and try to close you in. One would think that securing this area SHOULD be an objective of the axis, as not holding that territory often results in their loosing the round. so the obvious solution is to just add a territory to control on both sides of the park, then we are done right? Well not really, because there is this other area on the map..... And the list goes on and on and on ( Think integration ye math twats!). Until eventually the WHOLE map is covered in small little cap zones.
Thus dynamic Territory is born. Well somewhat.
One other and somewhat related reason to have a dynamic system is that maps become stale with time, they are methodical. Due to the locked down cap zones you cap x before y. Go route z to get to Y, bla bla bla. Its gone from a game to a recipe. That is something that I would like to at least partially alleviate. In order to do so something has to become dynamic, we can either make the maps randomly generated
. Orr better yet, save that headache for later, and just make the areas fought over dynamic.The Concept
500 Cap zones on a map is only the conceptual direction and the proof that static caps are well, static. Battlefields change, no two fights on a battlefield should ever be the same. This is the beauty of large games like ARMA.
So, Dynamic Terratory, we have the basic conceptual ideas for what it should do, now to the nitty gritty and the parts of it that I have not thought of that you can add in your own ideas.
I imagine this mode working very much like zerg creep in starcraft. Each Team is tasked with securing the map, or atleast as much of it as possible. Moving around the map secures the area around you, and the game dynamically spots locations where players are holding up. These become 'stronghold' type positions that the enemy forces must clear out in order for the surrounding area to be capped ( gee sorta like Territory eh? ). This system could even be mixed with Fixed points that must be capped, which are basically static cap zones.
The 'creep' would be represented on the map by grey for axis, red for allies, and white for no mans land. Because strongholds basically point out where two or more enemies are located these are not automatically spotted for the enemy. They are discovered when your forces advance into that area.
Communication Hop: Just like the radio system of delayed updates it is players in the area of lost terrain who know of it first, then their leader, then the commander, then all team leads, then all players( On map ).
The map would also only show area behind known enemy strongholds as coloured by enemy colours. The system should give away as LITTLE tactical information as possible. The area in front of you is white no mans land until you meet hostiles, then that information goes through the communication chain, and that area becomes 'contested' on the map. At which point ( after that communication hop again ) both teams know that terrain is being fought over. This could be represented on the map by black.
Im going to get some map pictures and make some illustrations as to exactly how I imagine this working.
This playmode would also be intended for slightly longer maps, say perhaps an extra 20-50% time per map.
Design
- System recycles old stronghold positions when defenders move out of them.
- System dynamically pinpoints strongholds of 2 or more players who are defending as 'stronghold' postions, and allocates these as objectives for the enemies to attack. These will be swapped out for more forward ones, so players will only have objectives to take the closest stronghold areas.
- The Commander can designate squads he has to take certain stronghold areas.
-Players can spawn somewhere inside their own 'creep' area. ( Discuss ) Should this be at commander designated locations, should it be anywhere inside the creep zone, or should it be at strongholds? OR your idea here.!
- Strongholds enforce the creep around them, remove the stronghold to capture the surrounding area, or 'creep' to keep with the nomenclature.
- Encircling an area of creep makes it start shrinking at a faster rate, players cannot spawn inside this encircled area. Stronghold postions inside the encircled area still need to be removed. Note this brings in the possibility of large pincer maneuvers, However these can backfire and go horribly wrong the attackers. ( The more you bite off the harder it is to chew, although technically this means you *COULD* encircle the fallen fighters square and cut off the other team inside. )
- Map makers can choose static objectives for maps, and add that to the dynamic system, or let the players have total freedom over which area they choose to hold and how they choose to engage the enemies.
- The ending win is determined by total map control area.
Example:
So for example, a map like danzig would have the two final capzones of the propaganda house ( command center ) and the Park ( Langer Market ). The allies and axis would spawn in their current areas. The fight would ensue over the bridge area, with the dynamic system taking over and bringing up objectives to clear out the bridge heads, then the buildings across the street, this is much how the battle evolves now in the game already, the difference is that this is now the objective and people will actually clear the territory BEFORE moving up. This also allows the germans to pick a variety of defensive postions.
Will they off the hop lock down the command center and the road that goes from it to market, the left flank area building( back alley ), and a send a small contingent in the park? Basically locking down the left side of the map. Or will they fight as the game dictates now by locking down the bridge head areas?
Great idea, but where do I come in?
Look for the few Discuss tags I have, and chip in on the following stuff.
- How should flanking be handled? If team A has a line of strongholds holding their front together, and another team gets around that, are they deploying their own creep and as such taking the map behind the enemy forces. Or do you force creep to be contiguous? If not does encircled creep do anything special? ( I would guess no spawning in that locked in area ).
More to come on this tomorrow when I get up.
A Further Elaboration on how it works:
Lets just keep using danzig because I've already got pictures of it. The allies and axis get their first spawns much as they do now, and run to the bridge head and a battle breaks out. Things like MG nests and buildings with riflemen in them are allocated either by the system or earlier by spotting to be stronghold positions. ( spotting would be quicker then letting it be done for you ). The further up the allies push, the further back the axis spawn. The allies continue to push up, securing the bridge head, and then getting across the street and clearing the buildings. At this point they have pushed the axis spawns back to where they are after the bridges have been capped.
Assuming we have two static cap zones where the market and comm center are these must be capped in order to win. ( Map makers can choose whether the static caps = win, or just extra points and it is still total territory control ).
The allies then move up through the far left flank, the basement, and the far right flank. Supposing now we are around that picture I posted beneath this. They must clear out the stronghold in the basement in order to move further. Similarly they must clean out the half building by the comm center in order to start moving into the comm center by the front road side.
Switching sides at this point, if the axis want to retake that Comm center, they must not only get inside it, but clear the area around it.
Lets break from this text simulation for a moment to observe the flow of this battle. How many times in Stalingrad did some Russians sit beside a wall for a moment to secure that area AND the street on the other side of that wall AND the apartments on the other side of that street? ALL from sitting across the street and hiding behind a wall? Think about this for a moment, its preposterous when you consider that sitting around in a corner actually means SECURING the area!
Capturing an area meant just that, going through every room, killing every single enemy you could find, only after that was that area yours. That is exactly what this fluid/dynamic mode seeks to simulate.
Now lets jump back into the simulation and say that the Allies make a hard push on the area of the park while leaving the CC open. The axis send an assault team through that cap and secure the middle apartments behind the allied forces. The information that the CC is no longer their territory is delayed in getting to the allied team because they have no troops there(Discuss)*, and their spawn is pushed back to the very first spawn area because of the axis controlled area that would be right infront of their further forward spawn. Thus a small assault team can pull a flanking manouever and alleviate stress on the defending forces buying them a few minutes.
* Should forces of one team be informed in real time when un-ocupied area is being capped by hostile forces? I am tempted to say no, but then what happens if they 'have' CC and cap park, and dont win because they really dont have CC? Are they then informed that the defenders of CC have not responded and it is assumed they are over run?
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