GTB idea thread

Gratuitous Tank Battles General
1

since the game isnt released yet, its too early for suggestions. we dont have a first hand look at gameplay etc.

but! ideas shouldnt be too harmful :wink:
this is why i made this thread. here you can post any idea that is on top of your head.

here is one that kept me awake last night:

Ability modules

we have had confirmation from the cliffski blog that there will be some limited control of your units. this would make for a good opportunity to introduce player controlled abilities.

examples:
cloaking module
when you select your unit with this module, a small button appears. if you press this button, the unit will become invisible for an X amount of time. this will allow it to sneak past defences. the weapons gets disabled for the duration of the cloak. it gets disrupted by anti-cloak gadgets.

booster
the unit gets a speedboost for a limited time. this could be used for getting your ā€œpeasantsā€ out to the front line, soaking damage, while your heavy artillery goes largely unharmed.

Super shield
when activated, the unit gets disabled and a strong shield surrounds it. this will protect any unit passing through it.

abilities could be unit-speciffic or module speciffic.

and one that has been on my mind since i first heard of the game:

APCĀ“s
armoured unit, able to carry infantry past defences and drop them off where they are needed. would require a order for infantry to board nearest apc.

thoughts and ideas are welcomme. (that is why i made the thread, duhā€¦)

2

I think the APC idea could be really good, depending on how the turrets were set up. There are going to be anti-infantry turrets, so giving a way to get past a wall of the suckers would encourage defense in depth (not to mention make you consider whether itā€™s worth the investment and the new set of vulnerabilities). Of course if you have APCs, you canā€™t forget IFVs: toss on a nice anti-armor weapon and cut the amount of infantry it can hold.

3

Howā€™s about more modules for support and supply vehicles? Like spotter command vehicle, artillery vehicles, EMP, shield defense, accuracy jamming, radar, anti-infantry rolesā€¦

I would like to see supply vehicles come up and supply tanks with ammo, or attacks supply chains as a commandā€¦
Just my two cents~

4

I have some ideas:

SPY: When this ability is activated, a special agent infiltrated in the enemy lines will destroy a enemy defensive emplacement. I mean, a random turret will get blown up instantly. The player cannot chose what turrent will explode and the ability only applies when you are the attacker.

GREEN POWER: With this ability, if the player loses any non-infantry force (vehicles or turrets), an aerial vehicle will come and take the wrecks of the vehicle to recycle a part of it, giving to the player a part of the lost credits. This ability is active for X time, and any lose inside that time is recycled.

BERZERKER: Another ability, this one applies to only one selected unit, does not matters if it is an infantry, a vehicle or a turret. It amplifies every aspect of the unit, Accurancy, Damage, Resistance, Moving Speed, and everything. But with a great cost, the unit will lose Hitpoints over time, for X time, until reachs 1HP, then stops, and the characteristics of the units return to normal. (depending of the situation, with 1HP in the middle of a hell of shots, it is dead. You can think on it as a last heroic act :P)

SACRIFICE: Same with berzerker, but this ability removes any offensive power of the unit and makes it REALLY hard to kill (maybe adds a huge resistance). Also the unit makes a complete stop and forces to every enemy weapon in range to focus their efforts on this unit, ā€œdistractingā€ the enemy firepower for a limited time (time of action of the ability or unit hp lose until death). There are two final options to chose when coding this ability, two different working types. First one, it makes a complete stops and lets to the rest of your forces go through the side and continue on their now a bit safer way. But with a lower range of distraction.
And the second one makes stop every unit behind it, but the effect range is a lot higher, maybe enough to let to the units in another passage go safely until the ā€œsacrificeā€ dies.

More ideas coming

5

I do like the idea of spotter vehicle, although they ma to make it into the initial release of the game.

6

Cool! I had two ideas with it.
One ideas was it could either enhance weapon ranges of vehicles in range of the spotter vehicle, like a Imperial shield booster.
Or two, it could actually reveal the actual spot it is on like a recon vehicle!

7

Iā€™m not sure if that is already kind of implemented, but there is one thing I just thought of:

Changeable sizes of paths.

You know, the paths units use to get to their goal. Let the map editor set the size of those.

That way, you could have paths for HUGE units (like behemoth tanks or stuff), but those could only go ONE way, why tiny units like infantry would be able to choose different routes ā€¦

8

That would be a nightmare to implement now, but I do love the idea. I guess company of heroes has a similar mechanic, with some bridges that are infantry only.
I so need to get this game finished, and on sale so I can think about adding extra cool stuff like that :smiley: It already has a ton of features, but more canā€™t hurt.

9

Is it safe to assume that thereā€™d be a ā€œbattle for Europeā€ campaign mode available as DLC? Also will different nations have different units?

10

Right now, there are not defined nations, because the core of GTB is customisation. ou will see what I mean when you play it, but there are a lot of permutations of army, so there is scope for a huge number of different looks. The assumption in the ā€˜plotā€™ (ha!) is that you are the british army fighting the Germans, but that could be massively subverted in custom maps.

11

I just had a thought. How about artillery strikes? You could charge them up with a power meter and use them to knock out heavy fortifications. The meter could either charge by time, kills, ground gained, or losses like a desperation meter (Samurai Showdown style!).

12

I just wondered, will there be some kind of minigame going on during the mindless armys march through the valley of death? I thought about something like Plants vs. Zombies where you had to collect this stuff the sunflowers dropped. Maybe defeated units could drop items like ā€˜Salvageā€™ which then could be spend into new units.

Or maybe like some kind of quicktime event. During an attack on a Turret you have to click on it to start a major offensive (e.g. 10% more dmg on the turret). Of course only random times during the siege. Not every pass by should trigger something like that.

A good example is also ā€˜Revenge of the Titansā€™. I hope you played this one Cliffski! Great stuff.

Like someone pointed out already unique abilitys like airstrikes or buffs for units from a skilltree would be great as well. Which brings me to the most important point. A skilltree! ^^ You have to implement a leveling system. Of course it would be best if it would be like Diablo 2 where you could create speficic builds but a skilltree where you can max out every skill would be ok as well.

As it is now there is already more stuff going on than in GSB (deploying units). This is good. But I think you could put some more spice into it.

To sum it up:

  • drops which can be gathered
  • quicktime events
  • skilltree which unlocks abilities during siege
13

There are drops, in some respects, because the last soldier in each squadron to die, drops his dog tag, which if you click them before they dissapear, earns you extra points you can spend on turrets.
It works quite well, from current testing :smiley:

14

Random ideaā€¦
Artillery - of whatever flavour.
Deployed the same way everything else is, except that it permanently blocks that lane/deployment slotā€¦ which leads to potentially interesting cost-benefit calculations.

15

Tunnelers can dig under a certain amount of squares to another square. allowing for certain units that can go through tunnels to be able to skip past some defences although they wouldnā€™t be able o fire when they are entering/exiting the tunnel making them vulnerable. You could also have a consequence were by tunnelling stops certain units from being able to travel through that path?

16

Random Ideas;

  1. Turtle action for mechs to absorb damage while other units get ignored.
  2. Air strikes or call-in orbital bombardment.
  3. Holographic or diversionary troops.
  4. Suicide troops/mechs/trucks

Cheers,
Peates

17

A few things iā€™ve noticed from playing:

I find little use for the small turrets once iā€™ve unlocked heavier turrets. In fact, I rarely use anything other then the Large Dual Ballistic and Large Dual Beam, except for the occasional range-boosted snipers to handle infantry. Itā€™d be nice to see some more specialized turret types. Maybe a turret that has an extra augment slot but no armor?

As for defensive augments, iā€™d really like to see some. Thereā€™s a lot of potential for building a heavily-shielded/armored turret with defensive augments just to use it as a ā€˜tankā€™ for sitting near the front line and distracting incoming attackers. And vice-versa, defense-boosted attackers rather then attack-boosted to try and soak fire to cover for units behind it. There might be some balance concerns, but considering your sacrificing other fantastic augments to boost defense, I think it would add a nice option.

18

Indeed, defense augments shouldnā€™t be too hard to include.
My main use for smaller turrets is due to rapid build time. when its clsoe to endgame, and you notice some pesky mech thundering towards the finish line, sometimes there is no time to build anything big.

19

One GSB feature Iā€™ve missed is the ability to create half-finished designs.

A tank with no engine? Not much use. But a mech without a weapon? Suddenly it doesnā€™t need a loader or sights, and that reduced weight means itā€™ll sprint. Or a turret with no armour or shields. Itā€™s going to die fast, but it should deploy quicker and that might be just enough to get it out in time (much as you use small turrets). Itā€™ll also be cheaper so you could deploy 3-4 fast and deal some burst defensive damage.

ā€“

It might be just too annoying to code, but is there scope for giving each component (including turret base) a default deployment time, and then each fully designed turret would take as long to deploy as the sum of its components. This might help balance missiles in defensive, by making them slower to deploy. It also makes a ā€œdeployment speedā€ augmentation useful.

ā€“

There feels like insufficient variety at the moment. Two ways of boosting this that shouldnā€™t be too painful

  • allow 2-3 times as many augmentations. light tanks get 1, medium tanks get 2-3 depending on chassis, heavy tanks get 4-6 depending on chassis. Balance this by halving the effect (and cost) of augmentation (but allow 2 of a kind so 1.003 builds can still be made).
  • reduce the number of slot types on a chassis. A heavy tank must have two armour, one loader, one weapon, an engineā€¦ why not three engines and no armour, one armour but two loaders, or other variants?

ā€“

I want infantry vehicles. APCs! I think that would require a change in game mechanics though. Basically a Truck with an infantry unit inside; when destroyed half of them die and the other half start running. Variants could include weapon mounts, a jeep (equiv) with tiny capacity but better speed (and weapon mount variants), etc. Give the truck 0VP and ten infantry and itā€™s still worth 200VP if it gets to the exit, but if it fails the defender has a new issue to contend with.

Part of my concern is that infantry is currently unattractive as an attacker: You spend a lot to deploy a unit that a single turret can annihilate, and then the defender gets a 250 supply bonus. So something that helps shift the balance a little may see more infantry in play.

ā€“

It would be great to have a game mode (or map config setting) that gives the defender 0 supply refresh but gives a supply reward for every enemy unit killed - infantry or armour/mech. That would also open the possibility of ā€œsurvivalā€ play maps, where the defender keeps going for as long as it takes the enemy to overwhelm them.

ā€“

Can we have attack vs attack maps? Green and red start zones both leading into paths with exits. This would need path-crossing designators on the map design, but otherwise might be a reasonably easy game mode to add. Why? Why not! May not be easy to balance in the campaign but as an online option it could be fun to test two armies against each other as they traversed an area of shared ground. Ok, this is probably the weakest idea.

Hey, doing all of the above would take weeks. I donā€™t expect to see any of it make it into the first release and wont take offence if none of it does. But thought Iā€™d share.

20

APC would rock : You buy this light/cheap/fast/little armed vehicle. No need for manual control.

Just have next infantry unit deployed on the same square loaded in the APC, and appear on the battlfield as soon as APC dies.