I had a game idea

[Jackass McAwesome]

(Copy pasted from another forum. The idea was a space combat oriented game where you had to give orders to your units during combat to keep you and the rest of your team alive in order to win)

I decided to plan out a mission system for a Single-Player campaign. I think it'd be best if you had your Flagship and other fighter crafts that you gave orders to, giving orders to the flagship and individual units to do stuff to complete your mission. A scenario popped into my head while I was on the John a while ago. Here it is:

Mission - Destory the Laser Tower controlled by the Venomian Army

In the mission you start alone, but you can order the Flagship to launch fighters at any time. The level would have a bit of a stealth element because the tower is in a Canyon. Using Debris found in the Canyon, you'd fly around avoiding sentry sight so that fighters don't scramble from the fighter base nearby to give you hell. Objective one is to destroy the base's shield power.

Once done, fighters will scramble, so you can have your Flagship launch your fighters or you can go to hell with Venomian fighters alone. If you had the Flagship scramble, the Flagship will also launch laser cover at the tower to keep it from attacking you, but you can make it stop at any time.

The Objective now is open fire on the tower which will be shooting your units (unless the Flagship is, in which case the tower will fire back at it) while they help you rock the enemies. At this point, you could call a wingmate to cover you while you focus your fire on the tower- I'll discuss the whole command system in a bit.

When you take down the tower, the mission isn't over. Rather, all missions are over when all crafts are either retired, destroyed or on the Flagship. You included. So even after you take down the main target, you still have to take out the fighters.


On to the command system, I'd love to see a system where you could call a wingman of your choosing from the pile of at most thirty-five soldiers that you trained for combat (you're the thirty-sixth, making for three dozen fighters) and you could give him orders like covering you from enemy fire, attacking or protecting the objective target, protecting the flagship and other mission based actions.

You could also tell your fighters to cover you entirely, attack in formation or to attack enemy craft and protect/attack the objective target. Among these options would be the ability to tell all or individual units to cover the Flagship or dock it for repairs or force them to retire from the mission. You can also lose your units to enemies, so a radar system would tell you whose awaiting orders to retire. You would also take distress calls from units to have you or other units save their butts. Oh, and you should choose where your Flagship starts and what position it's in (like, where the bridge, hangar, etc. would be when the mission started.)



All of that would require a _lot_ of buttons for controls, so I would probably set it up to where you could press hotkeys or use a small menu and select the orders lightning quick so your units know what to do, and so you'd not have to flip through so many options just to say, have your units cover you while you attack the objective target. Among these controls would be controls so you could control your craft like Star Fox 64's All-Range mode.

The reason I say SF64's all-range mode like controls because it was so simple. You didn't have complicated button combinations at all. Although, on the subject of boost: Rather than boost, I was thinking about having a speed-system where you'd press keys to increase or lower it, so you could have better control at taking down your target, and even a key you could hold/toggle to stop in mid-air (which might be good for negotiating in online play XD) for whatever reason.

...I think too much D=

[SoulRiser]

Voice recognition FTW!

Or you'd have to be able to type the first few letters of the wingman's name, and have it autocomplete, and then you can give him specific orders.

Have you played Starwolves? That's like a smaller scale version of what you're talking about (I think). There you can pause at any time and give orders while paused... which is really nice

[Jackass McAwesome]

I was thinking a more real-time situation where you had to give out orders really quick. I don't think I'd have you select a wingman mid-battle, rather, you'd select one prior to the mission, and when you call a wingman, he breaks off target to cover you.

[SoulRiser]

That makes sense. Maybe you could also select a backup for in case he gets shot down or is too far away or something...

[Jackass McAwesome]

I suppose I could set up an order for the wingmen in case they do die. I'm debating about making a system where you have to train them in between missions to be good at doing things, such as precision flying, dog-fighting, target covering, protection and attacking, etc.

[SoulRiser]

I like the training idea.