Battleship Game Mode

[dethret]

Suggestion


Hi, i would like to make a suggestion.
I hope that you post any feedback or suggestion
of what you like/dislike with this game mode, and ofcourse,
if you would like to see it in the game.


Me and a friend, SirTophat started think of a new game mode: Battleship.


The Idea

So basically a crew of up to 12 players commands a huge battleship,
and a second crew of other peoples command the opposing force of 3 or
more regular ships.

These will try and take down the battleship and when they do they win,
the battleship crew on the other hand wins if they destroy the opposing crew
ships 5 times.

The Battleship

The battleship is supposed to be a huge dangerous ship, with many large guns
preferably 3 or 4 on each side.

Gun Slots
Left Side: 3 - 4 Large Guns on the bottom
              2 - 3 small guns on the top

Right Side: 3 - 4 Large Guns on the bottom

Front: 1 - 2 Large Guns on top

Rear: 1 Large Gun on the bottom
        1 Small Gun on top

Objects
Top:  2 Engines
        1 Hull
        1 Ballon

Bottom: 3 Engines
           1 Hull

Roof(above top): 1 Ballon
This is basically what our idea is about, it isn't 100% perfect
and we welcome all feedback and suggestions. We hope this
game mode gets made as we believe it would be much fun.

No hp has been thought of yet so feel free to come with some suggestions.

[Cpt. Yami]

What am I supposed to imagine when you say huge battleship? Looking at the current loadout you're suggesting, it sounds like a a very cumbersome ship to operate and maintain. It sound cool though, but perhaps limit the crew size of the battleship as to make it more fair for the opposing team. With a crew up to 12 people and with so many large guns, you could go all gunner and destroy any ship daring to come close since it has no blind spots whatsoever.

[Captain Magellan]

I had this EXACT same idea.

I don't really like the ship loadout for the same reason as Yami-Yagari stated.

I'll go ahead and add my ideas to this discussion.

First of all, the Leviathan (I like this name better) would have to be allowed a couple deaths, not sure.

The match would be a 1vs3 or a 1vs4, this would determine the amount of people on the Leviathan. To make it easier, so you don't have 12 people crawling over an entire ship, there would be three or four (preferably three (so 1vs3)) "ships" that make up the Leviathan. What I am saying is that there are three sections that make up the ship that don't actually connect in gameplay, but make up the entire ship. There would be the bridge, the boiler room, and the gun deck. Each area would be configured like a normal ship, with a Captain slot and three crewmen slots.

The Captain of the bridge would be actual Captain and obviously pilot (though, on a ship this large and cumbersome, the Captain would not actually need to fly). The bridge would be where you get the most visibility, and the where the wheel for the ship is. I have not figured out what the other crewman aboard the bridge could do other than spot, though.

The gun deck would be, well, the gun deck. All the guns of the ship would be located here and all the crewmen aboard the gun deck would naturally be gunners. They however, would not be able to interact with their guns in order to fix them. The Captain of this deck would be Chief Gunner.

The boiler room would be beneath the gun deck. This area would be made up entirely of engineers, all of the hardpoints for fixing would be located here as well as hardpoints for the guns beneath the guns for the engineers to interact with.

Communication and team work would be a HUGE factor in this game mode. The Captain, Chief Gunner, and Chief Engineer would all be able to communicate to each other via the usual Captain Chat. The three, being so vital to each other, would have to work well together in order to win.

The same goes for the side of the three smaller, normal airships. They would have to have good communication, make good use of terrain in order to get close and into blind spots.

If you guys did create this mode, you could use it as a HUGE event in Adventure mode, with one prosperous city creating a Leviathan and setting out on a glorious mission of conquest, while the other cities have to band together to vanquish the foe!

[Captain Magellan]

Just reading over everything, I agree with the initial idea of only one life for the Leviathan.

[Sgt. Spoon]

as all the times it's been brought up before: The idea itself would be quite awesome, and it's definitely something that i'd want for adventure mode. On the other hand it would probably be a pain to implement.

[Phoebe]

One issue I could see is having 12 players on one ship probably necks the goto tactics to have 1 captain, 3 gunners, 2 engineers on engines/balloon and then each of the two hulls have 3 engineers just whacking away at it making it very little interesting of a mechanic since either you're invulnerable or you get shot down within half a second.

With the given gameflow and experience in Guns of Icarus Online;- and the value of an engineer as well as putting the enemy engineer into stress it simply wouldn't work to increase the player limit per ship even in another gamemode that would theoretically support it.

That's because after a given week or so of implementing something new a community always comes up with the most effective way to play it;- and I think we can all agree having a team of gunners try to gun something down while a team of engineers is just standing there doing the keystroke chain:  Mouse 1, Mouse 1, Mouse 1, Mouse 1, Mouse 1 for a good 20 minutes isn't exactly considered invaluable gameplay.

I can think of a lot more issues that fundamentally change gameplay and perhaps dulls it out;- meaning in order to support any new gamemode at all you have to look at the impact on the flow of the game and distribution of labor and evaluate wether or not each role is as interesting and fun.

That brings us to the resources Muse has to make drastic game enhancing or altering updates.  They are a small but awesome team;- they realize and understand just as much the underlying effects like the one I describe above that come with these alterations - which is the main reasons these creative suggestions are likely discarded as, "Neat idea; but not doable"

[dethret]

I've read your posts and what I can see is that there
Are many who would like to have this game mode but obviously
there's a lot of ways this could be done.

As for the name: "Leviathan" that's a cool name but more
like a name the players would have to name their ship.

The second thing on how the ship should be made,
I like the idea of the different levels, but I still think
that the engineers need to go to the guns to repair them.
Making it more of that you need to move and not just e idle in
the boiler room waiting for something to break.

The things you could have in the boiler room tough are all
engine related parts and the hull. The ballon would be on the
top level above the deck.

As for the guns that could be lowered to 2 big and 1 small on each side,
making it almost as the galleon, also one big gun could be in front.
Rendering the rear vulnerable.

The amount of players may have been a bit to much, still I think
the amount of players should be around 6 or 8.
This could lead to a set up of: 2 gunners, 3 engineers an one captain.

Considering the placements of ballon, hull and guns this leads
to a higher need of team work, since the engineers will need to climb
and run a lot.

The size of the ship should be something about 1 1/2 - 2 galleons in
width Ann length.

[Janaas]

I am new to this game, so don't consider it fully fledged ideas, I am not expert (yet:))

I agree with Phoebe, but there is a way to make this idea more viable, yet simple: Make the crew smaller. Ship with such tremendous firepower could be operated by 8 or 7 men still being huge threat to 3 ships we have now. What is more I think there should be some tweaks that makes new time managment problems. Multiple armor repair points (on which repair tools work less effectively, but hey, You still can tank more when all of them are on cooldown).

Still there are other problems: Such ship would be basically stationary target. Captain haven't much to do on such ship, that's one. Second thing: How could such ship prevent Goldfish or Squid carronading or flaming it's ballon into oblivion? Or team of 3 Junkers with Mercuries plinking at him? That could be fixed by making it not so immobile while still balanced(-ish?).

It's a bit like boss fight. He has much greater power than You, but You have all initiative in the fight. One level of cooperation (between ships) is entirely dampened for one side and I don't think what Captain Magellan wrote solves that issue.

TL;DR I don't think that this idea is bad, but I think that it needs HUGE amounts of polishing if it is about to work.

Matches with one Battleship on each side and smaller ships on each side is entirely different story.

This topic is good place to bring question that is bothering me for some time: Did Muse made any statement about implementing bigger ships and by bigger I mean class bigger with more crew perhaps?

[awkm]

Adventure Mode.

Maybe.

Stay tuned next week.