Samuel_Tow

You know... I've been bringing this up a lot lately, but I'm unsatisfied with the current base builder on a principle level, and I don't think there's any point in me suggesting improvements to it, because there's NOTHING which could be done to it that will make me actually like it. I know it has its fans, so I'll just stop trying to mess it up for them, and instead see about suggesting a completely different approach to making bases.

To me, the current incarnation of the builder is inherently limited, because even at the biggest plot size, you're still limited to a handful of rooms, most of which are taken up by functional facilities, anyway. So how about we go about it in a completely different way and look at a base design framework which will inherently give us a LOT more room without actually making our workload in filling that room infeasible. Let's first examine what a "base" actually should be. Currently, our bases, owing to the game's basic design, resemble more the kinds of things you'd get in Dungeon Keeper, rather than an actual compound that I think about when I think "base."

So, let's draw on a different inspiration. Let's look at an overland RTS of some sort, something that gives you a lot of room, but actually requires that you have a lot of room to work with. Let's look at the Settlers games. More specifically, let's look at The Settlers II: Veni Vidi Vici. I pick this game in particular, because it's an RTS of an unusual kind, where you're not just moving units about and ploppin buildings haphazardly, but rather need to make a decent, logical network of both supply lines and building locations in as large an empire as you can manage. Land management done right, from the games I've played.

Now let's try and apply this to our own game. Let's take the traditional volcano tropical island for an evil hideout, just for the sake of an easy example. Let's also stick to just base building without introducing actual RTS elements for the time being. Just cosmetics and maybe current base functionality. You basically have a large open plot of clear, flat ground to build on. Instead of micromanaging every chair and lamp post, you have a collection of buildings you can place down. To keep basic functionality, you could have a few versions of power plant that you can use, a comm centre to handle computing power, arsenals and warehouses to hold your stuff, and a few mess halls, barracks and command buildings just to add some ambience. Each of these buildings would be relatively small, but would be able to be entered. Ideally, I'd like to make the insides open to the outside world, but entering them like stores is also an option.

Now, going into your power plant would see a generator noisily trucking along, while going into your comm centre would put you in a room with lots of beeping computers. But that's not all. In addition to these buildings, you'd have the ability to lay down roads. Not necessarily as well-made as city roads, but if everything is forced into a grid, then why not? After all, if Locomotion could force a decent system of adaptive roads, it should be doable. Basically, the point here would be to encourage you to place MANY buildings in your lot, possibly running out of room, and linking them together with roads to... Say, transfer power and utility lines along with it. And look pretty, too

Aside from that, we could have a variety of walls, from the simple barb wire chain link fence, to the more elaborate tall walls, or even towers. I'm going to draw inspiration from Empire Earth here in how ramparts are designed there. You basically lay down a collection of walls around or through your compounds which then link together into rampart towers. You can further build towers ON the walls themselves, as well as build gates into them. And what self-respecting villain wouldn't build a tall concrete wall with metal gates and guard towers all around his evil compound? And why not split your compound into subsections with walls and gates in-between, after all? And who says you have to restrict yourself to just walls? Tall guard towers are often built just on open ground, as well, to add this more menacing look to the area.

So, basically, you now have a collection of buildings linked together by roads, walled off from the outside, possibly walled off into sections, all crammed together into a single lot. So suppose you want a bigger lot? Suppose you want to upgrade? Well, we currently have "better" versions of our base equipment and the ability to expand the plot, so why not have better versions of buildings and the ability to expand the lot? At this point, you can either tear down the old walls and expand the compound, or just build more walls around the new section. But what of new buildings? Well, suppose your best power plant is just HUGE, taking up lots of space you could be placing more buildings in, but the "better" power plant is just as powerful, only much smaller? That's an improvement, right?

Another feature I can pilfer from Settlers is buildings that require extra space. For instance, a comm centre might require a lot of additional space for more antenna, which you'd lose if you built roads around it or crammed it next to other buildings, but a better comm centre might require fewer of these, or might have its antennas add more... Control, is that what it's called?

The whole point of this is to get base building out of the dungeons and actually make it a lot more expansive, the equivalent to designing your own zone from pre-fab pieces. As long as a rigid grid is imposed on the thing, there really shouldn't be any problems of ugliness, and you'll end up with something that is, actually, very cool to look at and be in. Not just a small, confusing labyrinth of square tunnels, but an actual compound with buildings you can enter. While such a customizable location would definitely not have as much refinement as a real, professional-made zone, the feeling that this is YOUR base would more than make up for it. And, best of all, the effort required to put something like this together would not be monumental. I don't mean in terms of resource cost, I don't even want to guess at that. I just mean the actual, manual labour of hand-placing the whole thing.

Let me put this in perspective: A costume is difficult and time-consuming to design just because it's an artistic process, but once you know what you want, putting the costume itself together is a 10-minute job, if that. Putting a current base together, even if you know what you're doing, is a major, multi-day project. The base I envision won't take you any longer to build once you know what you want than, say, your average Star Craft encampment would, minus the resource gathering. That's what I think the real charm of such a system would be. With a base that's basically just five rooms, you kind of need to customize those rooms or there's no point. But in a base that's, say, 20 buildings, roads, walls and infrastructure, pre-fab buildings wouldn't be as much of a problem. No more problem than pre-fab costume pieces are, anyway.

I realise this isn't going to happen. I know it's just too "out there" to suggest, even though I think there's potential in it. But I just really wanted to express this, because it's been rolling around in my head for a long time now.

Base Building in general is an evil task, anyway. Yeah, if I want to just have an empty square hall with a bunch of racks in it, then I guess it's not that bad, but at that level of non-commitment, just mailing things is really the same thing, in practice. And it works cross-server, too.

I happen to feel base building, as originally envisions (i.e. a quasi level editor) was a mistake, in that it sets the bar of minimum required work far too high for anyone but enthusiast mod makers to want to bother. Nothing ever snaps to anything, aligning things is a pain in the *** and now that you can "float" things, it's just a nightmare. You can potentially do a LOT with it, but the overhead on anything decent, both in terms of skill and PATIENCE is just astronomical.

Personally, I hope we get some alternative to this that's less underground Dungeon Keeper dungeon and more a Tribes 2 style builder where we position whole buildings around a large lot, with the buildings themselves coming in pre-fab. More a facility builder than a room builder, as it were. If we get buildings, roads, fences, gates, towers and the like, which is basically what something like the Settlers or Tiberium Sun (or Dune 2: Battle for Arakis) gives you, then I envision a lot more variety at a LOT less of a learning curve.

You know, like the costume creator, which the current base builder IS NOT LIKE AT ALL.

Proactive control requires two things that the game is currently capable of, and can benefit from a few more that it isn't.

One thing is writing. City of Villains, especially, constantly writes us as flunkies who have no greater goal in life than to get paid. Even paper missions go along those lines. We are written as flunkies working as muscle for more important individuals. And we don't have to be. In fact, having written and played Architect missions that were proactive, written as though your villain is making his own decisions, I have to say this is easily possible. You just have to make sure not to assume you know what the villain thinks or feels, but rather explain what makes sense.

With this in mind, it stands to reason that we can have at least a few contacts who work for us, rewarding us with progress towards a larger plan that benefits us, rather than the other way around. Basically, these contacts will work like informants actually should - providing information that WE ask for, not providing ready-made tasks for us to undertake. Think the typical Igor "How can I hyelp you, myassster?"

The other is one-off random contacts. Think unlockable contacts, each with one mission, but without a requirement to unlock them. Like, say, General Hammond - he's there and you can just go talk to him and he'll give you missions. Now imagine sprinkling, say, 10 of these per zone, each of which has one simple task. "Oh, no! My daughter was kidnapped by zombies! They went down into that manhole over there! Please, save her!" "Hey, I know the combination to the vault over there in that casino. If you can bust up the guards, I'll split the money with you." Just that. Nothing big or complicated, just some random person standing in an alley, giving you a target of opportunity.

For bonus points, these could be randomised to spawn in different places for, say, 10 minutes, then despawn and pop up in another place so you can never really learn where they are and they feel more like random encounters, even though it's always the same, like, 10 missions over and over again. Not only do we have to go out to them, but we actually have to find them, too. Or, you know, NOT. We could just run by them as we're going along and find them that way.

As for things NOT in the game right now, I'd say personal projects and PERSONAL secret lairs are the big thing. One at a time:

By personal projects, I mean, technically, a life-long mission that gets done piece-meal each level range. Read up on comic books, read a few people's bios and just think about it - a LOT of characters, both hero and villain, are defined by some specific, overriding objective that made them turn to good or evil. Out of my own roster, I have a villain who's trying to build a machine of ultimate power, one who's trying to "destroy all humans" and one who aims to destroy all evil, and a lot of good along with it, while I have a hero whose aim is to arm law enforcement to such a level that crime is pointless, one who's trying to return to his own body and save his soul and one who's trying to regain all her power and rebuild her homeworld. Basically, a lot of characters would benefit from a life-long objective.

Enter personal projects: At character creation, you pick a story arc for your character out of a few generic ones, like "Want to build device" or "Want to save self" or "Want to reduce crime" or "Want to found own state" or some such. They don't really have to be very complicated, but it'd serve to give our characters a sense that they're actually after something on their own time and they do odd jobs on the side, not that their lives and existence is meaningless but to "protect and serve," or optionally "get paid."

Personal secret lairs are something I've seen suggested in other threads, and no, it IS NOT bases. This is basically another life-long mission that has you take a BAD plot and turn it into a magnificent stronghold, or possibly just your own crib. The options I've seen discussed are taking a desert island, taking a run-down city block, taking a cave off somewhere or just a piece of land in the country and trying to refine it. Secure it, deliver supplies, run off the vagrant elements, start building actual lego set-piece buildings ala Ufo: Enemy Unknown and basically go through a whole stage of building yourself an awesome monument to your own greatness.

Granted, both of the above only really work for meglomaniacal characters, or those driven to create and won't quite work for a feral or common character, but there's nothing stopping this from having stories for them, too. For instance, a less grand super hero could have as his mission to just reduce crime, allowing him to tackle specific big-name villains as his career and his personal lair could be a city block that he clears out of crime and rebuilds with nice housing for the nice people. Inversely, a feral, pure evil villain could have the mission to just destroy all humans and be able to take on and remove important (but non-canon) heroes as part of his evolution, and his personal lair could be just a shack in a cave that he cleared out of troglodytes or something.

These are, obviously, pie-in-the-sky suggestions, as the workload involved would basically amount to a whole new game (or a whole new expansion), but they're worth reiterating from time to time anyway.

I can't agree with this. If you REALLY want to have the ninja run animation with other travel powers, I'd suggest suggesting this as part of power customization. But the power itself, especially as a quasi-travel power from a paid-for Booster Pack, really does need to suffer from limitations, or it gives people who bought it an unfair advantage. Well, more unfair than it already does.

I actually like the animations, themselves, and I'd like to see them added into some kind of stance customization interface, but the Ninja Run power is NOT the right way to do it, in my opinion.

*edit*
Not unless they give us a zero-cost, no-effect toggle that just puts us in Ninja Run mode without any of the buffs. Kind of like the Halloween costumes. Then I could see it happen.

Far as I'm concerned, we don't need more flags so much as we need a system for automated team generation, where the game will try to put you in either a team as close to your specifications, or in as big a team as close to your level range as it can manage. Most people want "just teams" anyway, despite what the few of us more focused people here on the forums insist, and such a system would basically satisfy the great masses and take care of the "I can't get a team!!!" problem.

Beyond that, the team finding interface is actually not that bad for building a team. What it sucks at is FINDING a team.

So you can make fun of furries but not of goths and lolitas?That's disappointing