Collectors and Defenders

This is a map inspired by Power Towers and the "what if" of building towers being one full-time player job and collecting power for the builders to use being another. There would be two separate builders: Collectors and Defenders.

The power system is complete from Power Towers. Towers generate mana, can be connected to other towers, which will draw and use the power to fire more powerful attacks than the tower's default attack. The twist starts here. Generator towers do not store a lot of power, unlike the Power Tower units. Here are the units already in the map.

Collector Buildings/Units
Furnace Generator -Generates a small amount of power but will generate much more power when it has something to burn
Wireless Generator - Generates a small amount of power for all units/building around it. Does not store any power and cannot be connected to anything.
Capacitor - Capable of storing large amounts of power but is unable to transfer power very quickly
Resistor - A tower whose only purpose is to rapidly deplete any power sent to it.
Shredder - A unit that requires power to move, depleting 1 power per second while in motion. In addition, it is immune to damage while it has power. Can pick up various items dropped in enemy territory.
Zeppelin - A tower vulnerable to enemy damage but can move quickly. Can pick up various items dropped in enemy territory.
Planned Units:
Lumber Collector - Can harvest wood from trees to turn into lumber packs to burn in Fire Generators.
Coal Collector - Can collect coal from mines to turn into coal packs to burn in Fire Generators.

Defender Units/Buildings
Arcane Tower - A tower that, when powered, fires forked lightning at enemies.
Bridge - Capable of transferring large amounts of power but does not store much more than it can transfer per second.
Range Booster - A tower like the Bridge but will consume some of the power it is holding during transfer, so is only meant to extend the range of a transfer.

As you can see, there are not a lot of defender units yet because I've been fleshing out the Collector side a lot more. =) My idea with this is that there will be some sort of area on the map deemed enemy territory that only the Zeppelin, Shredder and maybe one or two Defender units are made to enter, be it just the maze on the map or some area where the units all spawn from and get to the players. However, and here's mainly why I'm making this post, I can't decide on a map layout. The bottom set is the maze I was going to try but it means that two players either must work together or live with sharing a maze together. A much more open map like that seen in Gem TD might work better but I'm open to suggestions. I really don't like fixed-maze maps, though, and I really like how Power Towers manages to have multiple game-play modes.

Some screenies. The file in the original post is not updated because the map is barely more playable than it was.

Goblin Shredder Collector
A Shredder Collector hooked up to a Furnace Generator. There would be no fuel in it right now. As it's walking it loses 1 power per tick and gains some because it's still connected to a source.

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Found Fuel
A Shredder found some fuel for the Furnace Generator that powered it.

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Fueling a Furnace Generator
The Shredder deposits some blue coal into the furnace. The furnace will burn 1 charge of the highest item it can use without going over the furnace's maximum mana every 10 seconds. You cannot use the item; it's controlled by the furnace itself.

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A chain of towers
Some towers attached to one another. That large power source is emptying into a resistor, which is just destroying power as fast as it's getting it. Towers that are slightly see-through are completely charged. The Shredder does this, too (all units that take power, really). Green on the left means power gained, red-ish on the right means power lost.

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Fuel burnt
A Furnace Generator burns some blue coal for 5000 mana. Fuel power gains are shown in the center of the unit in a green-ish. (This picture was artificially brightened to make sure you can see the power gain.)

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Power Source Lost
A Shredder walking away from a Furnace gets too far away and loses its power link.

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Wireless Generator
A couple wireless generators "hooked" up to a bridge. I say hooked, but any unit near them just gains power. They don't generate a lot of power and it's pretty uneconomical money-wise and real-estate-wise to build too many of them, but they can bypass any building's normally accepted power transfer per second.

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Got Wood?
Chopping down a tree produces some wood for a Furnace. As a side effect because I can't prevent the unit returning the lumber (if anyone knows how...), every 4 trees you cut down you can also buy an extra bundle of wood "from the scraps of cleaning your axe." Trees slowly respawn after being knocked down.

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Nice concept, allows players to focus nicely. I'll play it soon.

This map is changing focus a little bit now, I think, and may become some kind of vehicle combat. The collector concept may stay but the tower defense idea goes away. I don't know yet. I experimented with a vehicle structure and these are some of the basics. I can do a lot with this. I implemented the idea of gears and regenerative braking (like that found in gas-electric hybrid cars).

Currently, all a gear is is speed gained per tick. Each tick (currently 1 second for vehicles) equals 1 gear so a vehicle with 5 gears is at top speed in 5 seconds.

Regenerative braking can either be a flat bonus or a factor based on the current gear (though it may end up being based on speed, which is more like the real thing).

I may experiment with trying to make vehicles able to gain speed per tick but not change gears. Currently a gear is just the mechanism by which the regenerative braking system gives power returns and has no bearing on anything else.

As of now, the vehicle engine displays the vehicle's state above its head. That may or may not stay.

A Vehicle Starting Up
You can see a little purple 10 next to it. That's the start-up power, power needed to go from a stop to begin moving.

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A Vehicle Stopping
You can see the green 10 next to it, that's the power gained from regenerative braking.

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A Vehicle Out of Power
Vehicles out of power come to a full stop. When they do get power, they start from first gear.

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I've added morphable vehicles (transformers, if you will). A vehicle can have an organic form and a vehicle form.

Tinker and Tinker
A tinker and its vehicle counterpart, the, well, Tinker. The vehicle form is the big tank-like one. It is able to move twice as fast as the normal form. And being a hero unit, it sucks up more power as it levels up in both start-up and in motion, but gives more back when it stops. It can also move faster as it levels up as well. They're both connected to a generator. The spam on the left is the vehicle motion system in action. A gear really still has no bearing on anything and now the regenerative braking bonus is based on speed, not gear.

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This project has been stopped indefinitely because I don't know what to do with it. If someone has an idea for what to do with the concept of vehicles, feel free to post something. Forget about the name because I'd be open to virtually anything. It's a cool piece of code that's otherwise going to go to waste.

Try making a Carmageddon or Death Race type racing/driving map, where you can get weaponry to kill your opponents - and their wives in the spectators' stands...