Plan for a "different" TD... good, bad, or already done before?

The problem with most TDs is that once you have learned the map and know what the uberest towers are, there is no reason to play it again unless you get a kick out of watching newbies building no slowing towers or not knowing what a maze is.

The other problem is that one does not really play against the other players. Many TDs turn into a "let's all try to stay alive for as long as possible until everyone quits". Even the Line Tower Wars type maps, in which you summon creeps against the player next to you, revolve more around staying alive than eliminating other players, unless you are feeling evil and send 20 flying units at some poor newbie.

My humble solution and map idea is this:

There are two bases, bottom left and top right. The players are divided in two teams of five and receive a tower builder at their base. The base area is unbuildable, but the rest of the (64x64) map is game. Each team has six "beacons" in a vertical line on their side of the map from top to bottom. There is also a fairly large (1.5 screen width), buildable "checkpoint" area in the middle.

Every x seconds, creeps are spawned at a random beacon on their side and try to reach a random beacon at the other side. For each creep that makes it across, the owning team gains one point. Having to stop creeps that run all over the map can be hard, but all creeps are funneled through the checkpoint area, so this is where your first towers should be placed.

(Difference with other TDs: when you leak, the enemy team gets points, instead of you losing them. That way people won't try to "play nice" when the enemy team is losing in an attempt to lengthen the game)

Being civilized people, the inevitable conflict between both sides in the checkpoint area should not be resolved by shouting "LEAVE U NOOB" or "U (beep) (bebeep)" at the other team, but by using Anti-Tower Towers, Anti-Worker Towers and firing various bombs and rockets at the enemy defense from the safety of your base.

When your defense expands and outgrows the checkpoint area, you can build further down the field (and miss a few creeps) or try and bomb the enemy team off the checkpoint area so you get more room for more towers.

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There is no linear progression through x different towers and upgrades. You can upgrade your earlier towers upon going up to the next tier, and all towers of the same tier (natural or upgraded) have the same price and their damage is about the same order of magnitude, so it comes down to which effect you need at what place. A short ranged area effect tower is much better than a long ranged low damage one in the center of the checkpoint area, and the other way round at the edge of the map.

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The team-vs-team wars at the beneficial checkpoint area should add a new element to this TD. Anti-Tower Towers destroy expensive upgraded "normal" towers (which cannot attack buildings). Build some ATTs or Anti-Worker Towers around your own expensive towers to prevent the enemy from building their ATTs there. If the enemy has this going on and you really want that tower dead, throw a nuke at it or a Bomb Head spell at a nearby enemy worker.

The ATTs only come into play at tier 2 (of 5) and the AWTs at tier 4 to prevent cheesy tactics in the first few minutes of the game.

After a given time, the team with the most points wins.

So:
good, bad, or already done before?

Do it, definitely. I want to try it out.

If you have towers that can attack other towers, and one team can thus push the other team out of the checkpoint area altogether, then that's probably all that they would need to do to clinch the victory on a regular basis.

:)


Of course, those Anti-Tower Towers cannot attack creeps. If the enemy team masses these at the checkpoint area, they will have nothing to actually attack creeps there.

But now that you mention it, a bastion of ten or twenty ATTs would indeed be pretty hard to destroy if they are spaced out unless you throw a nuke at every one of them, which would take more time and money than it takes them to just rebuild everything. I may need something to kill ATTs more easily without making them too easy. Hmmm...

Thanks for the feedback! :)

I think this would do the game more vary, with more and different tactics and so on.
The idea sounds really good. I would certainly play it! :D

Edit: Misspelled.

Well, the overall idea seems to be unique, which is good, but I can forsee lots of problems, and "cheesable" things if you keep it like you described.
I am really tired at the moment, so can't think of any really great suggestions, but if done right, it could be a nice alternative to the 2 tower war games out now.

I think map layout will be a key in this, so don't just throw out some quick design. You might even think about working something out other than the 1 checkpoint thing, and maybe a way to play solo, as lots of people hate relying on teams for fear of being stuck with a bunch of jerks or "noobs".

It also seems like all you doing with a single checkpoint is force people to maze backwards, and really that may not be nessesary if they can wall in front of the start points and lead to a single outlet. Like I said, I am tired, or I would try to help and throw out a few suggestions. If you think ahead and really plan something out, and if it is done right, you could have a very good map on your hands, but if you do it wrong, maybe even just a couple things wrong, it could be a very unbalanced, unfun, and "cheesable" map :(

Good luck, if I think of something I will come back and write it down :)

hehz, nice idea, so to say a new definition of tower *wars*
make the ATT limited and pretty weak themselves to avoid players having a bastion of them. Also give players limited options to control their spawn, not like in a normal tw so that ppl mass air after a few rounds, but for example getting a higher part of the spawn air if you see that the enemy lack AA-Towers.
I could help with other suggestions or betatesting if you like

Okay :>

- New feature: tower decay. All towers lose 1 hit point per second. Tier 1 towers have 60 hit points, and each subsequent tier has 60 more hit points. Anti-Tower Towers are tier 4, but only have 45 hit points. This should ensure that whoever has a numerical tower advantage (especially an ATT advantage) does not get to keep that advantage throughout the entire game.

- Increased checkpoint size to about 8x32, while the map itself is only 64x64. The idea is to make some places better for building towers than others (otherwise it makes no difference where to build and a lot of the "warfare" aspect goes down the drain), not to make the first team to claim the checkpoint automatically win.

- Perhaps increase tower decay to 2 hit points per second in the checkpoint area?

Better?

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Which leads to a lot of towers being used as nothing but wall bricks, and the whole thing collapses when the enemy team so much as blows up 1 tower. :D

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There is also a problem with blockade detection. Considering that blockades can consist of towers from both teams (or be caused by building 1 tower in the other team's maze to clog it up), who should be punished and how?

I thought about a random meteor shower until the path is cleared, but it would make for a very cheap way for a losing team to destroy a lot of enemy towers at once.

Should I just set all creeps to flying?

Help!

All remarks taken into consideration :> Have added tower decay over time (especially ATTs), increased the size of the check"point" to 8x32 and more :D

Thanks everyone for your feedback :D

All remarks taken into consideration :> Have added tower decay over time (especially ATTs), increased the size of the check"point" to 8x32 and more.

Thanks everyone for your feedback! :D

hm, wouldnt like to have to replace towers all the time, and as that would affect both teams equally this wont help much if one side is better.

Blockades are indeed a problem this way, maybe you could make a one tower-sized gap on each line where you cant build, but the creeps can still walk through, that would then be more of a side-TD than a maze.
Maybe you could do a trigger that detects the last tower that completed the blockade, and then the player that build it is punished, some creeps get angry and kill that tower and continue attack that players towers until they get killed (like attacking creeps in tw maps).

Not better, having more towers. But you got a point there: I'm acting just like Blizzard with the rest state system - mathcraft that works on paper, but people get annoyed with it. Sorry! :>


Hum... how would I detect exactly which tower out of 300 did complete the blockade? ;)

well i cant say im a good trigger maker, but have some VB experience and see it like this:
a trigger that detects when a tower is built, and keeps this towers owner in a variable. If a blockade is detected after that, punishment goes against that player.

As much as it goes for towers, you could make the system more relying on tower upgrades than on mass towers, for example quite expensive basic towers that have low stats, and upgrades that are more worth their money, so massing towers will be a waste of gold and ppl built only so much towers as needed to use the rest of their gold on upgrading these.