Tuesday, April 19, 2011

GDI, taking the long road.

Right now I'm working on making GDI feel more like a real military power in the game.  My biggest issue with CNC3 from the beginning wasn't the graphics or the fact most multiplayer games lasted at most 15 minutes (ok, that did seem odd to me actually).  In the end it was the simplistic, cookie cutter game design that bothered me the most.  Its not that GDI and NOD had the same units, far from it, but they did always have a like class system in place.  Scout vehicle? Buggy vrs Pitbull. Tank?  Preditor vrs Scorpion.  Heavier tank?  Mammoth vrs Avatar.  You get the picture.  In fact, the only real difference to me was that GDI had APC's and true artillery and NOD had suicidal infantry (ooooh, so scarry) that you saw comming a mile away and the beam tank (laser artillery?  Who's idea was that?).  


So what I'm doing now is adding new units in to GDI's side, but it's not more stuff for the sake of more stuff.  These units actually are needed from a story side of view.  GDI is supposed to have been the defacto military/government force for the last 30 or 40 years and they have shit to show for it.  No variance, no choices, just the same basic force over and over.  That doesn't sit well for me.  So the updated GDI that I'm working on will have that.  Do you really need a GDI pitbull with a machine gun on it when you can use an APC?  They both kill infantry, both cost almost the same, Pitbull can detect stealth and APC can add more troops for more firepower.  So why the choice?  Because the choice IS the point.  Some players will choose to go the cheaper machine gun pitbulls and APC's with TOW Rocket troops for air defense where others may go TOW pitbulls  with APC's with basic rifle infantry.  Or they may ignore the APC all together and mix the two pitbull types together.

The point isn't that one can fufill the roll of another, the point is that a player needs to have the feeling that he has a vast arsenal to pull from.  NOD doesn't have the resources to match GDI on a unit - to - unit variance, so it only makes since that GDI has more to use right?   NOD's true power lies in their ability to hide with stealth generators.  They don't need 3 different Pitbull types to win, but they need to keep their troops alive long enough until they are ready to strike.  


So thats what I've been working on these last few days.  I'm working on the new Titan Tank for GDI, it's a mixture between a Preditor and Mammoth.  It will give that needed middle ground so that a player isn't forced to spam preditors if they don't want to until they can get Mammoths in the field.  I should be posting a new "Tech Tree" soon for GDI to let people see just how many new units are being added in and where.  Keep your eyes open and as always, let me know what you think.

1 comment:

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