It's been a loooooong while ('bout four months) since my last Concepts blog post. How could I, though, with the imminent release of Halo: Reach and Call of Duty: Black Ops? But, once again, revival.

So, previously I talked about a few new gameplay additions, primarily how suppression works, tertiary abilities, ferrying, and unit loadouts.

Suppression

Starting off with suppression, this is the default offensive tertiary ability for all combat units. Holding Y on an enemy unit will order your units to move into position and suppress that unit. Holding Y on an area will bring up a selection circle (like the one used for selecting units) where then you can select an area to suppress. The unit will sit there until an enemy unit enters the suppression field, at which point one of two effects will occur: a) the enemy is the correct unit designed to be suppressed and falls back automatically, or b) the enemy unit is not the correct unit designed to be suppressed and continues through without much harm. Knowing the correct type of unit your own unit is supposed to suppress is key strategy. For example, certain infantry can suppress other infantry, certain infantry can suppress vehicles, and certain infantry can suppress aerial vehicles. However, this suppression feature can be easily exploited (an entire team online uses a majority of their units to suppress a certain chokepoint), so there are two simple solutions. Either make the map design more complex, or divide the map into sectors and allow only three suppression vectors from each player. The second choice is easier to implement, as the first requires a LOT of pre-planning and constant revisions.

Tertiary Abilities

Okay, now onto tertiary abilities. Units already have a primary ability (X to move/attack enemy) and a secondary ability (Y to initiate secondary ability). Holding Y instead will trigger the tertiary ability, which adds a bit more flexibility to units. One aforementioned tertiary ability is suppression. Other tertiary abilities include ferrying, heal, escort, and deploy special item. Ferrying will be mentioned later on, but heal, escort, and deploy special item are of importance here. Heal can be assigned to specific units, like an infantry medic squad, to heal a unit similar to their own. While a Medic squad can heal infantry, a vehicle such as a Cyclops can only heal vehicles. Escort can be triggered by holding Y on a friendly unit, which the selected unit will then escort. Anywhere the VIP goes, the escort will go also. The escort ability also changes the AI, so when the VIP is taking damage, the escort will run/move in front to protect the VIP. The final ability is deploy special item. Certain units can equip a special item that pertains to their role. For example, the Gremlin can deploy an EMP grenade that renders all vehicle and aerial units within its vicinity immobile. The sniper team can drop motion sensors to detect any nearby enemies. These will allow more tacticality, as well as more cautious players, as certain units can bypass these special items and then disarm them.

[UPDATE] A new possible ability is hitch. Any unit capable of hitching can hitch a ride on a capable vehicle. For example, an infantry squad can hitch a ride on an Elephant, and a Warthog can hitch a ride on a Pelican.

Ferrying

Another important tertiary ability, ferrying becomes an option for those equipped to ferry. Examples would be the Troop Hog, Pelican, Falcon, and Elephant. Basically, when the "ferry" ability is chosen, holding Y down on an area will make a flag appear that will become the ferry location, and then another flag will appear for the ferrying destination. Any unit assigned to that ferry location will immediately be picked up and dropped off. This will allow a constant stream of enemies to the frontlines. This will serve as a viable replacement for the Troop Transport leader ability from the previous iteration. The Troop Hog can transport 1 infantry squad, as can the Falcon, but the Falcon is more expensive to produce. The Pelican can transport 3 infantry squads and/or 1 vehicle, and the Elephant can transport 5 squads and 3 light vehicles. While the Elephant has a bigger carrying capacity, the Pelican can travel faster, and is also prone to being shot down, whereas the Elephant is sturdy and can be upgraded for a faster travel speed. This allows more flexibility as players can opt for multiple ferrying routes to quickly transport units throughout the map. A unit selected for ferrying will also disappear off the unit population so a player isn't concerned with how many ferrying routes there are versus actual units.

Unit Loadouts

From the unit built menu that is accessed by selecting either the Barracks, Vehicle Depot, or Airpad, pressing Y on a unit will bring up another menu (when possible) to change the loadout of the unit. For example. The standard Warthog can swap to a regular machine gun (great vs. infantry, decent vs. aerial), a Gauss cannon (great vs. vehicles), a missile pod (great vs. aerial), or a troop carriage (great for ferrying). Or a Pelican switch from a troop bay (great for ferrying) to an ammunition storage pile (for dedicated gunship). Basically, this allows even MORE versatility than ever before. It will become a challenge to counter the right units simply because there are so many variants. And because of this versatility, it also eases the challenge of introducing a variety of units. Simply having different roles for the Warthog and Pelican can make all the difference.

All right, that's about it. Tune back next time for something like map design or something. Gotta plan it out.

ETA FOR NEXT BLOG POST: April 09, 2011