A hybrid abomination we deserve

[Stormtempter]

Okay hear me out. A fusion of Dark Descent and Fireteam, where one player is playing an RTS as a commander/director and his mates are boots on ground as the marines in FPS. He issues orders, rally points, has access to the map, sensors and other data the marines don't. They evaluate situation in the field and interpret his commands.

I'm almost positive this has been done before, but rarely, and when I see these two games, the assets they appear to share, I can't help but think they're like peanut butter and chocolate.

Thoughts?

[pRaX]

Yes. Would be a dead game in this current day and age. These fantastic games usually die really quick with "modern" gamers.

[DropShot]

Thoughts? sure. I think peanut butter and chocolate are overrated and i never cared for peanut butter cups.



Oh the game, it would be cool, but idk how 4 players would appreciate the slowness of the field commander's decisions.

[Dacote]

Sounds like you should've played Natural Selection 1 or 2 back in their heyday,
Not exactly the same as aliens fireteam, But close enough.

The Problem is always, being the commander is just not that exciting.
And having players who don't want to do your orders gets frustrating, and you have little or no stick to enforce your orders.
So with those games you can hop out of the commander's seat and just go do grunt work, Not like You're gonna run out of the APC and catch up with the squad in this one though.

[Stormtempter]

All fair points. I thought about the not following orders thing, it made me think of Majesty and its control system. It's an RTS, but you don't control any units, you just place a marker, and then post a bounty on that marker, and depending on distance, difficulty and the composition of the unit, would determine if they would respond to complete the task and gain the bounty. Wonder if something like that could work, where players are incentivized to follow commands.

Commander tempo would be a big issue, especially if people go in thinking like Starcraft and wanting to just do commands for the APM. Not sure how to address that. Perhaps with multiple squads under their observation and orders.

I wish I did play NS back in the day, especially with what you're saying. I had assumed at the time, it was more of an aysmetric game where one player was a giant monster and the others fought them. I'll have to keep an eye out for similar games.

prax, you're right. It wouldn't hold today. Likely not many would want to be the commander either, going based off of how those horror games tend to work out where everyone is waiting on someone to be the Predator or Jason.

Perhaps a total conversion or advanced mod in the nebulous future could achieve this goal, but as you've all pointed out, many design hurdles and challenges to surmount first.