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Well, i'm working on a map called Pirates! (inspired by the Genesis game of the same name).

In the map, there are two ways to win:

Assemble X amount of treasure (either to be a fixed amount, or adjusticeable before the 'game' starts)

Kill off the other pirates.


The game starts with you picking what kind of 'Pirate Captain' you will be, either using a Rifle (ghost), Pistol (Marine), or the trusty Sword (Zealot).

You also start off with a ship (Dropship). This ship can sail onto beaches (low ground) to drop off your crew, but if you try to sail any further you'll wreck the ship and die.


Treasure is amassed in a weird way: Zerglings. If a enemy pirate finds one of your Zergling treasures, he can kill the Zergling and steal your treasure. Because of this, you want to bury (burrow) the treasureling in a obscure spot. You can 'dig' for buried treasure by comsatting a area.


Now, there are some issues that I need help thinking through:

¤ How will you gain treasure in the first play? Shall it be gained through killing things (other pirates? preplaced towns you can raid? random animals in the jungle?), or maybe you get 1 treasure every 30 seconds?

¤ How will you be able to recruit a crew? Shall I make it so you cash treasure in to 'buy' units? Or should I only have it so you can only have your 'Pirate Captain', and no other men?

¤ Upgradable ships? Again, how would one gain this?


Any other cool ideas you can think up would help a bunch. You'll be credited if I use your idea.

I've never heard of that game before so i'm not sure if you're inclined to imitate that game but here are some ideas anyways:


-I believe the ships shouldn't be dropships, but instead actual combative air units. This allows for ship to ship battles.

A variation would be to have a primary ship, and to have cannons(other air units) to function as your cannons.


-have it so that when your captain leaves the ship(to go inland or something) the ship becomes nuetral, allowing anyone to reclaim it. Therefore, whenever you leave the ship, you risk losing it to other pirates. To prevent this, you would have to leave defenders, yet, if they are attacked and lose, your ship can still be stolen.


-have a 'boarding system.' In battle, if your ship is inferior in terms of firepower, you could always 'board' them and fight hand to hand. In order to engage in hand to hand combat, you would need to close within a certain distance for a certain period of time. The amount of units you could carry would be dependant on the size of your ship. Of course, there would be a seperate part of the map for this. I suggest forming the terrain to look like a small side section of each ship.

If you win, you would get possession of the ship, but only if you have enough crewman(crewman, not soldiers) to man it, otherwise it would be sunk, or left to the tides. Depending on how badly damaged the ship is, it may sink anyways regardless if you can man it or not.

note: making triggers work for several ships can be quite challenging, so maybe the enemy captain wouldn't be killed, but forced to pay a ransom or he is killed and his ship towed to port to be sold or exchanged(this would be like upgrading your ship)

Towing would involve triggers ordering the enemy ship to follow your ship. But if the 'tow line' is stretched too far(keep in mind there would be ships of different speeds), the line will snap and the ship vulnerable to the tides. Also, because there is no 'solid' connections between the two ships, taking a tight corner around a piece of land might lead the ship getting beached.


-have a tide. If you don't bother with steering your ship, it'll just get taken away(and hit some rocks?). This could be done with simple move triggers(with waits). Stronger tides would have shorter waits, making it harder to pilot successfully. This could also be used in storms.


-there should also be a 'pirateness' rating. The more piratety things you do, the more the local navy would try to hunt you down and destroy you. As your rating got worse( or is it better?), fewer and fewer towns will do business with you. This may get to the point where you're absolutely forced to raid towns for gold to pay your crewman and soldiers, because if they stop working for you, you have no way to pilot your ship.


-Ships shouldn't be able to land(go into shallow water, you would have to use dingys(dropships) in order to land.


-something to think about would be ship collisions(to avoid ship stacking)-though realistic, would be incredibly hard to do and severly complicate almost every other 'sea' trigger in the game.


and now for your questions:

1) I think treasure should be worked for, it should be stored in other pirate ships and in towns - and buried treasure of course.

2) Crew should be bought, but for a very small fee. The main cost comes from upkeeping them, more men you have, the more you have to pirate.

3) Definitely no upgrades(armor, weapons). The only way to upgrade your soldiers would be to higher better ones and the only way to improve your ship would be to pirate or buy another one that was better(but who would pay for something they could steal?)

Sweet jebus. I never expected to get that big a response.

Anyway, I really like your ideas, although your method of sea boarding is a bit too complicated for me. I think a simplier system would work better. How about, whenever you kill a ship (or even another pirate's crew member), it joins your fleet.



Can you elaborate more on how you would work for it?

I'm thinking this: Having random merchant ships (maybe even computer controlled pirate ships) sail across the maps at different times. If you can hunt one down and destroy it, you gain the treasure it was carrying along with the ship itself.



What is the small fee? How do you earn it?

lol, it was really late last night and i had nothing else to do, not to mention the idea of a pirate game sounded good


Treasure: when i said worked for, I meant to be fought for or in the case of buried treasure, hunted for.

an idea would be that a ship can only hold so much treasure, so you would have to hide them somewhere(zergling = treasure is an absolutely brilliant idea). Of course, when your captain leaves the vicinity of the treasure, it would become neutral, so you couldn't just move it away when you see an enemy coming.

of course, i don't know if you're trying to stay true to the game, so its totally up to you of course.


Fee: the small fee(paid in treasure or maybe by doing a favor - quest) is just that, maybe twice the cost of one upkeep. Every pirate you have will require upkeep. In order to not have a huge financial burden, maybe enough to seriously slow down gameplay in the beginning where it isn't any fun, the cost of having a larger crew comes from maintaining it over the game, rather than trying to pay one huge lump sum in the beginning. Also, depending on how long this game is, a player can't dominate as easily later on, when he has to pay for his larger crew.


boarding system: I also realized how difficult the boarding system would be with multiple ships. I made a note of it up there. However, with one capital ship, it wouldn't be too difficult. In this case, the captured ships would have to be sold or either sunk. In order to simplify things, boarding could only be done between the primary ships owned by each pirate.

once again, your map.

if you want an example of the triggers, i can easily show it to you.

If your up to showing me some triggers for some of this stuff, sure, have at it

Trigger

Description:

Boarding the ship

Players:

¤ Any player - but one player should have all the boarding triggers in order to simplify the process

Conditions:

¤ Player You brings at least 1 SHIP to 'Ship Blue'(every capital ship has a location following it)

¤ Player Enemy brings 1 SHIP to 'Ship Red'

Actions:

¤ Move all Pirates for player You at 'Red Soldiers' to 'Battle Arena Left'

¤ Move all Pirates for player Enemy at 'Blue Soldiers' to 'Battle Arena Right'

¤ Preserve trigger

you got to make one of these triggers for each possible confrontation eg. 3 players would require 3 of these triggers

with this trigger, conflicts occur instantly, if you want to have waits you're gonna have to have switches or some physical timers

it should be noted that you should have enough battle arenas for all of the players to be fighting at once - if you have 6 p then you need 3 arenas

if 3 ships came together, there would be major problems. it can be fixed, but i don't feel like doing all the switches and triggers on the forum.

as for the ships themselves, they could be moved to another part of the map or they could be given to computer players until the battle is finished

Wow, this is an impressive idea!
Treasure should be given at a set interval by workers! and you get more treasure by having more workers! Genius!

Oh yea, add alot of "arg, ya skurvy scalawag" and "ey! matey!" All over the place. ty.

Nah, treasure should be worked for, definitely not automatic.


But pirate talk would be kinda funny

It would be funny for the first few moments, after 34 different pirate catchphrases you'll swear you want to put a hammer to your monitor.
Treasures are interesting. I want all the gold pls. ty.

Name the main character "Johnny Depp"

(couldn't resist)

just to let you kno pirates didn't really have rifles...
but they had a pistol and sorta a combination with a rifle called the english blunderbuss
look here: http://shop.store.yahoo.com/replicaweaponry/blunderbuss.html

The generic sword was the cutlass and the rapier I believe. I too think treasure should be earned rather than automatically gained. By setting it to auto gain, the type of game would change alot I think. About hiring a crew, maybe you could have one or two "pirate towns" where you could go and hire out your ship and discuss plans as well as hire crew members. If there are more than a few players then temporary alliances might be made if you're up to that.

You might consider adding a first mate as they are often important, as a second hero type unit.

Another idea, it would be neat to reference pirate source material in movies, books, and history. Playing as or maybe meeting such characters as Blackbeard, Long John Silver, and the infamous "Johhny Depp" Captain Jack Sparrow would be alot of fun.

I'm not sure about using zerglings for treasure. It's a wonderful idea but I was thinking maybe defilers would be a better choice since they can't attack or run fast or anything. The size of the ling is an advantage of course. It's a great idea.

first mate sounds like a good idea. Expanding on that, maybe they would be your hero for ship-to-ship boarding battles.

And I agree about the defiler being treasure. Although, if the defiler was the captain, it would allow for a limit on how much gold he could carry at one time. There would be a very small space in a corner of the map. In order to take gold, the captain would have to 'consume' it. A trigger would detect a zergling being killed(lings would be invincible so the trigger wouldn't mess up) and create one in the 'pocket' of the captain.

it would looks something like this

# = empty spot for one treasure piece(ling)
$ = one ling
__= boundary between transporter and storage spot


## - empty pocket
##


$$ - full pocket
$$

$$ - full pocket but captain trying to add more
$$
$


the 5th piece would get sent back to a location centering on the captain.