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Story
After a sudden plane crash, you and your crew are stranded in what seems to be a deserted city. Quickly building a fast, but not so efficent outpost, your scouts report that 3 other opposing forces have crashed in this mysterious desert, and are heading into the city. Taking the resources you have, and all the men you can muster, you embark into the city and attempt to defeat the opposing forces and reign supreme.

Gameplay
Squads features a new gameplay system, that no one has ever seen before ( not that I know of )
You will command one commander, who is incharge of the soldiers following you. You have no direct influence over the soldiers, as they move on their own free will unless ordered to by the commander's radio commands. The basic commands are " Follow me " ( Soldiers will ignore enemy fire and follow the commander till ordered otherwise ) " Cover me " ( Soldiers will engage enemy troops and attempt to follow the commander )
" Hold this posistion " ( Soldiers will remain at the last area the commander was in, and will only engage if possible to counter-attack without moving out of the boundaries )
and " Spread out " ( All soldiers will scatter in different directions, attacking and engaging until ordered otherwise )

Morale: Newly implemented, this system affects the state of the spirits of a person or group as exhibited by confidence, cheerfulness, discipline, and willingness to perform assigned tasks. All squads start morale as 50, not sad nor happy. Units produced will have a 80% chance of spawning with average hp, 10% chance of spawning with low hp, and 10% chance of spawing with high hp. Meaning, if your morale is 50, your units are more likely to spawn with average hp. ( 50-100(average)-200 ) For every kill the squad makes, morale will go up by 1. For every 2 deaths, morale will go down by 1. If the morale is in between 26 and 74, it is average morale. Higher then 74 is excellent morale, while 26 and lower is poor morale. Morale plays a judgemental part in battles, as the more confident team, will most likely come out on top. If you have high morale, soldiers can randomly spawn free of charge. If you have low morale, soldiers can randomly leave your command and dissappear.
If you ever hit 0 morale, all current men will abandon you.

Upkeep: To maintain an army, you need supplies. Your rookie commander can only maintain a group of 6 people, with no experince. Anymore, and the supplies will diminish, and the soldiers will lose hp. Having more experince and more morale, allows for you to mantain more men without them losing faith in you, or dieing of starvation. If you are over the supply limit your commander can handle, then soldiers hp can be reduced to 1% instantly, and commander's hp to 5%. It is important that you make sure you take care of all your soldiers.

Experince: For every kill your squad makes, your commander's experince with raise. With more experince, he can endure more hits, recieve more money, maintain more men, and overall has a better chance against other commanders. Books of knowledge can help speed up the process also. Experinces comes in levels, and text messages will indicate the possible men you can handle, and how much money you recieve.

Money: You can purchase abilties that your men will use, more armor and weapon power for yourself, hire more men, and call in special attacks..

Vantage Points: Located in the desert, are locations which can be taken over, to help supply you. Everyone starts with one, and will allow you to build the basic marine. As you take overmore, morale will go up, and experince will slightly go up. Vantage points can be taken away as fast as they can be captured, so always try not to wander far, since it might be an enemy's outpost seconds later. Taking over a vantage point requires you to destory the power supply, and it will be replaced with your own, completely taking control of defenses, and scouting markers. More vantage points earn you more money.

Point of the Game: Last man standing ( for now )

Players: 4 players, 4 assigned computers.

This game is about the unique gameplay, not about the story.
Takes place in a 256x256 desert.

What do you guys think of it?

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I've seen some of these ideas in maps, but nevertheless, good ideas.

Make sure you finish it and don't make this one of those trashed away threads.

I'll try not too, but it's hard to keep on track now-a-days.

Yea it looks good, I have seen multiple of other maps like thins thought. It will be good if you spend time on it.

for the attack to you should center a location on an observer and have that as like the nav point to go to then have a dropship and do the spell cast with units labeled like go to or attack to or w/e

another idea is to have different generals and each one lowers or highers your health points like civil war.

Not to nitpick or anything, but why is the first objective eliminating the other forces? Reign over a deserted city, a place where you do even want to be? Whatever happened to cooperation in a common goal in getting out of there? Friend or foe unknown, yet we resort automatically to violence.



Anyway, gameplay sounds nice on paper, but if you can pull it off, thatll be great. 256x256 seems quite big for 4 players though.

Well make some sort of cheesy ending where if you win you find some helicopter ;P

Urmom, I did think of that, but there's only one problem. The observer would act as invincible scout, and could not be destroyed. It would be cheap if a observer constantly followed you. If it wasn't invincible, your opponents could just kill it and boom, can't command your men.

256x256x is for purposes, that I need room for dropship system, possible enterable buildings, maybe some nice pictures, but the city itself will be fairly massive.

The only problem I have, is I suck with terrain :/

then center a big location around your guy and then make it so that the observer cant move out of that location to restrict movement

That could quite possibly work, but if the location is too large, then you could see enemies from far-away, but if the locaton is so small, then just use the default ones for better purposes.
It's all about balance.

yea if you get the size to mebbe 11x11 would maybe work good for that mebbe

somehow get a medic to blind the observer before it becomes invulnerable?

Hmm... that sounds like a reasonable idea if I can get the AI for medics to work.
Anyone got any ideas on how that work?
I've read that detectors are a first thing to do when medics blind.

If you blind an Observer, it will see only 1x1 stop around itself, and to get it to be blind you have to force the medic to attack it with the optical flare, which it doesn't normally do on any unit.

You could make the player do it, and if they don't your tell because they'll be able to view some Starcraft "Crash" Buildings off in the distance.

i suck at triggers so much but is it possible to detect if a medic has less than 200 mana? if so can't you put the obs and the medic for the player himself inside a 2x2 area with a 2x2 location make the game not start until the medic has less than 200 mana(meaning it blinds the obs) then start the game?

No it isn't possible to detect what it has, but you can set it to certain levels. And you can set the level for the Medics at the beginning of the map anyway, or edit the requirement for Optical Flare, if it is player controlled, Computer controlled may only do it above 150.

Hm...I've tested it, but it doesn't seem to work on hero units.
Anyways, I'm just planning out the terrain right now.

I was playing around with the idea of making squad-based combat in an RPG, but It would take 1 comp per player and so it wouldnt work. Hopefully you can make it work, cause it'll be AWESOME. Will the orders be dropship-based or beacon-based?

Most likely dropship system. Provides faster responses and you don't need to look directly at the unit controlling the orders.