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I'm planning on making a generic Special Ops map. I've found most of these to be fun, but I am thinking about making one with lots of special features, combining lots of different ideas from different maps.

If anyone has played Gunship or Space Pirate War, they know about the "inside" of a larger unit. I plan to take this a step further to include suits as well as vehicles. The various suits will be a Firebat, Ghost, Marine and SCV. The vehicles will include a Tank, Vulture and Goliath. Each player (a regular civilian) can enter and exit the suits at any time. While in the suit (or not) the player can get into one of the vehicles. The tank can hold multiple people. Everything else can only hold 1 person at a time.

While in a suit, the players cannot see other players. While in a vehicle, the player can see other players.

There are upgrades, but only for damage, and only if you use the manual targetting setting, as in there is a switch that allows you to turn allying on and off, and when allied, you get experience for a kill. My interpretation of this is that as you kill more and more, you get to know where the targets' weak spots are, but only if you manually "aim". If you just use the auto-target (unallied), you don't learn anything. However, as you use the manual target, you can also use the skill to help out the auto-target as well, but your skill doesn't improve at all. The same goes for vehicles, but vehicles will use gas instead of minerals, since a gun is different from a set of controls.

The vehicles will realistically "run over" units, and of course there is no exp gained for this. Unfortunately for the player, the vehicles will also run over people in suits. In fact, any vehicle can run over any small unit, and the tank can run over medium units as well. That means that a tank can run over a vulture.

Once a unit dies, the unit inside it comes out of it unharmed. If your civilian dies, it is replaced with a civilian owned by a neutral player. Another player has to rescue the civilian's "body" and bring it back to the infirmary in the base. If the player is not rescued in time, he dies and ends in defeat. If a vehicle runs over a player, the unit will be killed and the civilian will be created, at full life. Due to the way the triggers will work, once the suit is destroyed, the civilian will make the vehicle stop for a moment, though it could just as easily go around and kill the civilian again.

I also plan on having some sort of storyline, involving Kerrigan/Duran, and them being mutated by zerg(with different names of course). Plenty of missions will be available, though I want to get the above parts in before I put in the missions.

Anyone who has actually read this, do you think this would be fun to play, or is it just way too complicated? I've found that there are a lot of maps out there that are incredibly complicated (or have innovative stuff in it) that just doesn't seem to be fun.

i think if you wanna make a fun map add simple gameplay and awsome cinematics, storyline and effects. your idea doesn't sound shocking though make sure you spice it up or else it wont be Wozizzle!

Im gonna try to make a Gunship/SPW style map after I finish mine, but I have to say, its not too complicated, and I love the idea. GL :D

Hmm.

I'm glad to see some people don't think this is too complicated, but what about these cinematics? Are they all that necessary for a good game? I'm drawn especially to anyone who has played the mess of the maps of Teckno Terror and/or The Wizard's Curse. Personally, I find these cinematics a waste of time. I suppose the other option is like cinematics in Baldur's Gate 2, where you lose control of your characters, and they act on their own. I could do this with the dialogue between the infested commanders and/or intellegent buildings.

I'm worried that people will get overly confused as to how to enter and exit suits and vehicles. Especially on exiting vehicles, since it's a possibly fatal occurance, though it only seems common sense not to jump out of a moving car...

Onto my very basic storyline:

You are a set of rookies straight from [Homeworld x] sent to [outpost x] for training and support of a military facility/research lab. The lab itself is small (I wish I could use both installation and badlands terrain), but specifically deals with testing of the unique materials found on the planet. Of course, during a routine tour of the lab, the natives of the planet (zerg) show up, and are not happy with the recent terran claim on the planet. The reason for their recent uprising is due to the nature of the [zerg] race. They live underground most of the time (burrow anyone?) and in caves due to the seasonal change on [outpost x]. So basically they get into the lab and slowly mutate due to the mix of the materials and [Homeworld x]'s technology. At later parts in the game, hero zerg units will be the mutated natives.

During that invasion, the "tour guide" Samir Duran gets captured by the natives, and later comes back infested, with his old abilities and works with the natives for a counterassault which the players must stop. He will play a major part in pestering, since he can cloak, and you have no means of detection.

The players must lead an attack into the caves to at least deal a crippling blow to the natives and delay a major attack for a few days, since it will take days for communications to reach [Homeworld x].

During one of these expeditions, Sarah Kerrigan will also be captured, but in a different way. I envision that if an overlord's tentacles touch someone, they are taken into the overlord and will later be infested. After her infestation, the game 's pretty much the players left trying to get to the central core of the native intellegence.

I definately want to have a training mode, mainly to get people used to running over stuff with vehicles and the manual/auto-target system. I also plan on explaining waypoints in the map (aka shifting) so that the manual system isn't really as hard as it sounds. However, I'm not sure if people should get exp for completing the training, since the people the player will kill are just zealots/dragoons/corsairs, which are not part of the native race. Also, if they do get exp, should I even add a skip tutorial function? If I didn't make the map, I don't think I'd know what the hell was going on.

This map sounds good to me. I think that you should make a "Training Area" where you go to practice your skill on Protoss units, but you get no experience from them. Have a txt message say "Whenever you're done - please exit by walking over to the beacon over there"... Well, something like that

Anyway, this map idea is really good and I'd like to be a tester if possible.