Hyperfortresses-A different kind of boss.
Sept 15, 2013 18:23:33 GMT -5
Duco, Kelsoo, and 2 more like this
Post by quicklite on Sept 15, 2013 18:23:33 GMT -5
First things first: What I am trying to accomplish here is having an interesting boss that is pre-set on the map that can't be cherry picked, doesn't go away, but presents enough difficulty to provide an interesting kind of challenge to smaller groups of people who don't have the time and/or firepower for a regionboss. Basically, hyperfortresses are incredibly powerful versions of the 3 'large' fortresses we have currently. They could either show up a) randomly in every 5-7 regions or b) In a random undiscovered region after having killed a certain number of circle/square/triangle enemies for the respective hyperfortress. Which do you think would work better? Also, to avoid being cherry picked, they would be surrounded by 6 layers of unscoutable enemies of their respective type (so for circle hyperfortresses, a whole lot of novas, for square hyperfortresses, securities and drills, and for triangle hyperfortresses, despoliers, and some deltas, too). This would mean that even if this fortress was scouted too, there would be a lot to clear first. Now, onto what the hyperfortresses actually do. First-off, hyperfortresses will never go away. Secondly, if they haven't been attacked for 3 minutes, any damaged part of the hyperfortress will regenerate. However, what dies stays dead: if you manage to kill something on a hyperfortress, it cannot regen later. There will be 4 of each main hyperfortress, to allow multiple assaults, multiple chances at loot, and basically a nice fight over a decent period of time. Oh, and hyperfortresses can't be debuffed. Cutting them off is a massive advantage for the battlefield, but won't affect the fortresses themselves. Anyways, onto what the hyperfortresses actually are:
Circle Hyperfortress: Alpha Command Tower
Firstly, as well as the windmill towers, This tank would have 2 outer cirlces of 10 orbiting 'gunships'. They would circle at about the same speed as convoys, and they would have both a phantom-like configuration of laser guns, and a more powerful shotgun turret on top. These would do enough damage to make it wise to clear some of them out before going in to attack the main fortresses. As for the drones, they now move at the same speed as the flying triangulum minions, travel in groups, and charge other players in mass bombing runs. They should have at least double health and damage of normal GCT drones. As for the main fortresses, they are very similar to GCTs, except that instead of throwing one targetted bomb, they will throw 2 bombs in random directions, which coupled with the other 3 fortresses and the incredibly long range of these bomb throwers means that players will have to constantly avoid 8 randomly placed bombs. The bombs should be similar in triggering and damage to zeta bombs. As for the windmill turrets, they will act like GCT ones, except that they spin slightly faster, do at least 4x the damage of GCT turrets, and would disarm any tank hit for a good 3-4 seconds. Basically, do not get hit by the windmill things. With all of these things compiled, you get a boss fight where you are always at risk of something, be it the windmill, the bombs, the orbiters, or yet another bombing run.
Square Hyperfortresses: Core Grid Extractors
Firstly, these fortresses will have 4 outer walls. As for the outer walls themselves, they are similar to drill walls, with a few differences. Firstly, and obviously, there are many more segments due to hyperfortresses with multiple walls being large objects. Secondly, instead of having annexes at every corner, there will be an annex in between every 2 normal walls. Annexes will not only be able to spawn minions and have considerably more firepower than their drill counterparts, but they will, as homage to watchtowers, spawn a certain number of trap squares when damaged. Annexes will also have the ability to heal the walls to the left and right of them very quickly, meaning that you are forced to target the annexes first. The hyperfortresses themselves will also have trap squares, but the main fortress would have 3 kinds: Red trap squares which damage, white trap squares which disarm, and a few evil blue trap squares that act as EMPs that destroy all shields and set all triggers on cooldown. Also, they will be very heavily shielded, and will have the ability to spawn minions too. The minions would be highly buffed versions of not only drill minions, but also buffed versions of the small square fortress minions.
Triangular Hyperfortresses: Elipson Processor Fortresses (Okay, that one doesn't work as well. Any other suggestions?)
Firstly, these would have 2 cirlces of region-boss like outer facilities. These outer facilities would look and act like mini-deltas without minions, with several outer structures covering the main one. The 4 main fortresses would have substantially more surrounding structures than a regular delta. All 4 hyperfortresses would produce as many minions as a regular delta, leading to 4x the amount of minions to deal with. These minions would have 25% more health and do 60% more damage than normal delta minions, meaning that in order to fight these, you need some way of dealing with the massive amount of minions. To top this off, all 4 hyperfortresses would regularly fire off gunships that do a solid 300DPS in random directions. These would follow a randomly generated, zig-zagging pattern back to the hyperfortress, making them a pain to dodge.
Although the orbiters and gunships of the circle and triangle hyperfortresses will drop a large amount of exp, they would drop no loot. As for the square hyperfortress, the annexes would drop ok, but not great loot, whereas the walls would just drop exp. The hyperfortresses themselves would drop massive bounties of good loot, making them very profitable targets.
Finally, I should add that these aren't exactly how I think hyperforesses should be. I just wanted to give a good example on how you could make a fortress feel like an upgraded version of another fortress, but also make it feel different enough to not feel like a cheap clone, hence why I put new features on every one. So, what do you guys think?
Circle Hyperfortress: Alpha Command Tower
Firstly, as well as the windmill towers, This tank would have 2 outer cirlces of 10 orbiting 'gunships'. They would circle at about the same speed as convoys, and they would have both a phantom-like configuration of laser guns, and a more powerful shotgun turret on top. These would do enough damage to make it wise to clear some of them out before going in to attack the main fortresses. As for the drones, they now move at the same speed as the flying triangulum minions, travel in groups, and charge other players in mass bombing runs. They should have at least double health and damage of normal GCT drones. As for the main fortresses, they are very similar to GCTs, except that instead of throwing one targetted bomb, they will throw 2 bombs in random directions, which coupled with the other 3 fortresses and the incredibly long range of these bomb throwers means that players will have to constantly avoid 8 randomly placed bombs. The bombs should be similar in triggering and damage to zeta bombs. As for the windmill turrets, they will act like GCT ones, except that they spin slightly faster, do at least 4x the damage of GCT turrets, and would disarm any tank hit for a good 3-4 seconds. Basically, do not get hit by the windmill things. With all of these things compiled, you get a boss fight where you are always at risk of something, be it the windmill, the bombs, the orbiters, or yet another bombing run.
Square Hyperfortresses: Core Grid Extractors
Firstly, these fortresses will have 4 outer walls. As for the outer walls themselves, they are similar to drill walls, with a few differences. Firstly, and obviously, there are many more segments due to hyperfortresses with multiple walls being large objects. Secondly, instead of having annexes at every corner, there will be an annex in between every 2 normal walls. Annexes will not only be able to spawn minions and have considerably more firepower than their drill counterparts, but they will, as homage to watchtowers, spawn a certain number of trap squares when damaged. Annexes will also have the ability to heal the walls to the left and right of them very quickly, meaning that you are forced to target the annexes first. The hyperfortresses themselves will also have trap squares, but the main fortress would have 3 kinds: Red trap squares which damage, white trap squares which disarm, and a few evil blue trap squares that act as EMPs that destroy all shields and set all triggers on cooldown. Also, they will be very heavily shielded, and will have the ability to spawn minions too. The minions would be highly buffed versions of not only drill minions, but also buffed versions of the small square fortress minions.
Triangular Hyperfortresses: Elipson Processor Fortresses (Okay, that one doesn't work as well. Any other suggestions?)
Firstly, these would have 2 cirlces of region-boss like outer facilities. These outer facilities would look and act like mini-deltas without minions, with several outer structures covering the main one. The 4 main fortresses would have substantially more surrounding structures than a regular delta. All 4 hyperfortresses would produce as many minions as a regular delta, leading to 4x the amount of minions to deal with. These minions would have 25% more health and do 60% more damage than normal delta minions, meaning that in order to fight these, you need some way of dealing with the massive amount of minions. To top this off, all 4 hyperfortresses would regularly fire off gunships that do a solid 300DPS in random directions. These would follow a randomly generated, zig-zagging pattern back to the hyperfortress, making them a pain to dodge.
Although the orbiters and gunships of the circle and triangle hyperfortresses will drop a large amount of exp, they would drop no loot. As for the square hyperfortress, the annexes would drop ok, but not great loot, whereas the walls would just drop exp. The hyperfortresses themselves would drop massive bounties of good loot, making them very profitable targets.
Finally, I should add that these aren't exactly how I think hyperforesses should be. I just wanted to give a good example on how you could make a fortress feel like an upgraded version of another fortress, but also make it feel different enough to not feel like a cheap clone, hence why I put new features on every one. So, what do you guys think?
). The drill used to spawn minions from all its annexes instead of from the drill itself. That meant that drills not only spawned far more minions than they do now, but at a far faster rate. Combined with the fact that when the drill was initially created, far less people were online, as well as triggers and tanks in general were weaker (NB: To anyone who would be quick to point out how batshit OP some of the older tanks were before the nerf: Yes, but all the OP tanks at the time were not crowd-control based ones. The only OP old tank that had any crowd control capbilities was the wildfire, and that thing's trigger can still only crowd control for a very short period of time). That meant that one of the key features of drills was that you were basically dealing with not only the fortress itself, but also a constantly-replenishing army of minions. You either had to take out the army, or target the annexes to slow the rate of enemies. That's what I'm trying to accomplish by giving the drill an overflow of pretty potent minions. As for having it cover all square minions but buffed, I just thought that would be a nice touch, also that really isn't 100% necessary if that sounds really hard. As for deltas, I always found that in earlier builds (though this is probably just when I was inexperienced...yeah, that would be it 
), the delta squads acted as another outer wall. They were constantly a harassment, circling me and eating away at my shields. I would even try to clear out a few before attacking the main thing. Ofc, as I said, this wasn't nearly as prominent as it was in drills, but I like the concept of it. It would give the cutlass a time to shine, and add another layer on an already-multi-level battlefield. That's my view of a good fight in grid anyway: Since auto-aim and insta hits takes dodging and aiming out of the question, and 2D eliminates perspectives and slopes, you've gotta try and create an illusion of 3D. You've got to have multiple things to deal with, damage coming from multiple sides, angles, and ways. You've got to make a multi-dimensional encounter out of something which is theoretically 2 dimensional, which is what I was trying to do here.