I look away for, what, a few hours, and this jumps from half a page to two! This is gonna be one *** long post!
zaki90:flood will be rushed to find resoucres so they can countinue to live to infect. they should always be losing resoucres until a host is found, then after that host is flood it will continue to drop, this way the flood will be forced to find more hosts or they die. thats how high ground works. the team on the high edge can kill the enemy with out taking damage. the enemy cannot attack back because they are to high.this causes them to leave. the flood (kinda like the enemy) will be forced to find other hosts or they lose.now look at the scale ------------flood < human = covie-------
but here is the worse part. ok you think the flood are gone and you get off the high ground(with a pelican or something) then a random infection that has been hiding jumps and infects someone.now it spreads spores. the flood just came back wit a trick futher balancing the scale
----------------------flood=human=covie-------------------------
Quite the opposite is true for most of your points. First, the Flood will almost never be losing resources. I think the best way for them to be implemented would be to make Calcium their resource. Sure, bodies are important, but Calcium is the thing that you have a counter for somewhere on the screen. Slowly the counter will rise (very slowly). The counter merely represents the extra Calcium store the Flood has. You can add to the Calcium store by adding bodies to the central intelligence. The only time the Flood really actually loses Calcium is when a Flood Form is physically destroyed (since it can no longer be fed to the central intelligence). So, using this system, you would now "buy" (and I use this word lightly) upgrades. Calcium spent on Infection Forms, since they automatically spawn, are basically compensated for. However, the Calcium spent on transforming a Combat Form into a Carrier Form or several Carrier Forms into a Juggernaut would require you to "buy" the upgrade. Pure Forms would also cost money (to upgrade the Stalker Form to a Tank Form or Turret Form, that is; Tank Form to Turret Form and vice versa are free). Yes, there will be three tiers of central intelligence (and this isn't because I based it around the Zerg, but more by chance): Photo-Gravemind, Gravemind, and Super Gravemind. The size of the central intelligence will be based on the size of your Calcium store, but to upgrade from a Gravemind to a Super Gravemind, for example, you would have to "spend" Calcium. Furthermore, as stated previously, most Flood Forms would have no trouble with cliffs, so that sort of high ground mentality wouldn't be effective. It would, rather than create a safe zone to defend from, become a death zone for trapped units.
Spartan543: Rot, at first i didn't want the Flood in HW, but you changed my mind.
I have an idea though.
How about, when the Flood infect a building, it produces infected versions of the units it infects.
For Example, if you infect a barracks, you can get Combat Form from it.
If you infect a vehicle depot, you can get Flood Driven Warthogs and Scorpions.
Finally, if you infect a turret, you will control it, and it will turn on UNSC, or Covenant.
I think allowing the Flood to use buildings traditionally i nthe way you are suggesting would ruin the feel of the Flood, to a degree. To compromise, I would suggest that by capturing certain buildings, the Flood get a couple bonus units. For example, infecting a Barracks would mean fast spawning Infection Forms, like I previously suggested, but the Flood player would also get five Combat Forms as a bonus for pwning.
dragoon9105: The Gravemind as your main building makes flood vs flood possible but theres usualy only 1 gravemind so wouldnt an infected cruiser be possible then its final tech form would be a gravemind.
Also infecting a base would me once you secure an enemy base you would mutate your made carrier forms into a bigger fatter carrier form that could bond itself to an enemy building and start producing flood spore and growth around it.
heres an example.
Flood vs U.N.S.C
Lets say the flood captured a human base. The flood player would mutate his carrier forms into Spore carrier forms.
Flood player makes the spore carriers go into the human barracks burse and infect all the personel and begin flood spore growth.
Now the infected barracks will start to spread flood spore and it will latch onto other buildings.
The entire unsc base becomes infected the buildings will have flood growths coming off of them like the ones you see in high charity in halo 2.
The flood players main base is hit by a mac cannon by the unsc player and the gravemind dies.
The flood infected command center will become your new base of operations and the cycle begins again.
Ps:If the Infected Cruiser idea works then you could deploy the materials inside it considering the flood are very intelligent and a crashed cruiser means a few starting combat forms that could mutate into base structures maybe.
I really don't like the infected cruiser idea mainly because it suggests a much higher level of infection that a Flood player would start out with. And I think that building infection would be very similar to vehicle infection, except that a very small building might take something like 200 Infection Forms to infect, while a larger building might require 500. A Command Center like building would probably be 1000.
Spartan543: personnaly, i like my idea better on the Buildings.
It will be cool to infect a UNSC barracks, and then see Combat Forms come out of it and attack the efenders nearby, or infecting a turret, and seeing it attack its former masters.
Plus, lets say you can capture his Command Center, and you can get a few special abilites from it.
1. He cant use MAC cannon.
2.After sending enough combat forms inside, you can control MAC.(Combats are to create a Photo-gravemind.)
3.You can build infection forms from it.
4.You can build infected builders(lets just say that they exist), and build infected buildings.
5.It will expand the Flood "spore".
Finally, 6.It will have 2 ranged forms on the roof, as turrrets.
As you can see, the Command Center is a practically game-ending ability, however, it is in enemy base, and is vulnerable, it takes 50+ Infection Forms to infect crews, and the Mac strike will take 20+ Combat Forms to use.(for purposes of Infection, Carrier Forms count as 6 Infection Forms.)
Like I said just above, I am very iffy about allowing the Flood to use infected buildings traditionally. The Flood are not a traditional faction, so I would want their game mechanics to really defy a lot of the traditional RTS basics enough to make them new and exciting.
Spartan #088: I gotta say... some of the ideas sound pretty good.
But it's starting to sound ALOT like the Zerg and Tyranids, with it's 3 tiered HQ and the infecting building to get Infected "whatevers".
The continual loss of resources though could make the army rather difficult to play for certain types of players... Defensive players, like myself, I am a mostly defensive player until I have a massive force to assault with. I would have one hell of a time to try and use the Flood with my style of tactics...
Personally, I think that some aspects need to be re-thought or cut completely so that you can lose the continual lose of resources and still have a balanced army
Still sounds like a good idea... just thought I would voice my opinion.
Trust me, the Flood will be very little like the Zerg. The Flood will not collect resources, build buildings, or build units like a traditional RTS faction (like the Zerg) do. It will all be about infecting, and the only units produced rather than upgraded will be Infection Forms and Stalker Forms (much later in the game), and these will be produced at no cost. Think of it sort of like a game of Evolution in StarCraft, but much much more complex and sinister.
zaki90: i dont think being able to use a mac gun is possible by flood. the mac gun is powered by a giant ship above. the flood do not control the ship. its takes one infection form to infect one person, but to futher amke that process faster there would be more infection forms.if ur a denfensive type then dont use flood. the flood were used to charge, charge and charge. see the resources for flood should be bodies(used for making diffrent types of units),calcuim (used for the upgrading of flood) and intelligance (for upgrading gravemind,uses of vechilces and wepons). the flood lose intellagance if they do not have enough bodies or calcuim for its gravemind.the flood lose calcuim and bodies because they cannot infect hosts.once they infect a host they will have a gained some bodies. of ya u need bodies and calcuim for making infection forms.this way the flood will be rushed but the scale will time up because the flood's stregth is alot.
I still think Calcium is the only true resource of the Flood. They don't save up bodies, they use them immediately, and then perhaps harvest them later for Calcium.
zaki90: thats wat you think. the juggernaut acn probaly only jump about 20 feet. cliffs are about 100 feet
What are you talking about? When was the last time you saw a 100-foot high cliff in an RTS game? Its a pain to render, create animations for aircraft to fly over, etc. If its too high for a Juggernaut to jump up to, its probably too high for an RTS screen.
C.C.: Wow, great ideas Rot, but i think the flood could also be implemented in single player also. Since Harvest gets glassed there could be a level or agroup of levels where you fight only flood. Since your not seeing the covenant attacking the flood your AI assumes there is a new kind of Covenant troop. The covenant, unknown to your ship, are taking their ground troops off the planet and are preparing to glass it. The planet gets glassed, all humans on it died, and the spirit of Fire is destroyed. The UNSC never hears about the battle between the humans and the flood because the SoF was to maintain silence during the mission, the only human ship to fight the flood is destroyed, along with the intelligence on the flood. The covenent never fight or saw the flood, so they don't know about the parasite.Plus all the flood were killed in the glassing so no specimens remain. All this Allows the flood to be virtually undiscovered by both sides as all witnesses are dead. Plus there are 15 campaign levels, it's hard to believe they'll all only be against the covenant.
While the Covenant eventually glass the planet, we win in space. Vice Admiral Cole, with a fleet thrice as large as the Covenant's, leads us to victory in his four year campaign.
xolejh: after getting a closer look at the flood on halo 3 and reading all the terminals, this is what i have to say.
The thought about infecting vehicles...sort of. Flood are relatively stupid, grave mind being the only intelligent thing, so its sort of hard for them to do anythting besides very basic functions. Now, that doesnt mean they can't drive a vehicle, and then crash it into another vehicle to save the flood the trouble of detroying that one. The only reason they can use the human weapons is because of their simplicity(and the marines died holding them). The only way they ever got those ships everywhere is by crashing them into the planet.
Now about flood v bases. Flood should basically taint bases the same way they taint land, but this should take longer because their getting shot at. About walls and turrets...i think that they probably shouldnt be able to use turrets, but i really dont care about that as much as vehicles. and yeah, they can jump walls. If you were fighting flood, the best place to be would probably be a nice relatively level valley, with most of the trees destroyed, since they are vertually all melee units and you would be able to see them coming.(i know i can't spell, please be nice, i got all the mistakes i could spot)
The Flood, however, are intelligent enough to use Slipspace (as seen by the cruiser that crashes into Earth during Halo 3). And the operators of a vehicle would be infected with the hands on the steering wheel or gattling gun or whatever they were operating, so I don't think its too much of a stretch to see a Warthog go blazing over a hill with the chaingun blaring, infected Marines in all three positions. I'm pretty sure we actually see quite a bit of Flood-operated vehicles in the Arbiter parts of the Halo 2 campaign.
TC GILTY ANGEL: Ya i think the flood would make an excellent addition to the game because just 2 people wont work but the flood shouldnt loss resources for not infecting thats ridiculous they should have weaker defense then the other races but not loss money for not infecting.
Red Alert 2 did quite well with only two main factions (and don't come and say there were more, because in reality, the different countries only had one special unit each; it all came down to Allied vs Soviet...and Yuri was a tad overpowered in the expansion, so don't mention him either). However, I agree about the losing resources thing.
Vortex_13: After reading all of the ideas presented here I find that I am wanting the Flood to be in the game, they will offer many hours of replayability to the game. But one thing I see that has been over looked about the Flood is their many area-of-effect buffs simply for being there. For example in Halo: Combat Evolved during the Library leve 343 Guilty Spark says something to the effect of "I m glad you brought a self contained armor, that will serve you well when the flood begin to alter the atmoshpere to propogate their growth." So basically the Flood can change the air so that it is deadly to anything not protected. That could be implemented in the game by having the tainted ground surrounding the gravemind start out as just a means of producing infection forms and getting calcium out of the ground. However when the gravemind reaches a certain level the tainted areas close to its influence will begin to emit a toxic cloud that will damage any Marinines/Elites or open vehichal operators that you send into the area. If you leave your troops in the areas too long they will die and simply become more Flood. That innate ability would help to defend the Flood against massive army rushes late in the game, since the Flood are the overall weakest of the three races. The toxic clouds would be a hinderence to most players but to the more experienced it would offer unique strategies.
For example say you the Covanent and you are fighting the Flood, it is late in the game and the Flood player has an enormous toxic field surrounding his base. How could you as the Covies beat this player: well you could build Scarabs, Wriaths, Phantoms ect. and just try to break though the Flood defenses, but all of those things cost lots of money and most of your heavy hitters (Wraiths for example) move too slow to avoid infection. How could you get by this defense without spending thousands of dollars that you might not have when you could simply use Grunts on Ghosts to attack the base. If you guys remember Grunts have self contiained breathers full of methane to breath so they would be immune to the cloud's effects and the Ghosts move too fast to be infected easily. This strategy would make players consider their lesser units more in late in the game than most RTSs, since in other games players simply discard their beginning units when their base "levels up" so to speak.
So Covenant could use Grunts to great effect against the Flood, and the Humans could use the Flood's weakness to fire to their advantage. Since the tainted land is just Flood growth the UNSC could get a bunch of Marienies equiped with flamethrowers to burn the toxic producing ground to a crisp, opening a path to the Flood base. This stratagy of using lesser units to combat higher level Flood would help balence the game out in terms of the Flood becoming overpowered as the game progresses.
A very literal personification of attrition? I love it. Wonderful idea. Something I completely overlooked.
Vortex_13: I know I have typed for a while so I keep my last idea as brief as possible. (This idea would only work if Ensamble put hero units in the game but here it goes.) If the UNSC and the Covanent had heros the Flood could not take them over, ( If a Flood player killed a UNSC player's Sergent Johnson, the Flood player would just get a combat form not a Johnson-form to keep the Flood from massing everyone's heros) also the Flood would have no heros other than the Grave mind, meaning that unit acts as a tech building and a hero. As stated earlier in this thread the Grave mind would have limited to no mobility when by itself, but for example if the Flood captured a Covie Scarab or UNSC Elephant the Flood player could spend a significant ammount of calcium and forfiet the ability to continually spawn Infection forms in order to attach his Grave mind to the captured Scarab or Elephant and then presto Flood hero. The now mobile Grave mind would offer sigificant hitpoints to the vehical it is attached to and still use the Dominate Will ability, and the vehical's originall weapons, making it one of the most powerful heros in the game, but if the vehical is destroyed with the Gravemind still on board the Flood player losses his Grave mind and must start all over again, meaning players will have to balance the advantages of having a near unstopabble hero with the risk of having to start their base over at square one.
Also a wonderful idea. The only thing is that I would make our mobile hero spawn Infection Forms (at a slower rate than before) just to keep the Flood going.
dragoon9105: Well you could expand apon that. say your gravemind is mobile. you could either use him to do 1 of 3 things.
1.you could move him to another location and let him imbed himself in a safer or clean area and spread the floods spore all over a new area and tighten your hold on a new region.
2.Use him as a beefed up hero and use him to attack the enemy. he would probably use his tentacles in addition to the scarabs weapons or elephants machine guns and spread a toxic cloud over himself and nearby flood and give them a regenerating aura.
3. transport him into a newly conquered base and have him infect/infest all of the buildings and gain a massive amount of recources in addition to pissing off the player.
Also Instead of transporting your gravemind maybe you could get an option for your gravemind to advance himself further or become a mobile hero.
If you advanced himself he would root himself in the ground and become a stronger gravemind gain some phycic abilities and start to slowly altar the battle field like a super weapon. in other words you would notice the landscape and air becoming foggy and weak and bleeding units becoming infected. until flood growths and trees and native lifeforms start becoming infected. the player would likely recieve an urgent warning like Enemy Gravemind Detected ____ minutes until planetary infection.
The mobile version would be able to move himself destroy "small" bases singlehandedly and mutate units around him infection form or not becuase of the toxic cloud and aura.
I think the way it would work is, at the level of Super Gravemind, the toxic cloud would really begin to teraform the area surrounding the central intelligence. I don't know if it would be quite like a super weapon, but it would be pretty awesome. At a certain point, the ground would become so infected that even plasma or fire wouldn't burn it back to normal, like Vortex suggested as a counter for the Flood toxic clouds.
zaki90: then the flood will be crazy strong, they could charge with thousands of infection forms and your defenseless because the humans cannot do anything but run.if there calcium did not drop they could build pure forms at the begginging. it would be to powerful. the gravemind would soon invade the map because it was mobile. the flood should be focoused on gathering resources to futher increase intellgance to win. watch-
I've been watching, and thus far, you haven't shown a true grasp of the vision I am trying to impart. The Flood cannot build Pure Forms to start with. The Flood do not build units. A Photo-Gravemind spawns free Infection Forms every two seconds. A Gravemind spawns free Infection Forms every second and spawns a free Stalker Form (the key to Pure Forms) every sixty seconds. A Super Gravemind spawns two free Infection Forms every second and spawns a free Stalker Form every thirty seconds. There is no building. And the Flood would not be crazy strong, because they're pace would still be set by the enemy until Gravemind was achieved (which takes a long long time to get without any unwilling help from the enemy). The Flood are among the weakest races because they are so prone to rush. Destroy a Flood army, it can't just micro another up while you march on its Gravemind, it has to infect some of yours. Thus, the toxic cloud idea balances this by adding attrition. Not serious attrition, but enough to help. But the UNSC and Covenant can still counter it with fire or plasma weapons or units that have breathers like Grunts and Spartans.
zaki90: 1. infection form kills human
2.the human would be infected.
3. he sooner later becauses part of a grave mind
4. the infection forms form and attck and so on
5.the flood survive because they do not starve because they do not lose resources.the humans move to moutains where flood cannot reach them.they cannot stay there for long and come down.
6.a month later the planet is full of flood, a super gravemind has grown.flood has destroyed the world. they have tons of resources because there was so many hosts. stage 8 of the flood, invasion.
wat i mean is if they dont get a host they lose resources because the starve.now watch this happen again with my idea.
1. infection form kills human
2. human becomes infected
3. he sooner or later becomes part of a gravemind
4.the infection forms form and attck and so on
5. the flood are starved because the humans have settled in high moutains(high ground low ground stragety) where snow and wind caused the flood not able to feast apon the vulnerable humans.the flood starve because they have they have no resources to continue to survive.
6. the flood are wiped out and humans are able to return and conolize the planet without being terrriozed by flood.
oh ya same thing with covies.
You do realize this is an RTS, as in Real Time Strategy. There is no month of play, no giant planet with a civilian population for the Flood to feast on, no vast and measureless terrain for the UNSC to run to. The Flood have one source of food: the other enemies on the map, which has a set size and terrain type.
Vortex_13: It is true the Flood if deneyed accses to viable food sorces would starve and enter the dormant stage. But that would at least take several months to happen, a lot longer than a standard game of Halo Wars muiltiplayer would take, so that factor really has no bearing on the game, also the Flood would not be overpowered in the game because they lack what the other two races have.
Strong units: The Flood have the weakest army in the game, (The Gravemind idea would only work if heros were in the game and if heros were there it would still balence out) Even the strongest of the Flood forms can be easily destroyed by one tank or two to three warthogs.
Stability: Given the Flood's basic drive to devour everything in sight their economy in game would reley almost entirly on finding viable hosts for infection (the calcium drawn from the ground is moot compared to the ammount of calcium gained from infecting one Grunt) so the Flood would have to attack other players in order to survive. Some people might consider it unfair that the Flood is built around rushing, but that is how the Flood operated in the Halo games, and given the fact that the UNSC and Covenant weakest units can wreak havoc on even a mature Flood base is sure to make up for any Flood advantages. Also, in drawing from the Halo novels even Grunts could defend themselves from infection forms, the only time in the books that it describes an utter victory by the Flood is when they catch their enemy off gaurd (like with Captain Keyes) or when the Flood sacrifices five to ten infection forms on a single Grunt or Jackel. (It says towards the end of the Halo Book: The Flood that when the Flood attacked Covenant stationed on the Pillar of Autum's crash site, that no more then eight infection forms attacked one Jackel, ripping its face off and taping the creature's spinal cord before the first shot reached its target.) That is the Flood's only defence, offensive, if denyed hosts the Flood can only produce infection forms and in game one infection form is not going to win even agianst a critially wounded Grunt with one HP left.
Support Powers: As stated earlier in this thread the Flood would only have one support power of Dominate Will at there disposal. When compared to the UNSC's MAC Bombardment there is no contest. In reality if a fully upgraded Flood player went up against a fully upgraded UNSC player in a frontal assult, the Flood player would almost always lose. All the human player would have to do is call in the MAC gun on the Flood army and kill ninty percent of its units and then use his army on the rest of the Flood. And even if the Flood used the Dominate Will power on the human player it would not cover as big an area as the MAC would and even if it did all the human player would have to do is call in the MAC to destroy both armies, and given that the Flood is so much weaker than the humans, some UNSC units would more than likely survive the bombardment to defend against any infection form rushes.
Very true. Things like the toxic cloud and being able to scale unpassable terrain are things to help balance the Flood from being the weakest. They don't need an economical set back too.
Vortex_13: I was just thinking, the Flood should be able to infest buildings from enemy bases, but they should only be allowed to do so once the Grave mind has reached a certain stage, and once infected the building should NOT spawn combat forms or carrier forms. I mean the locig behind such an ability is dumb; The Flood have captured a human barrecks but the humans keep sending infantry to this building to be captured (stupid). If a building has fallen under Flood control the UNSC command would not keep sending recruits to that building, also the Flood would just run through the base and infest everyone inside it and be done with it. So in my opinion if the Flood captured a human or covie barrecks they would only get to infest any units being "built" at the time and any units garrisoned there at the time, but no more. So, some of you might be asking why other than the fact you can get ten free combat forms would one infest a base, well I' ll tell you. First of all the Flood are generally dull ( without a Grave mind the Flood can only fire wepons that their hosts had or knew how to use, same for vehicals) they cannot operate complicated machineary, but throw in a Grave mind and the Flood truly become dangerous; in the game if a Flood player infests a human vehical factory he would only get combat forms off of any units garrisoned there, but if the Grave mind reaches a certain stage of its intellegence it will know how to run the factory and produce vehicals for the combat forms to drive. (This idea works great since the Flood have no vehicals of their own).
On a side note I think that once infected the player who's building was infected can do something about it. Humans for example given their adaptability would be able to burn the infection off the building with fire. The covenant would (in deriving from their approch to infection) would most likely destroy the "tainted" structure, but given their fanatical devotion to thier religion would actually be emboldened by the destruction of their building, making for a boost to covie units stats for destroying infected buildings in game (sort of like blood lust in warcraft 3).
Well, you're on fire today. While I had decided earlier that infected buildings will give a bonus of a few Combat Forms, but then it will act as an Infection Form spawn, the rest of this was stuff I hadn't considered, and that I like. Basically, when the central intelligence becomes a Super Gravemind, infected vehicle bays would become usable.
