This design document was last edited on 12/1/2006.
Conflict between the Western Nations Sphere Alliance and the Eurasian Mutual Freedom Treaty forces had raged on for decades. Brutal war between the Eurasian faction and American nations has shown no signs of resolution in 24 years of fighting. In a desperate struggle to end the war, several countries were threatening nuclear strike if the Western Nations did not surrender. This quickly escalated the war into a nuclear standoff, which has triggered several detonations. In reaction to the sudden brutality of both factions, several nations had abandoned their ties with either faction and declared themselves neutral nations, however these nations were quickly subdued.
In response, several scientists began applying technology originally designed for war to new uses, beginning construction on several colonies in space which were free from the throes of war. Millions of people, eager to leave the warring nations, fled to space and quickly completed work on the colonies. These self-sufficient colonies were governed by their own people and had no organized government or military.
The warring nations, which had first ignored the colonies, suddenly began to show interest in the colonies after a few engineers created a mobile suit for utility purposes and to help quicker construction of additional colonies. This however wasn’t how the earth nations saw this suit. They saw the military applications of these suits and wasted no time sending troops into space to capture the colony mass producing these mobile suits.
This was met with brutal tragedy when the Western Nations Sphere Alliance detonated a nuclear device inside the colony to prevent their enemies from obtaining the blueprints. The colonies were now a battlefield.
In response to the brutality they had been faced with, the colonies allied themselves to defend against future aggression. This quick response led the earth nations to quickly feel threatened by the colony alliance and their mobile suit weapons, and a treaty was struck between the warring factions to ally themselves against the colonies, to protect the planet from this “menace”. The nations of earth felt that a space colony would have no remorse destroying the planet with nuclear weapons since they wouldn’t be affected by the fallout.
At first, tension was high but the fighting had stopped. The United Earth Sphere Alliance (UESA), tired from it’s previous engagements was quick to look for a peaceful solution. The colonies, not so eager to jump on the peace wagon after seeing nuclear weapons used against them, slowly eased into a peaceful mindset. While they weren’t officially at war, the tension between both factions severely limited communication and transit between the colonies and earth.
These tensions continued for several years, until a small group of soldiers from earth, acting on their own, destroyed a resource satellite critical to the survival of one of the colonies.
The colonists began to see the earth as a threat. Influential leaders began claming the earth was a threat to the security of the colonies, and that it was no longer needed. More radical leaders began calling for the destruction of earth, or that all it’s military powers be dissolved for “harboring terrorists”
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Revise this. Not sure I’m going to use it.
The general concept is perpetual war in an MMO fashion. While this may seem like a large scale project, the scope has been filed down to a point to leave the amount of work fairly small, with the game mechanics naturally creating a lot of the content for us.
The “world” consists of a handful of locations which happen to lay out in a nice grid fashion, allowing them to be referenced as sectors. Sectors are referenced by a pair of 2d coordinates, and the map shows a “top down” view of the sectors. While the combat does take place in space, the actual zoning is done in a 2d fashion. This creates a “Square” shaped zone which can be easily made visible to the player. Also, the top down method of handling movement and combat creates more of an RTS feel.
Each sector has something worth taking. Some may have an important structure, such as a base or defensive structure, many are simply resource asteroids or other structures that aid in the faction’s advancement. As a faction accumulates more resource satellites, their soldiers get paid more in response.
Sectors become more valuable as they get closer to each faction. For instance, all mobile suit factories are located in sectors nearby the colonies/earth. If the enemy takes one of these factories, the player cannot buy any suit made by that factory. However, these important sectors are better defended since they can be quickly re-enforced by allied troops, and they may also come equipped with defensive structures such as turrets and cannons.
While the faction capital sectors cannot be attacked, they can be starved. The sector alone only has the ability to build a handful of mobile suits. On top of this, soldier pay is low. To balance this kind of siege, a wall is set up around all sectors creating a “square” of sectors. This creates corners and sides, specifically useful in that they can be attacked by fewer sides. Capitals are on opposite corners, so they can only by attacked by two corners.
Players traverse sectors via sector gates. These gates set up a theoretical boundary inside the sector. In reality, the sector goes on forever, empty space. However, the mobile suit won’t have enough power on its own to traverse to the next sector on it’s own so this isn’t an issue. These sector gates are used to transport players between sectors. However, they are placed at opposite ends of the sector, so some traveling is needed to go from sector to sector. When entering battle, these gates are useful strategic points since all forces enter from one.
When not in combat, players traverse sectors in a Mobile Carrier. These carriers look different per faction. The carrier they own determines how many suits they can carry. If one suit is destroyed, the next one is launched from the carrier if the player wishes, and they re-enter combat where the carrier from the sector gate they entered from. The only exception is the initial attack. Players inside the sector while it becomes attacked will have their suits launched from their current location.
Suit carriers can also be equipped with boosters to traverse sectors faster. Boosters only fit certain carriers, so they are limited to more advanced players.
All carriers also have a simple warp drive. This allows them to quickly jump back to their faction’s base without facing combat.
While in the faction base or other sectors with such facilities, players can dock at various structures. These include mobile suit factories, upgrade facilities to advance their mobile suit’s weaponry and armor, repair facilities to repair damaged suits, and other facilities that are outlined later in this document. If the sector is attacked while a player is docked, they will be ejected from the dock and thrown into combat.
In combat, players are greeted with a simple interface for attacking enemies. This includes a top down map of the sector (With fog of war. Revealed area is compiled among all allied units), a chat box for discussion among allies, and a lightweight collection of command buttons that allows players to perform unit specific actions.
Movement and combat is very similar to the classic top down RTS. Each suit has a specific set of unique commands based on it’s equipment, but all have the usual “attack”, “stop”, “move” command set.
Mobile
suits are launched in groups of 5. This number can be increased based on the
player’s skills, but more suits launched does not mean an increased carrier
capacity, so players must be careful how they organize their squads. These
suits all function independent of each other, allowing them to split up and
complete more widespread tasks, but most combat situations will require the
complete squad to be victorious.
Sectors will initially be all in space. Expansion to earth is a possibility, but outside the scope of this document. Sectors will include various structures and obstacles, none of which are useful in a combat situation for much other than cover.
Victory conditions for a sector vary from the usual MMO. Each sector has a set number of Contact Points (CPs) which must be held by a side for a set amount of time. After the elapsed time, they become controlled by that faction. To take a sector, the attacking faction must control all of the CPs, or a majority of them after 15 minutes. Destroying all enemy units is also a valid victory condition but may be slower than controlling all CPs on the map.
Players can advance their skills by spending combat points on skills. The amount of points earned is capped, so players must spend them wisely. Points can be placed into four categories to enhance their combat advantage over other players.
A player with strong leadership can control more units in battle. This gives the player a unique advantage over other players in that he has a large quantity of units on the battlefield. Leadership also gives small a bonus to unit speed.
A player’s control allows him stronger understanding of mobile suits, and thus he can use more advanced mobile suit types. While advanced suits can be upgraded, players with a high control can upgrade to more advanced suits, as well as buy more advanced suits from factories.
Intelligence determines what kind of technology a player can fit to his mobile suit. A higher intelligence increases the maximum complexity level that a unit can equip, above and beyond it’s normal value (calculated by unit level)
A player’s skill attribute gives a bonus to the amount of equipment that can be placed on a mobile suit. Specifically, it gives a bonus to the maximum weight a mobile suit can carry.
While players advance, their mobile suits can as well. As it gains experience from battles, it’s level may increase. An increased unit level gives a bonus to what it can equip (complexity). Some units can be upgraded to more advanced versions after a certain complexity is reached. For instance, if we had a unit named Bunny, at level 10 with a player bonus of 5, it’ll have 15 complexity, which would allow it to be upgraded to an Angry Bunny. Angry Bunny would have slightly advanced stats vs a Bunny, and may have additional slots. Furthermore, at a certain maximum complexity level, it may be able to upgrade from an Angry Bunny to a Placid Rabbit, which is a similar unit but may have a different focus (For instance, Placid Rabbit may have strong close combat skills where Angry Bunny excels in long range combat)
Unit advancement is broken into tech trees, which fork into similar units as demonstrated above. An upgrade cannot be reversed, so players must be careful how they upgrade their mobile suits.
Previously, all units are referred to as Mobile Suits. There are multiple types of units which may or may not be effective against any given type. The more common type is a Mobile Suit. These small units are very versatile, and come in many shapes and sizes. Mobile Ships are generally larger, but cannot capture CPs. They tend to take lower ground in a battle, and attack from below... These heavily armored units can take a fair amount of abuse from standard weapons, but are generally weak to ship to ship weapons. However, ship to ship weapons track slow and cannot target small objects such as mobile suits. At the same time, standard mobile suit to mobile suit weaponry is far too weak to do any real damage to ships and suits will not waste their time trying to attack them. While mobile suit to ship weaponry does exist, it is too cumbersome to be used against other mobile suits, and also cannot target objects that small.
Mobile suits are quick versatile humanoid suits which excel in combat. They are small, quick, and can be equipped for a wide variety of combat situations. They however generally cannot attack larger targets due to the massive size and power requirements of these weapons.
Mobile Ships are larger than mobile suits. They can be fit with large cannons which can penetrate other ship armor, or smaller turrets to attack mobile suits. The thick armor of Mobile Ships makes them practically invulnerable to average Mobile Suit weaponry, but other ship to ship weapons and anti-ship weaponry can easily slice through this armor. The largest disadvantage to a mobile ship is that it is too large to assist in the capture of a CP. However, they are useful in defending mobile suits currently stationed on one.
While mobile Ships are larger than mobile suits, they use the same number of bays in a Mobile Carrier, so unit deployment is not affected.
Every
player has one of these. It cannot be attacked and warps out of any battle to
the nearest gate. While the carrier can be replaced and upgraded, it cannot be
used for combat purposes ever. It’s sole purpose is to transport player units
to the battlefield.