Arena Combat Campaign Preview

[Mustang]

I'm working on an "arena combat" type of campaign right now, with the player taking the role of a futuristic gladiator in 2020 going through an arena tournament ladder, buying up better weapons as he gains victories. Here's the very first scenario. I'm posting it to see if people like the idea. Please, tell me honestly what you think of it, because I don't want to work for weeks or months on this project and end up with a campaign that nobody likes. So tell me where it sucks, where it needs to be improved, and so on. This is only the very first battle in the campaign, and even then it's only a beta version. It only lasts a few turns, but I want to see if people are interested or have any suggestions.

Some advice on playing it:

- Get to the center of the arena quickly so your opponents will have to advance to meet you.
- Don't fire on the move!
- Watch for mud and trenches because they WILL immobilize you.

You'll probably take a few turns to get it right. Once again, this is only the campaign's first mission, and it's a very small one compared to the ones that will come after it.

[Vas_FURY]

I played through the mission, and this does seem like a good idea. However, it's success will largely depend on creative map design and very precise team balancing. It would be interesting to see how this campaign turns out.

[Mustang]

Thanks, Fury, I was just about to give up. It's soo difficult to make the AI do what you want it to do in an unconventional campaign like this. I've been working for a week on the Race scenario, trying to get the computer to cooperate. Apparently it dosen't like driving fast and, not only does it deliberately run over ditches and immobilize itself, it tries to avoid the player and travel around outside of the arena. I tried everything, from increasing the unit speed to putting victory objectives all along its path, but nothing worked. I'll come back to that idea later, for now I'm working on the Island Arena.

The main problems I think I will face are, 1, figuring out how to use waypoints to give the computer an intelligent plan, and 2, making the scenarios last long enough for a real campaign fight. This is probably the main problem. How long should they last? 5-15 minutes? Half an hour? It's hard to make the player take time on one-unit scenarios.

[Mustang]

Come on, people! Nine downloads and only one reply! Tell me what you think of the scenario. Was it too short? Too easy? I need to know so I can design the rest of the campaign.