Map preview - Castle Siege

This is a minigame I'm working on called Castle Siege (the map is, for now, just named Castle Island). I had this idea back in Reach using the Insane/Haloball gametype, but couldn't quite get the mechanics to make sense. It turns out that ricochet multi-team is even better-suited to making this work the way I imagined.

Castle Siege is played in rounds (right now 4 rounds of 5 minutes each - this and much else may be subject to change, pending test results). Each team plays offense and defense twice. When on defense, you sit behind or on the walls of a mighty stone-walled castle, trying to beat back the attackers. When on offense, you try to get inside the castle, kill people, and steal stuff, in the best marauding tradition.

How you get points: 1. Demolishing the castle. Attackers have catapults (mancannons) that fire fusion coils at the castle walls. The fusion coils go off with a mightier-than-usual BOOM and knock pieces out of the walls. Knock out enough blocks and you can punch holes in the outer and then inner walls that allow direct access. 2. Stealing the treasure. Three jewels (ricochet balls) spawn in the castle - grab them, run or drive away, and get back to your territory to score. Each theft is worth far more than demolishing a block, so really this is your big objective.

How you fight: Castle Siege offers two classes, knights and archers. Knights have the traditional sword (energy) and shield (hardlight - unlimited use) to do battle with, as well as an old-timey blunderbuss (shotgun) to fire off the catapults. They also have the mobility perk to facilitate their mindless aggression. Archers have their bow and arrow (sniper rifle) only - no AA, no backup weapon. On a map this big, archers are perhaps more critical of the two, but for the final invasion you need knights as well. And oh yeah, the defending team also has a dragon (banshee). Just one, so be gentle with it. As the round wears on, the offense will try to blast big holes in the walls, encroach, and steal the jewels away; the defense will try to keep the catapults from doing too much damage (you can shoot the people using them as well as shooting the fusion coils out of the air) and try to keep the castle un-marauded. There are also a couple sneaky extra ways into the castle that don't involve blowing stuff up, so the defense has to be on their toes.

I'll be testing this over the coming weeks, mainly in the Tuesday night TCOJ lobby. If you guys know Juanez Sanchez, AnotherClaymore, or any of those guys, look for any of us Tuesday nights starting at 7 Eastern time.

Pictures:

The castle.


From the defender's vantage point.


Overhead view. Castle below, three stations of two catapults each spread throughout the woods above.


Catapultin'.


Stuff asplodes.


You can do damage.


Eventually you can do a LOT of damage.


Steal these; drive away.


But watch out for the dragon.

 

More or less. What's happening is that the blocks are tagged as "forgeballs" worth 1 point each, and the fusion coils are tagged as "forgegoals" worth 0 points, with a spawn sequence number that combines an explosion effect with deleting both the goal and the ball, and a cylinder "shape" big enough that usually when the coil hits a small block, the radius encompasses it. The result is that when the coil meets the block, there's a massive explosion, the block despawns, some cool char effect is applied to one or two adjacent blocks, and the attacking team is awarded a point. But what it looks like is that the castle wall is slowly being blown up real nice.

 

Block points are determined by data saved in both the blocks and the goals (fusion coils). In this case, the blocks are all tagged as worth 1 point and the coils zero, which adds up to give you 1 point per block destroyed. If you level most of the castle and destroy basically everything you can in a round, it's worth over a hundred points. Jewels are worth 50 apiece though - that's just a setting in the ricochet gametype itself (which only applies to ricochet balls, not "forgeballs"). And the round ends if you score 300 total points.

 

Thank you. And yes, we'll definitely be playing it. The only thing is, the map is huge - basically BTB sized - so I'm not sure how well it will work 4v4.

 

It's amazingly flexible. The core ricochet mechanics are kind of limited, but the additional forgeball/goal stuff in the multi-team variant is extremely pliable, and you can basically combine the two gametypes (ricochet and forgeball) in whatever way you can dream up. I already am working on another idea that is pretty different from this one.

 

Thanks all for helping test this last night. Some thoughts:

- Seemed to go pretty well for a first test of a very unusual gametype that I only barely explained before we started.

- There was some feedback suggesting to limit the amount of snipers. I'm still contemplating this. Here's the thing - the game really was conceived as two phases, first very long-range combat (with the catapults and snipers) and then very short-range (swords and shields). The phases kind of overlap but basically the idea is that you'd snipe for 2-3 minutes, then most players will switch to swords and fight at the castle. Due to the size and design, it's not really a mid-range combat map, and the sword class is fairly limited until the walls are blown up some. I also don't want the classes/weapons to diverge too much from faux-medieval styles of fighting; the idea now is that you have archers (snipers) and knights (swords), and it should play kind of like a real siege would have gone. Sooooo... what do the rest of you think? Was this problematic for you, or no? I was comfortable (when on offense) using my sniper to fire the catapults and also fight with snipers on the wall; however, when on defense I was able to drop into the woods (not on purpose, initially) and just go to town on the offense. I also saw some guys on offense hiding behind a rock and just sniping away, which really misses the point - if you're not firing the catapults or trying to get into the castle, you're probably not helping your team a whole lot. But maybe that was owed to me not explaining things too well.

Anyway, I could always try a different "archer" weapon, perhaps. Maybe just a conventional precision weapon, or something wacky like a railgun that is harder to use over large distances. The one key thing is that it has to work for breaking those pallets on the catapults - the sniper is perfect for that (takes just one shot). The precision weapons kind of suck for it, but they might work better if I monkey with the damage and health settings...

- The "dragon" (banshee) seemed to work just fine. Not OP at all. That's actually another reason I'm worried about reducing the snipers - they really keep that banshee under control.

- The last round was a best-case scenario of how I hoped the game would play. Our team was coordinating well, breached the wall on both sides eventually, and successfully stole three ricochet balls.

- Finally, I hope to test this with more players eventually, because I think 12-16 people is the ideal numbers. It's a big map and you want a lot of stuff going on, with some people firing catapults, some trying to sneak through or over the walls, and so on. Also, I think the more people you have on each team, the harder it will be for players on defense to sit in the woods and just snipe. If 8 guys on the other team are all spawning out there, it becomes a really dangerous place to be.

 

There's actually a jump-up to get out of the walls on both sides - if you use it you end up outside the castle. That gap has to be there because there has to be enough room on top of the walls for defenders to move around, but the walls themselves can't be more than two layers of blocks thick (and also can't be just one, as you'd breach them far too quickly).

I like the explosions personally! Feels like real warfare. My hope is that with 12+ players it truly erupts into chaos - guys running around everywhere, explosions going off, people climbing over the walls to attack, etc. Anyway it's definitely not your normal, quiet snipers match.

 

I've made some modifications for next time. I thought I'd try making the archers have railguns instead of sniper rifles; they're harder to use at a distance, and the charge time conveniently kind of mimics how a bow works, anyway! This required a modification to the catapults so that blowing up the pallets wouldn't also take out the fusion coils, but I've managed that by rearranging the shield doors that were in front of them to now be part of the mechanism (while still blocking would-be griefing from the defense on the castle walls).

I've also come up with what I hope is a good solution to the issue of players wandering all over and away from their stations (defenders on the wall; offense around the catapult stations). It was actually simple: turn off unlimited ammo. Instead there are ammo pickups for the railguns on both sides of each catapult station, and a few in various spots behind the castle walls also. This gives a huge incentive to stay in your intended area until all hell breaks loose at the end of the round - otherwise, you'll be stranded in a hostile neutral area with no ammunition.

Since this adjustment requires weapon pickup to be enabled, I've tweaked the classes too. Both classes now have hardlight shield (otherwise you might just as well spawn as a knight and then pick up a railgun so that you have both a railgun and an armor ability), and the perks have been adjusted - archers start with dexterity and ammo, knights with mobility and explosives. Every player having a shield should be interesting - it will hopefully offset the # of railguns on the map and make it harder to constantly pick people off. This way, you might have to catch them firing (or napping) to take them out.

Finally, I may adjust the ordnance drops. Right now they're focused heavily on power-ups. I'm thinking of putting in an incineration cannon - the mother of all flaming arrows. 'cause what this game really needs is more explosions. My only question - can you block an incin shot with a hardlight shield..?