Idea

[AU_Skythe]

Well, while reading a post an idea struck my mind. A lightbulb just like the one in this post. Jedi are underused in this game, at least in Standard RM games. Why? Its not because they are crap, not at all. Its because they require too much effort to make. One jedi padawan is obviously better than 4 troopers, say, but 10 troopers is better than a padawan. Its a lot easier to set up a troop center and make 10x cheapo troopers than building a jedi temple, going out of your way to mine 200 nova WHICH could be used to advance to tech 3 faster. So my idea is this:

Implement jedi into this new RTS game. One of the resources could be force power, force knowledge etc. You start the game with, say, 5 of these and a jedi padawan could cost 10~. You would gain this in perhaps similar ways to faith or wahtever its called in aom (lightning resource lol), by battling or other non-annoying means (not collecting holocrons or anything similar). Once you get enough, theres a button somewhere on the screen, you click it, and you choose a soldier. Lets say your republic, you have 10 force power, click the button, choose a clone trooper, he becomes a jedi padawan. Now this idea wouldnt goto the extent of mega's one, where they gain ginormous amounts of hp and attack, they simply gain melee attack, a few abilities, a shiny new lightsaber and an experience bar.

You could argue that this is un-starwarsy, but since when did a civ start off on a planet with 3 workers a command center and a scout, when did jedi magically appear out of temples, and when did the galactic empire fight the trade federation on a desert planet. So its probably a better idea than the original ones, just imagine your injecting lots of chloromidians or whatever into troops heh.

This could work similar to say, son of osiris in age of mythology or doom in warcraft frozen throne (dreadlord ultimate on one of the missions).

Troopers/jedi/etc's helmet could come on when the spell is inflicted and he could gain a lightsaber, and as he looses hp armour slowly comes off (just for show, i think it'd be cool).

Abilities for the padawan could be in the way of some of those expressed by padawan in the movies (ie obi, anakin, luke). I cant remember what ones they used, did obi use force push at the start of ep1 on the battle droids in the ship?. Anyhow it could blow a few soldiers back. Im starting to like the idea of the aom engine more and more as i think about it, god powers could be removed, but anyway, all thoughts aside.
As the jedi, and i mean the jedi himself not the soldiers around him ala warcraft 3, he could gain his skills, and rather than magically turning into a jedi knight he could passivly do this, ie assuming this is a clone trooper

You use your jedi skill ability, turn one of your troops into jedi, he looses the helmet

he kills 10 troopers/units, looses armplates, gains force speed or whatnot+few hp

He kills 20, looses legplates, gains passive stealth(invisiblity from minimap and until units get real close to him.+attack

He kills 35, looses breastplate, and what do you know his jedi cloak is revealed lol, gains convert+jedi energy boost(mana, vigor, energy, call it what you want)

50 kills, becomes jedi master, gets a glow or something speccy and gets proper jedi mind trick replacing passive stealth and can convert most units, final upgrade.

As to what units may be jedi-ised i think just trooper-class units. For civs with mechanical units something else can be thought up. Animations could be civilisation-unique.

As for force knowledge i think it would be more appropriate for this to be gained in battles, as units fight. Obviously players will engage in a similar number of battles. After the first battle is engaged, (say 10 troopers attack 8 and come out with 4 suvivors) both players would gain maybe +4 force knowledge and then in some other manner gain an extra one so they can afford their jedi.

What im thinking is that the cost ramps, so first jedi=10 so you only need 5 force knowledge and thus its almost free just delayed, second =25 so you wouldnt recieve it until around the 3rd tech level. What i was also speculating was that if you could perhaps get jedi knights or better from this. Would you pay more force knowledge, or would ur second jedi be a knight, etc.

What im hoping is that jedi arent too uber, but can change the course of a battle. eg one player looses his jedi in battle so he incorporates a few bounty hunters into his army. Maybe a player who looses his jedi could get a force power boost from loosing it, so he could afford his next jedi easier.

Well what started as a simple idea grew into a bigger one, what do you guys think. Its certainly a more original idea than the buy from jedi temple scheme, and would be more balanced than jedi from the temple or one uber jedi. The amount you could have would be goverened by how much you and your opponent fight.
comments?thoughts?disagreements?

[Admiral Vostok]

Interesting idea. I like the Force resource idea, I thought of something similar when we discussed having AoM for the SWGB2 engine. However I don't like the turning Troopers into Jedi idea at all. It doesn't really make much sense.

The Force resource idea is good though, I think. I'd quite like something similar, but because it is almost identical to Favor in AoM I think it could only really be included if indeed AoM becomes SWGB2's engine.

It would work like this: Instead of being split into Norse, Egyptian and Greek, the civs would be split between the Light and Dark Side of the Force. The Light Side gain their Force through meditiation, like the Greeks praying. The Dark Side gain their Force in combat, like the Norse. Force is used to buy Jedi/Sith and certain upgrades.

But chances are it won't use the AoM engine, in which case the inclusion of a Force resource would be too obviously a rip-off.

[AU_Skythe]

I still stand by my idea. Jedi arent born as jedi, only the lingering ability to become one. By using the force power this "ability" could awaken the jedi powers within the soldier or whatever.

I doubt they will use AoM's engine. What business would ensemble have with LA, Ensemble is owned by MS now correct me if im wrong, so they have a lot of money at their disposal, no need to get money from LA and give away their engine for another game.

[AU_Skythe]

I think it makes more sense than jedi being "made" at a temple. Troopers being made a troop center, or trained rather makes a bit more sense IMO, and this is an idea that hasnt been adopted *too* much into the gameplay of an RTS (ie it isnt a big part of the game).

Personally i like the idea of a trooper slowly turning into a jedi, perhaps it could be a unique characteristic of one of the civs. Think of it as a trooper being "marked" to be aware of the force and slowly come to realisation of its powers and soforth.

[Admiral Vostok]

While it might not be possible for everything in a game to be totally realistic, this idea would make things purposefully unrealistic, and thus have a negative effect on the game.

[swphreak]

I just wanna add to Vostoks Dark Side and Light Side civ thingy. Maybe a 3rd one would be Mercs or some other 3rd power. So it will be 3 sets... although, the Vong would work awesome in that place because they actually have gods and... well... this idea will be shot down already so I'm stopping now.

[saberhagen]

Here's an even more radical idea: why not take jedi out of RM games altogether and make them a toybox unit? Or maybe have them as a UU just for the Republic? I'm sure everyone will hate it, but it could be justified as jedi are supposed to be very rare. In the whole OT there are only 3 jedi and 2 sith. I think there are more jedi in the galactic civil war in EU (I don't know much about it EU) but presumably not that many. I tend to see RM games as representing relatively insignificant battles between the rank and file forces of the different civs, and so not really important enough for jedi/sith to bother with.

Let the flaming begin... ;)

[AU_Skythe]

u bring up a valid point saber but i think that would affect the popularity of the game to *others* who dont use forums or play on zone. nearly every newbie will make a padawan when they can and stuff like this keeps them playing until they realise theyre crap and then they stop playing but by then they realise its fun lol. Wif this idea u coold effectivly implement jedi into the game wifout too much hassle.

btw what do you consider unrealistic about this idea?

[saberhagen]

Originally posted by AU_Skythe
btw what do you consider unrealistic about this idea?

Nothing actually. If you want Jedi to be available to every civ in every game (and I'm sure most people who play this game and/or would buy the sequel do want that) your idea is a good way to go about it. I think it makes sense for force power to be a completely separate thing from the resources you use to build normal units.

tbh my post wasn't directly related to your idea but I just happened to think of it while I was reading yours and didn't think it was worth starting another thread.

edit: I've just seen that this is my 69th post. yay! ;)

[Admiral Vostok]

saberhagen: There must be Jedi for every civ. Although this isn't enitrely realistic, the fact you could have Jedi was a major selling point for the game, otherwise it would just be like any other RTS. A friend of mine who isn't as fanatical about Star Wars as me picked up the SWGB box at my house once and the first thing he said was "Cool! You can get Jedi!" so I think reducing their availability would be a mistake.

Skythe: While I find the idea of a Force resource very realistic, and quite possibly the best way to buy Jedi, the concept of turning Troopers into Jedi is totally wrong. Why go against what we see in the movies when just having them built at a temple is good enough?

[Sithmaster_821]

I think the best way to ensure that jedi are cheap enogh to be used in the game, but costly enough to keep em balanced is to have their costs scale, so that having a large army of them would be impratical, but not having any at one time would be improbable.

[Admiral Vostok]

Hmm, interesting idea, Sith. Perhaps instead of making the Force resource like Favor in AoM, it could work like this:

You start out with a certain amount of Force, similar to how you already have a small amount of other resources. Each Jedi/Sith Temple you build will give you a trickle of Force. Jedi/Sith cost Force to buy, but also will drain you Force stockpile while they are active. When not in battle, you can garisson Jedi inside a Temple, during which time they do not drain your stockpiled Force. For Sith, they do not drain your Force stockpile when fighting. This is a bit unbalanced at firs glance, but the Sith would be better in combat than Jedi, and besides it's less characteristic to have many Sith than it is to have many Jedi.

I think a variation on this idea could work well. If we agree on something, I may add it to my ongoing plan.

[AU_Skythe]

Its not going against the movies.. what you seen in the movies... anakin... when he first starts out.. normal person... turns into a jedi, same wif luke.

Here you have, normal person/troop, who slowly turns into a jedi. perhaps he wouldnt even have any jedi skills at first just increased stats.

If you let jedi temples create force power then u have a) ppl spawning tons of jedi temples getting lots of jedi ramp or no ramp
b) people not using jedi as they cost too much. The idea isnt the unit you mark to become jedi dosent magically transforms into a jedi, he slowly turns into a jedi, learning their skills & concepts. It makes sense, your marking someone to learn the ways of a jedi. Its an original concept not copied off some RTS, (althought it does take elements off *some*).

Also if u want to sound real speccy it has symbolic meaning, if the armour comes off it symbolises the units transformation into a jedi:P:P

[lukeiamyourdad]

It's an original idea sure but it kills realism. Luke was an exception.
You see Jedi and Sith are trained in the ways of the Force since their early childhood.
A growned man turning into a Jedi would be pretty improbable.
So a trooper turning into a Jedi would be weird.
Although you send little kids to battle...


Force Ressource- Shouldn't there be an alternate to building tons of temple to acquire the Force Ressource? Unless like AoM's Egyptians ever temple you make gives you a faster trickle.

[Admiral Vostok]

Anakin and Luke are both exceptions to the rules, and whats more neither of them were troopers in an army before they started learning the ways of the Force. It's a nice idea but not suitable.

As for the Force resource, you are right and I'll think about it a bit more, because it could work...