Serious Technological War gamemode

Garry's Mod general
#1

I couldn’t find a name for this, because i want to dissociate this immediately from typical infantry combat/“war” gamemodes. Flat out, this gamemode would try to recreate Modern Warfare. And please don’t think about that damn game. By Modern Warfare i mean that today war is won with technology and beyond-visual range precision weapons. In real war, except for the frontline ground combat arms, you very sledom visually see the enemy. This gamemode’s thing is Beyond-Visual Warfare.

In Real war, the work is done by automated machines and the work is reduced to pushing buttons. Your enemy might be a dot or shape on a screen or even a series of numbers. Here, there is no rambo MW2 killstreaking with M249s with no recoil. The gunfights in this gamemode would be short and rare, bullets would be almost surely a one hit kill and there would be maybe four firearm types, total.

No, in this gamemode the enemy is far away. Perhaps he is beyond a mountain or an ocean, the first map i could think that could be immediately used for this is gm_worldwide. I have Posted a map request specifically for a long range, low visibility range two-continent map. Check the thread out, i wrote a list of ideas on different scenarios you could play in that map or in this gamemode.

-So you ask, if you can’t see the other team and they are so far away, how do we kill them??
Easy! This gamemode would have wiremod and E2 (with a few commands blocked) available for creating those war machines you need. Of course, you need to dispell the “Fog of War” that is to have a good idea of what is happening in the map. So you need to create sensors and systems to find targets and create an image of the map, even though you can’t see it.

No limits in this gamemode to what you can build. Ships, airplanes, tanks, missiles, ecetera. Tanks might be the only safe way to have ground combat. To limit the amount of contraptions that people can build alone, a cost can be set for wire gates and E2’s, target finders and else. Money would be plentiful and shared by the whole team, but the supply depends on some entities that the players must protect. This could be fixed buildings or even SNPC citizens. It would be nice for the cost of some entities (target finder for example) be multiplied by some choices (such as range and target # capacity). And a maximum range for all target finders. Very far, but still a maximum range to prevent infinite range. Enough to cover the shore of the other team.

So you must also get close enough to see the enemy, not simply see him automatically. Use your imagination for this, or just do good old guesstimation. The whole point of this gamemode is to use your imagination. It’s one thing to build contraptions, it’s another one to test them in an intense environment and rush to develop better ones before the “other guys”

So what do you think?
This is simply an idea, i am good at E2 however lua scripting is not my cup of tea.

#2

I got quite excited about the idea, until I read that it is in fact not lua based, but wiremod based…
This is a disappointment, since I actually thought this would be good.

#3

Go ahead and explain your point! It dosen’t tell me much about why it would suck if using wiremod. The point is building your own stuff, not having pre-made stuff all ready to go that you just have to hop in. I’m not a Lua coder, so please elaborate.

#4

A gamemode is usually based around lua, and having scripted stuff instead of wiremod which is already scripted by someone else.
So basically you are trying to do something in a gamemode, which would only need the wiremod addon.
Why make the gamemode in the first place then?

#5

Sorry, now i understand. It would not only have Wiremod obviously, Lua scripts would obviously be required as well as scripted entities. It’s just that there’s no need to re-invent the wheel, wiremod works. Duplicating everything needed from it would be a pain in the ass and lead to long delays. Unless?

But i see your point. I forgot to precise many things. (Ideally, of course) You would have a proprietary Gcombat-like system with a small choice of realistic weapons. There would also be some basic buyable entities like SB-Vierling-turret style sents, explosive rockets and bombs. I will expand on my idea more below

COMMUNICATION
Chat and voice is limited to line of sight, Radio must be used. Each player has a permanent, on-person radio that he can set via chat example /radiofreq 23672. The data is displayed in a HUD display and can display strings. Every player has also access to the “Debugger” tool and a small compass display in the top-left displaying his bearing relative to X0,Y0

TEAMS
Team Blue and Team Red, Blue being Western/American style and Red being Eastern/Russian style. Player models could be done for this, with at most 3 or 4 models per team. The weapons would be side-specific, like Blue team has M92F/M16A2’s and Red team has CZ75/AK74M. Whatever, it’s not very important since firefights are not the primary thing in this game even if they do happen.

CLASSES
It would not just be building and fighting but also RPing. As i may have said, there are two teams. In these two teams there would be a few classes. Each can set his custom title with chat.

-At the beginning of each game a Commander is elected, then each new round the player with the most score becomes the new Commander. The commander has the power to repair damaged base structures, make command decisions and send orders. He can also build, repair and save contraptions. He has a special team chat that can reach all players on his team (one-way only).

-The War Industry Worker has wiremod and all the stools required for spawning, repairing and saving contraptions. He can duplicate a design a load it into the factory wich shall be described below. A Support class, it is wise to have a few workers who know what they are doing.

-The Soldier is self-explanatory. He is the grunt, the seaman or the pilot. He has slightly more health and can sprint longer than the War worker and commander. He is also armed with an Assault rifle. The soldier’s job is to take the contraptions the Workers make to war.

BUILDINGS
The commander and Worker can build and repair buildings. These are props or scripted entities with a fixed cost and purpose. Buildings will not be damaged by gunfire but only by explosions. Their health is quite high, but damage grows exponentially with how near the hit is, a direct hit will wreck all but the biggest ones.

  • Bunker. Just your basic Phx bunker, that protects from explosions until it’s HP reaches zero. Any number of use imaginable, low cost.

  • Radar Tower: The omnidirectional target finder is replaced with this, the ODF being completely blocked. This radar is like the Advanced radio cellphone tower. No limit on range.

  • Remote Control Turret: Spacebuild Vierling turret, essentially. This costly building/item is vital for anti-aircraft defense.

  • Small War Factory: a decent-size factory that serves as memory and duplicator for saved contraptions. It feeds directly on the team’s money supply and calculates cost from how many props, gates and E2 gates are present. It cannot dupe contraptions that are too big. Four can be built, you start with two, and they are expensive.

  • Large War Factory: a quite huge factory that can build large aircraft and ships. Extremely expensive, only two can be built.

  • Oil Refinery: a large building that provides a steady cash flow to the team. You start with two, and no more can be built. They can only be built if one is destroyed however their cost is prohibitive.

  • Oil Derrick: A small oil derrick that provides a steady but small amount of cash. Reasonably affordable, they cannot be built within 1500 units of each other.

I might add more later, but tell me if this is just bad.

#6

I really like the sound of this, it allows the use of contrapions made in wiremod and give it a use in a gamemode instead of just using it to mess around with in sandbox which isn’t a bad thing, but this would only be a bonus to the wiremod feature and helps expand on gcombat too.

#7

This makes me want to make a large laser-guided artillery cannon now.