Okay, I'm new to this site, but ever since Jedi Outcast was announced I've had an itching in my head to do something with it. After playing Counter-Strike, Day of Defeat and other teamplay mods, I knew that what I wanted was a realistic squad-based infantry game in the Star Wars universe. I've mapped and coded before for Jedi Knight, and I'm to the point where I want to get Quake III just so I can learn to work with the engine before JO comes out. But, I'd like to toss some of my ideas out first and see what people think, potential problems, if someone else has the same idea, etc...

Basically, it would be straight squad versus squad, Empire versus Alliance. Objectives would simply depend on the map...i.e. for a city, you might have to take the capital building, communications center, power plant, and airfield. Maybe there's a crashed freighter, and both teams start equal distances away and have to undergo a shoving war at the middle. Or perhaps straight "plant the bomb," "save the prisoners," et cetera. I'm sorry if this is hard to read, I'm going to be sort of rambling...

What I'm thinking would be 24 classes...12 for each team, though many will have a similar class on the other team. Hear me out...

Galactic Empire would have three "categories" of regular infantry, Stormtrooper Corps, and support personnel. My ideas for the "regular infantry" right now are the most muddled and tentative, but they're part of the universe and I'd want Stormtroopers to have both serious advantages and disadvantages. Probably a quick "light infantry" class like in Day of Defeat, an officer class (maybe with benefits in the rank system I'll describe below), an "infantry support" with a steady-fire rifle, and a Sharpshooter class with a SoroSuub QuickSnap rifle and targeting system.

There could be four classes of Stormtroopers...I'm thinking either Stormtrooper Sergeant or plain Stormtrooper Infantry for the first one, the only difference I think would be whether he had a brown patch or not. Standard E-11 rifle and sidearm, with ST benefits and burdens. Also a Demolitions Stormtrooper (maybe with railgun, grenades and antipersonnel mines), a Heavy Energy (?) Stormtrooper who would carry a heavy repeating blaster (and/or concussion rifle?) to the battlefield, and lastly a Scout Trooper or Stormtrooper Recon. He would be the fastest ST and get a scoped pistol, long range binoculars, and perhaps some mines. I think I'd also give him some "lifeform scanners"...he would plant it, and instead of blowing up it would transmit a message to his team of how many enemies and friendlies are near it when triggered. Maybe secondary fire would activate a weak charge that might take out one or two enemies, but obviously blow its concealment.

Stormtroopers would take very little damage from slugthrowers (which more Alliance classes would use). Also, the armor would help against distant blaster shots and explosions, and against chemical attacks (keep reading). Their helmet gives them the benefit of being able to activate a 2x zoom, an infrared scanner, and night vision at will. Remember that blaster fire and explosions would overwhelm the latter two options. STs would also be the slowest on the battlefield. Another way to counteract their benefits would be to reduce their field of view. For example, most FPS games give you a FOV of about eighty degrees, though in real life it's about double that. Maybe it's possible (?) to reduce a Stormtrooper's field of view to say, sixty degrees in front of him.

Support personnel would fit the same basic formula on both sides...medic, slicer, energician, and engineer. Some of the equipment they could utilize:

- Bacta sprayer to heal players. What I'm planning for health is to have parts of a meter go black and red when you take a hit. Black symbolizes permanent damage that you'd need to go to a hospital to heal. The red area of damage could still be healed up by a medic. Also, if stamina (for jumping and running) played a part in the mod, it would also draw off this health meter. Obviously you wouldn't die from running, but if you just took a blaster bolt in the gut and lived, you aren't going to be bunny hopping around anytime soon. Another idea from Day of Defeat might be to have bleeding (from slugthrowers) and burn wounds (from blasters), but if that was implemented you'd have to let the individual player heal it because it would be really boring to sit there and bleed to death because the medic's on the other side of the map.

- I think the medics should be able to detach the bacta cartidge from the sprayer and have something more malicious for the secondary usage. I don't think the Geneva Convention is exactly part of the Star Wars universe, with those Death Stars and all. My idea so far would be for Rebels to have some hydroflouric acid (extremely nasty and lethal stuff which you need to have a permit to work with in real life) to spray around, and for Imperial medics to be able to infect the enemy with a retrovirus that would gradually black out their health meter. I suppose Alliance bacta should be able to remove the infection. Maybe give medics a slugthrower pistol to carry too.

- Antipersonnel turret...something for the engineer to set up, of course.

- Grenade detonator...a turret of sorts, but it only serves to shoot down enemy grenades before they land in your position.

- A lifeform scanner like I said earlier, I'd probably give it to the Rebel slicer.

- A "reprogramming unit" (?) for slicers. Most objectives would require a realistic effort on your part. Instead of just running over a flag and saying you've taken the radio station, for example, you'd probably have to reprogram or rewire some of the equipment for it to be actually useful to you. Or you might have to bust into a power station and cause trouble for the enemy by creating a power overload. This stuff takes time, and though maybe engineers and energicians get a bonus, slicers would be valuable for the team because they could complete these objectives very quickly.

- An ion cannon to temporarily disable all these nasty emplacements...this would also make the energician valuable to the team.

- Something else for the energician...a portable recharger for ammo. It would slowly build up energy, and he could take it to a friendly and recharge one or more of his used ammo clips. Perhaps he could empty its contents at an enemy by, say, shooting out some nasty electricity bolts. But that, of course, would dump out the charged energy very quickly.

- Other stuff that I can't think of at the moment. As for E-Web cannons, everyone's favorite emplacement...they'd probably just be part of the maps, to help teams defend their base. I read that some had a weak shield to protect the gunner, that would be interesting...perhaps E-Webs could be moved to strategic locations, but wouldn't have enough power for shields and would make the gunner an easy target.

Rebel classes:

The first major change would probably be to give the Rebel light infantry an E-11 instead of an E-9 or whatever his Imperial counterpart would get, to make him more of the "backbone" of the Alliance force. Maybe a weaker sidearm, no grenades, or something else to balance things out. Also, the Rebels wouldn't put a steady-fire laser rifle on the battlefield, maybe replace with a slugthrower machine gun. The Imperial Sharpshooter, suited for defending, would be replaced with the Scout Sniper for classic "Long Range Recon Patrol." Good camoflauge, better zoom than his Imperial counterpart. He'd get a slugthrower rifle -- less effective against Stormtroopers, but hard to trace. Maybe give him the same scoped pistol as the Imperial Scout too, if that wouldn't unbalance.

Obviously, there were no Rebel Stormtroopers, but this is where we can put in the aliens instead. No Gungans, Rodians, Trandoshans, I mean races that would have supported the Alliance in number. My ideas so far:

- Wookiee's basically a given. Fast, tough, uses a bowcaster. But large and especially vulnerable to damage (i.e. explosions) that normal blast armor can help absorb.

- Mon Calamari...like the guys in Rebellion, good for defense. Probably similar to the Heavy Energy ST.

- Sullustan Revolutionary...maybe a sapper like the Demolitions Stormtrooper, but instead of using a rail gun he would carry more grenades/mines, and maybe have a "stripped" version of the Sharpshooter's QuickSnap rifle without zoom.

- Dunno about the fourth really...Bothan Recon? I doubt they got shipped out to battlefields at all, but it would be something people are familiar with.

As I said earlier, the biggest differences between both sides' support personnel would be the skins and some of the equipment.

I'm big on team play, and I wish I could take out individual scores altogether, but too many people like being at the top of a list ;). I'm thinking of a rank system for players in the game, where completing objectives, escorting people completing objectives, using bacta and rechargers on people, etc. would be rewarded over twitch-finger fragging. And I'm thinking of using rank for other features, but I realize this is very complex as-is...so I just want to know what people think so far.

I know this would be a ton of work, and probably wouldn't see the light of day if I actually worked on it, but hey, this is my dream mod and what better platform than JO to do it on? That is, if they'll let us edit it...

Whoa! You really thought that out, that sounds cool except I don't think you should divide the rebels up by species like that, I think any position in any of the rebel's army should be able to be any species. Altogether, very awesome sounding. :eek:

Thanks...as for the different races, I was just thinking about the 12 class system and what I would give the Rebels instead of Stormtroopers. Having a few special alien classes seemed to fit in nicely. I don't know, maybe I should rethink that. I was reading about Return to Castle Wolfenstein's multiplayer, where you just pick "Soldier" instead of Officer or Engineer and then pick your weapons...maybe a simpler system like that would be better.

edit: spelling

[ September 09, 2001: Message edited by: Blamer ]

What about the imperial commandos?

Blamer your idea sounds like a great dream-mod. Especially the mission-based gameplay and ranking system.

On the surface it seems like 12 different classes is a lot for the gamer to work with. As you've said, it may work better to have fewer classes, but allow each class to adjust their weapon/equipment loadout in-game.

Maybe just have infantry, Stormtrooper Corps, and support personnel classes for the Imperials. And the equivalent for Rebels. The weapons & equipment loadout could be selected by the gamer.

Seeing how game classes basically are defined as a combination of speed, armor, health and equipment, it's possible to just scrub pre-defined classes. You could allow the gamer to select a certain number of weapons and equipment, subject to weight/slot restrictions. (Perhaps like Urban Terror (http://www.urbanterror.net) for Quake3).

And you could apply a Rebel/Imperial template to the weapon and equipment loadout, of course, to differentiate each team.

Another idea, so as to not stereotype certain species, would be to have a few different skins per class, just as you might have a few different weapons per class, and you could select 1 skin(duh) and 3 or 4 weaps.

jh

Well, I'm glad to see people like my ideas...classes seem to be the main issue right now. I guess I just didn't factor in that people might want to be a Mon Cal medic or a Wookiee sniper, but it makes sense when I think about it.

To be honest, it looks like simplifying my intricate class system is the way to go :rolleyes:. For example, if you joined as a Rebel, you'd pick your race first. Each race would have its natural advantages and disadvantages. Imperials would choose between Imperial Army and Stormtrooper Corps (maybe?). Then you could pick your primary item of equipment...i.e. snag a good gun, or high quality medical equipment with that alternate attack, or a reprogrammer (could work on hostile mines and emplacements as well as objectives, now that I think about it), or a toolkit for making turrets, etc. Maybe the primary equipment as well as the race/corps selection would define your skin.

Then you could pick pieces of secondary equipment, whether they be sidearms, explosives, a bacta sprayer with less capacity and no "secondary attack," a repair kit for damaged emplacements, etc.

I'm sure there are some flaws in that idea...but it's not like I don't have any time to think about it. I've never played Urban Terror, maybe I should check that out.

I have ideas fo Alliance Aliens:

Wolf Men, (forgot the proper name): Scouts

Dressilians: Experts with Slugthrowers (bullet weapons)

Weapon classes:

Handweapons (knives, batons, etc)

Vibroweapons (vibroblades, etc)

Light/ Holdout Blasters (DH-17 etc)

Heavy Blasters (Dl-44 etc)

Rifles (E-11, Slugthrowers)

Support Weapons (T-21 Light Artillary, Flecchet Launchers, mortars,
Mini-rocket launchers)

*Note: Slugthrowers can be silenced, or explosive tipped

what do u think?

You speak of the Shistavanen wolfmen, correct? :D

Yes! BTW, I got the weapon ideas from Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology

I think that you should have the LIGHT STAFF option on lightsabers. it'd be way cooler thanks. :confused:

actually i think they are implementing something like this i believe from what ive heard from people with a new pcgamer mag.