@shlimazel, on Oct 30 2007, 07:51 AM, said in A Halo TC may be in the works:

So, you have a large background planet graphic, which cannot be landed on. Then, you have invisible spobs located on the graphic. This allows you to make cities.

Now, we make a planet killing weapon. It uses a dropship graphic and flies very slow, but only a few 'dropships' would be enough to kill the spob.

Now, when you kill the spob, the destroyed version of the spob is the captured version of the spob. Get it?

This would be handy for mission based conquering.

It's been tried, and there are a few bugs. Such as you can't have walls. But really, I would say that that only would apply if you really needed indoor areas. It's a very cool concept.

@gray-shirt-ninja, on Oct 30 2007, 04:04 PM, said in A Halo TC may be in the works:

The Covenant seem to have discovered Earth's location from Forerunner artifacts. Possibly the Sigma Octanus artifact that John recovered in Fall of Reach. The Covvies discovered Reach in the same manner: a Forerunner artifact containing the coordinates of a Forerunner installation which is coincidentally hidden under a Human controlled world.

It does make sense, as the humans are often refered to as offspring of the forerunners, as I recall, never having played the games.

And I had an idea with the outfitters. You don't actually have to pay anything, but you can have specialty weapons mounted for a mission. Say you need to destroy a large ship. You could "buy" a nuke that has a price of 0. You wouldn't pay for anything, but this would allow for greater flexibility. You can keep enemies off heavy assault fighters while they destroy it, or you can try to destroy it yourself with heavy weaponry.
Also, you should have a mission that completely fills your energy when you land anywhere. It doesn't make sense that you would have to pay for fuel at your own army base. So there is an invisible mission that does it for you.

Just forget the concept of money. This is a "war" TC. They don't sell bullets to soldiers, obviously. Nothing should cost anything. But to avoid crashing the game everything that can be bough in multiple example should have a price of 1. Just give the player a rank that gives him money per day. That should cover it for money.

But the cool thing is that you could also limit ammos and which ships are usable by actually only letting the player plunder ammos from disabled ships and\or giving them some via missions and crons. At least, it could be this way during missions where you can't land at any friendly and supplied base.

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Actually, judging by the events of Halo: First Strike, the Covies located Earth either during the fighting on Halo or soon after the Chief blew it in half. Remember the Covie space station I mentioned earlier? It was called the Unyielding Hierophant, and was being used as a staging point for a massive Covenant attack fleet that was intending to attack Earth, and very soon. The Master Chief took half a dozen of the surviving Spartans, infiltrated the station with a duplicate of Cortana (a trick she learned from the Covie AI she destroyed), and set off the station's self-destruct sequence. The Ascendant Justice was used as a lure to get most of the enemy forces within the blast radius.

The battle at the Unyielding Hierophant was the main reason the Battle of Earth at the beginning of Halo II was a primarily infantry action aboard the space stations: the Covies lost a huge portion of their forces in that sector, so they resorted to using their warships as a diversion while landing craft destroyed the orbital MAC guns with bombs.

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The Covenant seem to have discovered Earth's location from Forerunner artifacts. Possibly the Sigma Octanus artifact that John recovered in Fall of Reach. The Covvies discovered Reach in the same manner: a Forerunner artifact containing the coordinates of a Forerunner installation which is coincidentally hidden under a Human controlled world.

Hmm. So Earth is heavily defended with MAC guns, right up until they are fried by the Covies. Okay. So basically, after Halo they know where Earth is.

Imagine fighting an seemingly unstoppable enemy. Holding the line as best you can, until you are forced to fall back. Fighting out in deep space, far from home. All alone, in the night.

Then, you get the news. Earth has fallen. The homeworld has been conquered. We are doomed.

So, what now? If you think like me, a suicide mission is invevitable. Trust me, though, it'll be heroic

I won't say any more about that.

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It's been tried, and there are a few bugs. Such as you can't have walls. But really, I would say that that only would apply if you really needed indoor areas. It's a very cool concept.

No, not indoor. I mean actually have the image of the planet be the background, with invisible spobs located on the planet picture. I don't mean to have surface attack. Although that might be neat, it'd raise a whole new set of problems.

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And I had an idea with the outfitters. You don't actually have to pay anything, but you can have specialty weapons mounted for a mission. Say you need to destroy a large ship. You could "buy" a nuke that has a price of 0. You wouldn't pay for anything, but this would allow for greater flexibility. You can keep enemies off heavy assault fighters while they destroy it, or you can try to destroy it yourself with heavy weaponry.
Also, you should have a mission that completely fills your energy when you land anywhere. It doesn't make sense that you would have to pay for fuel at your own army base. So there is an invisible mission that does it for you.

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Just forget the concept of money. This is a "war" TC. They don't sell bullets to soldiers, obviously. Nothing should cost anything. But to avoid crashing the game everything that can be bough in multiple example should have a price of 1. Just give the player a rank that gives him money per day. That should cover it for money.

But the cool thing is that you could also limit ammos and which ships are usable by actually only letting the player plunder ammos from disabled ships and\or giving them some via missions and crons. At least, it could be this way during missions where you can't land at any friendly and supplied base.

Er, aren't you two talking about the same thing? And yes, these are good ideas. I'll need to use something along these lines for the TC.

Yeah, not indoor. I have a similar thing going on myself, except the spaceports are conquered in the usual way, and one can land on the planet away from any spaceports, as opposed to just having a background pic. I'm not sure if I'll keep that feature, though.

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and one can land on the planet away from any spaceports, as opposed to just having a background pic.

Hmm. Like, in the wilderness? Makes sense. I wish that had occured to me, that's a good idea. Might even be useful for missions.

Yep. That's what I'm planning on using it for, actually. I like the idea that a spaceport won't allow you to land, but you can still land somewhere on the planet.

Actually, I don't think Earth fell. Notice that at the end of level 2 in Halo II , the Covie capital ship jumped into Slipspace. It appears that due to the battle at the Unyielding Hierophant the Covenant didn't have enough forces left to glass Earth, at least not without severe losses from the orbital MAC guns and massive UNSC fleet presence.. So, they did a quick search for Forerunner artifacts in (New York?), then vamoosed.

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Actually, I don't think Earth fell.

coughCheck out Halo 3's storycough

Earth City, actually, not New York. That fleet was actually not a Covenant attack fleet, just the Prophet's personal escort.

This post has been edited by Crusader Alpha : 31 October 2007 - 03:27 PM

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Earth City

What's Earth City? I know I'll include Cleveland as a visitable city, but I'm considering what else to have as well. Wasn't there a city called New Mobasa, or was that on a different planet?

@shlimazel, on Oct 31 2007, 01:46 PM, said in A Halo TC may be in the works:

...Wasn't there a city called New Mobasa, or was that on a different planet?

Indeed, but I think it's not spelled that way. After the prophet escaped, the over-pressure wave from his in-atmosphere slip-space transition leveled New Mombassa (I think that's how it's spelled. Tell me if I'm wrong).

Yep, that's the name of it. Earth City was the name of the song about it in the soundtrack. Woops.

Sure have been editing a lot of my posts. I looked up the spelling, it's New Mombasa of the East African Protectorate. Mombasa is the current actual city in Kenya.

This post has been edited by Crusader Alpha : 31 October 2007 - 07:08 PM

Okay, so Cleveland and New Mombasa. Any suggestions for additional cities to land on at Earth? They have to have been mentioned somewhere in the Haloverse.

Also, I had an idea for how the story will start. Starting as a fighter pilot in the UNSC, you are Scimitar 41 (in other words, the commanding officer, or 1st position, in the 4th squadron of Scimitar flightgroup. This designation scheme comes from the Knife 4-something designation of the only named Longsword mentioned in the Halopedia.). Your flightgroup is attached to the Outlook battlegroup under the command of Admiral Roberta Kane. Outlook is a forward base, located uncomfterbly (sp?) near the warfront. It is heavily defended, and has managed to repulse several attacks by the Covenant. Though these attacks have dropped the force strength considerably, the UNSC has reinforced the fleet numerous times because although this position holds little interest to the Covenant it is valuable to the UNSC (I'll let you speculate as to the reasons ). Thoughts?

Also, I thought it might be interesting to have a ONI sidestory. This would be a blackops story, involving a lot of AI's and would have lots of possible connections to the Marathon universe.

Also also, when did the Spartan III's start being produced? Anyone remember?

Sydney is the location of something important that I can't remember at the moment.

The SPARTAN-III project was initiated in 2531. Alpha Company SPARTAN-IIIs were all killed during Operation: PROMETHEUS in 2537. Beta Company SPARTAN-IIIs were mostly killed in 2545 during Operation: TORPEDO. Current status of the Gamma Company SPARTAN-IIIs is unknown. 300 of them were deployed from Onyx before it was activated. There is also the SPARTAN-II 'Gray Team' that is currently on a mysterious mission far beyond the borders of UNSC space. Oh, and Halo takes place in about 2552.

This post has been edited by gray_shirt_ninja : 01 November 2007 - 01:35 PM

Okay, thanks. That's very helpful.

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There is also the SPARTAN-II 'Gray Team' that is currently on a mysterious mission far beyond the borders of UNSC space.

Extra good! Perhaps you'll be hearing from Gray Team.....

@gray-shirt-ninja, on Nov 1 2007, 12:33 PM, said in A Halo TC may be in the works:

Sydney is the location of something important that I can't remember at the moment.

The SPARTAN-III project was initiated in 2531. Alpha Company SPARTAN-IIIs were all killed during Operation: PROMETHEUS in 2537. Beta Company SPARTAN-IIIs were mostly killed in 2545 during Operation: TORPEDO. Current status of the Gamma Company SPARTAN-IIIs is unknown. 300 of them were deployed from Onyx before it was activated. There is also the SPARTAN-II 'Gray Team' that is currently on a mysterious mission far beyond the borders of UNSC space. Oh, and Halo takes place in about 2552.

300 Spartans?

Covenant officer: Human, our forerunner superweapon will destroy the sun!

Spartan seargent: Good, then we'll fight you in the shade!

@crusader-alpha, on Nov 1 2007, 12:10 PM, said in A Halo TC may be in the works:

300 Spartans?

Yes

Ahem Anyway. Thoughts on the story idea? Tomorrow I'll start work on... stuff.

@shlimazel, on Nov 1 2007, 09:23 AM, said in A Halo TC may be in the works:

Okay, so Cleveland and New Mombasa. Any suggestions for additional cities to land on at Earth? They have to have been mentioned somewhere in the Haloverse.

Also, I had an idea for how the story will start. Starting as a fighter pilot in the UNSC, you are Scimitar 41 (in other words, the commanding officer, or 1st position, in the 4th squadron of Scimitar flightgroup. This designation scheme comes from the Knife 4-something designation of the only named Longsword mentioned in the Halopedia.). Your flightgroup is attached to the Outlook battlegroup under the command of Admiral Roberta Kane. Outlook is a forward base, located uncomfterbly (sp?) near the warfront. It is heavily defended, and has managed to repulse several attacks by the Covenant. Though these attacks have dropped the force strength considerably, the UNSC has reinforced the fleet numerous times because although this position holds little interest to the Covenant it is valuable to the UNSC (I'll let you speculate as to the reasons ). Thoughts?

Also, I thought it might be interesting to have a ONI sidestory. This would be a blackops story, involving a lot of AI's and would have lots of possible connections to the Marathon universe.

Also also, when did the Spartan III's start being produced? Anyone remember?

I think that that story is pretty good, but I'd make a couple changes. Outlook is not close to the battle front, it is one of those worlds or stations that aren't threatened by the war, and are on the point of rebeling. You came up with that earlier. There is basically nothing of worth at Outlook, you have been assigned there because you are a helpless noob. But a huge Covenant fleet show up, and glass the planet, defeating the four-fighter squadren that is planetary defense. Your ship, after taking out half a squad of fighters (hey, you can't just stay at the very bottom of fleet rankings the whole plot, can you?), gets disabled, and goes hurtling off into space. You are rescued by an emergancy response fleet, but the Covenant have already left, after going down to the planet. In light of your spectacular performance at this battle, you are promoted, and get debriefed about the battle. At this point, someone asks you to go for a drink. You can accept or refuse, nobody gets mad at you either way. Except that if you accept, you are actually taken to a differant building to meet with the black ops story people. If you refuse, off you go on the standard plot! There should be several opertunities to go into the black ops line, though. They wouldn't give up on recruiting you just because you refused once, now would they? They would just get more encouraged after each time you do well.

So, what do you think?

EDIT:
Oh, Crusader Alpha, I think you are confusing spartan 2 and spartan 3. There were about 75 total spartan 2, nearly half of which died in the surgical modification, and a couple more were disabled. There were 900 spartan 3, in three companies, 300 each, and plans for a fourth that hasn't happened yet, and proboly won't, in light of the illegal chemicals used in the last company, and several other factors that I forget.

This post has been edited by 101181920 : 03 November 2007 - 01:00 AM