Unique maps, idea spitballing

[Uber-Neonstorming]

Like Hotstepper with it's lava, Skasi and I were bouncing a few ideas for maps. Here's to put them out in case anyone wants to run with it or has any suggestions.
Some of these are super-wtf inducing or have ridiculously complex mechanics. But neonstorming, eh?


Lava Rise:
So the simplest one is to have lava rise in cycles, but never go down. Say it rises by 100 each 5 minute point. So by half an hour, the entire map is under lava. (600 elmos is alot)
Point being, you can terraform your way into not dying.

This could be any kind of teams or FFA. Would also make a unique economy mission.


Ebb and Flow:
Skasi's idea is to have a map like supreme battlefield where the sea level rises and falls in a 5 minute tide cycle. So the land bridge toggles between land-only and sea-only.
The idea can be adapted to huge areas. Traditionally, sea dominates an area that is mostly water. But when ships can't move for 5 mins every 5 mins...

This idea requires map control of water level. I'm not sure if it's possible.


Destructible Terrain:
Tall spires jut out from a mostly flat map, giving massive area control to whoever sits on them. They also have geo spots (and maybe a supermex).
There is a gaia unit stuck in the spire with a cylindrical hitbox mirroring the sides of the spire (just a bit bigger so it can get hit), with something like 30k hp. When the unit dies, all buildings on the spire immediately blow up and the spire crumbles (gadget terraform) to a shallow bot-passable mound and a bunch of reclaimable rocks.


The Sky is Falling!:
As destructible terrain but a uber-high weight Gaia unit sits on the spires (indestructible). It has a ridiculously large collision size (many times the size of the spire) and has enough weight to basically be immune to pushing.
When the spire is destroyed, the engine will make the unit fall and crush/hit everything below it.


Solar Flare:
Solar collectors return double income. They work for 5 mins, then shut off for 5 mins. While solar collectors are working, radar doesn't work.


Police and Thief:
Policemen (gaia-owned indestructible flying capcars) wander the map capturing stuff. They ignore commanders and statics.
Captured units teleport into a jail at the center of the map. Whoever owns the jail (same as KotH, maybe even with countdown timer to gain ownership) gets those units.


Pacman & Ghosts:
The pacman map needs ghosts. 10mins grace, then it's Halloween! White dragons spawn and start attacking everything. Dead white dragons respawn at center of map after a short delay.

yay nice ideas! let me bainstorm with younext time. this covers some ideas i had myself a while ago (tidal water), but others are totally insane ZOMG crazy awsome!

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e.g. a map with a slight random meteor shower (and maybe this as only metal source).

some kind of tower defence which was very popular in good old starcraft broodwar/WC3 times.

a CTF map. solve this thing, as there is no portable stuff from the engine when entering a region, the player gets a unbuildable slow moving unit (singleton), which he must escort to a random place on the map, the other team must prevent it. game goes till a certain score (5?)

a map with 3-4 slowly "moving" mex spots which give heavy income (so micromanaging them is worth it), so players must adapt whole time and have problems with terrain, cliffs, sea,...

...i can go on!

I think water level changing is implemented but it may be infeasible.

Alternately, something I've always been thinking about, just using conventional terrain: a map that's a single, massive Kbot-friendly slope. Like, steep but not insurmountable. The whole thing is one giant ramp, with little fungal platforms sticking out of it for base-building. Or shape it as a half-funnel (half so the camera doesn't have to look straight down at it). Push the height variance of Spring maps as far as you can.

Bouncy castle: The jumpjet gadget rules are overwritten, so that any unit that jumps automatically jumps two or three more times after landing. And any unit nearby a landing jumper gets some upward impulse.

I'd love to see a random-nuke bomb map/option.

Maybe a 5 minute timer, which lets you panic and reclaim whatever you can before getting the hell out of there.

>Point being, you can terraform your way into not dying.

No no no, this is bad! The entire point of a map like that should be to FORCE a final showdown near the end of the game. There are hacks you can do to make terrforming prohibitively expensive. The WWF map, for example, is virtually unterraformable.

I would design the map with a large center island that is tall, and 8 small starting islands that are very close to lava level, each connected to the center by a big ramp. As the lava rises you must move up the ramp towards the center island. This is also bringing you closer to the enemies on their respective ramps.

jseah, how do you come up with ideas like that? You're some sort of freaking mad scientist or something... I love it!

Let's get this one implemented ASAP. Anyone want to try this one tonight?

+1 for the Recycling Plant idea ,
as long as the most obvious exploit is fixed (killing friendly units) this would be really encourage military strategy over raw production power, this may be my new favorite map.

the others sound great too of coure, would really add flavour to the game...and if they could be combined... the possibilities ... so many of them...so many...

Oooh, stealing this idea from a C&C-clone called Warfare-Inc: clone zones. Any unit in the clone zone will be duplicated (at your expense). So apply the Puppy Goo logic to every unit in the Clone Zone. Units lose goo (returning the resources to the player) as they leave the Clone Zone.