GH2 Arena Design and Mechanics

[Joseph Hewitt]

The arenas in GH2 need to be redone. That much is definite. I'd like for the PC to have to challenge a series of NPC pilots, rather than just complete a series of generic battles.

For the Maquise Spinner arena, here's an outline of how I'd like things to work: First the PC will have to speak with Mullins and convince her to let him fight; PCs who are already members of the PDA can skip this. The PC will then have to fight one or several generic qualifying fights.

Afterwards, Mullins will tell the PC he needs to face an arena champion to continue. The arena champion must be spoken to, then the PC should meet him in the arena on the world map. There may be a subquest involving the champion; this could take place before the match (i.e. if some condition needs to be met before the NPC will fight the PC), after the match (i.e. if beating the NPC will unlock a new quest), or even instead of the match. The PC will be able to challenge the NPC once every 24 hours until defeated. After winning the challenge, the PC can return to Mullins for a reward.

Between champions, there may be additional generic battles. Eventually the PC will reach the grand champion of the arena. Defeating this NPC will make the PC the grand champion and give the big prize.

Problems: If Mullins is killed, the entire arena is derailed. For right now I'm willing to ignore this problem. More importantly, if one of the NPC pilots are killed, this will derail the sequence... I can't ignore this problem. The best solution would be to add a check to Mullins so that if the target NPC is killed, an extra "generic" fight or two will be used instead.

How to enter the arena? For the generic fights, the teleportation method is good. For the NPC fights, meeting them at a shared location would be good. There should be a single arena location that gets shared between encounters. Certain NPCs may come with their own arenas.

Now all I have to do is come up with mechanics for all this. The basic outline can be set in stone, but it would be nice if the NPC champions were randomly selected.

What do you think?

[TerminusEst]

I think having a stable of pre-generated NPCs to randomly pick from would be the way to go. Having pre-generated NPCs for this plot lets you customize their stats rather than have a whole bunch of 'average' pilots/meks.

I.E: This way the arena battle can be against /specialists/. Our pilot might start out fighting Melee McStabbity, then Lu the Martial-Mechist next week, then Deadeye Sniper X-treme after him... all the way to the grand champion who would be a highly experienced 'all-arounder'.

It would be a nice plus if each pilot had stories they were more/less likely to do. Lu might be very willing to forgo fights in exchange for another quest, whereas if you draw Deadeye you will have to fight him, eventually, every time.

This is a good chance to show off various combat styles through limiting the weapons/movement patterns of the NPC pilots as well.

[Joseph Hewitt]

There will be a lot of pre-generated NPCs, but also some randomly generated NPCs to be used for gap-filling purposes. Caher and Vord will most likely be encountered in this way. As I've listed in the proposed features, victorious PCs will be saved and may show up later as NPCs in future campaigns. If you win with a pro duelist character, he may show up as an arena champion.

I think it may be possible to create an arena sequence as described above with the current quest system, without adding much new code. The controller would be the base quest; the challengers would be added as subquests. Each challenger would contain a persona fragment for the controller as well as whatever other stuff is needed for the challenge. The one feature that's currently lacking is that the subquest/challengers must increase in difficulty over a preset range.

Another thing that should be done is to enhance the AI so that different pilots can use different tactics.

[palefire]

Would the arena be like a one on many fight against the champion and his generic goons as before in GH1 (or many against many as in GH2 arena mode Ace "duel" missions) or a one on one fight against each challenger as in GH2 duel stories? Or a combination of both?

Is it possible to control the number of mecha the battles deploy so that you can fight either against a handful of elites or against a slew of less competent army?  Though I think one elite you can never hit is much much much more difficult than several goons that have the same threat value combined.

I think arena fighters might pick very different weapon sets from those used by war veterans.  You know, things like bladed webs, barbed chains, or other spectular but less efficient weapons that prolong the fights to generate more viewership rate.  On the other hand, are professional duelists simply arena fighters? The question should be, where do the money fit in in all these, background-wise.

It would be nice if there are more weapon types like round-attack-melee weapons ( though melee is quite impractical in space); MIRV type multiple warhead missile (something like Swarm and Blast);  Spread laser (Swarm and Line); Focused energy beam blast (Line and Blast);  Flame thrower (Cone or Fan-like, wait, aren't we in space?); Huge laser beam (several Lines); Movement hindering effect; Energy depleting effect; Ammo depleting effect(?).  Wouldn't it be overly ambitious?

[Joseph Hewitt]

If you've been keeping up with the SVC, you'll see how glaciarlly work on GearHead has progressed. In the last week I've written some comments on how the arenas should work, often as slow as a sentence or two a day. Hopefully now that I have a clear plan things will speed up.

This week I've been feeling much better; almost back to normal, but still low energy. In between classes I've mostly been staring off into space.

[palefire]

Quoting: Joseph Hewitt

This week I've been feeling much better; almost back to normal, but still low energy. In between classes I've mostly been staring off into space.

Space as "a blank or empty area" or "L5 space"? Good to hear that you are getting better.

I came across this Asia Times Online article:

Meanwhile, Roh, whose loquacious nature never fails to create controversy, has come up with some words of advice that appear at variance with his earlier criticism of South Korean dependence on the US military alliance. Koreans, he has been saying, have got to get up to speed in English if the country hopes to compete more effectively on foreign markets. "International cooperation and coexistence are essential," he said on Educational Broadcasting System. "English skills are a must."

With that, he proposed setting up English immersion centers at 1,300 schools, all staffed with native English-speaking teachers, at a cost of more than $250 million, and the building of an English town on the resort island of Jeju, off the southern coast.

The question is whether South Koreans who look with disdain on American troops on the streets of Seoul and other cities will be more enthusiastic about an army of foreign teachers penetrating their entire society. Like a flood of American imports, their presence may be the price the country will have to bear for shipping ever more goods the other way, to the United States.

[Joseph Hewitt]

A preliminary version of the arena system is up and running. Some additional mechanics will be required for scaling the challenger subquests, but the basic fight works right now. The arena manager persona is big and complicated, even with much of the heavy work taken up by persona fragments. Fortunately the mechanics of arena fighting are less obfuscated than they used to  be.

The arena exists as a visitable location on the map. If no fight is scheduled when the PC enters, he will be instantly ejected back out to the city map. As an added bonus the basic fights work as they always have: the PC is "teleported" from the arena manager to the arena, then brought back instantly when the fight is over.

[JohnnyDmonic]

As a side note, I've been thinking about this bones file PC idea, and I did have one thing I wanted to say.  I'm not sure if it has allready been considered, but any skills/stats etc of said PC's should be 'pro-rated' depending on when in the plot you encounter them, or possibly depending on the amount of game time you've played vs. the amount of game time in the bones file.  My reasoning being, I have a tendency to beat the unholy living bejeezus out of games before going to the end-game.  I can't imagine beating one of my PC's in the arena with anything short of one of my end-game PC's and a full line of tac-nuke weaponry.

[Joseph Hewitt]

Good idea, Johnny. I had planned on simply capping the skills of former PCs, but that idea sounds fun too.

The arena quest is mostly up and running now. I have an arena, a manager, a single challenger added as a subquest, and the whole thing doesn't break if anyone dies. The next step is to add a subquest for the challenger resolution: after you defeat a challenger, you can return and maybe a new quest will be unlocked.

I'm going to start by adding a number of completely random NPC challengers, then some pregenerated ones. Caher and Vord from the GearHead comic will definitely be one such team. I'd like to have at least one pregenerated character belonging to each appropriate faction; even though dueling is mostly illegal in the L5 colonies all of the corps will have duelists at least. The Blades of Crihna and the Privateer's Guild will have duelists as well.

[Joseph Hewitt]

The new arenas are up and running. There are 6 challengers to be faced (4 at the Privateer's Arena, 2 at the Steel Arena), 3 of whom are named NPCs and 3 of whom are completely random. I need more challengers since right now it's possible for a bad set of rolls to leave one arena unworkable.

I don't really like using regular portraits for named NPCs; if a major NPC uses a general portrait, I feel like the NPC thereafter "owns" the portrait. The current named NPCs are Carter (medium rank, from the GearHead comic), Vanda (high rank, uses the por_f_mechapilot portrait), and Hammel (low rank, uses the por_m_lightjacket portrait). Last night I started work on portraits for Caher and Vord but I don't like how they worked out, so I'll probably start over. So far only Hammel has the possibility of an interesting post-fight quest.

Everything seems to be working well so far. There's a lot that can be done with this current setup.

[The Lone Badger]

It would be nice if some of the arena fights took place inside. Space seems a much drabber and less interesting fight environment to me than ground based battles (as occasionally occur inside spinners).

[Joseph Hewitt]

The fights at Maquise Spinner are all in space, the ones at Cayley Rock are on an asteroid surface. The fights at Gaos Spinner, though, are on an Earth-style wilderness map.

[Erathoniel]

Is that just a reference to how Gaos Spinner will be, or can I get there in 422 by flying (I can't by transport, unless I have to go to Cayley Rock first)?

[Joseph Hewitt]

It's not in 422, but it is in the copy I now have on my computer. It'll be there in the next release.

[SharkD]

Regarding character sprites:

I'm surprised noone has created a random face generator for POV-Ray. The POV-Ray programming language would be ideal for this type of stuff. If anyone has experience with modeling heads, I would like to get together and maybe work on something like this. The trick, I guess, would be to make them "anime" heads, because that's what Joseph wants.

[edit]
Here's one that's sort of cool. Kind of hit or miss on the results, though.