I don't generally like making suggestions which greatly change games, but pasik sort of agreed with me in IRC, so I thought why not

This game is very simple at the moment: There's a ton of directions we could go. I would personally love a multiplayer-oriented direction, but the game needs more depth to be succesful there in my opinion.

So let's get started.

Cooperation is all in multiplayer games. Three different classes who must work together to accomplish the victory, would be everything.

Soldier



Basically the soldier we have now. They would only lose the M240, which is engineer's ability to place, and get 1 grenade cap.
The actions, with all classes, would rely on the three mouse buttons, which are easily achievable and are important.
With the soldier they would be simple: LMB to shoot, RMB to strike with the knife.

If secondary weapons are to be added, scroll to change between them.

Soldiers are the backbone of the army, the serial killers, but they do not have any speciality, so they are in a general disadvantage to the other faction if the enemy has all classes in use.

Move along.

Demolition man



Since we have those tanks and jeeps coming, I would imagine they will be quite powerful, and therefore need a good counter.
Demolition man would have a Bazooka

2/3 screen range, to not to be overpowered
Explosion radius as big as the grenade explosion radius
5 rockets, refill on nade boxes
and require crouch to fire.

It could do 90% damage to a tank in a straight hit, and 100% to jeeps / trucks in a straight hit.

Reload would take 2 seconds, to leave the demolition man very vulnerable to enemies, so therefore he would need soldiers to protect him as he'd be quite easy to take out. But tanks would have no problem in taking out soldiers ifiamrite, so it's kind of a rock-paper-scissors situation.
Demo man should also have a pistol, and one C4 (to destroy enemy fortification type of things, to set up traps or to destroy vehicles) which you could trigger after throwing it with RMB.

LMB = Shoot / trigger
RMB = Aim bazooka (crouches and slows down the mouse, improves accuracy) / throw C4
Scroll = Switch weapons.

And now to the most game-changing class suggestion, Engineer



I have come to realise that building + fighting is the ultimate game when done right.

The engineers would be able to place sandbag walls, barbwires which slow down and hurt the enemy, landmines, hedgehogs (to stop tanks), mountable machine guns, and whatnot.

Each placement requires resource points, let's say one sandbag wall part needs 2 resource points and a MG 5 points.

You would get these points by choosing the wrench from your inventory, and spamming RMB at containers which we already have in the game. This way it'd add a lot strategical priority to which areas you hold.
The containers would have resource limits too, say 5 rp (resource points), gathering one rp would take one click, and one rp would regenerate after 10 seconds in that container. This is needed so that you can't just spam everything everywhere, you'd need to wait at least. Though I don't believe massive wall mazes would be very common anyway

Oh yeah I mentioned wrenches. They would be one tool in the inventory you use to repair vehicles, gather resources, or to kill enemies. It'd do all these things depending on which one of them you're standing next to. Whatever you do, the wrench'll be always swingin' though.

LMB = Shoot
RMB = Place objects / Repair vehicles / Gather objects / Remove objects / Melee
Scroll = Change between objects in the inventory

The sandbag walls and barbwires should be able to be destroyed by grenades since they are a potential griefing tool, say 4 hits to each part would bring them down. Engineers would be able to remove them too, by swinging the wrench next to them. Also maybe when you ride over them with a tank, they'd go BOOM. Not the hedgehogs though. This'd add even more strategy and required acknowledge of the game, see this picture:



A potential stronghold, tanks can't easily get there, nor do enemy players so they can't throw grenades. Surely a tank (engineer also, but I'd imagine they will die swiftly into rapid MG fire) could slowly destroy them all, but that'd take time and enemy demoliton mans would be able to sneak to them and blow the tanks up. Enemy soldiers would prolly be protecting them though

How'd building work?

So basically if you want to build a wall, you click and drag the way you want the wall to be. After that your character would automatically goes and builds each part, and the actual building wouldn't take long. The same for barbed wires.
MG's you need to place on walls, and landmines you can place anywhere. It's quite simple.

Generally engineer-type of class would add a lot strategical elements to the game, and lots of the needed depth.

We were discussing this a little with pasik in IRC, and he said he'd make soldiers to have different abilities by what items they are wearing. I however think that making clear different-looking classes would be better, because it would be very hard to identify who's who and who's doing what. ''Is that an engineer coming up or is it a soldier?'' and ''Does that guy have a rocket there?? Maybe I should kill him first :S'' kind of quotes wouldn't be very rare, I suppose.
Without clearly different classes but with clearly different abilities I think this game would become complicated.

I haven't thought much about how to change the classes. Maybe by pressing a certain key you would get a menu where the three different classes are able to be chosen, with kind of big images and small explanation texts. After you will pick one, you could be assigned to that class after your death.

Also it could be a little hard to code the AI to behave properly as an Engineer - so I'd suggest that the bots only pick up Soldier and Demolition Man. Don't wanna see random barbwires covering all your spawn

''What's the point in building a stronghold when enemy can just capture nearby bases??''

This is a problem I thought may occur, so I suggest that you'd have a checkbox in the server settings - which as enabled makes only bases which are being targeted, be able to be captured.
Like this there would be a bigger need to build defensive positions, when all enemy forces are being centered to the same and one base.

But before this we need all kinds of basic stuff, such as server browser and chat history.. Yeah well. I've shout my thoughts now.

Click Preview... I should have remembered everything. Feel free to build on the idea if you wish.

Hello Monsteri,

I was thinking about classes and multiplayer as well and drafted this during my down time. It outlines weapons and classes (unofficial, just my ideas). Originally, I did not think about engineers but your suggestion seems valid and decent.

Please take a look at the draft and tell me what you think.

Proposal for Classes and Weapons in Running with Rifles

WEAPONS:

Assault Rifles:
M16
G36
AK47
M14
FAMAS
L86

SMG:

P90
MP5
HKUMP
TDI Vector

Heavy weapons:

Snipers
M24
TAC-50
MX110

Light Machine Guns*
M240
PKM
Shotguns
Mossberg 500
Benelli
Rocket Launchers
RPG
M72 LAW

TOOLS
Wrench

*Picked up LMG's must be shot from prone position (just like the current design)


Classes:

Classes and Specialties
Assault [Assault rifles, SMG, MX110]
Marksman [Snipers]
CQB [SMG, Shotguns]
Heavy [LMG, Rocket Launchers, Assault Rifles]
Engineer [ SMG, Wrench]

Boni and Penalties
Assault – Throw grenades further. Always starts with 2 grenades. Can hold extra grenades [5?].
Marksman – Longer sight. Weaker. Never starts with grenades
CQB – faster reload.
Heavy – More health. Slower movement. Anti vehicle grenades (replace standard grenades). Can shoot LMG while standing/crouching (very inaccurate).
Engineer – Only class that can use wrench.

Players using weapons that fall into the class weapons specialties will get the base accuracy. However, if a player picks up weapons from other classes (for instance, Assault picks up a rocket launcher), there will be an accuracy penalty.

Selection
When the player enters a server or starts a game, the player is asked to choose a starting class. Then, the player chooses a weapon to start with based on the class (can only choose from the weapons listed above) and spawns. When the player dies, the player respawns with the weapon chosen at the beginning. The player can press a button to go to the “Class” menu to change the class or the spawning weapon of the player at any time but the effects do not happen until the next time the player dies.

AI and Class
AI bots spawn at set ratios of classes.

Proposed ratios:
-Assault = 70%
-Marksman = 5%
-CQB = 10%
-Heavy = 15%
AI bots randomly choose starting weapons each spawn.

Class Slots
Within each game, there are set slots for human controlled players. There can only be as many of one class as there are slots so that not all human players are snipers for instance.

Proposed slots:
-Assault = unlimited
-Marksmen = 5
-CQB = 15
-Heavy = 15
-Engineer = 15

Since players will move between classes and quit games, spots open up over time and a player can get any class the player wants at some point.

_________________
ComJak's house... stay out of it

Umm ComJak, that honestly sounds quite complicated. We don't really need that much weapons at all, and this whole system would be veryvery confusing to newbies, and since the classes don't make much of a difference, there wouldn't be much targeting or strategic order between them.

And for an example, why have a sniper class with three different weapons, when we could just have one sniper weapon for the soldier? There is no need for CQB class, when the current soldiers can do that very well. They reload anyways quite fast so basically if you wanted to have a clear difference between them, the CQB class shouldn't have any reload time at all, and that sounds overpowered.
Now when coming to explosions, there needs to be a separate class. Otherwise soldiers would be able to do everything necessary, and would need no help from other classes. Then again the Heavies (I'd call them Demolition mans or Anti-tank though, Heavy copies TF too much ) shouldn't have automatic weapons, that'd make THEM again able to everything.

Different accuracies: Complicated. Especially with so many weapons.

Slots should be up to players. No class should be so overpowered, that it needs a max amount of slots to be used.
Teams may take bad decisions with choosing the classes, but honestly that's not a reason to enforce a good amount of each class, it's their failure.

Well, well. I agree only with your description of how class choosing could work.

Shameless self promoting of ideas

I like your ideas, but I prefer my own, (no offence meant)

Regarding the equipment suggestion:

Yeah it's pretty good and could work like that, but only in singleplayer. It'd all be so confusing in multiplayer, because even though you have good suggestions of how the different players would be able to be identified, in big battles it gets messy. I just don't want to be guessing my enemies superpowers.
And I would love this game to be more multiplayer orientated, as usually singleplayer only games don't get very big.. Plus the social side.
Also if you would just find items that boost your team when used right, it would be pure russian roulette. Say you spawned quite far away from the boxes, and then some newb dumbass comes and steals the equipment you want, and dies without ever getting to use it.

Some ideas of yours (flare gun, radio, mobile spawn) could very well be the ability of engineer to place.

Honestly again I think this would be so complicated, and very hard for newbies to learn - but with classes it'd be rather obvious. I had hard time learning even the basics of the game, and I probadly hadn't had the motivation to learn the game if I had a tonne of different (and hard to differentiate, because of the small graphics) items and weapons.

Again, your suggestions could work well in singleplayer - where I guess you see it all in - but not so well with multiplayer. And once again, I want a multiplayer-oriented RWR.

But disregarding equipment, others are a must-add (I want tanks+jeep combo), such as the chat thingy (We need chat logs too), snipers and secondary (Scroll would be better as default imo, but sure these keys can be changed).

Classes are likely not the way RWR will go in the end, I would want RWR to be more flexible than that -- one shouldn't be restricted by a choice made before spawning, in my opinion.

I agree that classes would be an easy way to bring out specific soldier appearances and that classes would generally be a more realistic approach, but I'm already so fond of what the item system enables that I'd hate to see that go.

I want to be able to start the attack with an M240 that I died with the last time, change it to a shotgun on the fly when going down the trenches for some close combat, loot a few LAWs and blast the enemy jeep to pieces, and look for another M240 when we're done with this particular fight to get back to my usual role. I want the role/mode/class/approach switch to be dynamic, and weapons or gear-sets make it possible.

Now I know that sounded very single player oriented and that it usually doesn't go quite that smoothly. Still, I want it to be possible for the player to try to be that all around hero guy with the possibility to adapt. In multiplayer, if you're working together with players in a tight squad, you might want to see that you have certain amount of variety in your squad and stick to your choices of items / weapons as much as possible to play by a certain role. Still, once all your friends with assault rifles are dead and you're there building that sandbag wall at the front line, it's great that you can just throw away your bags/wrench/toolkit and pick that rifle up and fight.

Anyway, the plan currently is that there will be a jeep first. Then there needs to be a simple bazooka, something like M72 LAW. A soldier can probably carry 1 or 2 of these, possibly depending on rank. They might substitute grenades, or they might not.

After these features have been completed, I'd say it's time to bring in the engineering functionality. The engineering stuff is quite far away still I think, maybe I can get to start with it after 2-3 months?

What comes to having a set of weapon types, each weapon type having a multitude of models but being very similar in properties and behavior (like currently AK47 and G36), I can see the fun in that. It's not the most important of features, but brings in some important variety. It could be also made so that each faction has their specific weapon models, as to not make it completely random. I understand that this stuff can become overwhelming for the rookies and the non-weapon-model-headz out there, so there needs to be a clear indication of the weapon class (Assault rifle, Machine gun, Submachine gun, Shotgun, etc..) while dealing with weapons.

Hmhh yeah, I know that side of the game, being all hero on everyone, but believe me,that any strategic stuff will never happen in pubs with such settings

I enjoy that role too - I've often first suppressed the enemy down the road with my M240, grapped MP5D from a dead fella and conquered teh city (only possible with <100 players though ). It's very fun to go all rambo once you've learned the game, but I would just love strategically oriented gameplay.

Hurmff.

What if you would be able to change your class on the run by going to a corpse and getting all its stuff? (Pressing some button to switch the class.) Sounds like a good compromise to me, but it's your game afterall.

.

By the way, if you'll begin making engineer stuff in 2-3 months and jeeps come first.. Does that mean that you'll start making them in 1> months? OMG

Strategical way of fighting is all fine and dandy, but I'm not sure if it needs to be forced on the players using classes. That would make things very straightforward, but I think certain openness in way of playing is a good thing.

The thing you said about getting all the stuff from a dead body to switch the class is pretty close to what I briefly referred to with picking up a gear-set previously. I didn't go into detail with it, but it basically means that when picking up a weapon, you also change your appearance in some ways. I think some minor primary weapon dependent restrictions or enablers could also take place, which would affect the max amount of grenades, bazookas, movement speed, etc.

E.g. a stealth guy would have his skin camouflaged, lighter combat belt, no helmet but a headband, the engineer would have a backpack and a bright red toolkit or a huge wrench or something of that sort, and something for the machine gunners and other weapon carriers as well, don't know exactly what yet. This would seem that there would be 4 main roles, the generic front line soldier, support, stealth and engineer.

If one would be carrying a LAW or two, I'd like them to be visible on the back of the soldier, maybe the bazooka model could be slightly exaggerated to make it more obvious that this guy has some light anti-tank force with him to make him a more obvious target.

And yes, I hope to begin working with the jeep physics quite soon, within one month.

Oh, well, that's nice to heard. That's basically my class suggestion then, but you'd change your ''class'' by just changing your weapon I guess. It would make more sense if you would get everything from the dead guy though, and you would still be able to change your style while on the run. It'd also be a bit less confusing.

e.g. What if you have got a toolpack/wrench and a M240? Wouldn't that be quite OP?

Well my idea behind all these weapons was that a player could choose different rifles for different jobs. For instance, the 3 snipers are different in damage, shooting speed, and reloading speed. The xm110 is a semiautomatic rifle with low damage and would suit a medium range combat situation while the m24 is a bolt action with long reload speeds and small magazines. The m24 would be suited more for long distance lone wolf kind of operations. The tac50 was thought of as an anti material rifle effective against jeeps and what not.

The same would apply for assault rifles. An m16 is a burst fire rifle that would not be as effective in close quarters as say an ak47. So by choosing the right weapon for the situation, players can be more or less adapted to the fight at hand. The accuracies follows these ideas.

Also, about reloading speeds, the current speeds are quite unrealistic and if we generally increase the reload time, then we can have a class that reloads quickly as a perk.
But this is not my game so I will only offer my opinions.

_________________
ComJak's house... stay out of it