I'd love a future co-op commando mission expansion some day - a new set of, perhaps slightly smaller, maps. They'd be intended for commando style play, and probably stealth, so human players only: no friendly bots (and therefore like Copehill Down map). They'd each have a unique mission. Here are some ideas? What else would other players like to see?

1) Capturing some V.I.P. warlord/drug baron type from their base.

There'd be some base/compound/citadel to attack and in the final lair there'd be the VIP and his bodyguard. They'd be programmed not to leave the final lair. The VIP would have a gold desert eagle and an infinite armored vest (i.e. he couldn't be killed but he could be knocked over by gunfire/explosives like other players). He'd have a bodyguard of maybe half a dozen uber-bots, like the officers with vests and rare weapons. You would have to take out all the bodyguard first and then the VIP would surrender and map finished.

2) A convoy. Some trucks that you have to escort through a rocky, winding ravine.

If blown up, the trucks would respawn at the start. Say, there are five trucks at the start and the aim is to get five original or re-spawned trucks over the finish line for victory.

There could be a river as well, that forces the road to cross it using bridges at points on the map.

A general "one side of the map to the other" game, on a longer, narrower map, with good height on each side like the east ridge on Rattlesnake Crescent (but with impassable points at the top occasionally so you couldn't walk right along the top of the ridge, like on that map).

3) Capturing some briefcase from somewhere.

This briefcase would glow gold, like the one in Pulp Fiction. You'd have to capture the briefcase (which could perhaps maybe be in one of a few random locations) and then return it to your home base.

Once captured the briefcase would have a map marker.

There could be some semi-uncapturable enemy spawn bases (like the enemy ones on Vigil Island) and so the person carrying the briefcase back home might be shot often. Then it could be that it takes several players' lives, with the briefcase changing hands a few times between players, before getting it home to victory.

4) Infiltrating and blowing up some dam complex.

5) Freeing some prisoners. Probably set in the jungle like the Rambo/Killing Fields movies, liberating US POWs from the Vietnam War.

There could be one or several prisoners to free. Maybe you'd get to the prisoners, possibly capturing zones in the process. Then the freed prisoners would start with body armour vests and would be programmed to start running towards the home base (maybe some cardboard helicopters). There'd be some uncapturable enemy spawn points so there'd still be enemy bots on the way back home and so players would have to ensure the freed prisoners returned home safely. Medikits essential.

6) I'd like to see a big base on a mountain top. Something with a big height difference effect, like the ridge on Rattlesnake Crescent. This would be a big walled base, at least as big as west and east bases on Fridge Valley put together.

The mountain would be in the middle of the map so you could walk around it at the bottom at the edges of the map and go up it at various points.

I'm not sure whether the RWR game engine goes below ground level, but the unique feature of this map could be that the edge of the map is below ground-level, to give it some real verticality and the height perspective of a mountain base. It would be a challenge to push the engine to its workable limits in a vertical sense. For example, having the central part of the map set at the height of east ridge on Rattlesnake Crescent would be too close to the camera, so to speak, perspective-wise.

7) Some sea-based map which uses the patrol boat/rubber boats.

Maybe a harbour, capturing a ship. This could be capturing an enemy ship or it could be a friendly ship that you have to re-capture from pirates or other enemy.

Or maybe the aim is to blow up some heavily guarded enemy ship with C4.

Players could maybe start the game from a submarine spawn point (a cardboard one, like the aircraft carrier in Black Gold Estuary), and they'd have to use the rubber boats for a bit to get to the target in the harbour. Maybe there could be a couple of enemy guard rubber boats patrolling the waters on the way. Maybe the harbour mouth is guarded by watchposts.

8) Some sort of oil rig complex with the game on raised platforms and suchlike above the sea.

I'm not a computer programmer so I don't know the technical terms! But a lot of the objects in the 3D environment would be see-through objects, like the metalwork on the two big radio towers you can run up in Copehill Down - metal walkways connecting platforms with the sea below.

9) Attacking and capturing some island, like Vigil Island but maybe different location, and you start the game on rubber boats from the sea. Maybe it is a pirate island.

10) Capture a vehicle - maybe a comms truck - from somewhere and drive it home safely for military intelligence. If the comms truck gets destroyed, it respawns at its original start point.

I think this expansion would be a lot of fun single-player too, as it could be done as a solo James Bond-style stealth game.

11) Blow up a radio tower, obviously!

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I was thinking of this as some expansion pack in the far distant future. But then I thought some more...

It would be a big undertaking, creating a whole new set of maps. What about using the existing maps?

This could be done as a mod or even an officially released add-on spin-off side-game called RWR: Special Ops or something, re-working the maps as a solo single-player/human only co-op multiplayer stealth game with specific missions.

As well as there being no friendly bots in this game version, capturing zones could be disabled, and the price of flares decreased, so players would create spawn points themselves through the mission. They would have to stealth to enemy-controlled armories during the mission, or get to their stash.

So, it's pretty much the game mode that the Copehill Down map is, but re-applying it to the other maps.

Imagine Keepsake Bay: the player spawn is a submarine in the bottom/south of the map and the mission is to do some tasks on land around the bay, and then maybe make it back safely to the submarine.

Vigil Island would be great fun with some stealth objective.

The mini-castle/fort in the North of Old Fort Creek town would be a great stealth objective.

This whole new special ops game is already 99% complete, since its basically RWR with some minor modifications. I think it could be a lot of fun.

A few years back we were tossing ideas with something similar viewtopic.php?f=6&t=950

Mostly fun to read how most of the useful features we're still missing or I had just started working on them.

Thanks for the link.

There are some similarities in objectives between the concepts, although the idea in the other thread seems to be about a tooled up firepower team, whereas I am seeing it as a stealth-based game, so primarily using silenced weapons. Have a backup loud weapon if necessary but primarily silenced.

Copehill Down seems to have been designed this way, and it is, I feel, easier to complete the map using silenced weapons. The way the spawning system is set up favours a stealth approach.

Incidentally, the squad system idea suggested in the other thread is pretty much the same as another game mode/variant I'd been thinking of and it's an interesting idea. However, it wouldn't work for a stealth commando game as bots can't stealth.

The way I see this game working is having at least three or four missions a map, possibly more. Maybe even something to do in every base on the map.

Here are some ideas then. So each map, combinations of these things:

1) Capturing/killing VIP/warlord/general

2) Capturing and returning "home" a "golden" briefcase

3) Freeing prisoners from a building. Vigil Island already has a prison building (can't think of any others).

Maybe, once released, prisoners function as unarmed squad members so they'd follow you around and you have to escort them to safety. If there were several players, the squad size function could be used to, say, have one guy go with the prisoners while the others set squad size to 0 and focus on fighting off the enemy.

4) Freeing prisoners from a prison transport truck

5) Blow up a ship/stealing a ship

6) Capturing a vehicle (like a comms truck/comms tank/cargo truck) and driving it "home" somewhere

7) Blowing up a vehicle (like a comms truck/comms tank/cargo truck). This could be a stationary vehicle, or the vehicle could be programmed to drive around in a loop and needs to be intercepted

8) Blowing radio towers

9) Blowing up some other uber-feature. For example, it would be great if the antenna on top of the TV station could be made to be an explodable objective, maybe with a high HP requiring at least a couple of C4s. There might be other features, like a bridge. Hell, what about the ship in the south of Bootleg Islands?!

10) Blow up a series of cargo crates/weapons cache. Maybe three to five piles of cargo crates on a map that need to be blown up. Maybe there could be several locations where they might be at random each game.

11) Escort a convoy.

12) Intercept a convoy

It could be some cargo trucks escorted by tanks/APCs and you'd have to blow the cargo trucks. Maybe a VIP in an urbal, too.

This might be interesting using the Copehill Down map, where you have to intercept it on the main East-West road. It would be fun having tanks in the village of this map since they don't appear on it in the regular game.

From the other thread you could add:

- Combat Search and Rescue of a downed pilot
- steal map (although this may be the same brief as the capture the "golden briefcase" mission, pun intended)
- destroy out-of-commission tanks that are being repaired.
- lay a minefield
- deliver a vehicle with arms to some resistance fighters