A Zombie RTS - Some Ideas

[s-l-u-g]

please make this. SOMEONE MAKE THIS. not you, EA.

This sounds really great, i think this would really SELL and create a huge fanbase along with it.

As for names, here's some suggestions:

Infection!

Apocalypse...

DND: Do Not Die [not my best, no.]

ZOMBIES!

that's all i got, it's too late to really think ;p

 

[Ronwue]

Sounds really interesting. Although I'd want to point out that zombies should be brainless horde. So you should have some sort of penalty when leading zombies, cause you know... they don't follow directions well.

Not quite.... zombies follow their whims well they have a hive like intellect, or a bug like intellect, it would be more correct to have them infight around food or attacking a tad.

Higher zomibe levels are more predatory like as they evolve from bugs to freaking raptors...

If I were to say something about resemblance, I'd say it's starcraft meets left 4 dead. Cool concept though.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Sounds really interesting. Although I'd want to point out that zombies should be brainless horde. So you should have some sort of penalty when leading zombies, cause you know... they don't follow directions well.

Not quite.... zombies follow their whims well they have a hive like intellect, or a bug like intellect, it would be more correct to have them infight around food or attacking a tad.

Higher zomibe levels are more predatory like as they evolve from bugs to freaking raptors...

If I were to say something about resemblance, I'd say it's starcraft meets left 4 dead. Cool concept though.

Well Look at the modner zomibe you have 2 trains of thought slow monstrosities who's own slothness parallels humanities own ignorance and the faster more feral predator like zombie that can show modern mans fear of self.
/incoherent intellectual

So if you want to use zombie classes or ranks you need to layer the details of what they are, basic slow witted fodder evolves to faster more feral predator that finally evolves into the ranks of the intellectual predator, a monster with a mind.
/incoherent intellectual


......least I am not in presudo intellectual mode today......

 

[Chickenlittle]

Sounds really interesting. Although I'd want to point out that zombies should be brainless horde. So you should have some sort of penalty when leading zombies, cause you know... they don't follow directions well.

Not quite.... zombies follow their whims well they have a hive like intellect, or a bug like intellect, it would be more correct to have them infight around food or attacking a tad.

Higher zomibe levels are more predatory like as they evolve from bugs to freaking raptors...

If I were to say something about resemblance, I'd say it's starcraft meets left 4 dead. Cool concept though.

Well Look at the modner zomibe you have 2 trains of thought slow monstrosities who's own slothness parallels humanities own ignorance and the faster more feral predator like zombie that can show modern mans fear of self.
/incoherent intellectual

So if you want to use zombie classes or ranks you need to layer the details of what they are, basic slow witted fodder evolves to faster more feral predator that finally evolves into the ranks of the intellectual predator, a monster with a mind.
/incoherent intellectual


......least I am not in presudo intellectual mode today......

Hmm. A Zombie Tech Tree you say? Interesting. Likely the Zombies' Tech Tree would increase based on time and numbers infected.

 

[j5mello]

A Company called Kerberos Productions (makers of Sword of the Stars) have been planning a zombie apocalypse game though not in the strict RTS style called Fort Zombie. The game is best described as Evil Genius/Stronghold "fort" building combined with scavenging supplies Commandoes/UFO/X-com Style.

- Hiding in the dark from hungry zombies
- Sneaking supplies in from unlikely places
- Jury-rigging various zombie killing devices
- "Average Joe" hero rather than uber-soldiers
- Lots of zombie gore.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Sounds really interesting. Although I'd want to point out that zombies should be brainless horde. So you should have some sort of penalty when leading zombies, cause you know... they don't follow directions well.

Not quite.... zombies follow their whims well they have a hive like intellect, or a bug like intellect, it would be more correct to have them infight around food or attacking a tad.

Higher zomibe levels are more predatory like as they evolve from bugs to freaking raptors...

If I were to say something about resemblance, I'd say it's starcraft meets left 4 dead. Cool concept though.

Well Look at the modner zomibe you have 2 trains of thought slow monstrosities who's own slothness parallels humanities own ignorance and the faster more feral predator like zombie that can show modern mans fear of self.
/incoherent intellectual

So if you want to use zombie classes or ranks you need to layer the details of what they are, basic slow witted fodder evolves to faster more feral predator that finally evolves into the ranks of the intellectual predator, a monster with a mind.
/incoherent intellectual


......least I am not in presudo intellectual mode today......

Hmm. A Zombie Tech Tree you say? Interesting. Likely the Zombies' Tech Tree would increase based on time and numbers infected.

Depends on how you want to balance it and what new thigns you want to try.

Survivalists and zombies share some things in common the main thing is the ability to make "disorganization" a usable skill that dose not undermine you.

For instance as a balancing mechanism for Survivalists food more than energy becomes their tech tree leveler but they can produce units without needing every requirement the unit quality will suffer tho but it gives you fodder for gorilla warfare. The quality issues would be slower unit build time and halved and caped HP perhaps some damage lowering modifiers this would also work well for zombies it takes time and material to build better units if you don;t have it you can hammer out a handicapped unit.

For zombies they need time and bodies that can be interpreted in many ways.

Infection can be one way, but how hard would it be to farm bodies, place "civilian" or survivalist camps here and there to allow for a quick start then have specialized burrowing units bring back bodies, the units can not attack but can pester and slow down enemy targets.

Now one could mix the 2 have units bring bodies back and toss them into pits and whatnot this could enhance the points gained from infection spread and quicken the tech ladder opening up.

The army tends to work on rules and efficiency, if you build buildings in X fashion you get time/energy/food/protection bonuses if you crank out untis in a certain order you get bonus's, if you have them organized for defense or offense in X fashion you get bonus's.

 

[RAKais]

As amazing as this idea is, I thought the whole point of zombie games is the whole survival horror aspect. First person and rarely third person just seems the only logical way to go with zombies. Left 4 Dead has proved that (being the best zombie game in existence alongside Dead Rising) and it would be hard to give the game, which admitedly, you've given some excellent ideas for, to give the game the atmosphere that zombie games need.

 

[goodman528]

Brilliant idea! I'd buy this game if Relic or Blizzard made it today!

You'd need real small squad focus for this, like a limit of 3 to 6 squads for each side. Because if you have hundreds of survivors or soldier that'd defeat the point of horror. I see a pop cap of say:

12 men for Army
24 men for Survivors
216 for Zombies

You can form the squads yourselves, and have up to 6 men (or 18 zombies) in a squad. So you can have:

2MG + 2Snipers = Fire support squad [Army]
1 Thug + 3 Kids + 2 Hunters = Recon squad [Survivors]
15 Melee Zombies + 1 Mob leader + 2 Bone Breakers = Assualt squad [Zombies]

The point is you can choose however your squads look like, in a metagame, then these squads are your build options in the multiplayer game. Experience would be carried by individual man, and you can reform squads between games. For multiplayer, this means you can have a consistent war thing like EIR mod for CoH, or casual games where meteagame experience doesn't count.

FLAVOURING:

The Army would focus on fire power and modern tech, i.e. Elite squads fighting against the odds, Rambo style. An part tech tree would be (Note: only a small part of the tech tree, to get a feel of things), say:

(Army)
[T0] Soldiers (M16 AR)
[T1] Humvees; upgrades for M16.
[T2] M60E (The MG Rambo used); Mortars; officer.
[T3] SR25 (7.62mm Sniper rifle); upgrade mods for the Humvee.
[T4] Apache gunship / M1 Tank / 155mm Artillery depending on doctorine choice.

The Survivors would focus on stealth and superior resource gathering, moving faster using local knowledge, building barricades, using ingenious solutions, etc. Here's tech tree taster:

(Survivor)
[T0] House wives (gathers and cooks resources; uses rolling pin and kitchen knife)
[T1] kids (low profile, fast moving); Highschool students (all purpose; uses baseball bats, chair legs, short knives)
[T2] Bums (crazy melee); Thugs (good local knowledge); Doctors (heals)
[T3] Hunters (stealthy, uses rifle); Engineers
[T4] Chuck Norris (You win!)

The zombies focus on swarming, massive numbers, I think having a hundred zombies, mostly slowly advancing, but some charging, and some dogs, all coming at your 2 squads of 12 survivors with nothing but improvised weapons, is scary. Especially after you've invested a lot of time and effort into each survivor's equipement and experience. There should be a lot more frightened running away in this RTS than Resident Evil 4 ever managed. Here's the zombie taster:

(Zombies)
[T0] Infected (Max Brooks' classic zombie)
[T1] Infected animals
[T2] upgrades, more resillience, more damage, faster infection / rising rate, etc,
[T3] Specialised zombies
[T4] ?????

ECONOMIC

Army gets reinforcement points based on how little of the map they control, the less they control, the faster R points generate. But, air drop is only available every 2mins.

Survivors gets whatever they can find on the map.

Zombies has no economy, every part of the map auto generates infected units every few seconds.

 

[Madshaw]

Why not have two or three rival army factions?

of course i mean as well as surviors and zombies

 

[theCMNDER]

I havent read the entire thread because its so long so sorry if someone has already had this idea! People have been wondering about buildings for zombies, well i am assuming that there are probably plenty of dead bodies around as you normally see in any zombie based setting, well a building taken over by zombies can use the corpses of the people in the building to make more zombies! Large buildings that have more corpses will therefore have more zombie types available or build zombies faster or whatever. Also opens the idea that maybe there will only be 1 of a certain type of building on the map (or more in larger battles), some sort of super special building that allows production of each teams best unit.
And i think zombie vehicles should be ZOMBIE T-REX, RAWR, they infest the bones of t-rex in a museum

 

[Necrophagist]

Been thinking a bit recently about how a zombie-based RTS would work. It's definitely an untapped possibility and I think it could be interesting. These are the ideas I've come up with so far for how I'd like the game to work. Suggestions and criticism welcome. Especially suggestions, as it's not too fleshed out yet, I don't have actual specific details of the units or even a name for the game. Anyway:

The game takes place in a city after a zombie outbreak. There are 3 different factions to choose from: The Survivors, The Army and The Zombies. The Army are trying to contain the infection by killing both the zombies and any survivors that would just feed the zombie horde. The survivors are trying to escape and defend themselves from the army and the zombies. The zombies are trying to kill everyone because that's what zombies do. They're just like that, you know? I see the Army as having expensive but powerful units, the zombies being the swarming race and the Survivors being the middle ground, as well as being more defence-focused.

Units are squad-based (as in Dawn of War and Company of Heroes). The game will be mainly infantry based, perhaps with some higher-tier units being vehicles for the Army and Survivors.

Unlike most RTS games, where buildings are built from scratch, maps in this game have normal, neutral civilian buildings already in place, as the game is set in a city, which are converted into useful buildings that create units, provide resources, etc. The stats of the converted building (hit points, attack power/range for defensive buildings, etc) are based on what the building was converted from. Any neutral building can be converted into any type of useful building, but the varying stats mean certain building type are more suited to certain purposes than others. All buildings are always garrisonable, but converted buildings may only be garrisoned by the team that owns it (and their allies in team games). A converted building that is damaged to 0 HP will be deconverted back to its original state, with some damage to the remaining unconverted building. An unconverted building damaged to 0 is destroyed completely.

Various doodads on the map will also be able to be interacted with for potentially useful results. For example, vehicles could be shot and blown up to kill enemies or raided for more resources and trees could be toppled to block access and create chokepoints.

The game has 2 resource types: Supplies and People. Supplies are justa generic, universal resource, obtained by converting specific buildings (shops, etc) into a resource generating building. People would be used to create units and convert buildings and each faction would have a unique way of generating this resource. Survivors would automatically generate it at rate based on how much territory they control (a value based on the number and placement of buildings and units). The Army would have to convert buildings into comm centres to use radio for reinforcements, generating People at a rate based on the number of these buildings. Zombies, obviously, would infect enemy units to generate People. This would be done with a special ability (not necessarily unique to one unit) that would convert enemy units that are near death.

That's all I have. Well?

STONKING GREAT. I think playing as the survivors would be too difficult though. Not only are you fighting the zombies which would multiply every time they got one of your units, but he military would be bombing you at the same time. If you could find a way to balance this, it would be an awesome game!

 

[Chickenlittle]

Been thinking a bit recently about how a zombie-based RTS would work. It's definitely an untapped possibility and I think it could be interesting. These are the ideas I've come up with so far for how I'd like the game to work. Suggestions and criticism welcome. Especially suggestions, as it's not too fleshed out yet, I don't have actual specific details of the units or even a name for the game. Anyway:

The game takes place in a city after a zombie outbreak. There are 3 different factions to choose from: The Survivors, The Army and The Zombies. The Army are trying to contain the infection by killing both the zombies and any survivors that would just feed the zombie horde. The survivors are trying to escape and defend themselves from the army and the zombies. The zombies are trying to kill everyone because that's what zombies do. They're just like that, you know? I see the Army as having expensive but powerful units, the zombies being the swarming race and the Survivors being the middle ground, as well as being more defence-focused.

Units are squad-based (as in Dawn of War and Company of Heroes). The game will be mainly infantry based, perhaps with some higher-tier units being vehicles for the Army and Survivors.

Unlike most RTS games, where buildings are built from scratch, maps in this game have normal, neutral civilian buildings already in place, as the game is set in a city, which are converted into useful buildings that create units, provide resources, etc. The stats of the converted building (hit points, attack power/range for defensive buildings, etc) are based on what the building was converted from. Any neutral building can be converted into any type of useful building, but the varying stats mean certain building type are more suited to certain purposes than others. All buildings are always garrisonable, but converted buildings may only be garrisoned by the team that owns it (and their allies in team games). A converted building that is damaged to 0 HP will be deconverted back to its original state, with some damage to the remaining unconverted building. An unconverted building damaged to 0 is destroyed completely.

Various doodads on the map will also be able to be interacted with for potentially useful results. For example, vehicles could be shot and blown up to kill enemies or raided for more resources and trees could be toppled to block access and create chokepoints.

The game has 2 resource types: Supplies and People. Supplies are justa generic, universal resource, obtained by converting specific buildings (shops, etc) into a resource generating building. People would be used to create units and convert buildings and each faction would have a unique way of generating this resource. Survivors would automatically generate it at rate based on how much territory they control (a value based on the number and placement of buildings and units). The Army would have to convert buildings into comm centres to use radio for reinforcements, generating People at a rate based on the number of these buildings. Zombies, obviously, would infect enemy units to generate People. This would be done with a special ability (not necessarily unique to one unit) that would convert enemy units that are near death.

That's all I have. Well?

STONKING GREAT. I think playing as the survivors would be too difficult though. Not only are you fighting the zombies which would multiply every time they got one of your units, but he military would be bombing you at the same time. If you could find a way to balance this, it would be an awesome game!

Going back to my earlier idea, Survivors could have an underground network of tunnels or bunkers they could retreat to, and re-surface elseware, mounting guerilla attacks.

 

[TheHorizon]

Oh my god... a Zombie RTS?! That's GENIUS!
Although I don't like the idea of the army killing survivors.

I'd like a bigger scale type zombie vs humanity type game (ala Yonkers) where you have the traditional human RTS units against zombies.
There would be slow zombies which would be the basic units.
There would be fast zombies which would be a more upgraded/high tier of unit.

And of course L4D esque "boss infected".
Maybe not with the same effects that L4D is styled with, but ones that are interesting to fight and add tactical oppourunity.

Maybe have zombie bears for example.

 

[curlycrouton]

I think there's already a Zombie RTS Source Mod.

I don't know what it's called though, try Googling it.

 

[TheHorizon]

Here's the zombie mod:
http://www.allthingszombie.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15745

 

[UberMore]

If this game isn't developed, then the gaming industry is kicking itself in it's 'nads (or respective female damage to area).

I would buy this game even if it was done badly, but only if it was patched regularly to finish the game.

 

[Chickenlittle]

If this game isn't developed, then the gaming industry is kicking itself in it's 'nads (or respective female damage to area).

I would buy this game even if it was done badly, but only if it was patched regularly to finish the game.

I think most people would. *smug chuckle*

The idea of RTS appeals to some people, but RTS would really draw in a lot more players, like Halo Wars is bound to do.

 

[XXXcrowhavenXXX]

Awesome! let the zombies have the ability to burrow underground and able to go underground 100 yards from their burrow spot and ambush enemies. and can you make like an armory thing so you can upgrade your units (make the upgrades appearable). like for army you can have gas masks so the zombies special ability like infection cloud dosent affect them.

Maybe mechs and scouts and uavs.

For survivors they can find crshed vehiciles and can pull them back to a base so they can be repaired read for battle. and if u want to make a campaign for army the ending is the vaccine created and its all back to normal....
for survivors the ending could be getting out of the city....

And zombies populating everywhere

 

[TimeLord]

I think it would work well with the Dawn of War 2 approach. i.e a band of travelers fighting their way across the map with certain special abilities and the ability to upgrade at stopping points (between levels) when they stop at army bases etc for new guns.

I'd buy that lol