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>"Joe Humble" <joehumble@earthlink.net> wrote in message
>news:vbb2i11afurbdr3v0lrt98dn6n4615tncv@4ax.com...
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>But that's the beauty of the system I tried to describe as Halo RTS. If you
>want to keep doing the playlist thing, that's all you have to do. It's just
>that the outcome of your battle may or may not affect someone else's
>"campaign". Plus, slayer works great -- well, team slayer, at least. In
>fact, most battles on a battlefield probably look more like team slayer then
>CTF.
>
>Basically what I propose is that the RTS portion be a wrapper program, say a
>$20 add-on. The target would be strategy gamers. They get to do their
>campaigns but with the very unique quality being that real people fight the
>individual battles. The wrapper program can stand alone easily enough, but
>since the infrastructure is already in place for today's Halo2 online
>playlists, Halo RTS just has to tie into these servers -- basically send
>battle requests So let's say my campaign has 3 battles going on this turn.
>One may be a hostage rescue from an enemy command center so Halo RTS
>requests a CTF on Coagulation. Another of my battles may be a team slayer
>with my scorpion unit engaging a unit of ghost-supported infantry. Here
>Halo RTS requests a battle from a playlist that would match this scenario
>(maybe one of the team slayer psuedo-random game types now includes
>vehicles). The third battle has one of my infantry units trying to demolish
>an enemy fuel depot, so the request goes out for an Assault game on
>Zanzibar.
>
>Today's Halo2 servers get these requests from Halo RTS and picks some of its
>games THAT ARE GOING TO BE PLAYED ANYWAY in say the next 3 minutes. When
>those matches are over Halo2 reports the results to Halo RTS, which in turn
>incorporates the outcome of those battles into my campaign. Maybe the CTF
>game ended in a 1-1 tie, so Halo RTS says it was unsuccessful (in other
>words my 'unit' would have to win in the Halo2 playlist game in order for my
>campaign to have a victory). However, my assault game from Halo2 came out
>2-1 in my favor. Bye-bye enemy fuel depot, which makes it more difficult
>for my enemy in my campaign to resupply. And in the team slayer match my
>team won 50-45 which means the enemy unit is either eliminated from my
>campaign map or severely weakened, and my unit moves on.
>
>I was sharing these thoughts with a friend and came up with another angle.
>As a "general" running a campaign, my goal is to out-flank, out-match, and
>out-gun my enemy. If I am successful I will be bringing say three units to
>bear against one enemy unit, and some of my units may even be artillery.
>These scenarios could be an opportunity to expand today's Halo2 playlists.
>Have a playlist titled something that gets across the idea that you are
>going in outmanned and outgunned. This playlist would draw all the
>tough-guys who think they rule everyone -- it would test them beyond their
>normal skillz. Plus, even if Halo2 picks a game that ends up having lots of
>quitters, the worst case scenario is that Halo RTS determines the outcome of
>my battle randomly, just like all strategy games to today.
>