Why Earth Sucks

[Cogburn]

I've been revisiting abathur's idea over and over again trying to rework it a little bit... but here's the problem I get into...

When I think about the teams and where they are based... the quesiton then becomes, where do you actually fight?

If its a European land war... That's stupid. I can get DEMs of the European land mass and make a 1/4 scale replica but then we are just playing WWII Online w/ futuristic weapons.

Otherwise its Africa, South American and Antarctica. Fine for variations on topography and environment, but there's a good reason no major war has ever been fought there (with the exception of the Boer War) ... There's not a damn thing worth fighting over.

The problem is then that leaves the entirety of the US and Eurasian land mass... but then you will always be fighting on someone's home turff.

I just dont think that Earth is the place to base a game. Maybe we'll have to pull some kind of Star Wars ....

A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away ... there were humans that weren't from Earth so just deal with it.

Thoughts?

[Cl2v2r]

I for one much prefer a non-Earth map and storyline. That's one thing I think PS did very well, was to explain why we were all on this alien planet doing strange things and still tied it back to Earth.

If it's only semi-futuristic, then meh. If it's so far in the future that no-one can say 'That couldn't happen,' it's good.

As for terrain, Earth-like is good, Earth is not.

[Kyraal]

I'm in agreement with both of you. By picking another battlefield than Earth, we're going to have a lot of creative freedom to play with. Not going to have to be worried about some people getting offended because of how we might portray a futuristic version of their homeland. I personally think it's kind of silly to get upset as it's only a work of fiction, but some people are sensitive about such things.

I like the approach Battlestar Galactica has. Creating an Earth-like society, civilisation, somewhere in some galaxy, with its own religions and cultures. With Earth only being a myth (or is it?). This is the kind of approach I would personally like to see. A lot of creative freedom.

[Cl2v2r]

If we just have Earth go through a cataclysmic, armageddon or <insert world-ending verb here>, we can move on, but have similar social groupings or idealists qutie easily.

PS did this by having people leave, and then lose communication.

If people leave in similarly believing groups (as they are wont to do, see the US) to new land (read planets) we can have the hub of the known universe blow up behind them as it comes to some monumental accord. No doubt due to some other faction interrupting the process, causing each faction to have a permanently festering suspicision of the other factions.

Now we have a variety of planets (perhaps connected together with alien technology allowing faster than light speed travel, so peeps can go where the fight is) for these factions to fight over.

No more Earth. We could even have it a little further progressed down the timeline, and have Earth just some backwater planet because it takes so long to communicate and travel to. Generations lived their lives travelling to other places, why the hell go back to the old place.

However, if we don't want Earth style groupings, then easy. Earth never happened in this universe, humans grew up on some other planet, though again not were our conflicts take place.



In fact, I know this was brought up in another thread, the idea that the players can control something that gives them a benefit per server. Play it a little different and have the global winner of the day (or two days or three days whatever) affect the political scene of the home planet, giving the winners some benefit until the new moment of global 'victory'. This way, if you work hard to take a lot of territory you won't see it lost overnight. And if the benefit is something not unbalancing, but still worthwile, people will actually try for it. Maybe just 5% extra XP for the day/kill etc.



Ack, this should be in other sections of the forum too. Bugger it.

[NasyVealisanoob]

dude have it be mars in like 2500. earth makes mars habitable by melting the uderground ice caps and creating an ozone. They colonize it cus earth is over populated and poluted. You could have some pretty cool terran and the cities/bases could be protected by a big bubble or inclosed from earlier times when the mars environment was not safe. It would also explain why there are not many roads/building etc all over the place between the cities.

Some fucked up shit happens to earth so the people left on mars are all alone. They have been messing around with biotech stuff like cloaning/reanimating etc. So for some reason 3 factions emrge (or there could have been 3 factions to begin with like the 3 major alliances on earth helped to develop mars.)

Maybe some weird anti matter radiation shit from the sun that can be harnessed and used to make vehicles etc (nanites)

Dont know, im not that great at this kinda stuff, just some ideas i had. Im sure some of you talented peps could come up with something good.

[Aftiel]

Cog wait for me to post my idea later today. I think possibly the beginning of mine mixed with some of your and Ab's stuff would roxxor your boxxors.

[UGoBoy]

Keeping it off Earth and completely abstracted away from modern politics would allow you to put any sort of twists you want to on the scheme.

For example...

Say that colonization of space started hundreds if not thousands of years ago. In one of the most remote colonial systems, thought to be almost completely worthless except for the mining of a few semi-common gases, aliens invade. With that simple of a plot, you have your three sides...

1) Colonists that are the decendants of the original colonists, that have been very effectively separated from the main Human govermnent for millenia, except for trade routes. They see both the human goverment and aliens as a threat to their way of life.
2) The main Human goverment, who are sending an expeditionary force into a remote warzone, where the "indigenous" group is squarely aligned against them.
3) The Aliens, who have their own motives for attempting to repopulate a star system that, to them, has long been a spawning ground and a place of great cultural importance.

It gives you the opportunity to do things like: Have continents that have been Occupationally held, and sport pre-fab instabuildings, as we're used to in Planetside...areas that contain older permanent colonist structures of completely different vintage...alien inhabited planets that have a human-hostile atmosphere and unusual architecture.

At any rate, I think having one non-human faction (Aliens, robots, nanocreatures, cyborgs, whatever) would make for a very cool play experience, and give the character and weapon designers a very fun design environment.

[abathur]

It's rather irrelevant, I never intended for major combat to take place on earth. I thought I was already leading us that way with my fiction but I hadn't explicitly said it yet. The only combat I see taking place on my "earth" miiiiight be some urban combat in a few war-torn cities for some stuff. I can't add to the fiction right this minute, just trust me, (you might see it if you read back over what I've got) that I wasn't working towards an earth landwar.

[Cogburn]

LOL you know what, you're right.

I think it was the reference to the moon and reading the 2500 idea right before it confused me totally.

There really is no Earth reference in your plot at all. But at least we now know where we stand as far as the Earth issue goes. :)

I've closed my Word document and am now anxiously awaiting Aftiel's idea. ::)

[navygrl]

Personally, Im all for an Eurasian land war. It wouldnt be like World War 2 online, i know WW2OL has half the size of the actual european map, which means that half the places never get fought on, and it takes 30 mins just to find one enemy. Not fun.

Mainly I like eurasian battles, because you dont have to think of a lot of ideas for key spots, such as, if you want to steal oil deposits from your enemy, Romania would be the place, things like that...

[Tigek]

dude have it be mars in like 2500. earth makes mars habitable by melting the uderground ice caps and creating an ozone. They colonize it cus earth is over populated and poluted. You could have some pretty cool terran and the cities/bases could be protected by a big bubble or inclosed from earlier times when the mars environment was not safe. It would also explain why there are not many roads/building etc all over the place between the cities.

Some fucked up shit happens to earth so the people left on mars are all alone. They have been messing around with biotech stuff like cloaning/reanimating etc. So for some reason 3 factions emrge (or there could have been 3 factions to begin with like the 3 major alliances on earth helped to develop mars.)

Maybe some weird anti matter radiation shit from the sun that can be harnessed and used to make vehicles etc (nanites)

Dont know, im not that great at this kinda stuff, just some ideas i had. Im sure some of you talented peps could come up with something good.


BAD IDEA!Haven't you played doom!?!?Everyone knows that mars is the home of ZOMBIE BITCHES(Oh, and where hell is.)

[rav3n]

Australia FTW!!!

[Cl2v2r]

Woot.

[MrMaroon5]

http://geology.com/pangea.htm

Pangea map?

[Stream|ine]

In the future Earth becomes the waste dump of the Galaxy everyone knows that. Well...that's the way it's going anyhow.

I say no earth. You can always find a way to comeback to later if the plot so strears in that direction.

Alien motive for invading humanity could have nothing to do with humanity at all. Maybe they just came back for resources they need to fight a totally different war that we aren't even aware of. We just happen to be in the way.