dragonhead tower. man, i probably should NOT be giving you this idea. i should use it for my TD. but... i'm thinking dragon head towers. traditional tiamat heads; red, blue, black, green, white. with a possible upgrade to make one big-ass tiamat tower. you can guess what the effects would be. red=fire, green=poison cloud, black=acid, white=freeze, blue=electricity.
bitchin'
yeah, i'm keeping this idea 8). but feel free to get inspired from it...
what about a tentacle tower that grabs a monster and slams it into the ground for damage?
hello kitty tower that showers the monster with cupcakes or something, confusing it so it slows or whatever? mmmmm. cupcakes.
or maybe a LCD tower that shows tv and the monsters stop to watch it?
stripper tower? poledancers distract the monsters?
I would rather have unique and original towers in a tower defense that is NOT about attack strengths and attack styles, but rather in a trick to deal the most damage and delay the mob to the best of your abilities...
Meaning there is no lives, but is a score attack between players to do the best trick with your towers.
Heh, calling it Trickster Defense would be interesting.
Towers that can manipulate a minion's movement and towers that can mind control (temporarily) one minion to attack other minions and potentially block the route (causing the mobs to attack the minions).
Then you balance it all out with minions and them having active abilities when they interact with specific towers...
Like jumping minions will be able to jump over the first mine-based tower trap, but will be hit by the second one after it.
Think plants vs zombies, every plants has a use and there are tons of different types of zombies to break through, outsmart, and evade your attacks on them.
Possible towers (and mobs to go along with it):
Icy Tower - Creates a patch of frozen ice which accelerates the mobs extremely fast towards the direction it was heading, very useful in mazing to prevent them from turning a corner to get by for example. Flying and jumping mobs can bypass these.
Fiery Tower - A fire variant of the floor based tower, rather than mislead mobs, it does constant damage the more the mobs are on them. Flying and jumping mobs bypass these. Metal mobs are immune.
Vacuum Tower - A tower that draws one mob towards it, trapping it for a few seconds, and then letting the mob go. It's ability will only function for a short period of time, so its best to combine other towers to maximize it. Heavy mobs bypasses these.
Scare Tower - A tower that acts like a scarecrow, making the mob flee in terror at the opposite direction for a short duration, will only work once per mob. Only cowardly mobs is affected.
Zap Tower - A tower that requires another tower linked to it, to zap and deal decent damage to any mob passing through them. Metal mobs are immune to them.
Spiked Tower - Any mob that comes in contact with this tower will take major physical damage, but it requires other towers to set up the infliction. Less effective on tank type mobs like bosses.
As for the map, it's best to have a map that gives the player many routes in their area, so basically the maze is mostly complete except for a few areas you can place towers on.
I always thought a "Void Tower" would be cool... Something like a tower casting a vortex, which absorbs units for a few seconds then release them as one huge overpowered unit, inheriting its properties from the units absorbed (ie. HP + shields + attributes of the exiting unit would be the sum of all units which entered the vortex).
Model: Dark pylon, or maybe something with the Void Seeker
Weapon: instant hit, very high cooldown, spawns a vortex at its target, can't target heroes... probably make this an ability, so you need to use it manually instead
The vortex holds for 10 seconds, if 5 units with 10 health + 10 shields + mechanical attribute are absorbed, a hybrid unit with 50 health + 50 shields + mechanical attribute comes out when the vortex fades. You probably can apply some damage to the hybrid when it comes out as well, like a percentage of his life removed matching the number of units absorbed (ie. 5 units absorbed = 5% life removed).
I'm not even sure such a tower can be done (or at least not using only Data, I guess...), but I'd love to see something like that. It's a top-tier tower though, so I guess you'll need lower levels for this tower (ie. shorter vortex duration, less damage applied, and higher cooldown).
Another interesting tower would be an "attribute modifier" tower. You can only build a generic tower which removes all attributes from enemies in its radius. Then you can level it up, so that instead of "no attribute", the enemy units will have their attributes changed to whatever you upgraded your tower to. Ex: Upgrading the tower to "mechanical attribute tower" will make all enemy units in its radius become mechanical units (and ONLY mechanical units). This is only interesting if you make use of attributes, of course. In case you have multiple towers applying multiple attributes, these attributes are combined (ie. a mechanical tower + a biological tower will make enemy units in range become mechanical+biological). You can also add upgrades for a better range.
Gatling Tower - Each attack speeds it up by x% up to a maximum of +y% attack speed. If the tower stops attacking for 2 seconds, it will lose all of its attack speed boost. (good for early in the maze where there are lots of units)
Blink Tower - Can teleport between two points, preferably automatically, so you can get almost 2 towers for the price of 1.
Timejumper Tower - Sends the unit ahead 3 seconds into the future (disappears and reappears). Can do any kind of other effects on return, such as removing a percentage of hit points.
Execution Tower - Gains a 50% damage bonus for 2 seconds when it attacks a unit that has less than 50% life.
I notice that the TDs I've played so far only use one type of monster per wave, so this should be possible with creating a hybrid unit ( by destroying all the units absorbed and creating a unit with the same model but at a larger scale, max shield/hp being n*maxhp/shield of unit absorbed )
I'd be a tower that heals enemy units but gives you resources for a percentage of the amount of health healed.
@Vexal: Go
I do suppose at the beginning few stages everyone would just keep mass building all the different types of towers. Later however, if the gameplay is interesting enough to gather more people, they'll start identifying with towers that they like.
I'll be surprised if anyone can come up with 150 different towers (I mean different as in useful in different situations), as opposed to 150 towers with slightly altered and increased stats.
No one really remembers slight changes in stats. It'd be much more effective to have fewer towers.
Yeah I think dra6o0n has the right idea here. A map with fewer towers which are more varied in their purposes would be far more fun. To make it about how you place your towers rather than what towers you have.
But here is a tower idea, which I guess I might be. One of a pair
A tower which needs to be built near another tower of the same, or corresponding type. It would then activate an ability with all nearby towers of that type which would stretch an energy barrier of sorts. I know there is an appropriate model though I don't remember what it is called. Any unit (or even tower for that matter) which passes in the barrier will take some damage, or have some kind of effect applied to them.
Alternatively, perhaps the tower can only connect with a single other tower (You would have to manually activate it), but the effect would vary depending on which other tower you connect to.
in a TD which has interest or some other form of gaining money not through direct kills, you could have Wonder Towers, similar to say Civ5 wonders.
and they can do pretty much nothing but boost other stats for your team.
Eiffle Tower (i know, i know) - could give a morale bonus?
Kremlin Tower, Pentagon Tower, etc. - damage boost?
Statue of Liberty Tower - could... shit... i don't know it depends on the map style. i'd say it would double the creeps, but also weaken them. so effectively, you'll get moar money from direct kills. (yes, i feel that immigration weakens our country by watering it down)
Pyramid Tower - might give a boost in research, or maybe lessen cost of certain upgrades?
World Bank Tower - ...
Large Hadron Collider Tower - gives random chance to just super major own?
I notice that the TDs I've played so far only use one type of monster
per wave, so this should be possible with creating a hybrid unit ( by
destroying all the units absorbed and creating a unit with the same
model but at a larger scale, max shield/hp being n*maxhp/shield of unit
absorbed )
I'd be a tower that heals enemy units but gives you resources for a
percentage of the amount of health healed.
I will be adding what were called "double" levels in WC3 specifically the td "Lasers and Rockets" did this... and they tended to make or break your game. What these are is when a unit dies it spawns another kind of unit with slightly different stats.
If you need maps as a reference, I'd suggest you take a look at Insectipede Invasion TD, which spawns various unit types at each wave, some of which spawn other unit types when killed. I just happened to play Char Tower Defense this morning, it also has an interesting system where you need to power your towers in order for them to work efficiently (it's a bit complicated to handle at first, though).
About the "150 towers is too much" thing, I'm pretty sure if he needs 150 ideas of towers it's because he will make a good use of them all. Don't forget 150 can be divided by 3 if each race has its own version of a specific tower (ex: ice cannon tower for terran, time stopper for protoss, creep tower for zerg... the 3 towers do the exact same thing, but they won't behave/look the same). 50 towers is something easy to reach in a TD, especially counting upgrades.
personally i like bouncing towers, they add interesting mechanic, splash is crowd thinning, bounce is group finishing, and usually finish off with 1-2 single shot towers at the end of the line...
a few misc tower ideas
GOOD
Bouncing attacks
Splash - it can be overpowered in alot of situations, however if there was a max damage, or hybrid (deals x per attack upto 5 targets, then 1/2 that to any additional targets per attack)
cold (aoe slow) - non-stacking, or limited stacking ofcourse... (limited meaning the first attack from the tower slows 20%, then next attack 10% more, then 3rd might add 5%, any attacks after that dont slow more.
Poison (Dot) - poison is interesting, although in many tds it tends to mess with the auto-targeting system of other towers making it bad for most builds, this is usually caused by its slow., If poison however was only damage, stacked properly, and could kill, it might be interesting. Poison can also deal more damage to stronger units, maybe each attack deals 1-5% of a units max health in damage, then the poison damage does a set amount over 3-5 seconds)
Stacking - towers that do more damage the more times the target has been attacked, (by any stacking towers), think incinerate in wc3 (if uve played it enough to know about that)
chance towers - a tower that gets 1 attack per round, and can either hit, or miss.. if it hits it might be good to have a rather large aoe attack or something of the sort to offset its other weaknesses
armor reducing tower - blablabla, maybe give it acid attacks that reduce aoe armor.. to make it more td friendly
Hero Towers, towers that level the longer they have been around, maybe give it upgrades, that require a specific level of kills, or experience to upgrade to.....
BAD
Gold towers - towers that give cash almost always turn out to strong..
Stun towers- they always either end up to strong (vs bosses), or to weak (vs masses), so unless you made the stun short or non-existant on bosses, and maybe made the tower automatically switch to an un-stunned target if it sucessfully stunned something..
Teleport towers- any tower that can tp a target backwards, again is usually to strong against bosses' or when massed, however if it were chance based it might be ok
Ok Im really looking for suggestions on towers people would like to see in a td
Hoping to get the ball rolling on some fantastic ideas for me to work towards.
Currently I was planning on naming some of the towers in my td after players on SC2mapster here if they had given me suggestions for the structure.
Anyways if you have idea for things such as models/ animations/ effects / behaviors towers could use or do feel free to share.
Im looking in the long run to create about 150 different structures..... so yeah big project..
@SouLCarveRR: Go
dragonhead tower. man, i probably should NOT be giving you this idea. i should use it for my TD. but... i'm thinking dragon head towers. traditional tiamat heads; red, blue, black, green, white. with a possible upgrade to make one big-ass tiamat tower. you can guess what the effects would be. red=fire, green=poison cloud, black=acid, white=freeze, blue=electricity.
bitchin'
yeah, i'm keeping this idea 8). but feel free to get inspired from it...
what about a tentacle tower that grabs a monster and slams it into the ground for damage?
hello kitty tower that showers the monster with cupcakes or something, confusing it so it slows or whatever? mmmmm. cupcakes.
or maybe a LCD tower that shows tv and the monsters stop to watch it?
stripper tower? poledancers distract the monsters?
If I were a Tower In a TD what would I be? I would be balanced.
In all seriousness I would be a terratron which is made from 5 other towers that can kill all but the simplest zerglings.
I would rather have unique and original towers in a tower defense that is NOT about attack strengths and attack styles, but rather in a trick to deal the most damage and delay the mob to the best of your abilities...
Meaning there is no lives, but is a score attack between players to do the best trick with your towers.
Heh, calling it Trickster Defense would be interesting.
Towers that can manipulate a minion's movement and towers that can mind control (temporarily) one minion to attack other minions and potentially block the route (causing the mobs to attack the minions).
Then you balance it all out with minions and them having active abilities when they interact with specific towers...
Like jumping minions will be able to jump over the first mine-based tower trap, but will be hit by the second one after it.
Think plants vs zombies, every plants has a use and there are tons of different types of zombies to break through, outsmart, and evade your attacks on them.
Possible towers (and mobs to go along with it):
Icy Tower - Creates a patch of frozen ice which accelerates the mobs extremely fast towards the direction it was heading, very useful in mazing to prevent them from turning a corner to get by for example. Flying and jumping mobs can bypass these.
Fiery Tower - A fire variant of the floor based tower, rather than mislead mobs, it does constant damage the more the mobs are on them. Flying and jumping mobs bypass these. Metal mobs are immune.
Vacuum Tower - A tower that draws one mob towards it, trapping it for a few seconds, and then letting the mob go. It's ability will only function for a short period of time, so its best to combine other towers to maximize it. Heavy mobs bypasses these.
Scare Tower - A tower that acts like a scarecrow, making the mob flee in terror at the opposite direction for a short duration, will only work once per mob. Only cowardly mobs is affected.
Zap Tower - A tower that requires another tower linked to it, to zap and deal decent damage to any mob passing through them. Metal mobs are immune to them.
Spiked Tower - Any mob that comes in contact with this tower will take major physical damage, but it requires other towers to set up the infliction. Less effective on tank type mobs like bosses.
As for the map, it's best to have a map that gives the player many routes in their area, so basically the maze is mostly complete except for a few areas you can place towers on.
I always thought a "Void Tower" would be cool... Something like a tower casting a vortex, which absorbs units for a few seconds then release them as one huge overpowered unit, inheriting its properties from the units absorbed (ie. HP + shields + attributes of the exiting unit would be the sum of all units which entered the vortex).
Model: Dark pylon, or maybe something with the Void Seeker
Weapon: instant hit, very high cooldown, spawns a vortex at its target, can't target heroes... probably make this an ability, so you need to use it manually instead
The vortex holds for 10 seconds, if 5 units with 10 health + 10 shields + mechanical attribute are absorbed, a hybrid unit with 50 health + 50 shields + mechanical attribute comes out when the vortex fades. You probably can apply some damage to the hybrid when it comes out as well, like a percentage of his life removed matching the number of units absorbed (ie. 5 units absorbed = 5% life removed).
I'm not even sure such a tower can be done (or at least not using only Data, I guess...), but I'd love to see something like that. It's a top-tier tower though, so I guess you'll need lower levels for this tower (ie. shorter vortex duration, less damage applied, and higher cooldown).
Another interesting tower would be an "attribute modifier" tower. You can only build a generic tower which removes all attributes from enemies in its radius. Then you can level it up, so that instead of "no attribute", the enemy units will have their attributes changed to whatever you upgraded your tower to. Ex: Upgrading the tower to "mechanical attribute tower" will make all enemy units in its radius become mechanical units (and ONLY mechanical units). This is only interesting if you make use of attributes, of course. In case you have multiple towers applying multiple attributes, these attributes are combined (ie. a mechanical tower + a biological tower will make enemy units in range become mechanical+biological). You can also add upgrades for a better range.
Gatling Tower - Each attack speeds it up by x% up to a maximum of +y% attack speed. If the tower stops attacking for 2 seconds, it will lose all of its attack speed boost. (good for early in the maze where there are lots of units)
Blink Tower - Can teleport between two points, preferably automatically, so you can get almost 2 towers for the price of 1.
Timejumper Tower - Sends the unit ahead 3 seconds into the future (disappears and reappears). Can do any kind of other effects on return, such as removing a percentage of hit points.
Execution Tower - Gains a 50% damage bonus for 2 seconds when it attacks a unit that has less than 50% life.
@ZealNaga: Go
Void Tower
I notice that the TDs I've played so far only use one type of monster per wave, so this should be possible with creating a hybrid unit ( by destroying all the units absorbed and creating a unit with the same model but at a larger scale, max shield/hp being n*maxhp/shield of unit absorbed )
I'd be a tower that heals enemy units but gives you resources for a percentage of the amount of health healed.
150 is way too much. The players should identify with each tower. An endless sea of upgrades and branching paths will lessen the importance of each.
@Vexal: Go I do suppose at the beginning few stages everyone would just keep mass building all the different types of towers. Later however, if the gameplay is interesting enough to gather more people, they'll start identifying with towers that they like.
@Shad0wsEdge: Go
I'll be surprised if anyone can come up with 150 different towers (I mean different as in useful in different situations), as opposed to 150 towers with slightly altered and increased stats.
No one really remembers slight changes in stats. It'd be much more effective to have fewer towers.
Yeah I think dra6o0n has the right idea here. A map with fewer towers which are more varied in their purposes would be far more fun. To make it about how you place your towers rather than what towers you have.
But here is a tower idea, which I guess I might be. One of a pair
A tower which needs to be built near another tower of the same, or corresponding type. It would then activate an ability with all nearby towers of that type which would stretch an energy barrier of sorts. I know there is an appropriate model though I don't remember what it is called. Any unit (or even tower for that matter) which passes in the barrier will take some damage, or have some kind of effect applied to them.
Alternatively, perhaps the tower can only connect with a single other tower (You would have to manually activate it), but the effect would vary depending on which other tower you connect to.
in a TD which has interest or some other form of gaining money not through direct kills, you could have Wonder Towers, similar to say Civ5 wonders.
and they can do pretty much nothing but boost other stats for your team.
i REALLY shouldn't be giving you these ideas...
Some interesting Ideas here. Pretty soon here I will be implementing a few of them.
I will be adding what were called "double" levels in WC3 specifically the td "Lasers and Rockets" did this... and they tended to make or break your game. What these are is when a unit dies it spawns another kind of unit with slightly different stats.
soul can you email me the list of towers and what they do because im working on the towers? email in pm
@SouLCarveRR: Go
DEBATES TOWER
@PirateArcade | I make games | Ask me things on Discord
angry bird tower (need custom models or trickery work with attachments)
@SouLCarveRR: Go
If you need maps as a reference, I'd suggest you take a look at Insectipede Invasion TD, which spawns various unit types at each wave, some of which spawn other unit types when killed. I just happened to play Char Tower Defense this morning, it also has an interesting system where you need to power your towers in order for them to work efficiently (it's a bit complicated to handle at first, though).
About the "150 towers is too much" thing, I'm pretty sure if he needs 150 ideas of towers it's because he will make a good use of them all. Don't forget 150 can be divided by 3 if each race has its own version of a specific tower (ex: ice cannon tower for terran, time stopper for protoss, creep tower for zerg... the 3 towers do the exact same thing, but they won't behave/look the same). 50 towers is something easy to reach in a TD, especially counting upgrades.
yeah zeal.... about 50 towers per race.... some of those being upgrades stages for other towers.....
personally i like bouncing towers, they add interesting mechanic, splash is crowd thinning, bounce is group finishing, and usually finish off with 1-2 single shot towers at the end of the line... a few misc tower ideas
GOOD Bouncing attacks Splash - it can be overpowered in alot of situations, however if there was a max damage, or hybrid (deals x per attack upto 5 targets, then 1/2 that to any additional targets per attack) cold (aoe slow) - non-stacking, or limited stacking ofcourse... (limited meaning the first attack from the tower slows 20%, then next attack 10% more, then 3rd might add 5%, any attacks after that dont slow more. Poison (Dot) - poison is interesting, although in many tds it tends to mess with the auto-targeting system of other towers making it bad for most builds, this is usually caused by its slow., If poison however was only damage, stacked properly, and could kill, it might be interesting. Poison can also deal more damage to stronger units, maybe each attack deals 1-5% of a units max health in damage, then the poison damage does a set amount over 3-5 seconds) Stacking - towers that do more damage the more times the target has been attacked, (by any stacking towers), think incinerate in wc3 (if uve played it enough to know about that) chance towers - a tower that gets 1 attack per round, and can either hit, or miss.. if it hits it might be good to have a rather large aoe attack or something of the sort to offset its other weaknesses armor reducing tower - blablabla, maybe give it acid attacks that reduce aoe armor.. to make it more td friendly Hero Towers, towers that level the longer they have been around, maybe give it upgrades, that require a specific level of kills, or experience to upgrade to.....
BAD Gold towers - towers that give cash almost always turn out to strong.. Stun towers- they always either end up to strong (vs bosses), or to weak (vs masses), so unless you made the stun short or non-existant on bosses, and maybe made the tower automatically switch to an un-stunned target if it sucessfully stunned something.. Teleport towers- any tower that can tp a target backwards, again is usually to strong against bosses' or when massed, however if it were chance based it might be ok
I personally would like to see the Prism Tower from Red Alert 2. With beams and some scripting or complex data, it should be possible.
It's something I've been meaning to attempt.