Before I start I'd like to thank snot for inspiring me with his description of TF2 as a racing game. That's what got my mind going and eventually brought out this. Also there is no tl;dr, although I will clean this up if someone can read the whole thing and tell me what I'm being confusing about.
Okay so here's the brilliant idea. The game is a futuristic arena-based racing combat spectator sport played from third person. The catch is that the contestants aren't racing cars, or boats, or planes, or trucks, or anything like that. They are running. In power armor. The armor would be customizable both aesthetically and statistically, but the visuals always reflect the stats.
Here's how creating a custom suit would work. First, you select the stats. The stats are Speed/Acceleration, Armor/Agility, and Weaponry/Handling; each sharing sliders with each other. For example, the higher your top speed, the slower your acceleration. The higher the armor, the less agile. Etcetera etcetera. Once you choose the stats, you get a default suit reflecting your choices. If you had max armor, you'll have a hulking mini-mech. If you chose max agility, you get pretty much a uniform with a little mechanical exoskeleton over it.
There are five suit templates total, all based around the armor/agility level. A suit with an armor level of 1-20 would be
a bionic exoskeleton, 21-40 would be like a
Nanosuit, 41-60 would be about the size of
fallout's power armor, 61-80 would be like a
Zone Trooper, and 81-100 would be like those
suits from avatar. Speed/Acceleration affect the shape of parts on your suit. Higher speed levels are more rounded off parts, while higher acceleration is blockier. Weaponry/Handling is the details. High weapon levels result in a more threatening appearance, with spikes and guns and generally painful-looking implements, while higher handling puts spoilers and vents and aerodynamic stuff on it. This kind of stat-based appearance lets people gauge their opponents' abilities just by looking at them.
Ok now for how the game plays. It's a racing game. Everyone is trying to get from point A to point B the fastest. Each race takes place in a big stadium on a track filled with obstacles like pits, roadblocks, buildings, and maybe even turrets. To navigate around these, you get to pick a propulsion pack, but I'll cover those later. Controls are like standard F/TPS games when you're walking or moving generally slowly, but once you start picking it up it becomes more like a car racing game. The ranged weapon everyone has is what I'm going to call a
Thud Launcher. It's just a large blunt slug fired at a low velocity. It pretty much works like a grenade launcher, minus the splash damage. You can shoot at other players ahead of you, or even aim behind you at the risk of running into an obstacle, but you have a very limited ammo supply. The ammo supply and damage done is governed by your weaponry stat. If you hit someone with a thud, they stumble. How badly they stumble and how much health they lose is governed by your weaponry stat and their armor stat. If you get hit too many times, then you get "knocked out" which is the equivalent of wrecking. You can also get knocked out by running into too many obstacles (like lampposts) or just the wrong kind of obstacle (like a pit of industrial-grade acid). In addition to the Thud Launcher, everyone gets a melee attack, governed by the acceleration and weaponry stat. The higher the acceleration, the faster you can swing. The higher the weaponry stat, the more damage you do. Melee attacks do slightly less damage than thuds, and don't cause the enemy to stumble, but they do get them closer to a knockout.
Ok so those propulsion packs I was talking about earlier. Well there's four, and any armor level can use them. Performance is hindered by higher armor levels though. The four are the Jump Pack, Jet Pack, Antigravity Pack and Booster Pack.
- The Jump Pack works by launching you in a parabolic flight path, either to get up high or get far quickly. It uses up the entire fuel supply when used, but has the quickest recharge time.
- The Jet Pack works similarly to the Jump Pack, but you can actually control yourself once flying, it only continues to fly when you hold down its respective key, and you have more fuel. The downside is that flying with the Jet Pack is slower than running.
- The Antigravity Pack, when toggled, makes you maintain your current velocity in whatever direction you are going until the fuel runs out or it is turned off. That means if you are jumping, you'll go up and at an angle until you turn it off. It has the largest power pool, so you can use it for longer.
- The Booster Pack is pretty much a overspecialized Jump Pack. It propels you straight forward over a long distance, using up the entire fuel tank in one go. You can use it to cross gaps you wouldn't be able to jump, but you can't use it to fly upwards. It has the slowest recharge time.
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Uh that's all I can remember, I should have written this stuff down.
I think it would be a stuffload of fun, what about you guys?
