I was reading the Dev Q&A just before, and noticed that they mentioned not being sure what to do with the halo installations. This got me to thinking. I know you don't want it to be a super weapon and perhaps it doesn't have to be. Bear with me, this is the second time I have typed out this post since the first time, an accidental push of TAB followed by a reflexive backspace push, caused the internet to eat my post and I lost ALL the typed out progress.
Halo installations could function as weapons without being super weapons (Or at least not SUPEROPBROKEASS weapons). However they would only be able to do this once. They would be devastating, but also possible to recover from. As well as a cost decision you have to make.
Ability Name:
- Desperate Measures (UNSC)
- Great Journey (Covenant)
- Birthright OR Ancestral Legacy (Forerunner Remnants)
Description:
UNSC: When all else fails, marines will willingly lay down their lives and fire the halo if it means stopping the covenant. This will however, break the firing mechanism
Covenant: The time has come to please the prophets and advance the great journey. Put those captured human slaves to use and activate the halo. This will not be possible to do more than once.
Forerunner: The time has come, Pick up the mantle of your ancestors and fire the halo ring. History is doomed to repeat after all. The sentinels have malfunctioned and as such, the ring will be unable to fire twice.
Conditions of Use:
- Must have Colonized Halo Installation
- Must have explored halo installation 100%
- Halo must not have been fired yet.
Visual Representation and Range:
- Visually the ring being activated would be depicted with a glowing ball in the center of the ring that explodes with a flash. A bright shock wave would then expand outwards in a ring.
- Range wise. I initially had the idea of 5 average phase lanes away (Aka average distance.) So that would make its actual range somewhat map specific. On a tightly packed, dense map with lots of short phase lanes, it would do major damage, but on a spread out map with lots of room, it perhaps would not be so deadly. This is of course, open to being altered.
Effects of the shock wave:
- Ships and structures are immediately imposed with following conditions:
- Transferred to neutral team.
- Abilities disabled.
- Weapons disabled.
- Sub-Light thrusters disabled.
- Passive regeneration disabled.
- Shield recharge disabled. (Where applicable)
- Can be captured. (With the crew extractor ships (Structures) or boarding parties (Ships). Covenant have yet to get boarding parties but I think they will, considering the roles that the boarding parties played in halo 2)
Ships and structures would essentially be completely shut down and not belong to you, to represent their entire crew being immediately wiped out, the halo rings only destroy organic life after all.
- Colonies affected by the halo installation are completely wiped out, leaving the planet as a colonizable empty planet again.
Naturally this would have a few issues, specifically for people like me who like to play maps that randomly generate. So naturally a few exceptions, and defenses would need to be a thing as well. The idea that I had for this was as follows.
- Capital planets (in capital victory only) are reduced to 0 population, instead of the colony being destroyed completely.
- Flagship (Flagship victory only) Has special, expensive shielding built into its armor (Right from the get go of course) which allows its crew to hide inside panic room like situations, as such the halo ring shuts down all systems (Weapons, passive regen, abilities, sub-light thrusters etc etc) to resemble the ships crew all hunkering down in the panic rooms instead
- A research would be added to all factions, it would require 6 labs, and have a mid-game cost. Because lets face it, it may be a fairly random chance that you use it. The research would add special shielding to all "Emergency Bombardment Shelter" Infrastructure upgrades, Meaning that if you had the tier 3 bombardment shelters (Most planets start with 0) then your planet would survive with reduced population, instead of being completely wiped out. The level of population surviving would be based on what level of Bombardment shelters you have.
- The titan class ships would also be affected by this research, and if it is claimed, then the titan would behave like the flagship, its crew all hunkering down in shielded bunkers inside the ship meaning all systems are shut down until the ring has passed out of the gravity well that the titan occupies.
As stated above, the halo would only be usable once, the colony on the halo would be wiped out regardless of the emergency shelter upgrades you had on it, as the radiation is so intense at the center of the blast. Perhaps Halo installations shouldn't gain access to infrastructure upgrades... I don't know exactly. But this is my current idea on how the HALO systems could be implemented, without making them so over powered that activating one would seal your victory.
It is designed to be used more as a defensive measure in a way, when you're on the back foot, because you will be forced to sacrifice your fleet unless you manage to keep them out running the blast.
