Here is the first installment of a game idea for everyone to toss around. I originally wrote this in the discussion form for a new game called PlanetSide, the first ever MMOFPS in development by Verant. Game Type: Grand Space Scale/ or large Multi-Continetal FPS/RTS, in which the objective is meant to be completed over several days using the Multiplayer save-game idea. Components: Highly configurable, programmable and real time commandable A.I. Bots ranging in 100''s or 1000''s per game, Functional Transporters ala Star Trek, Large/Massive Internally Rendered Vessels capable of carrying 100''s of bots or real-players. A VCR 3D Movie Editor to use as a game trialer to entice players to join, or to be used a Clan training tool (more on that). In long term multiplayer campaign, bots, as well as all resources are virtually limited, and are not renewable endless resources. In other words, if your bot dies in conflict, its body does not disappear after a time, but becomes a spoil of war, which can be repaired or recylced depending on how damaged it is. This also means that if the enemy is defeated, you can gather yours and their damaged bots and vehicles and bring them back for repair. However, if the enemy prevails in the battle, or simply gathers disabled enemy bots and runs, then they will get the spoils, provided they can either phyiscally grab the disabled bots off the field, or tag them for transport. My vision for pre-programming bots would be something like the Unreal Tourney interface for bots, except beefed up with alot more tabs like "Mapping".The mapping tab could tell your bots where to go and how to get there. You could select a "Leader Bot" interface which could have an "Orders" tab, which could be used to distribute a certain set of instructions to other bot/bot groups given that a certain set of sequences or objectives are met. A "Protcols" tab which would control how the Bots would respond if something interupted thier primary objective. This leader bot could then distribute simple orders to other bots. The idea would be to get the bots to get in position, and then have the leader hail you, so you can then Remote Access the bot. Which brings me to... Any bot can be entered and controlled by a real-player in 2 ways. In a large scale save-game scenario, new players can be added to either team, by giving them access to specific bots. For instance, a large scale game which had a previous save-game will start again at 7pm PST. Players from the game invite new players to join at that time, and provide them with a bot name and password. This bot is a real-bot which already existed in the previous save-game, and could very well be in the middle of some task/battle which he/they were pre-programmed to do. The other way of controlling a bot is to do so within the virtual controls of the game. In other words, during game play, bots are transported/fly to another ship/moon surface and are about to engage in thier objectives. You are in a Mother ship and wish to access a particular bot to control from a first peron perspective. Within your ship is phyiscally located a bot control interface center, which you must access. Once there, you access the bot and then are able to direct battle from the bots perspective. Once you disengage from the bot, it will resume back to its next function/objective. If it is destroyed/diabled in battle, you will be disengaged from you connection to that bot, and will need to access another bot in the field of battle. I think it would be cool if you guys thought about designing a specialized version of Planetside that conentrated on what I am describing here.. the vast use of highly programmable bots so that each player could control up to hundreds of different bots, much in the way of Batt***one1&2... and one tactical aspect this could add to a game variant like this would be the ability for a group to be able to plan in bettween save-games... as well as search for more human players to help control the vast number of bots. This could be done through community tools added to the game and accessible via a web-site community interface (including IRC/IM etc..). This could make the game scale-able. I think people would like this kind of save-game scenerio if it was done right, because it would be so compelling to come back. Groups like Quake clans, and Tribes already time-slot games with other clans and Tribes.. I think the return rate would be higher because of the anticaption of what will happen next. Right now, many FPS matches get cancelled because of no-shows. And the bots would give the ability to populate the universe and give the real players both ability to "die" numerouse times, but not actually dieing with thier "human'' character in the game, because they control bots to do the dirty work (of course, losing bots is still a big loss because you only have so many..and your objective would be to try to salvage the bot as described above. This could actually be the theme of the Role Play part of the game: To determine where the real players are and conquer/kill/capture them. This would actually be a solution the permadeath argument, by making it the whole idea. You could have one life, but you could control many bots to fight and "die" with, but not without risk because in order to control a bot, you would need to have some kind of transmission device which could be traced back to the location of the real-player controlling the bot and give the enemy your location. It would also be cool if cities on planets were populated with 100s of 1000s of non-player controlled bots which just stroll around or drive around.. some place the real-players can hide in. (Some of these ideas could also be implemented in a Persistent Uninverse scenerio as well.) more to come on large scale fully internally rendered battlecruisers! More to come. Tell me what you think. I would like to here from the Dev team as well if they have time, because I think Ive hit on something here.. I can feel it in my bones! EnderBean.