I came up with this idea about 10 minutes ago while listening to the soundtrack of Streets of Rage 2 for inspiration, so pardon me if it's a bit vague and/or terrible. [wink] The idea is that this tile-based game will primarily be geared to stealth and combat on the squad level with the structure of the game probably being a sequence of missions. I would like to use it for 4E5 but for the time being I'll ignore the use of the elements since I've already considered them and think they'd be pretty easy to integrate. The player's team will consist of 5-6 people (more? less?) attempting to infiltrate a building and retrieve information, kill a certain person, cause general havoc, rescue a hostage (or kidnap!), and so. The main catch will be that though the player's team consist of X number of people, the player can only control the leader of this team. The leader will be tasked with directing his/her squad members on what they should do. If they're too far away, the leader will either have to let the squad member go unguided or yell to him which is a danger to the team's cover; if he's close enough he can speak in a directed whisper which is unlikely to be heard by the enemy, but might require the leader to move closer to the member or signal him/her to come closer with a hand motion. Hand motions would be limited in their ability to direct members, though. The leader could direct members to do things like patrol a specific path, to take down a guard, to wait and hide behind something, to pass a message or item to another member, or to stick close to the leader. At this point I'm unsure if the leader would have to speak to a team member to be able to 'see' the portions of the map the member saw while away from the leader; seeing everything that all the members can see seems contrary to the game concept but having to talk to every squad member to get an update on the situation one didn't witness firsthand could also be a little rough. At the moment I'm leaning toward having to speak to team members to see what they've seen. Probably my greatest concern is 1) how difficult writing AI for both team members and hostiles and 2) how to make the UI for conveying plans to team members. I would particularly like feedback on #2 - the only thing I've got so far is painting a path of tiles for telling an ally to go somewhere. Combat will hopefully be somewhat limited and toting large weapons discouraged because they slow movement or create noise that can draw attention; I would like it to be more cloak-and-dagger, perhaps not even killing guards if it is possible to muffle and disarm them instead. Heavily-armed guards should be the norm since it means a premium is placed on stealth and also that the player can use the downed guards' equipment if the need for heavy weapons arises. Since frankly I'm not skilled enough or interested enough in 3D right now the view will be 2D, perhaps isometric or perhaps a rotateable overhead view. Comments, criticism, baseless or well-grounded questioning of my intelligence? Possible problems with the game concept or implementation thereof? Thanks! It's late so sorry this is not proofread very well.

It recently occured to me that having a team of 5-6 is really not very useful in a stealth game, but as the idea stands the team is vital to the concept. Suggestions on how to make a team useful in this kind of game? Is this idea just not viable? I guess I could make a real-time game with one unit rather than 5+ instead but it would be cool if this worked.