As with any game, balance is a huge issue. Making sure the classes compliment each other, making the abilities effectively work, and implementing gameplay that is fun is hard. So I want to make sure I'm going in the right direction. Think Monday Night Combat in an Urban setting with Zombies.

The basis for the game is to select a class defend your base from both the zombie horde, and the raiders from the other team. In order to do this you need to collect survivors and supplies scattered about the city. Survivors can be set to tasks (fortifying areas, raiding supply points, tending to wounded) best suited to their randomly generated stats. You also need to stock materials, food, ammo, power, and medicine. Each item category is color coded, and every item has a inventory block value. When returned to the Fort, a percentage of the players supplies will be added to the stockpile. The more survivors you have the more tasks you can assign, but you also need more supplies to maintain them.There are Five Classes right now. The Scavenger, The Wrangler, The Caravan. The Defender, and the Tech Guy. The Scavengers are fast, and can jump and climb where others cannot. Light Armor, Light Weapons, and limited item capacity. They search the buildings in the city, and mark them for raiding (all players have GPSs, that can be synced). The Wranglers are in charge of zombie crowd control. Moderately armed, they can set and disable traps. They also know how to get the attention of the zombie crowd and lead them away from your base and over to your opposition, then blend into the horde without being attacked. Being the loners they are, they can set spawn points within the city at "safehouses". The Caravans are all about the raid. They can command the 2nd most survivors, carry the most items, and build temporary emplacements to station an armed survivor along the caravan route they set through the city. The Defenders are in charge of the base. They command the most survivors, set the defensive positions and weapons, and protect the group. The Tech Guys are basically the engineer class. They can set proximity alarms, upgrade your gps/communication abilities, but most importantly, they can re-route the power back to their base, or sabotage the opponents connection. The game also plays using time, starting in the morning, when Zombie activity is least. This gives you time to explore, raid and fortify, as well as making the other team more of a threat. As the day progresses into night, the numbers of zombies increase, finalizing with a massive street filling stampede that will stress your defensive measures to the max. There are a lot more features and breakdowns, but that's the gist of it.

So with all that in mind, some of the questions I have are:

1) Do you make each team one of each type to force balance, or let the players pick?
2) If its one of each type, then would it be better to have each team be controlled by 1 player, switching between the different units? Are there games that do something like that already?
3) Zombies? Do I keep them all one kind, and make numbers the problem to tackle, or do I vary the kind there are, and make certain classes better against certain zombies?
4) Any class suggestions or abilities?

First of all, the game sounds terribly complicated. The need to maintain an RTS mind along an FPS fire fight might be hard -- some players would really need to dedicate themselves purelly to base control, which efectivelly lessens the amount of players that can raid, defend or scavenge. I can't compare it to anything I've seen before, so I can't tell if you are doing an overkill in your features or not.

1) Don't force them to pick, but allow them to change mid-game. In such a dynamic enviroment you can't have the players regret taking one class over the other.
2) Only one player in each team? As mentioned before, the number of features to maintain would overwhelm anyone who didn't play it previously and/or haven't mastered the game yet.
3) That really depends on how much weight you put on the zombie part. If it is just an obstruction and the main goal is raiding, have them all one type, with different textures. If the zombies are central and survival against them, then deffiently make several types with increasing stats and changing appearances during gameplay.
4) I think you covered all the mayor areas of gameplay. You could think of classes who are jack-of-all-trades (as in, may perform any action, but are always 2nd to the dedicated char class), or you can throw out classes all together and make player skills dependant on the tools they take -- like, if a player picks up a radar, he can tune it to ping zombies or loot in the vicinity. If he picks up a torch, he can repair stuff. A banner or bandana will signalise a raid leader. And so on and so forth -- that would even make some sense in the "allow changing classes" dept.

This whole piece is tainted a bit by my fear that the game will be overbloated with features that might prove too much to maintain and be too diverse. I appreciate the whole concept and would deffinetly try such a game, but I reckon that players with a more action dedicated nature would be lost, and the game would have many features that would be griefed or trolled. Also, the learning curve might be too steep -- a new player (without reading any kind of manual) could get lost in the number of things to do and dump the game alltogether.

Thanks for the good feedback. I realize it all seems so complicated, and I always shoot for loading up with ideas and then stripping away to get to the core. - Mid-game class changes are a good thing. not on the fly maybe,but after you die for sure. - Maybe 1 player per team isnt as fun, but multiplayer is a lot more work. Still, multiplayer is the desired experience. - I want to keep it a team thing, and not so much of a RTS just placing assets. I had toyed with the idea of eliminating the player character all together, and just having the player control the survivors, but thats not the experience I am going for. - The Zombies are a nuisance, but they also keep the players in check. You cant focus on raiding when your perimeter has been breached, and your base is under attack. You want the player worrying about the zombies, but finding supplies is more essential to survival. I think all classes need to have the same basic options. Primary Fire Arm, Melee, Jump, Assign Task: Fortify, Raid, or Defend. That way, any class can defend the base, albeit limited to the number of survivors they can task. I was thinking that The Defender, being in the role of Defending the base would mean keeping within the perimeter. Sure, you can go out there into the city, but your power lies in the control of the survivors, who are stationed in the base. So what the Defender gets is the ability to Task and then Control survivors, ex: a Sniper. The Sniper essentially is an AI watchdog you can place in a high vantage point within your perimeter. He can fire on targets on his own, or you can choose to take control of him for an alotted time, just like any of the Offensive Survivors you've tasked. I dont want to overbloat the options, as it should be quick to pick up, and at first you need to build up your ability levels by performing actions in order to unlock more abilities. I'm reworking the doc for 2D isometic gameplay as well. Thanks for the great feedback.

Hmm...star wars: battlegrounds? Every time you die, take control of an existing unit. Switch back and forth between management (during which your character is ai controlled) and direct character control.

Hmm...star wars: battlegrounds? Every time you die, take control of an existing unit. Switch back and forth between management (during which your character is ai controlled) and direct character control.

Yeah.. I loved that game. Something similar to that but with far less units. I think it's better if you think of survivors as turrets instead of real troops. They only do what you assign them to do. A part of the game is finding these people hiding out in the city and "rescuing" them. They add to your population of survivors, and you have more turrets available. Which then also goes back to resource management, as you need a certain amount of resources to maintain a certain size group of survivors. Do collected resources have to be returned to the base to be counted as part of the pool? Once those resources run out, so does your ability to use survivors. The unmaintained survivors can only last so long before they die and become zombies. Another layer of complexity!

I'm thinking the switch between managing turret d setup (rts mode) and turret shooter mode is a solid base for a game. For me, the third person aspect is too independent of everything else. It could be its own game...like a co-release.

IDEA! Make two games. Let third person players and rts/shooter players play in the same multiplayer games, through separate but interacting software. I'll expand on the idea if you like.

Thanks Coty for the great input. I had toyed with the idea of integrating 2 types of games into one single game before, although it was Armored Mercenaries and Weapons Manufacturers. Research showed that it would be unbalanced as there are more people willing to shoot things than there are that want to build things. This is the issue I'm currently facing. How do you make the defensive/gathering classes attractive to those who like to shoot? Making two games would be great but I'm still trying to solidify one.

I was thinking more like...in the rts/shooter context..."forcing" the player to switch. Do this by causing the action to die down, and rts objectives like resource gathering and turret upgrading/placing need to be done. Gradually reduce the down time as the players get into a rhythm of knowing when to switch.

I was thinking more like...in the rts/shooter context..."forcing" the player to switch. Do this by causing the action to die down, and rts objectives like resource gathering and turret upgrading/placing need to be done. Gradually reduce the down time as the players get into a rhythm of knowing when to switch.

Thats an interesting idea, but it gets away from the more frantic pacing I am trying to set as the game goes on.

How long is the game supposed to take? In my opinion, a tower defense game is a heavy timesink...as is an RTS. How do you plan to balance those methodical styles with 3rd person action segments?

I believe the action can be done in 3rd person, as well as the building. I also believe that the game can work as a traditional tower d with top-down camera. I think some of the action can play out as a turret style shooter.