I've been thinking about this a good deal. Sure, this is a war mod for a war game, and people who download it expect to be allowed to kill and destroy. But would it be possible to use the engine for other things, too? A map where there either are not two teams, or the two teams are on the same side?

     A Case of Point - the Firefighting Mod.

My original idea is based on something as crazy as a firefighter sim'. There would be only one team, which'd employ firefighter equipment, fire engines, trucks, helicopters, planes, and so on to evacuate people, extinguish fires, and so on over various settings such as high-rises, forests, ships, and so on. The fires would be dynamic objects that spawned smoke and regularly also smaller 'child' fires, which'd grow bigger and eventually spawn more 'child fires' near them. Certain terrain would kill 'child fires' and certain terrain would somehow speed their growth. Fire extinguishers, hoses, water dropped from planes, and so on would cause fires to lose hit points and eventually die out. You'd also have various other hazards such as parts of houses collapsing or trees falling from the flames, toxic smoke and gases, explosion risks, and so on. All in all, it'd be a challenging, creative mod requiring teamwork and co-ordination. There could also be alternative missions such as disasters and floods.

I guess it'd lag like Hell, but I also think it'd be a nice idea for a mod if properly implemented. As a side note, I still to this day feel that a 'dynamic fire' system, coupled with extinguishing equipment spread throughout maps, would be a nice implementation into the mod (I suggested it for Warp and also saw it be suggested for Forgotten Hope). Obviously it can't be as advanced as it'd be in my Firefighting Mod, but I think it has potential.

     Possible implementations in First Strike

I'm not certain how you could implement a non-combat map in First Strike, but I have one idea in my head. It started as an idea for a map setting. I pictured a large Imperial forest installation with trenches, buildings, turrets, bridges, and so on - after a freak hurricane. Trees would be uprooted, electricity would be gone, buildings would be damaged, landslides would have crashed down hills, vehicles would be destroyed or heavily damaged, even larger objects would have been blown about, and so on and so forth.

The problem was that I couldn't bring myself to think of it as a combat map - the whole idea of a disaster happening and Rebels or some other foe subsequently attacking seemed to clichéd and far-fetched (a hurricane decimating an Imperial base would logically also decimate the rebels, would it not?). So, after fighting an internal feeling of gloom, I had an idea - what about simply not making the Imperials fight anyone? Mother Nature has hit my North Sea-neighbouring town forcefully many a time, and I know that surviving her can be enough of a fight as it is. So what if the Imperials simply had to do something with their base, themselves, or both? Such as getting it back on-line, getting out in one piece, or something else. I feel that a hurricane, and even its aftermath, can make up for any hazards presented by an opposing team. Surely the map itself can be as casualty-inducing as any 32-player battalion of Alliance freedom fighters armed to their teeth.

So what'd be the hazards, and their objective? The hazards would have to be something that can do damage even though the players know about it. The challenges would have to be more puzzle-based than combat-based, and challenging even after you've run through them the first time around. And they'd require teamwork in some way or another, and without being cliché-like (such as the platform game 'hit several switches at once throughout the map'). Above all, I want them to be open-ended, so that you have several options and only some of them lead to success, while some will result in your unit lying there dead by the time the Red Cross shows up with hover-stretchers and medical droids.

     The plausibility of single-team maps

I suppose the simplest way to handle this is to simply not give the second team a name or emblem, nor any spawn points. This way people are forced to join the first team. The only problem I foresee here is a careless server admin flipping the Team Balance switch and trapping half the server's players in a Spawn Screen Limbo of Boredom, without a chance to spawn in.

The other way, of course, is to remove the other team. This'll arguably be the best way to handle things, but may of course be impossible to implement.

The third way is to have them be hostile, punish killing by point loss, remove all weapons, and hope they'll play nice. Definitely a last resort.

     Summary: Questions to be discussed in the thread

• Is it possible to make a map with only one team, or do we have to make do with a work-around?
• What could be the setting and background of a non-combat map?
• How would game-play work? I'm thinking here of objectives, hazards, challenge, replayability, and so on.
• How would victory be recorded?

And, of course:

• Is this a good idea?