I’ve got some vision for improved vehicle selection in Halo, particularly forge.
Note: An improved in-game vehicle type selector could work like this in Forge mode:
For necessity’s sake, I’ll compare this to what we already know and experience.
Let’s start this from the very beginning. You’re at your main menu. You select forge, and your canvas of choice.
Let’s call this selected canvas Forge World. Your game is now starting and You’ve just spawned in Forge World, by a beach. You look at the beach and say to yourself, let’s try some of these new vehicles out. You hit X and, boom, your forge menu pops up and you scroll down to the vehicles section and Hit X again. You see all of your favorite mobile goodies, plus a few extras in a list just begging to be selected, This list looks almost identical to Reach so far, and so it’ll look something like this:
> VEHICLES
>
> Ghost
> Mongoose
> Warthog
> Revenant
> Scorpion
> Wraith
> Falcon
> Hornet
> Banshee
> Pelican
Here’s where the differences from Reach begin. No longer are you brought from your main vehicles menu to the vehicle sup-menu where you usually get to select the variant. Instead, you’ll now spawn a vanilla, traditional vehicle, for example pick Warthog, and you’ll spawn a traditional 3-person machinegun turret warthog.
Here’s where it get really different. You’ve exited the menu, as you won’t need anything else right now. Pressing the X button again, you’ve opened up another menu, the “Variant Selector” menu. Vehicle traits, such as spawn time, max/min object count and all those other spawning adjusters have been reclassified under the “Object Traits” menu. This is accessed via the B button.
Back to our “Variant Selector” menu. Here is where you will be able to scroll through all the different variants. The variants (again, for descriptive purposes) will be the same as Reach, with the exception of the addition of the Transport Warthog. Since all of these are Variants, and NOT Configurations (more on that soon), they can be selected through a single option selector. That will look like this.
> Variant Selector
> <Default Warthog> Rocket Gauss Transport
Now that you’ve selected one of these choices, that default Warthog will now be swapped for the one you picked. The menu will then automatically back you out to the Vehicle Selection menu with the last thing you spawned in pre-selected for you to spawn another. If you spawned in a vehicle without any variants or configurations, like a ghost, it will spawn in the vanilla vehicle.
Now you want to try out something else. Something with a little more kick, say, a Scorpion Tank. You’re back in the vehicle selection menu, where the menu backed you out when you spawned in the rocket hog. Scroll down to “Scorpion” and spawn it in the world. Here, it’s the same deal with the warthog, at least so far. Hit X to access the Variant Selector. This time, the menus’ a bit different, as it’s renamed “Configuration”. There are now two options for you to access. Why two options for one vehicle you ask? Because there are two weapons built into it, the Main Weapon (cannon) and the Secondary Weapon (turret). It’s not an accident that these are the titles for the two option selectors either. For both weapons, you’ll get to toggle either the Main gun as either “ON” or “OFF” and the Secondary Weapon as either “ON” or “OFF”. I’m fairly certain that you are an intelligent person, and can figure what both options mean for the vehicle.
This menu should look a little something like this:
> Vehicle Configuration
> Primary Weapon: Cannon
> <ON> <OFF>
>
> Secondary Weapon: Human Turret
> <ON> <OFF>
Anyway, what this enables you to do is create vehicles specific for your map. Want a vehicle that is vunerable in close quaters? Turn off that Turret. Want a vehicle to emulate a base deployer for your invasion map? Turn off the Main gun. Anyway, you get the idea what’s going on here.
Alright. So you’ve mastered the menus of the Variant Selector, and have a good idea of how to use the Configuration editor
Here’s where it Really Gets fun. Air vehicles. Aircraft have always been a tricky beast to handle in Halo, because one size don’t really fit all when it comes to how they react to maps. Some maps might support air vehicles with roles as gunships, while as some maps might work only with transport variants, and some maps might need something well-rounded. Just look at Avalanche, the big B had to come up with the transport variant, just so the map could work.
The configuration Editor gives the average player the power to crate vehicles specifically tailored to their map’s unique playstyle.
Now back to what really matters; the mechanics. Go ahead and spawn in a Falcon. Boom, a Vanilla Reach Falcon has just appeared. 2 turrets and a weaponless flight deck (the cockpit). Give that X button a whack, and you’ll see just how simple creating a mission-specific falon can be.
A new menu has appeared, similar in structure to the Scorpion’s Configuration Editor. This time we’ve got a 4-tier menu, starting from the nose, Cargo Left, Cargo Right, and Extras. For the nose, we have this fantastic lineup; Nose: turret ON/OFF; Next up is both the Left and the Right Cargo bays with Jumpseat/Turret, and finishing up with Extras: Enhanced Sensors ON/OFF
The menu would look something like this
> Vehicle Configuration
>
> Nose: Turret - <ON>off
> Left Cargo: <JUMPSEAT>turret
> Right Cargo: jumpseat<TURRET>
> Extras: Enhanced Sensors - on<OFF>
The Hornet has a similar Setup, but with the options of Machine Guns-ON/OFF; Rocket Pods-ON/OFF; Left jumpseat-ON/Off; Right Jumpseat-ON/OFF
Now, this is a bit of my own design, but I Envision the Pelican as more of mix between the Falcon and a mobile respawn point. Here’s how it’ll play out: the Pelican is an air vehicle, but it heavily armored, meaning it’ll take a few rockets and then some to bing it down, 3 plus some DMR fire. The pelican, once it’s in the air will serve as a selectable respawn point, invasion-style. The respawns are limited though, to about 10 or 12, about as many people as it could actually hold.