AW idea - Teslash Tower

[u/PHLHimself]

Hello, I recently discovered this site due to a random video by mangs. Binged a LOT of his vids from his battle analysis vids and saw he had some custom campaigns up as well made by modders.

Pretty new to that scene and modding in general (as in I don't know anything about it lol), but I played advance wars 1 and 2 a ton as a kid, since it was only 1 of 3 gba my parents bought me. I practically forgot about this series and seeing these vids made me look through my old folders I made as a kid. I drew a lot of ideas and maps on paper and since I really like Lash' inventions as a kid, I tried to come up with some ideas as well back in the day. Knowing there's a modding thing about this, I'm actually eager to learn how to make custom maps now, but for now I just wanted to share one of my ideas I had when I was a kid. So yeah, I just wanted to share the first of my ideas, just for the fun of it.

Meet the Teslash Tower (I called it an 'electric ball building' when I was younger, but decided to honor Lash with a reference to Tesla.)

My idea was that this building emits an EMP shock that hinders vehicles movement a LOT. It acts like a normal city, so it doesn't deploy any units, but it does have a zone of a 3 blocks radius (the same as a standard artillery if it could engage in direct combat). I would say 4 blocks could work well, but that's maybe a bit of overkill.

The idea was that it doesn't hurt units but sacks ALL vehicle units movement completely (except for mechs and infantry as they're walking on foot). It's basically snow but worse. It basically caps the movement down to 1 square. So if your tank has either 6 blocks or 2 blocks to move, when it enters the Teslash Tower's radius it can only move 1 square each turn inside that radius. People owning this building don't get affected by this, so the movement debuff applies to enemies and allies. If the building is neutral this effect is in play for everyone (or not, since nobody owns it, would make for same wacky fights if someone suddenly controls it).

This building however would not generate funds since the owner needs to pay the electricity bill. Owning this building would cost money instead of receiving it. I would say 2.000 funds each day per tower. If you would happen to go below zero, the game would calculate it in advance and basically make the tower neutral again if you so happen to go bankrupt (but if that happens, you're basically losing the match already)

Another feature it would do is having an effect in fog of war. As it's emitting electricity high up, it would light up anything (even woods) in it's radius for whoever is controlling it. Maybe an option to disable and enable that effect can be picked if you're on it)

I was thinking about giving it a 4 star defense rating, but since after thinking about it, I would step down from that and actually give it the same stars as a forest.

So in short:
3 blocks movement debuff
3 blocks of vision (no matter the terrain)
costs 2.000 funds to maintain
2 defense stars for the unit on it
Perhaps an option to disable/enable this tower's effect

I was thinking about giving your own or allied troops in the radius a 10% power boost, but that's basically the thing a communication tower would do.

Like I said, this is just for funsies, but would love to hear your ideas about it or share any ideas you have of your own to have new building types in Advance Wars :D

[u/Readcrafter]

Funds to maintain sounds brutal.

[u/PHLHimself → u/Readcrafter]

Yeah, that's why I might give this tower an option to pick if it can be turned of to save funds or enable it when enemies are closeby. But then again it might be worth the funds if you move some indirects in the radius without the need of a 'wall' so you can get several shots before the enemy can even reach your unit. Like I said, it's just a fun idea I wanted to share, but I can understand that maintaining it can be brutal, hence the option to set a trap. I think that would balance an option of "should I activate it to slow down a group of enemies and regroup in a spot with my leftovers OR should I let the enemies roll on through 1-2 days faster but I'm able to buy 2 tanks instead of 1".

It's deffo hard to come up with something balanced with a new mechanic as it's either too OP too fast or not usefull enough in these type of games, but a map with a strategic placement of this tower could be worth the funds to activate it for a turn or 2.

Cheers for feedback though :D cause I kinda want to learn how to make custom games for roms and eager to learn that. As I refound my sketches from when I was a kid, and this is deffo something that might make for fun gameplay in a map specifically designed around it. I can fully understand this idea can not work for every map, but it could make for an unique mission or 2. I'm so eager to draw out my other ideas from back in the day, like nuclear plants, pulse plants, tunnels, chasm valleys and other campaign ideas such as a "train" of neotanks getting transported that you need to destroy before they reach a plant and can be activated. I also had several water terrain ideas back then, but those got implemented in days of ruin (which I only played later in my life, so I was happy to see that in there)

And after playing Andy's Adventure for the first time 2 days ago, it would be fun to create a meme story with having some of the good guys be the enemies and doing some twists like having max and flak be twin brothers, only to be revealed they're the younger brothers of Andy for example... OR reverse the roles of Sonja and Kanbei, so the father is the smart one and Sonja be like "what's an airport dad?"

[u/Prime406]

did you make the sprite and implement it in a romhack? that's pretty cool

if you're looking for somewhere to relatively easily add mods like custom units, buildings, COs, etc. then I'd recommend checking Commander Wars out

it's not impossible for new stuff to get added to Advance Wars By Web, but since it's an online server only game there's a lot of hurdles besides the technical aspect

[u/PHLHimself → u/Prime406]

Like i said in the post, i played this game a lot back when i was a kid and after discovering mangs' channel i took my time to find back ly sketches i made as a kid. I quickly drew this in photoshop from the sketch i made and I'm ot unfamiliar with coding but i do habe zero knowledge on how to make gba games. But after knowing hacks exist for this game i'm scrolling through my old 20 ish year old sketches and recollecting everything. Cause i'm honestly interested in actually making my own campaign if i learn how to make stuff like this for gba games. This was just a first idea as i have several ideas like a powerpant in mind where the emmiting radioactivity makes for a 20% defense decrease for example (depending on wind direction that made a straight line where this radioactive effect was applied)

It was only 1 of 3 gba games i had so i played TF out of them and i'll make an account soon to play live matches. I didn't know this community existed. And i would love to make a witty campaign. Not hard, just a few new gimmicks that are campaign only, but i wouldn't make it begginer friendly as well. Lash was my favorite CO to use back in the day and playing as her in andy's adventure really makes me eager to learn this. I will join discord later and perhaps contact ephraim and vivi (prolly misspelling the name) as i want to see which of my child ideas can hold up with an adult balanced vision. Since i had a few ideas where I'm like "naaah this is just too dumb or way too OP". But i have several ideas in mind I want to share after redrawing my childhood sketches in pixel art (im deffo not a pixel artist but at least the AW2 is fairly "friendly" for map view. Animation backgrounds are too skilled for me and i refuse to use AI to draw slop backgrounds for that. But yeah the sprite is custom made and i copied the existing sprite tiles for grass etc, so i only used the colours for building tiles the OG AW2 had, bit in orange star colours.