(Apologies for starting a new thread, but I was surprised to see the other new tower threads are a bit outdated already.)

Last night I had an idea for a tower that I've never seen in any TD game. What about a tower that was almost infinitely variable -- which instead of upgrading in increments, could be upgraded on a sliding scale in terms of its power, range, *and* rate of fire?!

For example, suppose the tower starts with power 5, range 1, rate of fire 10 rpm. Instead of having to wait until you had $20 to upgrade a whole level, and then wait for $40 for the next upgrade, etc., you could basically slide levers to increase its power *or* range *or* rate of fire as you got $. (And of course as you got enough $, you could increase all 3 attributes.)

I imagine it would work by setting initial starting values (as above), as well as maximum values and the costs for such values (for instance, maximum power, maximum range and maximum rate of fire, and what the fully-upgraded tower would cost). The sliding scales could be either linear progressions from the starting point to the maximum, or have a slight logirithmic component.

Either way, the idea is that it is a tower that the player can adapt as they see fit for the circumstances, and can incrementally upgrade as soon as they have some $ without having to wait for megabucks for the final upgrades.

Another aspect of this could be the ability to *decrease* the attributes of the tower and get money back (basically, slide the levers backwards), without having to sell the tower entirely. However, this 2nd aspect doesn't have to be implemented to make the basic tower idea above work.

http://www.towerdefensehq.de/spiel/laser-defense
has these features (without selling attributes) and many innovative things, too, like creeps that appear/disappear, unseen towers etc.
i don't promote that game, it's very buggy. but the ideas it has implemented, very cool.

...i can imagine those kind of upgrades beeing very hard to balance with the existing towers...

Darn. So much for late-night insight.

I think the power level I was envisioning would max out somewhere in between Pellet towers and Rapid towers, though maybe with a max range up to 3 instead of 2. Nothing that would be a megatower by itself.

For me the appeal was more the almost infinite adjustability, and the potential to do even a minor upgrade as dollars accumulated -- instead of having to accumulate $120 and upgrade power from 90 to 150, you could just upgrade by a few dollars and go from 90 to 100. I'm sure we've all been in games where just a few more h.p. whacks and the creep would be dead.

Or if you're quick thinking enough, you could have the tower on max power and fire rate, then as the creep loops around decrease the fire rate and max the range to give the creep a few last whacks. "Tower juggling" instead of creep juggling, as it were.

I like the idea, but lordcrumb is right about the balancing part - probably impossible. My idea is if this tower is implemented to be the only tower (with damage) in maps. If it is guaranteed that the players will have either the new "sliding" tower OR the old set, then I think it will be ok and fun.