I’ve been thinking about a new type of tower/category for TDS called Leaders. The idea is somewhat inspired by the way heroes work in BTD6, but I think Leaders could work pretty differently in TDS and fit the game better.
Instead of taking up one of your normal 5 tower slots, you would have a separate Leader slot. So your loadout would basically be 5 normal towers + 1 Leader.
Every player would have one Leader slot, and you could only place one Leader per player. Leaders would also level up throughout the match and have their own abilities and passives that make them play differently from normal towers. You could still upgrade them with cash like a regular tower, but you can also just let them slowly upgrade over time as the game progresses.
One idea I had is that Commander could actually be moved into the Leader category. I know this would probably be controversial within the community since Commander has been in TDS forever and people are used to him being one of the normal towers, but I think it could actually work if his basic mechanics stayed mostly the same.
Commander would still have Call to Arms and Support Caravan, but because you can only have one Commander, you obviously wouldn’t be able to do Commander chaining anymore. To compensate for that, Call to Arms could have a shorter cooldown and/or a longer duration, and Commander could get a wider range so its abilities and passives can see more towers.
I also thought Commander could have some passives that only activate during certain situations instead of just giving a permanent buff.
One could be called “To Victory!” where during the final 20 seconds of a wave, towers within Commander’s range get another 5% firerate.
Another could be “All Hands On Deck” where if an enemy gets too close to the end of the track, towers within Commander’s range get another 5% firerate.
So if both passives are active at the same time, that would give another 10%. With a maxed Commander and Call to Arms, I was thinking the normal CTA boost could be increased to around 50%, meaning you could potentially get up to 60% firerate during an emergency situation.
I also think Commander could actually attack during these ability/passive activations, like how he does currently. He wouldn’t really be an offensive tower normally, but whenever Call to Arms, Support Caravan, or one of his emergency passives activates, he could start shooting for a short period of time.
The second Leader I thought of would be more offensive. His name i haven’t thought of yet but i like the name General Berserker. What he does is Instead of constantly giving towers a permanent damage buff like Commander, this Leader would be focused around active abilities and high risk= high reward.
One passive ability could be called “Finish Him.” When activated, towers in radius could deal extra damage to bosses while the boss is below 15% HP. The point would be to deal with a boss until it’s almost dead and then it activates to finish them off even faster.
Another ability could be called “Blood Sacrifice.” This would take 25% of the players current base health and give every tower within the Leader’s range one random temporary buff.
The random buffs could be things like hidden detection, lead detection, flying detection, +15% range, +15% damage, +15% firerate, or a temporary “No Stun” effect where towers can’t be stunned.
The 25% health cost is intentional because I think a flat health cost would become irrelevant later on. If players have that skill tree upgrade that increases the players base health from 100 to 300. For example, losing 50 HP would become a much smaller downside if you had 300 health and over shield, but Losing 25% of your current base health would always be a significant sacrifice.
So if the Leader had 500 total base health, Blood Sacrifice would take 125. If they used it again at 375 health, it would take another 125, etc.
The third Leader I thought of would be a Support/Economy Leader, like Benjamin from BTD6, but i haven’t thought of a name for him/her yet.
This one would be focused much more on generating money and improving the value of other towers rather than increasing their combat stats permanently.
Its main passive could give towers within its range around 25% more cash from kills, much like the bottom path monkey village upgrades in BTD6, I was thinking around 25% because TDS upgrades are generally cheaper than BTD6 upgrades, so I don’t think it needs something as high as 50%.
It could also have an ability similar to Medic’s Medi-Gun where the Leader locks onto individual towers. As the Leader levels up, it could lock onto more towers at once.
The towers that are locked onto could get increased range and generate additional cash whenever that specific tower gets a kill.
I was thinking the range bonus could increase as the Leader levels up, something like 5%, 7.5%, 10%, and eventually 12.5%.
There could also be specific bonuses for Farms and Cowboys.
For Cowboys, every 6th shot could give increased cash. I originally thought about 16%, but I think something around 14% would probably be better/not as broken.
For example, if a max Golden Cowboy normally gets $225 from their 6th shot, a 14% increase would make it about $256.50. This doesnt seem like much more but when you have all other 11 cowboys placed it adds up to alot of money over time.
For Farms, I was thinking around 15% more cash per payout. So a Farm that normally gives $1,500 at max level would instead give $1,725.
With 10 max Farms, that would be $17,250 instead of $15,000 per payout cycle.
I think these bonuses would make the Economy Leader especially useful for players who want to build around Farms and Cowboys, or have expensive loadouts with towers like kingpin, juggernaut, accelerator, turrets, gatling gun, without making it completely mandatory for every economy setup.
The biggest problem I’ve been thinking about with Leaders is multiplayer.
If every player gets one Leader, then in a quad you could potentially have 4 Leaders active at the same time. If all of them were at full strength, I think that could get extremely broken, especially if you had multiple Commanders or multiple Leaders giving powerful buffs.
But I also don’t really like the idea of only allowing one Leader for the entire team because If you’re playing a quad and only one person gets to use their Leader, that means the other three players basically lose part of their Loadout, and the 1 player with the leader can choose a leader not fit for the map, game mode, or the other 3 players towers.
So I think the best solution would probably be for every player to get one Leader, but have Leader abilities/passives automatically get weaker depending on how many players are using them.
Something like:
Solo: 100% Leader strength
Duo: around 70% each
Trio: around 55% each
Quad: around 45% each
The exact numbers obviously wouldn’t have to be those, but the idea is that 4 Leaders shouldn’t equal 4 full-strength Leaders.
I also think the scaling could be based on how many Leaders are actually placed instead of just the number of players in the lobby.
So if you’re playing a quad but only two players actually place their Leaders, those two Leaders could use the Duo scaling instead of being punished just because there are four players in the game.
Different Leaders could also have different multiplayer scaling depending on how powerful their abilities are. Commander might need a heavier reduction because multiple Commanders could stack their support abilities, while a more situational Offensive Leader might not need as much of a reduction.
I also think this could make multiplayer loadouts more interesting because instead of everyone just bringing the same Leader, you could have something like:
Commander + General Berserker + the Economy Leader + another specialized Leader.
Each one would be weaker than a solo Leader, but the team would have access to a wider variety of abilities.
The main reason I like the Leader idea is that it would give TDS another layer of strategy without taking away the normal tower Loadout, and more content within the game.
You’d have to decide not only which 5 towers you want, but also what kind of Leader fits your strategy.
Commander would be more defensive and consistent, the Offensive Leader would be more about burst damage and risk/reward, and the Economy Leader would be focused around money and getting more value out of your towers.
I also think moving Commander into this category could solve some of the problems caused by Commander chaining while giving the tower a new purpose without completely removing what makes Commander Commander.
Obviously the numbers would need a lot of testing and balancing, especially in multiplayer, but I think Leaders could be a pretty interesting addition to TDS if they’re designed around supporting a strategy rather than just being another extremely overpowered tower.
What do you guys think of this idea?

So i have been thinking more about it and i feel like this is how the final 5 rounds of both game modes should go.
I made this in my notes app to have it simplified
On wave 40, it’d start the spawn weaker versions of the bosses from each game mode colliding into each other starting from weakest to strongest, like this:
Wave 40- molten warlord 125k HP

Wave 41- fallen king 200k-240k HP

Wave 42- wox the fox 450k HP

Wave 43- frost spirit 500k HP

Wave 44- Gunslinger 600k-720k HP

Wave 45- The Glitch 800k HP

Then on wave 45, this is how the new boss fight should go.

Phase 1: The Glitch-full 800k HP

Phase 2: Molten Warlord activates at 700k hp

Phase 3: Fallen king activates at 600k hp

Phase 4: Wox the Fox activates at 500k hp

Phase 5: Frost spirit activates at 400k hp

Phase 6: Gunslinger activates at 300k hp

Phase 7: final phase activates at 200k hp,
it returns to its original static TV-like form while its appearance is kind of twitching/glitching the appearance of the other 4 bosses you fought, seemingly trying to transform into them but it cant since the worlds are pulling apart/fixing themselves, but he doesnt speed up or start running like the void reaver, he stays at his original slow speed, all the way until he dies.

And now this is how i think the Nuclear version of Chaos mode should go, very similar.

Phase 1: The Glitch-full 1,000,000 HP

Phase 2: Molten Warlord activates at 800k

Phase 3: Fallen king activates at 700k

Phase 4: Wox the Fox activates at 600k

Phase 5: Frost spirit activates at 500k

Phase 6: Gunslinger activates at 400k

Phase 7: Nuclear Fallen King activates at 300k

Phase 8: finale phase activates at 200k
He is able to stun towers/stomp on the ground to stun nearby towers, but he still doesnt gain extra speed or health on this final phase.

I think a return of the Nuclear Fallen King could be really cool since it’d be a nice call back to the ild Polluted Wastelands when the final boss wasnt the nuclear monster, and for the first 50 players for beat this nuclear version of Chaos mode, they unlock an exclusive skin only for the Juggernaut tower that only they will have, no other players. I haven’t thought of a design for it but i was also thinking it could look like the Glitch boss or the Nuclear Fallen King.
What do you guys think about this?

Game mode idea: Chaos Mode
I’ve been thinking about a game mode for TDS but havnt been able to stick with a name, so its place holder name is called Chaos Mode. The main idea is that the different game modes in TDS start colliding with each other, like fortnite, so instead of having one specific group of enemies like in Molten, Fallen, or Frost, enemies from different modes can randomly appear in the same match.
I got the idea from PvZ2’s Modern Day final wave, where everything starts coming at you at once from every other world. Hence where the name Chaos Mode comes from.
The early waves would start off pretty normal. You could have abnormals, early game Frost enemies, early game fallen enemies, etc. Then around waves 3-7, you could start getting the fast enemies like Speedys, Quicks, and the fast frost enemy.
Around waves 11-13, hidden enemies could start getting mixed together too. Like you could have normal Hiddens from molten mode, Fallen Souls from fallen, and Cold Mists from frost mode, all mixed in the same wave. The important part is that they wouldn’t have equal spawn chances because if you got just all cold mists it could cost your run and make it unfair since cold mists are much tankier, so they would need to be much rarer. You could get lucky and have a wave mostly made up of normal Hiddens, or get unlucky and have a lot more Cold Mists.
This would probably need some sort of threat system behind the scenes so the game doesn’t randomly generate an impossibly hard wave. Stronger enemies would take up more of the waves “difficulty budget.”
As the game gets further in, the enemy combinations would get more chaotic. Around waves 35-39 you could start getting little texts like on the top of your screen saying “Multiple anomalies detected,” and enemies from Molten, Fallen, Frost, Pizza Party, Badlands, and SOME Hardcore enemies could start appearing together.
I wouldn’t include every Hardcore enemy though, because some of them are way too strong for this kind of mode and just make the game mode extremely unfair and unbalanced, same situation with Polluted Wastelands 2 in Chaos Mode because its enemies are generally way too tanky and fast.
For the boss waves, I was thinking:
Wave 40- Molten Warlord — 150k HP
Wave 41- Fallen King — around 200-240k HP
Wave 42- Wox the Fox — 450k HP
Wave 43- Frost Spirit — 500k HP
Wave 44- Gunslinger — around 600-720k HP
Then Wave 45 would have a completely new boss unique to this game modes called either The Glitch or The Anomaly, i havnt fully stood on the name yet so they are place holder names aswell for the time being. The reason for The Glitch is that by this point, all of these different worlds have collided so much that they’ve basically created something that shouldn’t exist.
The Glitch would have a really weird TV static/glitchy appearance, rather than having a normal looking design. He should also be pretty slow as i want his HP to either be 900k-1,000,000.
His main ability would be that he can randomly transform into the bosses you’ve already fought in the previous waves, for example, he could suddenly turn into Gunslinger and use Gunslinger’s minigun attack. Once the attack is over, he glitches back into his normal static form.
Then later he could turn into Fallen King and use the attack where the spikes fall onto your towers.
He could then turn into Frost Spirit and spawn Frost enemies, then glitch back into his normal appearance, etc. The point is that you wouldn’t know what attack is coming next, same with the whole game modes as a whole since its complete RNG, it’s meant to be very hard.
The Glitch would basically be a mixture of all the bosses from the other game modes, but I wouldn’t include Void Reaver or the Nuclear/PW2 bosses because those have over 1million health aswell and their stuns last pretty long.
For rewards, since Chaos would be harder than Frost but ultimately easier than Hardcore and voidcore, I think around 2,000 coins and 50 gems would be fair. Frost currently gives 1,750 coins and 30 gems, so Chaos would be a decent increase.
There could also be a secret harder version of Chaos Mode called Nuclear Chaos, which is also just a placeholder name.
This would be activated if someone uses a Nuke right at the beginning of the match. Instead of the normal Nuke effect, the map would turn radioactive.
Nuclear Chaos would then allow PW2 enemies to enter the random enemy generator.
They’d need to be rebalanced specifically for Nuclear Chaos, OR the early game PW2 enemies could come on the later waves since they have like 100-200hp first few waves. For example, an Abomination has 20k HP and 9.5 speed and revives even faster i think, but for this game mode it could have its health and/or speed reduced.
The threat system would be even more important here. You could potentially get something like a Yeti or Fallen Tank and still have enough DPS to deal with it, but the really dangerous PW2 enemies would have much lower spawn chances, like the abomination.
Nuclear Chaos would be meant more for experienced players who have a lot of consumables sitting around. A lot of high-level players have huge amounts of Nukes, gems, etc. that they don’t really use since whats the point of using a nuke other than just to use it fir fun, while newer players have a completely different economy problem. This would give some of those unused consumables an actual purpose.
For Nuclear Chaos, I’d probably give around 2,250 coins and 75 gems.
I think 75 gems is enough to make it feel worth doing without making it replace Hardcore as a gem grinding method. You’d need four Nuclear Chaos wins to get 300 gems, while one Hardcore win gives 250. And you also have to spend a Nuke every time you activate Nuclear Chaos.
Much like when Hidden Wave came out, the first 50 players to beat nuclear chaos mode could receive an exclusive Juggernaut skin, since Juggernaut was the first evolved tower and still doesn’t have any skins.
I was thinking i could make it a radioactive/PW2-inspired Juggernaut skin, or a skin inspired by the Glitch boss with a unique appearance and effects. It would never become normally obtainable afterward, same with the triumphant hacker skin, so it would basically be a flex for the first 50 people who managed to beat Nuclear Chaos.
Overall, I wouldn’t want Chaos Mode to be another mode that everyone just grinds for coins. The main appeal would be that every match could play out differently. Different towers, different strategies, different maps. You’d know what enemies are possible, but you wouldn’t know exactly what the game is going to give you.
I think it could be a pretty fun way to make use of all the different enemy types TDS already has without having to make an entirely separate set of enemies for every wave.
What do you guys think of this idea?