The time has come

Well, 2 hours late, but it's still Friday so I'm technically still on time!

Enough of the wait, we now have for you all Alpha 8.  

I'll just go ahead and post the links up here.  Then, while you download, if you want to read after you'll see how many things have been changed since Alpha 7.

Please keep in mind that this alpha is not perfect, there are still some bugs and things that need to be worked out (the most glaring to me off the top of my head is Artimis still doesn't do anything and the RGZ91 is using the Gundam Airmasters command set)

Mediafire :

http://www.mediafire.com/?zjqjrdg5jy2

One big note on a change.  In the game you can build the War Factory at the beginning.  But as units were added in and time went on we realized quite quickly that the War Factory's build list was becoming huge but most of it was grayed out during actual gameplay.

So our fix to this has been the following.  Once you pick a timeline from the main command center (or a resource pylon) the corisponding flag will become lit up in the War Factory.  By clicking the flag the buildings command set will change to one that has the units that that Timeline has avalible to it.  

Ok, now that that's out of the way, what was changed that took so long you may ask?

First of all we have the AW timeline in the game.  That's an entirely new army for everyone to play with!  The way they work is based around land bases that come out of the War Factory.  These land bases have the ability to deploy units out of them from the upgrade pannel on the land base, allowing you to move and fight while building units!  Also because it's not a building you can take a landbase out to the middle of nowhere and just start pumping out units.  This gives AW a huge mobile base advantage. 

Now you may also notice that AW doesn't have many units.  Well, your right, they don't, but what they do have are gundams.  Each Land Base can produce a single gundam of it's type at a time (so the Airmaster Landbase makes Airmasters).  But then the Gundams themselves have the ability to make and deploy Bits.  These units are a more generic level unit that use the same weapons and have some of the same abilities as their Gundam masters.  So the Gundam X Bit can also fire it's Sat Cannon along side with the Gundam X.  That's a LOT of Sat Power.  

But that's not the major change.  The true major change to the game has been work on the UC timeline.  Now it spans from 0079 through 0093 (instead of 0079 to 0083) giving you a TON of units to play with.  Now, not everything that is in the Gundam Cannon is in the game (it would take too long and would start getting redundent if we tried to do that) so if your favorite unit didn't make the cut for the Alpha 8, I'm sorry but this list is what it is.  But don't fret, we still have to go back and redo the Spellbook powers (one noteable thing that needs to change is that we still have the spellbook power for Gundam Murdock.  As Gundam Murdock is now IN the game as a buildable unit this needs to be removed.  I plan on replacing the Murdock power with a GP00 power later, but I just ran out of time so didn't get to it.)

What units does UC now have avalible? Here are the Teir breakdowns.

Teir 1 - 0079

Uniques : RX78 Gundam - Guncannon Prototype - Guntank Prototype

Mass Production : RGM79 - RGC80 - Guntank

Teir 2 - 0080

Uniques : RX-77-3 Guncannon - Gundam Alex - Gundam Murdock

Mass Production : RX-77-D Guncannon - GM Sniper

Teir 3 - 0083

Uniques : GP01 - GP02 - GP03

Mass Production : GM Custom - GunCannon Mk II

Teir 4 - 0087

Uniques : Psyco Gundam

Mass Production Uniques : RX178

Mass Production : GM III - Guntank II

Teir 5 - 0093

Uniques : Nu Gundam

Mass Production Uniques : RGZ-91

Mass Production : Jegan

Now after looking at this list you may be saying to yourself "Holy crap that's a lot of UC power".  Well, it is, but keep this in mind.  When you upgrade to a new teir some of the old stuff from the previous teirs becomes locked out.  For example, when you go to Teir 4 and gain the ability to build GM-III's you lose the ability to build GM-Customs and RGM79's.  You may be saying to yourself "big deal, why would I want those older units?  Isn't the GMIII much better?"

Well, it is and it could potentially not be.  The RGM 79 has the advantage that when you start out with it its using a balistic weapon (a machine gun).  You have the OPTION to upgrade it to a beam rifle if you want.  However doing this affects all RGM 79's, not just the one you upgraded, and while beam weapondry is stronger than balistic weapons for the most part, sometimes it's not the case.  An example would be Nu-Gundam.  He gets to use some of his funnels as a shield that protects him from enemy beam weapondry.  But the shield isn't as effective against balistic weapons, so the unupgraded RGM 79 would do more damage to it than the GMIII.  However, for the most part, the GMIII is a stronger unit.

So now, what I need from all of you is playtesting.  I need feedback on what things need changing (and I'm sure there will be a nice long list) and what things work well.  Please email these findings to azuza001@hotmail.com

And finally, I want to say thank you to all the people who have been donating models to me in the last few months.  Smoth and Keyboard have been particularly helpful, and with out everyones help this project wouldn't be where it is now.  Thanks guys.