State of the Xeno Mod

Ultra asked on the forum about what our overall plans were for the factions that we have not put into play yet. This is actually a good question. As always we are modifying desings as needed however this is the general design and play style that we are going for.


With the Earth Federation we are going for complexity. The idea is that the EF is made up of 3 full armies that are controlled by a general governing body. In game this translates to the player picking EF and then getting to further modify their choice in game. This is a huge tactical advantage as it forces your enemy to come to you and find out just what faction your moving with. On top of that this also allows you to pick a force and then find out what your enemy is using mid game to switch things up a bit. On the EF side you have UC, AW, and SEED.

UC is a force that is focused on defensive game play. Having said this that does not mean that they are a turtle army. They start out with slower but stronger units compared to the other 2 sides (and most other forces at that point in time) and go through a progression of gaining new technology as time go's on. The longer it takes for a UC force to win the more desperate the situation becomes for high command and they will continue to authorize newer and more powerful mobile suits to be used to win. This gives you a steady force that will continue to shift in focus as the game progresses but it also has the downside of you not being able to focus on speeding up deployment of units, things will just come as they come.

AW is a force that is focused on swarm game play. This is different than rush game play however. The force is designed to continually hit the enemy with many targets trying to overwhelm them. The disadvantage to this is that AW is such a threat in the global community that other armies (Zeon) will attempt to stop them whenever they can. To this end the AW player has to hurry and try to defeat it's opponents as quickly before colonies start falling from space (always a good way to ruin a great day).

Seed is of course sitting in a not-so-nice spot. The first course of action is to figure out what game play type we wish to go with here. Are we looking at a swarm army? A turtle force? How about making them a rush force? What units do they have that would fit into this kind of design? With UC about 50% of their units would sit in the tank/turtle category with the other 50% split between rush/dps (damage per second) and tactical/assault forces (units designed for attacking an enemy and forcing them off balance). AW's unit really made their own design, with so many weak units (daughtress's with their tenzans) with so many super units (all those mass production gundams) giving them a 65% rush / 20% tactical / 15% tank design. Truly AW is not designed for making a base. So SEED sits where it is until I can figure out what the units are telling me that their game play should focus on. (At this point it's looking to be the most direct straight up army that EF can deploy).


Now for the other forces that we've not talked a lot about. We have Zeon, Invid, and Robotech Defense Force. We actually have a pretty good idea where we want these guys to be (well, a good idea on Invid and Zeon with a general idea on RDF).

Zeon and Invid have a lot in common. They are both based around the idea of an invasion force. Where they are different is in how they do it, Zeon is an invasion force with the end game result being to control the Earth. Invid on the other hand have only one purpose, destroy the Tiberium and anyone or anything that has come into contact with it. This makes them very unique in their way of deployment.

The Zeon force is going to be based around tank units (units that are slow but tough and able to take a hit from all sides) and in a lot of ways will be THE Turtle force of the game. The idea will be that where they land they will place down a lot of heavy defensive structures and have a lot of heavy units. They will sit back, build up, then crush anyone that attacks with a massive counter-attack. The downside to this is their units will be a bit more exspensive per teir and their actual structures are not going to be very tough. Their entire design is based around cheap, quick to put up structures, heavy units and heavy defenses, and an income that holds it's own. As far as units/structures that we have for them is concerned we have a lot of Zeon units along with the structures from the original Xenoforce Mod. Defenses I will have to make myself (I have the designs done, just have to make the models).

Invid are a completly different beast. There are a few Invid designs floating around but they all focus around a central theme. The Invid units will have different designs that as time go's on will mutate into other designs. What this means is that when a unit is built it will be also given one of 3 upgrades randomly. It will either be given a speed boost (50% movement), a power boost (25% additional dmg) or a toughness boost (25% additional hp). The idea is that each unit is modified as the Invid Regis changes it's mind. Can this be done? I think so. Will it be easy? Not in the least lol. Now, here is the thing. I currently do not have any models for the units or the structures. At one point Doug sent me some units but I don't know what happened to them, so yea.... The overall design of the Invid is a force that focus's on Damage and is not interested in taking land. This means an Invid player will not have to expand their base very far to be successful, but they WILL have to kill enemy units. As far as their economy... yea I am not sure how thats going to work yet.


The RDF is another force that is unique in our game. Each and every other force in the game (Including NOD and Scrin) are military forces that are trying to take land or be a political power. The RDF however has little interest in "taking over the Earth". The easiest way to explain them would be as a Technologies Company with many military contracts across the world. In fact the RDF only has a few large installations on the world in Alaska and in the Philipine Islands. Most of the RDF work happens on Mars where the RDF has the only off-planet research facility. Now the RDF has 3 aspects in the show, there is the actual Robotech Defense Force from the 1st season, the Southern Cross from the 2nd, and the Robotech Expeditionary Force from the 3rd. I already have models for many of the RDF forces thanks to the first Xenoforce Mod as well as having all the structures that I need. At this point I need models for the Sothern Cross (Hover Tanks Rule pound for pound) and Robotech Expeditionary Force (Defiantly the Cyclone will be an interesting unit to design).

So how will they work? I don't want the RDF to be like the EF so what I'm thinking personally is that we have 3 structures. One of them builds units from the RDF, one builds SC, and one builds REF. There are 3 teirs of units for each section. One unit from each teir will always be build-able (so you will always be able to build the basic veratech or basic hover tank) but the other 2 units in that teir can only be built IF you choose to build from that side first. SO how it will work is this. At Teir 1 if you build the basic hover tank then the other 2 SC units from teir one will be build-able and the other 2 RDF and REF teir 1 units will be locked out. At Teir 2 you can then build the basic RDF unit to get access to the other 2 tier 2 RDF units locking out the other 2 SC and REF units. Same with Teir 3. This means that the player will have access to a maximum of 15 different units out of the grand total of 27 units possible. I personally like this idea. This also gives the Robotech Force the most flexibility to change tactics mid game. If your looking for hard hitting units you start with the REF. Then you notice that your enemy is going to be hitting you with a swarm of units and you simply can't keep up with a war of tactical strikes so at teir 2 switch over to the Southern Cross to give you some Heavy Turtle/Tank units to protect yourself. Then at end game you see that your Southern Cross units are tough enough to stand up against the enemy and your REF units are fast enough for hit and run tactics but you really need some units that can both come up and support the SC forces while also being fast enough to retreat if things go wrong, so you go with the RDF forces and their Super Veritechs.

So the end game design looks like this.


GDI - Turtlers Army
Scrin - Damage Per Second /Super power/ Swarm Army
NOD - Rush /Super Power/ Elitest Army
Earth Federation (UC) - Turtler Army
Earth Federation (AW) - Swarm Army
Earth Federation (Seed) - ?
Invid - Tank / Swarm Army
Zeon - Tank / DPS Army
RDF - DPS / Elitest Army

A Turtler Army is designed to take a long time to execute but when it does it hits with a massive amount of power.
A DPS Army is designed to do maximum damage at the expense of the units themselves.
A Swarm Army is designed to over-run an enemy position with numbers.
A Rush Army is designed to hit fast and first.
A Tank Army is designed to take a hit and shrug it off.
An Elitist Army is designed to use special, expensive super units to deal with multiple enemies at once.
A Super Power Army is designed to be able to manipulate the entire army with powers and upgrades.

If you have any questions feel free to ask.