Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Sorry for the lack of updates.

Getting sick is never fun, especially when you think your over it and then it comes back two weeks later worse than ever.  Now hopefully I truly am over this and can get back to work.

I promised a design workup for SEED and have come up with something that I think will work well.  Here it is.

After choosing the SEED construction yard you will have access to the SEED War Factory, SEED Airfield Support, and SEED Experimental Factory.  The way it will work is the War Factory will build the basic units, the Airfield will build a few important support units for when a player needs additional cheap air support, and the Experimental Factory is where the Unique units will be built.

Starting with the War factory there will be 4 teirs to build.  Each Teir is linked to the experimental teir as well.  There will be 3 units available per teir to build.  Each unit that is available to the player to build is linked to the following categories - Tactical - Offense - Assault.

A tactical unit is a standard unit with little to no real upgrades.  These units are not the fastest or the strongest choice but they are the most cost effective.   And Offensive unit is one designed for speed and deployment.  Typically this means they are equipped with a special 'pack' for flight making them faster and increasing their offensive capabilities while increasing their cost.  Finally an Assault unit is one that is designed for sieging an enemy base, typically this means they are equipped with heavy weapons or artillery of some sort.  This also makes them one of the most expensive types of units to build.

Once a player has purchased a regular unit of a given teir (it can be any of the 3) they can then build an experimental unit of that same teir.  Experimental units are very expensive and time consuming to build but are very powerful.  There are 3 experimental units per teir and they also follow the Tactical - Offense - Assault design.  Once the experimental unit is built the next teir of basic units are available to build.

This leads to a going back and forth between basic and advanced units.  A player could spend their early game simply advancing their tech and saving their money for later use but if they do this they would end up having access to their entire armory of units but without an army to help defend their base.  They could alternatively spend a lot of time building their basic force up early and then end up with less cash then expected come the end because now they have spent all their money on their units and can't afford the better stuff later.  It will be up to the player to determine how best to deal with their balancing of the economy vs tech race.

These are the tentative build trees that we're looking to use.

Mobile Suits -

Teir 1 :  Dagger - Jet Dagger - Launcher Dagger
Teir 2 :  Dagger L - Jet Dagger L  - Doppelhorn Dagger L
Teir 3 : Slaughter Sword - Slaughter Aile - Slaughter launcher
Teir 4 : Windam - Jet Windam - Doppelhorn Windam

Experimental Suits -

Teir 1 : Duel Gundam - Buster Gundam  - Strike Gundam
Teir 2 : Chaos Gundam - Gaia Gundam - Abyss Gundam
Teir 3 : Blu Dual Gundam - Verde Buster Gundam - Strike Noir Gundam
Teir 4 : Gells Ghe - Zamza Zah - Destroy Gundam

Air Support Units -

Teir 1 : Gunbarrel Striker (Unlimited Build)
Teir 1 : Moebius Zero (Limit 1 Build)
Teir 2 : Sky Grasper (Unlimited Build)
Teir 3 : Exus (Limit 1 Build)


Finally for the differences in the basic units.  A Dagger will be a very simple straight forward unit.  It is equipped with a single head vulcan and a machine gun typically unless otherwise noted (Like the Launcher Dagger is equipped with it's beam cannon and not a machine gun).  A Dagger L costs more but has double the head vulcans, a beam rifle, and EMP Shielding.  A Slaughter dagger has specialty weapons and greater speed.  Finally the Windam has the speed of a Slaughter, the cost and armaments of the Dagger L, as well as having greater accuracy.

For the final bit we have the "Allies" support power.  The player will have access to a structure near the end of their Structure Build tree called the "Allied Defense Coordination Center" (name pending).  This structure will give access to 3 powers.  Each Power will give you access to support from one of the 3 "choices" that a player will have.  The choices are "Three Ship Alliance", "Orb", and "Blue Cosmos".  No matter what one you pick it will cause a structure to "land" where you tell it to (I suggest in a defend-able position in your base).  Depending on what ally you go with will grant you not only additional powers on the side but also additional resources on the map.  So if you go with the Three Ship Alliance for example every 5 minutes the ArchAngel will fly in and drop in 10,000.  If you go Orb you will get the same 10,000 every 4 minutes.  Finally Blue Cosmos gives 10,000 every 4 minutes.  Also you will unlock additional powers on the side.

The Three Ship Alliance grants access to only 2 new units but they are the strongest units you could ask for.  They are obviously the Freedom and the Justice.  These units come in for free once their build timers are over and if destroyed still will go nuclear.  What fun!

The Orb Alliance will give you access to the Astrays, Murasame, Strike Rouge, and the Akatsuki units.  Where the Three ship only drops off money on its drops the Orb will also drop in Astrays for free!

Finally we have Blue Cosmos.  Where they are different is in the fact that you don't get any new "units" per-say but can now deploy additional "Gells Ghe", "Zamza Zah", and "Destroy Gundam"'s effectivly removing the 1 limiter that was on them.

So thats the design I think I'm going to try.  I don't plan on starting this design any time this month (still want to finish and get a build out to you guys of the UC/AW with the new O3 first with improved audios) so there is time to talk about this design.  Let me know what you think!


15 comments:

UltraKiroXei said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
UltraKiroXei said...

Oh my, I'll think about SEED structures anyway. I'll have to look up for all structures or make one for Construction Yard, Airfield Support, Experimental Factory.

azuza001 said...

I've got the construction yard under control, and honestly the airfield support is just going to be GDI's current building for now (I hate trying to figure out all the "proper" landing pad bone names and stuff). The experimental factory is the only one that I'd say can look different (and should look different) than the standard slanted building look that EF already uses.

Anonymous said...

Nice to see you've included the different factions from seed, looks good !

UltraKiroXei said...

"Proper landing pad bone names and stuff" < Having a difficult, trying to put the code in the game. Its possible to put it in if you check the text code often.

Alan said...

Yay I am so excited for this and the design looks great.

Anonymous said...

Do u have any plans to include destiny models?

azuza001 said...

Ultra - I know its a pain (hence why I have not done it yet lol). The only way to do it is to model, export, code, compile, then test. If it doesn't work you have to keep compiling before every test which can take awhile if your mod is as large as ours is (it takes about 15 minutes to compile the Xenoforce Reborn mod each time vs a minute to compile the O3). Time and patience.

Anon - what destiny models are you wondering about?

Anonymous said...

Providence
Legend
Destiny

would be some nice ones to see, not a big deal tho, just would be nice to see them added !

azuza001 said...

Those mobile suits were only ever used by Zaft and were never in the hands of the Earth Alliance. We're trying to give people what they want while also sticking to the Earth Alliance side of things and Zaft is not an option. Sorry.

Alan said...

Will we see the Strike Freedom returning? I know it was never with the EF but maybe something like you did with the Wing-Zero?

azuza001 said...

I may come up with some sort of easter egg to give SEED players the strike freedom somehow, but unlike Wing Zero if I do this it's going to have to be a real easter egg where the player will have to figure out just what the proper "order" of events that has to happen happens to get it. Maybe. We'll see. :)

Alan said...

Sounds complicated but fun I will be looking forward too.

Alphane said...

Will you include the meteor unit as the special power in it? Maybe it is limited to money and time. Each time use will cost money and need time to recharge the power. I believe it will be amazing if you would possible to make it works.

azuza001 said...

The meteor thing is not something I had considered, its a good question for sure.

If I do end up putting Strike Freedom into the game I will defiantly look at giving it that.