UC and AW, more different than just different units

I received an email the other day from someone who wanted to know what was taking so long on the mod when it comes to adding UC back in and putting SEED and AW back in. While I get these kinds of emails all the time I felt it was important to explain the difference between UC and AW.

UC Powers and Design Overview

UC has 3 sources of income.

• The Tiberium Rig
• The Refinery
• The Resource Resupply Dropoff

UC has access to many different normal suits that evolve in their rolls as the game go's on.

UC has very few production line Gundams to build.

UC uses 2 kinds of powers. Gundam Reinforment powers where they call in unique powerful Gundams to help support their lines and Defcon Powers. A Defcon power is tied to the Defcon that the UC force is currently at to give additional bonus's and abilities. This places UC inbetween GDI and NOD in terms of powers and abilities.

UC has access to many different defensive structures that gain experience and evolve as they are used.

UC has access to many different structures making them very reliant on space.

AW Powers and Design Overview

AW has 2 different sources of income

• Refinery
• Resource Drop Off

AW has access to only a few mass production mobile suits who fill very generic rolls.

AW has access to many Production level Gundam class mobile suits.

AW has unique land bases for super heavy support.

AW has very few defensive structures to build. They do not gain experience as they are used.

AW has very few structures to build, allowing for very small bases to be very effective.

AW's powers revolve around Newtype powers and abilites seen in the show. This can range from a massive "EMP" blast that shuts all ground units down on the map to the DOME system.

So as you can see, the difference between UC and AW will be more than just different units. We plan for UC to be a force that flex's and flows, with units that change rolls as time go's on and evolves as time go's on. AW will be a very straight up army with powers that have massive effects and powerful units who also can not deal well with loss's. For example, if you kill a squad of 6 UC Gm's it will not be the end of the world for UC. However, this same loss of a few Gundam Leopards will be a heavier loss as the AW forces will be their main line of defense.

As always, feel free to ask any questions you wish.

Work is starting to pick back up again

Now that all of my personal, family drama is done and over with (for now) I can get back to the mod. In this interm I have not been able to do any coding/modeling but Doug and I have nailed down EF-UC's design.

I don't want to get into much about it but I will tell you this. Previous versions of UC were bland at best, and mostly looked at as a straight forward no nonsense army. Our new design (which will be the final design, I must stress this) will have enough flavor that it will honestly be a very nice choice to choose. While each of the 3 sides of EF will play to a very spicific gameplay style UC is sticking with 1 major theme. The UC will be a turtler's dream. However, UC will also have a weakness against turtler armies if we do get it to work the way we want. So basically the strength of UC is the weakness.

More to come next week.

Late/no update this week

Sorry for the late post guys, there won't be an update this week. I've been busy in my personal/work life and havn't had a chance to do anything. So, since I've done nothing, there's nothing to report. Exciting isn't it?

I should have something to talk about this Sunday. I'm just getting started on some work now.

Things about the new design.

While we get ready to start working on our new Earth Federation designs one of the key points behind each design is making sure that not only each unit has a purpose for being in the game, but that each of the 3 sides have a true reason for being in the game and a distinct game play style.

Our current design for UC revolves around the holding of land. UC's defenses will be cheaper and gain experience quicker than AW or SEED's defenses. UC's air resource drops will also come in quicker as they have the supply lines better secured than AW or SEED. Finally, UC gains more tech and more units as the situation escalates. This means that the longer you fight UC the stronger they get. The reason for these game play designs is because in our story UC is supposed to be the force that simply holds the areas that SEED has taken. Think of UC as the forces that when they move they attack enemy lines as a large push, no small skirmish's with these guys.

AW and SEED's designs have not been figured out yet, but this is what I can tell you. From our story, AW is the force that is based off of the Lunar Base. These are the force that initially started the fight for the Earth Federations independence by launching attacks against GDI Blue Zones in North America. What this means is when we do their army the big thing that we'll be looking at is units that have speed, hitting power, and quick deployment and reinforments. This roll will work great for AW as between their "Bits" system for reinforments, the "Dome Defense System" for unique attack points, the "Sat Cannons" for massive stopping power, and the special powers being based around the unique "newtypes" that were in the show AW will have all of these things to make them a very dangerous army to play against. The AW weakness is going to be their structures, or more to the point their defenses. AW simply won't be designed around setting down massive bases, they will work more off the idea of small, efficent bases with few buildings that do lots of different rolls.

SEED is based around a very simple idea. In our story SEED is the force that takes land by making broad forward movements. Where UC uses a sledge hammer to hammer in a nail and AW uses a nail gun with a single nail in it and hopes it go's in right the first time, SEED truly is going to be the proper hammer for the nail each time. This means that each SEED unit that we do put in is going to picked and choosen as a counter for another unit type. While this means that SEED will always have something to work with this unfortunatly also means that if you pick the wrong units to build you could end up losing very easily. However, SEED doesn't have to just rely on having counter units to win. SEED will have additional Ally forces to call on. SEED can team up with ORB to gain access to units like the Freedom and Justice or they can team up with Blue Cosmos and gain super powerful mass production mobile armors like the Destroy Gundam. It'll be interesting if I can get this to work right, that'll be sure.

So soon I should have some pics of the new design working (assuming I ever get past the design faze and move into the recoding faze). If you have any suggestions or questions let us know.

Sorry for the late update

It's been a busy weekend with 4th of July here in the states. Sorry for the late update.

This post isn't going to say much other than I'm currently working on the new design for Earth Federation - UC (Yes, AGAIN, but with good reason this time.) After all the hard work that we've put into the original 3 we have learned quite a bit about the engine and the AI. The biggest things are what we can get the AI to do, what we can't, and what it really can understand out of the options we give it.

Its for this reason that we're abandning the UC Timeline design. Yes the AI can do it, but it really is not needed. Honestly, it's kind of silly to have all these units that you can only build at certain times. The reason we had the timeline setup in the game was because we were trying to stick to the UC Story as much as possible.

This is no longer going to be the case. The UNITS themselves will still work as close as possible to the Gundam story. The force itself though will not. This means the following.

1. A RGM 79 will work like you expect it to vrs say a Stark Jegan. I kinda feel sorry for the RGM 79 in this match-up.

2. You will be able to build the RGM 79 and the Stark Jegan at the same time with this new design. No more "greyed out units", you just get more as you move forwards.

Doug and I have been having a lot of discussions latley about this new design. If you listen to Doug's podcast you will have heard us and him discussing the new ideas we're toying with. The biggest thing I want to point out is that the things we talk about during this time period are NOT garunteed to be in the game. They're just discussions about what we could do and what is possible and what's not in the game.

Everyone have a good week, and I hope to have some more news soon.