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.

Will the SEED design suck?

It's a good question to ask at this point. Now that we've gotten Scrin redone (again) and have a solid focus/design for Nod done it's time to look at the next big thing. (I am ignoring GDI's work as really they are not getting any real attention this time, they're pretty much good where they are other than the stuff I mentioned last week).

And that next big thing is SEED. SEED has quite a few things going against it right from the start too. You have the fact that we've been working on the EF for two years now (I'm about sick of it honestly and can't wait to go on to Invid/Zeon/RDF). Then there is the fact that SEED has a very diverse selection of units and mobile armors to pick from. On top of that is the fact that many of the more popular SEED units would not fit in our design as your playing as Earth and not Zaft. Finally you have the problem that we have a ton of suits already made for us and donated that we have to sort through, maybe one that we've been given just won't work when we try to put it in (A problem I had with the Powered GM many times. All 3 donated versions caused severe lag in-game and I ended up retro-fitting a different model to get one in).

Having said all of that there is also the issue that I honestly do not have a clear vision of how I would like to see SEED in the game. The vision for UC was there and worked from the get-go. The vision for AW also varied only slightly from it's initial design and works well I think. So where does that leave SEED? In strategy terms UC is the Turtle Army and AW is the swarm army. Is SEED supposed to be the Blitz army? Maybe it's supposed to be between UC and AW, able to both turtle and swarm but not really having to devote it's entire strategy down one of those paths. Or could SEED be destined for something else, a force more akin to Nod using stealth and super powers to try and win the day. In the end I really want SEED in the game but I'm afraid that if we just half-ass it we're going to end up with a less-than-optimal force that people play for "fanboy" reasons and not because it brings something unique to the table.

What do you guys think?

GDI's new design.

Yes, I finally am getting around to talking about the changes that I've planned for GDI. There are not a lot of changes that I plan on doing, only 3 in fact. 1 change is to their economy and the other 2 are to their super powers. Thats how strongly Doug and I feel about GDI's current design.

The first change is going to be with their economy. GDI's design is based around deployment and units, showing a strong front on all fronts and wiping away the enemy with grand sweeping groups of forces. They will have 2 sources of Income, the traditional mining of Tiberium being the main and our new "force economy" as the secondary. What's the force economy? Basically what we're going to try and do is have every single unit that you build tick off cash every 3 seconds. The amount of cash they tick off will be 1/100th of their normal cost. This will mean that once a unit has been on the field and not killed for at least 5 minutes the unit will have payed for itself. Obviously this isn't going to be the case most of the time, but this also means that a turtle who just builds and builds and builds will continue to offset the cost of their base and new units with existing units allowing GDI to get more bang for its buck.

Now for the superpowers. GDI currently has the Ion Cannon, and that isn't going to change. We are however going to expand the way that the Ion Cannon can be fired. The traditional Ion Cannon is going to switch to being a 5 minute power and be the "Non-Targeting Ion Cannon" power. This is because after you tell it where to fire it will do just that and you can't change the target.

The second fire mode (or first new Ion Cannon) will be a "Controlled Ion Cannon" and will fire much like the USA cannon did in CNC Generals. The idea is that the power will spawn an "invisible, controllable, unit" that the player can move wherever they want. As the unit moves it will spawn the "big beam" of light part of the Ion Cannon and cut a path behind it. Finally this unit will last for like 10 seconds and then self-destruct, basically giving you control of where the beam go's. This beam will not have a large blast radius but it will be useful when you need to cut a path open. It will have a 7 minute timer.

The final fire mode (or second new Ion Cannon) will be what I like to call the "Planet Cutter". This power will literally cut a semi-controlled path across the map with multiple cannons firing at once! How it works is that the player "targets" where they defiantly want the beam to hit and then an "invisible" unit will spawn. This unit will move like the Firehawk bomber and work exactly like that unit does when it drops the MOAB. However it will also work like our EF Capitol Ships do, attacking any enemy that it flies over. This means that the unit will fly across the map in a straight line and any enemy that is caught underneath this drone will trigger the Ion Cannon to fire at that place! It will fire a few or ton of Ion Cannon Strikes all in a row doing massive damage. This Timer will be 15 minutes long.

So there you have it, our current plans on GDI. Let me know what you think.

Speak out against PIPA/SOPA!

As you may or may not know today is a national "blackout day" against these bills that the US Congress is trying to shove down our through. Speak out against it! A prime example would be THIS MOD! According to the laws it would be copyright infringement and be competently shut down without ANY DUE PROCESS!

https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

Go here for more!

State of the Echo

While working on this mod I have learned quite a few things. I've become a much better modeler (I still have a ways to go) and a more creative coder. I've also learned a lot about game design and how the three mesh together.

The final part of my Scrin Design centers around the Echo ability. This is a power that modifies itself based on the upgrade chosen. It's unique in this game as this one power can do many different things and modify many different units and structures on a global scale.

The first pat of this power is the upgrade. You have three choices, Infantry - Vehicle - Aircraft. These choices at first seemed simple to me, you choose the class that you want to focus on. But the difficulties in coding this power caused a new question to appear in front of the old answer. Before it was just going to duplicate whats already there. Now I have to pre-decide what units I want to pop out of the structure. Hmmm. Upon further testing only single units could be built in this fashion as well, no squads. That's a pain, but also an opportunity.

As I now have to decide what unit I want the power to spawn from the structure and the POE (Point of Echo) it occurred to me that I had no idea what I wanted to have pop out. But after a while something dawned on me, this is more than just letting the player choose what units it wanted to focus on due to their preferences. This is the player CHOOSING to supplement their game style!

This is how I have broken the three classic trinity of RTS types down (I-V-A. The 4th would be W for Water if we were putting that in, which we are not). For the Scrin, Infantry are for swarm attacks. Cheap units that are quick to move and simply overwhelm an enemies defenses with numbers. Vehicles are for frontal assaults and for the player that is looking at a drawn out game. Aircraft are for both quick attacks and seiging an enemy base from a distance.

What all of this means is the Echo Power has to help the design further along. The Infantry Echo has to not only phase the Scrin base and force out for a minute but also supplement the Infantry's goal of a swarm force. As these phased in forces are only going to be around for a minute this leads to a few issues. The force that appears at the base won't have time to move from there to the attack point (unless a player also picks the wormhole ability). To that effect these forces are more of a use to the player thats base is under attack, further protecting the base from enemy by giving a credible threat to an attack force to deal with. I have made some Gunwalker Echo's for this job. They are fast firing anti-air and anti-infantry units that in numbers can also deal with lighter vehicles. Perfect for a defense.

But what about the POE force? What if the Echo is used to get your swarm forces into position to attack inside a base? For this I have decided to go back to the original Mastermind design. My current Mastermind is an elite attack unit that based on it's position (if its the banner carrier or not) it has one of two weapon types making it the perfect choice no matter what your going up against. At the Point of Echo 8 of the old style masterminds will spawn allowing the player to take over an enemy's defenses or units to use against the enemy until the other forces phase back in. This allows for the Scrin player to gain temporary control over an enemies own defenses and use them against themselves weaken the front. I like to call it "Operation That's Just Not Right".

Where does that leave the Vehicles and the Aircraft? I have not gotten that far yet but I'm looking to do something along those lines. For the Vehicles I'm looking to not only allow their phase out time to be 2 minutes (giving the player a small window where both the main force and the echo force are active on the field at the same time). I'm thinking of the Defense Force to be made up of Seeker Tanks and the POE force to be made up of Super Shielded Tripods that are designed for close range assaults. For the Aircraft I'm thinking of having the defense be made of Planetary Assault Carriers and the POE be made of Devastator Warships. I am also thinking of letting the echo to cause Signal Relays to spawn Capitol Ships giving you even more air power at your base for defensive cover.

As always I await any thoughts. I will also probably post something soon about GDI's powers (I know I keep saying that).

This is not the update I planned....

But as a lot of you know these things don't work the way we want sometimes. I planned on talking about the new GDI Ion Cannon designs that I came up with (they are great, just go with that). That will have to wait until next sunday.

Recently I did a post explaining my process of how I was adding the Scrin Echo power into the game. Here is the good news.

1. I have developed a way to have a spell power to become modified based on the upgrade chosen. This means for example I could have a "megaton bomb" drop power that drops Vapor bombs if upgrade A is chosen or fire bombs if upgrade B is chosen. Cool right? I can think of a lot of ways that this could be useful (Thinking Invid here really, but possibly also NOD).

2. I got the echo power to work, when you echo all Scrin units phase out then all scrin infantry echo in additional basic versions of themselves.


Now for the bad news.

Apparently if you have more than 20 Scrin infantry units on the field and you echo it causes the game to crash. It appears to be linked to the engines inability to handle a sudden influx of over 60 units at once, but I can't be 100% sure thats whats causing the problem. The engine only crashes though when there are a lot of units that are suddenly echoing in. At about 8 to 12 units and an echo there are no problems.

So that leaves us with what to do. I really like the echo idea and want to make something out of it. I'm just not sure what at this point. The idea of a player ONLY having a hand full of units when they echo is absurd, we all know that armies get up into the 50's and 100's of units in some of these games.

If anyone has an idea of how else to do this let me know. Your idea doesn't have to explain HOW the code works, just a "when this happens how about this?" type of explanation will work. Otherwise my next step is that the echo phases everyone out then summons in some free units at the point of the echo. Not nearly as cool as I wanted, but it may be what I have to do.

No post this week.

Sorry, don't have much to say this week as we just got everything back up and running (both Doug and I decided / had to reinstall windows and stuff at the same time, funny how that happens).

I will post my ideas on GDI and their super weapons that I've developed recently tomorrow.