Brenodi Empire / Northern Faction - Design I wanted to discuss about how BE and NF should vary from eachother by appearance / gameplay and story. Right now all I know about the differences are following: BE - Brenodi Empire: Use NANOMACHINES to enhance their combat abilities. Go against their foes as a UNIT / LEGION. Rely on CANNON based vehicles. Advanced technologies make their tanks more AGILE and COMPACT in sacrifice for ARMOR, leading to teamwork being a major factor to victory. NF - Northern Faction: Use BIOLOGICAL MUTATIONS / ENHANCEMENTS to strengthen their combat abilities. Go against their foes like a HORDE. Rely on MISSILE based vehicles. Advanced technologies make their tanks BIGGER and MORE POWERFUL in sacrifice for AGILITY, leading to them overpower their foes in an instant. That is all I can remember for now, I might have missed some points or stated something which is completely wrong but I can edit the list later on. --------------------------- Purpose of thread: I opened this thread in order to discuss if we should add in more differences, keep it as it is or give them similiraties. My opinion is that it should have identifiable differences between both teams, to give them some sort of character and history. I believe EmpiresMod to be set in a futuristic war between two big factions, one which tries to unite people (Brenodi Empire) and one which refuses and starts to act against that idea as rebels (Northern Faction). --------------------------- I will gather ideas and suggestions in this part of the post. Current ideas: Shape of buildings: Right now Northern faction and the Brenodi empire have both varying shapes for their buildings but if you take a closer look you might notice that NF has more RECTANGLE-shaped buildings and BE has more ROUND-shaped buildings. If possible we could flesh out buildings being rectangle-shaped for NF and round-shaped ones for BE. This would mean Brenodi always favored the round shape over the rectangle one and Northern favoring the opposite. Pro: Difference between both teams building-wise. Contra: Possible balance issues. 1 unique research tree for each team: Both have access to some general research but have 1 seperate tree dedicated for their own, i.e. Nanotechnology and Mutations / Biology. Pro: Difference between both teams tankweapon-wise. Contra: Possible balance issues. --------------------------- So what do you guys think?
its meant as suggestion? because there is barely a "reallife" resemblance of the differences you described. nf has the rounder shapes on weapons and tanks. buildings are blocky for either faction. nf light and med are more agile then their be counterpart and so on ... ... but i can see where this comes from.
The differences are barely things I noticed during my time in Empires with a bit of flavor text on some of them. That is what this discussion is about. Is the design for both teams satisfying enough for you or not. If it isn't what would you do about. My opinion as stated is that it should have identifiable differences between both teams, to give them some sort of character and history. I never believed EmpiresMod to be set in a real-life scenario but rather to be a futuristic war between two big factions, one which tries to unite people (Brenodi Empire) and one which refuses and starts to act against that idea as rebels. (Northern Faction)
yes, no i mean "reallife" as how it currently is in the game, thus with quotes ... it totally reminds me on the balancing assumptions that had been made for 2.0 - or so it was told to me, i only played 1.08 (or 1.18 or 1.8? or 7 even i dont remember anymore and its unimportant really isnt it) for two weeks or so (in retrospective, probably THE time to join empiresmod lucky me) a lot of what you describe certainly has its roots there - and in megels lore. (aside of that the ml-cn dichotomy is blatantly obvious) i just didnt fully understand where you wanted this to go. im parted. on one hand you certainly are right, a deep lore and a good resemblance of it in the game is what differentiates this rare gems from the millionth generic FPS. so assymetric balance makes full sense out of this perspective. on the other hand, out of a few years of experience following the development of an independent mod as closely as i did with empires, id argue that assymetic ballance is a maintainance nightmare you dont want to put yourself in as small, resource limited team.
Yeah I understand you, the asymmetrical part is really torture for devs to balance out. Yet there are still some asymmetrical features in the game which work out, now that you remind me of it. Building-wise, Northern Faction (in the old days) were able to block off a lot of shell-fire from heavy tanks by rowing up barrackes to defend some buildings. Brenodi Empire is able to combine a barracks and a vehicle factory into a fortified VF. This wouldn't work with weapons though... so there would be 2 options. 1. Both have access to some general research but have 1 seperate tree dedicated for their own. 2. Both teams have the same research but both differ from description and design of the weapon itself, i.e. Mutated Ranged Missile / Nano-powered Ranged Missile = UML (Upgraded missile launcher)
I thought this was going to be a vary interesting thread about teamcomposition how many of what classes in what squads. I was dissapointed.
If NF is supposed to be the more "naturalistic" side then they should feature more round buildings (new nf rax fits perfectly) and have tanks with a more organic geometry (vehicles check).
This is an idea I like but I don't think I would like it for vehicles at all because of how there's something of a limit to how many useful weapons you can have scripting wise and I feel we are nearly there. Here's a quote of mine from when I was working on a research tree. The first 2 sentences are important though because you can't really put them in the main tree. Might be better to have specific building type research in mechanical or infantry research in biology, two trees with free space for this team specific research. But yes I would love some team specific research, it just has to be new type of stuff which translates to something coders have to implement.
