Poll: One faction

[Saktoth]

This is just a vote to see where the oppinions on this idea are at. Details, such as which models and factories we keep, need to be worked out- but there isnt much point mulling over those details if people are against the idea entirely.

The general principle is that we can combine the factions into two, dropping a lot of OTA content and doing a final 'purge' to get us IP free. Possibly this will mean dropping sea, hovers, and a lot of other units.

[licho]

I suggest we all vote for the most radical option acceptable for us. I would not switch it to 1 faction myself, but if you want, i wont mind so im voting for it.

Also depends on how it is done.

[Google Frog]

Wow Licho voted for it...

See the 1 faction page for an idea of how it could be done. I haven't updated it in a while and I'm open to other suggestions. My general idea is to keep most special abilities and to flesh out labs more while removing redundant units. T2 bots may need to be split into specops (cloak, jump, AT etc... basically the very special units) and heavy walkers (morty, crabe, zues. ie the more boring plain ones). Though we could just remove the more boring ones all together.

[licho]

There are some clearly duplicate units and some fairly unique. Like many vehicles are duplicates (tanks), but most bots are unique. Though of course morty = hammer etc.

Then when you eliminate clearly duplicate units there is also issue of duplicate roles.

For example I would miss losing either luger or penetrator and either merl or tremor. But all of them are unique..

[CarRepairer]

I am only for it for the purposes of an OTA IP free fork to legally advertise "CA" and increase playerbase and attract modelers. Otherwise I hate the idea. Backstory - out the window. Planetwars - out the window. Having one faction feels like an unfinished game. You're not going to convince me otherwise with whatever gameplay reasons you come up with. Spring 1944 is very appealing because of its four factions.

[SirMaverick]

For example I would miss losing either luger or penetrator and either merl or tremor. But all of them are unique..

That's why I didn't vote yes. There are many unit with similar roles and still used differently.

[Google Frog]

For example I would miss losing either luger or penetrator and either merl or tremor. But all of them are unique..

OTA had Luger and Penetrator in the same factory. Diplomat and Tremor too. There's no reason why we can't put all the unique units together, at least to start with.

Spring 1944 is very appealing because of its four factions.

Spring 1944 seems to have quite similar factions.

[licho]

I suggest factions are kept, just equal units "equalized" including structures..

Few unique units and superunits can stay faction specific.

[CarRepairer]

Replying to Google Frog:

Spring 1944 is very appealing because of its four factions.

Spring 1944 seems to have quite similar factions.

Yes, yet somehow it's a lot more interesting that way than if it were to have one faction with the unique units of all four.

[luckywaldo7]

Replying to CarRepairer:

Replying to Google Frog:

Spring 1944 is very appealing because of its four factions.

Spring 1944 seems to have quite similar factions.

Yes, yet somehow it's a lot more interesting that way than if it were to have one faction with the unique units of all four.

While most of the infantry do share general roles, the factions really do play quite differently, especially when you move onto vehicles and towed guns.

I really like the idea of a single faction. Don't forget though that it won't be CA anymore, which could be a very good thing, but you will be starting with a playerbase of 0. Er, 1 actually, cause I will play it.

[Saktoth]

Car: What backstory? We cant even settle on one. Chickens can create an appropriate menace for singleplayer, if thats even required. Age of Empires 2 had only 1 unique unit per faction (AoE 1, none).

They are all the same 'breed' of robot, just with differing views and paint schemes, lots of factions. Within singleplayer, you could have a lot of idealogies and strategies, different facs and degrees of porciness etc.

This is heading towards a fork, which i think is best. Content purge, IP free, new name, new game.

[Google Frog]

For me it depends how forky the fork is. I don't think someone should just commit an entire faction removal. It needs a lot of testing first so we would need to make a real test version. Then it would be merged.

I suppose a fork would end up replacing OCA eventually so fork might be effectively the same as what I'm thinking.

I suggest factions are kept, just equal units "equalized" including structures.. Few unique units and superunits can stay faction specific.

If we're going to do that we may as well make them one faction.

Backstory - out the window.

We don't really have one and the current ideas of a back story could easily have 1 unit set. Even then there's Saks idea of the lab factioning.

Planetwars - out the window.

One of the biggest problems with PW was that people like to play both sides occasionally. There's no reason there can't be 2 sides with the same units.

Having one faction feels like an unfinished game.

This is only a perceptual thing forced on society by early RTS developers mostly for the purposes of a campaign. There are many more games with almost identical sides than games with real faction difference.

[licho]

Its not true that we dont have a backstory. There are several proposals. We just cannot agree on one.

[Google Frog]

Replying to licho:

Its not true that we dont have a backstory. There are several proposals. We just cannot agree on one.

That's why I said.

We don't really have one

It's still open ended. The backstory is not set in stone.

[CarRepairer]

A 1 faction game is not interesting. There's no point in voting No if there's an option for Fork, if someone else wants to fork it then I can't stop them. But I would still play CA and not the 1 faction game.

[Saktoth]

The factions mostly describe idealogical differences. There is no reason they wouldnt both use the same tech, especially if they can steal it from oneanother.

One game faction allows us to have as many different factions in the campaign, planetwars etc along any lines we like to draw up.

Think of each factory as a faction with 9 units, with the buildings being shared. And you can switch and combine factions ingame.

[Google Frog]

The factions mostly describe idealogical differences. There is no reason they wouldnt both use the same tech, especially if they can steal it from oneanother.

One game faction allows us to have as many different factions in the campaign, planetwars etc along any lines we like to draw up.

Think of each factory as a faction with 9 units, with the buildings being shared. And you can switch and combine factions ingame.

Exactly, there is much more difference between different factory starts within a faction than between factions.

Oh and I think factory unit counts would near 10-12 as I don't want to lose unique units/roles.

[licho]

For many stories, different factions are required. For example in my proposal they dont know they were both created by humans. Having identical units would sort of ruined it :)

[Google Frog]

It looks like fork is the most popular so where would a fork go? I'd like to start work on it.

[Google Frog]

Yesterday I played a perfectly good 1v1 against Sak while we were both Arm. Many games I play only have 1 faction present and they don't really differ from those that have a mix. There seems to be no gameplay gain from having 2 factions (at least 2 as identical as ours). 1v1s are the only time when a player is forced to use half the units, in teamgames people can techshare.

[luckywaldo7]

The only downside I see to a single faction is that a couple times you will be forced to chose between two really nice and interesting units, like the scorcher and the stardust. Or the warrior and the outlaw; warrior model is much better but the outlaw is a really interesting unit with combo leveler gun and ak gun.

With pruning away all the bad stuff there is bound to be some good art stuff lost too.

But yeah I think gameplay-wise moving to 1 faction is actually a good thing.

[Google Frog]

The only downside I see to a single faction is that a couple times you will be forced to chose between two really nice and interesting units, like the scorcher and the stardust. Or the warrior and the outlaw; warrior model is much better but the outlaw is a really interesting unit with combo leveler gun and ak gun.

That's only really a problem with Bots. Air and tanks/vehicles are identical enough that the few interesting different units can both be added.

The bots is a bit of a problem. Some unused models can make up an amphib lab though.

[Saktoth]

Its true that we may need to cut a few units. But have you ever considered the number of units we dont have?

I have always taken CA from the standpoint that there are thousands of units that have not been included. Heavier or higher HP raiders, pure DPS raiders, low RoF raiders (kodachi doesnt cut it), inaccurate raider/assaults purely for killing buildings, useless against mobiles. Currently the pyro is all of these at once plus a jumper and a area attack and an anti-heavy and a DoT attack- there are 5-6 units in the pyro. More DoT units in general. More melee units- melee raiders. Different types of AoE blasts- vertical and horizontal lines rather than circles. More AoE support style units, and more kinds of riot. Mobile pop-ups (that move popped down, unlike the crabe). Sheilded units- shield raiders, shield assaults. One for every arm cloaked version could be made. More anti-heavy, absolutely. Ranged gunships, high-flying gunships other than vindi, turreted gunships other than krow/vindi. More substantial transports including hover, air, naval, etc. Firing platforms. More interesting supers- massive spaceships. More use of carrier drones. Special abilities. Strategic temporary terraforms, area control abilities that can be used to temporarily block the attack or retreat of an enemy or split up an army. Deflector shields. More use of impulse weapons like the newton. More planes and types of bombers- EMP mines, AoE blobs, AoE lines strafing like current, loopback stike missile bombers like liche but not crap, no AoE. Level flying ground attack craft with turrets- like current strat bombers guns but split into its own units, for harassment and anti-unit. This would make the plane factory a viable start fac, especially if AA is changed (more flex AA, less dedicated). Then you can combine any of these abilities in a spider, a jumper, an amph, a hovercraft (with sub-vehicle slope tolerance, ofcourse!), a bot, vech, tank, cloaking unit mech etc etc. We dont have an old style mobile turret like the BA sumo. Regenerating units- the old AA maverick. A proper capture/emp unit like the BA commando (only not suck and automated).

Getting the picture? CA is a tiny fraction of the possible units we could have in the game. Cutting out the duplicates with minor differences like AK/pw actually allow us to have much MORE variety, with less art content (though the playoff between ak/pw and gator/flash is excellent- ak can kite so it must give territory over to peewee, but peewee cannot chase- this is a fascinating dynamic we should probably duplicate with hovers/vechs or even vechs/bots (give glaive more range than gator but it'll cost less which will make it a bit different)).

[licho]

Its true that having 1 faction offers bigger room for experimenting due to lesser balancing problems.

But you still want chickens + robots => harder to balance than now.

[Google Frog]

But you still want chickens + robots => harder to balance than now.

I'm not even sure if it would work. Chickens still need a large re-work to even be close to balanced. The chickens bit is in brackets so I'm taking it to mean a far future project.

though the playoff between ak/pw and gator/flash is excellent- ak can kite so it must give territory over to peewee, but peewee cannot chase- this is a fascinating dynamic we should probably duplicate with hovers/vechs or even vechs/bots (give glaive more range than gator but it'll cost less which will make it a bit different)

We could do this with the current ak/flash. PW is actually faster the Gator even before the speed changes. We could even add more than 1 raider to a factory, there is a lot of room for different speed units. Currently units can be split into fast(raider) and slow(everything else) which is a bit boring.

[Saktoth]

I agree on speed issues, though i think it would be better to have some other kind of differentiation for two fast units, rather than slow and fast raiders. I want the standard 'flash' style play of comet to be using two units (janus/stumpy, janus/samson, leveler/samson, leveler/ravager, rocko/warrior or even tick/pw style).

Chicken is my answer to the singleplayer antagonist storyline stuff. We dont need to worry about balancing it for multiplayer.

[Saktoth]

Double post. My vision for hovercraft is to have something like the current hover scout replace flash/jeffy- very fast but somewhere between jeffy and flash in power, enough to take out mexes and offer a contest to large, low RoF inaccurate units, but not your mainline combat unit: janus/stumpy might get extra speed for this, too, to replace flash as your main combo.

[Google Frog]

I've started implementing this. Is there anywhere in svn that I can put it?

[Licho]

Winner: As a fork, keep CA gameplay intact. (36%)