Hi, I just had a nice idea. In one of the live streams Jon was talking about factions. To me it is sad to not have different units that only one faction can have, but it makes sense. But he mentioned that it could be possible that you can choose if the commander shoots lasers (Cybran ftw) or ballistic shots (UEF?). So why not expand that to the units? For example there could be a laser theme and a ballistic theme. The units do exactly the same damage. The only difference will be the visuals and the ballistics of the projectiles. So instead of a jelly bean shooting Pewee you get an awesome laser blasting Pewee that looks more like borrowed from Mech Warrior. Personally I always loved the Cybrans because of their overall laser theme. Maybe one Commander (offensive type) could have a melee laser weapon like a light saber A little bit offtopic but I did not want to start a separate post. It would be nice to have 3 types of commander loadouts (offensive, defensive, support).
Because making a few(dozen?) different Commanders is much, much, MUCH less work than creating(and balancing) even only a few factions. Not to mention how it can mess with unit readability and a whole slew of other things that get talked about every time someone mentions multiple factions for In-Game-User-Created-Units. Mike
Sure, like I said, factions is sad but not dramatic. But I really would like to have the unit theme option. It does not even make balance issues because the damage is identical. It is only a visual option.
It wouldn't only be visual, because lasers work very differently to ballistic weapons. Unless you mean green lasers vs red lasers, in which case, mod away.
Ballistic works differently from lasers, its not just a "theme". It's a way how units work. Lasers deal constant damage while ballistic deals chunks. Over time it is the same amount of damage but the style of gameplay each type requires is different. Themes shouldn't affect gameplay at all, meaning they should just be visual. Ballistic vs lasers != visual
Ok, then I say it differently. I would like to have a "pulse cannon" theme. Pulse Canon = ballistic off = same damage model.
That could work but then again, pulse works differently than a bullet. Esthetically speaking it would be the same if the ballistic animation was changed to a pulsing one but realistically they don't work the same.(A bullet deals the damage and thats it, a pulse explodes and leaves a pulsating effect for a couple of seconds) It could work but I'm not sure is it necessary or would it make much difference to people and I don't know how much time would it take to create.
Even if you want something "purely cosmetic" there are still concerns for readability, easily recognizing units its very important when you can have hundreds on screen at a time. Mike
I think we should just stick to commander customization, instead of something as radical as a whole reskined army.
I think there's a middle ground, a level of customization that is easy to implement and doesn't interfere with unit readability, but offers a few more options than just picking a commander and a team color. - selectable weapon effects color (match team color, or select from a palette) - selectable construction patterns (diagonal stripe, vertical stripe, checkered) - the ability to customize the camouflage pattern for units that use one (I'm partial to Flecktarn, or the Swedish M90 scheme). - logos and unit markings (also used to identify your commander when zoomed out). None of that would be hard, and could even be modded in, but it gives you a few quick army-painter options to make your units feel more unique. And good if you're playing in a huge 40-player battle and the pink and mauve players are otherwise indistinguishable.
+1 Even if not at retail this would be an interesting way to go for optional DLC. But only as long as I'm able to purchase a penguin theme which automatically annihilates anyone with the puffin theme at the start of the game so as not to have any chance of people being confused.
Exactly what I was thinking when I saw the topic. Cosmetic changes don't affect gameplay but add personality to the individual playing the game as well as distinguish your units from other players. Dawn of war 40k is a good example.
All/most the things that make such a system compatible with DoW aren't present in PA. When ever you change ANYTHING, 'cosmetic' or not, you affect unit readability, even when changing something as "simple" as FX colors. Mike
Not if you make good core aesthetic choices to start with, and enforce a limited range of good, workable user choices. I think you should have, at most, five or six potential FX colors, for example, and all three construction patterns would be yellow and black. That'll read just fine. Similarly, if camouflage is only present on some units and in sections, TA fashion, it's not going to make units harder or easier to spot if you're picking from a library of 12-20 patterns (although a heavily-camoed look would be good for scout buggies and bots). Logos and markings might be present only on some units (or only on build platforms and repair pads), and again, selectable from a curated list rather than user created to keep things under control (because I don't want penises on everything and neither do you). In short, you don't know as much about this as you think you do.
FX Colors: And what happens with Weapon A has Red colored FX And Weapon B has Blue by Default, What happens when you apply a "custom scheme"? Do they get mixed up and look like each other? It's easy to SAY it won't be confusing, it's a whole new can of worms to MAKE it so, especially considering we have no info in regards to weapon FX at this stage unless I missed it(I'm purposely not counting the Visualization in this) you might want to avoid making assumptions like that until you have some info to back it up. Construction Pattern: Maybe, I just don't see the point of have options for this, the whole idea is that it's supposed to be universal and considering the overall limited number of units/structures it's on I don't see how it's supposed to create any kinda of "Personality". Camo: This is a big one for me, the whole point of Camo is to break up the outline of whatever it's placed on so it can better blend in to the terrain, which directly counters a big part of the chosen aesthetic for PA. The fact you make a point to say it should be only on certain areas of the unit(and maybe only certain units overall?) actually support my point that such things do affect unit readability. Logos: Maybe, depending on implementation, but I feel such things are better suited to being used for team games as opposed to a user by user basis. Cute, you must be so proud. In the end you didn't refute my point thought, which was that making changes does affect unit readability. Of course, this is far from the first time this topic has come up, do some searches to find them. Mike
Why not just give every player the option to to show other peoples customizations of their army so that if they have their weakest units firing a color of laser that should be coming from an experimental you can turn that off and it will just show the opponent as their default color perhaps leaving only their emblem.
Because then Uber would have wasted time on a system that, if worked as you described, is of NO benefit and requires an option to disable it to prevent it from being abused. Note that there is a difference between a game mechanic having an option, and NEEDING that option. Mike
