How many races?

Hi! Just saw the Kickstarter and it looks amazing!

A question to the devs: have you decided how many races there will be?

In my opinion it would be a smart and innovative design decision to have only a single race. This gets rid of two common problems in RTS design: designing all the different units and then balancing them. That's helpful on a limited budget!

Any Uber folks care to comment?

I think they allready did. Check out viewtopic.php?f=61&t=33955

There Neutrino stated it will be one set of units. As far as i understand it, it would mean 1 "race".

I think it would be a great idea to have sub-factions of the one primary faction, a-la Advance Wars.

What they did, and what planetary annihilation should do, is make sub-factions that, rather than have new units or whatever, just apply some buffs and nerfs to the existing army.

Ie, in advance wars, one sub faction, called a CO, got +20% buff to direct-fire vehicles and a -50% damage and -20% range on indirect fire vehicles. Another got +20% damage to air units (and other buffs, like less fuel use) while getting -30% health and damage on ships. Another got improved vision radius (intel) on all units, but had slightly weaker damage for all units. Yet another had +20% health and damage on all units, and +20% cost on all units too.

Sub-factions would be great. Maybe there could be several "special" or "optional" units you can choose from before the actual match, which would slightly alter everyones set of units, and support different playstyles. Probably similar to funk's idea, but (in my opinion at least) a bit more interesting than only having different sets of buffs.

Or maybe the default army has 30 structures and 30 units, and you get to pick which 15 of each you want to be able to build... like, make your own sub-faction!

This would need to be done very carefully, otherwise it would just mean that i.e. on maps with high need for aircrafts everybody has to get the air-buffed-subfaction.

I agree. That level of finicky might be better left for a mod. IMO the vanilla game should have as clearly defined and easy to understand (yet complex) mechanics as possible. Too many irregular little -23% and +36.5% bonuses means a big increase in mechanical obtuseness and balance issues for small gains in tactical depth. It's why I could never get back into TF2.

IMHO the best option would be to let everyone start with exactly the same faction, but then have a whole lot of valid build/tech choices from the game start, more than you would have in TA/SC and many more than say Starcraft.

With all due respect to Jon Mavor and the crew at Uber, making only one faction is for me a big mistake.

Even though I'm enthusiastic for the game, I'm not gonna pledge anything until they annonce they will make at least two factions (which i believe is stretchgoal). One faction it's too big a step backwards for any RTS player. It'll be too easy to make fun of the game. "Screw faction diversity, Arm and Core were the same anyway!" "Goodbye balance issues : we'll have only 1 faction!". This doesn't feel right.

1) I for one, when I was 17, really cared about being Arm rather than Core, and I still care at 32. It's a big part of the identity of the game and of the player. Saying Arm and Core were the same, even if i understand what you mean, is like a blasphemy. Several factions promote debate, identity for the game. In a word : passion.

2) If there is a feature like Galactic War, but without at least 2 sides, what's the point? There needs to be a basic root for a galactic conflict, sprouting from differences.

3) Several factions add to the depth of the game, not only at release, but also in the long run. Heated balance discussions are needed in a RTS.

4) Just two factions can be advertized as going back to the roots, like an homage to TA. But narrowing it down to one will be the signature of a "cheap" RTS.

5) If there is only one faction, the advertisement will be about : we don't need more, it's balanced, Arm and Core, UEF /Aeon / Cybran were the same anyway, blabla, and it'll be harder to introduce another one at a later date without sounding a bit hypocritical.

6) For the long term, additional factions should be planned, or at least a possibility for an expansion (even if the additional faction is created my modders). 2 factions make it easier for additional factions later on. 1 faction will be a kind of game trademark, that may help the game to be made in the first place, because it'll save a lot of time and money, but it will probably impede its popularity and longevity in the long run.

These are my gripes about this aspect of the game, and I hope the first stretchgoal is an additional faction. Of course, I wish this project will reach all the stretchgoals and beyond.

Good luckl!

I think they should be working on the really important parts of the game, such as game mechanics, balance and interface features.

You don't need more than one race to make the game fun to play. I'd argue that it adds very little fun to the game unless the races are radically different like Starcraft.

Introducing slightly different races just causes confusion about the equivalency of units and their minor differences. Creating radically different races is awesome, but introduces a whole slew of extremely complex balancing issues that need to be dealt with.

Balance can make or break a game. It's what killed Supreme Commander.

I don't think Uber Entertainment has the resources to properly balance 2 or 3 radically different races, and nor should they spend their time doing that if they did. They're not Blizzard Entertainment, and don't have billions of dollars and hundreds of staff to run simulations and fix balancing issues every two weeks.

Also, adding a new race is the perfect idea to implement incrementally. They could do it later when they have the time/resources to work on that stuff. For now it's really not necessary. Think about when you played Total Annihilation and everyone chose Arm. Was it all that different from games where everyone had a different race?

I've been waiting for half my life for a true successor to Total Annihilation. I think their conservative approach is the right way to go to deliver the game we've always wanted. Forget races, campaigns, and all that other fluff that costs so much and adds little value. You can always add it later.

If they create only one faction, I just won't be interested in the game. I won't pledge, and I will almost surely not buy. I'm probably not the only one. I'm just warning them it's something very important. It's a make / break a game feature in my opinion. You don't need to try to convince me, my opinion is made (and I'm a long fan of TA and Supcom). I still play Supcom FA because of faction diversity. If there had been only one faction, I would have forgotten the game 4 years ago.

I care more for diversity in factions than about a level of complexity that allow games to last 12 hours (nobody plays 80x80 or even 40x40 maps in Supcom, there are several reasons for this, but wasting time is the main one). Even though I understand the point and the lack of funds, I think Uber has to carefully think about their production priorities / stock game features, unless they go for a free to play game plan.

Well the Game can be fully modded, so another Race can still come in later. I can understand that they say 1 set of Units to keep the cost down. Because its rlly not easy to balance all out. There are even games today out there that are not balanced with 2 races. And not even 3. Starcraft as a example, well they did balance 3 races, okay. But basicly, they did it in StarCraft 1 allready, so all they had to do for SC2 was to get the old statistics, import them in 2, make some adjustments but the balance was there. In SupCom 1 they balanced the Races still long after it was released.

I for my part think its okay if it got 1 set of units in the 900K area. Hey and maybe there will be two with enough money? But are you rdy to make it happen? If so, they need every dollar they can get. Because in one thing i guess they are right. A Publisher will not make another Supreme Commander or another Tottal Annihilation. Because there isnt a multi-million franchise behind it.

For me its maybe the best and last hope to get another Massiv-Unit count RTS to see in the next 6-12 years with a big fun factor and with its heavy mod-support i guess there will be some very funny mod´s commin too after the release.

I get where pip is coming from, but although I agree with him on the massive battles (i.e. probably impossible to get right with flux Eco, but please prove me wrong ) and on his views about the sense of identity offered by different factions, I don't think it's game-breaking to have only one faction.

The preview trailer has already hinted at the “plot”, i.e. humans built war machines, wiped themselves out and the war machines just carried on fighting. TA and Supcom had the barest shred of a plot: humans have ideological differences, then spend one to four-thousand years fighting about it. What I'm saying is that backstory does not need to be intricate.

I play a lot on FA Forever, and 1v1 is often UEF vs UEF for instance. Even in team games it's common to get one faction over-represented. The point is that this does not detract from the experience at all, and if suspension of disbelief is an issue then just tell yourself that the commanders involved have gone rogue and are airing personal grievances.

Making a second faction would be very costly for a relatively small (albeit very desirable) advantage. I would rather see a one-faction game with a high level of polish than a buggy game where programming resources have been spent in an inessential area. Faction 2 can alway be patched in later, what's important is a solid foundation.

There can be as many factions as you like. In PA, it looks like they just have stolen and incorporated technology, not ideology. A communist and a capitalist may drive the same tanks, buy they're still fighting against each other.


[PS:] ppipp! I haven't seen you in ages.

[PS] Hey Bullet Magnet, you should try FAF someday, it's a great community!]

I just really hope the first stretchgoal is a second faction and that the kickstarter will allow it before september. I expect a true successor to TA, not a half baked attempt.

doing 1 faction well is better than 2 poorly. if they can add another faction in before release, that would be great. but if not, can't see it bothering me too much.

I see your point of view, ppipp, and have little more to say about it. I think having different factions is great, if it's done right. I just think it's really really hard to do right. They didn't do it right in Supreme Commander, those flying Level 3 hover things for the most "Arm-like" race were too cheap and powerful, which was one of the things that ruined the game once the patches stopped. I just don't want to see that happen this time.

I think a free-to-play model would distort the incentives for the developers, focusing development on silly items that are merely cosmetic, or introduce unnecessary complexity that doesn't add to the gameplay. It might also draw the wrong kind of people to the game.

Coldboot, you know that the Restorers have been fixed and FA is now being patched regularly? Version 3619 is due out in the next few days. Check out FA Forever, it's better than GPGNet in almost every way. Once the replay vault is finished it will be head and shoulders above GPGNet.

It's got automated updates, live replays, 1v1 matchmaker, better rating system that includes custom games, inbuilt support for Blackops, Phantom and other mods, and the main chat is not limited to 100 people. It's very much alive, come and check it out!

That's pretty awesome, but there was a time where FA was basically left for dead.

How many people tend to play FAF these days?

How are they patching the game without the source code? Are they just changing unit stats and other simple things that tend to be in resource files?

afaik most of the actual game is in lua-scrips. those can be changed.

I agree that having only a single faction makes the game a little less interesting. In Supreme Commander, I often play Cybran over any other faction since I love the look of the units and their experimentals, but I'll sometimes go as another faction to have a different experience.

In Total Annihilation, I was an ARM kind of guy. Sure, it may not make that much of a difference, but the ability to play as the "good guys" made a huge difference to me, as I'm sure it does for many other people.

Though I do see the logic behind having a single unit set, since the game then relies purely on skill and strategy rather than "Oh, you're playing as the more powerful race", and it's easier to balance. But hey, maybe the game will ship with one faction, but who's to say that we won't get another one later on?