I was wondering what the different factions in PA will be like, or if there even will be different factions. Will PA be like Command and Conquer where there are distinct factions with separate units and abilities, or will it be more like the Civilization games, where everyone gets the same units, just in different colors? If there are different factions, what will they be like? Will they each have a specialty and a backstory?
From what we can tell, they will all just be regular colors. However, there will be differences in armies as one person might go for an aquatic landing force while you may go for a army that rips crap up but moves a tad bit slower than a snail. There's also commander exosuits, weapons, and of course the simple tactics people use.
In one of the livestreams they explained why PA would not have different factions, mainly because why would another army be using different weapons? Everyone wants the most powerful and bad *** robots, that there is no point in using anything else. Uber did say that if there was enough demand they would add in some factions, but I don't see that happening. Also the idea was, like knight said, that there is to be just one unit pool, but you are your own faction with a unique commander.
That's the in-universe explanation. The underlying reason is the cost of implementation. You need to create a lot of extra units available only for some factions. Balancing out the factions is both costly and time-consuming. PA is done on a small budget, so leaving out costly features that don't add a lot to the game is a necessity.
/forumgoersragingboneragainstfactions Srsly, they explained there will be factions. HOWEVER... Let's define faction. Faction in this game, will use one of its very commonly used definitions, being: Faction is a team, with colors and preferences different than that of other factions. That being said, there will be different factions. Each player in-game basically makes up their faction. Their faction's preference is based on player choice. The faction's loyalties are set up to where players may work together and other players may fight against, and there may be several players making up several groups which make up 3-4 competing teams each with a goal to defeat the other teams competing against theirs and working with the teams loyal to each other. The factions are probably decorated by the player too, in the very least by color scheme of the units. Will there be unique units that one faction has that others dont? Probably not. That is the extreme punctuation that everyone wants to make. One pool of units. They want to smash the word factions with a meteorite shaped like Scathis' head. But, there will be factions, which is what your settings and your place as a player in a game will be called. There just won't be per-faction unique unit pools, just one unit pool and one technology that covers every type of unit and gives every type of unit, powerhouse or stealth or otherwise, to every player to choose to build or not.
Well, since that is what it seems the amazing people at Uber are doing, I wonder if maybe it could be possible for a sort of team or "faction" lobby could be set up so that people could play as a larger, more cohesive, team. I know this is low, low, lower than dirt priority, but it sounds like something nice that could be implemented to help out with their new definition for factions.
Yes well, let's not confuse things, from a gameplay point of view, there is one faction and you can change your colours/commander model =P
Not even close to true. But yes, as previous post said, just because PA chooses to use the term factions to represent essentially clan affiliation isn't going to change the common thought of what the word means to standard RTS games.
Okay, so what I'm getting out of all of this (and it answers my question) is that there will not be game-created factions. Everyone will have the same units available to them at the same time, so we're not going to see a GDI/Nod/Scrin type thing like in C&C. However, the players themselves will likely create clans and battle groups with loyalty to each other.
The common term used was "tech-faction" not just "faction", its just that gamers are to lazy to write the whole thing now days so they have shortened it to faction.
Yes they also used factions instead of tech-factions, but they have later explained that they meant tech-faction and not faction (But they do still use the term faction instead of tech-faction from time to time :roll: , so yea they shorten it just like everyone else, just rember that theres a difference between faction and tech-faction and try to figure out which one they mean using the context).
