[WIP][Server] Imperial Legion (Faction)

I've seen you play orbital. Someone is going to be helping you right? And by someone I mean a lot of people.

Awesome update on the balance. It sounds like the changes made stick with the goals of adhering to vanilla PA while keeping everything balanced.

Also, how do you guys feel on the balance holistically with regards to preference in certain game strategies? For instance, does the vanilla PA roster hold an advantage on larger planets? While things appear balanced, the legion roster could hold an advantage on certain systems or game scenarios.

I imagine this "imbalance" is desired in some regard to make for a more interesting experience, but any comments on this would be appreciated.

Well from the bits I've played it is balanced against vanilla but not symmetrical. For example the balance between bot and vehicle is somewhat different (e.g. situations where you would play bot with vanilla faction are better suited to legion vehicles and vice versa). There's definitely some of that in there already.

I'm not sure if there are wider goals based on planet type or system configuration. That's probably something that would emerge over time after the mod is released...

It is obvious that the design team was concerned about planet size and slower speed from the beginning. Which I believe is why Legion has a relatively cheap flying teleporter in T2, vehicle combat fabber at T1, and more efficient T1 mex but less efficient at T2 (totalling same metal as other faction with both). At this point, with balance so close, planet size is probably a miniscule factor that may only be hinted at when top players play each other. But I'd wager that even then there would always be common errors and choices that are much more influential, like death-ball size before attacking, than planet size. In other words, I think planet size as a factor will always be too small to objectively determine, but fixed if ever found to be an obvious factor.

I think that choke points, metal density/clumping, and starting distances may cause top level players, equally adept at both factions, to show faction preference based on map layout and play style. But even then, players may want to throw opponents off by going the other faction because they want certain tactics/cheese/counters available.

Of all those things, my biggest concern is that Legion will have a bit more trouble on maps with zero choke points because they will always have less units, all of which are slower. However, that is something that can be accounted for if it is ever discovered.

On a personal note, I have to say that I love how legion's vehicle and bot rosters are so balanced between each other that people should be able to go with their personal preferences in many situations. Bots have a bit more versatility than vehicles (IMHO). So if you want to play meat grinder you'd go vehicles, which can be overcome with bots if you play to their strengths. (But vehicles/bots have counters to each other so it is still down to preference.)

Completely random, after a playtest recently, I got to use these again and reminded myself of how much I love these

Beaches?

What happened to the awesome fabber laser you had???
Let´s be honest but that new effect looks awful

Fabber laser was wonky on a lot of pc's
This one is still a placeholder.

Was it pc specific problem? That is strange

Lasers aren't going to work for fabbers.

It would have been nice. What do you plan to put instead?

Yeah I don't like those fx either. It's going to change.


Not sure what we will have instead, but will make sure it looks good. I'm somewhat sad that the laser didnt work out in the end either, but hopefully we can get something just as nice going.

(The FX guys are probably going to start to hate me over the next week or so)

The problem as I understand it is you have to have a fixed length for the laser, so unless the building occurred at maximum range then the laser would overshoot what it was supposed to be building and look pretty bad. It's a shame, because when it worked it looked badass, but such is the way of alpha.

Such is the way in alpha indeed. Did a minor update to the holkins hit FX and made sure the explosion uses a yellowish colourpalette instead of green pink or purple. Same is going to happen to the bomber bombs explosion FX.

Might also do some minor color changes to certain projectiles but that is going to happen in the end when most effects are final.

The bot titans laser is going to get replaced by something more traditional too. So still a lot of things are going to get changed

The thing that I find really cool are some of the charge up effects. The deathmark sniper tank looks really awesome

I liked the green one in between the laser and the new one you have now. As a side note the orbital Titan makes my game crash whenever it fires. You all probibly already know this though.

Just play tested this mod with @Nicb1 a few days ago. Quite good! My only issue with it is that the raiders are too fast, I can't catch them with fighters... Basically forces me to build AA turrets everywhere, which I found limited the options quite a bit. Fighters really need to be able to catch raiders. I'm honestly fine with the HP and damage of them, but I hate not being able to catch them with fighters...

Okay, even though what I'm about to say may seem like I'm being condescending, nothing is further from the truth. I know from ample experience that when people read groups of facts written concisely they often get offended. I'm just trying to offer what I perceive to be an objective perspective in response.

Raiders cost same as Beamer (fighter) and 68% of Dauntless (bomber). They do like 55% of the effective single target damage of a Legion bomber (counting circle-time), have 66% the range of a Hummingbird, and die to anything 1v1 in under .6 seconds (50 HP is ridiculously low for 240 metal).

In exchange for those pretty big detriments, it has a speed that is currently 11% faster than a Hummingbird because that is what is needed in its role. Raiders, by definition, exploit lightly or undefended things. Most people use their fighter blobs to dive into or around other groups of air, but once that is done they are usually told to move to some randomly clicked piece of uncontested land/water almost anywhere on the planet. I'm assuming that you do this to a degree as well? So by the time the fighters get there, the raiders have already done their job and left with your booty. If legion didn't cause people to have to adapt to new tactics, what is the point of making it?

An 11% move speed increase beyond a Hummingbird means what, about 3-5 less seconds to get to the other side of of most planets?

Okay, so that is the end of my attempt at presenting an objective perspective. In my opinion, I think that, for most people, it isn't that the Raider's speed is too fast, but the fact that everyone expects for their fighters to be able to get anywhere in time to combat enemy air units.

Will we smell beta soon? It seems you got looooots of work done about two months ago and it is taking ages since then for beta.

Just making sure the mod is fairly feature complete before release mainly. Like working out exactly how the orbital UC will work, modelling the t2 hover ship and adding in the new t2 air foundry model.

AA ypu are remodeling it? cool. I miss modx. It had ennough new units to make a faction by itself