[WIP][Server] Imperial Legion (Faction)

I am curious. I know a lot of the players developing this mod are some of the top competitive players, and/or run freaking Exodus E-Sports.

How do you guys think this mod is going to play on the competative scene? Are you guys designing/accounting for that side of things? Will it become fairly universal for the top players? Or is just going to be something fun that you will center a few tournaments around?

Not that I am by any means a competitive player. But I do enjoy watching the games with commentary and try to follow a few of the top players. But, if I were to try and become a competitive player, would practicing and getting good at Legion be a good entry point?

Also, if you guys need a qualified creative writer, I would be happy to work on some flavor text.

Random balance update,

Balance is complete for both legion vs legion and vanilla vs legion on all unit layers (land, air, naval, orbita), barring problems that will inevitably be found during playtesting etc.

Anyway, here's how the new orbital unit cannon works. Not only is it a teleporter, but you can also use it to build and send units almost anywhere on the planet! #orbitalonly

planetary or crossplanetary for groundunits?

currently only planetary, interplanetary is being strongly considered

Teleporter? Like a Helios?

I think It would be really cool if there was a turret that worked like the angle(Shoots missiles)
This mod look AWESOME!

You mean like a shield generator?

Not exactly... More like a turret that would shoot missiles at a set speed in an area

On a side not A shield generator would be cool, adds some extra health to nearby structures and that health would regenerate

It would also be awesome if the amount of health a structure had would effect the efficiency of what it did (Make people actually want to repair their structure).

While interesting ideas, I am pretty sure the mod devs are not looking to completely change the mechanics of the game. Legion still has to match normal PA unit mechanics. And not become a completely new game.

I actually liked it when it was only able to deploy units directly below it. Full planet seems a bit much IMHO. Seemed to me like legon had enough options for establishing a beachhead that they really do not need (or should have) an interplanetery unit cannon.

When it was only directly below it it was useless. Might as well build a Stalwart and then a space bridge, cheaper and you get more bang for your buck.

Don't really know names of units and don't want to look through all the JSON files to find Stalwart so that is lost to me.

But yes directly below limits the usefulness for sure but full panet is over the top IMHO. The usefulness in the directly below version is the build speed and the fact it is orbital which has plenty of benefits regaurdless of deployment area.

I agree that the drop area should be larger, (2/5 or 1/2 average planet size) but not full planet and definitely not interplanetary.

I think legon should pretty much stick to using the flying teleporter for interplanetary invasions instead of using a similar method as vanilla.

If it is going to be a offensive teleporter + interplanetary unit cannon. Might as well add lots of health and guns and make it a titan structure. (which would be cool)

I mean I like it, but I think it shifts orbital ballance in legon's favor.

So yesterday while streaming I got a lot of questions about when it was going to release. We've set dates before but those were never met because we kept wanting to increase the polish of the mod. Right now we're busy with the final issues before we go into public beta.

One of the things that comes along with release is having an article about the units so that players can fallback to that if they don't know what a certain units role is. Been photoshopping for it and to give you guys a minor sneak peek.



So yeah when we're kind of busy with these kind of things then you can say release is soooooon!

Titans hype level all again

Really good question! Can't believe i missed your post completely until now

For the really competitive player, the appeal of multiplayer RTS games is that they are constantly evolving puzzles. Every time you play against someone else you should be discovering something new or discovering something you could be doing better. Summed up, I think there are three things that are good indicators of competitive appeal.
a) depth of gameplay
b) A high degree of self-determinism (balance and fairness contributes to this)
c) An active and evolving community to play in and with

What I find interesting is that we can probably achieve all those goals not by specifically designing for the competitive player with arbitrary interactions and artificial apm requirements, but by appealing to less competitive players following the golden rule of easy to learn hard to master. Through accessibility you get a larger healthier playerbase, and through depth you get that enjoyment of competition, discovery, and progress.

To that end 'competitive play' specifically was never an important decision making factor when it came to designing, balancing, and polishing legion unit roles and their implementations. The biggest guiding principle for me was actually taking the existing designs and models, making sure they each had a good level of iconic role definition and awesomeness, and then using a balancing process to help ensure they are all viable in varying compositions and situations.

Hopefully more than one way to play the game should persist as the skill curve increases. If any toxic/stale meta game or cookie cutter develops, it'll definitely be a high priority to get rid of it.

It's early days and without large amounts of playtesting I can't say for sure how well it will actually play out with you guys in the long run, but in the few playtests i've had with alpha2546 it was great fun both in it's gratuity of strategic choice and 'balanced imbalance' (if that makes any sense).

As for entry into competitive play, if you're talking about becoming an RTS pro gamer then the only advice i could probably give you is to only be semi-decent at different games to expand your mental flexibility. At the end of the day t PA has a different skillset to grey goo or starcraft etc. Some skills are transferable but not all of them are. You'll eventually need to just pick a game and dedicate alot of time to it solely.

Just make sure you're having fun! Unless you're talking about doing this financially, then your only choice is really starcraft 2 whether you find it fun or not .

These models are so well made and textured it's as if they were made by Uber themselves.

And the effects look even better!

I'd say they're just different. I really like vanilla's effects.

The one issue I have with the effects is the disparity in flashy-ness between the two factions. The Legion units all have unique, colourful and powerful-looking effects (Gustav impact, for example) whilst the MLA faction's effects seem muted and piddly in comparison.

both have there pros and cons though when it come to large numbers of units