Ideas for new faction?

[KaiserJ]

evo players (well i suppose everyone, but they'd know best)

i'm working away at models for a new faction. now's your chance to spew forth with good ideas for game dynamics! immortalize your ideas forever in the form of a lego unit etc etc

go go!

[Forboding Angel]

Well imo, it would be neat to go with a completely different dynamic. It might not make sense storywise, but I'm sure zoombie can patch us up

I'm actually pretty happy to hear about that, cause I hadn't heard anything from you for a while so I was wondering if the second faction was diw.

By completely different dynamic, I mean that like now we have power requirements and things of that nature, with a second faction it would be neat to go a completely different route. Just throwing out an idea here...

Protoss pylon power? Keep in mind I have never actually played sc or sc2 (I've watched well over 60 hours worth of replays and commentary tho, so I have a fairly decent grasp on the game). Here is what I see has being the key features of it.

Units could only be built where there is pylon power and you would be able to warp in units (a la, pylon proxy).

It's a direct rip off of sc, I'm aware of that, but tbh, it's a really neat idea and one that I'd be interested in persuing. I'm sure there are several other things we could add to make it unique as well.

[luckywaldo7]

Bring back the plasma mech \o/

[JohannesH]

Just keep in mind that when you make very asymmetric factions, you gotta start worrying about map balance a lot. Which is not a problem necessarily considering both of you can make maps but it needs a bit of planning of what kinds of maps you want played, and how to maximize the different mapping styles that are balanced.

[Forboding Angel]

Just keep in mind that when you make very asymmetric factions, you gotta start worrying about map balance a lot. Which is not a problem necessarily considering both of you can make maps but it needs a bit of planning of what kinds of maps you want played, and how to maximize the different mapping styles that are balanced.

Well (unless I'm mistaken in what kai told me in the lobby) a new faction would have all the terrain capabilities that are available now, as in: hover, air, all-terrain, amphibious, so the maps wouldn't be an issue. Besides, i can always point out that the official ones are the only maps that are guaranteed to play well with evo (even tho we all know that most maps play just fine).

[MidKnight]

Have buildings that spawn floating lego bricks, have them connect to assembly centers to make units via some form of pylon network. add combinations/morphs and you have an ultra-adaptable but very expansion-limited faction. :D

[Google_Frog]

If you're looking for crazy asymmetrical faction ideas here is one. Basically the alien faction from Earth 2160, now I don't expect many people to have played that game so here is the main basis of the faction:

The race builds extra units with a combination of cloning and morphing. Every unit which can clone or morph is able to extract resources from it's local vicinity.

In Earth 2160 the tech tree consisted of a few tiers of weak 'worker' units that where the only ones able to clone, these units can then morph to other units of the same tier. Some combat units could also morph to stronger units or just a stronger version of the unit.

To meld this race with metal extractors you could create a radius around each metal point that can support X many feeding aliens based on the metal value of the point. You would not want 1 to be able to mine all the metal from a point on it's own.

The interesting thing about this faction is the purely exponential growth of the cloning and the completely decentralised economy.

[JohannesH]

Just keep in mind that when you make very asymmetric factions, you gotta start worrying about map balance a lot. Which is not a problem necessarily considering both of you can make maps but it needs a bit of planning of what kinds of maps you want played, and how to maximize the different mapping styles that are balanced.

Well (unless I'm mistaken in what kai told me in the lobby) a new faction would have all the terrain capabilities that are available now, as in: hover, air, all-terrain, amphibious, so the maps wouldn't be an issue. Besides, i can always point out that the official ones are the only maps that are guaranteed to play well with evo (even tho we all know that most maps play just fine).

Map balance depends on a lot more than just what terrains each faction can pass... Many maps are imbalanced between core and arm even in many TA mods. Even more clear in Starcraft, unless a map is really carefully considered by an experienced mapper, it won't be balanced

[AF]

Short range teleporty floaty units seem like a neat compromise for a faction with only one type of unit

[PicassoCT]

How about a completely nomadic faction? With driving factories, buildings, always ready for a suprise?

How about a Unit that creeps stealthy into the enemys base, slowly chewing away on his buildings from the inside, eating his economy alive, while the outsideshell seems completely healthy?

Or how about massive energy consumption, by fusioning seawater, slowly draining the oceans of a map?
How about anti-tank barriers, that are basically nano-turrets that plant drive-over safe trees?
Or how about having a base who in addition can hide its buildings completely into the ground, basically a Neo-Tokyo3, on legs? I imagine just the scary moment, when you scout for the base, and mark a place as checked, searching on, and behind you in the fog, this city pops-out of the ground.

Imagine a trainlike Unit, that plants its own rails, and can be connected with other of its kind into one long, stronger-as-strong supraunit for fast transport over steep slopes? For attack it would suck, because its basically a eternal onevsone against the Turrets.

My suggestion is to draw alot, and make it dinstinctiv diffrent in style to the other factions, one is organic, bright coloured, here comes darkthemed, razorteethunits- and so on...

Also cool would be units, that draw there amonition with nanos from wreckage and units around them. You cannot group them, you cannot fire them without trees, wreckage, rock or enemys around them. you cannot protect them, so you can make them ridicolous powerfull, while the cannibalize themselves, or the enemy if they manage to sneak in.

Further Ideas on request. And there is always the featurerequesets of the past, filled with ideas.

[Neddie]

If you're looking for crazy asymmetrical faction ideas here is one. Basically the alien faction from Earth 2160, now I don't expect many people to have played that game so here is the main basis of the faction:

The race builds extra units with a combination of cloning and morphing. Every unit which can clone or morph is able to extract resources from it's local vicinity.

In Earth 2160 the tech tree consisted of a few tiers of weak 'worker' units that where the only ones able to clone, these units can then morph to other units of the same tier. Some combat units could also morph to stronger units or just a stronger version of the unit.

To meld this race with metal extractors you could create a radius around each metal point that can support X many feeding aliens based on the metal value of the point. You would not want 1 to be able to mine all the metal from a point on it's own.

The interesting thing about this faction is the purely exponential growth of the cloning and the completely decentralised economy.

I doubt Forb is interested in this, as it is already a component of E&E.

[Forboding Angel]

I doubt Forb is interested in this, as it is already a component of E&E.

You more or less read my mind. The moment I read the first two sentences, I was thinking "Well doesn't EE already have that?".

EE does it slightly different than 2160 but it's pretty much the same. All things considered, EE was heavily based upon 2160 (and I really liked 2160, so it worked out ).

Keep in mind, my protoss suggestion was just me spitballing. I don't have any idea perfectly formed yet... getting there.

BTW on an epic sidenote... has anyone noticed all the little improvements I've been making lately? Also, this should make some people happy, piercing weapons got a nerf vs medium and light armor. Not a huge one, but enough to matter. Reason being, I noticed (because I did it constantly) that by just massing lightning raiders I could defend myself really easily vs units that I should be dying to.

Well no more, however, if you get hover and go 1:1 Lightning and flame raiders, they make a pretty epic raid/flash defense army. The flame raiders are a bit more expensive so it isn't the same. Also, flame raiders do 150 damage over the course of 1 second (not counting modifiers) with 100 less range than lightning raiders. So, basically it has changed up the early game a little bit.

[Pxtl]

The problem is that Evolution already has 2 factions that are generally OTA-ish, right?

That's always a nasty mess. It's easy to come up with different factions... when you're starting from zero or one... but once you're committed to a template of "this is how different the factions will be from one another" by having 2, adding 3+ is tricky. It becomes obvious that you started with 2 factions that were mirror images of one another. EE suffers from this a bit - robots, tanks, and... aliens???

That said, I still haven't gotten a chance to play Evolution yet, since I never see it in the lobby. Would play it if I did.

[KaiserJ]

hopefully we can play some soon pxtl; you're thinking of the pre-kaiser editions of evolution

we've since devolved into one faction but may make the leap ahead sometime soon

lots of cool ideas for me to stew over, thanks guys!

(and hells yeah, plasma mechs)

[Pxtl]

Ah.

Okay, in that case, I came up with a set of "differentiated factions" that I developed for CA when 1Fac was starting up. 4 different low-micro economies developed with CA's gameplay in mind. If EE plays anything like CA, these might help.

The notes are mainly on differentiating ecos, not weapons/units - I'm sure you can figure out htat kind of differentiation easily.

Breeders

No factories. All units are on/offable. When on, they spend a fixed amount of resources (proportional to their cost) reproducing. When cost is spent, they give birth to new unit on the spot. Can morph into any other unit.

Comm can build units, everything else is reached by morphing and splitting.

All Morphs

No mobile builders - factories only. Every mobile unit can morph into (and from) one or more static units - so raiders morph into LLTs, cons morph into Solars, AA units morph into mexes, etc. So if you want to cap a bunch of mexes, you build a bunch of morphs-into-mexes and assign each one a waypoint to morph at. You'd need some kind of intelligent LUA to make the UI a little easier - something like selectin a group of units and ordering their morphs as a queue of build commands and they sort out the details of who becomes what where themselves.

Traditional

Defenses and econ are immobile, built by mobiles. Works best with Super nanotower anti-artillery. For extra difficulty, separate constructor, repair, and assister roles.

"Defense Canister"

Simlar to conventional, but no static defenses. Instead, the defenses rely on a Defense Canister. Units in range of defense canister consume from the canister's supply, get resist and ROF-boost. Units are on/off to consume canister.

Finishing Chickens

In CA, playable-chicken is an interesting faction. There is no mex - you plant factories on the metal and they build units, similar to KP. To build buildings (including mex factories) you have a morphable unit that morphs into defense, artillery, or facs. This is my notes on how to expand that into a complete eco faction.

Metalless eco - factory is mex. Overdrive improves factory build-rate? 5 or 6 different types of factories, each with a short buildlist, but morphing from fac to fac is cheap. Single unit represents metal/energy/buildpower on the go, let's call it Eco. Ecos are the sole output of one of the Factory morphs. You build this unit and send it to places to spend eco.

Any building of the same price as it can be built by morphing directly. Larger buildings must be accessed by morphing into an Egg - more ecos makes the Egg bigger, and allows it to become a large building. Need Lua so that you can assign a long buildlist to a group of units (and a factory building Ecos) and they will take care of the details themselves. Select a single Eco and you see its buildlist as a set of morphs. Select a group of ecos and you see everything that they can build together as buildings. Run an Eco into a factory and it will sacrifice itself to boost that factory's output.

Reclaiming causes mitosis into more Ecos, but consumes energy (alternately, Rez-only with corpses).

Chicken eco units (energy, fac, Eco) are stealthy. All other units can Burrow to become cloaked-and-resistant, but they are "off" in this state.

Chickens get an energy eco, but call it "pollen". Two pollen plants - a basic Wind Pollenator, and the large Megapollen - the basic Megapollen frame is fragile, but has a good cost-to-output ratio. The more Ecos you pump into it, the bigger it gets, making it tougher and better regen. At max, a Megapollen is nearly invincible because of its fierce regen-rate, but it doesn't have as good a cost-to-output as smaller Megapollens. As it gets bigger, it also gets taller, so you can use large Megapollens as a wall to protect smaller Megapollens.

[Google_Frog]

I doubt Forb is interested in this, as it is already a component of E&E.

You more or less read my mind. The moment I read the first two sentences, I was thinking "Well doesn't EE already have that?".

EE has a few elements of the alien system but the way it's implemented is entirely different to my suggestion. Firstly in EE there are mexes and energy buildings which removes the breeders as mex facet. Your breeder unit's don't clone to make combat units, instead they build the units. Units can be assisted in EE.

No factories. All units are on/offable. When on, they spend a fixed amount of resources (proportional to their cost) reproducing. When cost is spent, they give birth to new unit on the spot. Can morph into any other unit.

This is the gist of my suggestion with the difference of global metal instead of units that mine their own metal for personal clone/morph.

[nightcold]

Well if u really wana be original on your second faction, give it a none-steam line economy/production with unlimited storage.

Basically this is how it works, after you set up a mex the mex will start production on an aircraft. And this aircraft will go back and forward between your base and the mex dropping off metal (and after every drop off you get your metal). If the aircraft gets shot you simply donÔÇÖt get the metal, and the mex starts production on a new aircraft (basically metal that dose not go to you goes to the construction of the aircraft). This will give the fraction a different feel and a new vulnerability.

[Pxtl]

@Google_Frog

Yeah - like I said, I was just pasting my notes on CA faction ideas - I know that one's kinda redundant. However, the global/local metal would be a big gameplay change. In my system, you can have units that are out fighting and patrolling be "on" to reproduce - yours requires they hang about the metal sources to do it. I just like the idea of an army in the field that is growing geometrically.

[AF]

Give it a mix of starcraft Terran and Dow Eldar

Have walking Hubs as builders that can deploy into static hubs, thatplonk themselves down and build a base within their perimiter. Then have the hubs act as transport gates, allowing you to slowly teleport structures between hubs, as well as build gates in their perimeter to move mobile units.

Give some mobile units short range teleport abilities as a tech upgrade, and extended hub ranges, and you've got the basis of a unique faction.

[Pxtl]

Yeah - the "jump" feature in CA has demonstrated to me that micro-intensive special-movement operations can be kind of fun. Giving a unit a "teleport" command similar to CA's Jump would be cool. Hell, give a melee unit a toggle to teleport automatically to get into melee range (and a long reload after teleport).

Although I do think that Nydus Canals weren't too useful in StarCraft, but that might be because StarCraft doesn't have the queuing to make it work. But either way, a faction with a teleportation theme could be cool.