Spring RTS Engine

Both the model and texture is seksehh, good job dudes!

some of the models look real good... but please dont make the same mistakes as other modders did...
make only high quality textures.. take ur time.. itll be worth it and the mod will be remembered for a long time.. believe me .. take it from blizzard..
its better to take ur time and make ur project shine before realising it..
good luck

Christ, why do you even try Vass? That model and texx clearly is terrible! Look how terrible it is.

*kicks dragon in the nads*

RE: Balance
It's definitely a sticky situation. There are several instances of shields in the movies--most notably, the Gungan mobile shield tech and the Rebel's shields on Hoth (that's why they had to land on the planet). With the engine feature there and working, we have no excuse, other than balance, to not use them--and we're confident that we can use them in a good way.

Personal shields, like on the Droideka, are the lowest tier and simplest. Since they only encompass one unit, there's no real difference if you build a wall of those than if you built a wall of anything else to absorb fire.

For area shields, we don't plan on having too many. The AT-MD will be able to protect perhaps a handful of walkers under its shield. The rebels will have a stationary Shield Generator building which can cover a larger area. We might give the rebels a smaller infantry-grade mobile shield generator as well.

Shields will only protect against lasers at the moment (though we're toying with the idea of some kind of "ECM" shield--wouldn't be extraordinarily useful in our mod though), leaving them open to attacks from bombers and artillery most notably, as well as missiles.

The shields are all "shells"--if you walk inside them, their effect is negated, much like what the droids did in Episode 1. However, for gameplay purposes, we allow friendly units to fire from inside shields if they happen to be laser-based.

Shields will also be limited in power. They can only take so many hits from lasers before failing. A turbolaser or Atgar or AT-ST/Assault or ... umm, the one heavy hovercraft the rebels have whose name slips me at the time should all be able to make relatively quick work of shields, assuming they are supported in their assault/defense. This is to be expected, though, since that's the role these units are designed for (siege).

All non-personal shields will take a relatively high amount of energy to run--the Rebel Shield Generator will probably require nearly the entirety of an advanced fusion plant to run (just like in the movie). Anyone who's played extensively knows energy is much, much more scarce in SWTA than OTA--most everything uses/otherwise drains energy. So building a wall of shields will be a massive resource hit, but building one or two to protect the most vital units should be easily within the realm of their tech tree position.

Personally, I'm very interested in how we will balance the Imperial / Rebel split between the sides.

It is essential that the shielding does not encourage porcing. I would much rather see the shields be used out in the field, especially during assaults, then see shields being used to augment defensive lines. I don't like porc strategies, and while players should certainly be allowed to defend as much as they like, I think an aggressive game makes for a more fluid game.

We have also considered making it so that when a shield unit blows up, it does so with the area of effect almost as big as the area it covers itself, meaning that if you use shields in your defensive line, and the shield is taken down by the enemy, it will put a nasty big hole in your defensive line. I think this increases the risk of using a shield generator, and encourages players to use them in less essential areas (ie: using them to protect attacking forces against artillery or airstrikes rather then using them to augment a defensive line.

Sounds like we still have some kinks to debate with this shield balance theory, considering zsinj just totally contradicted me...

In any case, don't worry, we'll playtest them heavily to make sure they fit.

I did?

Anyway, balancing will be quite a challenge. But, gruntwork first!

I'd love a solution involving getting the AT-AT back in the game (unless you took it out) and giving the Rebels some alternative such as the gungam shields or Snowspeeders with increased damage versus AT-ATs (instead of a tow cable).

The AT-AT hasn't been in a public release yet... and Zsinj, I told you what would happen but you insisted on posting screenshots of it... The short story is the factory isn't yet completed nor is it quite balanced yet, the slightly longer story is that we aren't going to release it until we finish all of the "super weapons" anyway (though for what it's worth, most are done in OTA).

As for the snowspeeder thing, I'm really against it. It's an arbitrary balance scheme. The Snowspeeders ONLY succeeded at their jobs in any way because of the tow cables, and that was a completely improvised solution. It'd just be a gimmick. I think the best solution would be to give the Rebel anti-veh rocket troop (from the adv barracks) the same kind of punch against the AT-AT as he does against other walkers. It's his kind of role, after all, and it'd fit the rebels well: See some walkers coming? Hide some anti-vehicle rockets in the hills and wait for them to get in range, launch a volley, and run like hell! That's the kind of balance scheme I prefer, where the role is made clear but the way to effectively use it may have to be thought about.

In any case, rattle, what kind of modding experience do you have? We can always use more slaves if you can do something useful like scripting

Gnome wrote:
As for the snowspeeder thing, I'm really against it. It's an arbitrary balance scheme. The Snowspeeders ONLY succeeded at their jobs in any way because of the tow cables, and that was a completely improvised solution. It'd just be a gimmick. I think the best solution would be to give the Rebel anti-veh rocket troop (from the adv barracks) the same kind of punch against the AT-AT as he does against other walkers. It's his kind of role, after all, and it'd fit the rebels well: See some walkers coming? Hide some anti-vehicle rockets in the hills and wait for them to get in range, launch a volley, and run like hell! That's the kind of balance scheme I prefer, where the role is made clear but the way to effectively use it may have to be thought about.

You could give the snowspeeder a secondary unguided slow-moving torpedo weapon instead of a tow cable - something with very little blast radius - that would make the snow speeder good at engaging large, hardened targets like at-ats.

Vassago wrote:Imperial AT-MD:




Comments/critique welcome.

...wow...



*nerdgasm*

My personal preference is that the ATAT has no direct "counter", but is simply a part of the imperial warmachine, which is balanced by another part of the Rebel warmachine. So, I don't think they directly need a "this kills ATAT's" counter - but they need to be suitably balanced enough so that they can be in a state of success which will give them enough resources to counter an ATAT (be it with masses of infantry, tanks, shields, aircraft, whatever) with the tools available to them.

... Which is not to say that we don't have some cool superweapons/units planned for the rebels

Warlord Zsinj wrote:My personal preference is that the ATAT has no direct "counter", but is simply a part of the imperial warmachine, which is balanced by another part of the Rebel warmachine. So, I don't think they directly need a "this kills ATAT's" counter - but they need to be suitably balanced enough so that they can be in a state of success which will give them enough resources to counter an ATAT (be it with masses of infantry, tanks, shields, aircraft, whatever) with the tools available to them.

... Which is not to say that we don't have some cool superweapons/units planned for the rebels

Well, it just seems to me that a large, slow-moving target with minimal anti-air capabilities is a prime target for a torpedo-bomber-like plane or gunship.

Fear the turret...

Props to Gnome for model.

Vassago, if I could somehow suck your talents out, just think of how I can use it for evil.

Thats just my way of saying "God damn that is a great turret!"

Hmm. I just feel like these skins are too gray, and not Imperial Dirty White. Maybe it's just me, but they don't have the softer, "we like brown washes" feel of the movie materials. They're too cold and techie, and I'd like to see more warm tones.

Lovely turret. Simply great. This mod will look awesome if you keep up the work.

Argh, I'd love to add more color, but this is what was wanted. With team color on, it livens it up quite a bit.



They are pretty dirty, for sure. But they aren't very colorful, otherwise.
I'm sure before everything is 100% finalized, we'll have some sort of artwork evaluation, and make sure everything is in check :)


Thanks for the feedback, all.

EDIT: Nevermind. Your image won't show.

? They are both showing for me. Odd....