Gundam 1.0 RELEASED May 18, 2006!

[smoth]

get this file now!
Ok, so with this version I begin the move away from OTA. This version is the completion of my origonal design. So this is no longer a beta, after this version I am going to add stuff that I would not previously add because it would not work well in ota.

So here you go, all necessary corpses have been added. A lot of balance changes have been made, many of the reflective areas on the textures have been added. I am still doing this but I wanted to push hard to complete the mod. Again, this is no longer a beta. Now I get to just work on expansions to the mod. Most of which were impossible in ota. Also I can begin uvwmap work etc. :).

Change log:
----------------------------1.0----------------------------------
This is the completed version. At least as far as my design Doc
goes. After this version the mod will only be worked on for spring
which means the removal of all the old OTA specific crap.

------------------------OTA independancy stuff-------------------
- no longer uses ota sounds
- no longer uses ota textures
- cursors will be replaced in time

------------------------Unit stats stuff-------------------------
ALL BUILDINGS
BUILD AT SLOPE 20 raised from 10

Federation rocket turret
Buildtime reduced from 6000 to 3000
metal cost reduced from 2000 to 1000

federation light hanger(lvl1)
metal cost reduced to 200 from 500

Federation hanger (lvl2)
metal cost reduced to 400 from 1000
energy cost reduced to 500 from 1000
buildtime reduced to 6000 from 8000
fixed factory to be hitable in the center.

Special ops (lvl3)
metal cost reduced to 1000 from 10000
energy cost reduced to 1000 from 4000

Anaheim electronics building(lvl4)
metal cost reduced to 1000 from 6000
energy cost reduced to 1000 from 5000

federation metal mine
metal cost reduced to 150 from 250

GM sniper
no longer fires his gun upside down
Reload time set to 1 from 2
beamtime set to 1.5 from 3
Damage reduced to 350 from 750

Ez8
buildtime reduced from 30000 to 13000
energy cost per shot reduce to 5 from 175(sorry about that)

rgm79
machine gun accuracy reduced to 300 from 100
machine gun given burst fire rate of 3
machine gun damaged reduced to 50 from 150
machine gun energy cost removed
machine gun reload time increased from 0.4 to 0.6

rx79plus
machine gun accuracy reduced to 300 from 100
machine gun given burst fire rate of 3
machine gun damaged reduced from 150 to 50
machine gun energy cost removed
machine gun reload time increased from 0.6 to 0.4
metal cost reduced to 900 from 1000

guntank
buildtime reduced to 12000 from 15000
metal cost reduced to 2000 from 3000

RGM79g
hitpoints reduced to 2500 from 2700

RGM79e
hitpoints reduced to 2000 from 2200
metal cost reduced to 500 from 600


********************
======= zeon =======
********************

zeon mega particle cannon
energy cost reduced from 7500 to 750(my bad guys)
Damage increased from 200 to 450
Buildtime reduced from 5000 to 3000

Zeon minofsky generator
metal cost reduced to 50 from 100

Zeon metal mine
metal cost reduced to 150 from 250

zeon mech pad (lvl1)
metal cost reduced to 200 from 500

Zeon factory (lvl2)
metal cost reduced to 400 from 1000
energy cost reduced to 500 from 1000
buildtime reduced to 6000 from 8000

Zeon bunker (lvl3)
metal cost reduced to 1000 from 4000
energy cost reduced to 500 from 1000

Zeon engineering
metal cost reduced to 1000 from 2000

Gelgoog
energy cost per shot reduce to 5 from 175(sorry about that)

Gelgoog
energy cost per shot reduce to 5 from 175(sorry about that)

Goufb
metal cost reduced to 5000 from 7000
buildtime reduced to 14000 from 20000
range raised from 400 to 600
reloadtime decreased to 0.15 from 3.5
accuracy set at 700
now cost 0 metal to fire

goufh
buildtime reduced to 15000 from 18000
range raised from 400 to 700
reloadtime decreased to 0.15 from 3.5
accuracy set at 2500
now cost 0 metal to fire

zaku2
energy cost increased from 200 to 400
buildtime reduced from 6000 to 5000
machine gun accuracy reduced to 300 from 100
machine gun given burst fire rate of 3
machine gun damaged reduced to 50 from 150
machine gun energy cost removed
machine gun reload time increased from 0.6 from 0.4

zaku
buildtime reduced from 5000 to 4000
machine gun given burst fire rate of 3
machine gun accuracy reduced to 300 from 100
machine gun damaged reduced to 50 from 150
machine gun energy cost removed
machine gun reload time increased from 0.6 from 0.4

Zaku2rl
energy cost increased from 200 to 400

Xamel
metal cost reduced to 6000 from 10000
Energy cost reduced to 6000 from 9000
buildtime reduced to 16000 from 20000

gallop.
metal cost reduced to 1000 from 3000
Transport script now works

------------------------trajectory height stuff------------------

RX79ZOOK
Fed AA turret
zeon AA turret
guntank long guns
magella attack tank
Shoulder mounted cannon(Guncannon,GuncannonII,GMcannon)
Trajectoryheight=1;

Xamel
Trajectoryheight=0.6;

RX79RL
RX79plus(just the RL)
Trajectoryheight=0.5;

------------------------Miscelanious stuff-----------------------

Fixed impulse factors
.... no more chain exploding zaku2s

[Zoombie]

Cool...

But the only thing I know about Gundam is its like Evengelion...but compleatly different.

[smoth]

just think of it as an rts. It being gundam is just at theme that I stuck to. I wanted to make a mod that is true to the anime and fun to play.

In time there will be even more to the mod.

[Zoombie]

Well the true to the anime part will be easy for me, cause I never whatched it. But I shall try it!

[smoth]

I couldn't really say it before but I am pretty happy with the mod. Now I move on to taking a break and completing some of the super units of gundam :)

[Zenka]

Woot! Zaku's!

I'll try this all out... soon!

[Targ Collective]

So you're who made this mod! I'll try it out, then, and I'm sure it will be very fun to play.

[smoth]

I appreciate it, Let me know what you think.

[Argh]

Bug list:

1. Several of the mechs with two-state weapons are jamming, due to Spring's check-every-tenth-of-a-second weapon aiming.

2. Lots of "skating" due to walk cycles not being quite timed right to the movement speeds.

3. Several problems with guns not being aimed correctly from the fire points. Not sure how much of this is Spring, and how much of this is too-generous tolerance values.

4. Some of the factories have pathing issues, for exiting units.

5. Using non-square footprints results in several types of borked behavior, including pathfinding problems.

6. Since the mod is not using S3O, the hitbox problems are pretty obvious. Friendly-fire "incidents" in Spring are depressingly common.

7. One of the Snipers uses a beamtime that's far too long, and it frequently hits friendly units with some of the beam during attack sequences.

8. Many of the missiles are mis-scaled and are very obviously too large for their launchers.




Overall critique:

This is a really neat mod, obviously made with a lot've love and care and attention to detail. The models are well made, and very detailed, and textured beautifully, considering that we're talking about 3DO.

The only problem, besides the many small details that still need rounding off which I've listed above, is how well it really captures the Gundam universe's feel. Since I'm probably one of the few people here who's actually spent any time reading about Gundam, here's my critique.


Gundam's creators were attempting to depict a fairly serious, high science-fiction world of orbital cities, high-powered military technology, and spacecraft, with some caveats and miracle technology thrown in, such as the mental control systems used by the later Mobile Suits.

In the cartoon, even a Gouf can rip through most armored units in an instant of freewheeling combat. Gundam is a fairly realistic setting, and part of the reason why "the" Gundam is such a big deal is that the energy cannon and energy sabre (curiously missing from this mod) are weapons that pretty much cut through other mecha like a red-hot wire cuts through Gumby. That, and "the" Gundam's energy lance has a much longer range than the traditional projectile weapons used by the enemy units.

Many mecha in the Gundam universe can fly, either with mechanical assistance, in space only, etc. In this mod, none of the mecha fly. Not only is this not dramatically correct, it kind've underlines the problems I had with the gameplay in general.

Let's go to the Gundam official website, and get some quotes:

Mobile Suit
A highly maneuverable humanoid fighting machine, designed for short-range combat in an era where the Minovsky particle has made radar obsolete.(my emphasis) The typical mobile suit stands about 60 feet tall - ten times human size - and is operated by a single pilot from a cockpit in its torso. While the first mobile suits are created for space combat, the basic design proves flexible enough to be adapted for land and sea warfare as well.

Gundam are, primarily... weapons suits that fight in outer space. Yes, they are seen on planets, but Gundam isn't Mechwarrior.


One of the principal problems with Gundam, the story, vs. Gundam the game design, is that THE GUNDAM is piloted by the "accidental hero"... and almost single-handedly saves the day, multiple times, through the series. THE GUNDAM is a one-of-a-kind Mobile Suit, enormously powerful and basically able to kill lots of lesser units easily.

Obviously, this can only be solved in an RTS context in two ways:

1. Make THE GUNDAM the Commander unit for the Earth Federation, so that you can only build one of them, ever. This would be dramatically correct, but also introduces obvious balance problems- the primary one being that THE GUNDAM, if accurate to the series, would be really overpowered and would make the mod unplayable on smaller maps.

2. Take THE GUNDAM out've the mod, or weaken the unit until it's watered down enough that it's roughly balanced for costs.

Smoth took the second route. I would argue that the first one would be more fun, and a much more interesting game design, but either way, those are the only real options.

Secondly, Gundam (at least, in the time period that Smoth's mod is roughly covering) is a world where guided missiles don't work, and neither does radar.

While this introduces a lot've problems on a fundamental level (including a lot of believability gaffes in the actual series) it's a pretty central part of the technology of Gundam. Unlike Robotech, where guided weapons are used by all parties on a regular basis, in Gundam-land, these things aren't used, and we see a fair number of multiple-rocket salvo weapons throughout the series, along with machine cannons and other heavy projectile weapons.

The game design that Smoth ended up with doesn't feel like the cartoons. The automatic weapons don't have the cartoony randomness as depicted, and the beam-cannons aren't the utterly deadly things they are in the cartoons. Nor does HTH combat (as utterly ridiculous as it is, in world of functional mecha) enter the picture.

My vote would be that the gameplay be altered pretty radically to fit more with the Gundam world, and less of a conservative approach that feels like an OTA overlay. I feel like many of the mecha are in here out've a need for completeness, but don't really serve the game design really well, and could be labeled as, frankly, pretty redundant. Each design needs to play in a more distinct way. And I'd remove a lot've the really obviously artificial balancing in the mod, in favor of things that feel more dramatically correct. For example, most of the buildings look quite fragile. In the cartoon, a Mobile Suit could tear them to shreds with a single burst of its heavy machineguns. So... let them! Go ahead- let them. Make combat more about finding, intercepting... and destroying... the enemy, before they can find and destroy your base. Make base-building much faster, and less a tedious resource-hoarding exercise, and much more about preserving the essential drama of Gundam, by keeping buildtimes for Mobile Suits pretty long, so that you don't have huge hordes of them flying about, but even one can wreak havoc if left alone for any length of time.

I guess that my final analysis here is that this is a bunch of very kewl art, very nice animations... and gameplay that needs a lot've work to really stand out. Smoth, I think you need to worry less about balance, and more about dramatic integrity. Let the Mobile Suits that can fly... fly. Make THE GUNDAM the unit that any Zeon warrior fears. Let battles be sharp, nasty... and fast. Give the weapons oomph. And loosen up the resources and buildtimes for economic stuff, so that players can destroy each other's bases and rebuild rapidly during the course of a game, making the focus on the strategic back-and-forth of choosing between attrition (Zeon's best path) and economic crippling (Federation's best path).

[Caydr]

I'll try it - if you change your avatar.

[Andreask]

Hm, Argh is right, it feels like a TA overlay, the gameplay is not unique enough, that might as well be the reason why its not played.

Add to this the fact that most ppl dont know anything about the cartoon, like me, and there is hardly a reason to play it.

But i will give it a few more tries anyway. :D

[Pxtl]

The reason I avoid mods without a specific gameplay concept is the pain vs. gain problem. I won't get to experience anything really new, but I have to go through the excruciating process of learning a new unitspread - which has taken me months to do in AA. EE has some real new features to bring to the table - makerless economy and specialized factions. AA is expanded/modified TA, so it's got a lesser learning curve for TA fans. Most other mods just play similarly to TA, but are different enough to make the pain of learning them not worth the effort for a similar gameplay experience.

[AF]

The gundam mod needs a bit of oomph and atmosphere, that adn mod gundamish maps, the current hyperrealistic attempts by our mappers dotn looks good next to the gundam models which are crying out for a more anime style landscape...

What really shocks me is that nobody has attempted to make a game of spring where everything is black and white, or at least made use of maps and colour to bring atmosphere and stress that this is a country on this planet in this era...

[smoth]

1. Several of the mechs with two-state weapons are jamming, due to Spring's check-every-tenth-of-a-second weapon aiming.

So, how would I go about fixing that.

2. Lots of "skating" due to walk cycles not being quite timed right to the movement speeds.

give me names and they will be fixed. I am not an expert on animations and I don't really pick it up.

3. Several problems with guns not being aimed correctly from the fire points. Not sure how much of this is Spring, and how much of this is too-generous tolerance values.

Tollerance issues?

4. Some of the factories have pathing issues, for exiting units.

5. Using non-square footprints results in several types of borked behavior, including pathfinding problems.

6. Since the mod is not using S3O, the hitbox problems are pretty obvious. Friendly-fire "incidents" in Spring are depressingly common.

7. One of the Snipers uses a beamtime that's far too long, and it frequently hits friendly units with some of the beam during attack sequences.

pathing is something I cannot help

The tard hitboxes are not(YET)

If you are talking about the dumbfire missiles, that is a spring bug. One which I have begged them to fix.

you are not supposed to move him. He is a stationary unit, it is supposed to fire like that if they ever put the feature in I want him to not move until the firing sequence is complete.

Yay spring bugs.

8. Many of the missiles are mis-scaled and are very obviously too large for their launchers.

This is a really neat mod, obviously made with a lot've love and care and attention to detail. The models are well made, and very detailed, and textured beautifully, considering that we're talking about 3DO.

The only problem, besides the many small details that still need rounding off which I've listed above, is how well it really captures the Gundam universe's feel. Since I'm probably one of the few people here who's actually spent any time reading about Gundam, here's my critique.

Most of that is spring bugs. I will do what I can to fix what you listed but I need to know what units are skating and what you mean by the tolerance of the weapon.

Gundam's creators were attempting to depict a fairly serious, high science-fiction world of orbital cities, high-powered military technology, and spacecraft, with some caveats and miracle technology thrown in, such as the mental control systems used by the later Mobile Suits.

In the cartoon, even a Gouf can rip through most armored units in an instant of freewheeling combat. Gundam is a fairly realistic setting, and part of the reason why "the" Gundam is such a big deal is that the energy cannon and energy sabre (curiously missing from this mod) are weapons that pretty much cut through other mecha like a red-hot wire cuts through Gumby. That, and "the" Gundam's energy lance has a much longer range than the traditional projectile weapons used by the enemy units.

Yeah, that was in my vision of this mod but afaik spring still does not support melee attacks. The only way to get it is a dodgy short range weapon. when spring gets close combat, yeah I will put it in.. I AM DYING FOR HEAT HAWKS!

Many mecha in the Gundam universe can fly, either with mechanical assistance, in space only, etc. In this mod, none of the mecha fly. Not only is this not dramatically correct, it kind've underlines the problems I had with the gameplay in general.

You have not played it at all. The goufh flies like a motherfucker and is one of the more popular units.

Also you are wrong IN ATMOSPHERE EVEN THE RX78 is only capable of LARGE JUMPS. Only the gouf flight type is capable of flight in the anime. if they ever give us jump jets, yeah many of the mechs will have them but they are not in spring.

Let's go to the Gundam official website, and get some quotes:

Mobile Suit
A highly maneuverable humanoid fighting machine, designed for short-range combat in an era where the Minovsky particle has made radar obsolete.(my emphasis) The typical mobile suit stands about 60 feet tall - ten times human size - and is operated by a single pilot from a cockpit in its torso. While the first mobile suits are created for space combat, the basic design proves flexible enough to be adapted for land and sea warfare as well.

This part is a bit condescending, I own more books on gundam then you know watch at least one of the series weekly. Don't lecture me on something that I KNOW! If you would go to MAHQ, stop watching gundam wing and read you will know that: The rx-78-2 is Highly maneuverable in comparison to a zaku.

Gundam are, primarily... weapons suits that fight in outer space. Yes, they are seen on planets, but Gundam isn't Mechwarrior.

You again have NOT seen the anime gundam is partly fought on earth. Many of the important battles happen there in the anime. IN SPACE many battles are inside of the space colonies which are pretty much land battles.

I could go through the list but there is only one space type mobile suit that I fudged and that is the gmsniperII. However, even if I fudged it the suit is capable on land and if/when spring gets jump jets he will have his. Same with the kampfer.

One of the principal problems with Gundam, the story, vs. Gundam the game design, is that THE GUNDAM is piloted by the "accidental hero"... and almost single-handedly saves the day, multiple times, through the series. THE GUNDAM is a one-of-a-kind Mobile Suit, enormously powerful and basically able to kill lots of lesser units easily.

Obviously, this can only be solved in an RTS context in two ways:

1. Make THE GUNDAM the Commander unit for the Earth Federation, so that you can only build one of them, ever. This would be dramatically correct, but also introduces obvious balance problems- the primary one being that THE GUNDAM, if accurate to the series, would be really overpowered and would make the mod unplayable on smaller maps.

there were several rx-78s. Let me explain something to you... GM means gundam MASS PRODUCED.

Secondly, Gundam (at least, in the time period that Smoth's mod is roughly covering) is a world where guided missiles don't work, and neither does radar.

the guided missiles you see can be found in jabro or other federation bases throughout the anime and YES there are TOW MISSILES!

The reason radar does not work is the minofsky generators used in many ships cause radar interference. However, mechs have a large array of sensors and if you did a half assed search you would find that they are fairly well ranged outside of when zeon scatters minofsky particles. WHICH THEY CAN DO IN THE MOD!

The game design that Smoth ended up with doesn't feel like the cartoons. The automatic weapons don't have the cartoony randomness as depicted, and the beam-cannons aren't the utterly deadly things they are in the cartoons. Nor does HTH combat (as utterly ridiculous as it is, in world of functional mecha) enter the picture.

In gundam the sheilds a mech can carry will block at least most of the damage from a beam rifle.

My vote would be that the gameplay be altered pretty radically to fit more with the Gundam world, and less of a conservative approach that feels like an OTA overlay. I feel like many of the mecha are in here out've a need for completeness, but don't really serve the game design really well, and could be labeled as, frankly, pretty redundant.

List them and I will reconsider

Make combat more about finding, intercepting... and destroying... the enemy, before they can find and destroy your base. Make base-building much faster, and less a tedious resource-hoarding exercise, and much more about preserving the essential drama of Gundam, by keeping buildtimes for Mobile Suits pretty long, so that you don't have huge hordes of them flying about, but even one can wreak havoc if left alone for any length of time.

there were huge hordes in the anime esp later after late 0079

Let the Mobile Suits that can fly... fly. Make THE GUNDAM the unit that any Zeon warrior fears.

they do and they do.

Let battles be sharp, nasty... and fast. Give the weapons oomph. And loosen up the resources and buildtimes for economic stuff, so that players can destroy each other's bases and rebuild rapidly during the course of a game, making the focus on the strategic back-and-forth of choosing between attrition (Zeon's best path) and economic crippling (Federation's best path).

The federation was a brute force straightforward army. This is reflected in their highly powerfull and very straight to the point units. They had units with more resilience and because they were not as quirky as zeon most units were easier to use.

Zeon was notable because it had highmobility for its later units lots of jamming and fanatic pilots. Most of its units are quirky, unreliable(outside of zakes) and often time meant for mass attack. Zeon believes in the value of a human's will to fight and this pretty much means that most of their pilots will charge headlong, no matter how poor their machine is. They believe that if they fight hard enough they will win. They use odd gimmicks like transports that can be fired from, paralysing heat rods and massive jaming to cover their short comings.

[smoth]

The reason I avoid mods without a specific gameplay concept is the pain vs. gain problem. I won't get to experience anything really new, but I have to go through the excruciating process of learning a new unitspread - which has taken me months to do in AA.

Dude, I can relate. I know what you mean, it is always such a pain working on learning new units in a mod.

EE has some real new features to bring to the table - makerless economy and specialized factions. AA is expanded/modified TA, so it's got a lesser learning curve for TA fans. Most other mods just play similarly to TA, but are different enough to make the pain of learning them not worth the effort for a similar gameplay experience.

What does any of this have to do with my mod though?

[Pxtl]

What does any of this have to do with my mod though?

I'm explaining why AA and EE caught on, and why yours might not be getting the reception it could. AA kept familiarity so there was less fear. EE got attention by talking about actual gameplay "You play without makers so the metalmap is all-important - and our factions are really different from each other". So far, all I've heard about Gundam is well... Gundams. Not about how it plays. Not about why I should try it, unless I'm really into Gundam.

[smoth]

Ok, as I have said before gundam is the theme not the SOLE point of the mod. Many people are arguing gundam wing shit. So I am not going to get into all of that.

So, originally I intended on a mod where close combat played a major role but also hundreds of units battled on a massive plain of war. So I looked at many games. OTA was the only one that had both large battles, close combat and expansive battlefields. Then I saw spring and realized that I HAVE to do the mod for TA.

Well, after more research I learned the limitations of OTA and noted that I would have to remove close combat. I did so reluctantly, the mod is still open for it when spring supports close combat.

So lets get to what we do not have: close combat, unit limits, fire while NOT MOVING and good transportation. So this is what the mod is(Until I get some more options from the spring people):

The mod:

• Intelligence emphasis:In gundam line of sight, radar, range and terrain type were of battle wining importance. This mod emphasizes that, I have always hated the super radar tower and the worthless jammers of other mods. In this mod you are really forced to scout out for attack when playing against an zeon player and a federation player will tear you apart once it can find you.

• Unit subtlety: I did not want units that were so very different that building one completely replaces another. I wanted units that complement each other in a squad and also subtle variety for player preference.

• largescale warfare: All mods can have large battles but in OTA most battles ended up with one or two super units ruling the battle. The mod emphasizes the usage of level 1 units as screeners. They are cheap but not strong enough to win. However, by that same token they are also key to attacks because stronger units do not have that big of a hitpoint difference.

• Artillery: In ota artillery was not used outside of turrets. It mostly came down to rushes of units driving forward. I wanted to see this game dynamic. So I was certain to include the relevant artillery units

ZEON: Utilizing quirky units and low numbers of short ranged units

Advantages:
High mobility, numbers, intelligence denial, better water map performance and odd units
disadvantages:
low hitpoints, expensive later technology weak against air and odd units.

Zeon strategies:

• Area spam:
  using jammers and their ability to produce higher numbers of level one units they can effectively expand much faster. Both denying resources and radar coverage map wide

• Pick apart:
  Using hit and run attacks with sporadic rushes in multi directional attacks they can complete remove the federation range advantage.

Zeon Tactics:

• Zeon Blitz:
  the zakus are quicker to build then their federation counter parts and they really have to be built in mass to be effective.

• hit and run:
  using the high mobility of zeon they can pick apart a federation defense line and in time the whole base

• intelligence denial:
  utilizing their ability to jam radar and sensors with minovsky particles they can completely disable everything but l.o.s.

• Suicidal charges:
  Units like the kampfer are meant to effectively drive through the federation defense lines at the cost of their life. 4 of this unit will single handedly ravage where ever they go.

• Combinational advantage:
  A unit on the dodai(air transport) can fire from it. this is particularly nasty with a kampfer or gelgoog riding it.

• closerange mastery:
  Even without close range attacks a rush of goufs will utilize their heat rods to paralize the enemy, is in combination with units like the kampfer and zaku swarms means you can get right up to the enemy and stop them dead in the battle feild. Even the Alex can be paralized by the gouf.

Federation: Solid to a fault units with many long range units.

Advantages:
Good range, heavy damage, higher survival rates, more artillery units, Air dominance and reliable units
disadvantages:
lower numbers, sight and radar dependant, only one water unit and no radar jaming

federation Strategies:

• Squeeze and throttle:
  Using artillery to pin another player the federation player can then build up it's strong units to do a heavy drive into and through an enemy base

• King of range:Using the many long range guns of the federation to take out the enemy supplies and units. Outranging the enemy at every step and answering anthing that does have range with airstrikes.

• Overwhelming force of arms:the rx79plus when built in mass along with large numbers of GM cannons, guncannons and guncannonIIs can completely crush an enemy from sheer force of arms. The multiweapon characteristic of these units can be devatstating

federation Tactics:

• Pin down:
  The large amount of federation artillery can easily pin down a zeon player. Keeping them boxed in

• power overwhelming:
  units like the rx79plus, alex,guncannon and guntank are just beastial destroy units in savage displays

• Psychological warfare:
  The alex and rx78 are devistating. They have their own fire sound because hearing this puts terror in any player who is experienced. Using this you can draw vast enemy forces away so your real attack can proceed.

[Egarwaen]

Also you are wrong IN ATMOSPHERE EVEN THE RX78 is only capable of LARGE JUMPS. Only the gouf flight type is capable of flight in the anime. if they ever give us jump jets, yeah many of the mechs will have them but they are not in spring.

Yes, though it should be noted that this is a peculiarity of the first Gundam series. By the time of Zeta, most suits either have "subflight units" or can transform into airborne mobile armor forms.

You again have NOT seen the anime gundam is partly fought on earth. Many of the important battles happen there in the anime. IN SPACE many battles are inside of the space colonies which are pretty much land battles.

Yes, but mobile suits are, for the most part, designed to fight in space. The fact that they work on the ground at all is kind of a happy accident.

And I can't remember very many battles in 0079, much less the later series, that take place in space colonies. In 0079 we have the fight at the start, the fight in the Texas colony, and maybe one or two others. But most of the really big battles towards the end happen in open space. The fights in the colonies tend to be small skirmishes or duels.

But you've said that your inspiration is mainly 08th MS Team, so the focus on ground battles is understandable. (Interestingly, IIRC, the last battle of 08th MS Team is a very nice demonstration of why superunits suck. )

there were several rx-78s. Let me explain something to you... GM means gundam MASS PRODUCED.

In canon, there was only one RX-78-2 (and a bunch of spare parts) that survived the Zeon attack on Side 7. The "RX" designation means that it's a prototype. The GM has a different model number (RGM-79). They're a similar design, but they're not The Gundam.

There were two or three other RX-78 models (the RX-78-4 and the RX-78-5 that survived in assorted side-stories, but they aren't considered canonical.

the guided missiles you see can be found in jabro or other federation bases throughout the anime and YES there are TOW MISSILES!

A more accurate statement would be that radar-guided missiles don't work. The vast majority of missiles used by combat units appear to be "dumb" rockets, fired in massive volleys.

The reason radar does not work is the minofsky generators used in many ships cause radar interference. However, mechs have a large array of sensors and if you did a half assed search you would find that they are fairly well ranged outside of when zeon scatters minofsky particles. WHICH THEY CAN DO IN THE MOD!

To be perfectly accurate, Minovsky particles cause radar interference, and create fields that make even visual detection unreliable. These particles can be scattered by anything with a Minovsky reactor, including warships and many kinds of mobile suits and mobile armors. The Zeons aren't the only ones that use these - the Federation does too.

Mobile suits have a large array of sensors, but most are rendered useless or severely hindered by Minovsky particles. The most common combat sensor in the UC continuity is the good, old-fashioned telescope, hooked up to considerable amounts of image analysis and amplification equipment. Even these are unreliable at long ranges, and (as various militaries discover in later series) can be fooled quite easily by inflatable dummies even at combat range under very close observation. (As Char's fleet demonstrates quite spectacularly in Char's Counterattack)

In other words, lots of radar jamming, heavy reliance on visual detection.

In gundam the sheilds a mech can carry will block at least most of the damage from a beam rifle.

If the pilot's good, they can catch a couple of beams on the shield before it disintigrates. Unfortunately, I doubt Spring has good support for randomized damage reduction (for modelling shields) and dodging.

there were huge hordes in the anime esp later after late 0079

Yeah, but those were assaults on major Zeon or Federation fortresses or fleets. Most of the skirmishes that composed the One Year War were relatively small forces of mobile suits on their own or backing larger forces of conventional cannon fodder. Char's attack on Jaburo, for example, was... What? Three squads of mobile suits?

Let battles be sharp, nasty... and fast. Give the weapons oomph. And loosen up the resources and buildtimes for economic stuff, so that players can destroy each other's bases and rebuild rapidly during the course of a game, making the focus on the strategic back-and-forth of choosing between attrition (Zeon's best path) and economic crippling (Federation's best path).

The federation was a brute force straightforward army. This is reflected in their highly powerfull and very straight to the point units. They had units with more resilience and because they were not as quirky as zeon most units were easier to use.

Zeon was notable because it had highmobility for its later units lots of jamming and fanatic pilots. Most of its units are quirky, unreliable(outside of zakes) and often time meant for mass attack. Zeon believes in the value of a human's will to fight and this pretty much means that most of their pilots will charge headlong, no matter how poor their machine is. They believe that if they fight hard enough they will win. They use odd gimmicks like transports that can be fired from, paralysing heat rods and massive jaming to cover their short comings.

You both seem to be talking past each other here. I think Argh's point was that you seemed to be trying to make bases and units more resilient. What he seems to want to see is the sharp, nasty, fast-moving battles of the anime. Point-by-point:

1) A war of maneuver, due to either easy jamming or a severe lack of radar. You don't know where your enemy's going to strike or concentrate his defences, so you have to disperse your forces and probe.

2) Fast-moving Mobile Suit units, so you can scout, retreat, concentrate forces, and exploit openings very quickly. Basically makes an assault a race between the attacker, who's trying to concentrate forces to punch through and do damage without leaving himself open, and the defender, who's trying to concentrate forces to push the attacker back without opening up a gap somewhere else.

3) Destructive Mobile Suit units that can rip through a base or conventional forces with relative ease. Tanks aren't a serious threat to most mobile suits. They're there to slow them down until other mobile suits can show up to deal with them.

4) Fast-building bases, so you can quickly recover from an assault's damage or even relocate to a better position if your opponent doesn't exploit the opportunity.

5) Mobile Suits that come in relatively small numbers.

Basically, a fast-moving, highly mobile game that's focused more on using a handful of powerful units effectively than on playing simbase.

[Pxtl]

2) Fast-moving Mobile Suit units, so you can scout, retreat, concentrate forces, and exploit openings very quickly. Basically makes an assault a race between the attacker, who's trying to concentrate forces to punch through and do damage without leaving himself open, and the defender, who's trying to concentrate forces to push the attacker back without opening up a gap somewhere else.

Ever played WC1 or 2? Games that focussed on that kind of gameplay? They're mad rushes and nothing else. As fun as "gundams kill everything" sounds, basically the game would be "first player to build a gundam wins" - unless the gundams move slow enough that you take a while to arrive at the enemy base so he can build more before they get there... which hardly sounds like sophisticated gameplay.

If you have a game of all superunits, then the whole game will be a rush to make those superunits and plough them into the enemy base. See dragons and footmen in WC2. So the superunits need to have a weakness that makes them better at defense than offense.

Here's my idea for how to do a Gundam game that follows the core concept of "Gundams are superunits, but also the mainstay of combat". First, most Gundams have negligible sight range, even though they have staggering firing range. So, all their destructive potential is usless without sighting units. This also gives defenders the advantage - the defender can have sighting towers up that allow his gundams to rip the attackers to shreds before the attackers know where to fire. For example, zakus are short ranged and fragile, but deal a tonne of damage out, so Gundams must be careful to either dispose of them quickly or crush them from long range. So the game with Zakus is to trick the enemy into firing range or sneak them up on him.

Second, a "unit oriented game" doesn't fit with TA's style of capture-and-control of metal points - putting up HLTs and mexxes everywhere just doesn't jive. I'd go for a C&C-style of harvesting - maps focus on reclaimable wreckage, with only minimal metal points. There would have to be heavy use of mobile jammers and recon gear to keep your harvesters defended, and you could even have the Dune-style "scouts sighted enemy Gundams near the resource field, get a transport to pull the harvesters out and get the defenders cloaked".

However, for some real defense points to focus on: the only energy is geothermal vents. Building most conventional units in the game require only metal. Weak cloaked units cloak for free. Energy is needed to build Gundams and to power their weapons and abilities (like cloaking devices). You need your energy for Gundams. Each Gundam provides a lot of energy storage, so if you lose your geotherms your gundams can keep fighting for a while. So in that case, a base is mostly a bunch of factories, sighting equipment, and maybe a couple of highly efficient metal makers to use in case the energy surpluses. Vehicles do secondary jobs - harvest resources, repair gundams, scout, lay stun-mines, transport eachother around, build sight-towers, etc. Combat vehicles and turrets are mostly just a way to burn surplus metal - their weapons are nigh-impossible to hit a Gundam with - short range, slow projectiles, and slow turning rates... but they can do damage if they hit, so Gundams still have to dispatch them when they see them.

Idunno, I'm just talking out of my ass - I'm just trying to think of ways to make a game that's very _different_ from OTA - focussing almost entirely on Gundams as combat units, while still using stock OTA concepts.

Edit: thinking it over, I might say that the player get's a fixed income of energy. Total. His commander generates X energy, and that's it. Small supplements may come from geotherms and harvestable energy sources, but at least 50% of it is standard. This means that the number of actual Gundams in action is carefully strictly controlled, and the use of special Gundam powers like cloaking and dguns (wasn't there a nuke gundam) must be strictly monitored - the damn things take energy to build, energy to run, and energy to use, and you're on a fixed income. Storage becomes very important. This would encourage just relocating your base - just build mobile storage and some gundams to use the energy, and 90% of your operation is now mobile.

[BigSteve]

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