The issue isn't with this mod or the T3 ships themselves. Its GPG's code within the formations system (which i refuse to try and detangle lol) that is designating frigates as a lower priority because it doesn't understand that even though these are frigates they need to have a better priorities... I guess i could look into fudging the categories a bit and see if it helps.

Just did a quick sandbox and spawn one factory's worth of the units in the list on last post so there is only 2 rows

Aeon range just past the first row
cybren main gun same as aeon, second is ok but would be just past a third row if there was one
Uef about half way between the cybrens 2 guns

they be good at escorting T2 or small ships due to the smaller formation but not very good with battleships or other big ones

Personally the Aeon one needs the same catagory as the destroyers, not sure about the others maybe battle ships since there normally in the 2nd row

Wait, when you say Cybran Main gun, which are you talking about? hopefully not the Beam turret, as I rememeber it its not rally the main weapon, the Hailfires/AA missiles are the 'main' weapon if anything.

Mike

ye i was talking about the the laser since red is normally the main gun and yellow a support gun. since most units use the red ring as the primary if they have one like the basilisk and the juggernaut.

sorry for the confusion didn't really think about that bit but the laser is good too so easy mistake

The Color of the range ring has nothing to do with which is the main weapon, the color only denotes the type of weapon and it's range.

Red is Direct Fire, and thus why its used for the Majority of units.

At least, thats how I learned it, I could be wrong.

Mike

That's correct, but last I looked at that unit's bp, the laser was the primary weapon (as it should be, as it's the highest DPS and shortest range). This means the unit will try to move within range of the laser when given an attack target, whether or not the hailfire launcher is enabled.

Even if you wanted the HF launcher as primary, it wouldn't work, since you can't make an enabling/disabling weapon primary without big problems.

While the T3 frigates do have some decent teeth they are still considered "Support" units. If used in a big fleet most of the time their anti-sub/torp, AA, TMD, Omni, and Special Weapon systems (Extra AA flat, Long Range Bombard Rockets, Massive Torpedo Swarm) are what get used the most. The primary weapon system was PURPOSLY designed to be short range to represent that they are indeed a frigate so while they can defend themselves if it came to it they are not a heavy warship.

Range rings are indeed based on type:
Direct Fire (Any cannon that points directly at the enemy)
Indirect Fire (Usually anything with high arc or missile that has a long range and higher miss chance)
Anti-Air (obvious)
Amti-Naval (obvious)

In fact I can make the weapon use just about any range ring color in the game if I wanted to as those are just the guidelines based on common use.

Good news everyone!

I got off my arse after doing the Basilisk and Textured the Thor!


Click for Full Size

Ex, I'm gonna pass it to Hawk seeing as i'm never around when you are.

Mike

Looks alot like the ion cannon from the CNC series. I love it. This is the first I've heard about it though. Any additional information you can share?

from what i understand the Thor will be used to deliver a very large emp effect that is supposed to stun units and shut down shields, dunno for sure about that latter

I'll have more time to start back into coding next week. Moving is such a pain in the butt.

As for details on the Novax Rewrite...
- Station Becomes a Factory : Essentually you build the stations and the sats seperatly. The factory is upgradable and can support 1 sat or 3 sats when upgraded.
- Sats Become Destroyable : Hawk should be hooking a new weapon system into the BO:Balance mod onto each SMD that will fire an anti-sat missile. The weapon will not have built projectiles (as it conflicts with the normal SMD) but instead be single shot with a long cooldown... More SMDs you have the more sats you can knock out at once.
- Multiple Sat Options:
--- SpySat : Similar (but a little different) to the sat equiped on the UEF BO:ACU Intel Pack. Essentually its going to be dual mode intel. You can either turn on radar/omni or turn on visual sensors. This was mainly done to presever late game stealth but allows you to track either blips for cloaked units or visual units for stealth units
--- Beam Defense Sat : Slightly modified version of the standard Defence Sat people are familure with. Beam will be a little more front loaded (to kill things faster) but the sat will be restricted to a limited operating range from the factory/station that spawned it.
--- Hellfire Rocket Sat : This is essentually the same massive bombard rocket sat that hawk introduced in BO:U though with a few extra tweaks of my own. In essence this is the heavy hitter of the sat family designed to cause destruction over a large area.
--- Thor EMP Sat : This is the sat that knight posted images for above. It is designed as a pre-emptive strike support weapon. Basically it is a massive anti-shield AoE Stun pulse generator designed with turtle breaking in mind. Keep in mind SMDs will kill sats so you want to snipe their SMDs before trying to charge this baby up for an invasion. I am also debating on making this also shut down stuctures such as radar, mass, or energy buildings caught in the pulse but I am not sure if it would make it OPed.
- Costs Balanced To the Weapon : Because the factory & sat are two seperate pieces I can balance the costs of each individual sats based on their weapons. A person using the system for spys only isn't going to have to invest nearly as much as someone using it for more offensive purposes. Don't kid yourself too much though... Its still an experimental system

EDIT: Oh yea and...
YES you will be able to mix and match your sat types if you upgrade the factory to support 3 sats...
YES the factory stays alive & can allow you to rebuild the sats if one gets shot down (even if its the onlyo ne you have on an unupgraded factory).
YES if the factory gets sniped and blown ALL sats it is controlling will reneter the atmosphere and crash

EDIT2: Now that I think about it I wonder if I should just make a mobile anti-sat deployable weapons platform rather than just modifying SMDs... Might make things a little more interesting. Hawk & Knight your imput?

Hmmmm...We have been meanign to do Anti-SMD at some point...

Mike

i think you mean mobile SMD, or rather mobile anti-SML....

Edit: Scratch that entire rant, just read through the post again and it's "satellite missile defense", a different unit entirely. I'm cool with that. Don't think the mobile defense is a good idea though, unless the satellites can be created in a similar time frame as their defense.

Spent some time working on the Cybran T2 Strafe Fighter, The Phantom;


Click for Full Size

Still kinda WIP, but the basic idea is it flies in, drops altitude, flies under shields to fire beams at the juicy targets beneath!

Mike

It seems like a great idea. However I would have to request that since it's cybran unit, it's probably going to have stealth or cloak. That would make for an incredibly devastating unit. Essentially since late game they could be cranked out in large batches then sent in to take out very expensive units, eg.. mavors, novax, artemis, paragons, with virtually no opposition. So I ask you, oh great Mr. Orange, please don't give it cloak or stealth. Then our bases will have a chance to survive if the aa can engage early enough. Or make them slow, very close range, and expensive to produce. The concept of a T2 unit that can fly in quickly, go under the shields and take out high-priority targets is terrifying. Don't get me wrong, it's a great idea. However, from a UEF perspective (their shields are huge), a group of these things could fly in and take out nuke defense for a main base, regardless of how well defended and that's game.
By the way the model looks great, though if you swept the rear ailerons back at something like a 45 degree angle to the other frontal set, it would be pretty mean looking. This implies that the strafe-fighter would move more like a gunship than a normal fighter or bomber.

Hi there all, this is my first ever post on these forums, and tis from my phone, so please forgive any poor spelling. I also warn you that I might ramble...

I saw exavier asking for ideas for units, and I've been thinking away, but I do warn that my ideas may be unfeasable, wishful thinking or balance nightmares - feel free to say so!
Oh, and I play seraphim so want goodies for them, but my ideas might fit other factions better...

1) I love the idea of an upgradeable defence experimental/t3 unit. Built as a fairly large structure, quite expensive with minimal weaponry, but has lots of upgrade options (similar to black ops commanders). Should be very expensive for low power basic, but very powerful when upgraded, and the upgrades should be versatile so you can adapt it to a specific defensive role. This way, it isn't a cheap throw away turret, but a good addition to a solid, hardened defence.

2) I also love the idea of an upgradeable land experimental for the seraphim. My reasoning here is that at the moment, seraphim only have 1 mobile land experimental, while the other factions have a selection (I play with the 4dc mod and blackops so sera have way fewer options by comparison). The exe bot sera do have is a medium land experimental to me - not cheap and throwaway, but not a massive powerhouse either. What I was thinking of would be a fairly cheap "light" experimental, to give sera a cheap option. Ideally, this unit would be highly upgradeable and could be turned into a very powerful experimental, albeit at a high premium, to give sera a versatile unit.

3) A t3 hover unit for sera, that is unarmed but carries a compliment of assist/repair/reclaim drones, kinda like a mobile hive or kennel (I'm jealous of those...). If given enough health could be a combat reclaimer... Possibly even upgradeable (i like upgrades...) to have more drones, or a shield, or even maybe weaponised drones, but the thing I really like is the mobile hive-ness.

4) I also wouldn't mind a variant of the stellar generator idea - specifically mass producing, for that is where I have my issues (I tend to have power galore). I don't want a carbon copy though, I think it could be faction specific, possible just being an experimental mass fabricator, very high startup cost but very efficient, or could start as a high yield power plant that upgrades to give mass at the cost of its power generation... I'm a bit shaky on that one - basically I like the stellar generator and kinda want one, but I don't want it to be a case of every race has the same thing... Ho hum...

5) I quite like the thought of a specific minelayer unit. Possibly landmines, but I actually prefer the idea of a hovering/floating unit laying sea mines (said mines being part of blackops I do believe) Not sure how feasible that one is though, but thought I'd throw it out there.

6) Final idea for now. A t3 plane that drops a pod (like dropping a bomb) that releases attack drones on impact. Originally I thought of it being a drone gunships, but there are plenty of gunships around and this seemed a bit different. Drones could either attack things automatically, or be controllable (i prefer autonomous to stop com hunting). Could even be stationary or deploy like a turret, but I'm not sure. I can see this one being quite a tough balance job too, but I liked the basic concept.

I do appreciate that these are likely balance nightmares, but I like the idea... more to come!

Next time just do it in one post - Mike

Edit: This looked way bigger on a phone...

zinetwin, you make it sound like it'll be immune to anti-air weapons, you're also making a few assumptions as well.

You assume its gonna stealth and/or cloak, and that it'll be so fast and it's weapons so powerful it can easily take out anything.

Now, (seemingly) obivously we are going to do our best to make sure its fair and balanced, I don't know exactly what Ex has planned, but I'm thinking it'd be Fast, but lower HP than other T2 air units with low-ish Beam damage. Keep in mind the faster it is the less damage the beams get a chance to do.

Have Faith in Ex, he isn't doing some lame unitpack where everything is OP.

Mike

How are you going to get the Phantom to dive low enough to get under an Aeon t2 shield without it smashing into the ground?

I wouldn't know! xD

Not my department.

Mike

@zinetwin: Like Knight said your making alot of assumptions before the person who actually does the coding can respond

This unit actually functioned & was balanced in vanilla just like several of the units in this pack. Its getting al ittle bit of a work over for FA true but its still just a T2 aircraft and even if i gave it stealth (which is both tempting & evil) its still of limited use late game unless you use a swarm. After all like most planes... unless you opponent has seriously neglected their AA defence your only really going to get 1 attack run out of these aginst structures.

That being said they are still very useful as an attack plane because they are very front loaded. Besides shield towers arn't as vulnerable due to hawk's fix in BO:Balance.

@the86th: LMAO its not designed to dive under mobile shields... just the static ones which is actually very easy to do if you set the altitude and firing range right

@Subanrab: Nice list but like Knight said try to keep it in one post

The biggest problem with alot of the ideas is they are upgrade based. Upgrades in FA are a royal pain in the butt because there are alot of checks & callbacks needed for them to work properly so I generally avoid giving anything spammable an upgrade.

Having a hover auto reclaimer would be interesting for seraphim and I may look into that one because I think I have an idea for a cpl cruel & unusual adjustments to the design. I'll look into that one

Its been requested several times that I make variations of the stellar gen for other factions. I am still debating on this because on the one hand having massive resorce production is nice. On the other hand it eventually gets to a point to make all other production methods obsolete.

I've never been a big fan of mines. Hawk's naval mines are amusing but arn't usually worth setting up that I have seen. Well thats not entirely true. I like mines but not the kind that FA could handle properly

Besides what knight calls a "coolness" factor I am not sure I understand the purpose of having a bomber drop automated combat drones instead of weapons of mass destruction. It just seems like its a little over complex for what you presented it to do.

To be fair, a big part of the reason for the multi-post was that since I was posting on my phone it becomes amazingly hard to actually read much once you have typed a lot - for some reason it's fine with reading forums, but posting on them becomes somewhat insaneif you type as much as I do. The other reason was that I was typing in between serving customers (I work in retail, with substantial downtime ya see), so was trying to get posts off before I lost my train of thought - could easily have been a couple of hours between posts, given the way my store tends to go... But, point taken, and I shall endeavour to avoid the multi-posting in future.

As for feedback: I reckoned upgradeable things would be a big pain, but I liked the idea so much and felt if I didn't mention it then it'd niggle in the back of my mind. In fairness, several of them could be done without the whole upgrade gimmick, but I just love the idea (one track mind, in some respects ).

The hover reclaimer thingy was my favourite idea from the point of view of originality and truly filling a niche - I like the others (of course I do...) but I would agree that is probably the best one in terms of "this could actually work..."

Oh, and I totally understand your point of view on the resource generator - it's just a case of me wanting more resources more easily. Ah well, guess I'll just to actually play well... Sigh..

Cheers for the quick feedback reply, and thanks for taking the time to explain your thoughts. Not everyone takes the time to really provide good criticism, so many thanks!

Old habit I developed over too many years of modding. I require people to provide reasoning or justification to me on things they want to suggest. Wouldn't be fair if I didn't give the same curtosy right

Besides I have actually had people come back with counter points or alternatives that eventually get added as a refinment process. It works quite well.

But yea the upgrade thing is something I am not really big on cause it doesn't work very well in FA with the whole drain economy style. Mass upgrades works better in a lump payment upgrade system... ack don't tempt me

I'm not talking about Asylums, I mean their Shield of Light. It's a t2 shield structure but its bubble is very small.

Well that might just be a +1 for Aeon to defend against these guys... I'd say it would not be considered a bug and is rather logical that given their extremely small bubbles they actually have an advantage here.