Well if work wasn't an issue I think there might be two attack ACU's, the heavy one you mention or maybe also a lighter version of even the standard one? You could call it a scout acu, with increased speed, faster or quicker teleports, maybe just this one has built-in sensors on this so that you need extra radar and omni with the heavier chassis, maybe a little less hp than regular not much, because the heavier acu might have 3-4 or more times more health.

Of course since I don't play online games so this might be useless.

the only reason i would see the need or desire to have another ACU would be if you were using that gameplay mod that makes it so all SCUs and ACUs must be destroyed to win(like an extended assassination i forgot what it was called) or/also if having an extra ACU increased your unit cap even further

edit: other than that i don't see the point of making an "ACU" that has uber upgrades when i can just make an experimental for the same/less cost, faster and be just as effective.

epicosity?

That'd would be sufficient..........if we were doing some kind of joke-mod.

Mike

i wouldn't mind the fact that the ACU get experimental level weapons later on in the game if they were bigger. personally, i think, by the end of the game, an ACU should be at least big enough for it to make sense for them to have these types of weapons. the Aeon ACU has no way it is large enough to be a feasible station for artillery, and the cybran ACU should not have a microwave laser, because they just aren't big enough.
THAT is why we need super-ACUs

But....how do you know they don't have empty space already set aside for enhancements? Not to mention most enhancements are adding on to the main chassis, rather than being internal.

The Masor obviously wasn''t something they'd just addon during the last day of design you know?

Besides, teh Masor is more or less the onyl Internal Enhancement that I'm aware of, especially with the BO ACUs.

Mike

The idea behind the Maser on the command chassis is that it is feeding directly on the main ACU core; something the Monkeylord can't match. Making the power systems (the block on the turret of the gun) large blocky assemblies distorting the weapons true size. The Maser is actually only the spinning assembly; the rest just powers and aims the death-ray. An ACU with it's main core feed can field the same weapon in a much smaller space.

And who says the Aeon didn't use their funky grav/quantum tech to make the damned arty recoilless; would certainly explain that T3 BO:U hover tanks main gun...

Mod was Chain of Command (don't ask me how I know this stuff )

I pretty much understand why ACU experimental weapons are condensed because of the hard-to-manufacture nuclear core that is already there.

I didn't mean that you have more than 1 ACU walking about, I meant that the ACU's are shells whereas the pilot/core could swap between chassis models with only one active at one time. Unless the ACU capabilities in BO:ACU's is changed this idea wouldn't fit because you got an ACU that can already specialize in any area.

This idea might seem more like an instance in a campaign mission than an actual skirmish/online play. As it is Blackops: ACU's fill the role, but I was speaking about if your offensive, defensive, and intel upgrade paths were seperated into different shells.

Guess i should make a comment as it is my thread and i have yet to not comment on suggestions I recieve


@gamerking345 : I understand what your after. Basically take the 3 main themes I included in my upgrade and force the player to build a new ACU chassis depending on the theme. In theory (and from a gameplay standpoint) the system would add a new element to the game but in practice it would be downright a pain in the butt.

The biggest differences would be the forced playstyles of the new process. If you have to build a new chassis for each "theme" it would allow more strategic options (permanent options to effect the long term game) at the cost of reducing the ACU's tactical capabilities (Ability to switch its role quickly depending on avalible intelligence). BO:ACUs was focused more or the tactical side of things since I view the ACU as a "jack of all trades" heavy war machine that can be optimized to a specific role.

As for the comments dealing specifically with the size of the ACU compared to a standard experimental... Keep in mind that with the exception of the compact ACU/SCUs everything else on the battlefield is a robot with standard computers (maybe a little cybernetics in cybran ones) as their overriding command/control. The ammount of computer equipment it takes to make all the pathfinding, tactical prioritising, and targetting equivilent of a human brain takes up a considerable volumne. After all the human commander can only multi task so much, the units themselves have to have some form of limited AI systems to function fully. That said the units with humans in direct operation need less automation systems to function properly, thus more avalible room for advanced subsystems

If you do take the path of multiple ACUs, can you please leave the option for using this mod with a single ACU as well? Personally, I prefer things the way they are, but I understand the various viewpoints.

Thanks

The current layour of BO:ACUs is not changing. I was just responding to the suggestion. Personally I preferr things how they are.

im done trying to push my idea, i just think that the original ACUs could be more varied. one idea of mine that i may still try to push, because i am a horrid modder/modeler/anthingmodrelated-er, is different designs for ACUs. i like the Experimental wars idea of changing the ACUs to better match the faction's specific ideals, but im not sure how to make it work with BO, heck, im not even sure why it doesn't work with BO, i just know it doesn't.

I haven't played experimental wars so I can't comment on it. I think the BO:ACUs come very close to keeping true to faction specific ideals (at least our little group has decided are their ideals based on GPG's themes & unit mix). The problem is that at the same time as trying to fit them into themed niches we also wanted to make them usable to a very wide variety of play styles so that a player isn't stuck with a single theme when they play a faction.

From a balance standpoint it was useful to have alot of similar playstiles to balance by even if the weapons work slightly differently. Heck I know my ACUs where popular enough in the ACU Wars game type (Basically ACU is the only avalible engineer for the whole game) that one of the players made a rebalance mod to make mine more compatable. I found it quite amusing when I looked through it and discovered he really only changed about 8 things and all of them where because they wern't designed from the outset for ACU vs ACU combat

Just for a point of reference Ex, the Exp. Wars changes the ACU's so that the Cybran commander has 6 legs and the Aeon commander floats on a hover-tanky thing. Though I don't think the others changed at all.

But I do want to stress that I'm not taking sides, just helping out incase it comes up again

I actually disliked those changes that Exp Wars made to the ACUs. It would've made more sense if we were talking three separate races, but we're not. We're talking three factions of the same race.

I just updated the threads 2nd post with the current v3.2 changlog and the known issue I am still working on resolving. All you TV or TVg fans should note that I readded the code for proper ACU scaling.

If you see a bug/glitch thats not either listed under Known Issues or in the changelog please let me know so I can look into it ASAP.

your misinterpreting what i am saying, the current BO:ACUs are fine and awesome, on the previous page there was suggesting about making new ACU "frames" or whatnot and basically building additional acus, my comment was about that idea, not BO:ACUs in general. might be better to actually research what another person is talking about before quoting them and issuing a counter argument

Well, this is the first time posting in this thread(so bear with me if this idea has been mentiond before)

Do you guys have any plans for sACU upgrades?

Plans... Yes
Models... 1 of 4
Time... Very little devoted to other incomplete projects

EDIT: Will probobly revisit the SCU plans after the next barrage of updates for the projects. I still have 3 new units and the rest of my novax sat system rewrite to finish in SpecWep. Now that the next version of ACUs is ready for release (minus 1 but and waiting for BO:U to be read) thats getting all my attention atm.

Entire posts in blue for me at least are hard to read

Too bad Sorian AI's aren't more agressive with ACU's. Also, I was thinking that the ACU "frame" idea would be cool on a campaign style map since its impractical for skirmish where balancing is changed.

I think SCU's will be interesting, since you can build more than one. Keep up the good work!

Thank you for reminding me of another issue i wanted to take a peek into before the next release. There is a minor issue with Sorian's AI that is preventing full use of the ACU by the AI.

Basically he had to go and hard code a cpl of the enhancment construction commands (such as his rush AI taking time to build the Weapon upgrade at the same time a normal human would be thinking about it). Unfortunatly this has the slight side effect of not finding that upgrade avalible on my ACUs and causing script failures (even though there is no log alert for it). I have an idea to fix it but I have to put a little time into it.

so...
if you guys are making sACU upgrades...

(forgive me if someone has already asked this;)
What are those upgrades going to be?

and, if it isn't to much of a bother, could I solicit an idea for a UEF upgrade (or rather, an enhancement to an existing one?)

Look at my posts on Page 9 of this thread for a breakdown of what I am planning to do to SCUs. Keep in mind that the current information is all general info since i haven't gotten close to the phase where i start setting up faction specifics.

Currently all I have managed to do to SCUs so far:
- Setup basic dummy units (Units using the Default SCU model & basic code structure)
- Rebalance of default values (Health, Build time, Costs, Pre-upgrade dps)
- Enhancment code structure (basically all the code tags to make the game recognize an enhancment, however no bonus are yet assigned to anything)

Basically the only stuff I have done are the things that effect all 4 factions equally. The only one I currently have a model for (which allows advanced work on it) is the UEF one. But as pointed out the project is sorta sidelined due to time issues.

Note: I know page 6 is a very old set of posts compared to a 65 page thread but what can I say. The plans are still in the works