Fourth Playable Faction

[Corey]

Will we be able to play as the Yevetha in the Black Fleet Crisis GC?

Not sure yet, depends on how the technical stuff goes. All I can say at this point is definitely maybe.

[Kalo]

Anything that suggests a new playable faction in its entirety is just not possible. The game already has issues with the third, you can even see little seams in the game that point to the issues with it. Like the Black Sun logo the Consortium has, and I don't believe there's a way to remove that logo sans replacing that icon entirely.


The idea for Jerec and Kyle is doable, and appeals to me, but that doesn't mean it'd be done.

[Corey]

Anything that suggests a new playable faction in its entirety is just not possible. The game already has issues with the third, you can even see little seams in the game that point to the issues with it. Like the Black Sun logo the Consortium has, and I don't believe there's a way to remove that logo sans replacing that icon entirely.

Not really. We've talked about this in some other threads, but those aren't really the problems. Third playable factions in FoC have no intrinsic limitations or technical bugs. The icon thing you're talking about doesn't apply to the third factions, just to the factions after that, but if we were worried about that then we wouldn't even have the minor factions, because as it is they're all called Hutt fleets and have the Hutt icon or Zann icon or whatever, though I've always intended to rename them to something more general.

The problems with further playable factions are as follows (leaving aside logistics and whatnot):
1. No story scripting, whatsoever. This means no hero release beyond the start of the GC, era progression, planet capture bonuses, etc.
2. No Tech tree stuff, but since what you see is what you get anyways not a huge deal, since anything would be a single-era single-GC kind of deal.
3. Stability. This is the big one. We used to have the Empire of the Hand as a third playable faction in the base game (pre-FoC), but I don't remember how stable it was. The two mods I can think of that have more than 3 playable factions are pretty unstable, but I don't know if that's the result of the fourth+ playable factions or of other bugs, since neither of those mods seemed especially concerned with stability to begin with, they were buggy messes before they added factions.

[Kalo]

Not really. We've talked about this in some other threads, but those aren't really the problems. Third playable factions in FoC have no intrinsic limitations or technical bugs. The icon thing you're talking about doesn't apply to the third factions, just to the factions after that, but if we were worried about that then we wouldn't even have the minor factions, because as it is they're all called Hutt fleets and have the Hutt icon or Zann icon or whatever, though I've always intended to rename them to something more general.

The problems with further playable factions are as follows (leaving aside logistics and whatnot):
1. No story scripting, whatsoever. This means no hero release beyond the start of the GC, era progression, planet capture bonuses, etc.
2. No Tech tree stuff, but since what you see is what you get anyways not a huge deal, since anything would be a single-era single-GC kind of deal.
3. Stability. This is the big one. We used to have the Empire of the Hand as a third playable faction in the base game (pre-FoC), but I don't remember how stable it was. The two mods I can think of that have more than 3 playable factions are pretty unstable, but I don't know if that's the result of the fourth+ playable factions or of other bugs, since neither of those mods seemed especially concerned with stability to begin with, they were buggy messes before they added factions.

In addition, the game stops allowing you to build from buildpads of any kind.

[Pox]

The problems with further playable factions are as follows (leaving aside logistics and whatnot):
1. No story scripting, whatsoever. This means no hero release beyond the start of the GC, era progression, planet capture bonuses, etc.

That could still be done with a LUA script. Unlike Story Events, LUA scripts allow you to spawn units for any faction, not only the faction the script is attached to.

2. No Tech tree stuff, but since what you see is what you get anyways not a huge deal, since anything would be a single-era single-GC kind of deal.

That problem is a lot harder to fix. I can already think of a workaround for it, though.
If you create a building that is spawned on every planet of your fourth faction and set it as required special structure for the units of a specific tech level then it would work.

3. Stability. This is the big one. We used to have the Empire of the Hand as a third playable faction in the base game (pre-FoC), but I don't remember how stable it was. The two mods I can think of that have more than 3 playable factions are pretty unstable, but I don't know if that's the result of the fourth+ playable factions or of other bugs, since neither of those mods seemed especially concerned with stability to begin with, they were buggy messes before they added factions.

Can't say much about this. Haven't really tried to add a fourth faction to the game, yet.

[Corey]

That could still be done with a LUA script. Unlike Story Events, LUA scripts allow you to spawn units for any faction, not only the faction the script is attached to.

Yeah, the script you sent me should be able to do that but I'm still figuring out getting the conditions to work. I was referring more to the other aspects of Era progression which you sort of addressed and which are less important anyways.

That problem is a lot harder to fix. I can already think of a workaround for it, though.
If you create a building that is spawned on every planet of your fourth faction and set it as required special structure for the units of a specific tech level then it would work.

That seems like it'd be pretty overdone. Kind of a waste of a building slot, and that script might cause a bit more lag than can be afforded, especially in larger GCs.

[Pox]

Yeah, the script you sent me should be able to do that but I'm still figuring out getting the conditions to work. I was referring more to the other aspects of Era progression which you sort of addressed and which are less important anyways.

Don't hesitate to ask if you need any help, I'll gladly assist you

That seems like it'd be pretty overdone. Kind of a waste of a building slot, and that script might cause a bit more lag than can be afforded, especially in larger GCs.

Yeah, the building slot would be really wasted.
I don't think it would cause much lag, though. I was working on a diplomacy script a while/years ago that was checking for planet control and a hell lot of other things and it didn't cause any lag. I only tested it in the equal footing GC, though.

[Corey]

That's definitely an option. After playing around with the Yevethans in BFC, the stability issues I expected don't seem to be occuring, but once all of the extra stuff they'd need is developed who knows.

[rumiks]

yuzong vong i think would be good

[Corey]

Well the point here isn't that we're trying to find a faction to make playable, the point is whether or not we can make more of the existing factions playable without any drawbacks. Whether or not we ever did the Vong would be a completely seperate issue.

[rumiks]

if ya need any help with making it i will and it be a good way to learn things to and i basically know the yuzong vong down pat having read all the books 1million times

[Pox]

That's definitely an option. After playing around with the Yevethans in BFC, the stability issues I expected don't seem to be occuring, but once all of the extra stuff they'd need is developed who knows.

Well, since you already have a script looping through all planets(assuming that you have implemented the script that shows the special structures) I don't think that there will be any major performance issues if you add some stuff that spawns a building and some heroes when a new tech level is reached.
The only downside is that you can't avoid that lost building slot. Without Story Events you just need something like this that unlocks your new units.

[Corey]

Well, if you can make it so a single instance of an object somewhere in the galaxy (as opposed to needing to be on the same planet) can universally unlock certain options then I think we could swing it without any loss of a building slot. For example, if we were to make 5 different barracks entries, and the build prereq for each era already having an existing entity of that barracks anywhere in the galaxy, then we could easily do it, since everyone always has at least one barracks unless they've already lost the GC and we could replace all existing barracks' with each tech level change to cut off previous options. That way there's no lost slot anywhere, but I'm not sure if it could work that way.

[Pox]

Unfortunately, the player would have to have one of those on every planet(or in orbit), since the whole system is based on the <Required_Special_Structure> tag. Without this it's impossible to lock the old units.

[Corey]

I'd hoped LUA would be able to do something, but oh well. I suppose there wouldn't bea huge problem with those factions getting a free barracks on their planets instead of using a black hole, it could be balanced out in other ways. More important than era progression is probably being able to split it between different subfactions (Teradoc, Zsinj, Pentastar, etc for Warlords, for example)

[Lord Xizer]

More important than era progression is probably being able to split it between different subfactions (Teradoc, Zsinj, Pentastar, etc for Warlords, for example)

What do you mean? More individuality for those factions or for their units?

[Corey]

Basically that the units that only one group would or should have wouldn't be available to the faction if it's meant to be representing another group, so for example Teradoc wouldn't get Raptors and TIE Raptors.

[Pox]

I'd hoped LUA would be able to do something, but oh well. I suppose there wouldn't bea huge problem with those factions getting a free barracks on their planets instead of using a black hole, it could be balanced out in other ways. More important than era progression is probably being able to split it between different subfactions (Teradoc, Zsinj, Pentastar, etc for Warlords, for example)

The bulding doesn't even have to be free.
If I remember correctly it is possible to take money from the player using a script.
However, the player will get lucky if he has less than required, cause the command will just take what he has in that case.

[Corey]

Well if it happens immediately after capturing a planet, the reward for capture would be enough anyways.

[Lord Xizer]

Basically that the units that only one group would or should have wouldn't be available to the faction if it's meant to be representing another group, so for example Teradoc wouldn't get Raptors and TIE Raptors.

Ah I see. That would be useful in helping distinguish each warlord.