More Factions!

[Angellus]

I think Corey said somewhere they want to do more factions, and I was a big fan of the Alignment in Thrawn's Revenge so I really hope that would be the case. What other options are popular though?

[Kalo]

I think Corey said somewhere they want to do more factions, and I was a big fan of the Alignment in Thrawn's Revenge so I really hope that would be the case. What other options are popular though?

No option for the Hapans?

[Angellus]

Fixed!

[tlmiller]

Hapans only canonically have 2 combat-oriented ships though, neither of which really classifies as a capital ship, so would be realliy hard to do.

Warlord Zsing is just the IR with Tie Raptors instead of Tie Fighters.

Chiss Ascendency might be neat, although I would think most of the units they have available would also be available to the EoTH.

Ssi-Ruuk would be neat, but do we know of what their combat ships even were, I can't think of anything off the top of my head.

Wasn't Empire Reborn just a hodge-podge of old Republic ships such as Venators, Acclamators, etc?

[Waffle Wagon]

Defintitely the Ssi Ruuvi. Space dinosaurs. Yes please.

I dunno about the PA... I fear they would be pretty much the Remnant, but with less cool stuff. In ICW they had a diverse array of ground units to differentiate them from the Remnant. In Ascendancy, all they would have is their space units which, with the exception of the Praetor II, are standard Imperial fare.

[Corey]

Well, I voted for what I want...

[Settra]

Defintitely the Ssi Ruuvi. Space dinosaurs. Yes please.

I dunno about the PA... I fear they would be pretty much the Remnant, but with less cool stuff. In ICW they had a diverse array of ground units to differentiate them from the Remnant. In Ascendancy, all they would have is their space units which, with the exception of the Praetor II, are standard Imperial fare.

I agree so very much with the first portion of this. Though about the PA, I'd have to disagree. With the upcoming update they are getting a few ships to differentiate themselves (Lucrehulk, Recusant, V-19, and the Gladiator) even without the update they have the Munificant, TIE Hunter, and the IPV (granted much less differences). They could also (potentially) have a much different research tree due to being formed on different principles to make them different.

[Lord Xizer]

Yevetha or at least the option to steal some Thrustships...

[Corey]

We definitely want to Here's how I see the pros and cons of these, put in reverse order of preference for myself:

4. Hapans
Pros: Star Home makes a really obvious flagship.
Cons: Really underdeveloped, Limit ability to integrate into New Republic.

3. Ssi-Ruuvi
Pros: Ship designs and themes are unique and pretty cool. Entechment could provide some kind of unique gameplay.
Cons: Really hard to make their stuff look right, very underdeveloped and a minor galactic power. While it makes sense to have developed the Hand in a way to compete with the other factions, because they really were on an equal playing field, the Ssi-Ruu didn't have that same basis. I don't see anything we get out of dong the Ssi that we don't get better from the Vong.

2. Pentastar Alignment:
Pros: Imperial group, so we can use the Imperial ships we can't fit into the Remnant, and everyone seems to like them, and it would line up with the ICW stuff. Also requires less resource splitting since the assets already exist if we need to expand on other factions more.
Cons: Kind of a downside to their pros here. They don't bring as much unique material to the table. Playstyle wise they're like a mix of the cultural policies of the Remnant/Hand and the economic policies of the New Republic.

1. Yuuzhan Vong
Pros: Very tight thematically in a way that doesn't overlap at all with the other factions. Also has easily the most developed unit list without us having to invent anything. Their culture and society allows a lot of room for unique techs and gameplay. Also extremely popular.
Cons: Very difficult to make them look right, more difficult to implement than other stuff. Also probably a bitch to balance. Easily the most work, and may require some adjustments to the other factions.

The team is obviously focused on completing the Big Three (and ICW, of course) right now, but we've talked about what to do next quite a bit considering how fast we're working, and that it seems we'll be done the art side long before we're done the code/testing/balancing. We all pretty much agree on the Hapans being a non-issue, but there's a lot of variance in opinion on the other three. I think Kalo has Ssi-Ruuvi and Vong in the opposite positions that I do, and that Enceladus agrees with me. I haven't talked to Slornie, Slevered, Codeuser or OzWolf enough to discern any sort of preference.

Anywho, this kind of thing has a lot to be decided, and I once said that we'd never do the PA in ICW, but then the massive fan support convinced me otherwise, so you never know.

[Lord Xizer]

Either the PA or the Vong would be great additions.

[tlmiller]

Or even better, BOTH!

[mynameisyou]

YES YES YES  ADD BOTH.

[Corey]

While that would be nice, keep in mind that the minidumps from the 2GB limit in the game are basically the equivalent of the freeze in EaW, only more avoidable since we know the circumstances up front.

[Rovert10]

Well there's always that option of seperation like SOGE did but even then I could run all factions at once without too much of a problem.
And your assets leave less of a footprint than base Sins. Don't know about SOGE's assets.

[Settra]

While that would be nice, keep in mind that the minidumps from the 2GB limit in the game are basically the equivalent of the freeze in EaW, only more avoidable since we know the circumstances up front.

Do you have any guess how close the three big factions get to the limit?

[Lord Xizer]

Or even better, BOTH!

lol Didn't want to seem to greedy, though that would be awesome. If either one makes it I'll be very happy.

[Lavo]

One of the Vong's most appealing pros, and at the same time one of their biggest cons, is that their ships have very little solid info, both in terms of armament/health and firepower. This pretty much gives them neigh unlimited breathing room. They also have biological ships which can be implemented through different directions, ranging from simply having a ton of health, to having slightly less health then a ship of "equal" or "equivalent" Galactic health, but with much better regeneration and, in the case of Sins, both can possibly make use of shield mitigation, which is something that doesn't really fit with other Star Wars ships. The reason I say the latter is purely due to the fact that you cannot have shield mitigation start off very strong, and then decrease as fire intensifies; if a ship survives and shield mitigation starts to "heal" it, unfortunately, will never stop increasing.

And your assets leave less of a footprint than base Sins. Don't know about SOGE's assets.

SoGE has a horrific footprint, worse then base Sins by a longshot.

[Corey]

Do you have any guess how close the three big factions get to the limit?

I'll tell you when we get there. We're trying to do what we can to optimize in poly counts, texture sizes, standardizing certain assets (shipyards, etc) and not packing the mod with redundancies, but it'll still add up so I don't want to make any guesses I'll regret in a year. Unfortunately my knowledge of the exporter isn't fantastic yet, which leads to some less than optimal meshes at the moment, though we have some that are comparatively tiny. There's also certain meshes where we needed to take advantage of some higher poly counts, because otherwise the ship just won't look right (Altor and ISDs are the main ones here). In any case, there's some other stuff we can do too.

With the PA at least there's a few core units that overlap with the IR that give some breathing room, but I'm not sure if putting the Vong and PA in the same mod is a great idea considering the Vong represent more of a forward shift in the timeline.

The Chiss seem to be getting some support here now, so here's my view on them: Empire of the Hand.

[Angellus]

So if you didn't do the Alignment what does that mean for the Prator if the Empire gets the Allegiance?

[engle99]

I'd love to see the Chiss but Corey's right they'd basically be the EotH without any Empire ships