Warlord Faction Development

[tlmiller]

Agreed that I like the colors Corey chose better.  If you want to rearrange your own colors, go for it, but I definitely prefer the colors Corey went with.  There's too many in your list that look the same to me (color blind).

[Grimnak]

What is all this talk about the Hutt Cartel?

[Corey]

Y'all need to relax and have a snickers.

What is all this talk about the Hutt Cartel?

Slornie was referencing when we had the Hutts as a minor faction in really early versions of ICW.

[Grimnak]

How many snickers do I need to give you to convince you to put them back in?

[tlmiller]

Y'all need to relax and have a snickers.

Slornie was referencing when we had the Hutts as a minor faction in really early versions of ICW.

Like dad always said, an EYE FOR AN EYE!!

[KommissarReb]

I have an idea! How about having some of the core and deep core planets belong to Zsinj's Empire? The reason why I say this is it could represent the Zero Command, and it would make sense to me since the Greater Maldrood was enemies with both Zsinj's Empire and the Zero Command.

[Corey]

Zero Command was also an enemy of Zsinj, and Zsinj is the Wartlord that already has the largest territory; that's one of his starting advantages. Splitting that up for a faction he had no real relationship with doesn't really make much sense. The point of splitting the Warlords into Maldrood, Zsinj and Eriadu is to remove the weird amalgamation faction of "Warlords" that previous releases had, especially since they're playable now.

How many snickers do I need to give you to convince you to put them back in?

Never going to happen. First, it seems like any further factions won't work properly. Furthermore, there's nothing to really give them. They aren't a true political entity, they're not a military power, and they were a bad idea to put in in the first place.

[Lord Xizer]

I have an idea! How about having some of the core and deep core planets belong to Zsinj's Empire? The reason why I say this is it could represent the Zero Command, and it would make sense to me since the Greater Maldrood was enemies with both Zsinj's Empire and the Zero Command.

That wouldn't really make sense for a number of reasons. Zsinj had no territory in the Deep Core, the Warlords hated each other as much as they hated the NR.(Hence the constant wars between them)
Harrsk had some loose(Very loose) ties with Isard, not Zsinj and was in both a state of isolationism in the Deep Core and more or less open war with any Warlords near him. The Maldrood was at war with EVERYONE around them(Hutts, Zsinj, IR, NR) Zsinj also had border skirmishes with Kaine, was at war with Teradoc, the IR and NR. Delvardus was at war with Lankin, the IR and NR and on nonexistent terms with Kaine due to his defying Kaine's orders and forming the Authority. The only times the Warlords ever united under one banner was Shadow Hand and even then sniped and attacked each other at every opportunity(Devian arranged the assassination of Kaine, Jax arranged the deaths of many minor warlords as well as the Emperor, Delvardus stole billions of credits and resources from the other Warlords for Night Hammer, Harrsk stole two dreadnaughts from the mainline forces and routinely carried out random reprisals on Teradoc, Teradoc sought to embarrass and undermine Harrsk by striking him, they were a very uncooperative group) . So having various Warlords in team ups makes no sense as each one viewed himself or herself as THE ruler, not A ruler so they hated each other bitterly.

[KommissarReb]

Zero Command was also an enemy of Zsinj, and Zsinj is the Wartlord that already has the largest territory; that's one of his starting advantages. Splitting that up for a faction he had no real relationship with doesn't really make much sense. The point of splitting the Warlords into Maldrood, Zsinj and Eriadu is to remove the weird amalgamation faction of "Warlords" that previous releases had, especially since they're playable now.

and

That wouldn't really make sense for a number of reasons. Zsinj had no territory in the Deep Core, the Warlords hated each other as much as they hated the NR.(Hence the constant wars between them)
Harrsk had some loose(Very loose) ties with Isard, not Zsinj and was in both a state of isolationism in the Deep Core and more or less open war with any Warlords near him. The Maldrood was at war with EVERYONE around them(Hutts, Zsinj, IR, NR) Zsinj also had border skirmishes with Kaine, was at war with Teradoc, the IR and NR. Delvardus was at war with Lankin, the IR and NR and on nonexistent terms with Kaine due to his defying Kaine's orders and forming the Authority. The only times the Warlords ever united under one banner was Shadow Hand and even then sniped and attacked each other at every opportunity(Devian arranged the assassination of Kaine, Jax arranged the deaths of many minor warlords as well as the Emperor, Delvardus stole billions of credits and resources from the other Warlords for Night Hammer, Harrsk stole two dreadnaughts from the mainline forces and routinely carried out random reprisals on Teradoc, Teradoc sought to embarrass and undermine Harrsk by striking him, they were a very uncooperative group) . So having various Warlords in team ups makes no sense as each one viewed himself or herself as THE ruler, not A ruler so they hated each other bitterly.

You guys are missing the point I'm trying to make. The reason why I would have extended the territories of some of the Imperial factions is to represent the splinter factions that aren't going to be implemented. What is the likelihood of Zsinj's Empire getting to the Core before the "Zero Command" gets annihilated anyway? And maybe it doesn't need to be Zsinj's Empire per-se. Its not like I'm asking for more factions to be made.

If you don't want to use my ideas, could you at least tell me how to make my own Galactic Conquest on the thread I made here: http://thrawnsrevenge.com/forums/index.php?topic=5477.msg52854#msg52854

[Lord Xizer]

I do understand.  You might talk to Vulcanus or Kuscidave . They built some good GCs in their submods if you want to do that. Cheers.

[kucsidave]

I do understand.  You might talk to Vulcanus or Kuscidave . They built some good GCs in their submods if you want to do that. Cheers.

A little correction. I just modified and added planets, but I do know how to build one.

Thank you for the mention none the less.

[Corey]

You guys are missing the point I'm trying to make. The reason why I would have extended the territories of some of the Imperial factions is to represent the splinter factions that aren't going to be implemented. What is the likelihood of Zsinj's Empire getting to the Core before the "Zero Command" gets annihilated anyway? And maybe it doesn't need to be Zsinj's Empire per-se. Its not like I'm asking for more factions to be made.

I'm not missing the point, I'm disagreeing with it. Like I said, we are doing these changes so that we do not have to have weird amalgamation factions.

Again:

and it would make sense to me since the Greater Maldrood was enemies with both Zsinj's Empire and the Zero Command.

I (and Xizer) was responding to this point. Yes, Maldrood was enemies with both Zsinj and Zero Command... But Zero Command was also enemies with both Zsinj and Maldrood (and Eriadu, and everyone else). There's no group with which grouping them either makes sense or really adds anything other than the opportunity to start controlling Kalist IV and an extra hero and fairly sizeable fleet they shouldn't have, with units they can't build.

I don't want to do that for the same reason we didn't combine Zsinj with the Pentastar Alignment or shoehorn the Chiss Ascendancy into the Empire of the Hand. There's no reason to represent those factions; Zero Command only has 1 known planet: Kalist IV. As a person whose primary/only interest in Star Wars is simply how much there is to the galaxy and how all the different groups got to be what they are (I'm love history), I sympathize with the desire to represent as much as possible, but I want to do it in a way that makes sense and not just shoehorn things in. Empire at War is a limited game with limited faction slots and limited ability to run with high planet numbers. That means when trying to represent something like Star Wars in this period which had literally dozens or even hundreds of small subgroups things will inevitably have to be cut on the smaller side. We have to pick the most relevant or at least unique groups and try to represent them, not dilute the ones that are present simply so that we can have a planet belonging to every group when that doesn't actually bring anything to the table.  In any GC you're not making to specifically deal with Zero Command (which did virtually nothing) there's plenty of planets more relevant than Kalist, so why add Kalist to a scenario where it's not adding anything, especially when it takes away one planet from the ones that actually belonged to that faction? The only exception here is when splinter groups still ostensibly worked with the Moff Council/Imperial governing bodies, ala Ciutric at certain points. As far as the likelihood of Zsinj connecting with it, pretty damn likely considering the southern border of Zsinj's Empire is in the core, and again, they're ALL playable factions, meaning the player also gets Zero Command when they play Zsinj for no discernible reason and human players could DEFINITELY connect the two or three planets between Zsinj's southern border and Zero Command territory. It makes far more sense, much like with the rest of the Deep Core stuff, to keep it out of play until Era 3 when it was alll (including Harrsk) part of Palpatine's Deep Core/Byss fleets.

Agreed that I like the colors Corey chose better.  If you want to rearrange your own colors, go for it, but I definitely prefer the colors Corey went with.  There's too many in your list that look the same to me (color blind).

Incidentally, this is why we try not to use too many shades of green for things. It also makes using red tricky.

[Lord Xizer]

Let's also keep in mind that this is a lot of time and effort the team is putting into the Warlords(Again major thanks and kudos from me to you lads on this, i still remember those days in 2007 when Zsinj with Gethzeron and Kaine with Jerec were fused together into the NPC Warlords pseudo faction and I was scheming ways to get them playable...ah nostalgia, the Warlords have come a loooooooong way since then.)

Merely adding someone or something simply to have it can seem neat at first but if it doesn't really add anything to the experience other than I have an icon with Harrsk now and another planet then essentially there really isn't much point to going through all the effort to incorporate it in(often at the expense of other areas due to workload)

Besides Harrsk was somewhat loosely tied more to the central Empire than the other Warlords(At least politically, though he was still independent) which is why he's an era 1 and era 3 hero for the IR already with kalist being an Imp world too. So your course of action would simply move Harrsk, Kalist IV and a few units from the IR to Zsinj, which doesn't add anything new, doesn't make much sense from the political nature of both character's empires and would leave the territory alone and isolated in any event.

It's not that we're discarding the idea right off the bat for no reason, it just doesn't bring anything to the game.

[KommissarReb]

Harrsk was somewhat loosely tied more to the central Empire than the other Warlords(At least politically, though he was still independent) which is why he's an era 1 and era 3 hero for the IR already with Kalist being an Imp world too. So your course of action would simply move Harrsk, Kalist IV and a few units from the IR to Zsinj, which doesn't add anything new, doesn't make much sense from the political nature of both character's empires and would leave the territory alone and isolated in any event.

It's not that we're discarding the idea right off the bat for no reason, it just doesn't bring anything to the game.

I am mostly ignorant of the backstory behind each warlord, their motivations, politics, and how they ruled their empires. I was just making a suggestion, though I may incorporate the idea in my own work after learning how to make my own Galactic Conquest.

[Lord Xizer]

The Warlords are something of a passion for me. I've lobbied for them since I first discovered TR. I do hope to eventually see them fully playable in Ascendancy one day as well.

[kucsidave]

The Warlords are something of a passion for me. I've lobbied for them since I first discovered TR. I do hope to eventually see them fully playable in Ascendancy one day as well.

That would be SO AWESOME!
If I would have to chose between Star Wars characters about whom would I work for, I would be in a very huge problem to chose between Kaine, Zsinj and Darth Revan.
It is convincing that two of them are actually warlords, while the third is an old republic sith... isn't it?

[solarflare]

What kinda units are the warlords getting to make them unique from pentasstar/imperial remmant

[Corey]

I do hope to eventually see them fully playable in Ascendancy one day as well.

Again, this misses what it actually means to be a faction and why this is something doable in ICW but to the extent that it means anything is already the case in Ascendancy. It's not even that there's no point, or that the workload isn't worth it; it's that they're already there.

What are the components that make an Imperial Splinter faction worth splitting off in EaW?
Name: If you wanna call a faction 'Greater Maldrood' in EaW, you have to have a faction coded that way.
Starting position: Each faction has its own historical starting position and if you want more than one Imperial group, you have to code more than one Imperial group.
Heroes: They exist
Unit Roster: Few appreciable differences between Remnant and Warlord units.
Tech: Doesn't exist in EaW

What are the components that make a splinter faction worth splitting off in Sins?
Name: AI factions pull from a list of race names. When playing against the Remnant, you already ARE playing against Greater Maldrood, Warlord Zsinj, Director Isard, Zero Command, etc. The game even says it.
Starting position: Randomized, and since you can have multiple instances of a race, if you wanted to have historical maps (which we will do some of), you can use multiple instances of the same faction.
Heroes: Not a thing except in flagship mode.
Unit Roster:  They're not different in EaW, they would be even less different in Sins. The difference would be switching out the Dark Empire stuff (World Devastator probably for Tector, MTC for the Escort Carrier which the PA already has, and the Galaxy Gun/Sovereign for nothing). Then remove Crimson Command from Remnant and put it in Warlords. The only place there's a significant difference in performance there is Tector for MTC.
Tech: Would, except for maybe 5 techs, be the EXACT same. Same propaganda policies, same focus on military power, same similar diplomatic outlook (kill everyone).

So again, you ALREADY have these groups represented within the Imperial Remnant in Ascendancy. The Remnant is already any Warlord, it's not just the Moff Council or whatever. The only reason to do it differently in EaW are the heroes which don't exist in Sins, the fact that they can be called that name ingame which they already are in Sins and that you can put multiple instances of them in a different place, which they already do by default in Sins.

The only thing that would make any difference is make a tech ingame which declares loyalty to one group over another and then gives slightly different bonuses and locks out access to some units in favour of others, but again, the only place where this has any appreciable gameplay difference is a trade of World Devastator for Tector, which is not a good trade. The differences would be Crimson Command for the VSDII for Maldrood (upgrade), CR90 instead of Lancer for Zsinj (a cosmetic difference, if it even fit on the build bar, which I think it wouldn't at this point), and access to superweapons/MTC for Dark Empire (and they technically could even have access to the Crimson Command stuff). PRoblem here is, why would anyone ever do anything except Dark Empire? Even this wouldn't change any visual indication of who you're playing as; you'd still be called "Tropicana OJ" (if you're me) and the enemies would still be called Greater Maldrood or Zero Command.

What kinda units are the warlords getting to make them unique from pentasstar/imperial remmant

Very few, no new ones that aren't already NR/IR/PA units (except where someone may get the Providence because why not). They aren't and aren't supposed to be unique roster wise, they're still Imperial splinter groups and the other factions already cover almost every single Imperial unit that isn't associated with a specific person.

[Jorritkarwehr]

It would be nice to see the Providence joining the ranks somewhere! What are the odds that the droid tri-fighter could be part of its complement? The Wookiepedia page doesn't list any tri-fighter usage after the Cone Wars, but it doesn't seem too huge a stretch that outdated CIS carriers still have a few outdated CIS fighters. It would make the Providence (and possibly the Lucrehulk) a bit more distinctive, even if the tri-figher probably isn't the most impressive vessel at this point.

To encourage the Maldrood's frigate-heavy playstyle, what if they don't start with a shipyard? They do get some initial Star Destroyers, but have to rely heavily on CC VSDs until they capture a shipyard.

[Lord Xizer]

Providence will most likely have standard fighters. Droid fighters were considered obsolete and were also only used by the Dark Empireand later IR due to pilot shortage.