Apocalyptic Dawn (formerly known as Military)

[Zoythrus]

you keep mentioning "elite unit" like it's some all powerful guy. when i think "elite," i think of a powerful infantry such as the Spec Ops or the Combine Soldier dude. in my sense, i think that all "elites" should be immune to toxins (and fire?).

maybe i'm wrong.

[Omega]

you keep mentioning "elite unit" like it's some all powerful guy. when i think "elite," i think of a powerful infantry such as the Spec Ops or the Combine Soldier dude. in my sense, i think that all "elites" should be immune to toxins (and fire?).

maybe i'm wrong.

Immune to fire? Naw, that's overpowered. Toxins, maybe.

Toxins would just be a attack type on an effect.

[Zoythrus]

you keep mentioning "elite unit" like it's some all powerful guy. when i think "elite," i think of a powerful infantry such as the Spec Ops or the Combine Soldier dude. in my sense, i think that all "elites" should be immune to toxins (and fire?).

maybe i'm wrong.

Immune to fire? Naw, that's overpowered. Toxins, maybe.

Toxins would just be a attack type on an effect.

i said "fire" because it would they be immune to something from the UNSF. but definitely toxins - the Combine soldier and the Spec Ops have gas masks, the mutant commando is a mutant (mutated units are immune), and an exo-suit doesnt breathe (it's a robot, and last time i checked, robots dont breathe)

[Hagekura]

If you had to create the exo-suit armoured elite soldier like zoy said,
I wish to see the soldier's appearance like these↓

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[URL=http://img502.imageshack.us/i/jinrohwolf.jpg/][IMG]http://img502.imageshack.us/img502/6533/jinrohwolf.th.jpg[/img][/URL]
[URL=http://img530.imageshack.us/i/kerbposterrenew.png/][IMG]http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/5898/kerbposterrenew.th.png[/img][/URL]
hmn...It's just my personal request after all,forget it sir.
but just in case you will create the unit...I want to see them...

[Omega]

Yes, something like that is what I had in mind too. Something like the combine from Half Life 2 (when the heck does episode 3 come out?! That ship is calling my name!) is what I imagined.

Of course, I am finishing up Military3 before I start making the "cult" faction, and the elite soldier (which still needs a name) will wait until the cult is out to face it... first step for v4 is to plan the cult faction. John has a start, but more ideas, as well as names and especially buildings, are needed.

[Zoythrus]

i think that a slaughterhouse/abattoir should be the food production structure. i would show how evil they are (their slaughterhouses do not follow FDA slaughtering standards)

[-Archmage-]

(their slaughterhouses do not follow FDA slaughtering standards)

 
Sounds so evil.

[John.d.h]

I'll draft up a better list when I get back home this weekend and have time to take a closer look at Military's layout.

i think that a slaughterhouse/abattoir should be the food production structure. i would show how evil they are (their slaughterhouses do not follow FDA slaughtering standards)

I think you mean USDA, and their guidelines are... well, let's just say that most people would not like knowing how their meat is produced.

Anybody know how Hamas feeds and supplies its operatives?

[Omega]

Anybody know how Hamas feeds and supplies its operatives?

Illegal smuggling, I would think, like most terrorist organizations do.

I'm thinking we can base a lot of the faction off terrorists, real life cults, and various other resistances. After all, the cult is basically a paranoid, terrorist cult which will attempt to reach their goal, no matter the cost. Though, we will assume them as well funded terrorists, not just the insurgents making bombs from household junk, but with professional weapons and a powerful systems. They aren't the neat, professionalism of the military, but can easily match its strength. Their weapons would be more balanced to mass destruction instead of stealth or cleanness.

[Zoythrus]

mass destruction

hmmm....mass destruction

well, i think they should be stealthier than the Military.

[charlieg]

This mod might look a lot better, even play better, if the troops were of a more proportionate size - i.e. made smaller.  Having a soldier tower over a tank looks ridiculous.  It makes it look too toy-ish with all the buildings and vehicles looking undersized in comparison to the troops.

[wciow]

I agree. Military is the most extensive mod ever made for Glest, but i feel it is let down by the weird size issue. I know that Glest has limitations with scale, but surely something can be done about this.

[Zoythrus]

there was a mod for Spring that was WW2 based. in the game, everything was to size. yes, infantry were tiny....but thats how things are in real life!

[Omega]

Unfortunately, this is a limitation of the Glest engine. The AI has problems with size 3+ units, since their pathfinding ends up horrid and AI don't usually space buildings far enough apart. And I can't make units smaller because not only does that make telling the difference between them very difficult, but they are already at their smallest size. Finally, most maps aren't made with very large units taken into consideration, and when experimenting once, I ended up crashing glest a lot due to insufficient space on many maps (of course, that was just an experiment with far larger than practical units). And of course, another problem is that units that are "long" or "wide" more than they are "tall" would end up taking up too much space if made to be a suitable size vertically. It's like the transport ship, for example, which is the largest size for a moving unit, being a size 5 (which is more than crowded enough already, and naval units are largely limited to maps made with naval units in mind), is still looking awkward in comparison, since to make it "to scale", it'd have to be at least size 50!

This is a common limitation in RTS's and TBS's (take the civilization series for example), but has no current workaround.

As an update, it's getting there, but I've been *very* busy with work, school, and a bushload of homework, so that set it back quite a bit. I hope to finish the next version before christmas, and then we can get started on the "cult" (which, by the way, I am still accepting opinions, ideas, and concepts for it. I want to hear what you want!).

[Zoythrus]

ok, John and i were talking a while back, and we had some more ideas that should be implemented:

the Spec Op needs to be able to morph into a dedicated sniper! the Spec op seems too overpowered. this sniper would be cloaked when not moving and when attacking and dying (so you wouldnt be too sure if he's dead or not  ). the Sniper would kill infantry instantly, but would be useless (like, zero damage) against tanks and buildings. also, remove the snipe ability from the spec op.

The Cult should have a stealth detection building, like a radar dish or something. now, we thought of something: the two factions would have their means of stealth detection reversed. the Military would have detecting buildings first (think Surveillance upgrade), but would get the UAV much later (detector unit). The Cult would be the opposite: they get the attack dogs in the beginning of the game, but the radar dish would come much later.

we noticed that the guns that the infantry should use should be M4's, because what they dont use bolt actions much anymore. this is for realism.

The Cult need a cyborg soldier with a "mana shield" of sorts. when the shield is up, the EP meter acts like a second health bar, absorbing damage.

The Cult also needs a cloaking field device, one that cloaks itself and everything nearby.

Make the Marine the standard Military infantry. we all know that you are just going to make them Marines anyways! and, give the workers the ability to turn into infantry (as a last ditch attempt to save the base). but this then you couldnt turn them back, but luckily you can still turn the infantry into Marines.

oh, and about the nuke: it should actually be a NUCLEAR WEAPON! right now, it wont even harm a fly. if it's a nuke, make it realistic (that means, if i launch it on a base, every unit will be dead, and every building will have low health)

[wyvern]

I disagree with making the marine the main infantry. I think the marine should be able to deploy real fast from naval transports while the infantry remains the main grround unit, have you considered transport helicopters, they could land, lift a howitzer or some infantry men and swiftly transport them, If you made it something like a chinook, it could carry a humvee too . Also, is it possible to make the standard unit standing action replaced by patrol, for example, airplanes like the stealth bomber can't hover, so maybe you could have them automatically patrol in a certain radius when they're supposed to be standing

[Omega]

While your ideas are cool, I'm gonna have to hit you with my realism stick. Try and makes sure the ideas are compatible with GAE. For example, using EP as a second HP bar, is not possible. We can change the mod as new GAE features are introduced, but don't try and depend on features that don't exist.

As for the nuke, it's overpowered as it is! While sure, a real nuke would one hit the entire base, then that'd mean a game over the moment a player got a nuke, turning it into simply a fight to see who can build the nuke first. It's supposed to be a disastrous catalyst, not a one hit game ender.

[Zoythrus]

ok, the shield thing was John's idea....

about the nuke, it should kill all units in that field, and damage buildings (i mean like by 1000 or so). if you have a nuke, it should actually act like a nuke!

[Gabbe]

A nuke wouldn be way more devastating than just killing units within a certain area 

[John.d.h]

Here's a little test you can do.  Gather up a whole bunch of Privates and have them stand together.  Drop a nuke on them.  See how many die.

[Omega]

Hmm... After testing the John method, only 5 privates were killed by the initial  blast, and another 3 dropped dead from radiation poisoning shortly after. I'll increase the power of the nuke a bit, as well as the strength and duration of the radiation poisoning. I'll still control myself though, while it may one hit an infantry, stronger units like the flamethrower can still survive a nuke (abet, this is in the case of one nuke. Nobody said you had to use just one nuke... Test for you all: build five missile launchers, nuke the foes base at the same time, then attack. You will find it stunningly easy.

[Zoythrus]

im trying to have a balance between the nuke (military) and the bio-rocket (Cult)

nuke - lots of damage, but it's just one blast with some after effects

rocket - not much damage, but the radius is larger and the effect does much more damage and has greater persistence

you like?

[Omega]

Meet the UNATF (United Nations Armed Task Force):

Menu Screen:

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[img]http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/783/militarybg.jpg[/img]^{(And no worries, the UN flag is Public Domain)}

And the new faction logo:

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[img]http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/8900/militarylogo.jpg[/img]
Version 3 is almost ready to release. I just need a newer snapshot to test this on. Because it uses cloaking, rev 1004 or higher is needed, but the only one I have, rev 1004, has a few critical bugs that are fixed in the newer snapshots. Alternatively, we can wait for 0.3.3, and get a (likely) less buggy version, at the cost of time. At any rate, I am patching up the language file after merging the latest from trunk (rev 1058). Silnarm has already graciously offered to build the installer, as well as using a slightly modified version of GAE to display Military in the program's titlebar, as well as to allow me to have a few changes to the INI without having to move the config folder. Though, I'd still have to test it in whatever version of GAE he will compile it with, because there's always a few changes that might need to be done (particularily the language file. For example, there was a lot of changes in that from 0.3.2 -> rev 1004, such as the entire game menu strings being renamed.

For now, there are 2 work arounds, namely the use of the AA Launcher as a detector for the Stealth Bomber, despite not being able to choose it as just the stealth bomber (but this is off-set because they are the only stealth/detector units until version 4). As well, the game loading screen has been changed as seen above. I am confident that we will have unique faction loading screens by the time Cult is released, and since we only have one faction for now, the screen is seen on all games. Eventually the cult will get their own personalized screen. The logo for the main menu is the same for now, as well, but that will be changed to include a mixture of UNATF and "cult" units. For now, it's the same as the original, since there is no cult units yet.

I also hope their can be the option to set the color of the text for the loading screen, as the white text is a bit hard to see on the light colors of the UNATF's loading screen (but I refuse to change that screen because it fits their name perfectly).

[John.d.h]

And the new faction logo:

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[img]http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/8900/militarylogo.jpg[/img]

Is the circle a bit jagged?  Other than that, awesome.

[Gabbe]

Military just gets awesome and more awesome good job Omega!