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Insomnia Legion

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Insomnia Legion

Unread postby Robomoo » 14 Aug 2017 18:07

What Is Insomnia Legion And Why PA Needs It
http://cosmicwar.net/pages/features/wha ... a-needs-it


CURRENT CHANGE LIST:

Mechanical changes
  • Legion T1 turned into MLA T2, MLA T2 turned into MLA T3, and Legion T2 turned into MLA T4
  • Commander no longer gives celestial vision, and radars must be used instead in the orbital layer as with all the other layers
  • Orbital And Deep Space Radar structure added from PA Classic as a T4 building, which gives celestial vision (i.e. complete orbital vision), with a metal build cost of 3600 and energy consumption of 6000
  • T2 factory build cost increased by 50%, T3 increased by 100% (i.e. they now cost the same as in PA Classic), and T4 increased by 150%
  • Jig now produces and stores no metal, and Rig produces and stores no energy
  • Rig's metal cost increased from 3600 to 5000, and its metal production reduced from 43 to 30
  • Orbital fabbers can no longer build non-orbital titans
  • Increased the metal cost of the Tyr from 40,000 to 52,000
  • Angel build cost decreased from 5500 to 3000
  • Icarus energy production increased from 175 to 260

Aesthetic changes
  • Added a small "Insomnia Version" text in the Legion splash screen, with mikey's permission
  • Build bar radically re-arranged to make actual sense (with Orbital section eliminated, among many other changes)
  • Anchor build bar icon color changed to deep blue and the T3 icon has been added to it
  • Added the little triangle icon that designates an advanced structure to the Rampart build bar icon (the Legion team had forgotten it)

Latest screenshots

20180112222649_1.jpg

20180112221208_1.jpg


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I have the first four things on the to-do list for the icylegion mod working.

20170814172923_1.jpg


It's just a question of an hour or so's work changing the commanders' files to Legion. Do you have any preferences for what to rename the commanders to, and which to make into Legion? You can see a full list of them if you go to Steam's PA install and then: \media\ui\main\shared\img\commanders

There's also a bunch of them there that were never put into the game.
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Unread postby icycalm » 14 Aug 2017 18:17

That's awesome.

Can you tell me which list you are getting your tasks from? Because by now there are several I think.

Also, is there a way to add to the game the commanders that are dormant?

I will look into the naming and the distribution between MLA and Legion soon, and report back.
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Unread postby icycalm » 14 Aug 2017 18:26

Also, what about the purchasable commanders? Can we change some of them into Legion too?

Perhaps you are confusing those with the "dormant" ones?
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Unread postby Robomoo » 14 Aug 2017 18:31

I was referring to the list in the "Alex Kierkegaard's Cosmic War" thread, starting from the top of the thread: http://culture.vg/forum/topic?t=5747

I'm looking into whether we can put the other commanders into the game right now.

I'm pretty sure there are some 'dormant' commanders as well as the ones you pay for. That I can't see them to buy in the Armory in-game is what I'm basing this on.
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Unread postby Robomoo » 18 Aug 2017 02:21

There are 67 Commanders in the game in total (71 if you count the 4 Legion Comms): 47 that are unlocked by default or can be bought, and 20 unique ones that we won't be touching. We want to remove 4 of these Comms: Nemicus, Aeson, Rallus and Commandonut. Nemicus and Aeson are problematic, since they are canonically the heads of 2 of the 4 MLA factions (I am not entirely sure that this is true for Aeson, actually) and Nemicus appears in the Launch Trailer, so we might not remove them.
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Unread postby Robomoo » 18 Aug 2017 03:10

Here's the situation with Aeson: A Commander called "Metrarch" is supposed to be the leader of the fourth faction, but it was never added to the game. Instead, in Galactic War, Aeson's model is used, even though the game calls him "Metrarch". Aeson also makes sense as the fourth faction leader, because he's the only 'tank'-type Comm amongst the free Comms, and each of the other three leaders are one of the other types.

The four archetypes of Comm are: Imperial (e.g. Invictus), Raptor (e.g. Nemicus), Quad (e.g. Osiris) and Tank (e.g. Aeson). The four factions are not restricted to any one type of Commander.
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Unread postby Robomoo » 18 Aug 2017 06:45

Here's a list of the four factions that you can play as in Galactic War:

Legonis Machina
Leader: Invictus
Description: Imperialist
icon_faction_0_col.png
icon_faction_0_col.png (9.69 KiB) Viewed 177855 times

The Foundation
Leader: Nemicus
Description: Religious
icon_faction_1_col.png
icon_faction_1_col.png (14.11 KiB) Viewed 177855 times

The Synchronous
Leader: Metrarch
Description: Hivemind
icon_faction_2_col.png
icon_faction_2_col.png (9.96 KiB) Viewed 177855 times

The Revenants
Leader: Osiris
Description: Technological
icon_faction_3_col.png
icon_faction_3_col.png (9.39 KiB) Viewed 177855 times

Source with more detailed info: https://forums.uberent.com/threads/offi ... ace.71695/


And here's the Legion mod's basic lore, as well as some useful info about PA's backstory:

The Xziphid war was won by the Commanders, intelligent machines created to carry out the bidding of the Progenitors. In the aftermath a number of them broke away, forming the MLA. They took the fight to their former masters and started the Pro-Com war.

Though powerful, the Progenitors could not defeat their own creations. During the peak of the war a new generation of Commander was created, programmed to be be utterly loyal and devoted to their masters and without mercy for the foe. The Legion was born. They had access to the greatest of the Progenitor’s creations, and so for a time the tide seemed to have turned.

But war is won by logistics, and the MLA had spread too far, harvested too much. The Legion fought well but despite many glorious victories in battle they were losing. It was at this point that the Progenitors unleashed their weapon of last resort: a superweapon designed to take out all of their machine creations. The Pro-Com war was over and for millennia the galaxy was quiet.

Then something disturbed the peace and the Legion awoke to find their creators gone, but the hated foe still present. So the Legion marches once more to war, in memory of the creators they still love dearly.


Source: https://exodusesports.com/article/legio ... ction-mod/
Last edited by Robomoo on 18 Aug 2017 07:48, edited 1 time in total.
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Unread postby Robomoo » 18 Aug 2017 06:53

I think there are a number of small problems with the Legion lore currently.

1. We need an explanation as to why Legion and MLA Commanders are fighting on the same side, as they will be in some of our games. The current lore makes it clear that the Legion units have been specifically designed to be immune to MLA corruption.

2. The name 'Legion' is too similar to 'Legonis Machina'.

3. The red theme has already been taken by the Revenants.
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Unread postby Robomoo » 18 Aug 2017 07:42

The full roster of available Commanders:

commanders blank.jpg

With 2 removals, we have 45 (17 Imperials, 10 Raptors, 4 Tanks and 14 Quads), which split between the base game's factions plus Legion makes 5 teams of 9. That or we could split them half-and-half between Legion and MLA as we'd originally planned.

We should also make sure we have the same team ratio if we're only using the free Commanders.
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Unread postby Robomoo » 18 Aug 2017 07:52

Some art supposedly of the missing Metrarch Comm:

metrarch.jpg
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Unread postby icycalm » 18 Aug 2017 15:51

Elite Sardaukar
tbh not a big fan of legion mod, but will play with it as a lot of others like it
a lot of work went into the mod

icycalm
Can you tell me why you are not a fan?

Elite Sardaukar
i dont feel they tried something unique enough for another faction

icycalm
True huh

Elite Sardaukar
everything is just a more powerful more expensive unit
have not played with it enough to really understand it yet
but this is the conclusion i have drawn
really great work done on the mod though

icycalm
tbh I am just happy to see the new unit models

Elite Sardaukar
yeah

icycalm
some of them are really great

Elite Sardaukar
nicb put a lot of work into that

icycalm
and a modder could take them and make your unique faction

Elite Sardaukar
the massive thing which altered them not trying more with making the faction more unique was the limitations of the game engine, a lot of things uber never got around to developing and creating modules for from the engine, even the system editor has suffered a lot for this

icycalm
Makes sense
They had big plans, and left a lot of stuff unfinished
Remember the 1 million units long-term target?

Elite Sardaukar
yeah

icycalm
Or multi-screen etc.
We are lucky we got an expansion
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Unread postby icycalm » 18 Aug 2017 15:54

I think we should shelve the idea of introducing Legion into our events for now, also due to performance issues that it has been pointed out in the PA forum that we might face [ > ], and look into making Legion more unique. The problem is that none of us has enough experience in TA and SupCom to see how those factions differ and draw inspiration from them. So maybe we should set aside some time for playing especially SupCom that has four factions apparently.

In any case, we should finish the Insomnia Legion mod so we can start playing it outside of events to familiarize ourselves with the units and their icons and so on. We can't even begin to think about modifying anything before we know how everything already works.

I will be back soon with a detailed changelist for the commanders.
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Unread postby icycalm » 18 Aug 2017 16:07

Robomoo wrote:1. We need an explanation as to why Legion and MLA Commanders are fighting on the same side, as they will be in some of our games. The current lore makes it clear that the Legion units have been specifically designed to be immune to MLA corruption.


The easiest way to deal with this would be to modify the Legion lore. I don't think that would even require any modding, since the lore isn't even in the game files. We'd have to find a way to mod the eXodus site lol. I think it's called hacking.

Alternatively, make it so that MLA and Legion cannot fight on the same side. That's actually a quite appealing notion for me. How technically feasible is it?
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Unread postby icycalm » 18 Aug 2017 17:39

I have a crazy idea.

The main criticism of PA is not that it lacks a second faction, but that it has a lower unit count (and perhaps variety?) than SupCom.

So let's take the Legion models, and use them as "MLA", to effectively DOUBLE PA's unit count! In the process we reintroduce units like the Orbital and Deep Space Radar that Uber themselves removed from the game, and balance all other units according to the suggestions of top ranked players, so that all units are viable.

As an added bonus, we won't have to deal at all with Legion lore and its inconsistencies (since we bypass all of it this way), or ugly or inferior Legion elements like the commanders or the trailer and intro (since we simply won't add any of this stuff to our mod to begin with).

And we can add this stuff and balance it incrementally, on a monthly basis. First we add the Orbital and Deep Space Radar and my Annihilazer cooldown, and then we take a handful of Legion models and add them to the game, with appropriate mechanical modifications. Then the month after we rebalance, and add more, until we've added all of them. We also add all units/models that were removed from the game by Uber. For example, there was an earlier wall model, that aesthetically seems more robust. So we add that as a second wall type that's more expensive but harder to destroy, etc.

As for balance, we were discussing with Elite the other day how slow official balance patches have become, so we could just create our own balance, with the help of top ranked players sympathetic to our efforts.

And by the way, Stuart from the PA forum has already taken all the Legion models and used them in his "Planetary Obliteration" mod that is NOT an addon, so there is precedent in what we will do that is widely accepted in the PA community, so we should be easily able to deflect criticisms of our mod, and work on it in peace.
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Unread postby icycalm » 21 Aug 2017 11:59

So the new plan is to not touch the "MLA" commanders, and simply turn all Legion units into "MLA", after having deleted the four Legion commanders. Can you do that? I'd like to be able to launch Insomnia Legion and build all Legion stuff with an "MLA" commander, and we can start testing this stuff immediately.

I guess you'll run into UI issues, since there probably won't be enough space in the build menu for all the new structures and units, but fit as much as you can so we can start playing with the new units, and we'll take it from there.
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Unread postby icycalm » 21 Aug 2017 12:22

An even better solution, in order to keep the Legion fabbers and factories as well, is to turn them to Tier 2, and turn the existing Tier 2 into Tier 3. This way, we won't even have to touch the Legion unit balance much, if at all, since they are already more powerful and more expensive than Tier 1, which is what a Tier 2 should be, more or less.

So there won't be any need to fit more units into existing factory menus, only more factories into the main build menu, and I think there may be just enough free space there for that.

And of course, you will need Tier 1 fabbers to make Tier 2 factories, and Tier 2 fabbers to make Tier 3 factories, so none of the Legion stuff will make it into the Commanders' build menu.

Man I can't wait to start playing with this shit. Let me know when you have something we can try out.
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Unread postby icycalm » 21 Aug 2017 12:25

And I guess Tier 2 Legion would become Tier 4. That'll be four types of fabbers to juggle lol.

There'll be some confusion of how to deal with Legion's economy structures, but we'll figure it out I am sure. I just want to start playing with the new units asap.
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Unread postby icycalm » 21 Aug 2017 12:31

In fact a better way to think of the Legion stuff is as Tiers 1.5 and 2.5, which really is what they are: 1.5 is a stronger more expensive halfway step between the original Tiers 1 and 2, and 2.5 is a halfway step between Tiers 2 and 3 (with Tier 3 being the Titans, and in fact Legion Titans will be 3.5: the ultimate combat units in the game), all of which will come into play in specific scenarios that favor them. No idea what these scenarios are, but we will figure it out by playtesting.

The SupCom holdouts wanted more unit variety and complexity, and this is it I think.
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Unread postby icycalm » 21 Aug 2017 12:51

It is incredible how many problems are fixed with this approach.

1. No lore issues at all. The PA lore remains unchanged.

2. No need to balance factions. The only thing you need to do is balance units within a faction -- PA's single "faction" -- but this type of balancing is much easier and less crucial, since even if you fuck things up, you have fucked them up for BOTH players/sides, so you might have reduced the complexity of the game but at least you are not favoring one side over the other, and rendering an entire faction useless. At most, you are rendering a few units useless, but this can be fixed with more playtesting, something which the Legion crew is already doing anyway, and apparently very well, so we should never have to deal with it.

Makes you wonder why they went with a new faction. I guess it sounds more impressive than merely adding units. And it IS more impressive, and more valuable and interesting, but only if the units are differentiated enough to warrant creating a whole new faction for them, which as Elite says the Legion units don't seem to be. And since the work of MAKING them more differentiated is way too hard for us -- and may even be impossible due to the unfinished engine, going by Elite's comments -- I am of the opinion now that integrating them into "MLA" is the best solution going forwards. I bet many players will like it too once they get over the fact that it was icycalm's idea to do this. I mean, the players joining our lobbies won't even know or care whose idea it was: they'll just be seeing a ton of new units in their build menu to play with, and I believe they'll be as delighted as I am. Who doesn't like new units, especially when they are as cool-looking as the Legion ones? Hell, half of them look cooler than the Uber-made ones! Can't wait to use the Tyr man!
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Unread postby icycalm » 21 Aug 2017 12:55

The Holocene will be a problem. It does the same thing as the Ragnarok, so I am thinking we could make it destroy, not only a planet, but its moons also lol. It could come into play in complex systems with many planets and moons, especially when server tech improves and such systems become playable. And since we'll be buffing the unit, we should make it more expensive -- at least twice as expensive, since it could potentially destroy several orbiting bodies, as opposed to just one -- and increase the time the player will have to defend it from one minute to two or three or so.

Once we have added a cooldown to the Annihilaser, the Holocene will be roughly on the same level of destructive power with it, since the first will indeed be able to destroy all the planets, but only after half an hour or more of successfully defending it (with say five minutes of cooldown per planetary body), while the latter will be able to destroy a bunch of them in one go. They will have their uses in various scenarios, as long as we balance them well, which I think we will be easily able to, since they are much easier to balance than the regular units, of which there are far more, with far more complex interactions between them.
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Unread postby icycalm » 21 Aug 2017 13:15

The cheap T1 teleporter will be nerfed to only allow teleporting on the same planet (and perhaps also its moons), while the T1.5 teleporter will be made more expensive, and allow teleporting to other planets. Thus one of the game's longstanding issues -- the fact that super-cheap teleporting renders the Astraeus almost useless -- should be fixed.
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Unread postby Robomoo » 21 Aug 2017 16:40

All of this sounds perfectly doable from a technical perspective.

Maybe the Legion metal extractors could be slightly less efficient at producing resources, but much more durable? In the early game you would have a choice between better preventing dox raids or expanding your economy faster.

As for lore, we could have a nod to the Legion story by saying something like "In the final days of the war, the Progenitors made desparate attempts to develop a new brand of machines that would be immune to MLA brainwashing - incorruptible and loyal to their core. It didn't work." and that these differently designed machines took the MLA Commanders a bit longer to remember when they re-awoke.
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Unread postby icycalm » 21 Aug 2017 19:30

Since the lore is not in the actual game, we will have to make a webpage with the changes. We'll deal with that when the project is close to being finalized.

And yeah, the economy structures will need tweaking, so let's start with the basic units that won't need it. Can you get some Legion factories in the game, so we can start playing with them?

Another thing I wanted to tell you is that perhaps you should be documenting every change you make, so that if something changes in Legion or Titans and you need to redo your changes, you won't have to spend any time trying to remember what they were. Or in case you lose interest in the project, someone else could use that document to do this in your place. It's going to be a long project, so we better be prepared for this sort of eventuality.

In our version of Legion, the "Legion" in the title won't refer to a new faction, but to the "legion" of units that were added to the game, just like the Titans title refers to the Titans that were added. And I would like a new menu screen with a different background that shows a "legion" of units. We must take a cool screenshot full of Legion units, and turn it into the right shade of red. And I would also like the "Community Expansion" line removed, because I prefer when it looks like an official expansion. And since Titans has no "Official Expansion" line under the title, I don't want Legion to have it either.

I don't think mikey is going to object to this, because we are not "rebranding" anything -- though we will eventually rebrand the whole thing, as Stuart did with his "Planetary Obliteration". We will just have to figure out the right time to do this, when we have made enough mechanical changes to the game that mikey will consider sufficient for a name change.
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