What happened to...

[Karottenrambo]

...some features of the nomads?
I talked with the founder of the nomads a few days ago, that his mod will be finalized by your team. We talked a bit about the nomad features and by that I noted that some cool features are gone. I would like to now why, because imo they seem far cooler than the stuff that replaced them.
For example:
- They had not an t1 sniper, but instead an vehicle that ordered a single small orbital strike.

- Their nuke was not a usual nuke, it shot a transmitter to the target. After the transmitter hitted the target, first an orbital emp strike came to stun everything, after that a devastating orbital laser destroyed everything like an usual nuke.

- The t3 artillery had 2 modes, one that was more effective against shields and another that was more effective against units.

[Brute51]

Many things changed, as you already noticed. Are you looking for an answer to those 3 specifics or just a general answer?

[Karottenrambo]

These 3 specific things would interest me.

[Brute51]

First, please understand that 'we' (the new team) don't follow the philosophy that the old team had planned out. Most elements are retained but some stuff is cut out. For example, the old team considered not having quantum gating technology but using fleets of space ships a strength. I call it a weakness; the ability to go almost anywhere in little time (for lower cost?) is a huge strategical advantage over any amount of space ships. This change, and the idea that Nomads doesn't have fleets of ships but just a few, is at the base of probably most or all changes since the new team started working on it.
Further more, a lot of changes were made to make Nomads a viable faction. For example, having a T2 mobile missile launcher that launches 12 missiles at once is always gonna be overpowered. I've always had the feeling that the original team used Nomads primarily as a show case. Seeing the problems we have with balancing the 'new' version of Nomads, I can guarantee the old team would have almost insurmountable problems getting it balanced and viable.


The T1 orbital artillery unit was removed because of these reasons:

- The decision was made to have orbital attacks available on higher tier units only. It doesn't make sense to have T1 units have orbital attack capabilities. Why not have the biggest gun in orbit fire at the target, instead of a small gun? Remember that the original Nomads philosophy is that there is a whole fleet of space ships near the planet. If a small gun on a small spacecraft can attack it, so can a big gun on a battleship. There would be no need to build any other kind of unit. All this doesn't make sense in the world of FA.
- The other factions T1 artillery units fire in a nice arc with a clearly visible path (because of the smoke and effects coming from the projectile). This allows players to avoid the projectile by steering the unit(s) into another way. Having a projectile that basically drops from a very high altitude on the target nullifies this, meaning the orbital artillery unit doesn't fit in FA tactical gameplay.

The T1 artillery unit was first replaced by the ability on T1 AA units to fire in an artillery way, with the high arc projectiles. It turned out it was not 'realistically' possible to get a high enough damage output from this unit. It doesn't make sense to have a high damage projectile for ground targets and a low damage projectile for air units, especially since the model has basically 1 type of weapon on it. A new unit, the T1 tank destroyer was added for (1) to have a high damage unit available at T1 and (2) for faction deversity and (3) because I happened to have Pureons tank destroyer unit available (which was used at first). Early tests showed the tank destroyer works. The model has been changed aswell but we're having a problem with the texture that we can't seem to fix for some reason (working on it).


The nuke effect was removed because:

- The code was broken in the version of Nomads I started with. Instead of trying to fix someone elses code (with no clue as that what it did) it was much easier to remove it and replace it with a new black hole effect. The black hole effect isn't done but priorities are elsewhere right now. By the way, the black hole effect on T3 artillery units is removed aswell cause it's inherently overpowered (and the code was whacky).
- As mentioned earlier, it doesn't make sense to have an orbital laser in action only when a nuke is used. Why not have the T1 orbital artillery unit fire such lasers?


The T3 heavy artillery structure was changed for these reasons:

- Again, the orbital stuff didn't make sense. See the second point in the item above this one.
- The third point for the T1 orbital artillery unit is applicable here aswell: you can't see who or what is attacking you. The T3 heavy artillery now has a slaved gun unit in orbit that does the firing.
- Having 2 modes means it's more micro-intensive but also hard(er) to explain. The only thing that appeared to change when changing firing mode was the flames on the ground station itself. I didn't even know until now one of the modes was for attacking shields. Beyond that, I don't understand why it would need an anti-shield mode. All other factions don't have it. Having a dedicated shield destroyer that fires from a safe place (your base) sounds very unbalanced to me.


I hope this helps!

[Zock]

Personaly i dont like cutting theese (and other i dont know about) things out. I would like to see nomads as mutch different to other factions as possible, but thats just my personal preference. But i also disagree to the statement its unlogic or not possible to balance the units.

first the logic thing, when you create your own faction, you can always create a solution of logical problems. Like, the land unit has to send a signal to the orbit to request the orbital strike. T1 Units can only send a very weak signal, the big ships in the orbit aren't able to get it. If they would, the system would crash due to the many signals of t1 units on the planets. Thats why they are only able to get signals from t1 units/nukes etc.

Also, if you start with that, why do everyone sends a commander with the quantum gate to a planet, and not some armys and nukes? The nomads with orbital strikes make more sense to me here.


For the path you could create a circle on the ground where it will hit. Like an aiming help. This would be a little disadvantage because you could dodge easier, its the opposite of having no sightable way of the projectile. But i dont think either the advantage or disadvantage is too huge. A faction needs advantages and disadvantages somewhere to be unique. You could balance that by giving one arty (t3 maybe) the circles, and one only projectiles falling from the sky. You can still dodge theese, althought its harder. Maybe that suggestion is not possible, but i think the unit itself is.

For the nuke logic goes the same thing like for t1, the nuke orbital ship needs a signal and other informations about the target wich can only a nuke launcher create. Or there are other logical soloutions possible, if you dont like that one.

For the t3 arty goes the same, also with the unbalance. For me it sounds like a welcome advantage, makes the faction more different and a little bit different to play. A feature itself is never inbalanced, few may be impossible to balance without enormous afford, but i dont think that two firemodes on the t3 arty are one of theese.

Sorry for my bad english.

[Brute51]

I was affraid before posting this would turn into another discussion about what Nomads should be. You're welcome to further discussion but it will not have an impact on the mod. I mean I'm willing to listen to good suggestions but I won't be caught in an endless discussion, and this appears to go that way. I'm sorry if you feel that good stuff has been cut out but that's just the way it is.

[Isen]

agreed with brute, also nomads how they are now, have a lot of difference things from other factions, tons of things. And also i think its well balanced

[Kryo]

hey you might know that I was in the original team with ZJ and Scalestor.

I just tested and saw that you did in fact change some things, but the overall spirit still ist there. The Nomads have some very dangerous weapons (for example hover t4) and some cool features like orbital t3 artillery.

im looking forward to some test games