Posts

• RE: Another Novax conversation

  @Dorset There's a lot possible in this game. Of course, not everything. But if as long as you don't draw outside the lines then all of this wouldn't even be much work.

  posted in Balance Discussion

  J

  Jip
  
• Galactic War 2025

  

  Hello everyone, as said in yesterday's announcement it was a special day, but in fact this adventure has started 3 weeks ago. You have me to thank to (with help of Fichom) for this joke (and the rickroll) but some jokes can go too far and this one surely is on the loose. Let me illuminate you!

  Some eye candy

  Let me start with a video showing the overall progress of the current Galactic War development https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka5Fsu_xp2o

  History

  Many of you might wonder, what the hell is Galactic War? And I don't blame you. If I remember correctly the last time Galactic War was working was in 2014, more than a decade ago. Some of the old fossils like me were there to enjoy it while it lasted. All we had left was some really old videos, couple of screenshots and fainted memories.

  The probable origin

  From what I found the idea for the Galactic War started all the way back in GPG times, but never came to life. This is the only picture I found from that era
  

  Zep times

  After GPG went down and FAF was born, the Galactic War was made by Zepilot, crowdfunded by the FAF community.

  From the first concepts:
  

  Over the alpha verison
  

  To the public release
  

  And the second season
  

  To the shutdown because of memory leaks and other bugs.
  The Galactic War was suppose to come back in few months when the bugs would be fixed, but that never happened, since all the FAF shutdown, Zep leaving, FAF transfer to the community thing.

  For those who don't remember or were not here back then. The new community era of FAF didn't start smoothly. Basically everything was on fire. Most of the things did not work, the server code was rewritten. The old GW code was incompatible and then it got lost.

  Revival attempts

  There were couple of attempts to revive it, but non of them succeeded so far. Brutus and lextoc were probably the closest with their iteration. By stalking the commit history of the gw code repo, work on that one was done 2017-2021.

  These are some of the pictures I shamelessly stole from them!
  
  
  

  For curious historians

  If you want to find out more from the history, you will have to dig into the old forums... Some starting points here and here

  Today

  The idea to make Galactic War started as something different. First I was just messing with some stuff for coop missions. Finding a way to send data from and to the game (while its already running, not just in the lobby).
  I also wanted to learn Websockets for some of my other projects, which is a network protocol for bidirectional realtime communication.
  One thing led to another and I realized I could learn the things I wanted by making sometimes real and that real thing would be Galactic War server.

  speed, why don't you use the things we already have?

  it's always harder to jump into someone else's project, especially unfinished one. Different structure, ideas, technologies. I wanted to learn the things I needed with the technologies I've picked, from the start. Also the existing code is using java, after many tries I have to admit I just don't speak that language and probably never will.

  What is Galactic War

  Galactic War is a meta MMO game for Forged Alliance where you fight for your faction to control the galaxy. It takes some interesting parts from the FA lore that you don't normally see in multiplayer games.

  Faction loyalty

  
  To participate in GW you will pick a faction and you will have to stick with it until the end of the season. That means that all the team mates you will play with will be the same faction, and obviously, all opponents will also be one faction.

  Permadeath

  The idea of Supreme Commander is about a single person controlling an ACU, which builds and controls every other unit on the battlefield and those are all robots, expendable. The ACU being the main unit, when it dies, the pilot controlling it dies.

  Losing your ACU in multiplayer game doesn't matter as you just join and start another game. But in Galactic War this matters!

  Progression

  When you pick your faction you get a randomly generated character (avatar if you will). You start with the lowest rank. By winning battles and killing enemy ACU you gain XP and credits. With experience you can be promoted to higher ranks and you can buy reinforcements (more on that later) and planetary defenses with credits.

  Uneven games

  While the classic multiplayer match aims to be as balanced as possible, Galactic War goes the other way. You play as your avatar with generated name. That's what the opponents see, your generated name and your rank. You don't know who you're going to play against. A new player, an experienced one, a pro? The GW rank doesn't directly translate to rating. With careful play style even lower skilled players can get high ranks and the benefits that come with it.

  The team don't need equal number of players to start the match. Any combination from 1v4 to 4v4 is possible. You can only see how many players are attacking a planet and you can decide if you're going to defend it alone or take team mates with you. And on the other side, if you are attacking a planet alone and that planet supports a map for more players. You can find yourself on the short end.

  And then there are:

  Reinforcements

  As mentioned before, you can spend your hard earned credits on reinforcements.

  

  Reinforcements are units that you can call during the game and they will be air dropped to your position. Higher tier units are unlocked by reaching higher ranks. "Free" early T2 or T3 unit to annoy cause problems to your opponents? Not a problem in Galactic War.

  Planetary defenses

  Another way to spend your credits is to buy defenses to the planets your faction controls. What that means is that your starting position is protected by those defense structures (AA, PDs, TMDs)

  Recall

  Since losing your ACU means losing your avatar and all the progress, a new command will be available in the game: Recall.
  When things don't go well you can initiate the recall. It is not instant, it takes some time to charge, so it has to be planned as well. You lose the game by recalling from the battle, but you get to keep your avatar.

  Play loop

  Once you have your avatar generated you will see the galaxy state:
  
  (galaxy size, shape and other properties are subject to change)

  The galaxy is randomly generated and the faction influences will be evenly split. You can see who owns which planet. A faction needs more than 50% of influence to control the planet. Players can always attack only enemy planet that have a connection to their territory.

  Next step is to set up reinforcements groups and other goodies, team up with someone from your faction and attack/defend a planet
  
  That is the start of the GW matchmaking, the attacks are displayed to everyone in real time. While attacking the planet (which is waiting for a match) you gain influence over time.

  On the other side players from the enemy faction will assemble and when they defend the planet, the FA match will start to determine the outcome! Whoever wins will gain % influence over the planet, xp and credits.

  Seasons

  Each season of the Galactic War will start with a new galaxy map and it will last until once faction gets control over all the planets. That can take several weeks/months.
  Defeated factions will become slaves and will fight for their master. The master will get access to units of the faction they've enslaved and they will be able to use them in their reinforcements groups.

  Release date

  As always: soon. I work on the Galactic War in my free time, whenever I feel like it.

  Can I help?

  Not right now, I still have enough things to figure out myself. Later I will have some non coding tasks someone else could do, like names for the avatar name generator, planet names, some textures. Balance of the ranks, xp and credits...

  I will let you know when the time comes!

  posted in General Discussion

  S

  speed2
  
• RE: Another Novax conversation

  @Dorset said in Another Novax conversation:

  I agree with you something dramatic needs to be changed not just cost changes.

  I've discussed this idea last year over voice, and I'll post it here. It has three parts. The goal is to actually utilize the satellite layer. This layer exists in the game, but there's not much going on there. Ideally these satellites become part of armies, like any other mobile unit. To support the Fatboy - from above!

  Not a ground station, but a factory

  At the moment you need an additional ground station for each satellite. This is a little bit cumbersome. Both from a programmers perspective (the satellite is not shared when your defeated - it is rebuilt at the station). As I think it thematically lacks a bit.

  Proposal: turn it into a factory. Allow it to pump satellites, like a regular factory.

  Multiple type of satellites

  Instead of just having one satellite, there will be three:

  • 1. A scout satellite. Relatively cheap and provides various types of intel. Enables the UEF to have Omni intel on-site to counter stealth and cloak, for example.
  • 2. A missile-based satellite. This would be the 'default' satellite, at the same costs of the current satellite. It fires a salvo of missiles. And those missiles can of course be intercepted by TMD. The missiles do not track, just like regular missiles. They will have some AOE though. And of course, you don't want to use this against Cybran missile deflectors . By being missile-based, the satellite is easier to counter:
  • • It makes the satellite worse against mobile armies. Just like mobile missile launchers.
  • • It makes the satellite unusable against naval armies, as they are usually packed with mobile TMD.
  • • You don't need to built shields everywhere, likely just 2 TMDs at each location.
  • 3. A laser-based satellite. This would be similar to the current satellite, except that it's designed to bust shields. The beam is continuous. For its costs, it will deal relatively low damage to non-shielded units (think 1/4th). And it will deal about half the amount of damage against shields as the current Novax does. But then of course continuous.

  All satellites will have an energy upkeep. The rational of @Nomander that upkeep is unusual for mobile units is correct. But given that these are the only units on the satellite layer, they can be their own niche. They are essentially flying buildings anyway. All weapons of the satellites also have upkeep to fire, just like for example stationary artillery and the Ravager do.

  When a player runs out of power the satellites simply stop firing because of the weapon upkeep. When a player loses the last Novax center all satellites become uncontrollable and unelectable. They start losing health (and visually: orbit). When their health drops to 0, they crash to the ground.

  Allow SMDs to intercept satellites (manually)

  This idea is not new. It's used in LOUD. I like it thematically. It provides the player with an option to immediately counter a satellite if the player thinks it's necessary. For example, countering the laser-based satellite would be a no brainer if you are also being shelled by artillery.

  Now, I don't talk about costs here because that's all too soon to discuss. It's the idea - the theme and the experience of it, is what this proposal is about. And of course the positioning of the units in the roster, what are their purpose and how do they remain balanced mechanically?

  posted in Balance Discussion

  J

  Jip