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#1 Wertologist

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Posted 28 March 2015 - 07:39 PM

I did not really see a proper place to ask questions, so I thought I'd just post a few here. Maybe others will use this to ask other questions.

 

To start off, I am eagerly awaiting the ground fights. Space fights are cool, but I much prefer to fight on the ground. Most of my questions will involve ground fights.

 

1: I noticed The Flood in some pictures on ModDB. The Flood are one of my favorite parts of Halo. Will the Flood be a playable faction? Will they be able to infect other units to convert them? Will they be available for space fights? Flood have been able to travel/fight in space before. I would love to play as the flood and command an army of parasites to wipe everything out.

 

2: Will the ground fights be more balanced than in EAW? In EAW it seemed the AI only ever spammed tanks and nothing else. The only way to combat the tanks were with more tanks thus making infantry almost useless.

 

3: What will the heroes be for each faction? Will they be rebalanced? EAW heroes generally were pretty useless. I'm assuming if heroes were added that the big obvious ones will be added(MC, Arbiter, Johnson, Keyes, Tartarus, prophets). Will the Flood(assuming they are a playable faction) have heroes?

 

4: Will there be new maps? It would be interesting to see new maps based off the Halo games. Like a Blood Gulch map or maps based on certain campaign levels.

 

5: Will there be Sarabs? If they are included, how overpowered will they be? Will other factions have an equally powerful unit to balance it out? Just an idea: have Spartans(Just going to assume they are in it) have an ability to board a scarab and destroy it from the inside(taking a little time so it isn't an insta-kill).

 

6: Will it be Similar to Halo Wars in any aspect?

 

7: As the Covenant, how will they integrate other races into the units? Will squads have both elites and brutes? Or will there be multiple squad types to choose from?

 

8: Will there be a map editor feature? I'm aware EAW has a map editor already, but it is only for vanilla EAW. I would love to make some maps that only have infantry so the AI has to use them.

 

9: Will there be new game modes? I think it would be a nice touch to add something like firefight where you just have to survive wave after wave.

 

10: Will there be civilian units you can control? As useless as they would be in a fight, I would still like to be able to amass an army of civilians to fight. They could be really cheap units. Humans could have civilians, Covenant could have small weak grunt squads, and Flood(assuming they are a faction) could have infection forms.

 

11: Will you be taking ideas/units/vehicles/ships from all the Halo games? Things like the hornet and falcon.

 

 

That is all I can think of at the moment. I would really appreciate some feedback. Really looking forward to the ground fights.



#2 DGaius

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Posted 29 March 2015 - 02:11 PM

I did not really see a proper place to ask questions, so I thought I'd just post a few here. Maybe others will use this to ask other questions.

Coincedentally all these questions have been answered at one point or another, on the old forums. It seems however that a lot of the info has either been lost, is inaccesable (like the FAQ section we had) or is simply unfindable (even for me). So let's see if I can answer all of them and build up a new FAQ of sorts!

 

 

1: I noticed The Flood in some pictures on ModDB. The Flood are one of my favorite parts of Halo. Will the Flood be a playable faction? Will they be able to infect other units to convert them? Will they be available for space fights? Flood have been able to travel/fight in space before. I would love to play as the flood and command an army of parasites to wipe everything out.

 

Yes you will be able to play as the Flood. Their primary weapon (and only weapon when starting out) is infection. They will be able to fight both space and land battles. However the pictures you saw were from one of the first builds of the mod. There were many issues with this build, which means we basically have to rebuild the flood. It'll take a while before you'll command them I am afraid.

 

 

2: Will the ground fights be more balanced than in EAW? In EAW it seemed the AI only ever spammed tanks and nothing else. The only way to combat the tanks were with more tanks thus making infantry almost useless.

That entirely depends on what you deem a good 'balance'. We thought our space skirmish was balanced pretty well. It was different, but good. Look at all the comments (and complaints) we got about that. We have a bunch of ideas for land skirmish which are different from regular EAW (like the space skirmish release was). But again, different tastes. Let's not forget we haven't implemented anything yet. So I am  also not able to give you any indication of whether the team thinks it's balanced yet either.

 

 

3: What will the heroes be for each faction? Will they be rebalanced? EAW heroes generally were pretty useless. I'm assuming if heroes were added that the big obvious ones will be added(MC, Arbiter, Johnson, Keyes, Tartarus, prophets). Will the Flood(assuming they are a playable faction) have heroes?

Taken from the FAQ on the old forums:

It depends on the story which ones you can play. You can expect some in a campaign release. Can't promise some in the pre-release aka Units-only release.

Note that there will be no heroes/characters from the games or books!

This was our initial response to the question, since we wanted to script a campaign ourselves. With a story comes a hero. However ever since that became almost impossible to do timewise, our generic answer has been: there will be no heroes

This is in line with the 'no heroes/characters from the games or books' part of the initial response. We've always focussed on the more 'common man' in this mod. The regular militaries if you will. This also means no heroes for the Flood. 

 

 

4: Will there be new maps? It would be interesting to see new maps based off the Halo games. Like a Blood Gulch map or maps based on certain campaign levels.

Yes there will be. Taken from the old forums:

As for your answer, yes you can expect those in the next release. Some are already done. Here's a couple of reasons why they didn't make the cut:

1: Most of them were only tested by me, I need everyone to test them (still pending);
2: Some of the game mechanics were (and are) not 100% functional. Some maps require a specific gametype to work (as they are specifically made for that gametype). For example: we have a few specific maps for our new type of starbase centered skirmish;

This should answer your second question partly. In addition to regular and 'renewed' skirmish levels, I intetended to do urban combat levels (infantry only) and levels based on the big scale battles in the Halo games. Throw in a random unlimited resource level for laughs and giggles. I think you get the idea

Additional problems due to time restraints: 

  • Problem is that I am the only 'mapper' on the team, with a pretty unrealistic approach to designing levels (which usually ends up really shitty, since I try to cram 5 textures in as little space I can).
  • My priority lies with the Audio aspect of the mod right now. 

At this point the latter two are just excuses. In the end I do intend to also add in maps which are based on existing Halo game levels. Taken from the Dev part of the old forums:

So the idea is to discuss the various mappacks and what they should consist of including challenges and gameplay modes. What I came up with so far is:

Space skirmish
  • Additional regular custom maps
  • Converted regular custom maps to feature the shipyard system
  • Shipyard only levels
  • Levels with limited resources (which means you'll have to race towards them and defend them. I was thinking of calling this 'space race levels')
  • Pure fun levels (lots of resources and wide space for big space battles)
land skirmish
  • Urban Area levels (with destrutable environment including penalties)
both
  • Easter egg levels (levels based on an easter egg which can determine the outcome of the battle)
  • Historical correct locations (relive the dream)

 

5: Will there be Sarabs? If they are included, how overpowered will they be? Will other factions have an equally powerful unit to balance it out? Just an idea: have Spartans(Just going to assume they are in it) have an ability to board a scarab and destroy it from the inside(taking a little time so it isn't an insta-kill).

Yes, there will be Scarabs. There's not a single dev build without one :P The Scarabs themselves will be powerfull, but only to a certain degree. We've been playing with both of your suggestions to balance this.  I am not sure which one we chose, if we made a choice at all. The old forum is not really cooperating right now (the info is all over the place). But I'd say that both are possible, depending on which type of gameplay you choose.

 

 

6: Will it be Similar to Halo Wars in any aspect?

Yes and no. See question 11 for the yes part. No, in the sense that we deliberately try not to copy anything from Halo Wars.

 

 

7: As the Covenant, how will they integrate other races into the units? Will squads have both elites and brutes? Or will there be multiple squad types to choose from?

The races featured in the Covenant army are partly decided by the type of gameplay you choose (depending on which choices you make in the Tech Tree). Squads will be mixed, but we haven't quite resolved how (as in which units mix with which). That is grunts and elites in one squad yes, but Anh Nhan has also been playing around with the idea of 'covenant buy packages'. Buy an artillery squad, get 2 wraiths and some escorts for example.

 

 

8: Will there be a map editor feature? I'm aware EAW has a map editor already, but it is only for vanilla EAW. I would love to make some maps that only have infantry so the AI has to use them.

There is nothing we can do to the map editor to feature only CaW related units. If you're an experienced modder you can do the following:

Spoiler

If you're not an experienced modder I would advise against using this method (which is the only method afaik), since it will not allow you to install any other mod. It'll also give you a headache or two if you wish to remove CaW, since it would mean reinstalling everything.

 

 

9: Will there be new game modes? I think it would be a nice touch to add something like firefight where you just have to survive wave after wave.

Yes there will be. Take for example our starbase based space skirmish. This is a variation on the already existing UNSC defense grid (SMAC cannon, repair yards, various shipyards and defense satilites).

 

 

10: Will there be civilian units you can control? As useless as they would be in a fight, I would still like to be able to amass an army of civilians to fight. They could be really cheap units. Humans could have civilians, Covenant could have small weak grunt squads, and Flood(assuming they are a faction) could have infection forms.

 I have suggested this in the past for the GC mode. The discussion is still pending. I know Anh Nhan include private contracters in the land skirmish UNSC tech tree. 

 

 

11: Will you be taking ideas/units/vehicles/ships from all the Halo games? Things like the hornet and falcon.

No. Our mod takes place between Halo 2 and 3. So the majority of vehicles/units/ships will be from those specific games. There are some incidental units from Halo Wars (vulture, Spirit of Fire) and Halo ODST (Falcon). Than there's also a whole bunch of custom ships/buildings designed by both our own staff and the SotP (By Annihalator) & Homefront staff. Original vehicles from Halo legends and Halo 4 are off the table for us, so you won't see those. 

 

 

That is all I can think of at the moment. I would really appreciate some feedback. Really looking forward to the ground fights.

Whew. Well this was quite a bit already, had to dig pretty deep to find the answer to some of the questions. I hope that, once we do release, we won't disappoint :)


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#3 Wertologist

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Posted 01 April 2015 - 08:45 AM

Thank you for the reply. I was worried this mod had gone under.  I eagerly await the land battles and can barely contain myself knowing I will be able to control the Flood and infect people. I do hope you decide to change your mind about the heroes thing though. I love RTS games where two armies go at it and there are a few units that stand out from the rest and just demolish the enemy. I never played a match in Age of Mythology without a hero leading the fights.

 

If heroes are reconsidered and you find difficulty in getting Flood heroes, you could just have some kind of super flood pure forms and also rare flood units like infected Spartans or infected brute chieftains.

 

I know you said that the mod will primarily between 2 and 3, but for the love of everything Halo do not cut out the Spartan IIs. They were the reason humanity won so many ground battles. The Covenant won more space battles, but the Spartans IIs were devastating on land.

 

Other questions that popped into my head.:

 

12: If the Elephants are included, will they function like in Halo Wars or will they just be slow moving APCs with high defense? Or something else?

 

13: This is more of a plea than question, but will you have a sniper squad for each faction? In Halo Wars it aggravated me that the humans didn't have snipers when the Covenant AND Rebels did. Flamethrowers were cool, but I really wished they were snipers as they were practically useless.

 

14: Will Spartans(assuming they are included) be able to board vehicles like in the games and Halo Wars? IF they can, I hope here is a way to eject them without blowing them up.

 

15: Will there be a way to delete units to make room for others instead of trying to get the enemy to kill them?

 

16: Will there be Skulls? I liked in Halo Wars there were skulls you could activate mid game to either give you or the enemy an advantage.

 

17: Will Pelicans just be a way to drop off new units or will they be able to be controlled?

 

18: Will there be new (designs you come up with) Flood? Will the scrapped Flood units from 2-3 like the Juggernaut and the Flood Infector Form?



#4 DGaius

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Posted 01 April 2015 - 03:37 PM

Thank you for the reply. I was worried this mod had gone under.  I eagerly await the land battles and can barely contain myself knowing I will be able to control the Flood and infect people. I do hope you decide to change your mind about the heroes thing though. I love RTS games where two armies go at it and there are a few units that stand out from the rest and just demolish the enemy. I never played a match in Age of Mythology without a hero leading the fights.

I am going to burst the bubble here and tell you we will not reconsider heroes. The heroes you had (and the way they work) in EaW/FoC were pretty much useless in our opinion. Every bonus they grant can be converted to any other unit. They also don't invite for a more tactical kind of gameplay. And to top it off, we wanted to to show a different side of the Halo universe which we try to accomplish by looking at the common man. I am personally a big fan of this decision, as it serves as our greatest creative input. How would you fight if there wasn't a spartan around to proctect your ass? 

 

Having said that:

I know you said that the mod will primarily between 2 and 3, but for the love of everything Halo do not cut out the Spartan IIs. They were the reason humanity won so many ground battles. The Covenant won more space battles, but the Spartans IIs were devastating on land.

This is a bit of an interesting topic. Going through old threads and discussions (which are badly documented, since we did a lot outside of the old dev forum) it seems we weren't going to include a single Spartan. At least not for skirmish, since we didn't quite know yet how Galactic Conquest would work. Our primary reason for not including them is that little is known about the surviving Spartan II's and most were (at the time), or at least seemed, dead. Sev pointed out however that Anh Nhan had included him in his new Tech Tree plans (which works for both skirmish and GC). Based on what was posted afterwards, Blamtroid officially decided against using them in both skirmish and GC. At that point any mention of Spartans (I, II, III, Headhunters, etc.) disappear. Our secondary reason for not including them at that point are balancing issues. From the FAQ section:

Q: Can we board enemy ships and take them over?

A: Sorry, due to 1) balancing reasons and 2) engine limitations, we can not allow such actions ingame.

The latter seems problematic, since Chewbacca and the Defiler definately can. Looks like we got a little more experienced over time on using and abusing such 'special abilities'. However, being able to basically capture any unit automatically brings you back to the first issue. A lot of the ideas we received regarding Spartans were all related to similar abilities (sabotage like the defiler in GC and/or taking over ships in space skirmish. The latter does seem quite impossible). Perhaps I should re-open the discussion on here to A) make sure whether or not Spartans will be in and B ) document it properly for the future.

 

 

12: If the Elephants are included, will they function like in Halo Wars or will they just be slow moving APCs with high defense? Or something else?

We mentioned the Elephant in our plans, but it's function remains unclear. As you know our primary focus all those years was on space, so a lot of the details about units abilities are still details we need to fill in. I do remember actively lobying to make it a mobile landing zone. That plan was (unfortunately) shot down by the other devs. 

 

 

13: This is more of a plea than question, but will you have a sniper squad for each faction? In Halo Wars it aggravated me that the humans didn't have snipers when the Covenant AND Rebels did. Flamethrowers were cool, but I really wished they were snipers as they were practically useless.

Snipers are part of the plan, depending on the Tech Tree choices you make.

 

 

14: Will Spartans(assuming they are included) be able to board vehicles like in the games and Halo Wars? IF they can, I hope here is a way to eject them without blowing them up.

As stated in the intro: they can and can. But they won't be in for now.

 

 

15: Will there be a way to delete units to make room for others instead of trying to get the enemy to kill them?

I don't think our coders are good enough in LUA (the game's hardcode) to change that. So no. We do try to actively influence your choice of units with our new Tech Tree and similar to the space skirmish release we will adjust the unit population cap to fit the kind of play style we're looking for. This usually means that the 'pop cap' will be higher than in vanilla EaW/FoC.

 

 

16: Will there be Skulls? I liked in Halo Wars there were skulls you could activate mid game to either give you or the enemy an advantage.

No skulls, you'll have to rely on tactics.

 

 

17: Will Pelicans just be a way to drop off new units or will they be able to be controlled?

Their current role is replacing the Gallofree Medium transport in the game. I believe that, based on the Tech Tree choices you make, they come available to you as troop transports together with the Falcon. 

 

 

18: Will there be new (designs you come up with) Flood? Will the scrapped Flood units from 2-3 like the Juggernaut and the Flood Infector Form?

The Flood gameplay for now is based around spores. But the Flood is currently not a priority and very little plans have been made yet. We'll need some time first to discuss how they'll be working before I can answer this question. Looking at the old forums there's a lot of suggestions by the devs already, including the infector form. So chances are you may see it one way or another. 

 

So these answers made me realize that I may have to repost some info of our old blogs (especially about the land skirmish Tech Tree). I was planning on doing this for the playtesters anyways, since I need input on some of the new stuff we added. If the playtesters respond positively to these ideas, I'll post them on the forums here. [edit: seems like I already did for an assignment. I'll open up a discussion in the near future]. 

It also seems I need to re-open some discussions. Now let's hope I can find the time for that. 


Edited by DGaius, 01 April 2015 - 03:47 PM.
Additional info added

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#5 sloosecannon

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Posted 01 April 2015 - 04:25 PM

Having said that:

This is a bit of an interesting topic. Going through old threads and discussions (which are badly documented, since we did a lot outside of the old dev forum) it seems we weren't going to include a single Spartan. At least not for skirmish, since we didn't quite know yet how Galactic Conquest would work. Our primary reason for not including them is that little is known about the surviving Spartan II's and most were (at the time), or at least seemed, dead. Sev pointed out however that Anh Nhan had included him in his new Tech Tree plans (which works for both skirmish and GC). Based on what was posted afterwards, Blamtroid officially decided against using them in both skirmish and GC. At that point any mention of Spartans (I, II, III, Headhunters, etc.) disappear. Our secondary reason for not including them at that point are balancing issues. From the FAQ section:

The latter seems problematic, since Chewbacca and the Defiler definately can. Looks like we got a little more experienced over time on using and abusing such 'special abilities'. However, being able to basically capture any unit automatically brings you back to the first issue. A lot of the ideas we received regarding Spartans were all related to similar abilities (sabotage like the defiler in GC and/or taking over ships in space skirmish. The latter does seem quite impossible). Perhaps I should re-open the discussion on here to A) make sure whether or not Spartans will be in and B ) document it properly for the future.

 

As a completely outside observer here (Not speaking as a part of the team), WRT the balancing issues, I feel like a good compromise would be something along the lines of (GC only of course) you get x number of Spartans, with no GC abilities (with the possible exception of raid a la Rebel Alliance), who when they die are completely dead (IE, not hero units, just plain old GC units that you can't build). I think that would give a good balance between something completely broken and Spartans nerfed so badly that they're completely useless. It would also add the canonically accurate "Oh $explative, that's a Spartan, KILLITNOWFOCUSALLFIREPOWER" reaction to a Covenant player.


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#6 Sev

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Posted 01 April 2015 - 06:48 PM

A bit off-topic, but does anyone remember the GC missions in EaW (the original game). I'm sure that, after you completed the mission, it gives you additional units to use, as well as credits. With that feature, you can put in rare units as the player can't keep building them and exploiting the hell out of them. And that way, you can't rebuild them and the player has to keep an eye on then so they don't die (and the missions were pretty rare to come across as well).

But for some reason,FoC didn't have this feature, which was odd because it was one of the reasons why I stopped trying to go defensive.
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#7 Michael_2553

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Posted 31 January 2016 - 04:38 PM

A bit off-topic, but does anyone remember the GC missions in EaW (the original game). I'm sure that, after you completed the mission, it gives you additional units to use, as well as credits. With that feature, you can put in rare units as the player can't keep building them and exploiting the hell out of them. And that way, you can't rebuild them and the player has to keep an eye on then so they don't die (and the missions were pretty rare to come across as well).

But for some reason,FoC didn't have this feature, which was odd because it was one of the reasons why I stopped trying to go defensive.

 

 

those missions really gave the game a lot of real feel to me. i missed them greatly.


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#8 Michael_2553

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Posted 31 January 2016 - 04:41 PM

Spartans took years to create in the halo cannon. if they are included i think they should have a crazy long build time, to counter there power. and once they die they would be dead so you could only train one batch per game, again to counter the power they had. 


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#9 Sev

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Posted 31 January 2016 - 11:30 PM

Spartans took years to create in the halo cannon. if they are included i think they should have a crazy long build time, to counter there power. and once they die they would be dead so you could only train one batch per game, again to counter the power they had. 

I believe the plan was that the SPARTANs (if they would be in-game) were to be unbuildable units unlocked at one of the tech limits, so if they die, they're gone.



#10 Michael_2553

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Posted 01 February 2016 - 12:33 PM

what would a tech tree for this game even look like?. i mean i can see a flood tech tree (AKA NOTHING)

and cov techtree being something like they can advance with favors. like chose a prophet to follow. and each prophet would give different things and bonus (like Prophet of Regret gives a slight drive to war. cut cost by 5% and vice versa)

 

but humans? i got nothing. maybe take a leaf out of EvE and be corporation based?

 

anyone i guess ill see some day 


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#11 christian

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Posted 10 May 2016 - 04:35 PM

may someone tell me how to download CAW on the steam version of this



#12 SiRD31M0S

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Posted 10 May 2016 - 05:39 PM

may someone tell me how to download CAW on the steam version of this

There are download instructions on the Moddb page. http://www.moddb.com...covenant-at-war

 

If you've already extracted it into your FoC mods folder and can't play it, go into your Steam library, right click on Empire At War, go to properties and open "set launch options." The string you need to enter is "sweaw MODPATH=Mods\CaW" without the quotes. You can then launch FoC normally to play the mod.


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#13 베이클라이트

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Posted 22 March 2017 - 06:18 PM

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