BrewLAN is a mod for Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance that has been in on and off development by a team of one for almost a decade. It adds a wide variety of new units for all factions, as well as offering several new game modes and features. The core design goals for the mod are simple; to add new, interesting, and visually aesthetic units which complement those already in existence and to maximise technical compatibility with other mods.
Comparison of experimental shields added by BrewLAN and the BrewLAN extra shields mod Bubble Tea.
From left to right:
Aeon: Pillar of Prominence
12000 mass
220000 energy
1500 energy per second upkeep
4200 health
180000 shield health
Included in Bubble Tea. Has a tiny shield dome and projects shields onto nearby buildings. Projected bubbles pass damage evenly between the main bubbles of Pillars in range.
UEF: BFS – Stalwart
15000 mass
250000 energy
2000 energy per second upkeep
7000 health
150000 shield health
Included in Bubble Tea. Generic single dome shield.
Cybran: Iron Curtain
12000 mass
200000 energy
2500 energy per second upkeep
6950 health
140000 shield health
Included in BrewLAN. Generic single dome shield. 8 years old next month (Created 2010-06-03).
Seraphim: Iaathan
18000 mass
300000 energy
2500 energy per second upkeep (overall)
8400 health
210000 shield health (per ring)
Included in Bubble Tea. Creates a lattice of shield generator drones which revolve around the central structure. Each ring of drones has 210000 shield health total, as does the cenral structure. Opperational costs are 2020 for the structure, 50 each for the inner ring drones, and 15 each for the outer ring drones. Deactivating and reactivating the shield averages out the current shield health values across the lattice.
can i make a surggestion for the cybran shield?
seeing as there are 2 similar generic shields (UEF and Cybran)
maybe diversify the cybran shield?
my surggestion is to have the cybran shield include an oversized T2 missile defense. ofcourse at the cost of either shieldpoints or bubble size.
You know, as an alternate suggestion, maybe make the iron curtain interfere with radar, maybe also include a stealth generator, omni scrambler, or radar jammer that comes with the less shield points? Gives a little faction diversity and fits their MO well.
this sounds a lot better^
What you are describing there is the Darkness. I've given them that as a sperate building already.
Oh right! The omni disruptor is yours, sorry I run 25+ mods and I sometimes lose track of what comes from what. What about radar jamming, I don't think the cybran have much that could facilitate that.
There's always my Baristas mod if you want labels of what units come from where.
Are you on about jamming as in false radar signals, or jamming as in the old TA name for a stealth field?
False Radar Signals specifically- and actually I have been using the Baristas mod for that purpose, was a nice little life improver for me
Jamming on buildings doesn't work super well since the radar signals are of the same kind as the unit making them, and the signals are super random, so you end up with a pile of really fake looking buildings, and any human is going to know what it is, unless you go down the route of the jammer crystal from the campaign, but they create untargetable dummy units, which as a player attempting to issue orders against that you end up spedning several minutes trying to find somewhere you can actually click to send units there.
If you think there is any value to a random looking pile of building radar signals I could make a some cheap disposable building for it.
Glad to hear Baristas is being useful.
Well that's an amusing mental image,but I see your point in its impracticality.
Yeah, the only things which should have radar jamming giving off
false radar signals is indeed only Cybran T3 gunship Wailer.
(some UEF stuff has it too; ACU, T1 Frigate and T2 Field Engineer)
So if theres Cybran T3 mobile Omni Citron/Melon/Metatron,
well, there could be T3 mobile Jammer crystal-like unit :D
Though, it would put Balthassar in a bad spot again, with need of creating it for all factions.
Mixing stuff for(T3,experimental or otherwise)shields(maybe except of UEF anti-artillery Recoil) as are TMD/SMD,stealth field,jammer,etc. seems little bit redundant.
BTW: Which mods are you using? :D
UEf has a generic shield dome ? why not make it have those little flying auto drones that way it has some utility and for cybran give it some kind of light point defense and flak? or give either of them a jammer seeing as both factions have that technology
These are such high level shields it seems like they would come with something extra like the seraph or aeon one... to justify the price of them
To be fair, they are all just shields realistically. The differences are basically cosmetic, and are whatever seemed appropriate for each race as a way of shielding things. I did originally want to make the Iron Curtain shrink as it took damage, but at the time I couldn't get it to work (this was like 8 years ago) and it's probably not great for attrition and too much of a feel bad mechanic anyway. What I might do is give Cybran a new unit, in the Bubble Tea mod, that functions like the Iron Curtain from Red Alert and projects a targeted shield bubble.
As for secondary or tertiary functional additions, like guns or counterintel on a shield generator, I don't like putting them on buildings. Personally I think it dilutes the purposes of those buildings.
From a logic perspective there is no reason to attach something to a building when it's simpler and easier to put the thing next to the building. From a balance perspective it means you know what you're paying for, and the effectiveness of what you have; you aren't ever left wondering if x-building has good AA on its own, or if it's actually more effective to build x-shield-generator for AA rather than the default static dedicated AA. For balance from the opponents perspective, you have greater granularity in what you can target and destroy, and as a result damage and attack strategies are more realistic, and you aren't ever left in a situation where you want to take out all of the opposing AA but can't because a few of them have arbitrarily large heath pools because they are stuck to a massive building, and you have to concentrate fire on things that shouldn't need it. And lastly, for situations where you feel a building shouldn't be without a feature, and there is a building that is dedicated to that feature; that is what build templates are for.
That is why I do so many single-function buildings.
Obviously it's a different set of rules for mobile things.