Version 1.2 Overview
In this version we wanted to further refine the upgrades by adjusting the cost to upgrade. In version 1.1 the upgrade costs were set low as we were really more interested in just getting them working at that stage. Upgrades in this version are now more expensive and will affect a players economy much more significantly if they try to upgrade a lot of units at once as well as making players have to think what and when to upgrade. We also added several new upgrades including: Scorpion dual weapons, APC repair drones, Mammoth repair drones, Mammoth speed upgrade, Predator and APC Kevlar Vehicular Armor upgrade (protects from mines), defensive structure upgrades.
The game speed is something we wanted to slow down so that players had more time to plan and build their base in the early game. We made the crane only buildable after the command post was built so as to deter having two build queues early on in the game and we also slowed down the build speeds incrementally according to tier. Tier 3 structures now take considerably more time to build than other structures. The same adjustments were made to units so that tier 3 units now take longer to build. This encourages less spamming of tier 3's or building a second vehicle factory.
The economy was another focus in this release and we decided to cap the refineries and drastically reduce their storage capacity to achieve this. Capping the refineries also helped in Skirmish games where the AI would make excessive numbers of refineries for no purpose. Having an economy cap means that a player cannot ignore his economy and then come back to it and spam units, build expensive structures, upgrade units, upgrade structures all at the same time. Instead there is only so much that can be done with the money in the bank at one time.
AA ground units were given some attention in this version because we felt that they should be a much more effective counter to air units and instead they weren't. The raider buggy and pitbull now receive much greater bonuses to range and damage when they upgrade.
Nod have got to be one of the most interesting factions and we have done a lot to make them play more as Nod already by removing stealth detection from everything in the game except units that specialised in stealth detection. As a Nod player you couldn't go past anything without being detected and that just took stealth tactics out of the game for the most part. Stage 2 having improved stealth detection on units was to improve it on defenses. In this version we have made it so that standard defenses (all non tier 3) do NOT detect stealth by default. They can however upgrade to detect stealth. This will bring the stealth tank into the game much more. Tier 3 defenses still detect stealth by default.
Tier 3 defense upgrades have been added as well. The Sonic Emitter now has a repair drone upgrade, the Storm Column has a mind control upgrade and the Obelisk (which now fires quicker) has a stealth upgrade as well as the mine drop.
Scrin as always require the most attention. We took a close look at Scrin and felt we were heading in the right direction with them but they still needed a lot of work. What stood out to us was that they were still devastating (excuse the pun) once they got to cranking out air units so we had to recognise that they are a strong late game faction but make sure that some hard work goes in to getting them to that point. We had also been looking at the fact that Scrin's tech is largely organic and as such has to grow instead of being simply bolted together. It would therefore make sense that a structure that grows is slower to reach completion than one that is built mechanically. So we slowed the build times down for Scrin structures. All factions received adjustments in build times but Scrin more so. To offset this we looked at the fact that they use portals to deploy units from another location so we made them the faction that can deploy units quicker than any other. Also, due to their relationship with tiberium, we made them have much greater storage capacities so that they can fund a big army late game and we also gave them the Terranexus which allows them to have unprecedented control over tiberium growth and creation.
Check out the readme file that opens after installation for more details.
