There have been discussions as to the direction of the tech trees and I wanted to clear some stuff up and also propose some ideas and get a good idea of where you guys want to go with it.
Rebellion Faction Forks
Now there have been small talks about tech forks due to my post involving the Cerberus Titans. Factions Will fork into two separate sub-factions and I'm going to clarify how each one separates
Cerberus
Pure Human - This tech tree unlocks the Pure-Human titan which uses a very powerful directed energy weapon which completely ignores shields and destroys most intended targets in a single volley. Making it dangerous even for a reaper.
Titan - Pure Human (DEW Titan)
Synthesis - Combining the best of human tech with Reaper tech, Cerberus seeks to create a lethal hybrid. When all they do is become tools for the force they are trying to stop. That doesn't stop them from being any less lethal. Avoid their titan as if it were a Reaper.
Titan - Synthesis (Thanix Titan)
Citadel Council
Paragon - Due to events surrounding the first attack by Saren and Sovereign on the Citadel, Commander Shepard saved the Destiny Ascension from a gloomy fate at the hands of Saren and his Geth. Being a War Asset the Destiny Ascension becomes a usable vessel for players choosing this branch.
Titan - Destiny Ascenion
Renegade - Making a tactical decision to save the citadel as a whole, Shepard took the alliance fleet and attacked sovereign, the Destiny Ascension was destroyed. For a time the Citadel Council was without a Dreadnought to lead its fleets. Turians made attempts at larger ships, and so did the alliance only to fail. Only one race lived up to role required of them in these tough times.
Titan - Volus Dreadnought
Reapers
Destroy - The Reapers in their desire to keep the cycle, forsake all beings organic or synthetic during this cycle in an attempt to erase their failure and start anew. Using their vast army of Collectors as minions and their own massive force of Reapers they shall wipe the galaxy clean.
Titan - Ravager Class Reaper Titan
Control - The Geth after the lose of "The Construct." Lost perspective due to their lack of numbers and new found sense of simple self preservation returned to the old machines (The Reapers) in order to save themselves. The Geth fleet adds to that of the The Reapers. With the Reaper code geth are cunning, they are decisive, and stronger in numbers. Making them all the more lethal.
Titan - Geth Dreadnought
Progress Update
You guys are probably asking yourself, "Hey man, WTF. Why no new movies or in game shots yet." Simple with the release of ME3 I had a lot of work to do. I am working as fast I can to get things in order. Zombie and I have done more work on this mod in the last month than the combined last 11. I have had to remodel ships, station, and redesign the tech tree in order to work with rebellion. I assure you all that I am doing all I can to meet our July Deadline. Cerberus is almost done, Citadel Council is almost done as well. Reapers are going to take some time but while im working on the Reapers. Two of Three factions will be completed and assembled and put in game. Which will hasten the release.
Q & A
- Is the Citadel going to be included and what would its purpose be?
Simple, It is going to be included as a controllable station. Its placed at random on the galaxy map and players get a bonus for controlling it.
- Are the Reaper arms going to be closed or partially open?
You guys can vote on that, the one with the most upvotes and decent arguments why will be done.
- What kind of Super Weapons are you planning?
I'll give you one, its the C.A.R.E package. Short for Catastrophic Area Reaction Explosive, calling this a weapon of mass destruction is a huge understatement. A weapon used exclusively by Cerberus due to its "Legality" its a Nuke with a ferrous tip containing a eezo core fired from the main gun of a dreadnought. It hits with the force of a 10 kiloton bomb, after impact the eezo core is activated causing the mass of what ever object it hits to become unstable. After that reaction occurs it detonates with the force of a 100 megaton bomb (Equivalent to the Tsar Bomba, largest atomic explosion in recorded history) This weapon alone can destroy the eco-system of any planet it is used on. It is something to be feared and used only in extreme circumstances.
Any more questions, comments, concerns. Feel free to put them in the comments section.
I love to see where you are taking this mod, fully utilizing the "tree fork" system and asking for feedback, and the C.A.R.E package is just my kind of delicate touch lol, nice.
Just a small correction that in no way affects the mod. The Tsar Bomba was originally planned to be a 100 megaton bomb, but was scaled back to a 50 megaton bomb during design phase.
Agree.
it was reduced to 50 megatons as if it were any bigger, no matter how high they dropped it from it would have reached up and vaporized the plane. As it was, the bomber that dropped it was sent into a two mile free fall before managing to regain flight and get out of dodge when it detonated.
The Volus Dreadnought is named Kwunu, btw.
Yeah. Somewhat interesting that the Destiny Ascension's class is named after the name of the ship, but the Kwunu is labelled after the race and size.
To be fair, you could still name the Volus Dreadnought you make Kwunu with the naming feature. It, thankfully, isn't too long.
I thought it was just known as an 'Ascension class-Dreadnaught'?
I know it is often referred to as simply 'The Ascension' [I.E: The Ascension, flagship of the Citadel fleet], other times referred to by its full name [I.E: ...the Destiny Ascension. Main drives offline, Kinetic Barriers down 40% - ect.]
I haven't seen it referred to as an Ascension class Dreadnought though.
"Volus Dreadnought Kwunu" is fine I think.
Hrrm. I know domination mode in Rebellion has a mysterious planet that is controlled to earn points. Never actually played the mode, so I don't know if there already is a Bias towards a certain type of planet, but could you make a 100% bias towards the Citadel planet type, thus having the Citadel be the 'Domination' victory planet?
In addition, will you be planning on including the Crucible in any Capacity?
On the issue of the Reaper arms... IDK. Sadly Sins doesn't support moving parts of ships, as if you could have done both that would have been awesome. I am inclined to say closed, as they are quite commonly seen closed. When travelling: Closed. When ramming: Closed, and the Beams could possibly come out of gaps between the arms. On the flipside, it would look more awesome in a fight to have them open, though I'm scared somewhat of an 'Uncanny Valley' effect would be had where they are open, but don't look quite right as they are not moving constantly, as Reaper arms are when open.
For Destroyers: Arms definitely closed at all times. I've only ever seen those things open their arms when landing. For Sovereign Class Capital ships... IDK.
For Destroyers, I can object you. I found by luck that there was some "hidden trailer". At first I thought it is just that it is some fan compilation of the final battle, but to my surprise, it was differently composed and more importantly, there were two more scenes in it. Youtube.com Look on 1:08, there is how Reapers destroys Alliance cruiser. This scene you never seen in game. And right after it, there is one of the coolest scenes I have ever seen in Mass Effect, and sadly this one isnt in the final game. And this scene is the argument to your statement.
Check my profile dude. Its the first vid I uploaded an all those sceea happen in thw game, you've just gotta have a crappy EMS.
Yeah, that's the pitiful EMS battle. Seen that before. Its why I said only when landing, rather than only when on a planet. Technically, it is landing on the Turian frigate/cruiser. However, unless every Reaper destroyer is going to be landing on ships to destroy them, I don't see the arms being open for destroyers.
Ahh, that explains why I cant seen it ever. I had quite high EMS, even without MP :P
Well, that or not, Destroyer may have an ability to leech on enemy ships and attack them from here. Crazy and most likely impossible to make. But even if the arms will be closed, how do you plan to make it with the panels which must open to reveal the main gun? Or they will be flying with the panels always opened?
IDK, if you've seen some of the Rebellion Vasari abilities, it may be possible.
As for the panels... Yeah, that's the problem for the Destroyers.
Panels open the whole time, or just have them fire a beam through the closed panel?
Not sure which one I'd vote for that.
Neither option is good for Destroyer. Even half-opened is bad. I hope team will do some afford to make it movable (somehow). There are some talks it is possible, thought very time consuming.
Agreed. Moving parts would be optimal for Destroyer and Capital ship, but it would likely be harder to arrive at a compromise with the Destroyer's panels that the Capital's arms. Hopefully a few moving panels is easier to animate (Assuming it can be done) than moving arms on a Reaper Capital ship.
Open cause then it has a psychological effect of seeing this mean deadly eye shooting down your ships. Also adds more detail and looks cooler.
Yes, and shows its own and only weakness which even fighter can exploit. Thats not smart. Its even worse than the arms of Capital. When they will be always open on Capital Ship, it would look weird, but would be tactically the same as closed. But Destroyer needs the animation to protect itself.
the destroyers can fire through them(sorry for wrong grammar, im dutch :D ) there is a hole there, only for (super) charging the beam those panels are open, so they can keep it closed i guess
The only time I really thought the moving arms made a difference in those kinds of scenes was when a destroyer or something landed on a ship.
I suppose this makes our job obselete then?
for the reapers, if I choose destroy will I still be able to use the geth or are the forks just bonuses for one or the other.
I vote for Reapers arms out, that way it looks like they're going to grab onto the smaller ships like squid catching live prey.
Though I have to agree with Joccaren that having them open without animations would be silly, so probably having them closed at all time in a central point like Sovereign would be better.
The only thing that bothers me is equality of Ravager and Geth Dreadnought. That's not right, I guess.
And I vote for opened arms for reapers :) I think they should look like this: Media.indiedb.com
Makes them more agressive-looking.
Also, I don't know if you've seen this concept for another reaper. It's from page given by one guy, I'll better leave it here. Fc00.deviantart.net
Or to make a compromise, semi-opened. Not fully opened, but still to see a gaps between the arms. It would look good, and make sense.
And for Ravager, cant it gain a different name? There are already "Reaper Ravagers", the rachni husks. Even they will probably dont show up in the game, it could be little problematic.
I agree, partially opened.
Yeah. If it manages to look good an menacing when open/semi open, and not too strange thanks to the lack of motion, then I'm all for them being somewhat open. Will likely all depend on how they end up looking for each in game.
How hard would it be to make a model for both, and do a quick gameplay demo of what each looks like?
Probably would like to avoid doing the extra work, but it might make the decision easier.
Hmm. On the Ravager name: Reaper Leviathan instead? Still threatening, and a slight reference to the Leviathan of Dis, but also not conflicting with Reaper Ground Troop classifications.
Agreed with this one. Either that or possibly simply naming it the Leviathan of Dis. There's no information on it's exact size and it's stated at being about a billion years old, so it's not been around for awhile. And it apparently indoctrinated "most of the [Dis] system" giving a hint that it's capabilities are at least a little greater than the average Reaper.
For reference: Masseffect.wikia.com
Hey man, we appreciate the hard work. Mod is gunna be greeeaat!
I am bit confuse with C.A.R.E package. Is that weapon replace super weapon such as Novaith Cannon in vanilla Sins?
I hope research branches work with the AI in Rebellion. For whatever reason the developers did not take this approach and instead when with 3 new Player entities. This is one area we will need to investigate to see if a) it's supported and b) the AI doesn't fart on it.
Other than that supporting two different Titan types in a single faction has been confirmed to work.
- Are the Reaper arms going to be closed or partially open?
You guys can vote on that, the one with the most upvotes and decent arguments why will be done.
Could it be possible to make arms so that they would be open and reaper would close them when it is going to jump and open them again when it arrives to its destination? :)
Will reapers have trade stations? It seems like they wouldn't be very open to trade and I can understand it not being in the mod, but I can also see for keeping it in mod for the games sake, maybe like a transport station? Idk.
Thanks
We have plans.
Tsar Bomba was 50 megatons
I say partially open, as the arms being entirely open would be dramatic but not appeal in a "realistic" sense, while having them closed would be boring/Melodramatic and would take away from their original design of "squids". Partially open would 1) Look cinematic in battle , 2) Provide a reason of it still being able to fire beams , 3) Still give the impression of a squid , and 4) Allow the Reaper faction to keep one its' most iconic designs.
I can imagine the reaper arms like from icon of this mod. Looks more normal
I'm confused. The Tsar Bomba was detonated and did not destabilize the ecosystem of the earth, so if the CARE package is the equivalent of the Tsar Bomba, why would IT destabilize a planet?
hey ive been playing for a little while and cant seem to assign points to my cap ships abilities, what up with that?