Mod Overview news

Greetings fans and infidels,

So we have come a long way so far, and progress has been wonderful. We have been very happy to receive all the community support and have been very happy amongst the team to be Free Releasing our content to help support this modding community. EAW/FOC is one of the greatest games to mod, easy to learn, and easy to modify, the amount of tutorials and usable material found on the internet is incredible, and we are happy to have reached a point in development where we can now serve as a modding resource and learning center for everyone to learn or enhance their own modding skills. By offering our models, we hope to be able to to encourage modding in many others, saving on the countless hours and frustrations that can be brought about by using the old modding program version of 3dsMax8/9 which has notoriously plagued and hindered the advancement of many other mods. We hope that we can inspire people to take modding up as a hobby, to be creative, and use our knowledge and assets to create newer and better ideas to help expand this community. More mods and ideas benefit everyone. The sharing of knowledge and assets by others is what has allowed us to be so successfully over the past 5 years, and as we now proceed to the completion of our project, we feel it is only right to return the favor and give back. If people such as Warb_Null and Evillejedi had not been so generous initially, we would have never been able to get off the ground, and now we wish to carry on that tradition for not just EAW/FOC, but for any modding group for any game that wishes to use our Star Wars material. Our fans patronage is what drives us, and we hope our generosity can drive others.

So this is what we are about:

After years of watching the original Filefront EAW modding community crumble into decline due to competition, ego arguing and even attempted sabotage by some, I (Burntstrobe) started to gather together up and coming talent found within the community that was having a hard time getting the help and notoriety they deserved. Our team slowly grew from 1, to 3, to 5, to 10, 15 and so forth. We formed the Vong Project: a collection of talented individuals ranging from coders, model makers, artists to lore experts and all-round good minded friendly people who all shared the same passion for Star Wars, the desire to work together, learn and help others and collaborate to showcase our talents to create a mod that not only does homage to the authors of the New Jedi Order series of novels, but to also become a showcase and preservation of all the great original lore and content that made Star Wars so endearing to its hardcore fans who have kept it alive during the years. We aim to bring the novels to life, to create a visually realistic RTS gaming experience that expands greatly upon the original game by providing a deep knowledge of Star Wars facts, new units and new game mechanics and to create an RTS gaming experience that delivers upon all the 4x Elements that fans have yearned for years and are so often disappointed by commercial gaming companies. We have high ambitions, but we are confident that what we are developing is sure deliver on all marks.

The Goal: To Bring the Novels to LIFE.

With Disney's announcement to do away with the Expanded Universe, we create our project to keep the EU alive for all to continue to enjoy. We are on a mission to recreate the story of the Yuuzhan Vong War, a 4 year war taking place 25 years after Episode IV a New Hope, that tore the Star Wars Universe apart, bringing about the return of the Sith and transitioning to the Legacy Era of Star Wars. Our mod will include the stories of the New Jedi Order, and the following Swarm War which occurred 36 years after the Battle of Yavin (episode IV). To create this gaming experience, we are developing an embedded Campaign into the Galactic Conquest portion of the EAW/FOC game. Our mod will not have a true campaign, and skirmish missions are to be considered only after the final Galactic Conquest is created. The Galactic Conquest will be a massive 120 planet battle (https://media.moddb.com/images/groups/1/7/6837/galaxymap_copy3.jpg) that will have an embedded campaign coded into it, so that players will be guided along a path of play that follows the events that occurred in the novels. So, if you have read the novels (which we highly recommend), any event you have read of significant importance will mostly likely occur in this mod.


Factions:

The mod will be based around 3 factions, telling the story from 3 unique points of view:

The Galactic Alliance - the struggle to recreate a new government and unite the Galaxy after the years of corruption and decline of the New Republic government in order to save the Galaxy.

The Yuuzhan Vong - a religiously fanatical race that deemed all mechanical technology to be blasphemy due to the destruction of their home world by 2 sentient robotic species. The Yuuzhan Vong have fled their galaxy and traveled across the cosmos to finally arrive at the Star Wars galaxy which has been foretold to be their new chosen home by their Gods and prophecies.

The Hutt Empire - a corrupt criminal empire which has outlived any ruling government, the Hutts firmly believe that their malicious methods of corruption and coercion is what has actually kept the galaxy alive and thriving throughout the rise and fall of various governments, and now in the ruins of the New Republic, they see their chance to rightfully emerge and declare their rule over the Galaxy.

We will be creating our own lore to fill in the many gaps and plot holes that occurred over the New Jedi Order series of books. To create a full mod, we not only have to follow the story of the Vong War, but also create story for an entire Galaxy to fully support the tales from all 3 perspectives.


Gameplay and Mechanics:

With the embedded campaign into Galactic Conquest, we are striving to develop a gaming experience unlike any other. The mod will play out over 5 tech periods, which represent the 4 years of the Vong War, and the 5th period representing the Swarm War. During the fall of the New Republic, the sectors of the galaxy became divided and reverted back to their localized sectoral governments (https://www.moddb.com/mods/yuuzhan-vong-at-war/features/faction-list). While playing as the GA, the main fleet of the GA was the 5th Fleet (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/New_Republic_Fifth_Battle_Group), which after the fall of the New Republic, stayed under loyal command to Cal Omas (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Cal_Omas) and the Jedi. The 5th Fleet was a technologically advanced fleet which proved to be far superior to the Empire, but shown many weaknesses to Vong weaponry. The GA player will be required to reunite the Galaxy in order to gain access to varying different ships which have different abilities and strengths to combat the Vong, such as the firepower of the Empire's Star Destroyers, the incredibly armored and shielded Mon Calamari Cruisers, the fast and maneuverable Corellian stike ships and the large armored hangar ships of Sullust. While playing as the Hutt, the Hutts do not start off with a strong initial fleet, but must seek out the aid of governments that are turning against the corrupt New Republic Government. The Hutts will have the opportunity to hire pirates and mercenaries, and coerce the sectoral governments through bribery or force to join their crusade to return true order to the galaxy. The Vong will play the most different, for they must seek out different types of environments in order to grow their organic weapons, but may also recruit forces for their secretly funded Peace Brigade forces. We aim to break the generalized and simplistic view that everything is either Empire or Rebel, for a true universe is much more complex than that. Ships will be known by their manufactures, and just like any business, weapons may be sold to anyone willing to pay, whether it be the GA, the Hutts, or the Vong funded Peace Brigade. We hope this delivers a richer experience, allowing players to become more aware of the strengths and weaknesses of each subfaction of the mod.

The division of subfactions in the mod will create a new level of tactical gameplay not seen in any previous EAW mod. Each subfaction will have unique strengths and weaknesses that the player will need to learn. Imperial ships are heavy armored with incredible firepower, but are generally weak shielded and are few in supply. Mon Calamari are slow moving and heavily armored and shielded, carry sufficient fighters, and feature weaker powered but longer range weapons. Corellians are the fastest, and they excel the most at anti-fighter tactics, but their ships are weak armored. Bothans utilize more missiles and torpedoes but lack fighters and heavy weapons while Mandalorians feature superior armor and non-energy based weaponry while Sullustians have incredible fighter loads but lack heavy firepower and larger ships. In addition, all the non-vong ships feature the use of the same weapons on all the different ships, with each weapon type having a different range, damage and fire rate. This will provide a need for the player to constantly be adjusting their attack strategies, for if the player loses the planets of the Mon Cals or the Corellians, they will need to adjust their battle tactics according to whichever other factions they make alliances with. We hope this constantly evolving system of combat tactics provides an unprecedented strategic experience for the player, and with the addition of ship building caps for every unit (only so many buildable ships of each type), the player's experience will never become stale or repetitive.

Diplomacy

With all the different subfactions, Wariscool has developed an ingenious Sectoral Diplomacy system for each of the Subfactions. The player will not only need to explore the galaxy and expand through conquest, but must also rely on forming alliances with the different subfactions in order to acquire the needed weapons to combat the other 2 factions. Each sector will work on a 4 tier diplomacy scale where through mini-missions and purchasable upgrades that sector will become an Alliance of your faction, thereby granting use of its most powerful weapons. For example, the Mandalorians are mercenaries who align themselves with all 3 factions. At a low level diplomacy, Mandalorian sector worlds will offer build discounts and resource bonuses. At a level 3 diplomacy, the Mandalorians will deploy defense fleets at their sector worlds to assist in defense. At a level 4 diplomacy, an alliance will be founded, and the Mandalorians will share their most powerful technologies such as the Darasuum Morut (https://www.moddb.com/mods/yuuzhan-vong-at-war/images/darasuum-morut-class-dreadnaught#imagebox) to help turn the tide of the War. Diplomacy will be a vital component for all 3 factions to use in order to successfully conquer the other 2 factions.

Galactic Conquest Map

In addition to the creation of a new user interface, the galaxy map will be subdivided into sector components to easily show the different factions. We will also be introducing a new level of tactical gameplay to the Galacic Map level of the the Galactic Conquest game. In addition to moving fleets and building units, we will be introducing a form of mini-game where the player will be able to move around various heroes and minor heroes to gather intelligence and counter the enemies offensive tactics. Much like how in the original EAW game, the player had the ability to move smugglers to steal credits, bounty hunters to kill fleet commanders and spies to reveal fleet movements, we will be expanding upon this with additional special characters and unique abilities. We will have Ambassadors, Warlords, Bounty Hunters, Smugglers, Jedi, Pirates, Vong Priests, Praetoriates and Shapers. Each will have unique abilities to give building and resource bonuses, assassinate others, spy or allow the creation of unique units. This constant movement of major and minor heroes will be a game amongst itself in addition to the conquering of the galaxy. Heroes will respawn, but minor heroes will be lost forever if they are killed.

And yet there is still so much more......

We have come a long way so far, and the team is hard at work to bring everything together. While all the above sounds impressive in theory, what is even more impressive is that we have already figured most of it out and have much of the code already developed. There is a lot happening with this mod, and we are hard at work to develop it all. We are hoping to have the Space portion of the mod finished by the end of 2016, and finishing land by 2017.

We kindly ask that you follow along with our progress, and give us cheer and support as we work tirelessly to accomplish all this. We are a dedicated team, but this is also a side hobby. We know the community is very excited to see our work, but we are not paid for our efforts, and we still have to work jobs, or go to school, or take care of our families... and sometimes get sleep.

PLEASE DO NOT ASK FOR A RELEASE DATE.

This is our biggest aggravation, for we work as hard as we possibly can, to create a truly unique experience of the highest standard. We ask our patrons to also remind others and new fans to NOT ASK ABOUT A RELEASE DATE also. We make this mod freely for the community, and in return ask the community to support us and remind others that THE MOD WILL BE FINISHED WHEN IT IS FINISHED.

There is a lot more coming and a lot I still did not have time to mention (such as land combat, unique new ship hardpoints, destroyable asteroids and planets, black hole weapons sacrificial ceremony pits and mutated slave creatures), but we will get to it all in time. We hope that this mod will continue to be a community center for all Star Wars modding and discussion, and welcome you to our project as we share our development experience with you.

Welcome to the Vong Project, your patronage is what drives us, we strive to create a masterpiece for all to enjoy.

Thank you,

Team Yuuzhan Vong at War