To be honest, I never really liked the ZC. It always bugged me that their units were always able to take on the dedicated military units of the Empire and Rebellion and win. Thats like the Mob taking on the US Army one-on-one and winning. I mean, sure, they could probably get their hands on some heavy equiptment, but not on a scale to actually compete in a direct confrontation. And certainly not BETTER heavy equiptment.
In this mod, I have tried to let the strength of the ZC units reflect their status as a criminal organization and not as a significant military force. Their higher-quality units are expensive and not always cost-effective versus those of their opponents.
In Patch 3.1, I want to make a few changes to the Consortium in particular. I had intended to make changes to the corruption ability in particular. In the next patch the corruption particle effect for planets in GC will be removed. While this will not fool the computer player, it will make multiplayer between human opponents more interesting, as it will require more attentiveness on the part of the other players to detect a criminal underground on their planets. This is due to the fact that criminal activity is usually difficult to detect.
Another feature that will be changed is the high credit income the ZC gains from corrupted planets. This will be reduced, but the price to sabotage certain critical structures will be reduced to compensate, as it will prove to be just as useful in the long run as the extra cash. If possible, I would also like to allow sabotage of enemy space stations, for a price. This will help to soften enemy defenses for an attack, giving them a much needed edge, as their capital ships will be decently expensive.
While these are the changes I have planned for the ZC as of now, I am open to any suggestions you may have regarding the ZC and how you would want them changed, altered, etc.
Thank you to those who have commented and have offered their suggestions for the mod, your help is appreciated!
Regards,
p*a*t*t*o*n
Sounds great. One thing I might suggest, if I may be so bold, would be to perhaps give the Consortium more droid units to use. Assuming the Galactic conquest maps and main campaign are anything to go off of, they have an abandoned droid factory on Saleucami and an entire transplanted Geonosian colony on Hypori, as well as Geonosis itself. One would assume Zann would have more than one model of droid at his disposal. I know a few mods that add Battle Droids, Super Battle Droids, Lucrehulk Battleships, etc. Thus far few of them have been able to do justice to the droids or the Lucrehulks, though.
Zann Consortium are alot like the Hutts, they spread their criminal activities around and if the Empire or Rebellion would get in the way they would have conflicts. But I think that because the ZC is different from the Hutts in the matter that they have the goal to dominate the Galaxy, that they would be able to get their hands on the funds and materials to combat the Empire and Rebellion head on. They do, for one, have the power of mandal motors, which makes very powerful ships, they can steal Imperial and Rebel technological layouts for ships and produce them, and so on, so I think that the ZC is not too unrealistic in taking on the Empire or Rebellion and being able to win, so dont make the ZC too weak or unbalanced. I suggest that if you dont like the idea of the ZC as a faction you could make them into a purely pirate faction, maybe a pirate alliance or something, maybe the reason they are allied is because the Empire and Rebellion have declared that they will work to eliminate their way of life or something. Units could be really anything, stolen Imperial ships, Rebel Ships, old Mandalorian war ships, Jedi Civil War ships, Clone War ships, for land, the same things such as old droids or something, the possibilities are really only bound to how limited your imagination is.
Technically, since the Zann Consortium's in-game goal of ruling the galaxy is completely un-canon, One could argue that the Consortium has no viable use as a playable faction in Galactic Conquest mode if total domination is the only available option for them. If there was a way to make them have another way of winning by corrupting every world in the galaxy, not necessarily conquering it, that would be cool, but as far as I know that's impossible. I am fairly sure that you could make them a third party player like the Hutts or Black Sun in the original EAW, just make them a considerably greater annoyance and even a threat at times.