Faction concept: Sky Council

SpaceJunk · Post by **SpaceJunk** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 1:44 am

I don't have time nor enough modeling experience to make a full faction, but I wanted to share this just in case it inspires someone who can. (These models I did are very poor and very very simple.)

The theme would be a faction that sheltered and expanded in the atmospheres of the outer Solar System, superb at storing he3 and generating energy, but a bit uneven when they fight and exploit resources in open space. Though they aren't bad at researching, they have to make an effort to adapt their ships. Certain technologies can't be brought from home and require mining and technological expansion.

They wouldn't have much access to heavy elements in their floating cities, so their ships and stations would be light and made of bulky composites. They would be easy to repair, and they would be optimized against very light damage (i.e. blizzards and supersonic storms), and disruption (they resist heavy lightning), and vulnerable to heavy particle damage. They would start without particle guns, though they would have some faction specific energy guns.

Their missiles would have an excellent MPG and, free of turbulences, their targetting would be one of the best. Unfortunately, without a lot of experience crafting metal shells, the faction would be generally poor at missile damage.

Their tanks would store lots of fuel at high pressure, and the careful mass distribution would make their small ships very responsive to the thrusters that would replace the flaps. On the other hand, their small engines would tend to burn inefficiently without aerodynamics, and the faction would start without proper boosters since they lack good materials for thermal insulation. Heavy ships would lose the agility bonus due to the structural limitations of composites, though by then they would already enjoy the full advantages of their energy dissipating shields.

Their signature would be poor without the cloud cover, but since their hull is already nanoengineered, they would be able to research and fit a variety of cloaks.

Stations, which would inherit a lot of technology from the floating cities, would be equipped with powerful sensors. That would make their small ships somewhat short-sighted, specially the underdeveloped light scouts they would start with.

Their bases would build slowly and have weak hulls. Unlike Giga, they would spend as much as they can in shielding. Their supremacy path (carbonaceous) would be better at the beggining and the tactical path (silicon) would better at the mid game, tough once they learned to harness expansion (uranium) they would be able to produce some devastating technology.

Broodwich · Post by **Broodwich** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 1:47 am

made you a teleport model

Death3D · Post by **Death3D** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 2:56 am

Sounds like a slower expanding Dreg.

beeman · Post by **beeman** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 3:54 am

Broodwich wrote:QUOTE (Broodwich @ Dec 6 2009, 07:47 PM) made you a teleport model

Brood, is this a real model? It kicks ass! The lights are amazing! I always think this is what Allegiance REALLY needs...a facelift...you know, MORE COWBELL. Don't get me wrong, it is the best game I have ever played...but the graphics are quite lacking. I posted a thread a while ago basically asking why it is that the graphics are mediocre. My understanding of the answer I got (and I could be waaay off here) is the lighting model itself was subpar. Anyways, If I were king of Allegiance I would devote R6 to

1) Fixing bugs

2) Totally redoing all models or the various graphics engines to make this baby pure eye candy.

If this has an impact on gameplay due to someone running a circa 1990 graphics card - I say update your friggin' box. All the advertising in the world could not draw new players as effectively as making this game visually irresistible.

Easy for me to say since I wouldn't be putting in the hours...well...I'll tell you what. When I get my new PC built (I had to RMA my motherboard due to a bad PCI-E slot) I'll get Blender going and I'll volunteer to help.

Fishy wants COWBELL!!!

Camaro · Post by **Camaro** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 5:36 am

That would be from Mass Effect

Bacon_00 · Post by **Bacon_00** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 6:40 am

I don't think we have a dev team willing to put the time necessary to re-do alleg's graphics in any kind of large scale makeover. We do have hi-res texture packs, which make the game look a few years newer, but aside from that fishbone is talking about a full scale graphics engine overhaul. I know next to nothing about video game engines, but I'd imagine that this would require a substantial amount of effort =P

That, and I think Alleg thrives as a "any PC can play this" free download. If people were to start beefing up the graphics, you start limiting the # of people who can play (many current players included).

And Brood was a lead dev on Mass Effect. Bow down.

Camaro · Post by **Camaro** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 6:44 am

Teh Bacon.

Let us work together, make 1 model, of Bacon. Then we will make a bacon faction where all the ships are merely different sizes of the bacon (and perhaps different colors).

It will be glorious.

Adaven · Post by **Adaven** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 4:43 pm

Bacon wrote:QUOTE (Bacon @ Dec 7 2009, 02:40 AM) I don't think we have a dev team willing to put the time necessary to re-do alleg's graphics in any kind of large scale makeover. We do have hi-res texture packs, which make the game look a few years newer, but aside from that fishbone is talking about a full scale graphics engine overhaul. I know next to nothing about video game engines, but I'd imagine that this would require a substantial amount of effort =P

That, and I think Alleg thrives as a "any PC can play this" free download. If people were to start beefing up the graphics, you start limiting the # of people who can play (many current players included).

And Brood was a lead dev on Mass Effect. Bow down.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure any graphics engine upgrades that actually get done will have to be able to be turned off for those with older systems. R5 for instance doesn't hurt older systems (except for bugs being worked on) but improves performance a lot for more modern systems. So much in fact that in addition to texture packs, we could also start making high-poly model packs.

Deathrender · Post by **Deathrender** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 4:50 pm

Camaro wrote:QUOTE (Camaro @ Dec 7 2009, 02:44 AM) Teh Bacon.

Let us work together, make 1 model, of Bacon. Then we will make a bacon faction where all the ships are merely different sizes of the bacon (and perhaps different colors).

It will be glorious.

I volunteer to help with the consumption of un-needed models

SpaceJunk · Post by **SpaceJunk** » Mon Dec 07, 2009 6:28 pm

fishbone wrote:QUOTE (fishbone @ Dec 7 2009, 04:54 AM) 2) Totally redoing all models

It would be more sensible to scrap all factions but 3, and use a limited set of ship models with some variants and extended technological steps. Otherwise it's unfeasible.