Ok, I'm done with my exams so back to posting
Fury road thoughts and balance issues.
0. I like the palace specials for the Fallout factions, but they aren't particularly well balanced yet, partly because many of the resources do nothing. I like the concept, but you need to make iron (steel), oil, airbases etc. actually do something. If there are some *buildable* units that require these, it would help. So, you can never build Gunships, but you can build light fighter planes that can bombard; and the Lexington has the resource for these for free (and earlier than the other civs) and maybe gives a +2 free xp for newly created air units (it has some aircraft left in the decks, and maybe some flight simulators).
My idea for those advanced pre-war units is to be buildable in cities, especially if Deon plans to cover restoration of pre-war tech with later eras of his tech tree. That's why I think depletable resources would be fun. In the beginning eras, you would rely on discovered depots, airbases and caches to build units, but it would not be a guaranteed source of units in the long run. Later, when you discover some advanced techs, you could build units with some undepleteable sources. For example, Uranium would replace Energy Cells when you discover how to make them, and if you have a tech to build tanks you could build them from Scrap Metal instead of having to rely on scavenging Ruined Depots.
I'd also make the palaces unbuildable; it just doesn't make sense that you can relocate your Vault.
It would also be cool to get individual graphics for these; in particular to watch the city slowly growing up around a Vault entrance, a la Vault City.
That's absolutely what I intended when I made those palaces, it's just that vanilla XML doesn't offer a way to do it, so it will have to be either a "Never" tech like in FfH or some dll editing.
1. I'd like to see a distinction between salvager/preserver factions (Brotherhood of Steel, Reavers, Enclave, etc.) and tribal or reconstructive factions. In particular, I'd like the former to be like the current factions are; low tile yields from most improvements, heavily dependent on settling near city ruins.
Whereas I'd like to see the latter have better tile improvements, and less to gain from salvaging the ashes of the old cities, and so more incentive to build up in the wilderness.
That's a good idea but it will have to be very carefully implemented because of balance issues. Some civs could end up having much easier time than others. I've also considered some varying starting units for different civs. It would be fun if the Enclave could start on a small island (Poseidon Oil Rig) and with a transport ship and/or vertibirds so that they can expand inland, for example.
This can be implemented by changing the tile yields from particular improvements/features , and providing some slightly divergent tech-trees with different units. So while the brotherhood are building small squads of troops with guns, the Beastlords are building Deathclaws and radscorpions, the tribals are building armies of hunters and cavalry, and the Pitt guys are building hordes of armored swordsmen and maybe knights and such, and then vehicles.
I'd also like to see some interesting mechanics, maybe driven by a unique tech for various factions. So; Slavers get a better slavery mechanic which can capture units and maybe create slave workers (and maybe you can settle the slave workers in cities as great people that provide +1 hammers). Beastlords and tribals could get the ability to capture animals and tame them (or the FFH Barbarian leader trait that has peace with the barbs). Ghouls and supermutants could get bonuses rather than penalties from radiation. The brotherhood could eventually get some Paladins in power armor (powerful units with a small national cap).
I've had this idea as well although no time to post it. Here's what I though of so far:
1) Reavers can have Capture Animals promotion like in FfH
2) Super Mutants can't build non-vehicle units and have their cities grow. Instead, they capture Slaves when they win a battle. Then, they can take those slaves to their capital or a city with FEV Vats, their unique building, and turn that units into a fighting Super Mutant unit, workers, settlers or a population level for that city.
3) Ghouls would probably be the most complicated. My idea is to introduce Radiation numeric property for units, similar to Age in Fall Further. Units would be able to move through Fallout fields, but their Radiation would increase. At certain levels of Radiation, unit randomly either dies or turns into a Ghoul unit. There would also be a Civic which defines a civilizations view on mutants, with options like "Shoot on sight", "Slaves", "Tolerated", "Equal Citizens" and "Mutants Only", or something like that. When a unit turns into a Ghoul unit, an event would fire for owning civ with choices depending on this civic, but covering the options of keeping the unit, killing it or exiling it. Of course, the kept Ghoul unit could always go feral and turn Barbarian. An exiled unit either turns feral and starts roaming the wasteland like as a Barbarian unit, or it stays sane as and joins the Ghouls civ. From that point, the Ghouls would have similar choices as Super Mutants would have with a captured Slave unit. Also, the Ghouls should be able to have a promotion similar to the Reaver Capture Animals, but working only on Feral Ghouls.
That's all the exotics for now, but I guess almost every civ should have some interesting mechanics. For example, there could be a Slave specialist available to those with Slavery civic. Some factions might have Sprawling trait from FfH, although I would definitely like to give it a different name. For example, the Brotherhood, the Vault City and the Enclave could have a very limited number of very advanced cities and then build bunkers which would be like Kuriotate settlements in FfH, built only to spread culture and thus gain control over territory and resources.
2. The tech-tree is far too short. 26 techs in total?
I'd like to see more techs, and deeper and more distinct eras. I'd suggest:
i) Survival era. Think of the tribal villagers from Fallout, or Mad Max, or whatever. Very low tile yields, only a few cities.
Suggested Units: survivors, tribal warriors (melee unit with combat bonus vs animals), crossbows, lancers, horse archers, catapults.
Maybe something of the herbal medicines that you get in fallout; herbalist building, etc.
ii) Early fire-arms (small arms)/scavenging.
Suggested units: light small arms, motorbikes, utility trucks, horse cavalry with guns (I can't believe this is missing!), machineguns.
Reveal the tier3 resources (munitions, depots, air strips).
Scrap yards and salvaging.
New govt forms like feudalism and slavery.
iii) Late fire-arms, heavy weapons, vehicles, early aircraft (think crop dusters + light weapons, treat like fighters from vanilla, and eventually helicoptors).
Flamers, RPGs, miniguns, jeeps, oil refineries, electricity, small factories
Civic types like democracy, totalitarianism (better than police state IMO), communism
Some means of reducing city maintenance costs (like vanilla courthouse).
iv) Power armor, later aircraft (tbirds), energy weapons, robots, nukes.
Have Vault resources that are revealed by techs in this phase, that could have been anywhere (they need not have been in city ruins). These are required to build power armor soldiers and energy weapons soldiers and the like (different types for each? or different units available to each faction? - brotherhood gets power armor, reavers get energy weapons, enclave gets both?)
And at the very top, some manufacturing plants that are able to produce some of the lower level spawnable vehicles, and some happiness buildings that let cities grow a little larger.
If I understood correctly, Deon is currently working on that, and I don't want to meddle in it until we have his first draft. If we all start working on a tech tree at the same time we might end up with completely different things. Better to have one man make the first draft and then enhance it with suggestions from others.
3. Rethink the heroes. These are quite unbalanced, particularly Tank Girl. They are often powerful and come very early, they start with a ton of free promotions and very high strength, and they are very random in getting them. I don't mind having some amusing pop-culture references, but these shouldn't be game-changing super-warriors.
I'd suggest trying the FFH hero system, where heroes are basically ordinary units that keep getting free xp over time, so level up to be quite powerful.
Also, as a rule of thumb; heroes should be no more than 1-2 strength points more powerful than regular units, and start with at most 1-2 free promotions.
I completely agree. I've even collected some ideas for the heroes from Fallout games. Here's what I've got so far:
Brotherhood: Star Paladin Cross, Sentinel Sarah Lyons (or Lyons Pride as a unit), Paladin Tristan
The Enclave: Frank Horrigan, K-9
Ghouls: Lenny, Charon
Slavers: Vic, Clover
Super Mutants: Fawkes, Melchior
Rivet City: Jericho
NCR: Ian, Tycho, Dogmeat, Robodog
Vault City: Cassidy
Tribals: Goris (or maybe it's better for Reavers?)
Hmm, maybe Robodog should be a robotic unit and K-9 a hero derived from it? Dogmeat would be derived from normal dogs.
4. I really hate the fuel mechanic. Its just boring micromanagement that the AI handles really badly; it doesn't know how to stack all its vehicles together and refuel them together, and it doesn't seem to know how to not waste fuel by moving its vehicles around all the time.
There have got to be other ways to make vehicles feel special and post apocalyptic without micromanagement + weak AI. If possible, it would be great to get the AI spawn rate of high-end vehicles depend on the difficulty level, so at high difficulty levels they get more stuff.
One of the key characteristics of Fallout setting is that fossil fuels are depleted. Vehicle units should required Energy Cells resource to build, later replaced by Uranium.
5. I'd like to extend the idea of the "ruined world" to exploit. I like the city ruins and their various resources, but I'd suggest extending this with a more . Have scrap metal resources that junk yards can be built on. Have more bonus resources not on city tiles that are revealed by particular techs, and just give improved tile yields. You don't necesarily have to build an improvement on them. Like an old powerplant that gives +1 hammers +1 commerce, that gets revealed by an electricity tech (you finally have the know-how to get it up and running again).
I've already implemented such Scrap Metal resource in my installation of Fury Road but I didn't have the time to test or share it. My idea for ruins exploration is to have Unexplored Ruins feature that looks the same as or very similar to Explored Ruins feature. Each Unexplored Ruins could be explored like dungeons in FfH. When exploration is finished, they'd turn into Explored Ruins which would function exactly the same as current Ruins. Of course, Unexplored Ruins would give the same yield and defense bonus as Explored Ruins.
6. I'd change the unit classes slightly. I'd think about taking out mounted units (and make them melee or ranged), merging wheeled and utility trucks (not much need for a separation?) and merging siege and ranged. These are relatively unimportant suggestions though.
I'd also consider making flamers have the offensive bonus vs ranged and melee units, but not a defensive bonus. As it is, they beat everything except jeeps, humvees, lancers, tanks and artillery.
I'd also think about making lancers get a bonus vs ranged units, and definitely adding another melee unit to the game, so that melee isn't just for suckers.
I'd probably add another offensive infantry at automatic weapons; just machineguns alone feels too little for the tech.
Mounted units have absolutely no place in Fallout. As for Utes, I think David's idea was to give them access to unique promotions such as Mounted Gun. You can't mount a gun on a vehicle that already has some sort of weapon(s).
I've also had another idea about units but I'm not sure if it isn't too much micromanagement. My idea is to build infantry units based on armor (Power Infantry, Combat Infantry), and then you scavenge or produce weapons for the unit to use like equipment in FfH. There could also be special types of damage to which some units could be more resistant. For example, you would produce Power Infantry with starting strength of 10. Then, you could produce or scavenge Energy Weapons which they could take for +5 Energy strength.
7. Civics need a redesign, they're too much like vanilla, there's a fair amount that could be done here.
I absolutely agree. I've toyed with the idea of values instead of religions like in Final Frontier, but then I realized, and Deon agrees, that there are enough religions in Fallout setting to have normal Civ4 religions in the modmod. Values could then be implemented as a civic (Power, Wealth, Science, etc).
Here's what I managed to gather on religions:
Children of the Atom: Allows a civ to turn their units into Ghouls, similar to Octopus Overlords turning units into Drowns in FfH.
Children of the Cathedral: Allows limited recruitment of Super Mutant units (Nightkin) and increases relations with Super Mutants civ.
Followers of the Apocalypse: Gives bonus to science instead of whatever default religion bonus turns out to be for the modmod.
The Hubologists: Gives gold bonus instead of whatever default religion bonus turns out to be for the modmod.
The Union: May not adopt Slavery civic. May free slaves and turn them into workers or settlers.
Old Religion: Remnant of pre-war religions. Default religion without any special boni or penalties.
I also did some research about the Guilds. Here's the ideas for now:
Talon Company (military boni)
Water Merchants (something with water resources)
Reilly's Rangers (exploration boni)
The Regulators (Safety boni)
Friendly Lending Company (something like interest on the current wealth)
Far Go Traders
Crimson Caravan
I've also thought about families from New Reno as guilds, but maybe it would be too much and maybe there should be a civic for civs to select which New Reno family or other criminal syndicate, if any, to support.
I'd also add some unique features like those in FfH. Many modern world wonders located in real world USA could be used as unique features for Fallout. For example, the civs could discover and settle near White House, Statue of Liberty, Hoover Dam, Mount Rushmore, Washington Monument, etc.
) resource if you have brahmin. Mushrooms can be turned in something else.
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