Mod theme/mission statement

[skallben]

As an old lover of FFH, I got my old desktop back working and now I look back to FFH of course Now I might be completely blind but I can't seem to find much info on what this particular mod aims to be exactly. I didnt really like Fall Further that much, I thought they added too much too fast so that things didnt implement that well. I liked Orbis a bit but I could not really decide if I preferred it over vanilla. So I got two questions here:

1. What direction is this mod taking; what are the major themes that stand out from vanilla FFH?

2. How is Rife different from Fall Further or Orbis? Now I don't mean you should list 1000 features in tables. What mod is furthest from/closest to vanilla? What are the different approaches to modding FFH if you compare the mods.

3. Do the devs throw in tons of content really fast or rely on more careful implementations?

[Valkrionn]

Originally Posted by skallben

As an old lover of FFH, I got my old desktop back working and now I look back to FFH of course Now I might be completely blind but I can't seem to find much info on what this particular mod aims to be exactly. I didnt really like Fall Further that much, I thought they added too much too fast so that things didnt implement that well. I liked Orbis a bit but I could not really decide if I preferred it over vanilla. So I got two questions here:

1. What direction is this mod taking; what are the major themes that stand out from vanilla FFH?

2. How is Rife different from Fall Further or Orbis? Now I don't mean you should list 1000 features in tables. What mod is furthest from/closest to vanilla? What are the different approaches to modding FFH if you compare the mods.

3. Do the devs throw in tons of content really fast or rely on more careful implementations?

That is a very, very good question, which I have no answer to. RifE doesn't aim to be anything, it just is.

As for your individual questions...

1. Honestly, RifE goes wherever we want it to. That said, some of the major themes thus far (including work behind the scenes for the next patch, so some things may not be implemented yet; Will clearly label these)
   • Enhancing flavor of those civs which have been found lacking.
     • Malakim
     • Doviello
     • Khazad - Dwarven Mines are awesome. 'Nuff said.
     • Grigori - Adventurers are no longer GP, instead they have a separate spawn mechanism; Still incremental, non-random. LOTS of work on them for the next patch, as well.
     • Countless others, these are just the ones that stand out among the 'vanilla' civs in my mind.
   • New civilizations
     • RifE has the most civilizations of any FfH modmod; All FF civs are in, as well as the following:
       • Mechanos - Orbis
       • Legion of D'tesh - My personal favorite, created by Mailbox
       • Frozen - TC01
     • We are also working on several civilizations of our own; As of now, I believe there are 6 at various stages of planning/development, including those Opera brought to the team.
   • New Religions
     • The introduction of the White Hand is a good example here, though it's currently a bit overpowered.
   • Enhanced Leader development
     • Minor/Emergent Leaders
       • Next version this system will be extremely different, well fleshed out, and unique amongst the modmods; Thank Grey Fox for his amazing work, but no, we won't give out details yet.
     • New alignment axis, Lawful-Chaotic; Only modmod to feature this thus far.
   • True "Wild Lands" mechanic
     • This one is NOT implemented as yet, but has been described many times.
     • All barb/animals lairs, dens, whatever, will produce culture for their civ; Same method as forts in both Orbis and RifE.
     • Basically, there will be 3 tiers of barbarians/animals.
       1. Low - Operate as they do now.
       2. Mid - Can not leave their civ's borders on their own; If they manage to get out somehow (Say, you capture/raze a city or lair), they become freely mobile, as with tier 1.
       3. High - These are leashed to their lair, and may not move more than 1 plot from it; They are very strong, and essentially guard their lairs, which spawn Mid-level barbs.
2. I think the first point answered this question, but I should mention that RifE began life as Malakim+, then FFPlus. It is at root an FF modmod, so all features from the most recent version of FF are in (And indeed, some were merged from my previous work; Malakim especially, but Feral as well). We've also merged many things from Orbis... We have most of the capabilities of Orbis, and have merged one of their civilizations (Waiting on the okay for the others :P)... You could almost call RifE an FF/Orbis modmod, though we develop our own material as well.
3. This one is changing; It used to be that I'd throw things in. That is not the case anymore; We've become much more thorough in our implementations. In fact, much of what the version we're working on now is about is updating past work to take new mechanics into account, and increase speed/stability.

Hopefully this is a good enough answer.

[Schwarzbart]

would be nice to have this answear in a place easy to find.

[Swinkscalibur]

perhaps a sticky?

[inuyashasama]

I'd put this all up in the download thread. I had hoped for something similar when I was checking out RifE.

[Valkrionn]

We'll likely be requesting new stickied threads once we release the next version, so I'll make a 'Frequently Asked Questions' thread with this as the initial post then.

[skallben]

Thanks for the thorough reply, Ill give it a go when I got time! Mod on!