Statistics: Posted by ColonelSheppard — 21 Nov 2012, 10:56

Statistics: Posted by Softly — 21 Nov 2012, 03:27

Statistics: Posted by ColonelSheppard — 21 Nov 2012, 01:16

Brute51 wrote:
Nomads have basically inferior tech than all the other factions. There are several reasons for this. First, space travel is definetely inferior to almost instantanious travel that the gating tech provides (Nomads don't have teleport). Secondly, the Nomads started out as a rather small group (several thousand people maybe, where the UEF has bilions). They're bound to lag behind in the tech area.

I'll show you how this impacts the current Nomads game design.
- No cloaking tech. No radar jamming. No other fancy stuff. Stealth limited only to static stealth field generators (which only exist by public demand)
- The lack of formentioned special abilities compensated (partly) by more 'low tech' abilities such as artillery aid (increases artillery accuracy) and AA missile flares.
- No gateway tech. Support commanders are constructed on the ground and a pilot of flown in (see next item aswell)
- The Nomads 'mothership' puts a device in orbit of a planet for 'surface operations'. This is the 'spaceship' you see hovering above the ACU starting point. The idea is that this thing puts the ACU on the ground at game start. It also constructs the 'head' of the SCU and the T3 artillery orbital gun. Additionally it attacks surface units targetted by some units (T3 orbital command unit, one of the ACU enhancements).

The Nomads are supposed to be aggresive. This is mostly expressed by giving each unit a bit more firepower and a higher rate of fire but less health compared to their counterparts from other factions.


Here is my current view on the Nomads story. I'll just mention the 'head lines' cause I never bothered to write it down.

Nomads birth
The supcom 1 intro tells us that before the UEF existed there was an Earth Empire. In my view of the story the empire periodically moves prisoners and 'trouble makers' to far away planets. At this point gateway tech didn't exist so they used spaceships to get to the planets. Each prisoner transport is escorted by a military (battle)ship. The escort is needed to destroy the prisoner transport in case of an emergency. The journeys are long (1 or 2 years) and boring so the trip provides an excellent opportunity to train recruits (you got to love Earth Empire efficiency!). Ofcourse at some point such a 'relocation' goes wrong and the prisoners aboard the transport riot and eventually gain control the prisoner ship. To the prisoners make it appear everything on the transport ship is ok so they act like nothing is wrong. When the convoy reaches the destination planet the prisoners manage to overpower the escorting ship, which is full of rookies ofcourse so that shouldn't be to hard for hardened criminals.
[Hardened criminals means lots of aggression, etc, which is what we want the Nomads to be.]

The centuries after
Having a common enemy united the prisoners before they overpowered the escorting ship. Now that the common enemy is gone the group falls apart. Groups of Nomads fight each other. Factions arise on the planet and they continuously fight each other. The spaceships are not destroyed but also occupied by a different faction (per ship). They don't dare moving to other planets in fear of being detected and destroyed by the Earth Empire. This goes on for years and years. Meanwhile the Earth Empire falls, the inifinte war starts and the prisoner transport is forgotten.
[Maybe the military ship does move to another planet and is never heard from again (probably destroyed by the EE). It's important that at least 1 ship remains at the planet. Also, centuries of inner fighting helps to explain why the Nomads didn't appear before in the story of Supcom, they minded their own planet.]

Rise of the Nomads
The Nomads have been left alone for a very long time but it's still years before the events of Supcom 1. The Nomads are finally getting somewhat united. A few billion 'Nomads' are spread over the planet, divided over 4 factions. Three factions are on the planet, the other (and smallest) one controlls the spaceships. At this point none of the Nomads people really knows where they came from, their history and the journey is long forgotten.
After years of war the Nomads have grown aggresive and brutal. The war has driven their technology advancements but they've never been interested in gating technology, if they even know it's possible. All research efforts go into better methods of destroying the enemy so mainly weapon technology. Eventually though, the faction controlling the spaceships manages to create new ships that can travel to the outskirts of their solar system and beyond. They're still no match for the Earth Empire battleships, should they exist. Still, they're powerful enough to harras and sometimes destroy UEF, Aeon and Cybran merchant ships. Acts of suddenly disappearing ships (the Nomads leave none alive), radar echoes, etc incite rumours among the UEF (mostly) of space pirates called "Nomads". Neither the UEF nor any of the other factions believe this is a myth and no serious attempt to find these 'pirates' was made.
[Just basic progression in the story]

Nomads United (somewhat)
At some point the Nomad factions unite again to fight their new common enemy, the UEF. I'm not sure how this 'alliance' starts out. It could be that one faction conquers the other 3, or that there is a brilliant person who manages to unite the factions. Or (and I prefer this one), the smallest spacefaring faction just leaves the planet after they learn about their past from their own and conquered merchant ships recovered computer memory. (Or maybe an emergency beacon was deployed by the Earth Empire crew before their ship(s) were taken and the Nomads find it, wahtever).
Somehow they learn how the UEF does their military now, with ACU's and gating (teleporting) I mean. The Nomads start a program to create their own ACU and develop gateway technology (this research fails however).
[In the campaign I'd like to have an initially underpowered ACU + Nomads units. During the first 1-3 missions the Nomads grow increasingly stronger, develop new tech and put up more of a fight in each mission. Also I'm intentionally keeping Nomads people on the Nomads planet incase they're needed for another story, maybe even in Supcom 2 or 3!]

Conquest
At this point the events in Supcom 1 are happening. The UEF is driven from their planets by the Cybran and Aeon. In their wake the Nomads move in and manage to capture former UEF planets which were taken by the Aeon or Cybran, and destroy the remnants. This must all be done somewhat silently to not upset the story of Supcom 1 (a new 'alien' species would certainly cause some commotion). The Nomads reach earth just after Black Sun has been fired, which ends the eternal war but creates a Seraphim wormhole. By the time the Nomads arrive the Seraphim have already wiped out the military resistence from the combined UEF, Cybran and Aeon forces. The Nomads are no match for the Seraphim and they're decimated and forced to retreat.
[The idea here is that the Nomads are always too late to the game, maybe because of the need to actually fly to planets instead of teleporting there. This helps to keep Nomads out of the Supcom 1 story aswell. There is a 2 year gap between the events of Supcom 1 and FA so there's plenty of room for such a story. I'm thinking that having to be silent during this part of the campaign makes some interesting missions.]

What's next?
From here onwards there are 3 possibilies. The Nomads join up with the UEF and Cybran to destroy the Seraphim. This is somewhat hard to believe, making friends with your enemies so soon. Although I guess it makes some sense if they really want to capture earth and not necessarily destroy the other factions. Or the Nomads retreat and fight the other factions on their own, maybe for survival. A third option is that they go back all the way to their home planet and have to struggle to get there. My personal favorite is the second possibility although the first one allows me to integrate the Nomads into the original FA campaign. A fourth possibility would be that the Nomads split up. One group helps the UEF+Cybran alliance, the other half just does their own thing.



In my story I'm not portraying them as very vengeful, just aggressive and that's their way of life. Maybe they're even fighting with honor.
They just want to live and expand like ordinary men. But their society is based on fighting, etc. so for the common people from the UEF they would appear very aggressive.

Statistics: Posted by pip — 20 Nov 2012, 20:50

Statistics: Posted by ColonelSheppard — 19 Nov 2012, 17:43

Statistics: Posted by pip — 18 Nov 2012, 12:55

Statistics: Posted by ColonelSheppard — 16 Nov 2012, 16:23