Garrison Nomad

Well, after a long time away from bfme2 I decided to reinstall the sucker on my laptop and give it a go. I installed bt2dc, since in my opinion it's the most balanced version of the game, and played a few matches. I must admit, it was a lot of fun. But there were things I didn't like, too. Which, as it often does, motivated me to formulate my own idea for a mod.

Here are the high points.

1- Formula Factions
I loved the diversity of every faction in bfme1. I loved how you could play Rohan using cavalry exclusively, and I loved the massive wall of orcs with only trolls and siege weapons for Mordor that could destroy all opposition with leadership-fueled awesomeness and the straight-up BAMFness of the Nazgul. Basically, I loved the diversity. And who shouldn't? After all, diversity is what really propelled games like Starcraft to greatness, coupled with fine-tuned balancing and incredibly anal patch-support. But Bfme2, a decent game in its own right, really lacks diversity. Every faction really has a lot of the same food with a slightly different flavor. Swordsmen, pikemen, archers, cavalry, siege, and heroes, with a few variations here and there. I flipping hate this. While some things are certainly common to Tolkien's style of medieval warfare, they shouldn't be clear-cut all across the board. Which is why I like units like half-trolls, ents, spiderlings, bfme1 elven warriors, and Haradrim lancers. They're all more of the same hack'n'slash goodness served up a little differently. Sure, games like Sins of a Solar Empire take the whole "every faction gets this" thing to the extreme, but even there every faction has such a diverse flavor from upgrades and such that you focus more on individual advantage, rather than cookie-cutter roles.

2- Units replacing units
RotWK was terrible. It added more of the same and destroyed the balance, and really only added old models out of Worldbuilder to serve irrelevant roles in the first place C'mon, we've all played Finalmoria. Black orcs? 2004, man. Mordor with cavalry? Psh, no. Anything relevantly added to the dwarves or goblins? Nope. I hate the concept of building a weaker unit early on, only to be replaced by a stronger unit later. True, your army should diversify and get stronger as you tech up, but units in general shouldn't replace other units. Bfme2 did a fair job with this, but I'd like to take it further. No half-troll swordsmen, no black orcs, no Rohan spearmen. Just units with specific strengths and weaknesses.

3- Bases should be BASES!
This one's not so abstract. When you fall back to your base, your base should be, oh, I don't know, relatively SAFE. That doesn't necessarily mean walls all around it and hordes of archers raining barbed death down on all who dare encroach upon your sacred ground, but it does mean that one battering ram with a few guys with bows and swords shouldn't be able to topple down the whole damn place. This is something I really like about Nazgul's Special Extended Edition, but in the purpose of what I'm aiming for I wouldn't go quite as far as he did. In fact, the game I'd make would be closer to vanilla bfme1 in pace, but further away in levels of awesome. I'd like to see a build radius put around fortresses that buffs nearby allied buildings significantly, and overall I'd to see more rocks flying through the air that don't topple a building in two or three hits. However, those outlying farms would die just as fast as they do in vanilla, so be wary. I'd like to make sentry towers much stronger on their own, but keep them vulnerable to things like rams and catapults. I'd like to put a motivation on forward outposts, too, which I'd implement into the AI build plots as well.

Those are the high points, but a lot of the individual faction diversity would come from pitching ideas around. I don't want to add a whole buttload of new units, and I might even take a few things out. If this mod ever happened, the initial changes would purely be in the stats. However, I do have quite a few ideas for the Goblins and Dwarves particularly, since I've pondered about them the most, and since they're my favorite factions. =P I'd really like to diversify the upgrades beyond just Forged blades and heavy armor, and even add a few new ones as well. Finally, I'd like to cut some of the crap out. A lot of the units in the game are just plain ugly, and I'd like to see them reskinned and redone. But that's just icing on the cake, and naturally would come with time.

This mod would definitely draw a lot on the lore, but it's more centered around competition than anything else. I want to make a mod that does way more justice to the competitiveness of the game, and forces the player to pick their side, learn it, and kick some serious ass. No new campaigns, no new fluffy units that only exist for the purpose of being fluffy. Just pure gameage.

As for myself, I know my way around finalbig and have some coding experience from college, but most of this idea is centered around the math of everything, which just about anyone can mod. The new stuff, as I've mentioned, would be much lower in priority. I'd limit the number of placeholders since the number of units per faction isn't going to change much and simply load the values into existing units and change the unit itself later.

So, if it's relatively easy, why don't I just shut up and do it myself? Because I need input. I don't want to make something based solely on my own judgment, because frankly, my judgment sucks. Plus, the new stuff gives me and anyone else interested the opportunity to flex their artistic muscles.

That's about it. If anyone's interested, I'll post what I have for the Goblins and Dwarves, but if not, I'll do absolutely nothing. Well, not completely nothing. There's eating, sleeping and classes. But ehh, you know what I mean. Thanks.