Playable races

FiringSquad: What will the main playable races be like in the game?

Adam Isgreen: The three core factions for UaW:EA are very diverse. We’ve tried to create some factions that not only play differently from each other, but from factions that have been done in other RTS games. That’s pretty challenging, as there’s a LOT that’s been done already. “That’s too much like Nod”, “No, that feels like the Zerg”, and a lot of other similar comments were thrown around as we fleshed out our factions.

So first up, we have the Hierarchy. This is the “walking base” faction, which features these massive walking factories that you can customize for offense, defense, support, or a mix of any of those functions. They’re massive in scale and cover any terrain easily (cliffs and deep water doesn’t stop them), making their arrival in an enemy base inevitable. Every walker has hardpoints on both the legs and body for customization. There’s a number of options you have to work with, but you’ve only got a certain number of hardpoints on any one walker, so you need to plan how you want to use them, as one outfitted for production isn’t going to do well on the front lines.

Next, we have Novus, or nanite-based sentient machine race. This is the “multi-tasking” faction, which relies on doing multiple things at once. Key to their use is the flow network, an ever-expanding network for power, unit movement, information, and all kinds of tricky hit-and-run tactics. Being our lightest armored faction, they have a lot of creative ways to manipulate themselves and the enemy through technologies like mirage, cloaking, attack redirection, computer viruses, and other finesse skills. They also expand like crazy, so unless you keep them in check, they’ll cover the board quickly and be very difficult to get rid of.

Finally, we have The Masari, the race that perhaps influenced a lot of human development back when we were still primitive. Ancient space-farers that hid below our oceans centuries ago, the Masari are a very powerful race that relies on research upgrades in order to fight against the other two factions. They’re the “range vs. defense” faction, in that they can have artillery-like range in one mode (light), or excellent defense in the other (dark), but can never have both at the same time. They can be played the most defensively of any faction we have in the game at present. We’ve found that many people that like to build big bases usually use the Masari. They have fewer units than the other factions, but their units have a lot of power and some amazing combination attacks between them.

FiringSquad: In terms of resource management what can you tell us about the game's plans for this area?

Adam Isgreen: We’ve moved away from a pile-based resource system, since it didn’t make a lot of sense for Earth and our game’s alien factions. Instead, you could say everything on the map is a resource for one faction or another.

The Hierarchy can pick up just about everything not nailed down for resource. This includes scrap, houses, cars, cows, enemy units and structures, and even humans. There’s instant-grab items like humans and cows, and then there’s items that they’ll harvest credits from as they destroy them, such as enemy units or any structures. They utilize these walking vacuum cleaners called Reapers that you can either direct to resources or turn them into auto-gather and let them methodically move around the map picking everything up. Of course, the reapers are stupid and don’t know value, so you may lose out on quick high-value pickups like cows if you don’t manage them.

Novus uses a collector structure that has automatically built and replaced drones that will fly out and collect nearby resources, which for them are scrap, metals, and other non-organic objects. The collectors can’t harvest any organics or be used in an attack manner like the Hierarchy Reapers can. Collectors can use the flow network, so you can easily min/max your resource collection by networking all over the map, and don’t have to risk your collection structures in the field. As long as you have network connection, your collectors will be able to get anywhere very quickly.

The Masari construct matter engines, which generate resource over time without collecting anything on the map. This sounds great, but the structures are very volatile, going nuclear if damaged. The explosion can easily take out other matter engines as well as units and structures in a large radius, so keeping them in your base is a bad idea. Although you don’t have to expand with the Masari, you’re compelled to if you want to keep your base from exploding. You can boost the relatively slow collection rate through the use of Architects, which when tasked onto any Masari structure, amplify its abilities. The matter engines also make great forward defense walls… ones that explode violently.

The nice thing about resources in our game is that they’re in tangible objects, so while you may want to harvest a small town, I may just blow the town up and deny you the resources. This way, you can rush to resource-deny an enemy player rather than taking them on immediately. This cripples them from collecting near their base or units, creating more risk and allowing you to control where they can expand and harvest. There’s a lot of tactics that evolve out of this resource collection & denial game, which is new for RTS as an over-arcing game component.