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Custom Made Faction: Lucite

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May 18, 2012
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  • Warlock 2: The Exiled
The True Shard, the thinking crystal that is nestled deep beneath Ardania's Crust, has finally awoken after a century of slumber. The underground river of memories that flowed over it, slowly giving it inklings of the thoughts above, have shaped it into sentients. It now has thoughts, needs, desired. Expand. Learn. Grow.

The Lucite Faction is focused on internal synergy, and growth. They are a race of magical constructs and elementals, and as such are powered by mana, not food.


All Lucite units have the "One Mind" perk, that gives a stacking +5 resist and +4% power aura. Getting your troops in close proximity is important, as they will become stronger that way!


Tier 1 Units:

Depth Dweller - The sentinels of the True Shard have gone mad, in their place the Depth Dwellers have arisen from the mineral vats. These crazed sentinels still remember their lucid moments, and can go into a Sentinel stance, granting them temporary vision, but making them stonelike and immobile:

HP: 15
Attack: 6 elemental, range 2
Move: 3
Perks: One mind
Actions: Sentinel Mode (Gives immunity to melee and ranged, +3 vision, and stuns. Lasts 2 turns)
Unit Type: Caster



The Crystal Forager is a basic healer unit, and the backbone of the True Shard. When he first had a desire, "Grow" It was the foragers that emerged from the mineral vats to find and spread his empire.

HP: 16
Attack: 15 Life, range 2
Move: 4
Perks: One Mind, Shardic Regeneration (+2 healing aura), Repose (+50% healing effects, 30 elemental resist)
Unit Type: Healer


When the True shard had its first thought, 'More' it conjured forth the Thoughtseekers from the mineral vats. Thoughtseekers are constantly on the lookout for things to learn from.

HP: 22
Attack: 8 melee
Move: 3
Perks: One Mind, Autopsiest(When a nearby unit dies, the thoughtseeker gains +3 research per turn for 1 turn), Hardened Shell (+15 missile and elemental resist)
Unit Type: Fighter



Once you have constructed at least one mineral vats in a city, you may began constructing Crystalline eggs. These are troops before they are fully developed. While in egg form, they are immobile and tough, and gain experience very rapidly. You can upgrade a crystalline egg to any of the three basic tier units. Incubate for a long time and you'll have much more powerful units.

Mineral Vat:
+3 Mana
+10% growth rate

Crystalline Egg
5 HP
0 attack
1 move
perma-stunned, with 100 resist all (except spirit), gains +5 xp per turn.


Note that the mineral vat is not unique to a city, you can produce them multiple times (similar to mana farms). Mana focused cities grow a good deal faster for the Lucite faction.
(Moved this here since now we have a cool forum for this stuff)

In times of great need, the True Shard will release clouds of its dust into the air to form Air Guardians. These guardians slow decorporealize, but fight viciously until the die

Air Guardian
100 HP
12 elemental attack, range 1
4 move flyer
Perks: One Mind, Unstable (-100% healability, -10 health per turn)
Cost: 15 gold, 1 turn




That's about where I am so far, planning out the advanced and elite tier next, as well as unique structures. I'm going to have the thoughtseeker upgrade into a loremastery type unit that has a bonus xp aura. Also going to have a tanky advanced unit that grants a +1 support aura. These guys are all about aura's, and a tank that helps others help it, is pretty cool.
 
pintocat said:
Sounds interesting :) Is this inspired by anything like a book etc?
Click to expand...

Nope, dimly inspired by some of my own DnD work, but only vaguely.

I'm thinking these guys aren't going to worship any gods, so they can build no temples, but instead have some super cool structure to put on temple grounds that doesn't give religious affiliation, but gives them other things instead.
 
player1 fanatic said:
One question:
Are these units done or is this just set of ideas for the mod?
Click to expand...

Units listed above are done, except for the knowledge generation from the thoughtseeker, which needs some xml. Buildings also done. I'm using the Undead as the base race, and since you can't seem to modify starting units/buildings, one of these units is build by the 'graveyard' which is kinda silly, but it's all part of the process :).
 
So I've got a trio of races I'm trying to put together (though I've no art assets for them, just re-using existing ones for now)

Quick overview:

1: Lucite - This is a growth and synergy based faction. They focus on mana and secondarily on gold, little in the way of food. They have lots of ways to gain experience and knowledge that are a bit unorthodox, and many abilities that stun the caster while providing some sort of effects.
2: Daeloth - A race of Dremer that did not follow the fanatical ways of the demagorgon. Cast away into the hell rifts before Armageddon occurred, they seek a place in the world. This faction uses morphing mechanics - Each of their units can morph back and forth between two possible versions of each unit (using upgrades) with the 'cost' of the morph being the main limiter. They have some 'dead end' morphs where the final form cannot be changed from. Strong flavor of adaptation.
3: Sjonfell - A race of dwarves focused on casting all earthly concerns aside in their own quest for greed. They construct powerful cities that can mine deeply into the earth looking for resources, but at the expense of unrest and other issues. They have a very hard time fielding large armies, but instead focus on having a few powerful units. Almost the exact antithesis of the Lucite.

I'm working on the Lucite for now, and will start a bit of testing for mechanics on the Daeloth and sjonfell.
 
pintocat said:
Heh. I am toying with shape shifting too, using the upgrade system. Since upgrades don't use movement or end turn, I made the initial units, then duplicate versions that spawn with a 1 turn stun, the dupe ones are used on shifting, but the normal ones dont get stunned on initial build.
Click to expand...

The big problem is that 'upgrading' fully heals the target. So you kind of have to embrace a regeneration theme with it as well, since each time they shift they will fully heal... I'm okay with shifting in zero turns (in general) but always paying a medium price to fully heal could be super broken.
 
Added s'more stuff:


Each of the three main trees now has an ultimate structure representing one of the three facets of the True Shard: Longing, Growth, Knowledge. Each is the 6th item along that path, and gives a strong bonus, plus a single one-shot perk:

Obelisk of Thought: +8 research, and one use of the Mentalism perk. Mentalism is a friendly aura that gives +2 xp per turn, and +10% power.
Obelisk of Longing: +8 gold, and one use of the Hedonism perk. Hedonism is a friendly aura that gives +20% life steal and +10% power.
Obelisk of Growth: +35 growth, +4 mana, and one use of the Altruism perk. Altruism is a friendly aura that gives +6 health regen, and +10% power.

I've added a new line of buildings. The Silverskin vat, the goldskin vat, and the gemskin vat. Each requires a level 2, and a mine of the same time (silver, gold, gem)

Silverskin: +25% gold (-2 mana), access to the Ag Construct
Goldskin: +50% gold (-3 mana), access to the Agau Construct
Gemskin: +75% gold (-6 mana), access to the Aguagem Construct

The Agau and Agaugem constructs cannot be built alone, they must be upgraded to Ag->Agau->Agaugem

The construct is very strong good damage, medium tankiness unit. At silver level, it can debuff targets to reduce their melee and life resist. At gold level they also gain hardened skin that makes them more resilient. At Gem level they also gain the ability to go into a fortified mode, where they become immune to magical damage types, and regen quickly, but are stunned (lasts two turns). Their stats also increase as they go up the list of course.

I've added the Mentalism Facility (along the Thought branch). This building grants two uses of the psionics perk, an ability which a gives a unit +1 xp per turn, and causes it to generate +2 research per turn.
 
Created the second tier (advanced tier) of the basic units for the Lucite, and started on the Common tier for the Daeloth:

Sentinel: The upgraded depth walker with sanity restored, they can go into and out of their sentinel mode (scouting mode) much more easily and tactically.
Fragment of Verdance: The upgraded forager gains a true single target heal, and a slightly stronger healing aura.
Fragment of Wisdom: The upgraded thoughtseeker gains a +1 xp and +1 research *aura* whenever something near to it dies.

These new units further push the synergy and growth feeling of the faction. Having a fragment of wisdom near a kill and suddenly giving you a nice burst of research is great. The sentinel can take point scouting, or just being sorta tanky.

I've modified the air guardian. It was clearly too strong at defending towns since you could quickly build them. They now have higher resists but only 20 hit points, and still decay over 10 turns. This way if you are pumping them out just to add HP to a city, they are much easier to get around.


Daeloth: I've created the first pair of units here. Note that the Daelothi are a faction of the Dremer that abstained from armageddon for philosophical reasons. They excel at dealing and resisting elemental damage. They have very flimsy but high damage troops, and adapt to situations by morphing from one state to another. Units so far:

Hellion - The Hellion is the basic melee trouper for the daelothi, dealing 5 melee + 2 elemental damage, and having a solid 20ish hit points. The primary soldier for the Daelothi.
Crusher - The morph version of the Hellion, it deals 10 melee + 5 elemental damage, is a demolisher too, and has increased missile resistance. However it has a mere 12 hp and 2 movement points

The hellion/crusher unit is designed to be mobile in Hellion mode, and crushingly strong in, well, crusher form. The upkeep for the Crusher is also higher, so you don't want to shift into the high damage version willy nilly. Very capable of taking down cities.

Nightwalker - A basic caster unit that deals 8 death damage, but applies a bane that lowers the targets resistance to death and elemental damage. Nightwalker can do substantial damage to things as a caster, but since it primarily deals death damage is weak vs undead.
Skyscorcher - The flying morph of the nightwalker, it flies, and also moves 3, deals elemental instead of death damage, and has very low attack (3 or 4).

The nightwalker/skyscorcher unit is half scout, half ranged damage dealer, for the early game. In walker mode, it has increased death resist. In scorcher mode it has increased elemental resist. In scorcher mode it works as a decent flying scout (similar to green bats) but is much more expensive to upkeep. In walker mode it is a blasty mage.


For the Daelothi, they generally pay 15 gold per stage to morph from one version to another, though some of the stronger units will cost more. Playing them well will require knowing best how to use your gold - either to produce more units, or maintain the flexibility of those you already have.
 
very nice work there cant wait till its finished to give it a go, and also i got a question seeing your working on races too is there anyway to change a units model outside the copy template it makes you do for each new creation? cause can be annoying having to copy a single unit and heavily change it, very annoying when trying to make a ratmen style faction more so with the custom buildings im puting in it like monster style with some other races things
 
DamianLockheart said:
very nice work there cant wait till its finished to give it a go, and also i got a question seeing your working on races too is there anyway to change a units model outside the copy template it makes you do for each new creation? cause can be annoying having to copy a single unit and heavily change it, very annoying when trying to make a ratmen style faction more so with the custom buildings im puting in it like monster style with some other races things
Click to expand...

I'm completely not a graphics guy, so I've no idea. I've been using base templates such that my units are visual copies of existing things. Dimly hoping I'll put this out, someone will take a liking to it, and then decide they'd like to do some model tweaking for me. But I've no assumptions there. Just doing what I know -> Game design.
 
Zechnophobe said:
I'm completely not a graphics guy, so I've no idea. I've been using base templates such that my units are visual copies of existing things. Dimly hoping I'll put this out, someone will take a liking to it, and then decide they'd like to do some model tweaking for me. But I've no assumptions there. Just doing what I know -> Game design.
Click to expand...

ah no worries and im hoping that one does take notice for ya man cause your ideas seem rather well done and if they do send them my way xP i wanna get the models from Majesty 1 made of the ratmen and the goblins and maybe a few custom takes like say a large ratman scarred and with a scythe for the krom temple for example lol
 
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