Age of Wonders: Planetfall - Dev Diary #43: The Paragon NPC Faction

[BloodyBattleBrain]

Smart rounds... I dunno about the balance there. When you buy a mod from an independent, is it per-unit or do you get the prototypes to start churning them out en masse? Because obsoleting a major game mechanic by giving your Vanguard grunts the ability to ignore most cover seems pretty brutal. But if it doesn't scale to mass production and is a thing you give your elite sniper hero... still pretty nice, but not a game changer, especially if other round options make it an opportunity cost.

Later game mod, seeing as it costs 50 influence to acquire, which is apparently quite a bit of influence.

And we don't see how much cosmite it costs.


And it is restricted to firearms weapons only, so really of benefit to Vanguard, and to a lesser degree assembly and Dvar, because their Infantry is short ranged single attack firearm, whereas Vanguard are medium range repeating.

Assembly do have a firearms based sniper though, so that could be a cool mod for them.

Also, afaik, mods purchased work like mods researched, in that they are available for all eligible units.

Thinking about the T4 units, the only one that is firearm based is the Earth Crusher I think, and imho if you have one of those, the smart rounds are just icing on the cake :

 

[TheGrinningMan]

You can't say whether a game is balanced from looking at just one small part. If any player will have access to equally powerful mods for the same price it will work out. We can't see how much it costs to equip this mod to a unit but if it is a lot of cosmite then it will be hard to mass produce regardless.

Later game mod, seeing as it costs 50 influence to acquire, which is apparently quite a bit of influence.

And we don't see how much cosmite it costs.


And it is restricted to firearms weapons only, so really of benefit to Vanguard, and to a lesser degree assembly and Dvar, because their Infantry is short ranged single attack firearm, whereas Vanguard are medium range repeating.

Assembly do have a firearms based sniper though, so that could be a cool mod for them.

Also, afaik, mods purchased work like mods researched, in that they are available for all eligible units.

Thinking about the T4 units, the only one that is firearm based is the Earth Crusher I think, and imho if you have one of those, the smart rounds are just icing on the cake :

Both fair sets of points, and of course we won't really know 'til release. But since I was already planning to go Vanguard with Celestian secret tech (i.e. better diplomacy with minor factions), I'll probably point myself to a Capitol World (highly urbanized and likely to have Paragons easily accessible) early on and see if I can make this particular scheme work. If it fails, I've learned something. If it succeeds, I'll shamelessly exploit the hell out of it 'til the nerf whenever I can get Paragons into my sphere of influence -- which is not guaranteed, especially on more rural worlds, so I won't be building my strategy around it even if it works.

 

[ashbery76]

I think npc' should really have a different narrative to each faction they meet rather than a generic same.

 

[Truewhit]

I think npc' should really have a different narrative to each faction they meet rather than a generic same.

I wonder if that whould be possible to mod in. I doubt it but we see fellow pc empires react differently if you are the same race so it might be possible.

 

[Ridixo]

Kir'ko are color dimorphism like birds. See the below from the dev dairy. The earth tones are female and the cool tones are male.

Also i think the females are the only one whit antennae, males use hats with horn-like things

 

[BBShockwave]

I love these guys - they kinda remind me of tech priests from Warhammer, albeit more obsessed with their own perfection than with machines. But interesting that their guards are basically cyborg zombies.

They vaguely remind me of the Archons of AOW3; pale, dead, hollow-eyed remnants of a once-great civilization. I was worried the Paragons would have too much overlap with the Vanguard -- both use conventional weapons as their backbone -- but the Overcharge mechanic promises to fit them in a different role.

They are also cyborgs and use arc damage, meaning they will mix well with the Assembly.

 

[Calm]

There's a typo in the Heavy Soldier flavor text:

"Heavy Soldiers are sure-footed and single-minded, so disorienting guild mind-tricks won't them."



Also, the discussion here has just reinforced my feeling that I'm really excited to play Vanguard. I know it's kind of the "Vanilla" faction, but...still.

I guess it's that I love love love AOW3's battle system, but it's all been fantasy combat so far. Excited to hunt some bugs!

 

[Draxynnic]

Later game mod, seeing as it costs 50 influence to acquire, which is apparently quite a bit of influence.

And we don't see how much cosmite it costs.


And it is restricted to firearms weapons only, so really of benefit to Vanguard, and to a lesser degree assembly and Dvar, because their Infantry is short ranged single attack firearm, whereas Vanguard are medium range repeating.

Assembly do have a firearms based sniper though, so that could be a cool mod for them.

Also, afaik, mods purchased work like mods researched, in that they are available for all eligible units.

Thinking about the T4 units, the only one that is firearm based is the Earth Crusher I think, and imho if you have one of those, the smart rounds are just icing on the cake :

Dvar and Assembly might be more inclined to use it on higher-tier units. Dvar could add them to Bulwarks, while Assembly might use them on their sniper to create a sniper that you really can't hide from.

And when push comes to shove, there'd always be the option to put it on Paragon units.

Really does depend on what else you could get instead of it, though.

 

[Promethian]

So here is my question. The Overcharger Augment says it gives new abilities. What determines what new abilities a unit with this augment gets? Is it based on the imperial augments you pair it with? Or did you actually make new abilities for every unit? Or is it tied to the unit type? Like a ranged unit would get something different from a melee unit?

 

[Promethian]

Also, smart rounds looks crazy good for sniper type units. Something I noticed in the gameplay videos is snipers seem hard to use because terrain blocks them all the time and they have very limited ability to move and do a proper sniper shot. Smart rounds opens things up for snipers a lot.

 

[Orinsul]

This faction reminds me of those surviving elites in the Planet of the Apes movies that worship nukes. Also, are there no women in this game?

it would be nice is soldier units that have groups of different models standing together could have mixed gender rather than it being segregated into unit types. Given it's already three-ish different models for them. Especially the basic soldiers in most factions that are just, people with guns

 

[Cassilda]

The paragons really seem to be an interesting faction, it's a pity they aren't playable.

 

[mr_stibbons]

The paragons really seem to be an interesting faction, it's a pity they aren't playable.

Seems like if you smushed together the paragon units and the imperial vehicles, you'd have a factions worth of units. I wonder if these guys were supposed to be playable at one point before getting demoted.

 

[Draxynnic]

Seems like if you smushed together the paragon units and the imperial vehicles, you'd have a factions worth of units. I wonder if these guys were supposed to be playable at one point before getting demoted.

Too close to the other factions, perhaps? They do seem to be essentially a 'midpoint' between the Vanguard and Assembly: the Vanguard represent a conventional science fiction military, and the Assembly embraces the cyborg theme rather than being a conventional military that happens to be cybernetically enhanced.

 

[TheGrinningMan]

I just noticed that, if you look at the bottom of the screenshots to see the makeup of the Paragon's armies, they include everyone's memetic favorite independent units. Which seems a hundred percent on-brand for the Paragon.

 

[Jean-Luc]

I like how the Heavy Soldier has a broken "cockpit". To him it's more of a helmet I guess.

 

[BloodyBattleBrain]

soldier units that have groups of different models standing together

Look closely at Assembly scavengers .

 

[LennartGS]

Seems like if you smushed together the paragon units and the imperial vehicles, you'd have a factions worth of units. I wonder if these guys were supposed to be playable at one point before getting demoted.

Actually Paragon units were some of the first to be added to the game, predating most of the major factions. Our first test battles were Vanguard versus Paragon and Growth. Paragons were always intended as an NPC faction representing the surviving PvE populations of the fallen empire together with the Spacers.

Agreed they could make a fine player faction too though.

 

[TheDarkMaster]

Makes total sense that their soldiers are carbon copies of the vanguard soldiers, just with the paragon unit types.

Both fair sets of points, and of course we won't really know 'til release. But since I was already planning to go Vanguard with Celestian secret tech (i.e. better diplomacy with minor factions), I'll probably point myself to a Capitol World (highly urbanized and likely to have Paragons easily accessible) early on and see if I can make this particular scheme work. If it fails, I've learned something. If it succeeds, I'll shamelessly exploit the hell out of it 'til the nerf whenever I can get Paragons into my sphere of influence -- which is not guaranteed, especially on more rural worlds, so I won't be building my strategy around it even if it works.

Also worth noting just how good reactive shielding is for countering attack spam. However it can only be used on mechanical and cybernetic units, making it very appealing for the Assembly and D'var, then somewhat less valuable for the Vanguard and Syndicate. While the Amazons and Kir'ko can't use it at all. All of the minor factions have mods that fit certain races extremely well but not so much others. Psi mods from the Psi-Fish, laser mods from the Autonoms, and bio mods from the Growth. Although you can always use those on the minor faction units themselves.

So here is my question. The Overcharger Augment says it gives new abilities. What determines what new abilities a unit with this augment gets? Is it based on the imperial augments you pair it with? Or did you actually make new abilities for every unit? Or is it tied to the unit type? Like a ranged unit would get something different from a melee unit?

Each imperial unit type has a specific overdrive variation. That means there are three variations for the soldier, guard, and heavy soldier.

I just noticed that, if you look at the bottom of the screenshots to see the makeup of the Paragon's armies, they include everyone's memetic favorite independent units. Which seems a hundred percent on-brand for the Paragon.

The spacers and autonoms used them too in the streamer previews. It's possible they're being used as placeholders just to fill the armies out before other more suitable units were finished in time for the release.

 

[Promethian]

Each imperial unit type has a specific overdrive variation. That means there are three variations for the soldier, guard, and heavy soldier.

You seem to not understand. I am referring to the augment. As in the unit mod the faction will give us that lets us overdrive non-paragon units.