Mass Effect mod

Well, I'm glad you are deciding to do this rather than requesting someone to do it for you.  Mod requests get old fast.  I don't really know the scope of this mod, such as what races and the overall diversity planned for each faction, or how you plan on having the Alliance fight the Council, however, I do have some basic advice.

1. No Reapers!  It would be hard to overestimate how unbalancing even one of these would be.

2. Try and make the factions very distinct.  Distinct to the point where strategies good for one race are useless for another.

3. Make dreadnoughts feel like the 1km deathships they are supposed to be.

4. Make gravity wells and planets larger, not just for gameplay, but for a sense of epic.

5.  Avoid using Sins's balancing and gameplay.  This mod won't be Sins, so don't make it play like Sins.  Make it play like a ME RTS would.

thanks.

1. I was thinking that I might include sovereign (reaper) as the "superweapon" for his race, but the other troops on his team (geth) wouldn't be as good as their citadel / terminus systems counterparts.

To all the others: Yes, good ideas.

I will post a basic outline of my plans later, but I've got tons of homework to get through now.

Perhaps mass effect 2 will give us an alliance/council superweapon to counter reapers? And even if it doesn't, I say put it in their but make it only buildable with research, so the AI won't use it.

I don't know about the other media, but I think it would be hard to find enough ships to fill all of the combat roles you'd need in the game, even if every side only has one cap and no support cruisers. Good luck with it anyways though.

Well, you kinda want to avoid superships, because then everyone has to have one otherwise it becomes unbalanced.  And the Council does have the Ascension, which is a supership too.  So the Alliance, Turians, and Salarians need a supership as well.  In the mod, I would have the Council represent just the Asari, and split the Turians and Salarians off into their own factions.  The Turians and Salarians already have established military doctrines and tactics (and the Asari by themselves don't), and besides, the Asari race pretty much rules the Council.

Oh, and I would call the Alliance superdreadnought the Olympus.  Its not just any mountain, but a kickass godly mountain.

I was thinking that to maximise the amount of ships each faction gets, we could have 3 factions - Citadel (Asari, Turian, Salarian, Alliance etc.), Terminus systems (playable pirates - Batarians etc), and Synthetics (Geth, with Sovereign available after loads of research.

Ah man.  Putting us together with the Council?  And here I wanted to show those puffed-up galactic oligarchs how the human race feels about being treated like we're second-class.

Anyways, a nice place to start would be the Turian Hierarchy and the Alliance.  You know they had that border skirmish early on...

Yeah, I'll just think it all through a bit. Can you make a poll in this forum? If you can, I will, if not, can everyone who knows about Mass Effect give their opinions on whether All the citadel races should be conbined, just the council races combined, or all seperate? Thanks.

I think you'll be forced to do this, as last time I check the information book thing didn't have pictures of all the ships it describes, and their is only so much you can see in the final fleet battle. Also @ SpardaSon, the Asari don't have to dominate the Council after the game is over, which would complicate things if this were ever updated to ME2.

Well, the Asari were the founders of the Council.  Wouldn't you say the Asari have the biggest say in how Council business is handled?  And it wasn't just because of that, it was simply because the Turians and Salarians have known tactics and have armed forces of their own, and the Asari don't have known tactics and we know nothing of their armed forces, so I felt they are best represented by the Council.

Mass effect was very cool, and a mod on it I would for sure give a try.

Have fun!

Does anyone actually have the books? I don't (yet), so any info you can get from them would be appreciated.

Also, if I didn't put the council together, what would the Hanar do? The blobs of jelly don't have a military, surely?

So is anyone interested in role as modeller?

ok, so this is the plan so far (but it's open to changes):

Races: Citadel, Terminus Systems & Reapers

We'll need to make (if possible) a new planet type to represent the citadel.

Now, Ships. Should we make it like default game (every race has basically the same ships, with small differences eg. Light frigate, scout, repair ship etc) or should we just start with the ships we're shown and then invent our own based on the style of the race? Basically, should every race get basically the same ships. I think no, but opinions please.

I'd recommend to start with what few ships we can see, try to guess what role they would fill in sins, and start from there. You might have to have some sins defaults fill in the missing pieces for a while, but that may be unavoidable. If you try making up your own ships to early, it might lose some of the Mass Effect fell to it. As for the Citadel, it might be possible, but it would have to take someone who was really good with meshes and textures to get it to look good. But thats going to be the main problem for this entire mod, as I doubt their are many already made ME ships on the internet to barrow from.

@SpardaSon: I was refering to after the game if you let the ascension die, the Asari cease to play the dominant role and Humans take over. And yes, there are few things we know about the asari military, thus what little we do know would be best used if combined with the other races and humans so their might be a chance of having enough units for one faction.

Now that I think about it, I wouldn't be surprised if the story / use of such weapon resembled the story in Freespace:

First game: Massive alien supercapital/superweapon

Second game: Humans build their own massive supercapital/superweapon (Colossus), it fights a massive alien ship, only to find that there are countless more massive alien ships. Since direct confrontation with them all is impossible, humans find alternative means of saving themselves.

Well, unrelated, but too bad there won't be a freelancer 2?

Hey Darth-me,

A Mod Team for a GC2 Mass Effect Mod has been online in December, but went inactive afterwards. I can help you out with graphics from what we had if you need them.

-MU

WOW! Thanks! Can those models be used in Sins? Do you have a link? sounds good!

Actually we were in the making of one single model, the Normandy, I don't want what happened to the artist who were in charge of that. I deal mostly with 2D Arts, models aren't my style sorry

don't worry.

Mass Effect was so short and ended before it should have.  I remember getting the xbox version first and the frame rates sucked so bad I ended up not playing it for a year and than picking up the PC version and out of anger selling the lame xbox.

That's why Mass Effect 2 is coming. I don't get it though, they said we'll be able to use our last character, but Commander Shepard is dead, wth?

Ok everyone.

I have started working on a Geth Dropship model, as my first major modelling attempt. So far it is going well. I'll upload pics soon!

I have decided the roles of some ships. I'll upload a list later, but Geth Dropships are colony frigates combined with weak bombers. They may sound too powerful for the Geth, because Geth/Reapers will specialise in very cheap, very weak ships (+ Sovereign), but (if possible), they can only colonise once OR use their "bombing" ability (drop troops who do a small amount of damage over time) once. I personally don't believe that the ships Sovereign brings at the ending battle (which destroy Citadel Fleet) are dropships, I think they just look similar, as Geth have no imagination at all. I think they are probably frigates with a few cruisers. Even if you disagree, I need to do this so that it fits with the whole "weak but many" aspect of the Geth.

@ SpardaSon:  Does this satisfy your "distinct factions" thing? Thanks about that, otherwise I would have ended up making base game factions that just look different.

Yeah I suppose it does.  I'm guessing you are going to have the Citadel Fleets be few, but powerful in number, and the Terminus races be piratical raiders?

(And I know this is an obvious question, but are you going to include the Normandy class of frigates for the Citadel?)

This sounds like it could be an interesting mod. Personally I think the Council should be 1 team, Terminus another and Geth/reapers the other. However there is very little info on any Termiinus style ships, and theres not many of the other factions either. I've read both the books,but theres not much on ships. A bit of waiting might be in order or perhaps some research may reveal something. I'll keep an eye out in the mass effect forums, might find something.

Have you thought about putting "mass relays" in. Perhaps the "worm holes" could be modded. Also maybee the travelling between stars could be dissabled, so only relays can be used between solar systems.

I agree, there isn't much. But we can first put in what we DO have, then if nothing new has been made, we can use our imagination a bit (eg Mass Effect Wiki has names of 3 classes of Alliance Dreadnought, and until we see one, we can use a stock game model or our imagination.

Yes, I think I will include the Normandy as a high level prototype research.

And yes, those race descriptions sound about right.