wat we are already stretching lore with the fact that there will be more than 1k per chapter dieing every single day, but we don't need to add MORE marines.
there will be thousands dead battle brothers the first week a few npcs will not do harm in my opinion.
I'm throwing in for the IG. Makes more sense to me. If having extra space marines in will do no harm why not having a few Imperial Guard in? Plus you can excite people for the upcoming update WITH playable guard where you can bust out the big guns. Tank columns and shit. I know that you want to keep the two races seperate, but don't think of these as guardsmen. A lot of IG detachments in the lore aren't actually guardsmen, just local defense forces, and that's how you should think of them. They don't even have to be regular guardsmen. They got conscripts and stuff like that. Maybe a sentinel or some sort of light support vehicle. Easy enough to take with one or two competent squads if otherwise completely undefended, nearly impossible for one or two people. Good food for tyranids. They should be able to overrun an undefended point easily. I think this is a perfect idea. It would be fairly easy for someone to run along behind an army ghost cap before the tyranids get there. I know they want to go for "tactical military play" but they need to fill in that little gap with something. Maybe have the little guys run out of a bunker door once capped. Pretty lore friendly as well.
A sentinel would be rather fun to fight. Have anyone tried to make a vote (?) to see what people wish between IG, Scout Marines, Space Marines and Servitors for guards?
Well conscripts will probably be protecting the Imperial Guard's bases, but as long as the main Imperial Guard becomes a playable faction I don't see why the other IoM factions can't borrow our conscripts. If someone tries to use conscripts as a way to say "lol IG is already in we don't need them playable" though, I will run them over with a Baneblade. Then I'll put it in reverse and back up to make sure I got them.
Why is there a conflict with having npc IG and player IG? Basically space marines and chaos marines if the issue is that the space marines and IG are opposing factions and not just implemented as a set of sub classes for the Adeptus Astartes. Also i dont have high expectations for how many people will be playing in battles 500v500 isnt very 40k ish so having weak npc's not only guard territory but fluff up the armies and can be controlled by higher ranking characters and/or officer classes would make the game feel more like the huge scale 40k battle experience. This could help keep players by cutting down on rage ie easy kills against a dominating faction. Idk how possible this is but i just dont want this game to end up with that Planetside empty world feeling
Trust me 500v500 is gonna FEEL very 40k, even the platoon vs platoon battles in PS2 feel much larger than it first seems. The other thing is that hordes of npcs are gonna kill frames quicker than tactical mass lasher spam. Npc's require much more cpu usage compared to a player. I don't mind the idea of having a squad or 2 of npcs guard bases but having them deployed on mass in battles is just asking for a very laggy experience.
There was a thread a long time ago in forum far far away about this with 26 pages of comments. Not saying this thread should stop, IMO this is the new founders one for it but figured I would rehash my opinion here and link the threads (kinda) lol. http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/fighting-alongside-npcs.2978/page-3 http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/fighting-alongside-npcs.2978/page-3#post-116295 Below response was in reply to NPCs being too process heavy to implement at all, which is not 100% true based on the game server architecture and from what I was able to get outta Patrick Balthazar. http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/fighting-alongside-npcs.2978/page-4#post-118070 In response to holdouts against anything NPC to keep the game "Pure" for the hardcore PVPers: Sentry Guns are definitely being considered as NPC defense as mentioned by Brent Ellison, this is just one quote. from http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/what-is-combat-like-in-eternal-crusade.802/page-77
Patrick Balthazar on the difficulty (or lack thereof) in adding AI scripting for NPCs http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/thr...ficulty-procedural-content.22485/#post-432440 About Pikko Tech and how the only limitation on server performance is the amount of servers BE uses, which in theory could be infinitely scalable http://forum.eternalcrusade.com/threads/about-pikko-server-technology.1783/ Long story short from the two threads is NPCs would not be impossible to implement, and could enhance the gameplay overall if done properly...yet there is resistance for fear of "WoWifying" this game in some players minds I guess.
