MP Other Full Invasion 3

[Maroon]

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After spending 4.5 years improving Full Invasion 2, the team responsible for Full Invasion 2: Amber, Full Invasion 2: Amber 2.0, and Full Invasion: Osiris is planning to bring the Invasion experience to Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord with Full Invasion 3!

While making previous versions of the mod, we were always severely restricted by what was possible within Warband. Especially Osiris, for which we started over from scratch, ran into a lot of issues with Warband's boundaries, restricting us to a smaller set of factions, a limited amount of bots, design limitations, and more such issues. The way things are looking, Bannerlord will allow us to really get our creative juices flowing, so we have some rather radical ideas, which I'll explain further in this post! I'll start with the headlines:

Design Headlines

• Two gamemodes rather than one: Siege and Survival. While Survival plays much like the tried and tested Full Invasion experience, Siege offers more of a mix between the standard siege mode, that sees players cooperate against a continuous assault of bots trying to capture a defended location with siege equipment.
• Return of the equipment system without gold: players will be able to pick their own equipment with a set budget, and can unlock stronger classes either individually or as a team.
• Individual skills: players can improve their weapon skills, much like in singleplayer, by fighting bots or helping the team. Better skills allow players to unlock stronger classes, and improve their performance on the field.
• Hero classes return: divided among the tiers of troops, heroes are a different way of playing that focus more on excelling at certain skills without being able to improve them.
• Defender faction-less servers: Servers only choose the gamemode, map, and invasion. Players can pick classes from any faction to join a server with (and can change while playing). Servers can optionally limit the faction and class selection for immersion/event purposes.

These are just the quick headlines of the design we have in mind for Full Invasion 3. We have thought out each of these ideas into quite a lot of detail, which we will elaborate on in the future.

Development Team

Speaking of "us", the development team for Full Invasion has expanded in preparation of the work on Full Invasion 3! The current team is as follows:

Spoiler: Development team

Borridian	Team lead, scripting lead, all-round mascot
Maroon	Team lead, scripting, 3D management, community management
Tsyolin	Sound design
Poheniks	Map design
Koyaanisqatsi	3D art, map design
Zantonny	3D art
Dnbray	3D art
Storm	Scripting

Development Plans

So how do we intend to create this mod? First and foremost, in terms of actual development, there's not much we can do right now. We have the basic design of the mod ready, but we can't implement that without Bannerlord's modding tools. This means that, unfortunately, we can't start actually creating the mod until those tools are released. Therefore we currently do not have any idea how long it will take for this mod to be completed, as we don't even know yet when we can start.

The current next step in our process is deciding what factions to include in the mod. In Full Invasion 2 (Osiris, more specifically), we were limited to factions that had a large amount of variation within them (to keep them interesting for different kinds of players) and had an existing set of assets that we could use, as we didn't have proper 3D artists in the team. Thankfully, neither of those limitations are still a concern for Full Invasion 3 (for the most part). The faction-less server design allows us to implement factions that are much more focused on one particular area, since players are usually not limited to playing as just that faction.
Furthermore, we now have our own 3D artists, so we can even create our own assets! This is a luxury we didn't have in the past, and will allow us much more creative freedom. We still can't create everything ourselves, of course, since that would take years, but this gives us much more room.

So, if you have ideas for factions we should definitely include in the mod, shoot! We can't implement everything and anything, as we still have an idea of the type of factions we want (modern weapons are still an unlikely addition, sorry!), but still.

FAQ

When will you release the mod?
As we said above: we don't have a release date or anything similar. Until the modding tools release we can't really do significant work on the mod.

Are you looking for more developers?
We are currently quite happy with the team we have, but once the modding tools release we will always certainly need more map creators. Send me a PM on the forums or on Discord if you've got more questions about this.

Are you adding [insert faction here] to the mod?
Faction suggestions are welcome, though we'll likely limit ourselves to factions that more naturally translate to Bannerlord. In other words, anything before WW1 era technology is a lot easier to add than anything more modern.

What will you be able to do in FI3 that you couldn't in FI2?
Bannerlord opens up a lot of possibilities for us that we could not make use of before! For example, we plan to expand the buffs and abilities mechanics that we had in Osiris, to allow them to play a more pivotal role. We'll also (finally!) be able to chance the skeleton that players use. This means players will have access to more outlandish classes, from Hobbits to Demons. With some luck, we'll also be able to tamper with the AI more, to allow the invasion to become more of a challenge because they're smart, rather than just meaty.

How do I keep up with FI3 news?
We'll be posting in this thread anytime something significant happens in Full Invasion's development, and we have a Discord server where the developers are active, so feel free to join that as well!

 

[John_M]

Very excited, interested to see how the class system works! You sure you dont want to use just use perks instead? :p

 

[Maroon]

Very excited, interested to see how the class system works! You sure you dont want to use just use perks instead? :p

Obviously, perks are the best choice

Essentially, our plan is for each faction to have its classes divided into tiers, similar to the current tiers in Osiris. At the start of a game, only the first tier is unlocked, though each tier (perhaps excluding the first? Not decided yet) will contain some hero classes. Players grow their proficiencies by playing to their class' strengths, and once they reach a certain threshold they can upgrade to a similar class (or one of several similar classes) in a higher tier. This is kind of inspired by the troop progression found in singleplayer.
To ensure people who join later in a game are not left behind, the team as a whole can also achieve certain global goals, after which the next troop tier unlocks for everyone. Such goals could be "destroy X amount of catapults", or "kill Y amount of bots within a minute as a team".

Meanwhile, each individual class gets access to a set of equipment, and has a limited amount of "gold" at its disposal, balanced in such a way that players can't get the very best of everything, but can compromise wherever they feel comfortable. They can trade some body armour for a better shield, for example. Kind of similar to the perk system, but without being tied to 3 options. You can still get a naked 2 hander with this system.

 

[John_M]

Sounds great, think we will see straight up troop trees in that case?
I always wanted the ability to increase profs in multiplayer, nice to see FI3 will try to accomplish this, perfect way to progress characters imo.

 

[Younes]

One of the best mods that combines singleplayer and multiplayer people

Also as suggestion here it comes y'all been waiting for it: Game of thrones

 

[Alphα]

Good luck!

 

[Serra]

Really excited! Would love to see some warhammer in there . Can´t wait to use buffs and perks to make my friends literal gods !

 

[Marko͘]

Good luck with the project, FI2 was a Warband classic.

 

[lonedoge]

I have spent so much time in this mod, cant wait for the bannerlord version. I wonder how the fps will hold up on bannerlord

 

[Unrecognized Token]

- Defender faction-less servers: Servers only choose the gamemode, map, and invasion. Players can pick classes from any faction to join a server with (and can change while playing). Servers can optionally limit the faction and class selection for immersion/event purposes.

Could you tell us a little more about this function? How will this even work?

 

[Dejan]

Good luck with the mod Maroon & the team

 

[Grimmy45]

I am looking forward to this mod! Good that this mod is already under development in Early Acces, it gives a much better adaptability to the mod and the game. Good luck!
PS: if you guys ever need someone to think of factions or maps (ideas and concepts not actual modelling) give me a call

 

[Maroon]

Good luck with the mod Maroon & the team

I am looking forward to this mod! Good that this mod is already under development in Early Acces, it gives a much better adaptability to the mod and the game. Good luck!
PS: if you guys ever need someone to think of factions or maps (ideas and concepts not actual modelling) give me a call

Thanks guys! We have a (semi-active) Discord server in which we have room for suggestions, including for the upcoming FI3, so you're welcome to join there and have a chat.

- Defender faction-less servers: Servers only choose the gamemode, map, and invasion. Players can pick classes from any faction to join a server with (and can change while playing). Servers can optionally limit the faction and class selection for immersion/event purposes.

Could you tell us a little more about this function? How will this even work?

In technical terms, the game would only have one defending "faction", which consists of every faction in the mod. Players can pick any class from any faction (So from LOTR, Native, Napoleonic, whatever they like), unless the server they're on has put a restriction on what classes/factions players can pick.
This brings several large benefits to the table:

• We can add defender factions to the mod that otherwise wouldn't make the cut because they're too narrow in scope. For example, we did not add Napoleonic Wars in FI2; it basically only has 3 troop types or some variation on them, which makes for boring gameplay. We can add that to FI3 because players can always pick whatever else they'd like to play as.
• This helps against the "issue" we ran into with earlier versions of the mod, where one combination of factions and map was almost always played, which was annoying for more frequent players of the mod.

Of course, we know some players still like to stick to a certain theme, so we'll give servers the option to limit the classes and/or factions that players can choose, to make sure everyone is playing the same type (great for events).

 

[Virthuss]

Guys may I ask if there is a song list somewhere of Full Invasion 2 / Full Invasion Amber ?

Checked the downloadable archives from Modb but the musics have been removed ( copyrights I guess ) but I'm looking for one of these songs. It's also not on the Osiris version ( and it's not a Two steps from hell one either lol ).

Thanks

 

[CaNpoG]

Really waiting for the mod!

Honestly, I think a lot of people (me included) really enjoyed playing as WW soldiers in earlier FI2 versions. They brought something truly different from the normal armored swordswinging combat always present in the game. Here I've gathered my opinions and suggestions on how (pretty much WW1) WW soldiers would be added to FI3:

They would be a ranged faction relying almost purely on keeping the enemy at bay, really struggling in a hard melee brawl.
As an overview, they would have less-than optimal melee (trench clubs, spades, knifes and at best, bayonets attached to guns) and no real armor. But their advantage would be firearms and grenades, which have both already succesfully been implemented to Warband.

DISCLAIMER: The guns wouldn't be "realistic". (Obviously a WW1 era army with firearms would absolutely delete any medieval army, so) They would be toned down and balanced to deal strong but not op damage.

The only pure melee classes would be the recruit tier troops, which would be something like partisans with farming tools. Another recruit could have access to a crude hunting rifle or shotgun. Most of the customization would be free in this tier, picking between the different farming equipment for different situations for the melee, and firearms for the ranged.
The soldier tier would have basic troops armed with rifles and similar weaponry, with specialised options including support classes like medic for healing or a sergeant with some buffs as run speed or damage. You could always bring back the beloved engineer class, who could place down (limited) different props to hinder enemy movement and protect allies. Here customization would revolve on improving the equipment with money earned - turning military caps and fur hats to helmets, and getting bayonets for your rifles.
The elite tier would bring better versions of these classes to the table, with even better weaponry and equipment. The main infantryman would branch into several specialized classes:
- The armored infantry (sentries from ww1): Big upgrade in armor, health and melee stats. Uses the same kind of equipment as the regular soldier.
- The sniper: Equipped with slower, better rifles with more damage and range and a pistol sidearm.
- The SMG trooper: Equipped with regular military clothing (really light armor) as the normal soldier, but comes equipped with an SMG that fires fast bursts for light damage (compared to rifles) with many projectiles. Good at close to medium range against groups of unarmored enemies. The aoe class so to say.
All those elite units could be equipped with an expensive grenade, with moderate aoe damage. For killing the enemy's low-tier cannonfodder fast.
The elite tier support units would include:
- The officer: Equipped with a pistol and a tidy uniform. Applies strong buffs like reload speed reduction and accuracy buffs to allies.
- The machinegun trooper: This troop would cost a lot more than the other elite troopers. Equipped with a machine gun capable of firing bursts of high damage projectiles. The heavy gun though would slow down movement speed a lot, making the soldier vulnerable to being swarmed by fast enemies rushing into melee.
I honestly don't know about the hero tier. Some war heroes IDK.

There could be subfactions inside this faction, like we see in FI2: Osiris, like Germany, France, Great Britain, Russia and the U.S. and so on. They would all have customized looks and would work as the subfactions for those familiar with Osiris' buff system.

TL;DR

A ranged faction relying almost purely on keeping the enemy at bay, really struggling in a hard melee brawl:

Pros:
+ Guns go pew
+Engineering
+ Fun roleplay potential
Cons:
- Pretty weak melee, with only (at best) bayonets and no armor.
- Overall underwhelming (average/slow movement speed, weak stats other than firearms) otherwise than guns. They're just regular people afterall...

Before anyone comments something along the lines of "But this is a medieval game! Guns are so absurd and stupid!". Full invasion has always been, as far as I'm concerned, about bringing as big of a spectrum of different factions from fantasy and history as possible together to form epic, and often silly survival scenarios.

And yes, I was bored.

Regards

CaNp0G