Unit response in Achron

[AnbuP]

Something that majorly contributes to the mood of a game / race is the kind of response you get from your units, from esoteric riddles to brutal growls to mechanical noises. What do you think marines would have to say about the situation they're in? Or the warfare Vecgir units are used to? Or the meta-time effects the grekim would be aware of. So far the game has a serious feel; I suppose it reflects the general theme.

[Common]

While I talk with developer they just replied that: Right now we are beginning to revamp the sound effects in Achron. From the last release, maybe only 2 or 3 of the sound effects are even close to being finalized. Once the sound effects are finalized, then we'll start working on the unit responses. As many of these will require voice acting, we will want this to coincide with the story voice acting, so we're looking to schedule this when the voice scripts are finalized (currently scheduled to start late summer).

[desilva]

Achron has a fairly serious yet somewhat quirky and witty feel. More of the latter will come out later in production. It is epic, but without being overly so, serious but not overly serious. Some story aspects will subtly influence what the units say, but they are spoilers, so I can't talk about them yet (including the warfare that the Grekim and Vecgir are used to). I can say a couple things though. The Grekim are, with a couple exceptions, very receptive to orders from an achronal commander. However, the Vecgir are even more reluctant to follow an achronal commander than the humans, even though the Vecgir have long been accustomed to time travel (whereas the Humans discover time travel at the start of Achron).

[RyanInt]

I just hope developer have time to add special lines for units ordered to attack their past or future selves, even the mindless mechs could issue statements like "does not compute" "unexpected target identification" "infinite recursion loop detected".

[Absolete]

What about nanite infected units? I think the audio responses should only be played for the player who gave the command. A nanite infected unit will tell its real owner about any commands he told it to do, but won't tell the real owner anything when told to do something by an opponent. However it will tell the opponent when it receives an order from said opponent.

[AZUL]

One thing I considered is that if unit responses get implemented, they could be used to track orders that have already been given.

1. Player orders a Tornade to attack the enemy base
2. Tornade tells player "commencing attack!" as he gives the order
3. Player moves slightly back in time, selects another unit
4. Player witnesses Tornade receive that order again
5. Tornade tells player "commencing attack!" even if it's not selected

That way you'd get an audio cue that notifies you that you've given a unit an order at that point in time. I can imagine this to be really helpful!

[RockOn]

I think that's a really cool idea. It might get a little bit annoying though if you iterate through a battle a bunch of times and end up giving like 20 orders in the space of 5 seconds. It might also be something to think about rather than having highly specific responses for every unit having a broad selection of generic responses for each race, I always felt such specific responses felt contrived. You might also have one specific phrase effectively acting as pronoun for each unit. E.g. a Tornade might say "Tornade" "commencing attack". I can't believe no one's suggested this but I think it would really drive home the gravity of a Achron's responsibility if human units shouted something to the effect of "I trusted you!" or "Please don't let this happen!," and just "Please no!" right before death (the sound clip might trigger when the unit hit 10% hp). Since we're shooting for all ages in the rating department, we obviously wouldn't want any screaming at the moment of death. Just an explosion sound effect like we have now (but nicer) is probably fine, maybe with a line of static on top.