Dev Diary #29: Naval Infantry and Orbital Barracks
Plus: how you can survive even if you only control a space-only region!
In response to a reader vote on Discord, I am delighted to bring you Dev Diary #29 with more on a truly unique feature coming in the next release.
Because v1.34 will include the first examples of Naval Infantry in Age of Legends, and, as far as I can tell, in any mod for Empire at War ever.
So, what is Naval Infantry?
Something I discovered while rebuilding the Vagaari (probably the most obscure faction in the mod) is going to have exciting repercussions for many factions, and for gameplay generally. Namely, that land units could be made buildable from the space roster.
Hence, Naval Infantry! These are infantry units buildable from the space roster. This has several exciting implications:
It will mean that even when factions are reduced to a single space region, or begin with a single space region, they can still access land forces and rebuild their territory.
This avoids the situation in most mods where once you have only a space region, even if you have a sizeable space fleet left, there is no way to rebuild and win: because you cannot capture planets without land forces, and without planets you cannot build land forces.
It removes clutter on the land build bar, which has only one quarter of the room of the space build bar now that space filters have been implemented.
It adds some really nice flavour from lore, and from real-world naval infantry like Royal Marines, NAVY Seals, and so on.
How to build Naval Infantry
The Galactic Empire will be the first faction to feature buildable Naval Infantry, so I’ll use them as an example of how it will work, and what you will get.
The Empire have an orbital structure called the ‘Imperial Naval Barracks’. Once this is built, various types of naval infantry appear in the space station build filter, on the space build tab for that planet.
Now, I was originally just going to add Imperial Navy Troopers. But, as you dedicated supporters of the mod know, for Age of Legends I really like to go the extra mile lightyear…