Video Game / End of Nations

STRATEGY REDEFINED

End of Nations is a MMORTS originally developed by Petroglyph Games, the same studio that produced Universe at War and Empire at War, and published by Trion Worlds, who also made and published Rift.

The game itself is much different from the previous games of Petroglyph. End of Nations is online, and it's free-to-play. But what makes it unique is that it can support up to 56 players in an online match, so you better make sure you have a good, constant internet connection.

The game is set 20 Minutes into the Future where a financial crisis has caused the collapse of governments all over the world. In the midst of the anarchy the United Nations steps up to restore order, and takes over the world as the Order of Nations. By then the Order quickly imposes a totalitarian control over the world, with the military force to back it up. The player then chooses a faction to play, either as the Liberation Front or the Shadow Revolution as they fight against the Order of Nations, as well as each other.

First announced in 2010, the game entered alpha testing in 2011 was slated to be released by 2013. However, after the conclusion of closed beta tests in November 2012 and internal re-organization of Trion Worlds that saw the departure of Petroglyph, the game went on hiatus for several months before re-emerging as a "tactical MOBA" in August. Virtually no developer activity occurred since September 2013 and as of March 2014, the game is as good as cancelled.

Has a character sheet.

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This game provides examples of:

• Ace Custom: The faction-specific Heroes use modified/upgraded versions of regular units.
• Action Girl: The female hero units, and some of the regular units have female pilots, like the Stalker.
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us: The Order of Nations in the backstory. They also do this in some missions.
• Amazon Brigade: Can be invoked if you bring a company consisting of nothing but female-piloted units.
• Ancient Conspiracy: The Order of Nations was apparently formed long ago, shortly after World War II.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Just look at the names of the Order of Nations' infantry units (Duke, Baron, Count, etc.)
• Armor Is Useless: Can be invoked when you use the Dreadfire tank's drone swarm ability which removes enemy damage resistances.
• Attack Drone: The Shadow Revolution have lots of these, primarily the Wraith class.
• Badass Army: Every side.
• Back from the Dead: The Chaos Drone is capable of reassembling themselves after dying once, to make up for its insignificant armor. The Phantom class has a support power that allows affected units to revive shortly if they are destroyed within a limited time frame.
• Beehive Barrier: All shields are this, with the Asgardian Dome support power being a larger version.
• BFG: The Ravager Stationary Platform is basically this pinned to the ground, acting as a fixed long range artillery turret. Ravagers, the mobile version, also fit this trope, as do many other units.
• Big Bad: The Order of Nations.
• Boring Yet Practical: The Gorgon tank has little health, short range, and the smallest DPS in the game, but its attacks do area of effect damage and jam the enemy weapons. A group of these are capable of negating the attacks of a whole enemy company, while the rest of your team gets free shots at them. It's ability qualifies too; a slow, short range EMP shot that shuts down enemies in an area for a couple of seconds. Can be continually refreshed to pin down a group of tanks while they receive whatever pounding your teammates have prepared, with no chance of escape.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: You can buy credits using real money, which can be used in place of wealth (in-game money earned from missions) for purchasing units and also to buy EXP and wealth-gaining boosts from completing missions. Keep in mind that these advantages are fairly minor, and that the developers strive to make the game as balanced as possible for everyone, both for free players and paying players.
• Cast From Hitpoints: The Aesir has a special ability called "Serum X" which greatly increases its speed and attack at the cost of 1,600 hitpoints.
• Cold Sniper: Shadow Revolution Stalker infantry, which talk in a whispering, seductive female voice.
• Construct Additional Pylons: Averted. You don't need to construct buildings to build units, and turrets are only supplementary for defense.
• Crapsack World: The entire world is torn apart by a war, and there seems to be no safe place to hide.
• Crippling Overspecialization: The Lightning Generator deals extreme damage against air units, but can't defend itself against ground attacks and has little health.
• Critical Existence Failure: Most units fight at full performance even when they are heavily damaged, unless they are debuffed.
• Critical Hit: Will pop up once in a while every time a unit is attacked. Most units start with little-to-no base critical hit chance, but can be geared with precision mods, and some units get critical hits by upgrading to higher marks or activating special abilities and support powers.
• Damage Reduction: In the form a of a percentage reduction, it comes in two flavors: Direct damage reduction and Area of Effect damage reduction. Damage Over Time damage affect hitpoints directly, and some weapons and abilities can reduce the armor or ignore it completely.
• Dark Is Evil: The Order of Nations units have a dark-grey color scheme.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts: Although extremely difficult to do, it is possible to destroy a Panzer Hulk using raw force and without the aid of special weapons.
• Deflector Shields: The Patriot class have numerous powers and abilities that grant these to their units. Said shields act as extra health and are affected by the units natural resistances and weakneses. They all have a limited duration, and some attacks and abilities are able to ignore them or completely remove them from the units.
• Dual Mode Unit: Many units have abilities that change their attack types, enable/disable special attacks or grant enhanced stats.
• The Empire: The Order Of Nations.
• Enemy Mine: While the Liberation Front and Shadow Revolution usually don't agree with each other just short of shooting each other on sight, there are some missions which they cooperate to take down the Order of Nations.
• Energy Weapon: The Lancer and the Count, from the Order of Nations, use continual laser beams to slowly overheat units.
• Evil Laugh: Many units, such as the Ravager and Defiant vehicles after they killed a unit.
• Expy:
  • Both in gameplay and appearance, the Liberation Front is based on the Global Defense Initiative, while the Shadow Revolution is based on the Brotherhood of Nod, complete with black/grey leather uniforms and shiny goggles. Justified since most of the crew in Petroglyph Games used to work at Westwood Studios (Creators of C&C) before it shut down.
  • Many units too, like the Harpy. The Oblivion Drone appears to be the T-1 or HK-Tank rigged with a Lightning Gun. The now removed Yellow Jacket unit also looks like the HK-Drone.
• Faction Calculus: Liberation Front as Powerhouse, Shadow Revolution as Subversive, Order of Nations as Balanced.
  • If you count the five factions model when we separate the playable subfactions: Spartan is Powerhouse, Patriot is Magic Knight, Order of Nations is Balanced, Phantom is Subversive and Wraith is The Horde.
• Fake in the Hole: One of the Wraith's ability, making it appear to the enemy that a superweapon strike is aimed on that location.
• Fluffy the Terrible: That Panzer Hulk you meet on one of the co-op maps that gives your mission control an Oh, Crap! moment? It's called Peacebringer.
• Fog of War: Prevents you from casting your support powers there, other than the obvious not being able to see your enemies.

• Death from Above: Various methods, like the Bombing Run superweapon.
• Gatling Good: Guardians from the Spartan class carry a humongous gatling gun the size of a pick up truck. It so heavy that they have to stop and deploy stabilizers to use it at full power, even when they already are in a big mechasuit.
• Glass Cannon:
  • Certain units on each side have massive firepower but little armor, like the units of the Phantom subfaction of the Shadow Revolution.
  • Also the UGVs on Ice Breaker, which deal a lot of damage but are quickly destroyed.
• Government Conspiracy: How the Order of Nations formed.
• Grey-and-Gray Morality: Other than the Order of Nations who clearly are the Big Bad of the series, each of the two playable factions think that the other faction has gone too extreme in their ways. The Liberation Front think that the Shadow Revolution would just displace the Order so that they could rule in their place, while the Shadow Revolution view the Liberation Front to be repeating the past mistakes that made the Order of Nations to be what it is in the first place.
• Guns Akimbo: The Aesir infantry unit of the Liberation Front.
  "And now we will throw in a second machine gun absolutely free!"
• Healing Factor: The Oblivion Drone uses this to accomplish its role as a tanking unit, in conjunction with his already high armor.
• Hell-Bent for Leather: The Shadow Revolution's uniforms are comprised mostly of black and grey leather.
• Hero Unit: All sides have them, though the Order of Nations have the boss vehicles.
• Hit-and-Run Tactics: The Wraith class of the Shadow Revolution revolves around this.
• Hold the Line: One map called "Hold The Line" lets you defend a base from Order of Nations attacks for as long as possible
• Hollywood Acid: Units of the Shadow Revolution have many acid based attacks. Also the Liberation Front's Hydra.
• Invisibility Cloak: Several methods, like using the Shadowmaker's special ability to cloak all units (except itself) nearby, but renders it immobile. The Phantom class also has the "Vanish" class specialization power, in which all units disappear for a few seconds and cannot be damaged nor detected, and after that they gain Improved Stealth for at least 20 seconds.
• Invisibility Flicker: Should a stealthed unit be detected.
• Kill It with Fire: The Liberation Front has the Vulcan flame tank. There is also the Order of Nations' Liquidator flame tank.
• Kill Sat: The Shadow Revolution's Phantom features an ability called Orbital Laser Hack. This implies The Order of Nations has them too.
• La Résistance: The Liberation Front, and, to some extent, the Shadow Revolution.
• Laser Sight: The Phantom class specialization power "Laser Precision" grants laser sights that greatly increases damage and critical hit rate.
• Last Stand: A map called "Last Stand" lets you hold off waves of Order of Nations units while trying to make the opposing faction lose first.
• Large Ham: Many units have a hammed up voice.
  Titan crews: "We're gonna keep fighting! IS THAT CLEAR?!"
  Shredder crews: "BOOM PSH!"
• Lightning Bruiser:
  • Combine the Spartan Rolling Thunder power with their heavy, hard hitting tanks and you get and extremely fast unstoppable force that can steam roll over most Shadow Revolution entrenchments, if only for a short time.
  • Titans are already a bit of this, very hard with good damage and decent speed too.
  • Helios vehicles can switch from fast and hard units with no attack to Mighty Glaciers and vice versa using their ability, making them lightning bruisers in the hands of the skilled.
• Lightning Gun: Fury, Chaos Drones, and Oblivion Drones.
• Made of Explodium/Self-Destruct Mechanism: The Dreadfire tank is made to detonate its on board explosives when destroyed (don't worry, these things are unmanned).
• Magnetic Weapons:
  • The Shiva Tank of the Liberation Front.
  • The Magnetic Resonance support power slows the enemy in an area and deals damage to them at the end of the duration.
  • The Indra MagnoShield structure creates magnetic fields around friendly units that act as Deflector Shields, protecting them for a limited time and damage amount.
• Macross Missile Massacre:
  • The Colossus Tank has a special ability which allows it to fire a continuous stream of missiles at a designated area at the cost of having to become immobile.
  • Badger vehicles count too.
  • Also the Vulture helicopters, which can fire a salvo of missiles at up to four different targets at the same time.
• The Medic/Hollywood Healing: Chirons for Liberation Front, Honey Bees for Shadow Revolution, and Visionaries for the Order of Nations. You know the drill...
• Mêlée à Trois: the Order of Nations vs. the Liberation Front vs. the Shadow Revolution.
• Mighty Glacier: The Liberation front focuses on this tactic, especially the Spartan class, which have the hardest and strongest heavy tanks, balanced by their lack of numbers and speed.
• Military Mashup Machine: The picture above shows a MASSIVE tank (called the Panzer Hulk, appropriately) which is basically a Land Battleship built by the Order of Nations. They have a smaller variation called Assault Panzers, which are somewhat easier and cheaper to produce.
• More Dakka: Plenty of units have more-than-adequate firepower.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Stalker, Shredder, Ravager, Fury, Vulture, Marauder, Wraith, Phantom...yeah, the Shadow Revolution seems to enjoy using this trope. Considering that they diverged form the Order of Nations, which uses names like Prosecutor, Liquidator, Eraser, Negator, Obliterator and Dictator, it's easy to see where the trend comes from.
• Nano Machines: The Shadow Revolution uses these extensively for different purposes, among them: Healing, shielding units, reducing enemy defenses, slowly damaging them and instantly reconstructing fallen troops.
• No Campaign for the Wicked: The Order of Nations is not playable.
• Nuke 'em/Slap-on-the-Wrist Nuke: Some maps give the option to purchase and deploy multiple nukes on the field. Using them on the enemy army can cause a enormous amount of casualities depending on the distance, but some units can have so much Damage Reduction that not even four nukes at point blank will terminate them. Liberation Front has even access to abilities that nullify all damage to their units in an area for a limited time.
• Ominous Latin Chanting: Some of the music tracks, like the Main Theme.
• One World Order: The Order of Nations is the de facto world government, while the Shadow Revolution hopes to replace them in that position.
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Certain light units belonging to the Order of Nations have more health and damage than even Spartan tanks.
• Powered Armor/Mini-Mecha: Most infantry units.
• Red Baron: All of the Heroes have badass nicknames, like Hellbent and The Judge.
• Ridiculously Fast Construction: Turrets are instantly flown into a designated area by helicopter and only take a few extra seconds to set up before becoming combat-ready. Don't place them in the middle of a firefight though.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: The Liberation Front units are named after Greek mythology (Titan, Ares, Cyclops, Colossus, Mars) and some others (Ragnarok, Abaddon, Vulcan, etc).
• RPG Elements: You can level up and acquire mods to gear up your units.
• Shock and Awe: Some of the Shadow Revolution's units have electrical based attacks.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: The Shadow Revolution's Reaper and Slayer units are armed with what are essentially six-barreled oversized shotguns.
• Skill Point Reset: You can reset research points that you have invested in.
• Spikes of Villainy: The Shadow Revolution seems to like them. Strangely averted by the Order of Nations —who technically are the bad guys— although they do make use of hedge-clearing spikes on some of their tanks.
• Spiritual Successor: To the Command & Conquer series, since the developers (Petroglyph) consists largely of former Westwood (creators of C&C) employees after their studio is closed down by EA.
• Support Power:
  • Type I: You can spend research points to unlock support powers every time you level up and get one free instance (unlimited uses but with a cooldown and consumes tactical resources). You can also spend wealth (or credits) to buy more of these instances.
  • Type II/III: Capturing key points in a map can grant access to superweapons like nuclear strikes, bombing runs, and EMP blasts (which also cost tactical resources and have a cooldown timer like Type I above).
• Tank Goodness:
  • The Liberation Front, especially the Spartan subfaction, have very strong tanks.
  • The Order of Nation's HUMONGOUS Panzer Hulk land battleships (see picture and Military Mashup Machine above).
• The Revolution Will Not Be Vilified: Subverted. Both the Shadow Revolution and even the Liberation Front are grey at best.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: The Shadow Revolution is only slightly better than the Order of Nations, if not just as bad (justified, in that they they were the Order until they split off). Meanwhile, the Liberation Front put on the Nostalgia Filter when it came to Earth before the Order came along and never ever took it off.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Was the rallying cry of the Order of Nations before they began to care more about their own power than improving the world. The Shadow Revolution has since taken up the banner.
• United Nations Is a Superpower: The Order of Nations grew out of the UN.
• Units Not to Scale: Averted, since the infantry are actually in mini mechas. In fact, the game's units are made to appropriately scale with the surrounding landscape and buildings, even the MONSTROUS Panzer Hulks.
• Urban Warfare: Two defense maps, Hold the Line and Last Stand, are located in the middle of devastated cities.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: The Order of Nations starts as this, but turned into authoritarian dictatorship later. The Shadow Revolution was once the part of the Order that retained its original goals.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: You acquire "Tactical Resources" over time, which can be increased by capturing resource points on a map.
• Zerg Rush: The Wraith class specializes on this, and one of their units, the Chaos Drone, is specifically designed for this purpose, able to reconstruct itself after being destroyed once. The Order of Nations is also fond on this tactic, even when their units may be individually stronger than the players units.

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