Looking for Country Special suggestions

NCoder · Soldier **Joined**: 22 Mar 2015

I'm looking for ideas for country-specific units for "a few" countries I'm adding.

The following countries are missing country-specific units; I'm completely lost what would fit them:

Canada (A)
Argentina (A)
Philippines (A)
Thailand (A)
Turkey (A)
Israel (A)
Saudi Arabia (A)
Italy (A)
Greece (A)
Sweden (A)
Poland (A)
Australia (A)
New Zealand (A)
Angola (S)
Egypt (S)
Ethiopia (S)
Morocco (S)
Mozambique (S)
Somalia (S)
Sudan (S)
Brazil (S)
Mexico (S)
Venezuela (S)
Iran (S)
Syrian (S)
Myanmar (S)
Laos (S)
Mongolia (S)
North Korea (S)
Vietnam (S)
Poland (S)
Romania (S)
Ukraine (S)
Yugoslavia (S)

Ideas I've been throwing around:

An infantry unit that can ride around as a passenger in any vehicle. Possibly Canadian "Mountie".
Frogman: Infantry unit that is slow and uses a pistol on land, but is a fast swimmer and plants C4 on ships, bridges and buildings. Possibly uses a harpoon gun against infantry while in water, dealing sniper damage. Maybe Philippines or Laos.
Saboteur: Possibly for Mexico or Venezuela. The pre-release Terrorist, plants bombs and disguises, instead of blowing himself up.
Manticore: that one concept art vehicle with twin chainguns and a rocket launcher "tail"; the one that appears in MO as "Hydra Tank".
Tortuga(?): Italy; a tank that gives a defensive buff to infantry around it. Weak weapon but extremely high defense. Takes damage whenever an infantry unit around it is damaged.
Katipunan(?): Philippines (could also appear as "Recruit" for Argentina or "Guerillero" for Mexico or Venezuela); infantry that costs no money or even grants money when trained, but takes twice as long as regular infantry to be trained. Either a light infantry or a knifefighter. Amphibious.
A miraged defense structure.
Jaguar Infantry: Mexico; faster than a GI, with a stronger assault rifle, but cannot deploy. Gains experience faster than other units and has more veterancy levels. Amphibious.
Eagle Infantry: Mexico; like a Rocketeer, but armed with an anti-tank rocket launcher. Has to land to use his weapon.
Jaguar Tank: A medium tank, faster and lighter than Rhino, amphibious. Gains experience faster and has more veterancy levels.
Martyr: Iran; infantry unit that gains ROF and speed when dealt damage.
Minelayer: self-explanatory
"Turretlayer": A vehicle that deploys turrets (gun turrets on Rookie, with added machine guns on Veteran, with missiles and machine guns on Elite).
"Bunkerlayer": A vehicle that deploys bunkers.
A vehicle that can be entered by one vehicle and is much faster than that vehicle and is open-topped. It's also much weaker than a tank and has a low passenger survival rate. Mongolia.

I like some of these ideas, but some of them are very contrived and situational and lack broad applicability. It's also not clear why some of them would go with some of the countries, as they don't seem to fit the special theme and strengths of those countries. And there is too few of them. Does anyone want to give some better/additional suggestions?

wardeathfun · Posted: Sat Sep 10, 2022 7:44 pm Post subject:

I think it is easier to focus on the countries rather than individual units for this. Just describe every country's playstyle and traits, then suddenly making units is nothing. I have currently five times the playable subfactions and made a massive wishlist of units.

I would focus heavily on mechanics vanilla, Ares, and Phobos allows and distribute them among the nations. This way, while they should be spreaded out among all nations, certain nations can do more with them. For example, Germany for me has Anti Tank, Chrono (both beam and teleportation), and Time Travel. I also threw in smaller traits shared with some countries like "better tanks". With this in mind, I have five Germany nations all with a variety of unique stats and emphasis on these traits. France was Artillery, Defenses, Support (attach effect boosters, healers, repairers, etc.) and once again, the five countries had different takes on all of this from a short range mortar variant to a sub country with artillery that can shoot inaccurately across the map (I even made for online multiplayer, not that it will ever happen, a pacifist variant with no hostile weaponry to boost and heal a teamate).

Otherwise, I'd say don't worry about including countries unless you know what you'd do with them. :lol:

G-E · Defense Minister **Joined**: 09 Feb 2015

First of all you must know that most countries follow the doctrines of greater powers, and use equipment made by the usual suspects with slight alterations. Almost none of those nations even have unique units. Argentina and Brazil both tried making their own tanks and gave up. Syria has been welding custom armor on T-55's, Poland had their own modernizations of T-72's. If anything, a country like Iran may one of the few that has fleshed out a top to bottom lineup of equipment not entirely foreign. Sweden obviously has its own unique aircraft industry, but few unique land units like the S-tank would make any sense in a modern war.

As wardeathfun says, the particular slant each faction has would determine for example what those alterations are. Do they use rocket AA or bullets? Do they prefer artillery with masses of infantry, or do they prefer mechanized brigades? Do they use airpower to fill gaps in their arsenal, or is is it more of a rapid assault force?

That all said, I fail to see how 30 factions would be enjoyable to play, and would be even worse to maintain as the author.

My advice is to keep it simple, fewer nations with greater variation beats a multitude of almost the same nations.

_________________
http://www.moddb.com/mods/scorched-earth-ra2-mod-with-smart-ai

Virgil · Stealth Laser Trooper **Joined**: 22 Jul 2018

I'd like to suggest you reading the readme of each available expansion platforms and cut off those settings impossible to realise in game first. Having a general direction, as G-E has put it, is much better than writing everything down and rushing into walls after walls of problems before knowing what you can do.

Overmind · Rocket Infantry **Joined**: 05 May 2022

There are way too many countries. You can't ever possibly do a good viable customization for all of them; anyway, just a few quick suggestions:

Turkey - drones (they proved to be good at building them) and patrol boats

Iran - uranium infused tanks and V3s (their nuke research)

North Korea - nuke arty

Romania - special forces called mountain hunters (they used to have those and they were very good); armored transports (they produce world's best buy they are never sold due to politics); torpedo boats (light fast and deadly)

Somalia - boats that disable naval units, ship that can take-over other ships (MK logic maybe); they are good pirates after all

Israel - their advanced well known AAs (like a better higher RoF patriot) and the Merkava V tanks

Sweden - the Saab JAS 39 fighter

Saudi Arabia - buildable oil extractors

And why do you have Poland on both sides ? - give them their JW GROM armed forces.

I agree with G-E, you should have a solid plan before you start, otherwise you'll abandon this idea quite quickly.