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Command & Conquer: Continuum [ARES]
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Algerian Major
Rocket Infantry


Joined: 07 Mar 2015
Location: Drinking Vodka with Lenin, Stalin and Putin

PostPosted: Tue Jul 12, 2016 10:06 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

hmmm seems interesthing, and i had couple questions/suggestions:
so first of all,does the GLA exist in your story? if so who not include it
secondly,what about kamikaze submarines? these would be interesting, and perhaps even add a EMP superweapon for eastasia, after all china is part of it as well.
and is there any side using nuclear, napalm ... as their main weapon

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Millennium
Commander


Joined: 09 Mar 2008
Location: Osaka (JP)/Hong Kong/Germany

PostPosted: Wed Jul 13, 2016 12:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

There is a faction called "The Brotherhood" in the mod, which is a GLA/Nod mix. Nod insofar as they are Middle-Eastern and African, rather than Central Asian as the GLA, but otherwise they are - mostly - the GLA. The Brotherhood consists of three subfactions, which are currently the Arab Union, the African Warlords and the Shahdom of Persia, but it's likely that these subfactions will be changed as the faction develops. It will be more likely that Brotherhood will become a non-state/non-territorial faction, while the territories it is active in are mostly ruled by colonial powers and puppet states of the other superpowers. I have attached a sketchy and WIP map of the Brotherhood's zone of influence below. Blue is Allies, light blue is countries that will *probably* belong to the Allies too, red is Soviet/Russian, Yellow is Eastasian. Brown is "other/nonspecified".

As for Kamikaze submarines, I've considered it, because it would instantly solve the two issues non-aircraft Spawns have (not updating position after re-entering spawner, and surviving the death of their spawner). Since you are also giving support for this idea for "fluff" reasons, I think I will implement this.

Quote:

these would be interesting, and perhaps even add a EMP superweapon for eastasia, after all china is part of it as well.

This has been considered. Eastasia had EMP tech for a long time, I then removed it in favour of Hacking-based abilities, but I'm considering giving it back to them now. I'm just not sure in what form they should have it. Any ideas? EMP infantry? EMP mines? EMP bomb? EMP cannon?

Quote:

and is there any side using nuclear, napalm ... as their main weapon

No, not as main weapons... but several sides use nuclear weapons.
Russia is the side with the greatest number of, and most powerful, nuclear weapons, including an atomic tank (the Devastator) and the nuclear missile of vanilla YR. Other nuclear-themed units for Russia that were at times considered are: the Liquidator (infantry suited up to operate in irradiated terrain and with an attack bonus against mutants), Exterminator (old Desolator), Desolator (Desolator on a nuclear-powered hoverpad), nuclear RPGs, nuclear artillery... so, plenty of options. Also, nuclear powerplants. So, if any side has the potential to use nuclear weapons as "main" weapon, it seems that would be Russia.

But the Allies are also supposed to get an Atomic Bomb superweapon. Even Third Power might get its own atomic bomb. Eastasia might, too.

As for napalm, again, difficult decision. Fire-themed weapons are a Soviet thing in Red Alert, but I can't deny that Napalm is also a clichee American weapon. And finally, China has the longest history with fire-based weapons, making this also a Chinese, and thereby Asian, clichee. So, napalm is hard to assign to a faction.



Brotherhood Map Sketch.png
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Millennium
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Joined: 09 Mar 2008
Location: Osaka (JP)/Hong Kong/Germany

PostPosted: Tue Jul 19, 2016 11:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

In an attempt to reduce the disorder on my HDs and free up some space, I've recently sorted through material related to the mod. In doing so, I have stumbled upon a load of files associated with older versions of it. Here are some, perhaps they are of interest:

Back when the Asian Alliance was a subfaction of the Allies...

Loadscreen for Blue China under the KMT, using the flag of the RoC.
Apparently, neither did China realize the KMT's claim on Mongolia, nor did the victory in the Chinese civil war prevent the formation of a separate North Korean state...


Using the flag of the Kuomintang as the state's flag in this version.
Territorial claims realized in this version, apparently there has also been a succesful intervention on the Korean peninsula...?


Final version of the build; claims to Mongolia realized, Korea united (presumably, the KMT victory prevented the formation of North Korea), but not occupied by China...
The flag has also been touched up abit. All of these loadscreens of course lack the outermost western part of China, and none has a Country Special on it.


Some Asian Alliance units?

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Millennium
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Joined: 09 Mar 2008
Location: Osaka (JP)/Hong Kong/Germany

PostPosted: Tue Jul 26, 2016 6:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Cluster Bomb

Tier 2 of the Allied bomber SW. Instead of large explosive bombs, the bomber will now drop cluster bombs that burst into many bomblets in mid-air. Effectiveness against structures is not reduced, but the airstrike is now more effective at engaging groups of enemy units.

Time Machine
I've long had the idea that the Time Machine could be used as a neutral tech structure, granting, upon capture, access to units from the future or past - exotic things like dinosaurs, Star Trek units or even somewhat useless gimmicky units such as catapults or swordsmen could be made available. The mod's team now involves at least two members who additionally have their own mods. Perhaps their mods could make an appearance in Continuum through a Time Machine that works "laterally", too - granting units from parallel timelines, in which other mods exist...

History
Recently, I have been wondering about the possible numbering of "World Wars"; obviously, by the time of Red Alert 3, the canon RA universe(s) has (have) a confusing lot of them. In our world, besides the commonly-accepted numbering, historians have at times proposed alternate interpretations of which conflicts may have constituted (or which is constituting at this very moment) a "world war".

  • Seven Years' War as World War I
  • World War I & II as a single war
  • Cold War as a World War
  • War on Terror as another one

In various combinations, these interpretations may appear dominant in the universe of Continuum over the interpretations popular in our world.
On that note, it seems unjustified to even talk of the events of Red Alert as a "world war", on account of either the geographical scope or the number of countries involved in actual combat - although there is a Chinese theater (which is beyond the confines of the game's missions) and the US eventually lends support to the Allies, the war seems to be limited to Europe. On the Western Front, there is no warfare in the Atlantic or in North Africa. In the east, too, warfare seems to be limited to China - a far cry from the geographical expanse and number of involved countries that characterized the Pacific theater of our world's World War II. But certainly, there are multiple metrics by which one may assess whether a conflict qualifies as a "World War".
If we accept the events of Red Alert (which approximately happen in Continuum as well) are not a "world war", Continuum already enters the 1960s with one World War less than our world did.

Revision of Sino-Russian Border


The Engineer/Mechanic/Technician Problem
Three machinery-inclined "classes" of infantry have appeared the Command & Conquer so far:

  • Technician - Civilian personnel who operate technically sophisticated installations, which can spawn them as survivors when destroyed. This includes Radars (not according to ModEnc) and, according to ModEnc, buildings which are crewed and have weapons (none of these exist in any vanilla C&C game, I believe). It does not, curiously, seem to include SW structures, which can be assumed to be more sophisticated than radars! Technicians have appeared in all of the C&C games prior to the 3D era. Technicians are armed with (useless) pistols and have no in-game function that is particular to them - their "operating buildings" is a "fluff" feature and there is no way to send them back into a structure to increase that structure's efficiency, or to replace lost personnel (which cannot happen in any of the vanilla games), or whatever. They are said to make great fodder for Bio Reactors and Grinders in YR!
  • Mechanic - Appearing only in Red Alert: Aftermath, Mechanics are unarmed service personnel who are equipped with tools and skill to fix vehicles.
  • Engineer - Appearing in all games except those of the Generals series, Engineers have a variety of abilities - and the general rules that can be abstracted from these are complicated. Engineers are overwhelmingly unarmed, although the Soviet Engineer in RA3 carries a pistol. Engineers are capable of repairing buildings, capturing enemy buildings, removing Ivan bombs (in RA2/YR, these were not present in any of the other games) and rebuilding bridges. In RA3, they are also capable of deploying "porta-buildings" (Medical Tents for the Allies and Bunkers for the Soviets). Engineers are also the ones who assemble a player's buildings inside a Construction Yard, going by their spawning when such a structure is destroyed.

In Continuum, it is intended for all three to make an appearance. It is also intended that the Technician be made in some way useful - perhaps in conjunction with a feature that kills the Crew of buildings, rendering them inoperable.
Now, the problem that has occured to me, and, mind you, is fully justified from a gameplay standpoint and never adversely affects any player's gaming experience, so likely nobody cares about it (but I do!), is that, going by the popular knowledge that "the engineer designs it, the mechanic repairs it, the technician operates it" (I believe scientists also make an appearance somewhere in that, but they're outside the scope of this post), these three appear to be "upgrades" of one-another. Why, then, is it that each tier is capable of doing things that the next tier is incapable of? Technicians do not do much, granted, but if they are given functionality to operate buildings in Continuum, then Mechanics and Engineers should be capable of the same (that they are still the ones to be inside sophisticated structures is justified, because doing so would follow the dictate of economics). Mechanics and Engineers already present a problem when implemented in the way they were in the extant games - Engineers can do things that Mechanics can't, and vice versa. Mechanics can repair anything mechanical that is mobile, and do so "at a touch", while Engineers can repair anything mechanical that is stationary, and are consumed in the process. Of course, there are plausible explanations for that - architecture and construction engineering is a very different discipline from fixing a vehicle, and the "popular knowledge" only holds true within the same discipline. But insofar as the Command & Conquer structures and units both involve sophisticated technology (and this is true moreso in the games that take place post-Red Alert in in-game chronology) that tending to would be reducible to the discipline of mechatronics, one would expect some overlap, rather than a sharp dividing line between building-types and vehicle-types as the scope of each of these classes' repair ability.
The other concern is armament - Technicians are armed, but higher tiers of techy-minded infantry inexplicably lose their self-defense ability (or whatever Technicians try to sell us as that). That, too, can be explained away (maybe they are carrying heavy toolboxes and cannot be burdened with the additional weight of a sidearm!) , but I find no plausible "fluff" explanation, neither do I think game balance would be greatly affected if Mechanics and Engineers could take some health off single enemy infantry units, or ward off wild animals. In YR's engine, it is not currently possible to give Engineers functional sidearms, but perhaps a workaround can be found.

Infiltrator

Ultimately, this unit is supposed to become a Brotherhood one, but for testing the concept, he's with the Soviets. Carrying a suitcase full of C4 charges and a personal stealth generator, the Infiltrator sneaks into enemy bases to demolish key structures or defenses. When planting a C4 charge, he briefly becomes visible, so beware of nearby enemy units that will pick him off after he's done the job. While the Infiltrator carries a pistol to defend against the odd single infantryman, wearing no armor and trained in subterfuge and explosives, rather than with physical resilience and combat in mind, his life is measured in seconds if that happens.

Build 3010
Digging some more in the older files associated with this mod, I came upon possibly the oldest version thereof, the oldest parts of which dated to 2006 and which seems to have received further amendments until 2008. Called 3010, in a reference to a short indie TBTS of the same name, it only had two factions involved in the combat depicted in it - the USA and the "Eurasian Union". The mod had its own (very short) campaign for the EU only and the story was somewhat of a reversal of the plot of Red Alert - "After five years of peace, the USA are conducting a second D-Day, landing two million soldiers in Europe. The Eurasian Union defends itself. The result: War."
Although apparently set in a postmodern setting (involving mechs and wearable Scouter-like HUD glasses), the supposed second D-Day following "five years of peace" would perhaps fit either the 1950 in our world (presuming a complete occupation of Eurasia by the Soviet Union in 1945, following the failure of the original Operation Overlord), or five years after the Soviet defeat in the Red Alert universe. Either would place the events of Build 3010 into the 1950-'60 period. Of course, the war prior to that five-year period may have been something entirely unrelated, too.

The campaign was far more character-centered than traditional Command & Conquer campaigns, the player guiding various members of an all-female cast of mecha pilots through a total of 22 missions (three of which were intro/tutorial missions) to repel Operation Overlord II, utilizing support powers and a limited number of supplied troops to achieve map objectives against an enemy with production facilities. Designed when RockPatch and NPatch were the most sophisticated EXE modifications (Ares being in its infancy), much of this concept would not have been functional, except in a rigid form reliant map triggers, and subsequent builds did not stress the character- and ability-centric gameplay style. It has only been in more recent times (with the advent of Designators and unlimited SuperWeapons lists) that the build's concept could even be functionally implemented in Yuri's Revenge in the fluid and variable way it was intended to be.

Worldmap

Oddly, Japan is counted as an American ally, yet the Eurasian cast involves several Japanese characters. This indicates that the map is either from a newer or older version,
This is further corroborated by the description text of the Eurasian Union, which speaks of that faction "ultimately controlling all of Eurasia, with the exception of Thailand", which is also not reflected in this map, but similar to the partition of control in subsequent builds.

Other oddities include the noninclusion of Tasmania into Australia's political alignment and the presence, although easier to explain, of the European part of Turkey as the only piece of continental Europe not incorporated into the EU, something not easily explained with the kind of discouragement that may explain that Afghanistan and Iran were not included.
The relation between the USA and what are here presented as countries nondescriptly aligned with the US would later be worked out into a system of US allies and colonies, seen in subsequent builds.

The map has been assembled from various draft maps in my files, which were not very detailed, and includes several oddities and anachronisms in itself; for one, the USA is already called 'American Empire', a term which only appeared in subsequent builds. The American logo, too, only appeared in subsequent builds - 3010 only had a logo for the Eurasian Union. Also, there are no borders in most of Africa; this, too, is not indicated by the original maps found in the files of this build, which all included borders identical to those of our world at the time when the build was made (e.g. did not include the Sudan split). The absence of borders, here, rather is a remnant of the base file I used to create this map.

Title Screen?


Build 3010 even had its own soundtrack, something no version has had since.

From the fluff section of the mod's concepts:
Quote:

Eurasian Union
The Eurasian Union seems to correspond roughly to the [faction from an even earlier build]. Just like Oni's WCG is said to be an extension of the European Union on a global scale, this seems to be true for the Eurasian Union too, albeit limited to the Eurasian Continent. It is uncertain how much of Eurasia the Union actually covers, as Overlord 2 seems to take place exclusively in Western Europe, leaving one to guess about the situation in other parts of the Union. In the game, the Eurasian Union is clearly portrayed as the "good guys". Being attacked by the United States, the Union is initially overwhelmed by the military power of its opponent.

The Union seems to possess little military power compared to the invading Americans: while facing Predator and Abrams tanks and industrial-grade battle mechs, all the Union is capable of throwing in is the service of a few selected special agents with customized powered exoskeletons, occasionally helped out by infantry squadrons. Yet, the firepower of the Union units clearly makes up for the lack in numbers of armored units. Overall, the Union seems to possess few, but advanced armored units, and inferior, but numerous infantry, corresponding to the combination of both the European and Chinese aspects within the Union.


Presumably stating the outcome of the player mounting a succesful defense against Operation Overlord II, the concept has this to say:
Quote:

The Union finally controls Eurasia, except for Thailand, which [...]

, implying that the control of Eurasia was indeed not completed by the start of the war, but that the war ended with the complete control of Eurasia by the EU, except for a Thailand - making the assorted maps even harder to fit into the canon.

(Automaton Faction)
This faction, or at least aspect of the existing EU faction, was hypothetically considered for inclusion in the mod, but discarded.

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Our mission, unfinished, may take a thousand years.  

Last edited by Millennium on Thu Aug 11, 2016 11:43 am; edited 1 time in total

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Millennium
Commander


Joined: 09 Mar 2008
Location: Osaka (JP)/Hong Kong/Germany

PostPosted: Thu Aug 11, 2016 11:07 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Factions now have build-time "clock" animations tinted according to their UI color:


Finally, Brotherhood infantry has started to enter the game:

Mujahid

Quoth wikipedia:
Quote:

Mujahideen (Arabic: ???????????) is the plural form of mujahid (Arabic: ???????), the term for one engaged in Jihad. In English usage, it mostly referred to the guerrilla type military outfits led by the Muslim Afghan warriors in the Soviet war in Afghanistan, but now it often refers to other jihadist outfits in various countries.

Since "Jihad" literally means "struggle", it appears that "mujahid" is indeed best translated as "fighter". Given the connotations of righteousness the term acquired very early in the history of Islam, a translation more approximate to its meaning would perhaps be "righteous fighter", or, indeed "crusader".
Mujahideen are the basic infantrymen of the Brotherhood. Their equipment is a rag-tag assembly and most of them receive their military training in the field. Although that makes them exceedingly cheap to field, the Brotherhood, being a clandestine organization, lacks a formal draft and recruitment system, relying almost exclusively on volunteers. This is represented in-game by the relatively long training time of the Mujahid compared to his cost. The Mujahid comes with an old Soviet AK-74, which he wields with little initial skill (originally, this was supposed to be the stereotypical AfPak Khyber Pass copy 'LEE-E?FIELD', but this seemed both anachronistic and lacking the fitting graphics to be implemented - it might make a return as the weapon of a sniper associated with the Brotherhood. The AK-74 seems just as stereotypically associated with insurgencies in general.) He also carries a small IED, which he will place on the ground when ordered to deploy. Seasoned Mujahideen are exceptionally skilled at camouflage, becoming invisible to the naked eye when standing still.

The biggest strength of the Mujahid, conviction and devotion to the cause, is difficult to model in this engine, which includes no "morale" system, (save for the (detrimental) Fearless attribute); the Mujahid's fanaticism is represented by his immunity to enemy propaganda (although MC will still get him) and to the suppression effect of some weapons.
To compensate for the rather low combat value and inordinate training time of these fighters and to represented the "grassroots" form of localized resistance of their movement, they have a unique bonus on some maps - some civilian structures will, when occupied by the Brotherhood, produce an additional free Mujahid for each Mujahid ordered at the Camp (barracks).

Spoiler (click here to read it):

They might not have been implemented in the "Cyberian Dawn" build, but apparently there was a design going back all the way to the time of "Cyberian Dawn" build, where they were named "Partisan", cost only 50$ to train and were armed with various small arms, which are everywhere in the countries the Brotherhood draws its forces from – AK-74s hidden in cupboards, pistols of various calibers under pillows and hunting rifles in drawers. Armed with these, Partisans make a somewhat under-equipped force to be mustered, but they make up for their lack of equipment and training with their fanaticism, flocking to Brotherhood from all corners of the world. This makes the Partisan a numerous and therefore cheap unit. He requires little else than the mentioned small arm, some ammo and food and drink to go. He will even fight in his civilian clothing, which makes him hard to be distinguished amongst the local population. Moreover, the Partisan makes up for his low health stat – the lowest of all three basic infantry units – with various skills at avoiding detection, and sabotage. Partisans would naturally have the "No Reveal to Fire" trait and gain Cloak as Veterans and "No Decloak to Fire" and C4 on Elite.


RPG Mujahid

Identical to the above, but, RPGs being prolific weapons outside the former Soviet bloc, his armament is identical to that of the Soviet RPG Conscript. RPG Mujahids also carry an IED, which they place on the ground when ordered to through deploying them. Having to make do with what they have against foes commonly superior in finance, armor and firepower, elite RPG Mujahids, while still equipped with the same worn RPG launcher stockpiled in the 80s and the same RPG grenades smuggled out of the arsenals of the ailing Russia onto the black market, become proficient at targeting the vulnerable parts of enemy vehicles, such as a tank's drive train, something the well-equipped Soviet RPG teams never bother to learn.
As a result, an Elite Mujahid can, on a direct hit, briefly slow an enemy vehicle down to a crawl - allowing for more time for himself and his brothers-in-arms to dismantle it.
RPG Mujahideen are deployed from the Training Camp and, like their gun-toting brothers, certain civilian structures, when occupied, produce an additional RPG Mujahid for each one trained at your camp.
(Unsurprisingly, and unlike the GLA unit in Generals that they correspond to, this infantry cannot fire at flying targets.)

Terrorist

The familiar RA2 unit, now associated with the Brotherhood. No specifics to declare.
Snipers can take out terrorists without detonating their explosives, but almost any other form of killing them will cause them to explode.
Terrorists can be globally upgraded with biotoxin bombs, causing them to contaminate a large area when they detonate. Infantry entering such a contaminated area will quickly accumulate heavy damage. The strength of the contamination fades over time.

Spoiler (click here to read it):

They might not have been implemented in the "Cyberian Dawn" build, but apparently there was a design going back all the way to the time of "Cyberian Dawn" build, which also had the "Bio-Terrorist" variety as country special of the Arab Union, which would use C4 charges against buildings, and only suicide-bomb when told to attack infantry or when ordered to deploy. Their suicide charge is different from that of normal Terrorists, because it does less damage to buildings and vehicles. Instead, these Terrorists use biochemical weapons against infantry, bursting into clouds of poisonous gas that is deadly to enemy troops.


-----
Some sketchy "A Commander Is You"-ish pro/con overview of the Brotherhood:
+ Low production costs
+ Camouflage
+ Potential for very high damage output
+ Fast units
+ "Attrition warfare" through area denial that does not rely on having actual units in an area (e.g. traps, toxin dumps, infections)
- Long production times, relative to cost
- Weak armor
- Many units operate at close combat range; no airforce
- Weak economy
- Sub-par fortification options; non-hardened structures.

----
Some conceptual fluff, originally associated with a previous version (Build 2010), but re-introduced here to set the theme for the Brotherhood - although it certainly still has to be revised:

Jihadi states
Quote:

Europe will become pockmarked with increasing numbers of “little Fallujahs" that will be effectively impenetrable by anything much short of a US. Marine division.

                 - Tony Blankley


The location of the Jihadi states in Europe


The American Deformation
As I have mentioned before, the world of Continuum is supposed to be cyberpunk-y. So, even in the hubs of wealth and civilization, there is supposed to be a great decline of democracy and civil rights compared to the 20th century. I have taken some inspiration from the background fluff of StarCraft (the part about how human colonists were sent to the Koprulu sector in the first place, which never plays a role in SC, although some of the story becomes relevant in BW), the little-known Brazilian RTS OutLive (which is pretty much a SC clone in terms of game mechanics and much of its story, but given the creativity of the creators in terms of unit design and roles, it could pass as a very ambitious TC mod of the former) and the still-somewhat-active modding community of Bungie's 2001 beat-em-up Oni to arrive at the conclusion that, perhaps, Continuum should have a faction that is essentially an one-world-government in the process of not being very succesful - something like the GDI, but more sinister. The obvious faction for such an attempt, for stylistic and historical reasons, would be the USA. I've already established that most of Europe will likely consist of US auxiliaries in Continuum; it is not a long shot to assume that the primary motivation of the USA is to be "world policeman", with a United Nations to which no states claim membership anymore except those who are favoured or protectorates of the US.
That is not to say that I wish to cast the US as "the" villain - next to islamic fundamentalists, fascists and theocratic fascists plus mutants (oh my!), they just don't stand out that much anymore. Eastasia still seems like a friendly place to be, but perhaps the ideas given by lefthand will be incorporated to level that elevation - to put it one way, even in a cyberpunky America, you own what you can earn, and you can earn a comfortable living. That might not be true for Eastasia.

The term I will use for the process by which America develops from a democracy, to a democracy-in-name, to a corporate state, the collapse of central authority and government, and the accompanying increase in attempts to project power abroad, initially, and perhaps for a long time, "bona fide" on the part of a large share of its political establishment, leading to the establishment of the "American Empire" is "The American Deformation". This concept is, of course, subject to future revision.

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Our mission, unfinished, may take a thousand years.  

Last edited by Millennium on Fri Jul 10, 2020 4:02 pm; edited 2 times in total

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G-E
Defense Minister


Joined: 09 Feb 2015

PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2016 8:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

At this point you might as well conceptualize a nordic alliance with Scandanavia/UK/Ireland and call them the Nortek Resistance or something. Heavy on naval and aerial warfare, shitty for land war, aside from stealthy infantry and maybe snipers.

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malius123
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Joined: 14 Aug 2010

PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2016 1:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

i really like the ideas in this mod, the concepts while derivative ideas are still much needed, but its well worth while learning blender. in 3 months of learning blender i have already modeled a full side and started on their buildings admittedly animating is a pain in the ass, but only really applies to infantry and mechs as veichlar animations are easy., if you dare to believe in yourself. i see you have worked on this a while and think you should give blender a try, to make this mod one of the best.

g-e , the side ive modeled is actually an english side based of warhammer 40k imagary,  called royalist britannia ,for fluffly lore a royalist, prince H ,  sick of the state of enland, infiltrates england with a secert army, taking over infastucture. throw some more fluff at it for good measure.

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Millennium
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2016 10:07 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

malius123 wrote:
i really like the ideas in this mod, the concepts while derivative ideas are still much needed,

Yes - this is what I see as the "bread and butter" concepts of my world-building. Those things which are needed for an "alternate history" that retains the link of plausibility with our world and those which are needed to adhere to the "canonical elements" of C&C and the modding community. Some have pointed out that I lack originality, and that may very well be true - I'm not good at whisking, out of the blue, settings, units and factions which are truely so alien as to strike one as a novelty in an RTS multiverse already populated by Greenskin Mutants, Soviets, Mind-control Mutants, two variations of Allies, Insectoid Aliens, a futuristic Illuminati/Nauwabian alien cult/terrorist organization, a world government, a pseudo-islamic terrorist organization, China, giant ants and dinosaurs...

Quote:

but its well worth while learning blender. in 3 months of learning blender i have already modeled a full side and started on their buildings admittedly animating is a pain in the ass, but only really applies to infantry and mechs as veichlar animations are easy., if you dare to believe in yourself. i see you have worked on this a while and think you should give blender a try, to make this mod one of the best.

Yes, as I have responded to other posters previously, you are right in asserting that this mod is lacking in the graphical area. There's both a shortage of quality assets and a shortage of assets overall. The only certain way of mending that problem is that I learn a 3D program. I have started practicing with 3Dsmax, is Blender preferable?
I'm loathe, however, to put too much work into the graphical department as long as I'm uncertain that I have indeed reached the finalization of conceptualization and coding. Seeing how much this mod has developed from its inception, I would expect that I might either do much work for naught, or restrain the conceptual development by adhering to graphics made at this early stage of development.

Quote:

g-e , the side ive modeled is actually an english side based of warhammer 40k imagary,  called royalist britannia ,for fluffly lore a royalist, prince H ,  sick of the state of enland, infiltrates england with a secert army, taking over infastucture. throw some more fluff at it for good measure.

This sounds interesting. Is there a link to it?
Care to cooperate?

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malius123
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Joined: 14 Aug 2010

PostPosted: Wed Aug 31, 2016 1:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

in term of oringinality i dont really beleive its trully possible, sure there is originality in certain unit compositions for factions but i consider most all pretty derivative.which isnt always a bad thing. look at the similaritys between tiberian dawn and red alert

it is indeed possible for a co- operation , our design ideas about sides are very similar (you have the illuminati i have a faction called the shadow order, a nod themed Illuminati, you have american empire i have the american confederacy a shady version of the allies.

most my models havnt been previewed yet because im quiet anxious of their quality and i consider this forum to have a high standard.

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malius123
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Joined: 14 Aug 2010

PostPosted: Wed Aug 31, 2016 1:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

DOUBLED SRY

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Millennium
Commander


Joined: 09 Mar 2008
Location: Osaka (JP)/Hong Kong/Germany

PostPosted: Thu Sep 01, 2016 1:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

If you don't mind, I can view them and perhaps offer some suggestions. My standards are, for want of assets, not very demanding.
The rest of the team is on Skype. If you use that, you can PM me your name and I will add you.

There's actually a very ancient setting I made about a decade ago, inspired by The Man in the High Castle, Crimson Skies, Oni and Enigma: Rising Tide, and not for Command&Conquer, but for the government sim browser game NationStates. It could still be considered a very early ancestor of Continuum in that it has the first appearance of an "Eastasia" faction. It does not hold the record for the first appearance of the "Third Power" and "Brotherhood" factions though - or rather, for the first appearance of interpretations of a fascist pan-European state and Arab islamists - , both of which appeared previously in even older settings.

Lots of text in here:
Spoiler (click here to read it):


"A tantalizing tale of our world, as it could have been!"

In that setting, an epidemic (a fictional version of the infamous Spanish Flu) kills a large portion of the world's population in 1918, mostly in America, causing the country to undergo disintegration into its constituent states. Among the victims is a certain Wallis Simpson, who, in our world, went on cause the English prince Edward III, a Nazi supporter, to renounce the British throne in order to marry her.

With her out of the picture, Edward III becomes king of Great Britain and aligns the country with Nazi Germany later, which prompts defiance from Churchill. While Britain proper joins the Nazi cause, Churchill and several other members of government escape Europe and set up a government in exile in Hong Kong, with effective control over a large portion of the British fleet and virtually all of the colonial empire. Of course, in 1941, Hong Kong falls to the Japanese (considering the boost in defense power the city would have received as a capital-in-exile and headquarters of the British fleet, it might happen a few weeks to months later, so in 1942, but it happens nonetheless). Between a rock and a hard place, the British government-in-exile choses the hard place and enters a formal alliance with Japan, which unifies formal control of all the British colonies previously controlled by the British exile government.

Meanwhile, with America and Britain out of the ring, Nazi Germany occupies all of Europe and successfully carries out an invasion of the Soviet Union.

At some point in the 50s, Europe is completely occupied by Germany and Italy (called the 'Catholic Union' in-game), with Italy occupying the mediterranean littoral, Germany occupying the rest of Europe, either directly or through several puppet states and eastwards into Asia to the Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan-Karachi line. Beyond that line, a Soviet rump state exists up into Siberia. The Nazis intentionally keep the Soviet remnant, which they could destroy and occupy entirely with some effort, alive in a perpetual state of war, which they use as an eugenic "meat grinder" to weed out the weak and feeble-minded from their young men, almost all of whom are sent to the Russia front for military service.

South of Turkey, west of Iran, east of the Mediterranean and the Suez, no political entity seems to exist - the area is simply known as the "Middleast", and although the antijudaic sentiments of the population make them natural allies of the Germans, there is no form of formal treaty or alliance and the area seems to be left mostly to its own devices.

In Asia, the Japanese occupation is completed in 1964. Siberia belongs to a revived Russian Tsardom, founded by White Russian fighters with Japanese support, and allied to Japan. China is split between Manchukuo and the Republic of China, both Japanese puppet states. Korea, Indochina, Indonesia, the Philippines and all of the Pacific islands are Japanese colonies. The status of India is unclear, but it seems to be an area of ongoing conflict between Germany and Japan. The status of Australia and New Zealand is also uncertain.

America's western seaboard is occupied by several Japanese feudal states ruled by members of the Imperial family. America's eastern seaboard is occupied by Germany, with only Texas retaining some degree of independence as a German ally.
Inbetween them lies the "Independent Midwest", where a remnant of the USA was revived to serve as a buffer state between the two superpowers, but it is only a sparsely-populated, irradiated, mutant-roamed wasteland.

Africa is known as the "Mining Grounds", split between a northern Italian/German half and an Eastasian southern half, with the population largely exterminated or kept as mining slaves, the latter more prominent in the Japanese section.

It is implied that Germany and Japan have strained relations and both sides are preparing for a war with the other side.
The Japanese seem to be actively working on mutagenic bioweapons, to be used both for the creation of supersoldiers (the timeframe was in the 21st century) and offensively against enemy populations.


So yes, pretty much a crapsack world, which, of course, would be a great match for anything in the WH40K tradition.
It is not a setting I'm particularly proud of, because it is not very realistic, and unnecessarily evil to a cheesy degree (a fault I find with WH40K also). It was also faaaaar less eloquent than the summary suggests. I was a teenager when I wrote it though, so I suppose I can be lenient. Still, if you find anything of this interesting for your Britainhammer idea, feel free to use it. I'm, of course, particularly fond of that idea with Prince Edward III, which would allow you to have your British aristocrat, a rebellion (although the rebellion would be _against_ him, not _by_ him), subsequently Britain as an "evil", xenophobic empire (i.e. the 19th/early-20th century imperialistic attitude carried onwards in time and perhaps exaggerated, rather than abandoned as in our world), while still keeping it _somewhat_ plausibly connected to history.
Cheers!

Edit:
Sorry for typos and convoluted wording/sentences. Typing in a hurry and without much sleep!

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malius123
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Joined: 14 Aug 2010

PostPosted: Thu Sep 01, 2016 11:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

 is kinda my learning blender "blog" style post, its where my Wip's get showcasedhttp://www.ppmforums.com/viewtopic.php?t=42112


im just unhappy with Brexit, and am completey affected by, so much so i invented a scenario where a royalist faction rises to take control of briatain in protest to brexit but then ironically becomes a tyrant. the royalist britiania faction i speak of  clings to oldskool ideals of quasi feudal imagary,  power suits with energy swords, modern/scifi day interpretations of calavary , ie a a infantry man riding a suicidal walker drone, air ships with naval themes. in my learning process im trying to develop to styles , serious units and RA2 silly styles,

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Millennium
Commander


Joined: 09 Mar 2008
Location: Osaka (JP)/Hong Kong/Germany

PostPosted: Sat Sep 10, 2016 8:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Currently much work is being done on the Brotherhood, aka Islamic Union, aka GLA, aka Al-Quaeda,...


Purportedly the real-life flag of Al-Qaeda - a plain black field, imprinted with the shahada; used in 2008 in concepts for what would be the Cyberian Dawn build, for the faction that was then variously called 'GLA', 'Islamic Foundation', 'World Caliphate', or, indeed, 'Al-Qaeda', or even already simply 'Brotherhood'. The flag was not used in-game in the build, but perhaps it should return as the flag of the Brotherhood?

Nuke Truck

A variant of bomb truck that is, as expected, loaded with a nuclear bomb. This truck can be built only if a Brotherhood player manages to gain control of either a nuclear reactor, or a nuclear missile silo. Like the other variants, the Nuke Truck can disguise itself by deploying and targeting a terrain object. It also cannot stay disguised while moving.
The output of the nuclear device carried by the truck is more than twice (2.5 times, actually) that of a nuclear TBM as deployed by Russian tactical silos, but of course the truck has the substantial downside of being unable to bypass defenses and has to either avoid them, or be broken in by other forces.
* Pro tip: the truck can be airlifted, and even dropped. While it may end up being brought to detonation through anti-aircraft fire, even an explosion at high altitude is usually enough to flatten large areas on the ground.

-----
It has been realized that the Brotherhood side needs a substantial overhaul regarding faction organization. We're not sure right now how to present our ongoing work - as an analytic essay, an in-game perspective, or a development chronology?

In other news, due to consistent impossibility to get hosting on PPM for Continuum, presumably due to the incongruence between the mod's design focus and the design focus of the other currently-hosted mods on the site, the decision was made to present the mod on its own webspace. The thread on PPM will be maintained and updated at the same rate and with the same type of content as it has been so far, but the website will be dedicated to more exhaustive presentation.
This can be expected to happen in early October, plus two or three months that one can customarily add to the schedule of  web development projects done by unpayed and inexperienced contributors.

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malius123
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 10, 2016 10:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

i agree the gla faction is just old news.  your better off saying the arab union unites behind a new science-tocacy. then bridge the gap towards a Nod themed early tiberian dawn esque style in terms of design but add a more arab theme, but i assume the illumati is your gap towards nod in you canonical universe.

i think ra2 did a good job with iraq, didnt make it polictical or ideological. trying to make an entire faction based on design concepts from the desolator isnt so easy.

saying that gla was so damn fun in generals , there ifv style bikes were amazing and there battle buses,

a fleet of demo bikes rocket bikes and gla commando on the bike made a deadly bike gang.

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Millennium
Commander


Joined: 09 Mar 2008
Location: Osaka (JP)/Hong Kong/Germany

PostPosted: Thu Sep 15, 2016 10:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

That's an interesting idea.
But yes, in Continuum, the Brotherhood isn't very Nod-ish in terms of tech or theme. The Illuminati are the faction that is essentially Nod. The only thing Continuum's Brotherhood shares with Nod is that they're arab/african. And perhaps a love for chemical/mutagenic weapons.
OTOH, the Illuminati are not african/arab, but also have chemical weapons, plus various other Nod techs - cybernetics, stealth... alien tech?

What we are currently thinking about is splitting the Brotherhood from the Arab states - one is a terrorist organization, the others are proper countries. But the Arab countries wouldn't really be playable - they might get a few units (generic, unique or shared with Soviets or Allies) and appear on maps and in campaign, but they wouldn't be strong enough to appear as full playable factions.

Unfortunately, right now we're struggling with an intractable IE that makes the mod completely unplayable, so until that is solved, no main branch updates are possible...

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Millennium
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Location: Osaka (JP)/Hong Kong/Germany

PostPosted: Thu Dec 22, 2016 1:41 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Hm, I have not been active here in awhile. Though I had many other interests and duties and cannot say I have given it much thought during my absence, what I am currently (still) trying to achieve is a credible inclusion of the Third Power faction.

A world without Hitler, which Continuum, as a consistency-upgraded Red Alert timeline, is supposed to be, can credibly have some sort of fascist or quasi-fascist European Union from the 1950s onward, including even some tech/unit identity with real-world Nazi Germany. However, the original concept for the Third Power was a Raiders-of-the-Lost-Ark-y, Wolfenstein-y, Hellboy-y, Hellsing-y (yes, my namesake) Ghostapo/Jetpack Hitler occultist Nazi superscience faction. And that just does not go very well with, well, the removal of the Nazis. Of course, many of the supposed secret societies that form the undercurrent of the Nazi party in pulp fiction and conspiracy theories would still exist, even if the Nazi party never came into power. But can they credibly be woven into a non-Hitler Europe, even if fascist, in a way that provides that European faction with tech/units? Or do they have to be a faction of their own? And if they can provide Europe with tech/units, then why is it that the tech from a Europe which is not opposed to America, but essentially forms with America a bullwark against the Evil Russians, does not seep into a more generalized tech tree which is also accessible to the Americans?

Non-Nazi Reichsflugscheiben? Non-Nazi Nazi Zombies? Non-Nazi Death Rays? And does this all even fit with the general quasi-realistic style and period of Continuum?
I will have to find a way to implement it, or discard the entire idea.

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G-E
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Joined: 09 Feb 2015

PostPosted: Thu Dec 22, 2016 1:57 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Something with Prussia? The only way I see a 3rd world power arising is in isolation, like some rebellious enclave in Australia that no one paid attention to, or the region at the border between the primary two superpowers, where ideologies and technologies are able to mix/co-exist.

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Millennium
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Joined: 09 Mar 2008
Location: Osaka (JP)/Hong Kong/Germany

PostPosted: Sat Dec 24, 2016 12:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Well, Continuum has a third "world power" in the form of Eastasia. "Third Power", in particular, was the proper name of a Nazi faction of my first mod (in 2007 or so). I've tried to re-integrate the Third Power into this new mod, but I can't find a way to do it.

As for Prussia, well - if Hitler gets killed, then, serious alternate histories branching off from that event are:
a) either a communist victory in Germany, meaning that Stalin probably installs a puppet government there, which means that if WW2 ever happens, and Stalin doesn't just slowly subvert all of Europe, it's courtains for everyone in the West, because nobody could stop the Soviet Union and Germany together. Britain might remain independent, the US certainly will, but nobody could prevent continental Europe from becoming a Soviet satellite, just like Central Asia.
b) or a victory of some Prussian-y conservative/quasi-fascist military government based on the Wehrmacht and Freikorps. This is what seems to have happened in the original Red Alert and also what Continuum assumed to have happened. But I can't tie a conservative, Christian government together with the pulp/conspiracy Nazi theme the Third Power had. At same time, their theme also doesn't fit with any other faction or world region.

Recent Misc Changes

- Introduction of some basic Indian Confederacy units; because the Indosphere is composed of many states (India, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, parts of Afghanistan, parts of Tibet, Myanmar, Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore) and independent monarchies within India, there is a great deal of artifact variation. Princes try to out-do each other military artifacts, and imports of powerful foreign weapon systems are common. Some statelets also receive direct aid from some foreign powers, for example, Russian units are delivered to some left-leaning statelets.

"Ratha" Tank - I would love to say it's in some way inspired by the real-world Arjun, Echoes' IC Rama Tank and MustaphaTR's Tiger Tank. However, none of those offered any particular inspiration, so it's pretty much just that - a regular medium tank with a gun, no specifics to declare. Essentially, it's a redressed T-55 (stat-wise). The paint job itself, however, is largely inspired by MustaphaTR's Tiger. The IC should have a darkbrown/olive/india green color scheme, so it might still get repainted.
Another Indian unit is the Jingle Truck, or "Caravan", a merchant truck which will periodically appear in your base when you own a Market structure, and drop off some cash.

For want of any game-implemented progress on IC infantry:

Concept art for IC regular infantryman.

- Midget Submarines (spawned from Eastasian Sub Carrier vessel), previously tentatively called "Manta", are now called "Remora", are definitely drones, and now have two modes of attack - suicide bombs against aquatic structures, organic and amphibious targets, and a latching attack against ships, which causes them to function as parasites. Vessels so parasited will not lose health but will be greatly slowed down and occasionally have their weapons paralyzed while the Manta is latched onto them. If a ship is destroyed while a Remora is attached, the Remora will instantly detonate.

- Trying to put order into the overabundance of Third Power defense structures. So far:
Heat/melt-based: Flame Turret, Heat Ray Turret, Plasma Turret
Kinetic: Gun Turret, Raygun Turret
Misc. rayguns: Tesla Turret, Disruptor Turret, Shrink Ray??? (what other ideas would RA3 offer?)
As can be seen, this faction, originally intended to be the most attack-oriented, has lots of redundancy in the defense structures considered for it.

- Gatling Laser upgrade for laser-based units? This would apply to Laser Tank, Laser Turret, Pegasus - achieves higher ROF by arrangement that cycles through barrels, allowing the majority of the barrels to cool-down during the firing process. In effect, this upgrade will probably change a unit's laser attack to a continuous beam which is maintained for several seconds, dealing DoT each frame while it is maintained.

- Uncertainty regarding implementation of bioweapons for Eastasia. A syringe sniper? A chem sprayer? A "capsule cannoneer"?

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G-E
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Joined: 09 Feb 2015

PostPosted: Sat Dec 24, 2016 1:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

You have to understand that fascism and communism as we know them are slight structural differences of the same thing. Neither is inherently required to be imperialist, but both are highly protectionist ideologies, with a basis in altering morality to do so. So a genuinely "third way" as we were discussing with Putin, has to be equally strong, without being so ideological, and the simplest alternative is a monarchy.

If a country like Prussia slowly returned to monarchy let's say, and remained committed as an ally to one side, or even played both sides, while in secret playing each for fools in competition for the allegiance, then interesting things could happen under everyone's nose. I picked Prussia only because they are a very independent if cynical people, and for some twist of fate, they never seemed to get destroyed in wars or invasions, like the Swiss.

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Millennium
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PostPosted: Sat Dec 24, 2016 10:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Oh, yes, I agree with you, fascism is much closer to socialism than it is to conservatism, so a "conservative/fascist" faction is somewhat implausible.

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Millennium
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 02, 2017 11:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Working some more on the lore; a near-future trope that ought not to be missing and is very close to the already-established facts of the Continuum universe is the North American Union. I have already said that the earlier part of the American campaign would take place in Mexico, where the U.S. intervenes in the Mexican Civil War - what the Mexican Drug War becomes as it gets out of hand (perhaps in the years running up to 2025). Now, going full Fallout-y, there ought also to be a union of the US with Canada - I am not sure if that will happen (more or less) voluntarily, or by means of war, and, if the latter, the player is going to be actively involved in missions in Canada, but it will happen at some point around the same time as the Mexican Intervention, or Operation Extended Freedom.

The NAU then bolsters the forces sent by the US to the Middle East.



Canada, so far, does not have its own unit roster, but they might, like Mexico, get a few units particular to, and representative of, the country.

Preliminary American campaign: Pax Americana
The American Campaign takes the player through the stages of the War On Terror that already happened (in Afghanistan and Iraq), then a hypothetical invasion of Iran, Syria and Lybia. These nations are occupied, while Jordan, Turkey, Kuwait, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia more or less 'ally' with the US, accepting rising internal conflicts in exchange of avoiding the potential threat of invasion.

In a second stage, the US invades the Caribbean islands (including Cuba), central America (including Mexico), Columbia and Venezuela, when a large-scale anti-drug campaign in Columbia spirals out of hand by local militias and gives pretext to the "Hawks" in the DOD to act against all potential rivals in the region. Argentina sides with the US. In order to legitimize their invasion of Mexico, the US makes use of "Peacekeepers" from its UN puppet states – mainly Britain and Japan.

in which the entire UN takes part – Argentina, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Thailand, Japan and Great Britain. The Campaign goes at great length to describe the situation in the different countries – in Japan, much like during Eastasia, a nuclear strike on Tokyo meant that the government temporarily moved to New Port Harbour on the eastern side of Tokyo bay while Neo-Tokyo is being constructed as a new capital in the Tokyo bay.

The third and final stage of the campaign, again consisting of four missions, is a war in Asia which is apparently fought against North Korea, but is really a proxy war against China. The US allies are Japan, Thailand, New Zealand and Thailand. At this stage, the US has deformed into the "American Empire" and the UN is only a collection of US allies and puppet states that all contribute forces to the war.

The final mission of the campaign involves sabotaging the launch of a bio-missile that is to be launched by the Brotherhood from a captured Russian cosmodrome (presumably Baikonur) in Kazakhstan.

  • The Empire Strikes First - Invasion of Europe ("Second D-Day").
  • The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway - ??? Fight against president gone insane? (a la RA3)


Provisory Third Power Campaign
Takes the player in an invasion of the US proxy states around Europe, involving a combined French, German and Russian landing in the UK.

Provisory Brotherhood Campaign
The Brotherhood campaign consists of the recapturing of Sarajevo, using Bosnian mujahideen, the bombing of the WTC and the bombing of the Eiffel tower. If the player is successful, the European campaign ends with Europe being occupied by Muslims, except for Andorra, Ireland, Scotland, East Germany, Switzerland and eastern Europe. In China, the Seven Gorges Dam must then be destroyed to cause flooding.

Provisory Eastasian Campaign
The Chinese Campaign takes the player through three stages of war as well. The campaign sets off during the Korean War. The player must remove the invading UN from the Korean peninsula, then proceed to absorb South Korea into the Chinese Empire.

The second stage places the player against the Brotherhood, which fights both the US and Eastasia. The campaign involves using a nuclear missile against Singapore, which has fallen to the Brotherhood. In southwest China, a rogue Uyghur general has allied with the Brotherhood. She has combined Brotherhood technology with Eastasian technology to create deadly combined arms (for example, the Chem Tank, which is a Crate/SecretLab tech, can be built by her as a regular unit). The player must stop her and her bio-superweapon development before is too late!

The final part of the campaign involves the invasion of Russia to gain access to the resources of Siberia. The amur conflict develops into a fullout war, which finally entails the invasion of the (Brotherhood-ridden) western European states, bringing entire Eurasia into one system and forming the Eurasian Union (which is functionally an extension of the previous Euro-Slavic Eurasian Union).

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G-E
Defense Minister


Joined: 09 Feb 2015

PostPosted: Wed Jan 04, 2017 2:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Reminder: to make a mod you should be making things, not talking about making things, or talking about plans, or talking about plans to make plans, or talking about ideas to incorporate into plans you haven't made....

Just make the damned mod already and show some pics.

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Millennium
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Joined: 09 Mar 2008
Location: Osaka (JP)/Hong Kong/Germany

PostPosted: Wed Jan 04, 2017 12:11 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Sorry, there is no progress in that area at the moment.

Update
Academic homework has kept me from working on my mod, but I have finally made some progress again.

African Warlords Update
I have differentiated two "faction" concepts - a "political affiliation" and a "tech tree" concept. This has allowed me to better define the African Warlords faction. It is a faction defined by a tech tree that is shared by the entire sub-saharan area of Africa (as indicated on the map) and ruled by a variety of independent strongmen, but only the lighter areas are politically-affiliated with the Brotherhood, with other areas paying allegiance to the Allies or Russia. In-game, this is implemented by an African Warlords player having a rudimentary tech tree resembling that of the Brotherhood to a large extent, but gaining the option to (irrevocably ally with either the Allies, Russia or Brotherhood to unlock higher-tier options specific to each faction).

The basic African Warlords roster holds a generic levy with an AK, a generic levy with an RPG, a supply truck, a technical, a biker.

I am still working on differentiating a "faction" from its surrounding "culture" - e.g. how does the "Brotherhood" faction differ from 1) the Arab/African countries within which it exists 2) the civilian population within which it exists and which often share its sentiments. By extension, while the dichotomy of state and non-state actor is not applicable to, say, the Allies, the differentiation between playable military and non-playable and ostensibly neutral "civilians" is applicable to all factions - why does the game consider civilians "neutral"? Certainly, the civilians of a given country are what the military of that country protects (mostly true), and the civilian population supports that military and will, in a pinch, defend itself against "hostile" militaries (even if that defense is ineffectual). To that end, I have considered making civilians offer support to certain factions, depending on the map - maps set in America will grant American players the support of the civilian population, maps set in the Arab countries will have civilians offer their support to the Brotherhood, while being hostile towards American players.

Eastasia
I have also worked some more on the Eastasian government system - there will be a (mostly figurehead) emperor, the government is effectively headed by the Paramount Leader/Sh?gun/Generalissimo, to sum up the terms for functionally-similar real-world positions in three Asian countries. I'm not sure what subordinate offices there are - there is supposed to be some bureaucracy, but I'm not sure whether there were any "chancellors" in historical sinic/japonic government structures.

Tiger's Cannon
WW2 trope suggests that the Tiger Tank is armed with an 88mm cannon, and this in turn should be the same one as the Flak. We ought to think about how such a weapon may maintain its firepower in a modern setting. Multiple ways are possible in which superior muzzle velocity, and thereby penetrative power, can be maintained relative to other tank cannon in a modern setting - most promising would be ram/scram cannons, light gas cannon, electro-plasma cartridges and railguns or coilguns.

Indian Confederation
- As one can tell, this works pretty much the same as the African Warlords faction in that it has a roster of native hardware of Indian, Indonesian (and so on) origin that can be combined with British, Soviet imports.
- Gurkha infantry can now move through cliff terrain at 50% speed.
- Shikari infantry can now move through forest terrain (tree overlays) at 50% speed.
- Sikh infantry... hmmm... this would be something about plains, but plains constitute normal terrain, so this doesn't grant them any bonus above normal infantry.
- Indian units cannot attack civilians.

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Millennium
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Joined: 09 Mar 2008
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2017 6:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Fiddling around with SC3URK for buildings!:


I am somewhat surprised that this tool and the public assets created with it are not in any way popular in the C&C community.

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G-E
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2017 7:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

So what you're saying is: you have no more excuses holding you back from doing the mod?

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HG_SCIPCION
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Joined: 07 Jun 2013
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2017 10:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

G-E wrote:
Reminder: to make a mod you should be making things, not talking about making things, or talking about plans, or talking about plans to make plans, or talking about ideas to incorporate into plans you haven't made....

Just make the damned mod already and show some pics.


haha I agree  Laughing

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PussyPus
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PostPosted: Sun Mar 26, 2017 10:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I read every arabic word here, everyone knows i am from the arab world (bu7loos too). I like the mod idea itself.

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Millennium
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PostPosted: Sat Apr 15, 2017 12:23 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

A short-handed update; messing around some more with building sprites:


(This, of course, being a conversion from Age of Empires II - viz a stable, although I do not expect my mod will have capturable stables that allow you to train Horse Archers/Chevaliers/Cataphracts/Dragoons/Paladins/Elephants. It is more intended as a demonstration of principle.)


...neither should Trieres/Triremes be built here, but perhaps as a civilian structure to compliment middle eastern maps?


A defense structure for India? At least the base looks like it could be used, while the top portion of the tower would look obviously outdated.

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malius123
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 18, 2017 6:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

dude seriously learn blender, if its too much to learn. as i have learnt .then try to compartmentalize your skills, become a proficient texturer, or proficient in making models, or learn how to rig using models from blendswap, pick a specialty and go crazy.

i know pixel art can be fun, but if you bring a skill to the table you could get a team of 3d artists. it really doesnt take long to get a basic grasp of the shortcut keys, listening to  video tutorials while actually modeling and using blender is a sneaky way of gaining knowledge slowly while still actually having a workflow.

i say this because i want to play your mod.

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Millennium
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PostPosted: Mon Jul 24, 2017 12:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I've been very busy working on my degree and whatnot, but the mod is still progressing, if at glacial speed, and I plan to learn some 3D modelling during the holidays. Meanwhile, I now have to contend with YR not running on the computer I finally upgraded to. And apparently with Photobucket's changed service conditions.

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Millennium
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 15, 2017 10:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I have stated that the mod will not include Chrono technology in anything but a remote, minor role. However, with Ares, there are so many possible and interesting Chrono-based units and SWs, I'm having a harder and harder time to relegate Chrono technology to a miniscule role...

Stasis/Timeskip


A "time machine" SW, which generates an uncontrollable, unselectable, untargetable, undamageable, invisible "Chrono Prison" unit that abducts nearby units, making them "disappear". The prison's HP gradually deteriorate, and eventually it is destroyed, releasing the previously-abducted units, which have effectively been "sent into the future". Use it to evacuate your own units from a passing threat, or to temporarily remove enemy units from the equation, so that they can be fought in two smaller formations.

Alternatively, a SW that attacks its target with a temporal warhead but zero damage for a certain amount of time, causing it to "phase" for awhile, without ever being warped away. That way, the target is immobilized, but also made inassailable.

(Whether one considers the effect of either SW to be time-travel into the future, or a stasis field, does not matter - in effect, they can be considered the same: the target is made intangible for a duration of time and rejoins the battle some frames into the future.)

Telepoint Dropper
As we know, a vehicle with teleportation Locomotor and a Dock set will drive when moving normally and teleport only when moving to dock with that structure. This feature is only used on the Chrono Miner in vanilla RA2/YR and could be exploited for an interesting setup by giving a range of vehicles that Locomotor and a Dock structure that can be placed by means of an SW or otherwise, e.g.:



A very heavily armored and very slow vehicle which deploys into a structure that is the "Dock" of numerous teleporter vehicles. Intended use is to place a "teleporter" into the center of the enemy base, to which you can then instantly deploy large forces.

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G-E
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 18, 2017 4:46 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Are you polling for opinions or just talking out loud?

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TAK02
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 18, 2017 6:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

G-E wrote:
Are you polling for opinions or just talking out loud?


Are you jealous or something? #Tongue

I think he's just showing us what he discovered, I never even knew the chrono-locomotor could (ab-)used like with the Teleport Pylons, because I never even thought of it.
Very interesting idea indeed.

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XxpeddyxX
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 18, 2017 6:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

There was zero signs of "jealousy" in that sentence. Just looming for clarification.

The teleportation thing is pretty cool, would be the perfect weapon to teleport a dhrono demo truck into an enemy base. Don't ask how the demo truck has chrono tech :p

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TAK02
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PostPosted: Wed Oct 18, 2017 11:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

XxpeddyxX wrote:
There was zero signs of "jealousy" in that sentence. Just looming for clarification.
There's a reason this existed: #Tongue

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XxpeddyxX
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PostPosted: Thu Oct 19, 2017 7:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Yes I took it into consideration but couldn't bother explaining why it doesn't fit into context.

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Millennium
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PostPosted: Fri Feb 15, 2019 9:10 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

After another one-and-a-half years, another update regarding progress (or at least meandering activity) in the intervening time.


  • I have said before that I intended to give shoutouts to several other mods and fictional universes by means of the pre-placed and capturable Time Machine building providing entities stemming from there.
  • I have decided on several settings of which elements will be investigated for possible implementation; these are the Doom, Wolfenstein, Quake and Half-Life series of games. Entities from these games can all roughly be modelled as Command & Conquer entities by using a stat scaling calculus (TBA) and the implementation of the last series from the list has recently received some wind under its wings by the appearance of several SHPs converted from 3D models from the game. For the same reason and its continuity with HL2, Team Fortress 2 has recently also been considered for implementation. In addition, entities from these games may influence the conception of units "indigenous" to the Continuum universe, to the point of these units being models, in a different engine, of these entities, without these units having "crossed over" from an alternate timeline.
  • The Allied Commando now uses a hip-fired M60 instead of the various other considered options (sniper rifle, battle rifle, shotgun). This makes the Commando less disjunct from Sammy Stallion/"Rambo", who is supposed to be a Commando-class character and in vanilla Yuri's Revenge uses what appears to be a machine gun or assault rifle, consistent with the iconic hip-fire use of an M60 in the Rambo movie. While it would be wholly consistent for the Commando to use a weapon fulfilling the same battlefield role as an M60 does if the M60 is wielded with enough strength, making assault rifle and battle rifle acceptable alternatives for the Commando, the advantage in firepower given to the Commando by these two weapons would have to be explained in-game largely on the basis of improved marksmanship skill (which is the explanation for the majority of the advantage in firepower of the Spetsnaz, who wields the same AK74, with minor and inconsequential alterations, as the Conscript). The choice of a machine gun further allows for a generalization of the Half-Life "Sergeant" class of HECU Marines  (cut from the final game) and the "Commando" enemy of Doom. I do not yet know whether and how the laser gun, which the Commando has previously received as a Heroic upgrade, will be retained after this change - perhaps it is possible, or even plausible, that the mod is set at a tech level at which a "portable" laser gun would still be comparable in size and weight to a machine gun, so that there is no change in the role of the Commando from "heavy weapons guy" to "omni-purpose light infantry", which would not be desired, between Elite level and Heroic level Commando. On the other hand, the Allies already have a separate dedicated laser infantry, the Enforcer, who uses a heavy laser gun, so perhaps the heroic-level Commando will not be using a laser gun at all anymore. Further, the Commando for now retains its M79 grenade launcher for hard targets and airstrike-calling, even though this seems somewhat superior to Sammy Stallion's bow-and-arrow method of grenade delivery. This may be subject to further scaling in the future, retaining vanilla Sammy Stallion's attribute of delivering grenades with arrows, which is consistent with Rambo, while making the Commando's method of grenade delivery no stronger than that.
  • As there already exists a separate "Machine Gunner" as well (even though it has to deploy to fire its machine gun), it is considered to switch that unit to an M2 machine gun or a minigun, to differentiate from the Commando.
  • The Allied Officer will prospectively be using a shotgun instead of the pistol he is currently be using. This is in order to generalize this unit with the "Officer", or "Shotgun Guy", of Doom. As it has so far not been decided that the Officer's laser pointer secondary should be removed, this possible alteration of the Officer currently has a curious tactical flintlock feel - unsophisticated close-range firepower suited against soft targets, combined with a very sophisticated long-range secondary that has no synergies with the primary - though the concept of range-dependent weapon alteration is perhaps itself interesting. Alternatively, the Officer may be retained in its current form and the "Shotgun Guy", qua a model of the shotgun-armed Marine variation in Half-Life, and directly scalable to the Combine Shotgunner of Half-Life 2, may be implemented as a separate unit.
  • The „White Russians“ faction is scrapped (this has been the case for a long time, but I believe I have never stated it), as it would have been improbable to exist in the case of a continued existence of the Soviet Union, even as a protectorate of Eastasia, at least with the ridiculously outdated unit roster with which it was originally conceived (using variations of rhombic World War 1 tanks). It‘s not entirely improbable that such a protectorate
  • Also scrapped is the idea, of which none ever made it into code, of the American pendant to the White Russians – Confederate States, either having somehow survived in this universal timestream or having in some way been revived, and being affiliated with the Third Power faction.


(post body exported to new post)

Gangs
Not a faction, but a type of tech of multiple factions. Non-playable, the Hideout can be captured, giving access to gang members. They consist of Thief, upgraded to Gangster, Raider and Marauder. Their relation to ScavengerTech is uncertain; it's uncertain if they have military or civilian stats.


  • Scavenger

  • Scavenger Heavy Gunner
    Dreams of CO2-powered Nordenfelt gun have come true!
  • Looted Tractor

    A farming tractor fitted with some armor plates and other bolted-on improvised armor. Armament may be a toxin sprayer, or it may also be a flamethrower. It is one of the weaponized civilian units available to the Brotherhood.

    Looted Minibus

    No specials to declare.

    BM-13 Katyusha

    A BM-13 Katyusha rocket launcher truck, as opposed to the Soviet Katyusha, which is a BM-21 Grad. This unit would only be available when looting on maps set in Russia, Eastern Europe or Central Asia, or perhaps as a rare museal find on other maps.

    Liberator Tank

    Unknown of what this would be a loot/salvage. Included mostly as a shout-out to the Liberator Tank of Tiberian Sun: Reform.

    Looted APC

    An Allied APC, with the addition of a casemate and sponsons, with cannons of undefined caliber, machine guns or flamethrowers in a fixed mounting.

    Soviet Armored APC
    This was the name of a voxel I found upon which I based the unit. However, "Soviet Armored Armored Personnel Carrier" has one redundant "Armored" in the name, therefore I prefer to call it "Heavy Arms APC" to make any sense at all.

    The voxel was pretty much identical to the M113 voxel present in the game, though larger to fit the game's scale and with different coloring and remapping pattern. It also had a fixed (non-split) turret holding a dual gun on the roof, and a sponson on each side, each holding another gun. Inspired by the M3 Lee, the sponson guns are now 75mm HE guns. Since there are two of them, the proper RA2-style naming would be: 75HEx, or 75HExE for Elite, respectively. The turret-held guns are now 20mm autocannons - however, in a strange twist to the original purpose of the 20mmRapid and 75mm, this vehicle's 20mm guns are designed versus vehicles (...I'm still thinking on this part...)

  • Antlion Tank
    The AntLion is SCORPION's main combat vehicle for desert regions. It can dig into the sand to hide from enemy airstrikes or to ambush their forces.
  • Looted Rhombos

    What appears to be a one of the British Mark I through X tanks of World War I, but that is perhaps coincidental and the Scavengers simply welded something together that resembles such a tank. Armed with 57mm cannons that fire HE shells. Effective against infantry, but ineffective against tanks, hardened buildings and aircraft.
  • Boar Tank

    Unsure what that is, but it has a single large anti-tank cannon. This cannon cannot be elevated, depressed or turned independently and the unit is likely intended to be used as a tank destroyer. The Rhombos' theme of a trapezoid hull whose outline is almost entirely traversed by the track is repeated here. Possibly improvised armor welded onto a looted chassis.
  • Peacock Tank

    Mounting an array of six laser cannons.

    Looted Apocalypse


    Looted Mustang

    A looted P-51 Mustang. This unit is comparable to the Yak, it has machine guns for anti-air and anti-ground combat, but is generally not effective against vehicles and structures. It is also much slower than more recent aircraft. Would only be available on American maps, or as a rare museal find elsewhere.

    Looted Mare

    Armed with an autocannon for anti-air and anti-ground attack and unguided rockets for ground-attack exclusively, perhaps with exotic warheads. Would only be available on American maps, or perhaps as a rare museal find elsewhere.
    The name is something of a pun; the plane itself is a P-38 Lightning, which is a twin-boom aircraft and thus an aerial analogy to a trimaran. "Mare" is also the name of a malicious entity, possibly spiritual, blamed as the cause of night-mares (the term for which is derived from their name) and sleep paralysis. As malicious folkloric spirits from Europe, they are similar to, although harmless compared to, the Banshee, who are of course the namesakes of Nod aircraft in Tiberian Sun and Third Power aircraft in Continuum.
    Finally, "mare" also means "female horse", continuing the equestrian theme with the complemental Scavenger fixed-wing aircraft, the Mustang.
  • Umagon

    Spoiler (click here to read it):


    • Scarlet

      Before the decision was made to include Umagon, there was the idea to include "Scarlet", a Soviet heroine closely based upon Umagon, but not a mutant and functioning like Yuri's Virus sniperess in vanilla Yuri's Revenge. The unit never made it to release readiness.


  • Sniper
    Spoiler (click here to read it):

    Back in Build "Cyberian Dawn", Snipers were a Brotherhood units. They could deploy to become prone. When firing from a prone state, the Sniper's damage is increased by +10% and his range is increased by +1. Persian Snipers will also increase their ROF. The Persian Sniper's deploy image is also different. Snipers would gain Cloak as Veterans and when reaching elite status, the Sniper will no longer reveal the shround around him when firing. Persian Snipers will also not decloak when firing. When reaching elite status, the Sniper is issued anti-materiel bullets that are slightly more effective against enemy armor (like normal small arms fire). These bullets can also be used against aerial targets. To achieve their increased capacity against armor, they use a uranium tip. This has the side effect that the shards of a shattered tip poison the atmosphere inside a pierced vehicle. Nothing speaks against using these toxic shots against enemy infantry in the open also. This way, a shot that would otherwise miss or cause a serious injury will result in the death of the target and even bystanders, as the toxic dusts contaminate the air around the impact.



New publication format
Finally, I have decided that I will diverge from the widespread use of releasing a "complete" mod, including greater or lesser changes to gameplay, which are similar in scope to any subsequent releases, and subsequent releases also including material that makes previous releases redundant. I have realized that I will probably not stay interested in this project for enough of my lifetime in order to ever achieve a stage of a complete release, and it is of note that there might be benefit to playing parts of it earlier, especially when there is the option for unfinished elements not to obstruct playability. Using the Ares "#include" function greatly eases the integration of piecemeal releases of separate files. I will therefore release my mod in parts as they are completed. It is my intention to approach the far-off goal of realizing a completion of my mod, but in this way, everyone is free not only play it before that, but I also want to transgress the "wall that is (mainly) in the head" of a single, coherent mod that has to played as-is; with a iterative release, perhaps it is also easy to assemble an entirely different mod, using some elements that one finds interesting, in combination with others, with the vanilla game, or perhaps even with other mods. Such a release can probably be expected next week, including the (non-canonical) Chinese units detailed above. Use "expand/expansions".ini as name for the #include file! Should we use expand? ecache? ecache in expand? This seems best.

Thank you all!
2022-10-23: Exported ScrapTech concept description to external file.

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Last edited by Millennium on Sun Oct 23, 2022 12:18 am; edited 19 times in total

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TAK02
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PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2019 6:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Dude, I don't care about the mod, I'm just happy you're even alive!

Then again, it looks good. I got to pick up the slack #Tongue

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Millennium
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PostPosted: Tue Mar 19, 2019 6:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Well, I'm glad. The reception usually hasn't been so nice. Wink

1. Generics

  • Mobile Outpost
    A field command vehicle with all the necessary supplies and equipment to deploy a small outpost. The Outpost is itself unable to construct any units or buildings, but provides a small construction radius in remote locations to place buildings at the frontline.
  • Radome
    The facility is one of the worst building with this function across all factions, comparable at most to the civilian array. It is a simple structure in which a radar antenna is protected by a metal dome. Third Power builds Radomes. It is required for the Airship Bay and itself requires a power plant to be built.
  • Sandbags

  • Watch Tower, Wood
    Simple wooden tower, used by various factions in various forms. Its main purpose is observation and it mounts a powerful searchlight, it's also fitted with a heavy machine gun. Exists in two variants.

    A simple wooden tower with a searchlight and an outdated heavy machine gun. These towers are more suited to preventing prisoner escapes than halting enemy assaults, however they are somewhat useful in mowing down attacks that rely purely on infantry. Against anything else, the weapon performs poorly. Guard tower crews can be promoted, gaining sensor equipment and armor-piercing ammunition, which makes their heavy machine guns effective against light vehicles. They still retain their ineffectiveness against armor though. Guard towers will sound an alert when becoming aware of an enemy unit in the vicinity and will point that enemy out with their spotlights, giving a slight accuracy bonus to other units firing upon that target.

    * The Guard Tower is a tier 1 defensive structure, on par with the wooden fence, sandbags and barbed wire.
    * While reasonably protected from small arms by the breastguards, the Guard Tower's crew is highly exposed to all sorts of other battlefield hazards - snipers, gas, radiation, pyrogenic, psionic, electric or cryogenic weapons can all easily kill the crew of a tower. In the case of pyrogenic weapons, it is likely the tower itself will quickly be destroyed.
    * Towers have a simple ladder to climb up, and special forces (i.e. infantry with the Assaulter tag) can easily kill a tower garrison too.
    * Concrete ('bunker') towers are somewhat more resilient, comparable to a bunker in all but construction layout. They are protected from most occupant-killing methods and are resilient towards even heavy guns. This type of tower makes an appearance in several "stronghold" levels (such as [[Mount Sumeru]] and [[Jade Valley]]) and the Third Power fortifications. They are often linked by tunnels with each other and/or bunkers.

    ==Skills==
    * '''[[M2 Browning]]''' - A WWII-era heavy machine gun has found a new purpose as the armament of this tower, where its immobility does not reduce its effectiveness and its continuous high rate of fire allows it to cut down ranks of infantry with ease.
    ** '''AP Bullets''' - When the tower's crew is promoted to elite rank, the HMG is issued armor-piercing ammunition, making the tower mildly effective against vehicles as well. Especially light vehicles will become easy targets to the tower, while tanks can still ford its line of fire with minimal damage. The largest gains in effectiveness, however, are seen against infantry wearing body armor, which now falls much quicker, allowing the tower to fulfill its role against larger groups of armored infantry.
    * '''Spotlight''' - Only available after ''Upgrade: Spotlight'' has been purchased. A spotlight is rotated around the tower when idle. When an enemy is spotted, that enemy is marked with the spotlight, and receives reduced evasion against attacks.
    * '''''Upgrade: ''Spotlight''' - Upgrades the tower with a spotlight which allows it to detect enemies in low-light conditions, such as during nighttime, and marks them for easier identification by other units.
    * '''''Upgrade: ''Siren''' - Upgrades the tower with a set of speakers. When the tower's crew notices an enemy unit, they can activate the siren with the push of a button, instantly alerting nearby units (and their commander) to the base infiltration.
    * '''''Upgrade: M60'''''
    * '''''Upgrade: M2 Browning'''''
    * '''''Upgrade: Vulcan cannon'''''

    The use of towers as defensive structures
    It is here important to note that „tower“ must by necessity be a relative term with regards to the height of the surrounding structures.

    A tower, incorporated into a wall of the same height, will cease to be a tower, and instead become a bastion.

    It is one of the simplest forms of defensive construction, and in its basic form provides nothing but an increased sight range at the perimeter of your base, allowing you to spot approaching hostile forces earlier and react accordingly. Infantry can be sent up the tower to fire from above, slightly increasing their range and penetration, as the targets are now more exposed to both line of sight and line of fire. The tower can be further upgraded with a weapon of its own, usually an automated gun, which its crew can operate. It can also be upgraded with a spotlight to increase its effectiveness in low-light conditions, and a siren to alert nearby forces to intruders the crew has spotted. While natively independent of base power supply, both the spotlight and siren have slight power consumption when added to a guard tower.

    Simple, but sturdy, constructions of wood and steel, the Guard Towers provide excellent protection from small arms fire and are, as expected, quite resilient to a few bullets getting lodged in their wooden support pillars. Anything heavier, such as tank shells or artillery, will quickly topple these soft structures however.
    Due to its ease of deployment, owing to its simple construction, the Guard Tower is perfectly suited for protecting forward outposts, for example for the purpose of mining resources.

    All Guard Towers come with a few pieces of equipment; apart from the pair of binoculars issued to the sentry, every Guard Tower possesses a single Browning .50 cal heavy machine gun, which has proven itself capable of tearing through thick jungle foliage and lightly armoured Vietcong soldiers with equal ease. Sustained fire from the machine gun will eventually tear up light vehicles, but against heavier armour the bullets aren't likely to have much effect, and the wood construction of the tower means that it can't be expected to survive more than a few well aimed shots from a tank.

    Watch Tower, Brick

    Watch Tower, Concrete
    Far-sighted hardened structure raised in the field by scavengers and some field armies without access to more heavy-duty equipment. The Observation Tower shows some relation to the Bunker, as, unlike the wooden and brick guard towers, it appears to be a hardened concrete construction. Just like the other towers, Observation Towers come with a single crewman manning its weapon.

    ** '''Energy gun''' - CDF, Brotherhood and Mutants are all known for their prolific use of salvaged, illegally-purchased, or, in many cases, downright looted technology of the other factions, often exotic, and as these factions are the common users of this type of tower, it is no exception - when promoted to elite, the tower gains an exotic energy weapon which deals non-elemental damage, making it effective against both hard and soft targets. The beams also briefly stall vehicles and cause frequent weapon malfunctions.

    ====Notes====
    * Needs to be captured by an [[Engineer]] to gain the ability to attack.
    * There are two graphical variants of Observation Tower. Both can be found if Observation Towers are pre-placed on maps for variance, but they are identical in terms of stats. The CDF can also build both variants, but again, the difference is purely graphical.
    * These towers connect to bunkers and tunnels constructed next to them, allowing them to be easily garrisoned or evacuated in the heat of battle without exposing your forces to fire or hazardous terrain.
    * Like all concrete structures, very resilient to atomic damage. The structure is also hardened to resist occupant-killing attacks and will resist tank guns to a great degree, behaving much like a bunker with slightly less HP and substantially more visual range.

    ===Allies===
    The allied Guard Tower is not accessible to commanders in skirmish. It consists of what is essentially a [[pillbox]], mounted on several masts. Its armament is identical to the pillbox, however the higher vantage point increases the building's sight and weapon range and allows it to attack the weak top armor of enemies. It can also fire at low-altitude aerial targets. Unlike the pillbox, the actual crew compartment of the tower cannot be raided, but the tower itself is far more vulnerable due to the fragile long mast, which collapses readily if exposed to fire.

    ===Soviet===
    The soviet Guard Tower is not accessible to commanders in skirmish. It is a medieval tower mounting a [[cannon]]. It can be crewed with infantry to provide additional short-range firepower.

    ===Third Power===
    The Third Power has two variants of Guard Tower - a light wooden construction armed with an old heavy machine gun and fitted with a searchlight, and a higher concrete tower with the same equipment. Both towers give alerts when spotting an enemy.

    ==Variants==

    ===Stone Watchtower===

    ===Allied Mast Tower===

    ===Component Tower===

    ===Allied Firebase===

    ===Soviet Firebase===
    The Firebase is a variant of the soviet Bunker, armed with a large howitzer at the expense of crew space.

    (edit: moved "Soviet China" section originally included in this post into its own post)


2. Greater Turkestan


I might've mentioned before that there are going to be "neutral" Command Centers capturable on certain maps, granting access to the forces of non-playable local factions. While most such Neutral factions will be limited to just a generic Command Center and possibly a handful of generic buildings, some factions may have distinct buildings and additional buildings beyond the roster of generic building types available to all neutral factions. Besides the Chinese Soviets, "Greater Turkestan" is such a faction: the hold of the central government in the Russian SFSR on the Turkic republics of Central Asia has weakened, meanwhile the Republic of Turkey, having been on the Allied side during World War II, lays claim to these areas as spoils of war.


Turkestan is not currently intended to be playable, but this flag in the proper format for the faction selection menu has been created nonetheless.


The area colored in a lighter blue is the "Cuman Triangle" (or "Kazan-Rostov-Tabriz Triangle", although its outline does not actually connect those three cities), a land corridor connecting Anatolia, Kazakhstan, Crimea and the transcaucasian turkic territories, although not itself a turkic territory. Crimea has been claimed mainly out of irredentism.

Being a non-playable faction, Turkestan is supposed to have a limited unit roster. It shares its units with the Brotherhood, but is limited to basic infantry (Mujahid and RPG Mujahid) and vehicles focused on speed and mobility (Bike, Trike, Buggy). They should also have access to the BTR, a Soviet unit, and War Miner, a Third Power unit. I'm considering giving them the hero unit "Tarkan", a hero biker accompanied by a pet wolf, dealing bonus damage to buildings and inflicting a "burn" damage-over-time status to them.


Turkestani Command Center & Mujahid
The Command Center might get the special ability to grant a Speed Boost.


BTR-80 (ver. 1), which is accessible to Russia and Turkestan


Turkestani Factory, Power Plant and various speedsters. It produces the Bike, Trike, Quad/Buggy, BTR, Supply Truck, Crane and War Miner. The Bike would be loaded by a RPG Mujahid, the Buggy with a Mujahid and RPG Mujahid, the BTR with 8 Mujahids.

3. ScavengerTech, pt. 2 & Neutral Factions Misc

Other than the aforementioned mods, this expansion to the Warzone 2100 Scavenger faction roster[/i] is something that I want to roughly implement as part of the tech-tree of Scavenger factions in Continuum. It will of course not be possible to allow the same degree of weapon customization, except if a separate type is created for each vehicle-weapon combination, but I think I will refrain.

3.1. African Warlords
The African Warlords faction is not itself a faction in the same way as the other factions are. It is a group of individual warlords aligned with different sponsors. Previously, I have unequivocally stated that the African Warlords faction is a "subfaction" of the Brotherhood principally in the sense subfactions in vanilla Yuri's Revenge are subfactions: having in common a large part of their tech-tree, with the aspect that these do not share a goal or allegiance, which is otherwise central to factions and sub-factions, having no effect on gameplay. But I'm now thinking that this should perhaps be changed: It is a collection of individual warlords, aligned with different sponsors: some may be aligned with the Allies, some with the Soviets, others with the Brotherhood. This could of course be implemented as making three factions, one representing an African Warlord sponsored by the Allies, one representing those sponsored by the Soviets and one that is a Brotherhood subfaction, although whether that would be in any way different from simply having access to the Brotherhood tech-tree without any specialties that qualify as a sub-faction, I've not plotted out yet. The Allied-aligned African Warlords include the Nikoomba of Continuum and the relation between warlord and sponsor is structured in the same way as that between Nikoomba and the GDI in Tiberian Dawn: they all have a share in the Tech tree of their sponsor and field small forces composed of units of their sponsors. Instead of making three separate factions selectable from the match menu, I've concluded that it would perhaps be more interesting to allow African Warlords players to switch their allegiance during a match, by building an "Embassy" structure. Depending on the embassy built, different units become available and the embassy has to be sold or destroyed in order to built the embassy of a different sponsor. Such units would always be very basic and perhaps not even player-controllable, though perhaps it would be possible to upgrade your "standing" with a faction to unlock additional tech-types*, though I've not thought of a way of implementing a game mechanic to that effect. Sponsor units would not be produced by your own factories, but instead delivered by paradrop. The techno-types available to the African Warlords in absence of any Embassy would be low-tech "scavenger tech" units, that is, repurposed civilian vehicles, and basic infantry identical to that of the Brotherhood. Affiliating with the Brotherhood would grant access to "suicide" units and bio- and chem-weaponry, making the Brotherhood's tech-tree available to the player in its entirety.
What I've said above about the Brotherhood being a different faction when played in a different kind of map may also apply to the Brotherhood, namely it would map to the generic Scavenger faction of the map's region, which may preclude certain affiliations.
On the other hand, the affiliation could also be selectable right from the menu; cf. how, in Panzer General 2, "Republican" and "Nationalist" Spain can be selected, both being Spain, but with different "extra" units reflective of their affiliation.

Notes
Spoiler (click here to read it):

* The general idea of a faction composed partially with the tech of another faction is perhaps a line of thought that leads to interesting faction designs. In a sense, it can be said that subfactions, at least in Yuri's Revenge are built in this way, but that no playable faction has any more claim (except by fluff, by which it is Russia) to the tech that is not specific to it being its "own" that is simply included in the other factions, except by campaign, where the player plays "Soviets Undivided" and "Allies Undivided" for the most part (that is, without the special units available in Skirmish and Multiplayer), though, again, by fluff, probably plays American and Russian forces. In a way, the African Warlords are a faction that has the potential to compose its tech tree out of parts of playable factions: a part of the Brotherhood and a part of the Allies or Soviets, or out of all of the Brotherhood. I've explored the idea of a faction that is a sub-faction of several factions further in Great Turkestan.


3.2. CDF
A similar situation to that of the African Warlords also occurs in relation to Scavengers elsewhere: Scavengers on the North American continent are supposed to be divided into two or three factions by allegiance and modus operandi, which correspond to the homonymic groups in Fallout or Warzone 2100: "Scavengers" live in settled communities and, well, scavenge, "Raiders" raid them (and occasionally each other). The third faction, the CDF, is defined by its allegiance to the U.S. government and formal membership and is an individual group, rather than a catch-all term for certain kinds of groups, and may fall under the raider or scavenger classification, but is in turn supported by the U.S. government. In other words, these groups do not exist on the same "layer", the top two being categories of individual groups. Although a faithful representation of these groups, which differ in equipment and modus operandi to the same degree as the communities and groups in Fallout, would make each of them a separate subfaction composed of very specific units, I'm going to make just one faction for all three, and not a faction that is specialized in shishkebab fencers, another specialized in varmint-riflemen, etc., all with their individual clothing style.

3.3. Brotherhood
I've said before that the Brotherhood would be a "Scavenger" faction that would use salvaged vehicles from its surroundings. This does not retract that they have access to very specific tech that other salvaging/scavenging factions have no access to: suicide units, which is due to the religious background most other such factions lack (except when representing religious fanatics of a different kind), and perhaps bio-weapons, which are improvised and smuggled, and which they might largely not have more access to than any other low-tech faction, but which are more widely proliferated within this faction due to its ideological appeal, which goes beyond the local. I'm currently not sure whether the Brotherhood should have the camouflage focus I've originally envisioned it to have; this certainly fits a "terrorist" faction, but it is hard to justify that they would have any greater ability to "blend into" their surroundings than the members of any other scavenger/salvager faction, which in turn seems like an odd thing to be a great ability of other such factions (though it is a common theme with Forgotten-based such factions in Tiberian Sun mods.) The Brotherhood, like the "Mutants", also pushes the conceptual limits of what constitutes a "faction"; it was originally envisioned as having as its subfactions the "Arab Union", "African Warlords" and "Persian Empire", and there was the idea that its roster would be expanded by including "mutant" units that would be recruited from the mutant population that would be prolific in its area of influence, due to the war of the greater powers.

4. Ore Truck

This Ore Truck will be the generic resource collector available to the Soviets and to most factions that are not independently playable.

4. Time Machine, pt. ?
Considerations about the Time Machine connect to considerations about Scavenger faction. I think I’ve said before that capturing the Time Machine may produce disappointing results, granting outdated units, such as chariots, clubmen, axemen and even dinosaurs. It is also supposed to grant “cross-over” units. However, when we consider that the Time Machine grants tech, this does not make a whole lot of sense: we probably still have a relatively decent idea, in our time, of how to construct a chariot, and the idea that we would not know how to put a wooden club into a guy's hand is ridiculous. The reason, now, why this is not done is not lost knowledge, but rather that it is militarily pointless. The same incongruence showed up when I considered how Half-Life and Half-Life 2 entities would appear in Continuum through the Time Machine: while it perhaps makes sense to think that a transfer of tech is involved in making Combine infantry and war-machines available, this explanation becomes shaky when alien creatures are involved, and entirely untenable as an explanation for the transfer of Rebel units: while some of the weapons used by Rebels, where they have been pilfered from the Combine, are arguably a step up from the weapons natively available in Continuum, considering the enabling of training Rebel “units” as they appear in HL2 as a tech transfer would mean that the idea of giving these advanced weapons, which one can now reproduce, to civilian volunteers would be more sensible than to upgrade one’s proper infantry with them. Likewise, HL2’s crossbow is an ingenious solution of producing a sniping weapon from scrap. While there might be some situationally applicable knowledge in producing this weapon from scrap, it provides no advantage in a world where this particular niche does not need to be filled; how a crossbow would be produced, should one ever need one among the plenitude of extant sharpshot weapons, is probably as commonly known in Continuum as it is in our world and materials that can be transformed into crossbows are already ample. Pistol-and shotgun-armed rebels, likewise, cannot be seen as a tech transfer. The case for whether the RPG represents an improvement over extant Continuum tech is, in my estimation, undecided; at least by its stats in HL2, this would not be the case.
Again, if the enabling of units by the Time Machine is intended to represent a tech transfer, then there might be a transfer of some weapons, but they would be seen on proper infantry, not on Rebels.
If, however, actual units are transfered, already grown/trained/equipped/built, no loss in throwing them onto the battlefield, right? Therefore, the access granted by the Time Machine to units will be explained as transfer of actual units in several cases (perhaps tech transfer in others) and this will probably have other implications for gameplay. Now, where have we heard before that units are thrown onto the battlefield not because they are the best a faction can do with pieces already available? That's right, in the Scavenger "warehouse capture". So, whenever I figure out the gameplay implications of the one case, I will probably also have figured out the gameplay implications of the other case.

4.1. Time Machine, pt. ?+1
I‘ve stated before that the Time Machine, when captured, is supposed to provide, à la Secret Lab, access to units from various points in various timelines.

5. Allies
The Allies in Continuum are supposed to be largely analogous to the GDI of the Tiberium universe: aspiring to a one world government, but despite global reach and the ability to strike anywhere on the planet, it does not have full control; the remnants of the Soviet Union are largely independent, there are crime syndicates and socialist governments in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa are a mess. Depending on where I want to place the Allies on the sliding scale of idealism versus cynicism, this might amount to a sinister, dictatorial organization, rather than a global force of good, and their tech tree might include ways to kill rather gruesomely.
And of course, there is Unit 666, the shadowy military division that largely parallels the history of Black Ops.

Ch-47 Chinook

Chinooks are sturdy and reliable transport helicopters which shuttle men and materiel across the jungle, avoiding the hazardous terrain. Unfortunately, they are entirely without means of self-defense, so their drop-off points should always be shadowed.

The sub-factions currently planned for the Allies are America, Europe and Oceania. There might be Generals-like subfactions for the Allies, probably at least including the American sub-factions of that game, that is, an airforce, laser and superweapon sub-faction, plus perhaps sub-factions focused on other characteristic science of the Allies, of which, in Command & Conquer, only one more comes to mind, which is what I may call, for lack of a better term, „chronurgy“ (time-working). This may include a Chrono Transport, Chrono Tank, Chrono Prison, all of which are self-explanatory,

Chrono Soldier

A regular infantryman fitted with a personal teleportation device.

Chrono Artillery

This unit is loaded with explosive devices, too large, heavy and unwieldy to launch over long distances. However, the Chrono Artillery does not launch them, but rather teleport them right into the enemy, where they will explode with a little delay, dealing tremendous explosive damage. Once a bomb has been teleported, it cannot be moved to adjust its position if its target moves and will also require some time to fully materialize, determined by the distance, during which it can be destroyed at the target location, but is not yet armed. A possible elite upgrade for this unit is that the position of bombs that it teleports can be adjusted after initial teleportation if the target moves out of the area.

Possibly, this unit will only be available to some sub-faction, and almost certainly it will be higher-tier than other artillery units of the same tech tree or even require specific conditions that cannot be immanentized from the tech tree alone (such as Secret Lab, or Stolen Tech), which means that the other conceptualized Allied artillery units, the Howitzer and MLRS, are not entirely counted out yet. However, because of the conceptualized Paladin Tank, it may be that these are still only available to some subfactions, being replaced by that unit for others.

Chrono-Fighter


5.2 Allied TCTF

A design exercise that ties into . Adapt GDI ('optimized' GDI) infantry/vehicles to TCTF color scheme, and perhaps units.
* Name: Public Security
* Operative -
* Tactical Trooper -
* SWAT Trooper -
* Patrol Car -
* SWAT Truck -

6. Soviets
I‘ve considered creating the Psi-Corps as a separate Soviet (rather, Post-Soviet) sub-faction, along with the Black Guard, which was originally conceptualized as cyborg supersoldiers dating to the time of the Soviet Union, but has now been re-conceptualized as a shadowy black-clad „state guard“ that maintains order in the regular Russian military.

7. Conceptual Bio/Chem/Mutation Faction




A conceptual side, focused on bio-weapons, poison and weaponized mutation, inspired by Nod's Project ReGenesis and Tiberium-based weaponry, as well as the creatures and mutagenic and toxin weapons in Yuri‘s arsenal, splitting all the many other non-generic tech of either Yuri (teleforce, drain, gattling, antigravity (or however the Saucer flies), mind-control) or Nod (stealth, cybernetics, subterranean movement, flamethrowers, lasers, plasma) which are all used only in a few places in their respective factions, and merging the remains. Nod's use of Tiberium (adapted to the setting) would have remained, being identical to chemical technology, even though it also underlies other techs and thus is, as a precondition, included in them.

I considered this concept for one of three sub-factions of the Yuri side, the others being focused on mind-control and stealth, or illusion, though the latter would probably achieve that by . This faction concept could also be worked into a more doctrine-consistent Nod.
The first conception was created under the influence of having recently played Half-Life 2, and had an analogy to the Combine‘s alteration and weaponization of life-forms, though instead of cybernetics, the faction would have used mutation for this purpose, which is only a distal element in the Combine‘s arsenal. Still, something like Headcrab shells – replacing the Headcrabs with a living payload more suited to the universe of Continuum, for example Visceroids – would have fit the concept. The concept did not include any history or ideas about the organizational structure.

* This faction may share mutant/forgotten logo, that would actually be more Nod-ish, especially given its current focus on mutants and mutation-inducing weaponry.


  • Initiates
    Would have been low-order cultists fighting with a variety of small arms, though elsewhere their weapons were given as „Viper“ sub-machine guns. On reaching Elite level, they would also have been capable to lob contaminative, explosive Tiberium grenades.
  • Light Infantry
    Would have been kept, or replaced with the Augmented Trooper.
  • Hazardeur

    Basic infantry, matches Light Infantry. They are armed with SMGs and fitted with protective clothing and gas masks, allowing them to operate in the hazardous environment their faction creates around its areas of operation.
  • Rocket Infantry
    Would have been removed, but the faction would instead have had access to the Chemical Infantry, which would have lacked anti-air capability and be weaker against vehicles, but would have been highly effective against infantry almost irrespective of their armor, with the exception of hazmat-suit-ed infantry, against which it would have been largely useless.
  • Engineer
    Regarding this, nothing was decided.
  • Cyborgs
    Would have been removed and replaced with noncybernetic mutants, for example a minigun-armed Brute substitutive of the basic Cyborg Infantry.
  • Servitor
    Surgically and mutagenically altered humans of the lowest kind, technological zombies. They are little more than shambling corpse-like drones, with grey complexion and entirely nude, apparently sexless. Servitors are political opponents, criminals or other "undesirables" who were converted through surgery into mindless drones. All Servitors have a greatly modified brain in which implants control their thoughts and movement. Servitors represent the lowest investment necessary to turn a human into a loyal unit of the Combine, and their "augmentation" consists solely of their unfaltering obedience and immunity to pain, discomfort or any other stimuli that would discourage humans from fulfilling orders or lessen their morale. While they have no need for clothing or housing under climatic conditions conductive to human biology, they are still biological humans and depend on shelter and clothing when conditions become adverse. Servitors also require food, but have no requirements regarding taste or texture, which means they can be fed on Soylent, but can also consume any other source of nutrients available in the area.
    Their masters use these creatures as laborers, using hand-tools to mine resources, digging and construction and repair work, and they are of little use for any other role: while they can use their tools to clobber enemies in close combat for minimal damage and can be covered in protective clothes, they can merely soak up bullets, as they invariably act with low proficiency, slow reaction, inability to follow complex orders, absence of initiative on even the most primitive instincts, and an inability to gain experience or benefit from training. They are still physically human however and will gain muscle mass when exerting themselves, if fed adequately.
    When their host Collector is destroyed, all Servitors dispatched from that Collector will collapse into puddles of grey goo.
  • Druga
    Virus was to become her, who would have been able to poison enemy infantry with her dart-gun. She would have been able to fire at friendly infantry to restore their health. Unlike Virus, poisoned enemies would only produce virus clouds when killed by a Pharma on Elite, otherwise, only toxic clouds would result. Deploying her would cause her to throw down a bio-grenade at her feet, producing a dense fog that would poison enemies and heal allies.
  • Mutant Hijacker: it has always confused me in what way Mutant Hijacker gains the ability to hijack, and whether Mutant Hijacker is an individual, or a group of people. Mutant Hijacker can run faster than ordinary humans, which helps him catch up with vehicles; is that a feature of his mutation? Is it a mutation that others have? If there are more people with this mutation, why are they all hijackers? Is the hijacking itself a feature of mutation? Is this just the M.O. of this individual, akin to a comic supervillain, and he does not languish in obscurity because his speedster mutation allows him to be effective with it? Anyway, it is beyond a doubt that something
  • Mutant Dog

  • Toxin Tank
    There was supposed to be no Flame Tank, but rather a Chem Tank, armed with a sprayer, without burrowing capability.
  • Hive Fist
    A unit called „Hive Fist“ was supposed to attack air and ground targets by launching flying parasites. This unit was later developed into the „Nester“, which houses Visceroids that it can deploy, mounts a quadruple rocket launcher and Tiberium rockets and has the capability to catch Visceroids. It would have turned infantry into Visceroids with its rockets, which would then have disproportionately augmented the Nester‘s ability to attack buildings and vehicles, either in the same area, or in another area, by catching and re-deploying them. It is also possible that the Nester was supposed to be able to unload the Visceroids at the Waste Facility/Grinder combination building (see below).
  • Blight Hurler
    Nod's Artillery of TS/FS was to be replaced by, and have its function distributed among, several types of artillery with exotic payloads more in line with the faction‘s concept than vanilla Nod‘s regular explosive shell: poison (gas), radiation, Tiberium and even Visceroid shells, some using shells and others rockets as delivery system. The Blight Hurler is a long-range, large-bore mortar on a tracked base, which has to deploy to fire. However, its weapon has been altered from dealing straight damage to contaminating the target area.
  • Raven
  • Cliff-ghast

    Cliff-ghasts attack with their claws at close range, dealing slashing damage. They can also spit toxin to attack ground targets from the air. Those cliff-ghasts which have been around for awhile will mutate further, gaining the ability to spit beams of radiation.
  • Floater
    Instead of the Floating Disc, the Tiberium Floater would have been available, though it would not have been able to drain refineries.
  • Wasp
    The Banshee would have been removed and replaced with an aircraft called „Wasp“, which presumably back then already denoted a spray plane or chemical bomber.
  • Bio Reactor
    Rather than the generic and not even Tiberium-based power plant of Nod in TD and TS, the power plant would function according to the principle of Yuri‘s Bio Reactor.
    A power plant which consists of several Bio Pods in a metal aperture which holds the pods and connects them with wires to a central pillar. Each pod can contain a lifeform of up to human or slightly larger size, rendering them static and extracting energy from their biological activity. Each reactor can be remote-controlled to release its captives.
    The reactor has a special function where it can re-channel its power into the lifeforms held inside, causing them to undergo violent mutation.
  • Bio Pod
    The '''Bio Pod''' is a production facility that doubles as a base defense, or ''vice versa'' - these pods can absorb infantry, either sent by you or enemy infantry "trapped" with its special catcher
    function. Inside the pod, the infantry unit undergoes a transformation process, turning it into a [[Brute]]. On command, or when the cell is broken, the now-transformed infantry unit emerges.

    There would have been no Tank Bunker, but instead a „specimen tank“, which had two (or, arguably, three) functions: it could "catch" infantry and would mutate it while inside. The resulting mutant could be released by deploying.
  • Processing Plant
    There was supposed to be a structure that would somehow merge the Nod Waste Facility and Yuri‘s Grinder, though the prospective result is unclear. It may have been considered that a superweapon, likely the Visceroid Missile, or Visceroid Shell, would be charged by sending units, in that case Visceroids, into the structure. The Nester (see above) was possibly intended to dock with the structure to unload its cargo of Visceroids.
  • Mutator Emplacement
    The role of the Psychic Tower and Obelisk of Light as "heavy" base defenses would have been taken over by the "Mutator Turret", the name of which is probably sufficiently explanatory.
  • Jade Cannon
    Another base defense would be the „Crystal Turret“, firing a flechette of Tiberium, which appears to have been conceptualized as a sort of – possibly monomolecular – incredibly hard, incredibly sharp and incredibly pointy unobtainium, deadly against both infantry and vehicles, but preferentially targeting vehicles. Due to the narrow area of effect, it would be easy for infantry to dodge the turret‘s fire, but infantry killed would, at a certain chance, be subject to mutation. Likewise, if a crewed vehicle was hit by the weapon, the crew of the vehicle would be killed and with a certain chance mutated, leaving a heavily-damaged capturable vehicle and a mutant that would endanger other enemy forces approaching the area. The weapon would also irradiate its target and cause linear damage.
  • Graser

    Graser (gamma-ray laser, or more commonly "Rad", turrets are deadly against both infantry and vehicles and will not discriminate between the two types of targets. When hitting infantry, the effect is instantly deadly. When hitting vehicles, the effect is usually a quick demise of the crew and any passengers, unless the vehicle is specially protected.
    The Graser deals linear damage, meaning everything between it and its current target gets a full dose of radiation. It also irradiates the ground in a small area around its point of impact.
  • Toxin Turret

    Toxin Turrets are generally only effective against infantry, and will preferrentially target them. They are minimally useful against vehicles as well, as the chemicals are corrosive and will over time degrade even vehicle armor. However, this effect is too weak and slow to be noticeable on heavier vehicles and is more akin to an accelerated wear-and-tear, than true weapon damage. When infantry targets are present, the Toxin Turret will never fire upon vehicles.
  • Cloudmaker
    The SAM Site would have been kept as sufficiently generic and simplistic, although the same could perhaps be said of the vanilla Artillery, so the decision was perhaps also influenced by the circumstance that no payload


Regular vehicles should be generic, non-special, weak and not prone to specific tactics:

  • The Harvester would have been kept, though probably merely out of gameplay necessity. Later versions instead make resource collection dependent on a Slave Miner with Servitors (see below), give the Harvester the ability to be used as a suicide vehicle with damage depending on load, or a combination thereof.
  • There would have been no Bike and the Buggy would have been replaced with an armored car; this decision was based on the aspiration to parallel Half-Life 2‘s Combine, which is an alien empire occupying Earth, rather than an irregular terrorist group, like Nod. Later version removes this vehicle.
  • In place of the Subterranean APC, there would have been a generic (surface) APC. Later version removes this vehicle in favour of the conceptual idea of letting forces ride in toxin tanks, healing and strengthening them en route. These could possibly be the tanks of Chem Tanks, which would then double as transports.
  • No decision was made regarding the Tick Tank, but the Stealth Tank was removed.
  • There would have been no Sensor Array.
  • The fate of the Boomer was undecided.
  • The Harpy was to be removed and replaced with a generic, weak helicopter of Soviet origin, the reason for this perhaps being a desired analogy with the Half-Life 2 pre-release concept of Soviet helicopters being used by, again, the Combine. This was not included in later versions of the concept.
  • The Construction Yard and Radar would have been kept, out of gameplay necessity.
  • The Tech Center was renamed to „Lab“.
  • The Stealth Generator would have been removed.
  • The Temple of Nod would be replaced by a structure called „Citadel“.
  • The Gattling Cannon would not have been available to this faction, but perhaps a more simplistic, generic sentry gun would have been available. Later version scrapped this defense.
  • The Adrenaline Vault and Steroid Vault buildings, or perhaps a single building combining both, would have enhanced infantry strength, speed and resilience.
  • There would have been no Hunter Seeker.
  • The Psychic Dominator would have been removed, but the Genetic Mutator would have been kept, though, due to the proliferation of objects that are in some way genetic mutators, would have received a different name more specific to its activity.


Rockets
The missile silo was originally deemed not to fit this faction, but long-range artillery was considered fitting because of the association of chemical weaponry with long-range missile SW. Possibly, a generic artillery SW would replace missiles as delivery system, but at most, the faction would have neither the EMP Cannon, nor the Multi Missile, but it would keep the Chem Missile and get several other types of missile, aligned with the types of artillery:


  • Toxin Rocket: Possible upgrades would have consisted of a trail of poison gas puffs that would have drifted down, dealing some extra damage over the trajectory, and, after no way could be found to implement the Veinhole Shell,
  • Irradiation Rocket: Possible upgrades would have consisted of the rocket leaving a trail of radiation over its entire trajectory, and, after no way could be found to implement the Veinhole Shell,
  • Tiberium Rocket: A rocket that would air-burst over an area and "salt" it with Tiberium, preventing construction and making the area impassable for unprotected infantry.
  • Visceroid Missile:
  • Veinhole Monster Missile:


Alternatively, artillery or bomber aircraft could have delivered these payloads.

Eventually, these SWs were combined into Genesis Missile (this can be call-in PD; so cruise missile locomotor; it drops a few Visceroids, explodes, spreading radiation, tiberium, gas; perhaps also creates veinhole if possible). It also produces a mutator effect when detonating, mutating every infantry nearby with its powerful mutagenic radiation blast.

Others
"Visceroid Shells" and "Veinhole Shells" were considered, but, of all mutants, no satisfactory solution could be found for these two in particular to be delivered via air-mail. Visceroid shells would be shot at the target location, each containing a Baby Visceroid. While the Visceroids themselves are not harmful, they quickly coalesce into Adult Visceroids, infecting and disrupting enemy troop concentrations and bases. Visceroids created by Visceroid Shelling cannot be controlled by the player that fired them.
To aid in actually actively harming enemy forces at the target location, the shells also contain a small amount of poison gas, as well as having the power to seriously maim units on a direct hit through the kinetic energy of their impact alone.

The Psychic Dominator would have been removed, but the Genetic Mutator would have been kept, though, due to the proliferation of objects that are in some way genetic mutators, would have received a different name more specific to its activity.

8. ID'ing patterns
Long ago, I made a then-much-derided request that the 26-character, including brackets, limit to ID length be raised in Ares, because I found that this length did not allow me to be sufficiently specific. I've since tossed around ideas of how to implement an ID'ing pattern; Dune uses a capitalized two-letter prefix, indicating the faction, not just for buildings, but also for units, followed by a camel-case name of the building or unit. I think the two-letter prefix falls short because it is, at least in the context of Continuum, not always certain what the "faction" of an object is (and I'm not talking about the obvious case of shared use, which already complicated the use of separate INIs for the objects of a certain type, belonging to a certain faction, which was used in Gen/ZH, and which, by the circumstance that certain objects were shared by factions so disparate that they could not plausibly be considered subfactions of an "organization", but must be considered "subfactions" of faction, non-playable and merely defined by shared tech, led to the idea of defining the

9. Third Power
I'm still not sure how to fit the Third Power into the mod. Just as with the idea of Chinese dualism, I had the idea that there could be more "Westernized" parts of Europe that would form a European subfaction of the Allies (Great Britain, France, perhaps others), and a more "German" part of central Europe, perhaps with other allies in Europe, corresponding roughly to Axis and the Central Powers, in short, all that would be leaning more towards fascism, conservatism or even centrism, instead of the liberal order spearheaded by the USA, such as Italy, Spain and Turkey.
A totally different concept would grant Europe entirely to the European sub-faction of the Allies, and instead turn the Third Power into a "remnant" like that asserted by some conspirationists to exist of Nazi Germany, without anything but secretive holdings on Europe proper, based instead in those places in which conspiracy theories usually assert the Third Reich to have withdrawn itself to, which would be Hollow Earth, Antarctica and the Dark Side of the Moon, though of what, exactly, such a faction would be a remnant of in a world in which the Third Reich never existed is not so easy to answer: certainly, the Nazi Party existed, and it is conceivable that various secretive occultist groups whose beliefs included similar elements existed as well, but why these would retreat to obscure places in the world, or would have gotten their hands on the sort of military hardware that the Third Power uses, rather than being a secretive organization, is unclear. At best, you get cultists finding ancient or alien artifacts in places that their occult teachings lead them to.

10. Gang Warfare!

Trying to weave the „gang members“ included in SuperJoe‘s Civilian Pack in. Far from being comedic, . , but of course, armament scale of gang „field operatives“ begins much lower – bandits lightly armed, perhaps with a pistol, are prolific in the slums of the USA and the Caribbean.

He can also loot civilian structures to inflict a little damage on them in return for cash.

The '''AK Brother''' has an AK-47 assault rifle, one of few available to gangsters. He is far more deadly to infantry, but reloading his ammo takes awhile. Because it is unwieldy, the AK's accuracy is greatly reduced when firing from cars.

Pyromaniac
The '''Match Brother''' likes to give his brothas fire for their joints. To that end, he always carries his lighter with him. When ordered to attack, he sets fire to cars and buildings to burn them down, but this works far less effectively with armored vehicles and living creatures, which are usually not as flammable when exposed to a small lighter flame as their reaction to exposure to flamethrowers in C&C suggests. He can also roll burning tires towards enemies for ranged damage and incendiary effect.

11. Command Center
The Command Center can also order vehicles to be dropped in, however those only become available periodically and also cost supplies to be delivered.

Neutral Command Centers have been revised. Because Command Centers are neither supposed to construct buildings or vehicles, but should be the central buildings capturing which should provide a player access to the entire tech roster of a faction, however they explicitly should provice specials, they now provide Dozer Drop, which will deliver a dozer to the structure, which in turn can build the entire tech roster of the respective faction.

Likewise, this has allowed Comm Centers to be aligned with Construction Yards for the playable factions; Eastasia will be able to build its Comm Center after a Power Plant has been built and it initially serves only as a radar facility. It can then be upgraded to access "Cash Hack", which can be upgraded two more times, and "GPS Hack", which can be upgraded one more time. It also houses Hackers.

§12 Defenses
The way migeater has handled field defenses in D-Day has made me reconsider defenses. While I‘m keeping defenses mounting the weapon in an enclosed turret mounted on a solid base, perhaps there is room for less fortified defensive emplacements: an entrenched anti-tank gun or mortar, or a machine gun nest without the walls and covering of a pillbox. However, an entrenched anti-tank gun, without being mounted in a special structure, would still fundamentally be a field gun,

Defensive line warfare could also be some faction‘s „hat“ (this would probably be the Third Power), combining a wide-spread ability of infantry to deploy into fixed positions

XXXX

Edited by Millennium 2022-10-19: Moved APC section.
Edited by Millennium 2020-9-18: Moved Mutant section to post of its' own.

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Last edited by Millennium on Wed Oct 19, 2022 9:04 pm; edited 11 times in total

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Millennium
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Joined: 09 Mar 2008
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 1:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Hover Tank
Hover tank is fast, maneuverable and has a wide reach. However, it suffers from a relatively slow acceleration and light armament. The light weight required for it to hover, and the tractionless movement, preclude the use of a standard main cannon. Hover tanks can be equipped with light weapons: with one or two machine guns, grenade launcher, flamethrower or recoilless gun, but the standard production model has to make due with twin-linked 40mm autocannons, which can make short work of infantry and light vehicles, but work pitifully against heavy armor and are thus harmless to heavier armored forces. relying on their superior speed and reach to avoid enemy armor and positions.

Crewed by 2 (gunner/commander, driver).

Tankettes are miniature tanks They have a crew of one or two and are preferred by the Japanese in djungle environment. In a one-on-one battle, a Tankette will easily be beaten by even an Allied Light Tank, but the vehicle has great anti-infantry capabilites comparable to that of an Allied Ranger, while having greater armor than the Ranger. When promoted to Elite, the Tankette can easily take out lighter vehicles with it's grenade launcher.


  • Twin-linked 40mm autocannons – Can fire on both air and ground targets, but anti-air effectivity is limited by short range to low-flying tactical aircraft and helicopters.
  • Strafe – Can fire on the move and will strafe to avoid enemy fire.
  • High Speed, but high Drag also – Takes a brief period to accelerate to full speed.
  • Elite are assigned a support drone.


Currently, I am experimenting with replacing the design of the Hover Tank. I'm unable to decide which one to use for it.


v. 2b: the chassis of a Hover Tank by LGibbs with a simplistic turret pilfered from Bugsey827's Gunboat.


v. 2c: the same chassis, mated with the turret of Atomic_Noodles' Tsunami Tank.


v. 3a: the chassis of azri_apoc's Hover Tank, mated with the turret                 of LGibb's Hover Tank.


v. 3b: the same chassis, with the turret of v. 2b.


v. 3c: the same chassis, with the turret of v. 2c.

Coincidentally, the designs also show a new color scheme under consideration for the Asian Alliance, leaning towards the Japanese color scheme of Red Alert 3, to replace the beige/gold scheme.

Which one looks most suitable?

Sentry Drone

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TAK02
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 10, 2019 3:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

v3a or v3c IMHO

Also, good to see you're still alive Smile

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Millennium
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Joined: 09 Mar 2008
Location: Osaka (JP)/Hong Kong/Germany

PostPosted: Sun Aug 25, 2019 1:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Has been noted; I'll probably go for 3c because the turret would be consistent with the Eastasian Amphibious Tank (which has the design of RA3's Tsunami Tank).

Meanwhile, an Eastasian hero unit:

Alita


With agility, speed and strength beyond that of a human, the automaton Alita has little problems taking down infantry and even tanks will have some problems taking her down. While no where near the destructive power of a Tekka unit, the lower investment of resources needed to produce her makes her a more cost and time effective unit to deploy if the enemy is using infantry or terror drones to hassel you.

Graphics created by Blade
Rules originally created by Whirley14 and Blade

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PostPosted: Sun Aug 25, 2019 2:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Millennium wrote:
Has been noted; I'll probably go for 3c because the turret would be consistent with the Eastasian Amphibious Tank (which has the design of RA3's Tsunami Tank).

Now that I think about it, 2c can work too, but you'd have to flip/reverse the chassis, and move the turret appropriately.
Just take it and make it force-fire on what's behind it.

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G-E
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 26, 2019 11:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I'm just curious, have you finished any of this? Like I can see your unit designs are in flux, kind of expected, but you list off 15 things every post, did you do those?

How much of this mod is playable vs theory?

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Millennium
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 27, 2019 1:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

G-E wrote:
I'm just curious, have you finished any of this? Like I can see your unit designs are in flux, kind of expected, but you list off 15 things every post, did you do those?

How much of this mod is playable vs theory?


This is a good question. Yes, many of these units are in themselves fully implemented and playable and lack no artwork or functionality. Some cannot be implemented and wait for Ares updates, some others are mentioned to appear in places that don't exist yet (missions, maps) or are totally conceptual (generally, units with screenshots are fully implemented). Besides me, there are two other people working on the mod, but we do not expect to "finish" it anymore. That means we do not think that we'll get to the point of fully implementing even those parts of the mod that the player necessarily encounters while playing (i.e. fundamental structures, UI features, etc.). However, as has been announced in previous post, we have intended to do "partial releases" of completed features that anyone can easily plug into YR by means of the feature "#include". We did not live up to that yet, but it is bound to happen within the next few weeks.

Here are some more updates:

Brute

In Continuum, "Brute" signifies a green, more powerful variant of Brute (the grey variant exists as well, and is called "Barbar"). They are sporadically created when humans are exposed to radiation, and thus their creation can be either intentional or a side-effect of the aftereffects of the use of nuclear weapons. Brutes are encountered as part of the mutant wildlife on some maps, just as Tiberium wildlife in TS, though they might also be available to be created by some factions under certain conditions.

Tiberian Brute (Tiberius Brutus)


Some of these hideous creations who are infused with additional mutagenic particles grow a cover of crystalline spikes. This has the effect of dramatically increasing their strength and resistance to weapons. Naturally occuring, but some psychopaths with access to the requisite tech may also produce these intentionally.  

The name is a pun on the historical figure Tiberius Brutus and the canonical binomial classification of Tiberium strains. Though it is still WIP, in the lore of Continuum, nuclear radiation, mutation and "Tiberium" (i.e. a Tiberium-like substance) should somehow be intrinsically the same thing, so that there are not really two distinct mutagens at work here.

Artwork created by The Darkest Elf
Description originally created by The Darkest Elf

Possible Chinese Carabinier Artwork Variants

YRArgentina had these three variations of a green recolor of the Seal. Chinese basic infantry should have the appearance of a green recolor of the Seal (as has been shown), but I wonder which one is the most suitable to use. It is possible that the furthest left will become "regular", the one to the right be used for a not-yet-introduced "Officer" unit, and the center one, being divergent in color, missing a frame and having some misplaced colored pixels, going unused, but I'm open to suggestions.

Possible Artwork for Tech Upgrades

Using the "POW Truck" unit as example, this pattern will possibly be used to depict upgrades that unlock access to construction options.

Lore Houre*!: Rayguns and Pulseguns
Sometimes, "ray-guns" or "pulse-guns" will be mentioned. Here are some notes on the difference between the two: Rayguns are any weapons shooting a stream of particles. A laser is an archetypical raygun, but not all parts of a stream need to follow the same vector, so that tesla coils arguably qualify as well. Rayguns are a broad category of weapons that do not all fire the same kind of particle, and different factions make use of rayguns that fire different particles. Pulseguns, for the most part, are the same, except that they do not shoot beams, but instead discrete pulses of particles. Note however that, as far as anyone can determine (in RL physics, which also applies to Continuum), all particle beams are actually composed of waves, and thus a ray-gun is a serial pulse-gun at best, or, depending on the wavelength, may even fire a single pulse. The distinction is most clear in the case of pulse-guns which shoot "pulses" that are discrete in some sense additional to merely being the peak of a wave function. For example, plasma weapons in Continuum mostly (though there are cruder variations) fire plasma encased in permanentized magnetic fields, with the walls of the "bubble" determining the limits of each "pulse". Blasters are the archetypical pulse-gun.

* cuz it rhymes

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G-E
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PostPosted: Wed Aug 28, 2019 4:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

It's going to be a nightmare to balance if you consider your unit/structure additions to be plugins.

Sides need themes, but they also need to be internally balanced, and balanced against foes.

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Millennium
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 23, 2019 4:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

To be quite frank, balancing has a low priority for me. There should be parts of the game which are balanced, but it's a conscious decision to leave some parts of the game unbalanced. In vanilla RA2/YR, the TechLevel can only be set to be the same for all sides involved in a match, and this prevents interesting difficulty branches and tiers beyond "1 Player vs 7 Brutal AI": maybe a player wants to try whether a TechLevel 10 AI can be defeated with TechLevel 1, or somesuch. This is emulated to a degree in some factions; at their best, they are only as strong as other factions are on a low TechLevel. This allows a player to have a breezy match by chosing a strong faction, or an extra-difficult match by chosing a weaker faction. Especially the "mini-factions" (Latin Confederation, Brotherhood, Scavengers) are likely going to be such Difficulty +1 factions to play.

Within-faction balance is something we are working on, though. There's no obvious benefit to a cluttered sidebar and redundant units.

Some updates:

Latin Confederation


The LC is taking shape now, but it will likely not be a fully playable side. Scheduled units are:

  • All the basic infantry is available to the LC. Reflecting its lower TechLevel, there are two basic infantry units: riflemen and assault-riflemen, whereas other factions have access to infantry with assault rifles as lowest tier. Shotgunners, flamethrowers, grenadiers, machine-gun teams and machinists are available.
  • Sniper: Somewhat basic infantry, since other factions have access to them as well. Elite upgrade might be incendiary bullets, or an AMR, for big-game hunting.
  • Weeder: Infantry armed with defoliant sprayers. Basically, these are toxin infantry.
  • Borillo: Dozer-tank for operating in jungle terrain. Has a dozer blade to clear obstacles and a large-bore howitzer. Can carry troops.


Cazador

A helicopter seating a sniper and mounting illumination rockets. Rocket attacks cause little damage, but illuminate the area, effectively reducing the armor of units and structures, have a chance to set things on fire. Elite upgrades are incendiary rockets and either a sniper squad in place of the sole sniper (increasing ROF and distributing fire) or an AMR for the sniper.
(This is a combination of the unit by the same name in old Red Resurrection, and the "Roc"/"Rocket Roc" of March of War.)

"Fire" Tiers
The vanilla rules of TS and RA2/YR include two warheads for fire: "Fire" and "Fire2", which "doesn't set things on fire", which is "weird, but necessary" (although I can't see why it would be). In TD and RA, not only does fire set things on fire, but where fire hits, fire will spread even on the ground*, in absence of flammable objects. In Continuum, all of these have been integrated and re-ordered:

    [1] Fire is now the non-incendiary variant of fire, previously encoded as "Fire2".
    [2] Fire2 is now the variant of fire which sets flammable objects on fire, previously encoded as "Fire".
    [3] Fire3 is a variant of fire which leaves residual flames on the ground, in addition to setting flammable objects on fire.
    [4] Fire4 is like Fire3, but the flames it spreads are larger. This is the "Napalm" fire of TD/RA.


* I don't know whether this is done by animations, or whether it is a hard-coded property of the WH with th ID "Fire".

Supply Trucks
While all of the sides have Supply Trucks, or are scheduled to have units with the same function, it's somewhat uncertain what they will actually _do_. Originally, they were supposed to function like the Robot Storm supply units and facilitate exchange of money between players. However, we have had competing requests that they be usable as transports (not as sole function, but as an additional function, which is currently impossible to implement), as resource gatherers from sources other than ore fields, or as supply units for other units, regenerating HP and ammunition.


Supply Truck
Civilian convoy trucks supply Allied bases in South Vietnam with all the necessities of daily life. Being unarmored, these vehicles were originally very vulnerable to attack, to which soldiers in the field have applied a creative solution - because of the frequency of ambushes by communist forces, the truck crews have taken to up-armoring their vehicles with all sorts of improvised armor and have fitted crew-served weapons to the back platform to ward off would-be attackers. This practice was eventually sanctioned further up, leading to the regular appearance of such trucks. Because of its relatively resilient armor and high volume of fire, the Convoy Truck can meet infantry on equal footing, but its armament is meant purely for self-defense and it should still never be considered an offensive unit.


Eastasian Tech Expansion
Eastasian tech roster has been expanded to include "nanite" and "mono-shrapnel" weapons; derived from this, there is now the consideration of "Nanite Missile" and "Mono-shrapnel Missile" superweapons. Nanite missiles would probably not be identical to the superweapon which transforms infantry into cyborgs: Eastasia is not the Borg, and their TechLevel is not all-out science fiction. The Nanites would dissemble enemies, reassemble friendly units, but conversion into a cyborg would still require surgery.

IFV Modes
Because of constant changes and uncertainties in the infantry roster of the mod, all previous attempts to make a fixed list of IFV modes were abortive. We've now created a list of modes that is probably final, though the infantry types involved may still be expanded.
As a general rule, IFV weapons are stronger than the weapons of the infantry that is inside the vehicle, but weaker than vehicular or structural weapons of the same type, if they exist.

  • Autocannon: Basic mode; when IFV has no passengers, also retained for certain passengers with weaker or no weapons, such as civilians or gun-armed infantry. Rapid fire, some degree of armor-piercing, can fire upon air targets.
  • Shredder: Sacrifices armor penetration for splash damage; dual automatic shotguns saturate an area with shrapnel.
  • Cannon: A light tank cannon. Ground targets only, AP warhead. This essentially turns the IFV into TD's Light Tank.
  • Grenade Launcher
  • Rocket Launcher: Guided HEAT missiles, capable of attacking air and ground targets.
  • AMR: Anti-materiel rifle; combines sniper's range and accuracy with a warhead that has some degree of armor-piercing. Elite: upgrades to Gauss gun.
  • Mortar or Howitzer
  • Repair Arm: As in RA2/YR; implemented by a Machinist inside the IFV.
  • Laser: Somewhere between the infantry laser guns and laser tank cannons; can target both air and ground targets.
  • Angelfire: It's now assigned to the "Dragoon", since his laser weapon is now "Angelfire". For now, it is a laser. But we already have a "simple" laser for IFV from Enforcer, so Angelfire should be something special (or maybe it just has a different color, fitting for its side, so that the Enforcer's IFV weapon can have an allied blue beam, and other art), though it can of course also have differences in other effects and attributes. Alternatively, Angelfire will be the force-field mode. N.b: This is at odds with the current design decision that Dragoons cannot enter IFV.
  • Toxin Sprayer: Sprays poisonous chemicals. Elite upgrade uncertain, might be either "Acid" (reduces damage penalty against non-organic targets), "Psych" (i.e. added berzerk effect), "mutagenic", or something else entirely.
  • Flamethrower: No specials to declare. Implemented by putting Flamethrower infantry inside the IFV.
  • Demo Charge: Turns the IFV into a suicide bombing vehicle. Implemented by putting a Terrorist inside the IFV.
  • Graser: Gamma ray laser, implemented by putting a Liquidator inside the IFV. Upgrades to Neutron Gun on Elite, which ignores walls and vehicle armor, going straight at the people inside.
  • Sonic Weapon: Implemented by putting a Sonic Trooper inside the IFV. This, or a slightly changed version, is also invoked by putting Chitzkoi into the IFV.
  • Drone: The IFV will launch a single Dragonfly drone.
  • Observation: The IFV will receive a LOS bonus and disguise itself.
  • EMP Weapon
  • Tesla Coil: Implemented by putting a Shock Trooper inside the IFV.
  • Cryo Cannon
  • Plasma Cannon: Implemented by putting Volkov inside the IFV.
  • Speaker: Invoked by a Commissar; has the same effect as the Commissar's speaker, but stronger (not as strong as that of a Prop Truck, though).
  • Shield: I'm not even sure what infantry invokes this; it projects a shield around the vehicle which reduces damage taken by nearby units.
  • Ambulance: Invoked by a Medic; projects a healing aura.
  • Trapper: Mine-laying; I'm not sure what infantry invokes this.
  • Cattlepult: Flying cow; a gimmick mode invoked by putting a cow into the IFV.
  • Ion Cannon Uplink: Invoked by putting McNeil into the IFV.


Spoiler (click here to read it):

Build "Cyberian Dawn" already committed changes to the IFV; IFV is unchanged, save that in its default mode, it is armed with an M60 machine gun and its armor has been upgraded from light to medium.


Eastasia
Eastasia tech-tree is currently being finalized; there are two competing models: in one, Eastasia functions like the Japanese Empire of RA3, but without a distinction of Construction Yard and Factory. In this model, player begins with a "Mobile Factory" "nanocore", which can be deployed into Factory. A Factory can produce right-away the "Mobile Power Plant", which can deploy into a Power Plant. Power Plant then unlocks Drone Miner and Mobile Dojo to be built from Factory. Dojo and Drone Miner unlock Mobile Factory and military units to be built from Factory, and the latter also unlocks Mobile Comm Center. Comm Center in turn unlocks Air Pad and Tech Center.

This model would maybe also use an upgrade "teching system"; the Factory would gain access to additional units by being upgraded, since otherwise the tech tree allows Eastasia to access military units much earlier than the other factions, and before it even has access to infantry! To harmonize with other structures, it is probable that all structures of Eastasia would have such an upgrade system (this would also be harmonious with the upgrades for the Comm Center, which we already determined long ago and which would exist in either version of the tech tree). Since having both prerequisite structures and tech upgrades unlock additional units in the same tech tree seems sort of odd, we would want to find a way for them to work together, rather than in parallel: for example, by tech upgrades unlocking different tiers of units for each prerequisite structure, or by prerequisite structures unlocking tech upgrades (but that would make teching rather slow and would imply a price tag change for the factory, since each part of the factory would cost extra to unlock, unless tech was entirely free and just took time to build - and even then, it could only be mapped to a full-priced factory of the other factions if each factory had to have its upgrades purchased separately).  

Possible tech upgrades would broaden the range of buildings that a given nanocore can deploy into, so that the player is not "locked" into a construction option in case something else is needed at the destination by the time the core gets there.

It is also planned that the Eastasian "Sentry Emplacement" will function like an IFV, but only for drones. Sentry Drones will give it a shredder turret, Mite Drones will turn it into an explosive trap, Repair Drones will give it a repair function, Perimeter Drones will give it sensors, an alert and a laserpointer. It's uncertain what Harvester Drones do, and Dragonflies and Fireflies can't enter, being airborne units. Additionally, Sentry Drones might be capable of deploying into Sentry Emplacements with Shredder turrets, though perhaps weaker than built ones.

It's not yet determined how the weapons of the Sentry Emplacement will change in response to the upgrade (be that upgrade an actual structural upgrade, or the drone inside); the idea is to have the "empty"/un-upgraded Sentry Emplacement be armed with a fletcher, or perhaps a "shredder"/"shuriken gun", that is, a shrapnel "shotgun", and also be fitted with a laser pointer (so the weapon loadout of the Sentry Drone). However, upgrades cannot overwrite the weapons of the upgraded structure, which is not in our intent.

There are currently three Eastasian tank concepts that we are not currently aware how to differentiate: these are the basic "Lynx Tank", the "Amphibious Tank" and the "Hover Tank". After a period of thinking the basic "Lynx Tank" should be amphibious, we now agree all three should exist, but be distinct from the Lynx Tank, and have revised names.

Regulatory for parsimonious encoding of gas particle spawning weapons
Excerpt from the proceedings regarding economical implementation of gas-spawning weapons:

  • There are two ways of spawning gas: per warhead property, and per animation property. Both have their uses.
  • While the method of spawning particles from animations can create a number of gas clouds irrespective of the amount of warhead detonations by a simple setting, creating a number >1 of gas clouds from a weapon with a single detonation requires the (imparsimonious) addition of cluster weapons.
  • On the other hand, using animation-spawned gas particles, a single warhead can be used for weapons that spawn different, but also weapons that spawn the same number of gas particles, by using different damage values, thereby implying different IDs from the warhead's AnimList list to be called up, which can each have their own number (and even type) of clouds, even if the same SHP is referenced by each of them.
  • Using the same warhead, different animations can be called up and thus different amounts of clouds produced, however the number of clouds can only differ between two weapons if there is a damage differential of at least 25 between them. Under the 127-character limit of the AnimList string, there can be any number of weapons producing amounts of gas clouds different from the number of gas clouds produced by any other weapon in the number. By using low Verses, it is possible to produce a large number of weapons which have brt damage values of 25 or more points apart, and thus spawn different amounts of gas clouds, but all do no damage at all (since any net damage of <1 is nullified).
  • However, it should be kept in mind that, in order to produce the damage differentials desired, it might be necessary to produce Damage= differentials of 50 or more, which means that the animation called from the AnimList will be more than one place apart, necessitating the introduction of additional unused intercalated animation IDs.
  • However, it should be kept in mind that although net damage can be freely modified between an infinite amount of weapons sharing the same WH, even if there is an infinite amount of zero-net-damage weapons using the same warhead, damage will always scale damage by armor types and distance according to the same ratio. Also, while it is perfectly possible to spawn in this way the same amount of clouds with weapons doing different amounts of damage, it is not possible to spawn different amounts of clouds from weapons doing the same damage, unless the damage is zero. (Actually, if the Verses is low, it might be possible, depending on how the game rounds damage.)
  • If the re-use of a pre-existing warhead is not desired because of the damage scaling, one should consider the number of other weapons which should share the same amount/types of clouds spawned. If the use of the same warhead for these is not prohibited because of different Verses ratios or CellSpread intents, one can use a warhead, but if these weapons can also use the same projectile statistics, a projectile with Cluster and an AirburstWeapon can also be used. What should determine the decision here is whether the projectile or the warhead would be useable by a larger amount of weapons.
  • As for the matter of differentiating between gas-spawning explosions, and mere gas-spawning: here, EXPLOSION and an airburst weapon can be used; however, these weapons also mostly use distinct animations, making animation spawning a parsimonious method; because such weapons are also DeathWeapon, in which case the use of Airburst is barred, animation-spawning particles is also suggested, although DebrisTypes are another avenue.


Alien Tech
Thanks to Master Haosis' dispensation of a crashed UFO graphic, we can finally implement one of the "cross-over tech" ideas, access to alien tech. Capturing the Crashed UFO map structure allows access to alien units. However, the particular alien species having crashed there is the 50's "little green men" variant. They are not terribly more advanced than the post-modern tech of the terran factions of Continuum and reverse engineering will result in access to a slew of Flying Saucers: alien infantry armed with tesla, laser and plasma weapons and the Laser Disc and Tractor Disc, all of which use tech shared with human factions, also the Meteor Disc, which drops meteors.

There's also some more exotic stuff in the XenoTech: strange matter and antimatter, disintegration rays, mutation weapons (which might be somewhat unique, at least in their specificity), heat rays. But perhaps that will be different Xeno factions.

Third Power Update
How does this faction fit into the setting of Continuum? It is based on Nazi-related conspiracy theories, such as the Hollow Earth theory, supposed Nazi bases in Antarctica/on the dark side of the Moon, Reichsflugscheiben, etc. In a world where Hitler was killed early on and Nazism never became the ideology of a powerful state, their existence doesn't seem plausible.
Assuming RA's timeline, what likely happened in the early 20th centure was that increasing communist insurgencies in Western Europe, especially Germany, were met with British- and American-sponsored military governments. Fascists like Mussolini and Franco would have existed without Hitler. Infact, Hitler and the aggressive expansionism of Nazi Germany seems like an alteration in the scenery of fascist dictators in Europe in the 30s and 40s. Fascism was, for a time, a valid "alternative model" Europe could have adopted, at least in the West. The East had its fascists - Metaxas, the Chetniks, and so on, but they seem to have been of a different persuasion. By extension, this question also requires one to ask about what Europe looks like in Cont., and how it came to be such. It is possible - and this is likely the turn events took in RA, that in Germany, a military dictatorship would have succeeded the Weimar republic, suppressing the left, which was otherwise poised to take control of the country. (In still other worlds, it may have done so.) Such a dictatorship may have been fascist, but I believe that Germany would have been the "odd man out" without Hitler, as I believe that it would most likely have been traditionalist, conservative, more akin to Franco's regime than to Italian extravaganza, yet entirely German in its nature and appearance. One can see glimpses of this "traditionalist" machinery at work behind the scenes of Nazism even in our world - in the feudal lords who made up much of the officer corps of the Wehrmacht, for example. (Indeed, this element was so strong that Hitler rather made his own, entirely new Nazi army - the SS - rather than rely entirely upon the conservative Wehrmacht. On the continent, democracy would have had a difficult stand for years to come, for longer than in our world I suppose. Only France, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, perhaps Scandinavia (minus Finland) and Austria would have been democracies. -> If the number of new countries permits it (in Ares), we may very well make the EU consist of several country subfactions. It is likely It is likely that this constellation, subsidized by America and Great Britain, would have continued for far longer than Fascism did in our world as a state philosophy. The Soviet invasion in the 1950's may well have happened, although its outcome is uncertain to me. Assuming that "things went" the way they did as established in RA, the subsequent fate of the Soviet Union is uncertain. To me, it appears feasible, even likely, that the defeat was not absolute and that the Soviet Union would continue as a state, even a world power. In RA, Stalin dies as a result of the Allied counterattack on the Soviet Union and this ends the war. The events after that, which lead to the formation of socialist Russia as depicted in RA2, are somewhat plausible. However, Stalin dies in 1953 in our world, which greatly limits the timeframe for RA, which is said to have taken place in the 50', assuming that events in our world that differ from those of RA's universe did not hasten Stalin's death. I need to check back on the timeframe of RA, but it may have begun in the late 40's. Anyways, a time-frame from the late 40s to 1953 seems more realistic, if that is not the timeframe of RA anyways. The war would/could end on Stalin's natural death and subsequent suing for peace by his successors. The history of the Soviet Union would more or less continue as it did in RA/RA2. However, since the outbreak of cold war hostility into open warfare is also an event more commonly placed into much later times - the 1960's, 70's or even 80's. I will not yet venture to place the original conflict between USA and Soviet Union. There are, however, two questions from this - 1) How does Europe look? 2) How does Russia look? (by the time of Continuum). If the take of Continuum as a PM/cyberpunk setting is definite, one may go back to the inexplicability popular notion of "Novaya Rossiya" ("New Russia") instead of the Soviet Union. This change would be, in in-game aspects, mostly artistic. The Soviet color scheme requires revision anyways - the beige pattern has no consistency with Soviet forces, except perhaps those deployed in Afghanistan. A "mild green" color scheme would perhaps be more fitting for the Soviet Union, however I am not sure if such a color could be a "minor color" on units, or if it would already be like a remap and confuse the viewer when combined with remap. As for a color scheme for New Russia, I am uncertain. Perhaps they would inherit the green of the previously-soviet units and opt not to change it. Grey is also an option, but that is already covered by the Third Power. I think the best option to use would be black. I had doubts as to its versatility as a main color scheme, but I recalled that Nod uses it too and it works. There could be a vast number of Soviet-schemed divisions with older hardware and a few units "of the New Type" with new hardware and the new color scheme - the "Black Guard". In terms of fluff, it is so that New Russia is a semi-dictatorship controlling Russia and perhaps some other former Soviet territories (or at least has ties to them in some political way). It came about after a brief period of disorder, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, which could occur either the way it did in our world, or perhaps following a war - perhaps a nuclear one. (The concept of a Soviet Union continuing into the timeframe of cyberpunk is also interesting.) New Russia is a sort of theocracy (orthodox), but also an oligarchy (or perhaps it is that no longer, and the new government acted harshly against oligarchs - as many of them are Jews, that would make sense). For some reason, I also associate New Russia with extensive use of cybernetics, perhaps because of the "vast cyborg armies" of the Russian warlords in Rifts. Ther could, however, also be theological objections to cybernetics. Also, cybernetics could be used for "forced conversions" of criminals, which would tie back into concepts from old RK. These story aspects may necessitate, in parts, a revision of the army list over the one held over from the Soviet Union. In any case, we assume that Europe was either never attacked by the Soviet Union or repelled the attack. Now, we can take a look at how Europe looks. The original concept for Europe in NOW was that drawn by right-wing cultural pessimists - a continent run by a mostly liberal-socialist political elite ("EUSSR"), degenerate, decadent, with a large welfare state and no proper military force, but an internal security force of police which serve to suppress the population,but also conduct - inadequate - outward defense. Birth rates are low, roving bands of migrants enter the continent. In short, an old civilization that has "lost its teeth", so to speak. I was at the time under the impression of Spengler's Der Untergang des Abendlandes ("The Decline of the West"). Some of these may be very valid and appropriately worrisome assertions. They are also consistent with cyberpunk, although that was, at the time, not my intention even in the remotest, if one takes a conservative or fascist approach to cyberpunk - also an interesting concept I did not think of before. This continent would be aligned with the Allies and rely on America to conduct its defense against the Soviet Union (of course in contradiction to its supposed socialism). However, this concept soon came into contradiction with other aspects of the world of Continuum as they were established. For one, the world of NWO was originally implicitly the "real world", that is it shated our world's history regarding World War 2, where RA diverges. If the RA timeline is accepted for Continuum (as it currently is), it becomes less likely that Europe recoiled into leftism as it did in our world, where developments were largely a response to the extremes of racism, perhaps aided by Soviet subversion tactics. With the anti-authoritarian argument losing its historic justification and the very real Soviet danger*, it is to be expected that the "strongman" political systems that characterized European politics in the 30s and 40s would have far outlived their OTL deaths.

* The mere presence of a Soviet threat would not have been sufficient - this existed in OTL and still youths turned into communists. It is debatable whether an actual Soviet invasion would have changed that - most European leftists, even if sponsored ultimately by the Soviet Union, did not see themselves as being in ideological or moral continuity with the Soviet Union (opposed to the leftist movements of the early 20th century in Europe). The dominant force that advanced leftist policy in Europe was a recoil from Hitlerism and the resultant self-examination - commonly under Marxist delineation of colonial pasts and racist aspects. At least this is what we must assume to come to a necessary conclusion (see below). Of course, very practically, the collapse of many of Europe's conservative and fascist regimes was owed to World War 2. Without their defeat and intentional dismantling down to the lowest levels of bureaucracy, such governments could have lasted much longer - see Franco's regime in Spain. Other factors may be taken into account for either conclusion, but cannot be quantified. -

Illuminati/Unit 666 Update
As I have pointed out before, the Illuminati do not seem to fit into Continuum, but they did fit into New World Order. This was when I conceived of Continuum as a dieselpunk setting, with the tropes of the factions emphasized. The Illuminati felt more appropriate for a setting that was essentially a post-modern real world - like NWO, already appropriately armed for conspiracy theories. It seemed to me that the Illuminati could have no role to play in a dieselpunk setting - which is perhaps also because of a lack of precedent in fiction that I am aware of. The dominant inspiration for a depiction of the Illuminati came from Deus Ex, which is a PMT world.

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Our mission, unfinished, may take a thousand years.  

Last edited by Millennium on Thu Jul 23, 2020 5:40 pm; edited 2 times in total

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Millennium
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Joined: 09 Mar 2008
Location: Osaka (JP)/Hong Kong/Germany

PostPosted: Tue Nov 05, 2019 5:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Regarding Inefficency of Tank Destroyer vs. Infantry
I've considered two possibilities as to what physical attributes correspond to the inefficiency of the Tank Destroyer against infantry: 1) That the "AP" warhead, despite being commented with "discarding sabot", thus implying that it is actually APDS, rather than AP, is actually AP, which means that there is some explosive power behind it, rather than the localized impact of a KEP. 2) That it is owed to the lack of accuracy because of the restrictions imposed on fine-tuned aiming by a casemate structure over a turreted weapon mount.

I've dismissed 1) on the grounds that the Verses of RA's AP warhead is identical to the Verses of TD's AP warhead. There is no reason to assume that KEPs were not developed in the Tiberian universe by the 90s (when TD takes place), and the identical Verses rules out that one represents KEPs, while the other represents AP shells with explosive power, or else, that they are both to be considered as inflicting damage at the same ratio in C&C. Furthermore, if research progressed in the Red Alert universe at anything approaching the progress of our universe, KEPs were in use in the 1940's, certainly in the 1950's in order to be used as tank ordnance. I've therefore opted for explanation 2). What this leaves unexplained, of course, is why SABOT/SABOTE would also be weak against buildings.

Brotherhood Update

Tank Destroyer V

Converted into a voxel by SgtMay. Original creator unknown.
The Jagdpanzer V is an experimental design of the inter-war period to counter the newer Soviet tanks of the era by increasing the number of platforms capable of mounting the more powerful 8.8cm Pak 43 by mounting it in a casemate on a Panzer V chassis in place of the turret, which would not have been able to support it, and the 7.5cm KwK 42. The Jagdpanzer V has superior anti-tank firepower to the Panzer V, but suffers from the shortcomings of casemate-type tank destroyers in general: the limited weapon traverse (independent of the vehicle) limits accuracy, making the weapon nearly useless against infantry. A powerful vehicle in its own time, by WW2, the Jagdpanzer V was outdated, as a more powerful 90mm cannon, in a turret mount, became ubiquitous in the M60 Patton. Against any modern AFVs, this unit is woefully inadequate, but it is sometimes refurbished and put into working order by salvagers principally in the Middle East. It can also, in Allied colors, be a possible reward of using a Time Machine.


The Jagdpanzer V in its original Allied colors, operating in snowy terrain.

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RIAKTOR
Disk Thrower


Joined: 23 Nov 2013

PostPosted: Thu Nov 07, 2019 3:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Reupload all images from photobucket to normal hosting. Some vehicles is bigger than needed. Grazer is cool! How you make radiation around it? When mod will be released?

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Millennium
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PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2019 3:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I don't think the mod will ever be finished, sorry. Wink I'll probably die or lose interest before that happens. However, stand-alone parts of the game will be released successively.

As for the Grazer Turret radiation: it's not actual radiation. It's just ambient lighting and an AE which deals area-of-effect radiation-type damage. However, in more recent versions of Ares, it might be possible to use the animation-weapon feature to create an AE that also generates radiation.

Possible Eastasia Update

Overlord Tank

New version by Conman


Old version

We are working hard on the introduction of the unit termed "Siege Tank". Right now, this is probably going to be as much as implementation of the Generals Overlord Tank as the engine allows for (although, where it will deviate for technical reasons, for example, will probably be a lack of the per-unit upgrades this unit has in G/ZH, replaced with global upgrades - the player may opt to purchase the Bunker xor Gattling xor Speaker Tower options (unless one were to sell the Tech Center that the upgrade was given to), and all subsequent Overlord Tanks are built with that upgrade. Neither of them results in a visual difference as well.).

The Overlord is a heavy tank that is the tank most used by Chinese forces in general combat due to it being the only tank not too specialized, but rather kept with a good edge to a wide range of possible adversaries. The large dual cannon on its turret can easily destroy enemy infantry and vehicles alike, though the tank tends to get problems with dug-in troops, often being unable to kill them off in time if they use anti-tank weaponry. An important aspect of what makes this tank so well-rounded comes into play after it has survived some battles: Once it reaches Elite status, the Overlord can control large numbers of civilians in the vincinity via its Propaganda turret. Unlike the soviet Apocalypse, however, it has no anti-air capabilities except for a gatling gun-based CIWS serving to shoot down spawned missiles. The system employs miniature gatling guns that cycle for awhile before having to reload, thus disabling the system until they go online again.

The old artwork has now been replaced with this voxel by Conman, which fits better with the artwork of the other Chinese units, not to mention the scale of our other artwork. A possible contender to fill in as the "Siege Tank" could also be our own take on the "Qilin Tank", which would be a sort of Mammoth Tank, rather than the Rhino/MBT that goes by this name in Mental Omega.

Spoiler (click here to read it):

The "Overlord Tank" and HQ version of it, "Emperor Tank", were Chinese units in "Build 2010", aka "New World Order". They required the Palace to be built.


Prison Camps

  • Allies: Allied Prison Camp could use not just Prison/Chrono Prison, but even Chrono Abduction, teleporting stuff into itself from across the map by SW.
  • Yuri:: Yuri's Psychic subfaction gets a "Re-education Camp" as prison camp. Sending captured infantry here will brainwash it and permanently mind-control it. The Mutation subfaction gets something possibly named "Re-formation Center", which is, of cour

    Syndicate
    It's the Evil MegaCorp faction; it apparently successfuly undermined the US and caused its fall. Using the US funds given to it to develop and produce military arms for the US military, it builds up its own military force and armament program. It seeks to invade the Forgotten Land. The Evil MegaCorp is the "Syndicate".
    The Syndicate is a mysterious organisation. The Syndicate has a political arm and maintains a good deal of influence on US politics and connects the colonies with those in power in the continental US. The Syndicate formed from, is backed by, and backs,


    • Mitsubishi Conglomerate
    • Zion Corp., an Israeli energy company originally engaged in the exploitation of oil fields in Arabia.
    • RvneTek Corporation
      The RvneTek's logo. It was choosen mainly for its reference to Runes, but could also indicate some link to the pre-Bunker Age Reich, perhaps as a part of a militar-industrial complex similar to the Iron Triangle (though, controversely RvneTek fought prolonged wars with the remains of the Reich, which makes any positive relationship unlikely). Note that the Svastikah is reengineered to face left, as in the orginal in Hinduism, not rightlike the one used by the Nazis. The triangle, square and circle shape indicate fire, earth and water, respectively. The absence of a reference to air is a synonym for the life underground during the Bunker Age.
      A Technology Cartel from the Bunker Age. Produced the Controller, a prototype of the Cyberorganic Computroniums like the Lenin's Brain, as well as developed many other technologies of the Post-War world, like Cyborg Upgrades and Shielding, discovered SPIRIT.
      With the end of the Bunker Age and the Freedom Wars against the Androids, RvneTek's power effectively ended and the cartell was apparently dissolved.
      It is unclear wether it was actually the RvneTek Corporation that founded Metropolis in the Metropolis alternate version.
      In the original Random Kingdom, there is company of the same name, ruling the world (which, in question, does not seem to be Earth).
    • Chrysantheme Corporation
      2008 logo of the Chrysantheme Corporation. Imperial Seal of Japan.
      The world's largest insurance company, hailing from Nippon. It employs its own special agents, the Fund-Raider Counter Taskforce, including an heavy mecha named "Django", to eliminate threats to insured objects.
      The presence of a character named "Harald" in both PREUSS and the Fund-Raider Counter Taskforce could, should they be identical, indicate the Corporation's participation in H.O.F.D.E.S. However, the corporation acts freely in LD territory, so this is either not the case or unknown to the LD.
      The presence of Ace Kuro, brother of bretonian MI6 agent Victora S. Kuro and part-time agent-for-hire for the MI6 (during the operation against Lazarussia) in the Task Force indicates some link to Bretonia as well.
      A third tie seems to point towards the Bunker Era's RvneTek Corporation: Of the two agents deployed to guard Belisar, one is called "Loki": Besides sharing this name with PREUSS' most proficient sniper, a girl of the same name appeared in the original Random Kingdom and was the daughter of the RvneTek's (RvneTek existed in Random Kingdom as well) supersoldier Yamato Haria, however her design was that which in RK3 would be used by Tao Li (though using a Chu Ko Nu crossbow rather than a SMG simply called Chu Ko Nu), while Tao Li of RK used a more chinese, less japanese design.
      The name is taken from the name of the ancient norse god of trickery for all three occurances.
    • Churms

      American weapons company, part of the cartels of the military-industrial complex „iron triangle“. Produced the Churms Mk. IX cyborgs (lore unit). Though never mentioned, Mark I – Mark VIII are likely to exist. Nothing more is mentioned about the company, but it is propably part of the Iron Triangle ruling the UCA.
    • Helkov (???????)

      Russian armament company, only mentioned as producer of the Helkov 211mm triple missile launcher & accompanying 211mm GtG/GtA missiles and the Helkov Mk. IX tank (lore unit), to which they serve as secondary weapon. Propably a state-owned company.
      Sometimes misspelled as 'Helnikov' in the source material, yet those two are likely the same company, given that while 'Helkov' is an actual Russian family name, 'Helnikov' is not.

    The Syndicate seeks to use Tiberium as a source of energy and raw materials. However, this is only a way to finance the primary goal: the founding of the Corporate state. They also influence the military. In order to protect its interests in the Arab world and further its goals, the organisation employs a large military force, mostly sub-contractor security firms and mercenaries it recruits from underground organizations and ex-military. Its military is also backed by a large group of fanatics that would give their life for the company. The organisation's forces are highly fanatic and willingly give their life for the organisation and it's semi-religious ideology. These members are recruited mostly from the poor, unemployed masses of third world nations and impoverished deindustrialized cities, but also has members in the upper ranks of society.

    The Syndicate often works closely with organized crime and other underground organizations that are either terrorist groups or further international terrorism through arms trade or similar. There is no feeling of brotherhood between the members of the organisation. Instead, there is hard competition and only the fanatism unites the organisation behind it's goals. Due to the origins of the organization, one can also safely assume that members were also recruited from the Israeli army and Mossad and that it also has strong ties to other organizations were forged from the remains of these organizations.

    Spoiler (click here to read it):


    Technologies:

    • Mecha
      EMC has put much effort into the research of mech technology, especially since NeoZeon was declared a sovereign nation and the dicovery of the Megaparticle.


    Units & Buildings
    After all, we can't use "*yor" names for everything anyway. So might as well name the ground vehicle "Prospector" and move Surveyor to the Dragonfly. Otherwise, it will be some "or" name for the Dragonfly.

    • Enforcer
      Most basic infantry personnel. Like almost every terrorist organisation, SCORPION's forces use AK-47 Kalashnikovs as their main armament for their infantry. Exist as Normal, Urban, Desert and Arctic. Desert variant are basically identical, but their training and equipment is slightly different.
    • Striker
    • Suppressor
      Exskel infantry; exists as Normal and Underwater.
    • Eliminator: Mercenary Ninja Assassins
    • Terminator
    • Operator: Machinist
    • Preacher: Faux megachurch preacher found only in Brazzaville level.
    • Mindstinger: EMC psionic experiment.
    • Constructor
    • Firewolf
      This is a grey version of the GDI Wolverine, it's more of a Noddish look so you can either have one for each side or make it so when you capture GDI tech you get this look. Or even replace the original with this, go nuts!
    • Surveyor
    • Jigabachi
    • Tonbo
      Corporate edition of the Eastasian Dragonfly; identical to the Eastasian Dragonfly, but replaces the HEAT missiles with webby and incendiary/flare missiles.
    • Purveyor
      Harvester?
    • Conveyor
      Amphibious mega-transport. Can cast a powerful Argent wave to flash/stun units around it.
    • Dropship


    Helkov MK IX
    Bewaffnung: Beck 309 "Chuck Cannon", Helkov 211mmx3
    Propably a "hybrid tank" built by the Dynastian military industry, incorporating parts of UCA weaponry.

    Beck Type 309 "Chuck"
    Produced by an otherwise unmentioned arms company called "Beck", the Type 309 (aka "Chuck") serves as the main armament of the dynastian Helkov MK IX tank.

    Helkov 211mm Missiles
    211mm missiles, to be fired by a tank-mounted pod, the Helkov 211mm Triple Missile Launch Pod, which is mounted on the Helkov MK IX.

    Helkov 211mm Triple Missile Launcher Pod
    A pod that can contain three 211mm missiles and launch them. Mounted at both sides of the turret by the Helkov MK IX tank.

    Crawler
    SCORPION Light Tank
    Phase Crawler
    SCORPION Experimental Teleport Tank
    MechScorpion
    SCORPION Cyborg
    Dune Crawler
    SCORPION Desert Tank
    Dune Hopper
    SCORPION Desert Helicopter
    Grasshopper
    SCORPION Helicopter
    King Scorpion
    SCORPION Heavy Tank
    Ruby Weapon
    SCORPION Superweapon Unit
    Scorpion
    SCORPION Basic Trooper
    Scorpion Brain
    SCORPION Stategic and Technical Designer
    Scorpion Claws
    SCORPION Meelee Combatant

    Scorpion Stinger
    SCORPION Stinger Missile AA Tank
    Scorpionette
    SCORPION Female Combatant
    Slaying Tail
    SCORPION Anti-personell weapons truck trailer.
    Spider
    SCORPION Minelayer
    Spider Eyes
    SCORPION Sensor Array
    Spider Web
    SCORPION Claymore System
    Stinger Soldier
    SCORPION AA Missile Trooper
    Tick Tank
    SCORPION Deployable Tank
    Venomous Sting
    SCORPION Toxin Sniper
    Wasserschneider
    SCORPION Hovercraft
    Sky Tail
    SCORPION AA Rocket
    Red Scorpion
    SCORPION Elite Trooper
    Scorpioneer
    SCORPION Pioneer & Demolitions Expert
    Black Scorpion
    SCORPION Covert Ops Trooper
    Fairy Tail

    Scorpion Tail

    Scorpion Scope
    SCORPION Long-range visual reconnaissance device
    Siege Scorpion
    SCORPION Tracked heavy siege railgun.
    Scorpino
    SCORPION Initiate
    Scorpius
    SCORPION spaceshipThe Scorpius is a Constellation-class spacecruiser converted by SCORPION on NeoZion, which serves as the organization's base for Mobile Suit operations.

    Red Scorpion
    The Red Scorpions are the organization's elite guards

    Black Scorpion
    The Black Scorpions are SCORPION's covert operations troops. They are trained in stealth and .

    Scorpioneer
    The Scorpioneers are SCORPION's sabotage and demolition specialist.

    Venomous Sting

    Terrestrial and Amphibious Units and Hovercraft

    Tick Tank

    Scorpion Stinger
    The Scorpion Stinger is SCORPION's aa tank. It looks much like a Wirbelwind, but the flak cannons have been swapped with a dual stinger launcher on each side of the turret. It targets using a technology similar to the Spider Eyes, emplaced in the center of the turret. The Stinger missiles, once locked onto their target, effectively hunt it down. The Stinger is badly armored and easily destroyed by any ground unit faced. Although quite effective in anti-air combat, the tank reveals SCORPION's focus on ground-bound stealth and asymetric warfare rather than aerial combat: Though the missiles are effective, the launcher's full capacity of four missiles is cleared with one burst, and relaod takes several minutes. The Stinger might be effective in downing single aircraft, but it is certainly useless when dealing with large forces of aerial units.


    Venomous Sting
    The Venomous Sting was SCORPION's first aerial unit (aside from hijacked civilian airplanes for kamikaze missions). It was basically an ORCA Bomber that had the usual high explosive bomblets removed in favour of fitting it varyingly with two short-range artillery missiles with chemical warheads, or FROGs with chemical warheads. Unlike previously developed Chemical Bombers, the Venomous Sting does not only drop chemical bombs, but rather could deliver it in a more stand-offish way.

    Venomous Sting
    Operated By
    SCORPION Organization
    Manufacturer
    SCORPION's Secret Weapon Factory Network
    Specification

    Sky Tail
    The Sky Tail is SCORPION's answer to the weaknesses of the Scorpion Stinger. It is a modified short-range ballistic missile or, even simpler, a FROG, which is pulled by a large aircraft, like a Venomous Sting or stolen ORCA Bomber and then fired against incoming aircraft. During the storyline, the Sky Tail never leaves development stage. However, another offshoot of this technology, the Gas Tail
    Sky Tail

    Air Tail
    An airburst missile that is used against ground installations.
    Gas Tail
    An airburst missile with a chemical warhead.

    Spider Sensor
    An omni-directional visual sensor array used by SCORPION. The Spider Eyes can see through camouflage and even stealth and holo technology. The device is carried on the back of an armored truck. It is unarmed and will easily fall to any kind of attack if left unguarded.

    Spiderweb
    The Spiderweb is a Claymore mine system emplaced by the Arachne minelayer. It is fitted with a cloaking device and a sensor array. While remaining invisible to enemy units without sensors, the Spiderweb can detect any cloaked units that move through and will instantly trigger thedetonation of all linked mines. A group of interlinked mines covers a small radius that turns into a ball of fire once the mines are triggered, effectively tearing into bits and pieces whatever is caught inside the detonation.

  • Springfield – Also called the "Pyramid of Zeon". SCORPION's headquarters in Egypt. The massive complex has the shape of a three-sided pyramid coated with massive silver and is placed right behind the Pyramids of Gizeh, towering over them all. The building above ground is gigantic, but the majority of the structure are located below ground level, on several underground levels. The building itself in its entirety is a Vault, a structure constructed to shelter from meteorites, floods, nuclear impacts, plagues and other types of cataclysmic events. However, Mt. Zeon is poorly defended against conventional assaults. It was here that Scorpion was created.
    Scorpion Consulate - A high-rise in California used by Scorpion as an embassy and base of operations after NeoZeon was declared a sovereign nation. When North America is temporarily plunged into disarray by the Philadelphia events, the Scorpion Consulate becomes the capital building for Caliphornia, the Californian Califate, a nation that existed briefly under SCORPION's control.
    NeoZeon – A space colony created by SCORPION. NeoZeon, much like GDI's Phoenix spacestation, became the organization's headquarters. It was here that many of SCORPION's secret research projects took place, as for example the Lunatic Pandora project (with aid from Southfar), the Mech and Megaparticle research. NeoZeon was also the place were the Scoprion Civil War and the battle against The Sting took place.
    Zeon – A military protectorate errected by SCORPION. It covers much of the territories Israel covers today. It is heavily guarded and surrounded by some sort of barrier device. Any non-zionistic presence aswell as any Tiberium formations have successfuly been removed from the area.

    Viper -
    General Keith -
    Ezekiel – A Nod operative that sometimes works for SCORPION when Nod sees it's goals furthered through the success of SCORPION's projects. Ezekiel, who's true name is never revealed is a formidable laser rifle sniper and wears one of Nod's personal cloaking devices.
    Carmilla Black – already delt with in article
    Mac Gargan – already dealt with in article
    Solitaire – already dealt with in article
  • Sagittarius Emplacement

_________________
Mao Zedong wrote:

Our mission, unfinished, may take a thousand years.  

Last edited by Millennium on Mon Nov 30, 2020 2:55 pm; edited 11 times in total

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