[1.2] (WIP) Red Horse: Tacticool Expansion

[Chicken Plucker]

Can you give me a brief rundown on what this actually is?

Seems it just replaces the few current factions with these and they act mostly the same?

Forgot to answer your question, oof

Front page hasn't been updated much, but the thread have changed into an entire expansion. It's new factions with custom clothing textures and weapons I've added in along with custom food such as MREs for military units and first aid kits based on what infantries units use and etc.

No factions in vanilla are replaced, instead I add new ones. There's also means to contact them for reinforcements without relation costs, and means to start missions using the mission board through the Military Furniture mod, which hasn't been listed in the front page.

The whole expansion is based on modern tactical or military themed stuff, sometimes I end up incorporating things that aren't really military like bleedin' vending machines in the furniture expansion just for making players have new gadgets and means to have an easier time to focus more on combat instead of colony management. Either I make the new enemies, or they fight other community-made factions. *cough* Glitter tech commandoes must die *cough* Hopefully, when things are done, the game feels more vibrant with the number of factions and outfits/hairstyles from different games and players get to have a military/tacticool feel with all the stuff I've added on

Honestly dunno. I suck at balancing things, so i usually rely on feeling it instead - how it plays out. With a 45% AP on a charge lance it feels like anything it hits is very close to naked. Mechs usually have up to 70% armor rating, so that more or less means .50 BMG will just strip em. On one hand - those weapons are supposed to be anti-vehicle measures and mechanoids are equivalent of military vehicles in RW, on other hand - i d be tempted to just use those only, since they are so much better than anything else game has.

It also depends on how hard it is to get your hands on such monstrocity, right now for 60 steel and three components it feels like a give away, you just woke up and found an LMG conveniently placed on your dresser, for if your mood is terrible and you wanna murder your neighbors.

It just might be that with your tanks and APCs factions will use, those will fit right in as a countermeasure, since you yourself can't have vehicles... Without them however it feels like you can tear anything to pieces. So i guess my suggestion would be to work through crafting costs, research, benches, then through factions and their vehicles - then playtest it to see, what needs adjustments.

I guess there is something in shooting someone's torso off through 120% armor 2 timez over

.50 Cal stats are still open for debate now, currently been nerfed to 60%. I apologised to Madman in PM and to anyone for my last post cause I got defensive due to me being a touch sensitive despite asking for feedback in the first place, sorry bois.

[Madman666]

Who doesn't love the big bangs and limbs creatively flying off? Zero apologies needed, CP. Its gonna be amazing either way. And if someone does disagree with some balance aspects - we all dunno what each person does with his local copy, hehe.

It was also wrong of me to look at 50cal without taking vehicles into account, so i also was too hasty. We ll playtest it once the project has all its content, then it ll be clear, what needs some fiddling with!

[Chicken Plucker]

Who doesn't love the big bangs and limbs creatively flying off? Zero apologies needed, CP. Its gonna be amazing either way. And if someone does disagree with some balance aspects - we all dunno what each person does with his local copy, hehe.

It was also wrong of me to look at 50cal without taking vehicles into account, so i also was too hasty. We ll playtest it once the project has all its content, then it ll be clear, what needs some fiddling with!

Not at all, I get defensive sometimes over valid criticism and I need to cut it out cause I don't want to be hostile towards people who look at my stuff, if that happens I'm gonna be the only one playing with my mods rip

So with 1.0 coming and textures being renewed in order to better match the vanilla quality standards, vehicles are being redone. The old textures from existing B18 versions will be changed, some tanks will possibly never be seen again, some will use new 3D models using the proper vanilla views instead of the 2D appearance they have when they turn.



AGR Drone

Description: The A.G.R. is an Autonomous Ground Robot, equipped with a high calibre machine gun chambered in 7.62x51mm NATO. It is unmanned and expendable, high armour rating against typical small arms fire weapons.

This AGR Drone might be given to Task Force 141 or Task Force STALKER, I don't know yet. I am yet to change the ghosts' uniform, headgear and onskins since they are outdated. I am also supposed to give those guys dogs since Cod Ghosts had dogs.



Dragonfly Drone

Description: A remote controlled unmanned drone mounted with an M249 machine gun chambered in 5.56x45mm, meaning it has a weaker firepower than that of the AGR. It is highly mobile due to the fact that it is hovering from the air, but it's armour is very shoddy, taking less hits than that of the average infantry soldier.

Along with the AGR, I might hand these drones over to special forces or PMC type factions that will not be utilizing APCs or tanks. I thought it would make sense than having huge waves of operators, since they're supposed to be small in numbers anyway.

These babies will be able to assist your colony, assuming their factions are on friendly terms with you.

Am also working on some optional radio skins from other games:


Fallout radio


STALKER radio


Portal radio

They're only alternate skins, will be on the drop down so the buildings won't get any more crowded than they already are.

I've honestly done this in procrastination from everything else, cause the vending machine and all the food I have to recode is daunting, along with the bloody weapons. Other than that..

I have animated trailers I have to finish as well, after these ones. First things first, I have to progress my British Army application before they withdraw it due to my inactivity, so I will have to make slower progress here in modding to exchange my time for real life sneaky beaky stuff.

[Madman666]

So remaking vehicle sprites is really cool news, cause 3d stuff looks glorious, but one problem's still present - the blurry textures. I mean if not for that even your current tank sprites are mighty fine. Were you able to work it out how to stick properly sized sprites without blur?

[Chicken Plucker]

So remaking vehicle sprites is really cool news, cause 3d stuff looks glorious, but one problem's still present - the blurry textures. I mean if not for that even your current tank sprites are mighty fine. Were you able to work it out how to stick properly sized sprites without blur?

The technique to that is already sorted, looking at Call of Cthulhu's Horrors, there is a way to use a larger resolution for monsters. As long as the measurements/dimensions are right, I can resize them in game and it will instead make the texture smaller, instead of bigger, which means loss of quality will be minimized.

For example:

Bradley IFV

As you can see it's bigger than this Centipede, which was the old resolution for those old B18 vehicles I had


Centipede scrublord

That quality part is sorted, the downside is it may hit performance due to the textures being super high quality, the factions are already memory heavy as it is. We'll see when we cross the bridge! For now, I have to go set up for dinner. Compared to the camp me mum hasn't been restricting us to 1 piece of protein per meal, so I'm getting fat again, rip.

Cheers lads, will be back with progress.

[Madman666]

Amaaazing news! Thanks, CP!

[Chicken Plucker]

Amaaazing news! Thanks, CP!

No need to thank me at all, thank you guys for the support



Radios done, can't procrastinate with that anymore, rip. Got more things to do, happy with the selection and I'm sure many will agree.



Gonna get a couple more things done regarding vending machine before I update the link

[hauvega]

You keep out doing yourself.  I enjoy your work. CP

[Chicken Plucker]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! I found another way to procrastinate!



Arcade Training Console
Description: An arcade console that allows users to improve their skills through the use of virtual reality.

The idea is to have this thing have workbills to improve pawn skills and all that stuff, yet another cool thing. I thought about having more alternate skins besides this yellow pacman arcade machine, but it's more work as it already is. We'll have to see. Got plans to add actual arcade sound effects as pawns use them.

I'll also see if I can add joy multipliers for these.

You keep out doing yourself.  I enjoy your work. CP

hey hauvega! always love seeing your signature, it's very rare for me to see people playing with my mods, surprisingly enough so I do appreciate people showing off their favourite pawns dressed tacticool like

EDIT:


Aperture Training Console

It's pretty much the same feature and function as the arcade training machine, but it makes more sense in terms of technology. Unintentionally, I ended up making another Portal related device. This will be the only other skin for the training console, I don't wanna spend anymore time trying to find another modern look since it's not easy to.

New Red Phone texture


Had to make a new skin, there is also an alternate skin available here, it is a military radio. Will add custom radio chatter.



New Tacticool Refrigerator texture:


Rotatables are the future, though unfortunately I don't think I'll make this thing minifiable since it might cause bugs, so the player will end up having to choose the rotatable thing and make sure it's the position they want unless they wanna spend resources rebuilding it.

New Vending Machines:
Nuka Cola


We had another Portal building, why not another Fallout building? And heck, here's actual Nuka Cola now, I'm gonna remove the old "Rocket Cola" idea I had.

Surplus Vending Machine

So to solve the possible Combat Extended compatibility issues if I made Rimmu-Nation stuff producable here, I will instead make some basic vanilla weaponry and body armor purchasable here so we won't have issues with any mods, in case someone despises Rimmu-Nation.

Stuff like heavy SMG, shotgun, assault rifle, advanced helmet, flak vest and flak pants will be available on this machine for silver.

I had the choice to make resources craftable for the vending machines too but I thought "Nah" since that will just stop people from caring at all about gathering resources. The vanilla equipment are pretty basic enough to make people abandon the vending machine at higher technologies anyway, but resources are another thing.

When all of this is ready, the black hat station should be a great source for getting your basic needs and private military starter packs.

Will note, due to the Black Hat Station being such an effective money maker with no possible hindrance at the moment due to lack of Law Enforcement, there will be some re-balancing for Vending Machine prices to be more expensive for a source of income sink.

EDIT again

I totally dig the server racks, and the computer desks as comms console and research benches are neat (although I'd have preferred LCD flatscreen monitors rather than CRTs, but that's just me).

As for the songs, I'd prefer if you didn't delete anything and instead kept adding to the collection. I'm not the least bit bothered by the large filesize of the mod, and if anything, it means more songs and more variety.

Pardon me, I forgot to reply physically! (did it mentally, rip) I took your advice and added more songs, removing none. It's been good so far.

As for the screens, I have been adding alternate skins for other stuff but for the computers, they're a pain in the keister due to the multiple layers, so I may end up just keeping the old retro CRT look. I hope nobody minds, maybe LCD textures as alternate skins one day when everything is finally done and ready

[pressurpoint123]

Do you know when the faction mods will be updated? You might have said it somewhere but I missed it. It sucks to play without getting raided by tanks and op russian infantry

[Chicken Plucker]

Do you know when the faction mods will be updated? You might have said it somewhere but I missed it. It sucks to play without getting raided by tanks and op russian infantry

Faction mod workloads are huge.

Just one faction is connected to:

Rimmu-Nation Weapons
This mod has it's own textures with about a hundred plus weapons, there's also a new projectile system from B19 that I had to redo, not that my B18 projectile coding was top notch, they were all shoddily done anyway. Then there's the benches and crafting recipes and workbills and worktomake and the list of sounds for each types of weapons.

Now I have to balance each weapon because people who actually held a gun before tell me "Hey, why the heck is x weapon behaving exactly like y weapon? That's not how it works." So okay, off I go and make weapons work differently, which means more time.

Military Furniture/Rimmu-Nation Camping Stuff (Now being re-branded as Red Horse Furniture)
This mod also has it's own textures, 3 for each building if I want them rotatable and their own coding for their own functions. There's coding for recipes if they're crafting stations, be it food or silver or whatever, thoughts that the pawns make when the food they eat (I.E. MREs) makes them happy, all this while figuring out where on earth I'm gonna get what texture since I'm already ripping too much from Sketchfab without artist permission.

The main thing we're taking from this for the faction mods are the food that the infantry units carry and the first aid kits they carry, but then there's people who want the furniture, so I might as well update the whole thing as well.

Rimmu-Nation Clothing
Every piece of clothing has 15 textures for each body type and their views. Then there's 3 textures for each head gear. Then you have to balance the protection rating of each outfit, code the benches, it's workbill and their bloody workgiver. Then I have to wait for Jecrell's apparel adjuster .dll only done in C# because I can't code C# and mrofa abandoned the original apparel adjuster, I need that to make sure the clothes stay one colour if they're camo.

When all these three are done (which they aren't) now we have to make the faction mod.

I move over to the faction mod, I choose what weapons they have, what pawns they will have, outfits and vehicles.

Let's look at War Mongrels for example and their uniform.


Here's the new style of combat uniform I've done, the M81.


Here's the old one that the War Mongrels uses, the Serb M92 camo

"Why did you make a new one? The old one looked fine" some may ask. No it doesn't look fine, it has issues matching where the pawn's heads will go so I had to sort it out because if someone complains later on and I have to redo the textures, I have to bloody do it anyway so might as well do it now. Off I go, 15 more textures of one outfit just with it's own camo, I end up going for the best quality I can do so hopefully I don't have to go back on it later.

Then on the sidelines I have stuff like this:


That I fix without mentioning to anybody into:


Cause the holes are too big, or it's not centred. I don't want to draw a new GORKA-4 template because this is the second GORKA-4 template I've done already and it will mean 15 more textures for one body type. Already shredding my head off for the other stuff I have to redo, so let's take shortcuts that will hopefully not bite me in the keister later on.

Then I get this stuff:



Fair one mate. So I look at other modders for solutions, I find Jecrell's technique, now I have to enlarge the tanks and make them high resolution, one more problem solved that I haven't even started with yet because the other mods are still pending to be redone.

Then among all this chaos that my brain miraculously makes sense of before overdosing, I get requests from old un-updated mods like DOOM Factions and Deadpool's Outfit, I can't even reply anymore to most of them, but the progress on many updates have begun and have failed to make any more progress since things keep being re-prioritised.

The answer to when the faction mods will be updated is "I don't know." because they are a lot of work. I understand, the game is a ton of fun with the tacticool stuff, tacticool enemies and overpowered low res tanks firing shells at your colony, believe me I know cause I wanted to add them, but I am the one drowning here in the salty sea of Rimworld Modding workload while trying to do life at the same time.

Please do not misinterpret this reply as angry, bitter, insulting or ranting in any way (though it is a rant) but there is a lot of work to be done and I hope I explained well without much detail how much obstacles there are.

I find myself talking to Albion or Jecrell for C# help, even if its commissioned and paid for new features, and they stop replying because they themselves are getting busier and busier and I'm the one on the other end of the stick with requests while they're off doing other things.

I understand it's hard enough to ask sometimes because you could get authors typing wall of texts like this, but to that end, I can only make slow progress if I want to keep my sanity and I don't shut the whole show down. I hope this reply was helpful to you, take care.


EDIT:

Front page has been updated, download links are now available there.

Military Furniture updated, still no vending machines, currently in progress of adding new songs to the radio.
NOTE: Mod has been renamed, just re-enable it if the game says it can't find the defs, it's only because the save will be looking for the new mod name, which is Red Horse Furniture.

Instead of "Military Furniture" it is now "Red Horse" since not all equipment within are military, some being from other games.

[Madman666]

Err... 1S-1K Longbow... 500 dmg? 40 tile range? O_o

[Chicken Plucker]

Err... 1S-1K Longbow... 500 dmg? 40 tile range? O_o

It used to be 1K damage and 45 tiles! Well, this weapon is open for discussion. It's a long range weapon from Resistance: Retribution that always guaranteed a one hit kill towards infantry units upon charging, but for bosses it took a few more shots.

It's kinda like the BFG of that game, except it was a Precision rifle. We could change it to 100 damage and 100% armor penetration. It's a boss fight weapon, it's also a rare one you don't get to just pick up. Alongside the Auger which is almost finished, the Auger fires through walls, giving the enemy barely any chance to fight back unless they have an auger too.

Gimme your thoughts, I'm off to play DnD with some friendos today, the Longbow is one of the most complained about weapons during B18, but I was going with how it behaved at Resistance Retribution, which is a Spacer tech game

[Madman666]

Well if its ultra rare and expensive thenmaybe - 100 dmg, 100 AP should be fine... But one pirate raid brought me two of those monsters. Its a miracle no one got rekt by them. And well, it does its job - it obliterated 3 centipedes with just one shot, so i had to sell them.

[Chicken Plucker]

Well if its ultra rare and expensive thenmaybe - 100 dmg, 100 AP should be fine... But one pirate raid brought me two of those monsters. Its a miracle no one got rekt by them. And well, it does its job - it obliterated 3 centipedes with just one shot, so i had to sell them.

Could go lower. Will deal with that soon enough.


Finished all the songs I wanted to add:


Around 50 songs, pardon he inconsistency with capital letters, not all songs were named the same way so uh.. Oh and I changed "Portal Radio" to a small "R" to match the Bandit radio and Trumpet radio. Enjoy all, got a lot of work to do this week in college. Goodnight.

Edit:
Just fixed the updated link, was having issues uploading the new version due to me messing up. Woops. G'nigh!