[1.2] (WIP) Red Horse: Tacticool Expansion

[Madman666]

Ok, some more feedback. I am now at spacer level of tech (can start consrtucting SAMs) and have crapton of wealth - (more numbers tomorrow evening), pirate raids are getting extremely scary due to drop pods and sappers even though I am armed to the teeth with excellent weapons i stole from War Mongrels. Red Horse faction raids however stayed at somewhat mild level. While i get like 20-25 pirates with 1-2 Doomsday launchers, some with power armor pieces, War Mongrels still only send like 8-10 guys and 1 to 2 of those light machinegun cars. Maybe i am getting numb to threat level, since they absolutely trashed me early game, but late game i am way more scared of pirates getting through my walls before i snipe the sapper or landing in drop pods on my head, than i am of War Mongrels coming and squashing me.

So scaling part needs some solid work. Early game (bow-pistol level tech, 5-6 colonists) you get like 8 unarmored guys with plasteel Karambits which is kinda crazy (plasteel level melees are harsh at that point) and can only be beaten with cheesy many-door-hide-n-seek tactics of poppin in and out shooting them one by one, while they have fun beating on your horseshoe pin. A bit later with 8-10 guys and some crappy survival rifles you get 5-6 armored, drugged to hell guys with LMGs, excellent rifles and 1-2 APCs which absolutely destroy anything you can offer, but the cheesiest of tactics and melee ambushes, hoping to make APCs flee, because you can't even scratch them.

And then at lategame part we have nearly the same picture, but +2-3 guys and +1 APC, no sappers, so they can't do a thing, but to go obediently into a killbox and die. Of course that said i have some other security mods like More Vanilla Turrets, which has mud moats slowing targets to a crawl, but lategame raids from Mongrels i repelled with 4 turrets (vanilla ones) and just 10-14 of my guys with stolen weapons.

Suggestions:
1) Early game needs to be more mild (if melee weapons - then no plasteel, as with high quality the damage is way too harsh)
2) Mid game needs ti have non-drugged, lightly (medium) armored raiders with Armor Vest level of equipment, without too high grade weapons as they either crush you utterly, or you cheese them, get those way too good weapons and breeze through everything else.
3) Late game needs a bit more quantity of both guys and vehicles, armed to the teeth, drugged as hell, with the possibility of sapping through walls, so that calling in drop pod aid is way more viable to deal with those pesky types that don't like going into killboxes.

Thats my small input for now. Madman out.

[Chicken Plucker]

- snip -

Hey Madman, I appreciate this, but I fully intend on keeping the difficulty early game. War Mongrels and Umbra Company are coded to spawn with CQB weapons early on, but early-mid game is when the vehicles appear.

I didn't like the idea of melee only units for the two since I just felt that it didn't fit their theme or backstory, though the 1337 Krew or Elite Crew do utilise weaker gear quality and melee weapons early game.

I just got bored to death of the pirates or even Rimsenal units spawning with pistols and weaker weapons early-game, there is no real sense of danger or powerlessness. 

As for the odd spawn rate, I'm guessing it's due to the pirates having a cheaper ticket for their heavy units, which is why they get the Doomsday launchers. WM has rockets that wouldn't be disposed of after one use, so I kept their ticket higher than the pirate heavies, especially since as you said, the quality of their items are high.

As for late game and you feeling as though their threat is now underwhelming, I believe that needs more testing. It's odd alright that they are sending weak units to you, since as I showed you earlier on I got a platoon of HOUND units to attack me that absolutely destroyed like 4 separate reinforcements from British SAS, Royal Marines, Army and Task Force STALKER.

It took me spamming the PC Comms for reinforcements to lessen my casualties, even then I lose 3 good colonists.

I suppose it's all the luck of the draw, if you get War Mongrels with high quality gear early game to fight you, or Elite Crew/Pirate with measly knives. Then there's endgame as well, when sometimes they do not send special units or the MBTs.

Whatever's the case, there will be worse enemies to come, I'd say these need more testing. Hope you understand.

I have plans for animated backstory trailers of the faction, and this would explain their quality of gear. Especially with Umbra Company being a colony that was there before you, and War Mongrels being funded by shady megarich people with ka-jillion dollers. Really it was all an excuse to make their units stronger.

At the end of the day, there are more sci-fi themed mods out there, and weaponry. The modern tacticool factions I do are no threat when you get to endgame gear, especially after I finish developing these new DOOM techs meant to make it easier to have super soldiers.

Please feel free to let me know what you think of this response, I'm sleepy so I may have not made sense and I need to know for chickening reasons

[Madman666]

Well, hey, i enjoy it even though at times it seems overwhelmingly hard earlygame, so don't mind it - keep it the way you like. I mean there isn't even whole functionality of the mod in, like red phones which has the potential of changing gameplay entirely and reinforcement waypoints stuff too (i still hope for it). If you intend to keep it that way - i am more than fine with it. I ll play more and give more feedback on lategame balance stuff a bit later - got my 24 hour shift done and i am hosed as all hell. Will be trying to get to 3-4k threat points level raids.

I hope you'll consider adding sieges and sappers to your factions, because those will make for a lot more diverse and fun experience late game. Like assaulting a siege camp with allied forces.

[Chicken Plucker]

The new armor look's sharp/detailed then the old before. Good work.
But too bad it is wasted artist work for this little grafic ingame IMO.

Never a waste if little people on-screen get to look tacticool, it is a lifetime mission for men and women alike to dress tacticooly so everyone can tactically get along

Well, hey, i enjoy it even though at times it seems overwhelmingly hard earlygame, so don't mind it - keep it the way you like. I mean there isn't even whole functionality of the mod in, like red phones which has the potential of changing gameplay entirely and reinforcement waypoints stuff too (i still hope for it). If you intend to keep it that way - i am more than fine with it. I ll play more and give more feedback on lategame balance stuff a bit later - got my 24 hour shift done and i am hosed as all hell. Will be trying to get to 3-4k threat points level raids.

I hope you'll consider adding sieges and sappers to your factions, because those will make for a lot more diverse and fun experience late game. Like assaulting a siege camp with allied forces.

Sieges are broken for the factions with mechanoids, the 1337 Krew since they have no tanks have it. Maybe some crazy Artillery vehicle one day? Bwahahaaha.

And youre right, gameplay will definetely change when more features come, mission board and reinforcements

[Madman666]

Why and how exactly sieges are broken for factions with mechs though? Can something be done about it?

[Chicken Plucker]

Why and how exactly sieges are broken for factions with mechs though? Can something be done about it?

I couldn't specify which units can siege, so the game automatically picks, they order APCs to build sandbags and to operate the mortar. Unfortunately BTR-70 has no hands, just wheels, so the game bugs.

Mechanoids themselves have seiges disabled, and if you went to dev mode to force them to siege, a bug happens and they are stuck with blueprints since they dont know how to build sandbags.

I'm sure it would be possible to make a custom raid event for each faction with custom units, but its more unecessary work and commission money spent for something so minor, hope you understand

[Madman666]

Yeah, i see now. What about sappers though?

[Chicken Plucker]

Progress Report for Union Aerospace:

UAC "Raven"


Before (A17)


After (B18 WIP)

Far from done, will do the other Raven body types sometime and then move on to the other armors.

- Raven
- Wildcat
- Shepard
- ASP
- UAC Elite



- Praetor Suit (planned new texture, similar to lost files shown above)

So for the old praetor suit, I will keep the cartoony version for DOOM kit, I have a lost WIP of the 2016 version, this will be scrapped and I will make a version which I hope will be even better to match with the other new UAC styles.

I've got multiple projects to help others with at the moment, as well as important jobsy lifey stuff, so I won't have the same amount of time to give modding as I used to, but thankfully, with all I've learned, I know how to make mods twice or even more times faster than I did when I first began.

Yeah, i see now. What about sappers though?

I believe sappers are the "Smart" raids, I do have those already on, sometimes in cases like Umbra Company spec ops raids where only special forces spawn, they have every other raid strategy disabled except for an immediate smart attack

Edit: Brand new front page art!



Old



New

[Chicken Plucker]

Progress Report for Union Aerospace:

UAC "Wildcat"


Before (A17)


After (B18 WIP)

Brand new Wildcat, haven't done the other body types yet, hope it won't be too hard.

UAC "Raven"


Before (A17)


After (B18 WIP)

Raven color scheme for helmet has been changed to fit the uniform, matching the classic look. I tried the old color scheme but it didn't fit Wildcat armor type, and it just didn't look right having different looking uniforms for units, the colors had to match.

Gotta redo my CV real quick before I sleep and pack my stuff, first day for Military college tommorrow. It's no boot camp but they're gonna put me through all the boot camp training to prepare me for the real thing.

Tommorrow is selection and some kind of interview, hope I pass it. Take care all!

- Raven
- Wildcat
- Shepard
- ASP
- UAC Elite


Sneak peak for DOOM events progress:

Mehni (one of the bestest coders ever) offered some help with creating an event for the Cyber Demon



I was sent a mod test with a custom incident worker, it was oddly named, something about billiards and cows and chickens being eaten

So billiards land from space, things are on fire, psychic drone. I shoot billiards table, nothing happens



My reaction when as follows



Bad thing happens as follows (mad animals as place holders for DOOM demon bad guys in their own custom faction)



I spam friendlies in dev mod just to get some help while my test dummies get away, and the muffalos and cows proceed to eat the British SAS and Task Force 141, as such



Also, Mehni found an old code by Yaluzan, which makes dead things explode in skull pattern, which will be neato burrito for monsters, I'll be saving it for a boss fight.

Everything here is a place holder, animals coming out will be demons, and the billiard table landing will be an even more evil billiard table, with the UAC logo so you assume it's all their fault because somewhere in space they had a facility overrun by evil muffalo cows

[Madman666]

One more thing which would be extremely nice to have - a collection of all your tied mods in one archive. Its a bit of a pain to update all of them once update hits, so it would be really convenient to just one single file and extract it to your mods folder overwriting old versions, or clearing old ones first.

[Chicken Plucker]

One more thing which would be extremely nice to have - a collection of all your tied mods in one archive. Its a bit of a pain to update all of them once update hits, so it would be really convenient to just one single file and extract it to your mods folder overwriting old versions, or clearing old ones first.

Can you please explain what you mean? I'll see what I can do for the new 1.0 files

Road to 1.0 and the many many updates

- Commissions are back! (as soon as Jecrell isn't busy updating his own mods)
- First priority for commission is mission board that allows recruitment and a reinforcements beacon
- First faction to be updated and converted to 1.0 will be Task Force 141 and the other small ones that do not have vehicles, or at least as planned.
- Many items will be removed (e.g. Multicam sleeping bag, multicam IFAK) to reduce clutter and unecessary duplicates
- Parkas from the US Military Kit will be temporarily removed until I solve the "tribals with tacticool parka" issue, which Canute already gave a solution for.
- DOOM Factions update is once again on hold now, won't be able to be released for B18, sadly since there's not enough time to make it, assuming 1.0 doesn't get delayed for months.
- Many more to come, when I'm not bleedin' busy

1.0 and the many defname changes such as "ComponentIndustrial" and other silly things like building rubbles are kinda annoying, I found it a bit unecessary, along with the complete removal of electric damage, which means more fixing for the weapons I made that used electrical damage and armors that used electric protection.

Oh well, it's what we're here for.

[Umbreon117]

I think Madman666 meant "Putting all your mods into one giant mod, so we can download one big thing rather than a dozen and one small things"

[Madman666]

Can you please explain what you mean? I'll see what I can do for the new 1.0 files

I meant creating one zip (or rar) archive, that contains all your mods. So that people can download whole bundle with one click and quickly extract with a second click into mods folder. Then decide and delete what they don't want to play with.

[Umbreon117]

I meant creating one zip (or rar) archive, that contains all your mods. So that people can download whole bundle with one click and quickly extract with a second click into mods folder. Then decide and delete what they don't want to play with.

Oh, so like Vegetable Garden does?

[Madman666]

Oh, so like Vegetable Garden does?

Yep, VG has a way to just download all mods from one link. Though with VG i get it all updated through Steam.