[1.4-1.5] (WIP) Red Horse ²

[Skynert]

Woow, you just hit Fallout 3 memories. I love how this gun look.

[Chicken Plucker]

Doing some more promotional for the Rangers for release


Some pin-up poster art for Muffaberg root beer done in the style of that era


Another poster for Macronchy Bros rations in the style of the 50s 60s etc.

Decided in the end to call them "Rangers" or "The Rangers" and to dump the "Wasteland" or "Desert" in the beginning, there's no need.



Wanted to do some Ranger posters, kind of stuff they'd have on their walls but this one I feel it doesn't work, need to improve it. It was done in Far Cry 5 style, like the wallpaper below but to me I feel if it's a wallpaper it should be like the two above.



Here's the preview I decided to settle in on with a desktop wallpaper below, did it in that big size initially.

Description of wallpaper:
"The image depicts Ranger "Betty" Lester overlooking her journey ahead with rations running low as her trusty sidekick Chip asks for scratches. Despite marching on an empty stomach with danger lurking around the corner, hope comes from the little things near her heart."

Rangers desktop wallpaper:
https://imgur.com/iDgQ8Rm


Got PT to do and a commission to do, busy day ahead and next month likewise. Have to deliver a lesson, have to be dunked in a large pool inside a sim helicopter and escape through a window without drowning. Sounds pretty cool, but it's just very wet, cold and very scary to me.

Woow, you just hit Fallout 3 memories. I love how this gun look.

Happy you like it, I forgot these rifles were in Fallout, and now that it's a T48 I realized it makes more sense and we can add it 

[Skynert]

Now i have cool new wallpaper. Those posters are nice, stylish

[Chicken Plucker]

Ranger poster for Information leak awareness


Anti-drug ranger poster

It's safe to say that thanks to the recent gear being developed and all the posters contributing to world building of the faction, they're no longer the small time vigilantes I originally planned the rangers to be. They've become a greater military force than they were as part of the Wasteland Republic, though not big enough to form their own government or be considered an army. Rangers in the Wasteland Republic were the guys just above infantry sent to bail out the Sentinels.

Sentinels were the cool top dogs in full power armour and charge weapons, with the republic's funding fully invested in their development. Rangers specialized in drop pod insertions, making them airborne and their main objectives were usually to rescue sentinels or provide a distraction while they escaped. No reinforcements would come for the rangers and were left on their own. After the extinction of sentinels, funding later went over to rangers with their initial name being "Sentinel Rangers", who were given a type of armour similar to the ranger armour you see now. They were lighter in weight, lesser in protection but still afforded the rangers some speed. Rather than the old bolt actions, rangers were finally given automatic weapons such as assault rifles and anti-materiel equipment.

This was a short lived upgrade since these changes came about as a desperate move for the republic to defeat an onslaught of mechanoid hive invasions that eventually wore down the republic in terms of resources and manpower over a period of time.


M1903 Springfield Rifle


AUGUR Canvas Daypack

Been working to nerf the rangers.

Ranger armour shield belts, I don't want them to be 100/100 because during raids when outnumbered they're a tad too strong. I still want that element of underdog, make them feel like they are a part of vanilla factions.

Person who helps me code bullets is out of contact, I need to do .30-06 balancing, a brand new bullet type for Springfield Rifle and M1 Garand. Glad I haven't released the mod yet because you guys will end up losing crap here and there.

I've decided to remove the exile trench coat because I didn't like how it's turned out with the collar being too large for back view and helmets annoyingly rendering above it. I have also decided that I want to remove the balaclavas for Rimmu-Nation Clothing. I want the mod to only have the following pieces of item:
- Helmet
- Body armour
- Backpacks
- Webbing

I understand people want the mod to be like how it worked for 1.0/1.1 but as it stands the irritating hardcoded system for tribals to use these balaclavas and jackets and other warm tactical clothing is driving some audience away from the steam versions and the endless supply of complaints after several years of making the mod gets tiring to have to re-explain. I've had two coders try to fix this for me before, Jecrell and another person whom I forgot the name of but to no avail.

I wish Vanilla didn't make things so bloody hard to mod with things being hardcoded that doesn't need to be, but here we are.

I'll get on down to work my friends. Looking into commissioning a band at fiverr to do a Big Iron cover for this mod, thought it'd be nice for Steam release but I think maybe it'd be wiser to save the money for other things or even coding another mod? I'd be open to suggestions. Cheers all.

Now i have cool new wallpaper. Those posters are nice, stylish

Thanks Skynert! That's what I was going for, but if I did have the ability to do proper detailed art I'd have gone for that. These vector styles were the next best thing

[Chicken Plucker]

Decided to create UI for some concept idea I just wrote on a scrap paper (virtual paper) in notepad++

Rangers

- Enlist Option
"Join" Rangers, other options will appear
Must be at least +0 with Rangers, Falling at -10 relations will result in player being kicked out

Upon being enlisted, everytime a Ranger base is visited the following options are open:

- Salary claim
Every 7 days claim $750 salary, given straight to inventory (Can only be claimed once every 7 days)

- Daily claim
x10 Ranger rations, x4 muffaberg root beer, x2 industrial medicine given straight to inventory every 24 hours (Can be claimed for each base)

- Start a Quest:
Pay $150 to begin a selection of quests popping up in UI

- Turn in outlaws
No sold to slavery debuff upon turning in pawns in this jail trade screen

- Ranger storage
Storage screen/inventory screen on base where players can dump inventory items. UI Screen will appear for every ranger base. Unlimited storage.

- Leave Enlistment
Decide to leave the rangers at cost of -25 relations


- Upon joining, Rangers can be called for reinforcements every 24 hours. Ticket of how much rangers arriving will scale on faction relations. Arrival mode will be drop pod on edge.

-9 - 25 = 500 raid ticket
26 - 49 = 1000-1500 friendly raid ticket
50 - 74 = 2000-3000 friendly raid ticket
75 - 100 = 4000-5000 friendly raid ticket

NOTE: Most of these are mental self notes, probably most of them will not come to fruition or just scrapped altogether. Without further ado here's some UI art.

These will appear as you approach and visit a ranger base. I am torn between making this a standalone mod or a faction specific action. What do you guys think?

Here it is.

UI Artwork:



Enlist

Icon is available if you are on a neutral standing with the Rangers. Upon clicking this icon other options will appear and you will become an official part of their factions with benefits provided to you.

Dropping below a certain relations threshold will automatically cause you to be kicked out of their service.

These are concepts, I haven't requested for them to be coded yet so these aren't guaranteed features.



Start a mission
- Option appears after enlisting
- Allows you to pay $150 to begin a select type of quest on a UI screen that pops up


Collect salary
- Option appears after enlisting
- Allows you to collect $700 per 7 days from the Rangers
- Can only be collected once per 7 days


Collect provisions
- Option appears after enlisting
- Allows you to collect: x5 Ranger Rations, x2 Muffaberg root beer and x3 industrial medicine per day.
- Refreshes every 1 day, can be collected from each Ranger outpost


Personal storage
- Option appears after enlisting
- Allows you to store your personal belongings in the faction's inventory, which you can collect from any of their base
- Unlimited space


Casualty training
- Option appears after enlisting
- Clicking this option will enable your caravan pawns to gain:
+2,000 medicine skill EXP per hour
+2,000 social skill EXP per hour
- Cannot be selected with other training options
- Interrupted by caravan moving or performing other actions (i.e. clicking other icons)
- Caravans with pawns resting/sleeping will cease to earn training experience until they wake up from rest


Combat training
- Option appears after enlisting
- Clicking this option will enable your caravan pawns to gain:
+2,000 shooting skill EXP per hour
+2,000 melee skill EXP per hour
- Cannot be selected with other training options
- Interrupted by caravan moving or performing other actions (i.e. clicking other icons)
- Caravans with pawns resting/sleeping will cease to earn training experience until they wake up from rest


Resign from service
- Option appears after enlisting
- Clicking this option will allow you to leave the faction, all benefits will be withdrawn and options removed
- -25 relations when selected (may be subject to tweaks i.e. less relations loss)
- Are you sure? screen to possibly prevent accidental click


Enlisting will allow you to change your playstyle, pretty much a wanderer or a permanent caravan, like a homeless ranger that goes from outpost to outpost living with your faction base, they provide the daily provisions and training but you'll never have a sense of permanence like staying in your own home.

[EDIT: Details removed due to OpSec]. If you have comments about this planned feature please give it, it can either be Rangers exclusive or we can potentially allow you to join any faction if this was standalone.

Also the thing with training stuff, wanted to do more options but it needs some balancing on how much exp per hour we can do. It will potentially be exploited with pawns left in bases for ages (which is how training is supposed to be) but it can't be that someone walks out as John Wick after 10 days. I gotta get this in order later.

[Skynert]

Anti-drug ranger poster

I sell them elsewhere then ;p

Enlisting is good idea, should be oart of base mod. I know that is a concept but, it's like dlc with new cool thing to do. Like... having a colony and have 5 commando type pawns who roam Rim and do stuff becouse they have reason to leave colony now.

[Chicken Plucker]

Some weapons I find too detailed or "off" are being slightly reworked.



Hey all, I'm going out on a run.

I'm reflecting on how far we should take going to vanilla style with Red Horse 2.

I'll be honest with you guys, I wanna hit it more mainstream. I want for the mods to have a wider target audience, and this means the crowd who likes vanilla style and balancing. I wanna reach them now that all the textures are original. Why? Because it may mean more donations on ko-fi (I've spent hundreds on these mods, reaching about a thousand now, wanting to earn something isn't necessarily bad), that and reliving the old glory days when I first started modding, only this time to finalize the mod series in a saga that won't need to be remade or remastered ever again. Then I can go finish modding one day when everything is done, on a setting sun and finally play rimworld because all I do is test mods.



Should we rework Rimmu-Nation 2 to have weaker weapons modelled after VE Expanded weapons? (With Oskar's permission, the man himself)

Weaker Rimmu-Nation 2 means weaker factions. That means VOID won't be as powerful, and etc. etc.

Should we have weapon sounds that aren't so bombastic? Maybe just cut down the variety of sounds and keep it small?
Should we just use vanilla weapon sounds?

Should we stop using real weapon names? Not everyone appreciates using COLT, FN Herstal, 5.11 in a world where those companies may not necessarily exist (no matter how hard Red Horse 2 tries to explain the lore of these things) It means all clothing will be affected by these changes also.

What are your thoughts? Please give em because if I make up my mind, I'd appreciate hearing yours out before things are made final. Things will be final when these mods release on steam, right now we have time to change anything.

Anti-drug ranger poster

I sell them elsewhere then ;p

Enlisting is good idea, should be oart of base mod. I know that is a concept but, it's like dlc with new cool thing to do. Like... having a colony and have 5 commando type pawns who roam Rim and do stuff becouse they have reason to leave colony now.

Thanks Skynert! I made a decision on it, I think it can be a standalone mod so it can reach a wider target audience. It still makes sense for rangers but if it was available for everyone to play with and pick and choose, it'd have more attention to the feature than if it was in a faction mod that not everyone may want to use. That was my thought on that.

I'd probably ban neolithic and spacer factions from using it but have a mod settings to perhaps allow it/disallow for players

[Skynert]

Dont ban neolithic, 90% of my playthroughs start as tribes and live as less primitive tribes with guns ;p

[Chicken Plucker]

Rimmu-Nation² Clothing updated, download link available in front page

Been going so hard on the rangers and other mods in development, that you guys haven't had anything new. I'm throwing everyone a bone by finishing some old works in progress and have released an update of some new items for Rimmu-Nation² - Clothing. Thanks for voting in the polls, this brought to my attention people would like some new gear.


P1944 Gasmask
Reduces toxic fallout effect by 75%. Also looks cool.


M56 Webbing
Unfun fact, I accidentally merged all of the ranger version's templates in the only save of this template, rendering it useless to be re-used and recolored. Had to remake the M56 webbing manually. I did it cause I love you guys alright.


FAST Pack
Same carrying capacity as RUSH 24, which is so far the daysack that can carry the most in current mod series.

Note: Speaking of backpacks, all of the coding has been tweaked to better fit on west and east view so they don't look off.

I haven't slept much so I'll keep it short and sweet, yes, it's all modular. Yes, you can wear the backpack with the webbing with the body armour.

You could wear the gasmask with a ski mask so you can dress like you're cold war era SAS or something, but no, unfortunately, no helmets with the gasmask due to them rendering above the helmets (or under chinstraps) so I decided to make them not modular with each other.

Screenshots:






Got a party to attend today, I hope I do attend it. Wanna roast chicken for everyone, then I gotta do other things. Cheers all.

Dont ban neolithic, 90% of my playthroughs start as tribes and live as less primitive tribes with guns ;p

No I mean that neolithic tribes, you can't enlist and do crazy industrial stuff with them. I'll talk more about those later I gotta go bed, hope you guys enjoy the new content for RN2: Clothing 



EDIT:

Quickly updated oversized M56 webbing display on the floor, if you have issues with that then please just redownload. Cheers

Edit 2:

Hey all I screwed up. I accidentally added the M56 Webbing for the Rangers and added the Ranger Webbing to Rimmu-Nation 2. That's an epic oof, apologies due to lack of brain function at the time.

It's now fixed, you may get errors and lose the ranger webbings but seeing as they were probably pink squares for you it doesn't matter. Cheers all

[Chicken Plucker]

[EDIT: Details removed due to OpSec]. Caught me off guard cause I was supposed to be off till Sept, due to COVID calming down they made some moves to get my butt ahead on the thing.

Anyway about Rangers.

Was highly unsatisfied with something, so I thought.. I got it. Let's redo the thing and do it properly in vanilla style. No set colours, no re-used recon armor with an added bandolier. Let's go all the way, make the thing recolorable and original.

Here's what we got:




Possible outcome:


Will probably do the bandolier as a separate webbing layer. Hope it turns out good, but it's flippin time consuming and my days are numbered now. Cheers all.

[Chicken Plucker]

OP Delivers again bois, the textures are done, rangers now looking so vanilla mate. Flip.

Ran into an initial issue figuring out how masking works but it was just a matter of using the right stuff in .xml already available. I earned my sleep, you guys can have screenshots of the new stuff.

Images when masking issue was present




Images with fixed masking



















Need a ranger motto now lads, they're really getting fleshed out.
"Glory for the republic!" or "Rangers are super cool!" or "I'm Batman."

Current plans:
- Redo Rimmu-Nation 2 weapon sounds, declutter unused or old game sounds to new more modern game SFX
- Bandolier webbing item
- Move back view of ranger helmet exhaust a bit more to the center
- Write order for Taranchuk for the quest system
- Balance Ranger weapons so I can release beta version here

[Skynert]

"We like pancakes!" Or... I dont know, Im not good at marketing. O! Semper Fidelis Ad Mortem? Always loyal, until death.

[FadedRen]

Hello Chicken Plucker, just wanted to say that I really enjoy using your mods. Don't think I've played a run without running at least 6 of your mods. Keep up the good work! Also, a possible motto for the rangers could be "In the Face of Death, we Prevail."

[MrBriggs18]

Like that last armor design. Doesn't feel "blurry" for me anymore.

[Chicken Plucker]

RIMDEED UPDATED, FRONT PAGE YADDA YADDA YOU KNOW THE DRILL:

- Ban timer reduced from 30 days per applicant to 10 if they die within protection period
- Option to reset ban in mod settings added



Sorry for yellin at you fellers, I'm freakin exhausted and there's only two chickens to roast left in the fridge. I should go home frick.

Anyway lads, I've hatched a diabolical plan to possibly appear in Tynan Sylvester's radar and maybe find employment in the Ludeon team if senpai notices. Canute brought to my attention an old Twitter post of him seeking people who can do storyteller art with backgrounds and this and yadda yadda with hero poses. Here we are with a vanilla style faction coming complete with artwork, freakin uhhh.. Ahh.. Oh yeah. Major features like the quests and stuff, so it's not just another faction mod.

What next in the page?

Welp. A storyteller. (Work in progress image below)

Work in progress storyteller named Elizabeth "Betty" Lester.

It's Ranger Betty. Unsure if I should make her another hardcore storyteller or just make her casual. Betty believes herself to be cursed due to all of her loved ones having a track record of dying horrible deaths, in the hands of either cold blooded killers or unfeeling, unemotional machines. It seems anywhere she sticks around for too long, she attracts danger and trouble. She's gone around looking for it, establishing the rangers only to step down as chief when it began to gain traction. She left on the grounds of suffering extreme PTSD, diagnosed with depression and having suicidal tendencies. (Yeah, willing to go there.) This therefore lead to her being labelled as unfit to serve with the Rangers officially, for the sake of not tarnishing the image that's been portrayed of her to inspire many, and secretly because she believes she is cursed and will cause the death of her allies, just like how she has lost her family and her entire republic.

She's gone to live a life of isolation by choice, cleaning towns of outlaws in an attempt to go out fighting, doing what's right and to punish herself for highly traumatic events that she blames herself for, with all others around her never getting to know, due to their unrealistic heroic views and expectations of this ranger blowing smoke in the reality that is a broken human being with a revolver and a grudge.


I understand I wanted a story with Rangers full of hope and heroism, but I want to be very realistic and I want a character where if you strip them of their gender, their armor, their skills and weapons you see underneath a human being just like everyone else that is capable of flaws and feeling pain and suffering, yet rising above it all, finding a greater purpose in staying alive to fight everything pushing against them despite of the demons they face. Maybe one day that person will find what they need by looking around, and find that long awaited victory by realizing that they cannot be their own saviour. That they need help.

Have some friends suffering with PTSD. They don't like to talk. It just gave me some mood and I felt that a Mary Sue character like Betty at the time could use some human attributes, and if she did see all of her friends die at such a young age, then she would very much not come out as the hero she's made out to be when nobody else is looking. I hope if anyone out there is suffering that kind of fate, that they keep on fighting and keep on praying and that a few people like me will pray with them even if it's not visible or even if they don't believe in that stuff. I can only hope one day, it causes something amazing to happen, and that it'll surprise us both.

I'm off to bed, more writing and worldbuildy and art later. Me tired.

"We like pancakes!" Or... I dont know, Im not good at marketing. O! Semper Fidelis Ad Mortem? Always loyal, until death.

Thanks, nah I'll stay away from US Marine mottos my friend but thanks for the suggestions

Hello Chicken Plucker, just wanted to say that I really enjoy using your mods. Don't think I've played a run without running at least 6 of your mods. Keep up the good work! Also, a possible motto for the rangers could be "In the Face of Death, we Prevail."

Thanks Ren! Welcome to the forums, I like what you've suggested and may adapt from it when I make my mind up

In the Darkest days, in the darkest nights
something something rangers fights?

Genius.

Like that last armor design. Doesn't feel "blurry" for me anymore.

Me too Briggs! I am happy with the decision, was worth the hours spent doing.



Could even color code them now if I wanted, I'm color coding the elites and boss units but probably letting the normal rangers wear whatever color they want for variety