Aristeas

I've played around a lot with modding this game but I've never really tried to go that in depth with it. My main goal was to make it into an infantry only game. I've switched infantry units around to balance out the game sans mechs. Replaced their weapons (Kinjals with Inkvines can be pretty formidable, I can tell you that for nothing :D) But currently what I've settled on is for everyone to have access to the same infantry units (excluding subhouses). This is great and all but what I don't know how to do is changing the troops names to reflect the house they're in. Like everyone can make AA troopers but no matter which house makes them their tag is always "Ordos AA Trooper" instead of "Atreides AA Trooper. (this is especially irksome in the case of the OREITS which should be and in my mod is a Guild unit) Can this be fixed without creating new units? If not, is there an easy way to do that? Like is it a matter of copying and pasting the AA trooper's info from the rules.txt in each house and just changing a few lines or is it going to be an ordeal? Thanks!

Sardaukar...oh...wait...

Well...here it is. You should just be able to extract it to C:WestwoodEmperorDATA. The goal here was to take existing units and disperse them amongst the houses and subhouses to balance the game for infantry only. I ended up having to modify some units. I also tried to take out at least a little of the micromanagement by making buildings and harvesters selfrepairing. (not sure how much that actually helps) Hope you enjoy it. InfantryMix.zip

Thats too bad. What you had so far looked interesting. On a brighter note, I'm done with mine and I'm going to post it tonight. Just need to make the readme file. So Jules, at least another mod came out of your abandoned one. Hopefully folks will dig it. :)

Well...there's one thing that a lot of people around the world seem to have in common. So many of us like to think that we're better than someone else because of where we live.

Yeah, but I'm not doing any where near what Jules is doing. I'm pretty much just switching around some of the units. I'm also changing some of the speed and capabilities of a few units but I'm not creating any new ones. But it is fairly fun so far...hell...modding the game is turning out to be fun within itself :). Hopefully I'll be able to finish it up this weekend though and I'll post the whole file. Now that I'm able to use all of the sub houses I've selected their units: Ix: infiltrator and the ordos dust scout (extended build times and higher cost) Tleilaxu: fast contaminator (with slightly extended range) and the ordos saboteur. (I might give the TL their leeches back though to counter the dust scout offered by the Ix. Then just make Contaminators available in the Starport) Guild: maker and ordos eye in the sky (the eye in the sky...c'mon...that should have been a Guild unit to begin with. Did the people that made the game bother to read the books?) Starport units: Regular Sardaukar, Ordos Saboteur, Ordos Mortar troops, AT Kinjals. Might add a few other infantry units to the starport. I did have it so that you could buy harvesters from the starport but I had to take that out. For some reason the AI kept buying harvesters from its starport instead of units and...well...that just annoyed the hell out of me. Well...it did this when I had 2 IA enemies. One of them seemed to not use the starport at all where the other one kept buying harvesters. On the other hand, maybe the AI knew what it was doing because crowding its base with harvesters made it harder to take down that base with infantry. I kept having to take out harvesters while the base guns mowed down my troops.

Jules' Mod Is there a way to make it so APCs can't cush infantry short of making all infantry uncrushable? A small fleet of them could work hell on an army running toward your base...a little too much hell IMO. A cloaked trike, unless everyone can get them it seems like it would be a bit much to me too. But is kinda nifty. I'd like it better in a different kind of mod. Aristeas' Mod I fixed the issue with the Subhouses. They're all active now. I'm having to do some more balancing though. With the sniper/scouts....it really isn't a balancing issue if everyone has snipers. As it stands all scouts are disabled. I feel that they're a superfluous unit and not very realistic. In the real military "scouts" are very often just infantry on recon missions...often these are also snipers. (just wanted to explain the how I came to the decision for getting rid of scouts). HK and OR get snipers (with FRWarriorgun) with view range 20 (same as a scout). AT get Fremen Warriors with view range 18. I think I'm close to being done with everything I'm going to change except for the chemtrooper. I want every house to have a "super unit". The AT get the Fremen Warrior, the Harks get Sards (in the Light infantry model) and the Ordos will get the suped up chemtrooper. A question for you Jules...actually 2. How can I change the default color of the AI enemy? I really hate pink. And is there a way to make an "Atreides" sniper into and Ordos or Harkonnen sniper. When someone playing House Harkonnen hovers their mouse over one of their snipers it would be nice if the label said "Harkonnen Sniper". Neither are big deals really but they'd be nice touches.

I agree but I would think that any military engineer would carry at least a handgun. I would make an engineer into an infantryman that could also take over buildings. Aristeas mod I've attached the rules file that I've been playing on. I haven't fixed the issue with the Guild, TL, and Ix being able to be built. All units are now Elite = TRUE No Scouts Snipers have been given the view range of scouts and can stealth when still upon creation. Equipped with Fremen Warrior guns. Fremen Warriors now only buildable by House Atreides. Increased view to the same as scouts. Harkonnen Light Infantry now have all the same capability as Sardaukar except that they have Hark Infantry armor and 200 less health than a Sardaukar. Atreides Infantry have Sardaukar guns Ordos Chem troopers now have the turret gas gun. Increased speed to 9. Can attack at range with gas turret gun or up close with their traditional attack. No armor. Low health...575. They're very powerful, especially in groups. Maybe overpowered. Sardaukar Elites now use Sardaukar guns instead of lasers. Still have the knife. Sarkaukar regulars have been removed from the game All houses get Harkonnen engineers Atreides Units: Fremen Warrior Infantry AA Trooper Engineer Harkonnen Units Infantry Flamer Sniper Trooper Engineer Ordos Units Chem Trooper AA Trooper Sniper Engineer Imperial Units Kinjals Elite Sardaukar Fremen Units Feds Mortar Rules.txt

Whether or not Bush has followed the law is a matter of speculation as far as I'm concerned. And I just generally disagree with how he runs things...but then I would...I'm a decocrat

The US has several political parties but the Democratic and Republican parties are, by far, the largest. They are so large that other parties have very little sway in American government. Not sure where Andrew is coming from on saying that both liberals and conservatives in this country are the same. They aren't...not by a long shot. Like everyone we do have varying degrees of liberal and conservative folks that do blur the lines and do I think I understand where such an opinion might stem from. As far as Americans thinking that anyone who disagrees with them is an idiot, no. Thats a personality trait not a national characteristic. If you're referring to my comment about us being idiots for electing Bush twice, that was not a commentary on the intelligence of the members of a political party. This is about the re-election of one man in particular who happens to be a Republican, Bush. I believe that its brazenly obvious that this guy and his cadre are a bunch of crooks and I have trouble understanding how his supporters are missing this. This doesn't have anything to do with political parties. It has everything to do with one man and his circle of associates whose actions I consider to be very bad for my country and the world as a whole. For my part, I do not believe that Republicans (or members of any other political party) are idiots just by virtue of them disagreeing with my political beliefs. I have friends that are Republicans and some of them are undeniably intelligent. One of them I consider to be even moreso than I. (I still think their wrong but being wrong doesn't mean you're stupid...misguided, misinformed, or in denial maybe...but not stupid)

Well...I've fiddled around with it a lot these past few days and I think I'm coming close to something thats fairly well balanced. It may sound crazy but here is basically what I've settled on...I am still tweaking weaponry. 1st off...when I started modding I did this...extracted DukeLeto's Infantry Wars mod then replaced his rules file with SnIper's Infantry mod rules file and started modding from there. No one gets scouts. Every house gets snipers and I've extended their view to the same as scouts. This just seems more "realistic" to me. Also, since the Atreides get Fremen warriors they no longer can make their own snipers. The Harks and Ordos can make them and those snipers get stealth-when-still upon creation. All houses and all units can create elites. Atreides get: Fremen Warriors (also extended their range to match the scout) AT light infantry with ATpillboxgun Hk Engineers Ordos AATrooper Harkonnen get: Sardaukar in Harkonnen livery ( :D ) which is to say that I basically just copied and pasted all the sard attributes under the Hark light infantry model. ATSniper HK flame troops HK Engineer HKTrooper Ordos gets: Chemical troopers...Ive turned the chemtroop into a special unit (since the other two houses get special units) by increasing their speed and pasted Sard attributes to their graphic. They still have the chemgun but I've been playing around with giving them the chemical turret for a gun. This makes them very powerful and I'm still looking for a way to put them on a level field with the Fremen sniper and HKlightinfantry/Sard. I'll probably take away their armor and slow them down but I haven't had the chance to experiment with this yet. I like using the chemturret because it gives them some range while retaining a chemical weapon. What makes it unbalanced is the fact that a shot from a chem turret kills 5 or 6 infantry and they can shoot pretty fast. Maybe I'll just give them the turret gas gun but in all other respects leave them unchanged except I'll either give them armor or give them more speed. ATSniper AATrooper Hark Engineer Subhouses For some reason the only subhouses that function are Fremen and Imperial. I can select as subhouses Ix, TL and GU but their buildings don't appear as construction options. Not sure what I did there. Since I cant use them I started using the fleshvat as a "garbage can" of sorts. I don't know how to just disable units I don't want so now TLfleshvat is the place I put all the scouts and sabotuers Imperials get: ATKinjals Advanced Sard...the advanced sard I gave the regular sardaukar gun. This makes them much more interesting in an infantry only mod, makes them more effective against infantry at rabge and they can still use their knives at close quarters. Its kinda cool if I do say so myself. Fremen get: ORMortars Feds (as is) On TL and Ix. I wanted to have them both but I can't figure out what happened there. My plan was to make the contaminator faster and perhaps give them sobateurs and allow Ix to make high cost slow built infiltrators and dustscouts. The guild would just have the maker. Anyway, I'm happy to share anything I do, Obviously I'm not really trying to do a major overhaul to the game like COTL, just playing around with unit availability and capabilities to balance things out for an infantry mod. And I'm still fiddling...this is just my favorite fiddle so far.

Ok...I'm discovering that the idea of having every house have every infantry unit might not be the best idea. This is just the initial impression I have from the messing around I did last night. Of course it creates balance...everyone has pretty much the same stuff. But the downside is that it also creates a situation where you have so many kinds of infantry to choose from that it makes your head spin. So I think I'll narrow things down a bit. Actually, it does also take away a little of the character of the Houses but I'm willing to trade this aesthetic for balance. I like the atmosphere of the game plenty. I'll still give everyone snipers, mortars, and flame and chem troops standard. But there's no reason that everyone should have Ordos AA troopers AND Harkonnen troopers. Nor is there any reason for everyone to have access to both Atreides and Harkonnen infantry so I might do away with AT infantry and HK troopers just so the selection board isn't so crowded. I might also do away with Fremen Warriors as they're made more or less superfluous. But maybe not. Fremen snipers are better than Atreides snipers. Maybe I'll just replace the Atreides sniper with the Fremen Warrior and nix AT snipers from the game but I'll think about that later when I see how what I have plays out. So... Standards units for every house are: Ordos Mortars Ordos AA Troopers Ordos Chemtroopers Ordos Sabotuers Hark Infantry Hark Flamers Hark Engineers Atreides Snipers Scouts Units I'm cutting out (to get rid of the clutter): AT infantry AT Engineer OR Engineer Hark Troopers Btw...I just realized I kinda hijacked this thread a bit. I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to. I find this mod your working on intriguing and I want to contribute but because I don't really know how to mod I felt like every time I was making a suggestion I was talking out my ass. I just want to see for myself if anything I'm suggesting makes sense in real time. Oh and speaking of hijacking, I have a couple of questions about COTL...if I install it into the game right now...with the mod I have installed will that be ok or can I only install COTL into the stock game? Also, if I can install COTL and play it can I uninstall it and go back to the mod I have in there now or will the uninstaller just restore the game to its stock state?

Sweet! I'll give that a shot thanks. Now thats interesting. You know how I was saying the Harkonnen infantry sucked? Maybe that would be a way to balance them out a bit. They shouldn't be as powerful as Sards though but the Sards have more health and range, yes? If you had an HK infantryman with bullets on par with a Sard would the Sard still win? Not sure how useful that would be against Atreides snipers though. I still think all sides should get snipers standard. They're just so damn powerful. But I suppose a house that didn't have snipers could opt for Fremen as a subhouse.

I meant in the regular game...or rather the mod I'm messing around with at the moment...DukeLeto's infantry mod...making it so that all three of the major houses could have flametroops, snipers, mortars, chemtroopers, kinjals, and light infantry (I'm trying to do a little balancing experiment) The real differences between the houses would be what subhouses players pick as opposed to the type of units they have on their own. But other than pasting Elite = TRUE into all of the infantry units I haven't done any modding so if its much more complicated than that nevermind as I'm likely as not to screw it up :) Incidentally (you might find this interesting), in 2005 when I first came to this board I was working with someone (Spectral Paladin) on creating an infantry based EBfD that was more true to the books and he discovered that a Harkonnen light infantry somehow always beat an Atreides light infantry. He was never really sure why because they did the same amount of damage and had the same amount of health but I theorized that the Hark was quicker on the draw than the Atreides troop.

Hey Jules, just for the fun of it I did this with every houses' infantry in the InfantryWars mod. Would it be just as simple to do that and re-enable Elite Sards and Feds AND make it so every house can make any infantry unit from either of the three houses?