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Cm_blast

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Cm_blast last won the day on February 16 2023

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  1. -Completed: The Great Battle of Arrakis By Thel Vadam FLippy. The full story and campaign is done. Now 32 total missions. -Added: The Ixian Problem, By Cm_Blast
  2. First post updated. I always had in mind Fremen being sthealed (that's the reason why they build so slowly and the units don't have 100% hp. But some bug on the exe would crash the game (at random intervals, but very often while battling the Fremen units). the current stable Exe provided by Klofkack fix that, so I could recover that gimmick. The fremen (the unit) no longer has 100% hp either, same as vehicles, but all of them are sthealed. The AI still builds really slow and the Fremen are barely considered an enemy but more "these annoying little guys". On top of that, seems that people overall didn't like too much the idea of the enemy AI filling the silos/refs on hard difficulty even if just 1 single harverster is alive. I completely removed that. this means that now, both on normal and hard difficulty the missions plays the same (except for the cost/speed production from the game itself); mission 6 (the only non-traditional base) is the only mission that has difference per difficulty, but I toned down the difficulty on that one for hard difficulty as well. There are other few fixes here and there. Overall, only 3 missions plays slighly different on normal (Fremen being invis), and on hard difficulty the AI no longer will be able to have "unlimited" money so hunting harversters is an actual valid tactic. just remember to download and apply the new stable exe from klofkack, link on the first post, or otherwise the game will crash in at least 2 specific missions a lot (and depending on luck, even unplayable).
  3. check on this post there is a big list of tools, so it has to be at least one. I have one on my computer but I cannot remember where I got it. I know the exe is "bgafc_de" but no idea of the name of the editor (unless is called like that). It looks like this, opening mission 10 from The Atreides campaign. It allow for both PC and Amiga, although it is not too visual and you have to put the mouse to check which structure or unit is available. Another way to edit the map is using dune legacy editor, you can load the .ini files from the game (or generate one with a seed) and then save is as an .ini to apply into your msdos dune 2 game. I never did many custom missions (I used once a even more rudentary tool and I had many issues with the unit/structures limits of the game), so maybe there is something much better than the two I refer.
  4. Increse the cycles on dosbox. if you are using the regular-oficial one (DOSBox 0.74 I think it is), press Control+F12. You can do it ingame withouth any issues. Increase the cycles to 10.000 or around that, it hasn't to be exactly that number and I don't remember exactly the number, is all about checking, increase to 10.000 and it won't slowdown. Later, if you are into mission 7-8 or so and the game still slowdown you can increase to 15.000 or any value you consider good speed. Control+F11 reduce the number. There is the other non-oficial dosbox that has an option "maximize cycles" which will increase the cycles on his own to the max depending on the game so you don't need to manually do it (although you can still can). There is also the in-game speed, but switching from "normal" to "fastests" don't change that much, it is only slighly faster and deviators will become useless as the deviating time is going to be drastically reduced, also sonic tanks are affected, so just try first the cycles, and if that doesn't feel good enough, you can do both things, increasing cycles and in-game speed.
  5. Nice!, there is a modder here that hate him so much that in 80% of his missions there is not a sandworm in sight xD. Glad to hear the opposite. And like everything else, if you play long enough you start realizing that the sandworm is predictable. I even have a theory on what the sandworm does when it spawns, but I have no proof so I can't tell for sure. Yeah, the game is like that. This is the reason where I do custom missions (at least the lastests) I tend to make the AI really on the aggresive side, but if you manage to survive all the waves and cripple the enemy economy, then it is more easy to take out. You still have to destroy their base, but the enemy base has basic stuff. Then there are other modders that gave the enemy 3 copies of each building so even if you rush the CY, take out 2 refs and 2 factories... and you are still afar from winning because it has so much alive and can rebuild. Another thing is depends on how much you play the game. I did a campaign in which the player is given 1 ally on every mission; the ally may have a small base or a bigger base, but you are never alone on your own. The last mission used to take me 2 hours to win, but nowadays I can complete it in 1 hour and 15-20 mins at most. I still have around here the game recorded, don't know if those will ever be published at some point. My gameplay is on normal speed, and since it is intented to be into a retro-channel the objetive is winning withouth saving the game, but also not speedrunning it (letting cutscenes, dialogues or not just going against an enemy to win in 2 minutes even if it is possible, like certain RA2 mission); so I spend time deploying concrete and building the whole base even if the building is useless. The Final mission on the Atreides campaign took me 1 hour and 4 minutes. Final ordos 1 hour and 8 minutes Final Harkonnen 1 hour and 22 minutes. And I am a average player. But I feel that the moment the AI cannot recover or do it slowly, it is just better to just build 200 units at once that sending small groups. There was recently a person playing a custom mission on mine and he was like building 20-25 vehicles (in bewteen tanks and some quads), and moving them near to the AI to harass them, he killed AI units, but then he lost the 20-25, so he send another similar group; he kept doing this 5-6 times but the mission didn't advance, it was a fully stalemate for 20-30 minutes. Until he said "maybe I should group", he did, and it took one single strike to destroy most of the enemy base. Is even worse, since the harverster, instead moving 1 step foward leaving the entrance free for another harv, it will wait to pick up. The spice must be really really far to speed the production, if not it will slow down. Either spice too afar, or just so many cliffs that the harv would take forever moving on his own. I did a campaign that it is heavily inspired on dune 2, so there are no cliffs and for balancing purposes I made the harverster to be 10 tiles minimun of distance to ask for a carryall. And even only if the carryall was just on top of it the take on air/ground was kind of even. On my custom missions I tend to put multiple small mine fields so you spread the refs, but then putting bigger or just more blooms on distances. I even made some missions that mostly annoy people since it force you to build the HTF and having carryalls. Like, making 70% of the spice being fully unreachable for land xD. Yeah, folks are annoyed by my stuff often. Now imagine if we had the dune 2 thing that could order 50 units at once if you had the money for it xD. But on dune 2 units could be more expensive, while here they are always cheaper. Maybe you will get to enjoy the tleilaxu campaign and the starport, not the core or anything, but there are a few missions where I scripted that the starpor starts fully stocked, instead being at zero as it starts on the game; so you beging the mission with the CY, 2 windtraps and a starport with 10.000 initial credits, you can get a bit of an army before deploying any factory. Dune emperor prizes didn't seem to change often. Last time I played a unit was really cheap so I kept ordering 4-5 units over and over, no idea if it was intented or the version I downloaded was bugy or what. You can play as Sardaukar on the original campaigns but only if you capture the Imperial palace (last mission). Need to point that as Harkonnen you get the worse version Sardaukar. There are 2, the campaign one, and the multiplayer one. The multiplayer has a slower Rate of Fire, and it cost 200 (campaign sard cost 120). As Harkonnen you get the bad version due the game having 2 units named "Sardaukar" and since Harkonnen actually trains them on multiplayer the game still pick that version even if you are getting the requirements from the originals. sad. Fey already pointed to you the index, but to be more specific. If you really really really want to use sardaukar, go to play my "Emperor return`s". The campaign is modded, so be sure to copy everything right (and assuming you have the mission launcher 1.2.0 (by funky and Feda). If you don't have it, on that index you can find it. Mods works by overwritting files, but if you have the mission launcher (at least 1.2.0, if it is more recent it works too) then the launcher will overwritte the files on his own, and then revert to the original when you finish the mission, so other custom missions or the original game is not affected. Although if you downloaded the "all in one" from Dato then you have nothing to worry about, as everything needed is already there, nothing to download then. If not you can get it here: I forgot if you already have it or not, so just in case I put the link here. This contains around 90% of the campaigns/missions on the index, so once you download it once, then it is fine to play everything. <-- if you already have it or just download it, the index purpose is just to check which missions, which author, and if the author wrote the story or gameplay stuff to see what to expect, but no need to download any extra. Dato was kind enough to give us this to compile most of the index package and ready to play. Emperor return's was like the 2º custom campaign I ever made, so gameplay wise is not much complex. But it has the mod that you get to train sardaukar from your barracks withouth a palace or whatever. However, you don't get to build light vehicles. So your main army will be tanks and sardaukar (you cannot even train troopers). If the lack of light vehicles for you is a turn off, then you can play my other imperial campaign called "The Emperor's plan"; this one is not modded, whole thing is vanilla, so you don't get sardaukars on the earlly missions. Then, around mission 4 or 5, you start getting them on the starport for free plus having the imperial palace to train them on your own. This other campaign has a couple of middle missions that may be a bit oppresive, but I think the final mission is kind of easy. The modded one is more easy overall since it was done on the early era where I had no much idea, thus my Ais tends to be slow-building ones, but the last mission is kind of long due enemy massive base (although the objetive is not to destroy the whole base). The unmodded one has a small issue that, unfornatelly, only discovered in recent times. If you go play that cmpaign and at the very beggining of mission 1 the enemy infantry units don't move, you must restart the mission. if they do, then everything is fine and there are no other issues (that I am aware). <-- this issue happens on the first 5-10 seconds, so is not like the mission is that much broken. This is a thing that back in the day worked 10 out of 10, and they never ever went iddle, but now for some reason sometimes they do... meh These are the Teasier/trailer on both campaigns, if you have any preference. On both you get sards, on one from the very first mission and it is the core of your army, and in the other you get them for free and can also build them more mid-campaign, while on early missions you get 1-3 at most. Don't worry about the language, on dato's pack is in english. or at least as good as my english is :P. When I checked another guy and saw that you are suppose to rush the nearest oil ref, the mission turned out much more manegeable. Enemy get's less resources and you get more, even if I end loosing it at least I wasn't against an AI that had 3-4 times more resourcesharversting that me. Also, AI cheating with unlimited oil to harvest xD. I tried the 2º game but it never clicked to me, I felt it was so slow... On KKND you spend I think it was 1400 or 1500 on the refinery, and then you get 700 money back, so in 2 travel, you recover the money. on KKND 2, if I recall the ref cost 2000 and you get 400 only back. You need to wait your harverster to travel 5 times just to get the money back (and 5 more if you want a second refinery). Maybe I am playing it wrong and you are suppose to just have 1 refinery or whatever. Dunno.
  6. I really like this game, a bit sad I never played it back in the day (but I play others that leave mid-way since I didn't find it that fun for whatever reason) Even on my last campaign of dune 2k I heavily considered making an AI that behave like that game. I didn't do it because it would be really hard/complicated, and who knows if may work at the end. In theory it can work, like, you can (now) check how many units the Ai going against the player in attack (so not counting units defending), and then check how many units the player has in, maybe, a radious (to not count all the 100 units scattered on the map, but the 40 units that may be next on your base, or in front or your base, or direcly in the path bewteen enemy and player bases...) and making them to retreat if they are in a loosing situation. At the end of the day, that would require lots of test to do, scrapping my head and brain to do it properly, and then finding that a random player gets decimated (or decimates) due something something doesn't work as expected something. In a related note. I recorded this game for a channel; I remember having lots of issues with 1 specific level, the kind to restart or reload tons of time (and the same for the last mission); so prior to recording that mission (since it was suppose to be done withouth using saves) I checked how others played it; and I found the surprise that you can use the enemy refinery to put your oil trucks. From an almost impossible mission turned into a more easy one. Come one, don't tell him that. Sure, the tleilaxu one I put has multiple drops behind your back, but those are usually only on the early missions, and so small that are easy to repel; later on that campaign most of enemy drops (the few that I actually put since the AI is so passive otherwise) come from a slighly off angle from their base, or even directly dropping behind the enemy base. Heh, I even felt so bad from doing that that the last mission where there are drops in the corner behind your base the game tells you 3 times that they happens and where it happens. Briefing: "Be carefull, commander, the enemy will drop stuff at the corner behind your base". Intel. "Watch out for enemy carryalls, they will drop units at the corner behind your base". Ingame: "Alert: enemy carryall dropping units right now at the corner behind your base."
  7. I feel those are not even attacking units but defending units, either the harv got damaged (even if damaged by his own units it count) due the sandworm, or you enter his "base defense area" radious and the AI react by sending all. The AI on this map has a very big defensive unit. This is how it goes. the AI is told to attack the first time (not counting drops) at 17.000 ticks, which it is a bit more than 11 minutes. Then is told to attack every 7000 ticks, which are every 4.6 minutes (less than 5minutes) and is being told to build 1 unit every 1700 ticks, so a bit more than 1 minute. so theorically,the AI will build a total of 10 units the first time it attacks, and then attacks of 4 units per wave. The numbers are not exactly because the AI is set to attack with a 30% of the strengh (hp) of the units, so the first wont be 10, but 3+RGN (there is an increase), to simplicity,around 5-6 units and then, on those 4-5 units he didn't send+ the 4 new untis he got to build before attacking gain (so he will have around 10 units ready again) he will send another 5-6 units. so yeah, if they are doing that, or you are ultra unlucky with the sandworm, or you are entering the enemy base (or just being close) making the AI to use all the units he has to defend himself into you. The thing is that, if you go back and retreat your units, they may even stop firing at all. Even if on top of your base, they will be there for a while and just leave to the base (with the harverster they may have a frenzy). this game doesn't have that kind of script (on 2024 custom mods yes, but only because there is a guy that it is actually doing stuff that allow the game to check certain aspect and make the AI to do certain things). His is just mostly you are going near them and they go mad probably. Well, you can play this mission withouth doing the tactic you did (which works with pretty much the whole game). I usually just use infantry to reach the starport, then I move the MCV on the shortest path possible with no other units and never send vehicles on the starport or from the starport into the main base, just infantry or whatever staff I order there. The AI usually gets screwed trying to reach the starport because the narrow path which works in your favor (except for the mercs that can make things hard). But besides that, is just as every other mission, build your army, destroy every. The thing you did to win you can do it on the last mission on everycampaign, just atrack all enemy units, let them die to your turrets easily and now, withouth defenses, you send your actual army against an enemy with almost no opposition. the AI on this game it's always the same, it changes "how often it attacks" or "how often it build" per mission, but even a deployed CY will make the AI to attack it; deploy a CY where you want them to attack instead your main base (or other areas) and you manipulate the AI with just 1 single building (even windtraps works too), but you could have done that tactic on pretty much every mission. There are even moments where the AI will keep training/building units and sending them against you 1 by 1 because you recently attacked, or you damaged a harversters or stupid things like that and things he needs to keep doing that. (eventually it will stop, but you are going to drain resources just dealing with 1 attacker at a time). An airstrike on top of a harverster can trigger that too. you use one and the AI is "I must defend it" and because it doesn't find the exact unit it just send all against your base. Or walling your ally (if there is any) so they cannot leave and then sell for a 80-100 units wave if you wants. many people here, on custom missions do the same you did. Attrack, then send an engie, capture whatever random building and then concrete-barrack-engie to dismantle the AI's base from the inside, and there is nothing a modder can do (not unless 2023-2024, but only if you know how to really use the editor) to prevent that to happens, besides, you know, giving the AI 20 turrets so you cannot enter a undefended base (or a gallilion of drops/deliveries so the AI always have some units as back up). It's even worse once you know how the defese bases of the AI are draw or how far, you can use cliffs to make An AI to die against you even with a smaller army, just for the placement itself. Ps: There is needed 1 single raider/trike to outrun all the enemy units and luring them into your base if you desire. I only do this trick if I am playing a custom mission with an enemy that has a gigantic base with 3 Cy, 3 Factories, 8 refs and so on. But otherwise I avoid this or the game becomes too much easy. (on a smaller map they still group fine, not much distance to split their army, but on custom missions people tend to do bigger maps, so you get to kill units as they come splitted). And then there are the veterans that I made a mission with an AI with not much stuff, but grow over time so you don't get heavily attacked while you prepared your army, then they send a trike or whatever unit they had, retreat, put other units in the middle, the AI ignores those units, are killed withouth almost not much damage and rush the base to win in few minutes. You want an extra trick? drop units attack whatever is the nearest, unit, building, doesn't matter. Run with this unit and they will chase it to their death, soetimes they fully ignore being shot for other units because they are hunting "the original nearest unit". With enemies attacking from his base into yours may not do this that often since the AI may swap targets, but from I can see, if you deploy a CY the AI makes that building the primary focus (only if deployed, the one you start with not) and ignoring everything else (or, at best, the unit being fired swap targed, but the rest keeps going into the CY).
  8. The final mission difficulty also depends on the version you pick. I remember back in the day that the Atreides final, where you have 1 base splitted in 2 areas to me was impossible to hold, I always rushed a MCV and deploy on the bottom side because I could never hold the CY and the few buildings on top. Then, while playing the other version, I could win withouth no issues; withouth loosing buildings at all (or, at most, 1-2 turrets). The difference was that much that I remember not wanting to play the harder version ever. It is the same for the other missions. The Ordos one with the mercs in front on you is easy, the other I had multiple times the "mercs being neutral - now hostile" thing that made me restart-reload the mission. Never happened that on the other version. Same for Harkonnen, I always find the "only a MCV" version much harder that the one with a partial base. You know, I have done 2 missions based on Dune Emperor. One it is a more generic one; you start with a MCV and some units on the sand on the edge of the map, you move into the nearest terrain and deploy. Then you are given a secondary objetive; protect the fremen. Imperial send some sardaukar and Combat tanks; if you protect the Fremen, they will send some more, and if you still protect them, they will send a bigger wave against you directly, but from that point the Fremen will keep appearing from time to time to help you. But if you let them destroy then Imperials keep spawning to attack you the rest of the game (being all compacted into just 1 mission I had to do a reward/punish). The main enemy, meanwhile, has basic building but 4 turrets to avoid being rushed out, but it deploys like a skirmish one. I even release an easy-medium-hard versions of it, where besides the amount of units spawed from the imperials change, it also changes the reinforcements you and the enemy get, Kind a representing the reinforcements style based on how many territories you have nearby. Then, the other mission I made is the final mission on that game, the one with the god worm (it is just a CY with tons of hp); I tried to replicate the final mission as close as possible; there was many limitations and a couple of stuff that doesn't make sense because how the game work, but that's the closest I got to copy that mission with the limited stuff available. This map could be a mission you can try if you are curious about it. Contaminator and leechers are not exactly how they are but not really a way to do that in dune 2k (maybe now, in 2024, with the current tools could be possible). The Tleilaxu campaign I recommended has 1 of those. The first mission kind of is but it is more on the those RTS that the first mission is "here, pick this X amount of units and hunt every enemy on the map" so I don't count it. The actual commando mission has you navigating a "ant colony" as I like to call it (the preview map looks like that XD). If you never pick a crate, nothing happens, so you have all the time in the world to solve the puzzle. This is a mission I can recommend playing on a fastest speed or may become a bit too slow to play. But at least you are given both the minimap and the whole map revealed, so all the info is being told before hand. Briefing will say exactly what happens when you pick up a crate, and then even in game will tell you "enemies incoming in..." the moment you pick one. Not the most dinamic commando style mission, but I wanted to give players all the information the author itself knows (like layout, position of the crates and so on). Also that mission has changes based on difficulty, on easy difficulty you can mess up a few of the pick ups and you can still win. On normal maybe you can mess up 1 (not counting exploits, with exploits you can just break all my puzzles). By the way, this is another puzzle mission I made back in the day; it was hard to do since I wanted to make a "every unit is good on this but bad on that", and it was kind of hard to make a island that will make that specific unit to excel while the others just do badly. Is the last mission on my Christams mini-campaign, it is only a 4 mission long; and it ends with one of the biggest/complex commando/puzzle I ever had This one is actually playable on regular speed, even recomended on that. The only bad thing is that you are expected to keep your units as healthy as possible but you will never know exactly how much hp you can sacrifice. But regarles, you can watch this teaser. Except for the final island you get information; although, you can exploit a bit of it, every unit is suppose to go to a different island since it does better than the rest of the units, but some people may end reusing certain untis from multiple, or just combining them to make it more efficiently.
  9. Or, if the game wasn't yours but a cousing and you do a pir... security copy of it. I still remember my brother having to ask for the cd again because it has an anti-copy syste, so the first mission repeat on loop. He had to play the first mission 9 times (1 per house and difficulty) just to have a save at the start of mission 2 so we could play withouth issues (well, except no ingame music). Guard is just "if an enemy is near me, I move foward, fight it and return to normal". On missile tanks it almost doesn't work because they tend to fire enemies with a big range so they may move 1 tile only. Although this is in theory, in reality many time the units just don't go back or do whatever. I mean that you can use the engineer to capture an ally building, but to be clear, you cannot use an engineer to repair on this game. So, you can capture your mercs ally building if you wants during the ordos campaign. I Just made a mission where you have an ally that deploy a base from a CY (and a few initial buildings), then the player is given a couple of engineers, and the story is that your ally will share buildings with you, so you can capture as many as you want (but withouth being overboard or your ally will suffer the consequences). Not sure if this is the first mission that you actually need to capture ally buildings just to play, and some people got no idea you could do that. Dune 2 has support for mercenaries. I cannot really tell exactly the though process, but it wouldn't surpise if the Ordos mentat and storyline were more designed for Mercenaries but they cut and reused stuff for them. But who knows, probably those Ordos were too much close to mercenaries and smugglers which they actually appear in dune2k, so they decided to make them more weird; and since Ordos were never a part of the original story, they decided to not reuse the lore of other houses for them while keeping the Atreides-Ordos-Harkonnen dinamic that many people knew. To this day, even the modders that bring new houses tend to keep Ordos, is just already into our minds. on Feda's campaign you fight against Mutelli, Richese, Tleilaxu, Moritani, The spacing guild and another more I think, but you still play as the main 3. I also used 4 minor houses (with only a name on a wiki or just a few lines of info) and you still fight the 3 mains. I used the names of Lassoki, Iasi, Qaii and Bromeli, and gave them they own backstory while facing the 3 main trio considered "the big houses". Well, they already spice up with "you start with half-base", or "you start capturing the enemy starport early" instead the "here, a CY, all the 27 missions in the game" from the original; and I never like non-base missions so I prefered the game it is now. I even replayed recently Wacraft 3 and the expansion and I used a cheat code to skipp any mission withouth a base involved. Even when I do custom missions that are non-base related they tend to be really short, and I rarely add 1 per campaign if I even add any. Although I made a whole campaign on that style, but I cannot say is my favourite, I did it just for the limitation and "see what I can do". I don't know, they went the extra mile with Dune Emperor I don't like that style at all. The different units, ok. But some having to be deployed, the planet missions with cripple economy, the non-base missions don't like too much, and the "campaign but it is a bunch of skirmish batles" is something I don't like it at all. Better dune 2000 as it is than being what dune Emperor turned on.
  10. Well, just as I said, they pretty much pick most of dune 2 into dune 2000, so the tech is very similar, with differences on light factory is not longer a prerequisite for the heavy factory, and the IX centre then was just to build the special tank, while here it is also give you access to the missile tank, but on dune 2 there was multiple upgrades, for you to spend money on having MCV, then sieges, then missile tanks. Since on dune 2k there is only 1 upgrade, they merged the upgrades and ix centre to split how many new units you get. Although now with the mods (a couple of modders/campaigns have implemented it) you can do 2-3 upgrades on the same building to get 1-2 units/buildings per upgrade. Nowadays there is even an option to modders to include the minimap withouth the outpost. It is not often that you will see it as it is a new feature, but the ones that did it is mostly for those missions where you don't build a base. I was refering that if you are going to squish, the combat tank is the better option of all of units in the game. So you get troopers to deal against pretty much everything but Sieges, and then combat tanks to deal against pretty much everything including troopers. Well, reminding the scatter command is fine since I didn't know back then, despite playing a gallilion of RTS. And many people don't know you can force fire (firing into the ground or into your own ally buildings/units), so I prefer to mention it instead of just assuming people know. I even started to add on briefings "press these buttons to capture your ally building" since people sometimes get stuck not knowing that's even possible. I always consider Atreides the easiest, and Harkonnen the hardest, which also match the order they are presented. In dune 2 there was also a hidden difficulty, although it was more tied on the tech of the units as missions themselves were similar (or just the same but houses swapped). The Ai on the 3 campaings is also really different; if you check values, enemy AI on the Atreides final battle are ais that they take forever to attack, so when they do the send lots of units, while on the Ordos they have the sortest inbewteen waves, like, as Ordos, they will send 2 waves against you before the AI on the Atreides send the first (not counting carryalls dropping stuff). Not just that, on the Atreides final map all the Ais are told to have only 1 harvester per refinery, while on Harkonnen they have 2, much better economy. Even on the final Atreides mission, at least on one of the 2 versions, one of the enemy Ais is below 100% energy, so you don't get attacked by any Death Hand at all. Yeah, there is so much stuff. Just a full decade of creators. When I got into gruntmods to replay the game there was like 7 custom campaigns, and being a game I like I didn't mind playing all them. In that case, I can give you a very solid run with 3 specific custom campaigns. First, the Feda's final trilogy, that you don't even need to play all the 3 campaigns. It starts with a 5 mission prologue that starts the story, but from that point you can choose any of the 3 sides and the story happens the same on the 3. Different points of view, and different maps and objetives, but the story is shared. Playing the prologue and then 1 of the houses is more than enough. Then you can on my Tleilaxu, which I made it easy on purpose; it may be slighly harder than Feda's, but while on Feda's enemies tend to have massive bases, mine tend to have smaller enemy Bases and a bit more aggresive enemies. But overall my missions are shorter. And you can finish with Summer's Solstice from Fey. It is considered pretty much the best campaign release (if anybody would like to try just 1 single campaign, I would pick this one over any other). It has lots of balancing, and the creator make sure that not all the missions are just turtling for 40 minutes until you get to win, you get to face rivals with puny bases that you can destroy easily, deploy a MCV there and harvest faster and better so you can keep pushing enemies 1 step at at time withouth having to ammash huge armies before hand. He spent many years creating and balancing and perfecting that campaigns (and he reworked that campaign like 3-4 times), so a run of those 3 specific campaigns (or at least this last one) in that specific order may give you a hopefully overall good taste.
  11. I wasn't refering to optimal eco, just that moment in the game that you build 10 refineries and have 30 harversters and you never run out of money, there are times I have around 5-6 refs, then I decide to do a 5 harverster order on the starport and usually this is enough to rise your money more than you can spend. Early is another story, but I mean late game, once you have tons of stuff and get more that you can spend, you can use the autoque system just fine. I am not the best player around here not by a longshot, and so far on those missions I let the game building for me (also, that modder added an extra building that you capture and gives passive money, so you get even more money without having to go that far on harv/refs). And that's exactly what my Tleilaxu campaign is aiming at. People have the knowledge of "if I can build bewteen these 3 units, this one is the most efficient", but I am aware not everybody know that, so when I tested my own Tleilaxu campaign, I played "wrong" on purpose, I spend time and money on units that are not that good/usefull, or buildings that are not that much needed to rush, like, you could build X amount of units to protect yourself, but instead I deploy building X and Y and because that I had no money; even doing this, I could defeat my missions, and if I couldn't, then I proceeded to make the enemy AI weaker or give more free units to the player. Mission 8 on the Harkonnen is kind of hard, there are multiple enemies, and the mercenaries being there is an extra enemy. Your Conyard exploded because Ordos use saboteurs; I can recommend having light infantry around the Cy, or if you want to be fully safe, deploy walls all around the CY and it will never explode. Also rocket turrets, they are incredible strong in this game, unless you play against humans, the Rocket turret will deal with enemies better than other units. Also don't feel bad, I think Harkonnen is the thoughest campaign of the 3. Atreides being the easiest (it may be some exceptions). The last point, well, it happens on pretty much every RTS around that era (dunno moddern times), the enemy has a full developed base, so it has all the tech while you don't have; but it is also true that dune2k Ai is not exactly the smarters (not as dumb as other ais, but still far from a human); for example, as an human, you will group your 20-30 units next to the enemy base before attacking, the AI will send the units right away, which result on the enemy raider reaching first, being killed, then a quad arrives, and gets killed, then tanks appears, and are killed, and then siege tanks and troopers reach you when you have killed all the other units already. Just remember that the sabo, as other invis units, is spotted near infantry or turrets, if you have a few infantry around your CY it will be killed before it reach, and if you have a couple of turrets in the path, the sabo will be spotted by the turrets but the sabo still will go against the CY. You can even put pieces of walls to make the enemy sabo to go invis early and, by the time is about to reach your CY it is visible again. the easiest is just building 7-8 infantry, putting 1 of each all around the tiles of the CY (more on the front) and that's it. infantry and turrets detect them. Pro players never bother to deploy concrete, they only deploy the 4 concrete needed on windtraps because the energy, but otherwise, the majority around here never deploy. I still do, since I even use that to balance my maps, deploying concretes slowme down a lot, so if I can defeat that way, others that will play faster due not doing that will have it easier. It gives you access to the rocket turret, which if you deploy 4-5 of them the enemy AI will die 80% of the units trying to kill them. put a couple of sieges behind and the AI may never win the match (as long as you repair the structures from time to time). Also, the fact that rocket turrets never miss the shots. The sieges is to kill enemy troopers as the rocket turrets are bad against them, but good against the other 90% units (and light infantry are bad against turrets as well. Rocket turrets and missile tanks. Again, 3-4 rocket turrets on the front and the enemy AI will never take down a building with them (unless those structures are not placed on top of concrete, thus having only 50% hp) Play on the vanilla resolution and believe me it does makes a difference. You can see enemy waves coming from afar, which you cannot do where you vision is 1/4 of the screenshot you included. This is what the game is suppose to look like. The Resolution the game is suppose to be played is 640x480; this is the resolution I play, and I try to build the outpost early just for vision. On bigger resolution it is 100% an useless building, some pro players don't even bother with it, but of course, being able to see half the map with a big resolution it helps. Just pointing that dune 2000 is nothing more than a remake of dune 2. So most of the units, building, tech and so on were translated from that game into the remake. including the outpost. Dune 2 is a really rought RTS to play, and not many people are willy to play, having the same issues like concrete stuff (but building them 1 by 1, not in groups of 4) and other worse things. True, but now you discover how I can make a mission with 100 enemy units defending the base and instead going into the enemy base to facing them directly, you attack the harv and wait for them to come. Faster units dieing first, then slower units dieng. It doesn't feel you are figthing a 50 army, but 5 groups of 10 enemies. Usually is best to deploy 1 refinery per mining field, like, There is a mining field to the top side? put 2 ref there another big pile of spice on the right side? put 2 refs there Usually the custom missions I do tend to be that way, instead 1 ultra-big amount of spice, I put 4 small areas of spice, so you get faster money by having 1 ref on each corner than having 6 all next to each other. I think the other version is much tougher, at least with that you can just deploy concrete to deploy a new refinery much closer and then sell the other one. You will have 2 harverster for the refinery that it is closer to the spice. The other version is insane; If I recall, the enemy send a wave behind your back before you get to build your first ref, and there are other stuff that comes if you explore a bit afar from your starting location. Troopers are good. The enemy AI will send to his dead multiple of his units, the troopers are slow, but it is the enemy going frontal into you. Only the sieges will kill them, but even if they kill them troopers are also cheap. "troopers + combat tanks" are usually the 2 units most pro players will tell you to build if you don't have enough of them (later yes, you combine sieges, missile, and if you overflow with money with light vehicles); also, combat tanks can crush over enemy infantry, so you don't even need sieges nor light infantry/trikes to kill enemy troopers. As a final note, I want to give you this thing, so you get to see what kind of players we have around here (not me, not even close). This is a video somebody of the name of Kipp that recorded, he is playing on the hardest difficulty, on the maximum speed of the game, and playing all 3 final campaigns all being played at once. By the screenshot alone you can see he tower-hug a lot (if he would be playing the missions just 1 by 1, he wouldn't even need them), but you can see that having to control 3 games at once he can hold more easily with them. Now, by the look of it, It seems unlikely that you will go into custom missions too much, considering that the game doesn't seems to be high rated for you. At least I hope you get a go at my Tleilaxu infestation even if it is on easy difficulty. I made a custom building that appears around half the missions (or a bit more) that it is the Axlotl tank. This building is being given to the player, you cannot build more or anything, but as long as the building is not destroyed, it will produce infantry and troopers for the player as the game progresses (and for free). On easy difficulty, they appear even faster. So even if it is out of curiosity, you can try this one on easy difficulty. Just for the amount of units I give to the player for free you may encounter a more chilling campaign that doesn't induce rage (and the one mission that it is not played like a traditional RTS, you are free to skip it, with the launcher you no need to play them in order).
  12. Many of the early custom campaigns were made by people that didn't have the proper tools or knowledge to do hard missions. They do "harder mission than the original" only because instead of facing 4 enemies like you face on the final battle on the original game, on that campaign you face 6, but because the person imported values here and there, there are many missions around there that tend to be very basic; the enemy has some drops copy-paste from the original map, but that's it, they add as many spice/blooms as possible and it is just a matter of time to win. After a while, people that spend time with the editor is usually people that care for the game enough to keep playing, so it makes sense that a person that struggle with the original missions may not do any custom stuff (or, if he does, it is also on the easy side). But the more you play the more you find the too easy missions that, too easy. In my case, I have the deal that I play the game on a slower speed that many people play around here, so I make enemies to attack the player at certain timers that I consider fine, but then somebody else play on hard difficulty and on the fastest speed of the game and you are attacked so fast that it caugh people off-guard. With custom campaigns and missions is just a lottery, there are around, dunno, ¿70? custom campaigns. Some designed for multiple authors with multiple themes. For example, if you are unlucky you may go into my Butlerian campaigns. The 1º Butlerian was suppose to be the last campaign I was about to made, so I made it incredible hard; after all, I had done some campaigns and I wasn't about to do anymore. I kept doing campaigns, and sometimes it depends; on the lastest campaigns I have made I prefer to not give the AI free drops, but those missions can be still hard but totally more fair; like, on the butlerian enemy will drop tanks behind your base, while on others is just hard because the AI build fast, but at least you know that if the enemy is on the top side, the enemy waves will come from the top side. Although not ideal, playing the game at a slower speed (if you are playing at the fastest) is going to help; I doub I would win half my campaigns playing at the fastest; and unless you are uncofortable not playing the maximum speed possible, you may try that. On the speed control panel (in game), if you have the slider to the max right, you can click twice on the left side. The game will slowdown into what I call the "real life speed"; if you play a mission with a clock "wait 20 mins until reinforcements" you will need to wait 20 real life minutes to happen. Or, alternatively, reducing the difficulty o easy; some missions become easier, others become a breeze. Since easy (besides the prizes and faster production) afects enemy drops, custom stuff that rely on Ais getting free units on drops/deliveries will become really easy (Like my Butlerian, for example; on easy is a joke); other custom missions just have AIs that build fast so the difference is not that big. But overall I even played some campaigns I couldn't complete and turned into easy just to enjoy the story. However, like I mentioned, the Tleilaxu of mine I made it easy with that purpose, to have people that struggle a bit on the original campaigns, to give something cool to play after withouth having to rage because it is too hard;; as the theme of the Tleilaxu are the Ghola, the player will be given many infantry; depending on the mission you may get to swarm the enemies with those free units. But also there are Feda's campaigns. He has multiple, but the mains ones are the "War of Assassins" Saga. It is a total of 9 campaigns; the first 3 were the originals, then he made a sequel with 3 more, and finally 3 more (plus a prologue of a few missions) called "War of The landsraad"; I can heavily recommend the last one, not only it has better custom stuff on it, but even the author prefer people trying this lasts ones because have better balancing, better pacing in game and more diversity, including a few missions outside Arrakis; plus I think it is the easiest of the 3 trilogy. For now I can recommend those; my tleilaxu Infestion is so easy than on easy difficulty I defeat my final mission in only 15 minutes (and not because I rushed the enemy, but because you get to build lots of stuff really fast). Although is no queues in Dune 2000, we recently found a way to add something similart; of course, this needs to do per mission/campaign so it is not available nor something you can just add and have it. Right now, the modder "Flippy", release recently (in fact, it is the lastest custom campaign release) a big campaign on 3 chapters, 1 per house, mean to be played in order. He implemented the new implemented/discovered autoqueue. This is not like RA where you click 4 on a vehicle then 4 on another and you eventually will have 8 vehicles, but instead, you click on an unit, and the game will continue to build that unit forever unless you cancel manually or you have no more money. So if you economy is really good, you can just keep your trooper-trike-missile tank queues clicked, and just focuse on moving units, figthing enemies and hunting enemy harversters. By the time your units have been killed, you will see on your own base that you will have multiple units ready while more are in production. It is not a perfect system, but it makes the missions more focused on the battle than on keeping clicking on units. I haven't played the whole campaign yet, just almost the first chapter; and I can tell the missions are on the easy side although harder than the tleilaxu/Assasins that I recommended; But as long as you have good economy (or just the point where you get more money that you can spend) is hard to even loose, as even if iddle or afk you will have an army being produced by the game to you. Flippy campaign is not too much vanilla though. Multiple units has been changed, new units added, and sometimes the same unit does different depending on the side. Like, Atreides light infantry has more range than the original unit, while the Harkonnen light infantry is more like a shotgunner that needs to be closer but does more damage. And finally, I cannot leave behind Summers' Solstice, a 4 arc campaign (30 missions total), which it is a masterpiece. However, people usually struggle a bit on the early missions since are not traditional style. This campaign will make 90% (or all 100% of mine) bad in comparison. It has lots of balancing, lots of new units, new structures and much more, and I played recently and overall it wasn't too hard. So, if you are willy to give a try, you can just go that path. My Tleilaxu since it is my easiest, the Feda's one, which are also easy (maybe even easier than mine), and then either Flippy to try the autoque system, or Fey's summers just to play the ultimate campaign.
  13. Yeah, I am the responsible of that bizarre mission xD. Also I did that tileset and the "test-map", But if you play Feda's War of assasins campaings you will see the actual tileset used as draconis IV. Setting a game this old is hard, and has been many fixes, options and so on. I got to work even a portable version of the game but only after overwritting dune2000.exe (not the most recent or anything, I used to use that portable version just to do heavy modding before applying into the main game). So sometimes the game works just fine, but depending of the computer it may not. After you finish playing the original campaigns, I recommend to go into my Tleilaxu campaign. It has custom color for your units, a custom color for the UI, a custom sigil. Intel and Tactical map avaliable (is just flavor, like reminding you main/secondary objetives), and a couple of new units/buildings although overall the game is still mostly vanilla. But the main reason to recommend this one is because I have done many hard (some more unfair than hard) campaigns over the years, and I wanted to grant newcomers with a really easy custom campaign for a change. Is one of my lastest campaigns, and it is easy enough to avoid people to need to restart the mission multiple times becuse it is just too hard (I don't know what difficulty or game-speed you are playing; only on hard difficulty and max speed the campaign may be a somewhat a challenge, but even then, this campaign on hard difficulty is easier than others I have done on normal difficulty). Just in case, My Tleilaxu campaign is 20 missions long. I did a 7 mission only campaign many years ago which was kind of hard (at least halfway the campaign) since it was so short, but I did a rework and rename the campaign as "Tleilaxu infestation"; however, depending on where you got the game (or from you downloaded the missions) you may have the 7 mission version instead (or maybe even both). The 20 missions long contain those 7 initial but reduced the difficulty drastically. As drastically as having 1 mission where you fight and enemy that builds (and drops) combat tanks and siege tanks, but on the new version he cannot build those units and the drops not just cut in half but swapped for raiders and quads, much more easy to defeat. (and the fact that the 7 mission only doesn't have custom stuff).
  14. Congrats for the kid! Cannot help you, Kipp said the game worked fine to him on win 11. What version did you tried? gruntmods or dunemaster? If one didn't work, try with the other. Usually dunemaster is the only one that is updated from time to time. Otherwise just checking all the options on the config and prey that at least with some of them end working. meanwhile, just telling you that we have been reache new highs with the new editor tools. Anytime you have the time (and if the game works for you at any point) to try Fey's summers, considered the best custom campaign ever made and yes, this time the campaign is actually finished, no more work is done on that one. It has lots of new units and plenty of cool mechanics; so if you manage to make it work go tried that one.
  15. if trying other options but "fullscreen" or if clicking on advance settings and trying multiple options there doesn't work, you can try one settings on the computer itself. On the desktop, right click. In my case I have a "NVIDIA control panel" and inside there is an option around there that you can choose to keep ratios or just going all fullscreen. You may not have NVIDIA but other graphics settings, but it should be very similar.
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