Conflict of the Landsraad Mod for EBFD

[JulesG]

Hi all,

This post has been updated following testing and campaign analysis

Conflict of the Landsraad

=========================

Due late 2004/early 2005

Storyline

=========

The Corrino have captured Geidi Prime in a sneak attack while HK+AT are fighting to kill the Emperor Worm. The worm is killed but at heavy cost to both Harkonnen and Atreides forces.

Corrino pilage a lot of the HK technology.

The Guild blame a secret Tleilaxu-Ordos Alliance for the Emperor Worm and state they were trying to "protect the flow of spice" by invading Arrakis.

The Guild invade both Tleilaxu and Ordos homeworlds and find them evacuated and empty.

Ixians move onto Caladan to protect their allies Atreides.

The Harkonnen forces on Arrakis are cut off from their homeworld Geidi Prime and are not aware of the Corrino invasion, they are short of troops and weaponry and are forced back into isolated bases.

The Atreides forces on Arrakis are cut off from their homeworld Caladan and are also short of troops and weaponry.

The Corrino send troops to Arrakis to defeat the Guild and impose their new heir (a distant cousin) as Emperor

The Ixians send troops to Arrakis to find and support the Atreides, and prevent the Guild and Corrino forces from dominating Arrakis. Also if found, to hunt down and destroy the Tleilaxu.

Key Changes

===========

All Fremen no longer have full stealth mode, as this mod has defined full stealth requires a modified shield (that can react with lasers).

However as experts in the art of stealth, Fremen retain Stealthwhenstill which is now no longer available to any other unit.

Cannon-fodder units (standard infantry unit, quads, trikes) of the main houses do not have the ability to gain veterancy.

However as the Atreides, Ordos and Harkonnen units are now battle-hardened units, they all start at level 1 veterancy and can gain higher levels quicker.

Each side will now be having different factories and palace(s):

Ix

==

Heavy Factory builds all units except for Stealth Tank and Infiltrator which will come from the Ix Research Centre. Ix have two palaces, one is the Chaos weapon, the other allows training of Ix General.

Corrino

=======

Light Factory builds Light tank and Quad. Heavy Factory builds all other units. The Corrino Devestator requires BOTH factories. Corrino have two palaces, one is the Deathhand weapon, the other allows training of Corrino General.

Guild

=====

Guild only have GuPalace factory which builds all units but needs separate Factory Upgrade Building to enable the building of GUNIAB tank and GUNIAB APC. Guild has one palace training GuMaker and a MegaPlasma Superweapon Gun (range reduced from standard EBFD, but increased damage against armour).

Main Houses: IXIAN

==================

Ixian scout

Ixian infantry

Ixian captain - Plasma trooper plus long sword

Ixian Engineer

Ixian Plasma Mortar

Ixian Slave (Campaign unit only replaces AT Militia)

Ixian General - stronger version of Plasma trooper

Ixian Viper - hover unit based on projector tank frame with light anti-infantry cannon

Ixian Quad - fires two light-damage missiles

Ixian APC - fires three light-damage missiles

Ixian Projector Tank - with a plasma cannon. Projections can fire, but can only project own Ixian units, unable to produce images of enemy units.

Ixian Quad Cannon Seige tank - supplied by Atreides Allies this is an AT Minotaurus in Ixian colours.

Ixian Chaos Infiltrator - stealthed (shield generator based) mobile chaos mine

Ixian Stealth Dual Missile Tank - with 2 x light-damage missiles and full stealth (shield generator based) capability

Ixian Stealth Gunship - with light-damage missiles and strong health but low speed. Must reload at Helipad.

Ixian ADP - fires light-damage missiles

Ixian Machine-Gun Turret

Ixian Plasma Turret - heavy-damage, long range version of plasma cannon on Projector/Cobra tanks

Superweapon - Chaos beam

Ixian vehicles have self-repair capabilities

Main Houses: CORRINO

====================

Corrino Scout

Corrino Flame-thrower Sardaukar

Corrino Sardaukar Levenbrech

Corrino Engineer

Corrino Colonel - with Lite Laser weapon plus short sword (Elite)

Corrino Bashar - stronger version of Colonel. (IMGeneral)

Corrino Light Tank - Imperial Tank with light anti-infantry cannon

Corrino Heavy Flame Tank - the Harkonnen Flame tank with more armour and less speed

Corrino Quad - fires two light-damage missiles

Corrino Repair Unit - scavenged prototype from Geidi Prime, designed from plans stolen by the Harkonnens from the Atreides. Slower with more armour than the old Atreides unit

Corrino Seige Tank - uses HK Devastator chassis with reactor removed to take the Heavy Seige Cannons and shells. Less armour than full Devastator

Corrino SuperLaser Devastator - Devastator chassis but the plasma reactor output has been funnelled into a tight Laser beam of incredible power, without the downside of reacting with shields

Corrino Fighter - fires heavy-damage rockets, has light armour and high speed. Must reload at Helipad

Corrino ADP - scavenged Harkonnen ADPs

Corrino Machine Gun Turret

Corrino SuperLaser Turret

Superweapon - Death Hand Missile

Main Houses: GUILD

==================

Guild Scout

Guild Light Infantry

Guild Engineer

Guild Beam Trooper - fires Energy Beam weapon

Guild LaserSniper

Guild Maker (GuGeneral)

Guild Medium Tank - medium anti-infantry machine gun

Guild Quad - fires two light-damage missiles

Guild NIAB APC - the NIAB Tank with the space-folding engines (augments Guild Navigator capabilities) removed making room for troops

Guild Mega Plasma Seige Tank - with an energy beam weapon when mobile, and fires a Mega Plasma seige cannon a long distance (equal to HK InkVine)when deployed.

Guild NIAB Tank

Guild NIAP - fires medium-damage missiles. Must be reloaded at Heliport. Heliport once constructed can not be sold.

Guild ADP - acquired Ordos Air Mine technology from invasion of Ordos Homeworld.

Guild Machine Gun Turret

Guild Energy Beam Turret

Superweapon - Guild Mega Plasma Turret

SubHouses

=========

FREMEN (as before)

------------------

Fremen (StealthwhenStill) Sonic Fedyakin

Fremen (StealthwhenStill) Sniper

Fremen RPG (Stealthwhenstill) Warrior

HARKONNEN replaces Imperials

----------------------------

HK Buzzsaw

HK Inkvine

HK InkVine Rocket Trooper - modified rockets now include a small InkVine warhead to combat infantry

HK Assault Tank

HK Gun Turret

ATREIDES replaces Ix

--------------------

AT Kindjal - standard unit

AT Trike

AT Sonic Tank - development version with much longer range and damage capability

AT Rocket Turret

TLEILAXU (as before)

--------------------

TL Contaminator - less easy to kill

TL Leech - standard unit

TL SuperLeech - fires deviator leeches that now deviates both Infantry and Units

TL Mongoose - based on Mongoose chassis (aquired through CHOAM) fires very powerful rockets a good range

TL Missile Turret - fires same missile as TL-Mongoose

TL SuperWeapon Gun Turret (campaign building only)

ORDOS replaces Guild

--------------------

Ordos Gas Trooper

Ordos DustScout

Ordos LaserTank

Ordos EITS

Ordos Chemical Gas Seige Turret

Mercenary uints (available in crates)

=====================================

Saboteur - like the contaminator is more difficult to kill

Light Infantry (Campaign unit only replaces IXSlave)

Heavy Infantry

[Beonid]

Is this going to have an install program or is it just going to have Rules..txt files etc

[JulesG]

:)

Like my mod ICW (Imperial Civil War) it will have an install/un-install program. As each main house has all new textures, building xbfs, unit xbfs, the file for download is likely to be quite large (at least 20 Mb, final size not yet determined).

As I am also only creating the mod using highest graphic quality (H0) xbfs, it will require at least 128 Mb RAM (I think it will need 256 Mb on big maps) plus a minimum 64 Mb Graphic card.

Unit Update

===========

I have determined that EBFD does not like stealthed/shielded flying units, on a number of occasions the software has crashed when such a unit is destroyed.

As such the Ixian Stealth Orni, is now a slow flying heavily armoured fighter with 12 low-damage missiles and no stealth!

[JulesG]

Mod Update

==========

90% of units are coded, balanced and unit xbfs/texturing done.

All Ixian buildings are complete, just need to decide which civilian buildings are best used for the new Light factory, Weapons Upgrade and Palace buildings. (From Arrakis base and Homeworld campaign maps).

70% of Corrino buildings complete. New buildings defined as specific civilian buildings from Arrakis base and Homeworld campaign maps complete.

50% of Guild buildings complete. New buildings defined as specific civilian buildings from Arrakis base and Homeworld campaign maps complete.

All sub-houses complete less a few civilian buildings and the Ordos Chemical Gas Turret

Unit Sound: speech and weapon effects - 0% complete

Unit naming - 50% complete

Campaign text and movies - Moved worm death movie to start of each campaign. Text updated for Ixian first mission. Approximately 1% of all mission text recoding done.

I am planning to do limited text editing of campaigns so that the map displays correct sub-house names and the intro mission details are correct. I will modify some speech so that "Attacked by Harkonnen" becomes "Attacked by Sardaukar" etc.

A future release may happen where I also redefine all the speech within missions, so that each mission plays out in accordance with the newly defined houses.

I hope to be in a situation shortly where I can show screen shots of new units and buildings for Ixians and Corrino with Guild to follow.

[Inoculator9]

Groovy Jules! I can't wait to see the finished product ;)

[Beonid]

So if I downloaded the mod, would I be able to save to my hard disk before it started installing

[JulesG]

::)

If you have downloaded my ICW mod you would know that you can save the icw.exe file to your hard disk before running the install routine.

Unit and Building Update

========================

I have been unable to get an acceptable Green chemical flame for the Ordos Chemical gas Turret (reds appear from an undocumented file called from the sfx part of the flameturret xbf). I am thus abandoning the chem turret.

I plan to move the AT Seige popup turret to Ordos (it would be then a standard Ordos gas turret) but the firing mechanism would be as a seige gun firing more powerful faster gas shells. With the fire rate of a Kobra and Gas_W warhead (damages infantry and units) this would be a nasty turret to attack!

I have also created a new Tleilaxu Missile Turret (based on the flameturret xbf) that fires the same rocket as the TL-Mongoose and replaces the Tl-Turret in maps (which has been moved to a Tl civilian building present in some campaign maps).

[JulesG]

Sadian,

Thanks for the IM.

The answer is that the ICW mod and thus the new Conflict of the Landsraad mod use a special utilty (Install Creator software) that allows me to create a single file that is an executable, eg icw.exe or cotl.exe. This is a very large file with all the EBFD files compacted into it. It is a vast improvement over zip files as it also includes an un-install routine.

It thus looks like one big file to download, saves as one big file. When you then double-click on the file it unpacks everything to where it is supposed to be (you tell it where your copy of Emperor is located).

With ICW the file is about 13 MB in size, the COTL file will likely be 25-30 MB, though I dont yet know for certain as I have yet to finish building all the files.

[JulesG]

I have updated the list of units and buildings following further play testing within campaigns highlighting a need to review the units I had defined for each side.

See my first post for the new info.

I have also cut back the strength of the contaminators so that it is possible now for infantry to slowly kill them (the heavier the weapon, the more the damage). I did this as otherwise it was impossible to survive the "Save the Duke" mission, infact I lasted less than 1 minute!

[Mozared]

Wow, i'm used to having every mod i want to play finished already  :P

I just finished emperor (well, just, 1 month ago), and i am gonna play this when it comes out. finally a mod really worthy to play, it sounds.

Mozared

[Beonid]

With ICW the file is about 13 MB in size, the COTL file will likely be 25-30 MB

How come it's so big? I had trouble downloading ICW with my 56k modem because it took so long, but looking at these figures this is going to take more than 2 hours!

[JulesG]

i am gonna play this when it comes out. finally a mod really worthy to play, it sounds.

Mozared

:D

I hope it it plays as well as it sounds, it certainly plays differently and looks different and a number of the later missions are much harder (the Tleilaxu ones are tough!) and even the Corrino though the strongest side suffer from expensive slow units which mean you have to think about how to fight. The only dissappointing aspect is the weakness of the AI, so I think I will tweak this as I did for ICW before release.

Mod Update

==========

All Ixian buildings complete, units complete and starting SFX sounds. ICONs and In-campaign NewUnits details to do.

All Corrino Buildings complete, units complete. SFX, ICONs to do. In-Campaign NewUnits done.

Guild, all buildings.H0 done (Just leaves all the damage levels and textures! so 90% left!). SFX, ICONs and In-Campaign NewUnits to do.

Still have campaign re-texting and AI to review/change.

Projected Completion Date

=========================

I am very busy at work and will be away on business in the next few months, so I expect that the mod will definitely release in 2005. (sorry no Xmas present!).

[JulesG]

With ICW the file is about 13 MB in size, the COTL file will likely be 25-30 MB, though I dont yet know for certain as I have yet to finish building all the files.

How come it's so big? I had trouble downloading ICW with my 56k modem because it took so long, but looking at these figures this is going to take more than 2 hours!

ICW had only a few new building and unit definitions for Corrino and the Rebels-Tleilaxu Alliance. Tied to these are textures, the result was about 13Mb in size.

Conflict of the Landsraad is nearly a Total Conversion (only Fremen/Tleilaxu are 70% untouched).

I could have done what all previous mods did and just re-texture Atreides, Harkonnen and Ordos existing textures which are then applied to the At-ConYard, HK-ConYard etc...to give you same building but new colours.

However I have kept the three sides as sub-houses so they would then have needed new textures...

What I have Done

================

I have mixed and matched buildings from all 3 main houses plus sub-houses plus incidental buildings (some not used in EBFD, but left in the files) and created textures for each individual building to make each building look the best possible for the chosen side.

This means I have 30 plus new building xbfs and associated textures.

I have then built new textures for each unit and infantry unit (which I have mixed and matched for each side) including new textures for Ixprojector etc.). I thus have 40 plus xbfs and associated textures for units.

I have also built additional files (like NewUnits definitions and descriptions) to support changes to the User Interface for campaign play (my interest) so that it will look as close to a complete conversion as possible when playing.

All this takes up space...

...much more space...

...how much I have not yet determined, but you probably need to be on Broadband for this mod!

[Mozared]

What I have Done

================

I have mixed and matched buildings from all 3 main houses plus sub-houses plus incidental buildings (some not used in EBFD, but left in the files) and created textures for each individual building to make each building look the best possible for the chosen side.

This means I have 30 plus new building xbfs and associated textures.

I have then built new textures for each unit and infantry unit (which I have mixed and matched for each side) including new textures for Ixprojector etc.). I thus have 40 plus xbfs and associated textures for units.

I have also built additional files (like NewUnits definitions and descriptions) to support changes to the User Interface for campaign play (my interest) so that it will look as close to a complete conversion as possible when playing.

Dude... CHILL OUT! you might as well start programming Emperor 2

[Inoculator9]

Can't wait to see the finished product Jules ;)

[Kyle]

looks very awesome...i remember playing ICW and i really liked it...so i have high hopes for this one as well... 8)

[Mozared]

ICW?

Mozared

[Andrew]

I had no idea, but with a little bit of searching.

Imperial Cival War

Third file.

Although I hvae no idea what a cival is, should be civil, no?

[JulesG]

8)

Yes ICW stands for Imperial Civil War, my first mod (with help from Inoc) though it got put up as Cival.

Mod Update

==========

Changed all three ADPs to antiground = False, ie can only kill airborne units. This allows me to offer HKADP as Harkonnen Heavy Air Turret, and move GunTurret model to Fremen. All sides now offer a "turret" that can be built.

Switched GuNIAP back to ADP and created new Guld Orni (using AT Orni model)

Also got the GuScavenger model to act as a full AdvCarryall (used XbfEditor to assign new sfx header), the only problem is on big units the GuScav's legs go through the unit body, so may not use afterall...

What do you all think would you like the GuScavenger model for the Guilds AdvCarryall (instead of HK model)?

[Inoculator9]

What do you all think would you like the GuScavenger model for the Guilds AdvCarryall (instead of HK model)?

I think it'd be pretty groovy mate ;)

[JulesG]

Well it has been a while since my last post.

Mod Update

==========

Completed everything for Ix (buildings, units, sfx, newunit descriptions, icons) plus some bug fixes.

Changed Ix General to include Stealth (via shield).

Nearly completed Corrino (just doing icons at present) and a few bug fixes to sort out.

Icons for Sub-houses to do, plus need to do some bug fixes/checks especially on the Mercenaries.

Atreides now has slow bomber (Ix and Corrino have fast light fighters, while Guild only have GUNIAP ADP).

Loads to do on Guild still. I think I will keep the GuScavenger as the Guild Advanced Carryall, I will look at it when I get round to the Guild work soon.

Not yet looked at mission text, mission speech or AI tweaks.

Need to test Random Crates again - I got mission crates to act like skirmish mode and give random units/money/stealth/nothing rather than a fixed unit or money. Problem was shortly after my system corrupted which may have been caused by this tweak, so I may test this out once I have a stable complete system that I can save on a CD.

...Merry Xmas to you all if I dont post again this side of Christmas.