Dune 2 Team Bug

MrFlibble · May 27, 2009

I've decided to do a separate topic about this, because the explanation of the "team bug" I gave in this thread doesn't contain much detail.

I discovered the information about the "team bug" in the documentation for Shagrath's Dune 2 Scenario Editor 1.0 (you can download it here under the title "Dune II Scenario Editor"). Here's the exact passage from the document:

Now let's talk about the hardest one (in my opinion) option - Teams. Here's
the answer to one question. You may ask: "Why after I've loaded and saved
the original Dune 2 scenario it became very difficult?". The reason for that
is the bug in Dune 2 which caused old scenarios to be easier. There were
actually no teams. Computer was just building units and sending them
immediately (except infantry). Ok. Here's original line from old Scenario:
0=Atreides,Normal,Track,2,3 (don't worry about all this)
the new one is:
0=Atreides,Normal,Tracked,2,3
See the difference?
Ok. Now in this example "Tracked" is called the "Source" of team. It means
that all tracked vehicles (except MCV and Harvester) can be assigned to this
team. "Normal" is called "Type" in my editor and means how units in this
team will react. These can be "Normal,Kamikaze,Staging,Flee". In original
scenarios there were used only 2 of these - "Normal" and "Kamikaze". I can
only guess what can these mean and so are you. Just try them and if you like
the effect - use them. Also, don't ask me about the numbers at the end as
I'm not sure about them.

In other words, each scenario (mission) file in Dune II contains simple scripts for AI behavior. The incorrect spelling of "unit movement type" variables that accounted for vehicles resulted in disabling these scripts, which, in turn, reduced game difficulty. As far as I know, this issue is not covered (at least in detail) anywhere else.

As for the team types (Normal, Kamikaze, Staging, Flee), the first two that are actually used in the game differ in that units in a Normal team can retreat and amass near the enemy compound, as if guarding it, while the Kamikaze team, as the name suggests, attack the player until either all player's buildings and units are destroyed (there's a priority hierarchy which determines the AI's choice of targets), or the team itself is wiped out.

More info about the AI team types in Dune II can be found here and here.

Here's a couple of screenshots showing AI attack teams in action:

Atreides vehicles storm a Harkonnen player's base

Sardaukar, Ordos and Fremen overwhelming a Mercenary base

(from Super Dune II: Classic Edition)

More screenshots can be found here: http://www.cnc-comm.com/community/index.php?action=mgallery;sa=album;id=31