Dune 2000 1.06p - Game patching (bug fixes, new features)

[Zaxx]

Never mind.

Edited January 4 by Zaxx

[Fey]

13 hours ago, Zaxx said:

same issue

I dunno man, I've played d2k without it being all stretched out in an ultrawide res before  like this:

different renderers and settings in the ddraw ini thingy might produce different results. I'll go poke Cm for ya though and see if he knows what this issue is, but it'd help to detail whatever you've tried already, with specifics

edit: oh, he already replied I see

well, maybe stop by the landsraad discord server and we can try passing some files along or whatever xD something'll stick if enough stuff is thrown at the wall

Edited January 4 by Fey

[Zaxx]

Deleted / edited my previous post as it was way too ranty and I actually managed to find out what the issue was.

Basically the config app that's included in the Gruntmods / Dune 2000 Online custom builds is broken as in it incorrectly modifies the dune2000.ini file. It's easier to show then tell so here's how the file looks like after that horrible app touches it (this is a partial copy-paste and the values are already edited by me so only look at the structure of the settings):

Quote

[Options]
DisableMaxWindowedMode=Yes
GameWidth=1280
GameHeight=720
GameSpeed=75
ScrollRate=20
SFXVolume=100
MusicVolume=100
MoviesEnabled=Yes
SoundsEnabled=Yes
ForceNoCD=Yes
SlowSideBarScrolling=No
CutsceneChangeResolution=No
SingleProcessorAffinity=Yes
UseHardwareCursor=Yes
[MultiPlayer]
UnitCount=10
TechLevel=7
StartingCredits=7000
AIPlayers=1
Crates=No
Worms=0
PlayerName=NONAME
PlayerSide=0
PlayerColor=0
PlayerHandicap=0
IPAddress=
ModemPhone=
SerialComPort=1
[Options]
FirstTimePlay=No
ScrollRate=20
GameSpeed=90
GameBitsPerPixel=16
SFXVolume=100
MusicVolume=100
MoviesEnabled=Yes
SoundsEnabled=Yes
ForceNoCD=Yes
SlowSideBarScrolling=No
Language=
DisableMaxWindowedMode=Yes
SingleProcessorAffinity=Yes
CutsceneChangeResolution=Yes
UseHardwareCursor=No
GameWidth=1280
GameHeight=720

Yep, there are two [Options] in there for some reason and the contents of the first one won't be applied (or it will get overwritten by the contents of the second one). That second one is what you have to edit manually and then the game will apply the set resolution properly instead of sticking to the original 640x400.

As a bonus I'd like to mention that there is an app on Steam called Lossless Scaling, it's a neat little program that you can use to apply AMD FSR upscaling to windowed apps. So if you put Dune 2000 into windowed mode through editing the ddraw.ini file you can actually use FSR on the game, just be sure to disable the "cutscenes change resolution" option and instead stretch those to your set resolution in ddraw.ini too because resolution changes mess up the app.

By doing this here's how the game looks like by upscaling a 720p native resolution to 1440p with FSR:
https://i.imgur.com/QoJQuHS.jpg

It's rather nice and it's better than other upscaling methods.

[Fey]

3 hours ago, Zaxx said:

fixed

ayyy nice  glad it was fixed mate

well then, I guess all you need now is whatever custom campaigns to play. dato's full package install for dunemaster is pretty good, but there's even more. I refer you to Cm's index for more info:

if you're sticking with the dunemaster copy, then you already have mission launcher 1.3 and some of the custom campaigns on the front page there. uhh... but you could have a look through the index in case anything else looks appealing

also, there was an error discovered with regard to stealth units that sometimes crashes the game. dunemaster has yet to be updated with the fix to that, but it exists, so, save often! or drop by the Landsraad server sometime and we'll pass along the latest from Klofkac, which has the fix

have fun!

[Zaxx]

2 hours ago, Fey said:

well then, I guess all you need now is whatever custom campaigns to play

Oh yeah, I'm already discovering some crazy stuff... will there be orcs?

I know that D2K is a Dune II remake so it was never part of the game's scope but I always thought that the game should have featured more map tilesets, at least for Caladan, Geidi Prime and whatever the Ordos homeworld is (since they were not in the books my knowledge on Ordos is spotty lol).

And there are also some custom maps based off the book there where right in the first one the Gom Jabbar scene is reinterpreted as a battle lol. For now I will stick to the original campaigns though since I haven't played this game properly in ages.

The custom launcher stuff I like too which is surprising because I never liked how the Gruntmods Edition did things. This is much smoother, fits the original game's style more and is very straightforward.

I will hop on that Discord for those fixes, thanks for mentioning them. The game seems very stable for now even without that though (didn't encounter stealth units yet), much better than the last time I tried. Was a bitch to set up because of that ini bug but it's been top notch since.

Edited January 4 by Zaxx

[Fey]

3 hours ago, Zaxx said:

top notch

haha  no orcs, but we do have some new sprites exclusive to d2k. we have a couple of tilesets that might match Draconis IV, the Ordos' place, and I believe dato worked up the original Giedi Prime tileset. I did a little work on that one, myself and you should find maps using that tileset in Cm's Coalition of Nobles campaign. there's also the Heighliner tileset, because Emperor: Battle for Dune going "the Great Convention? what's that? battle on a Heighliner! yeah!" wasn't enough heresy

we also have some new Arrakis tilesets: water out in the open desert (heresy but it exists, though I guess it works close to a polar region of Arrakis?), cave tileset with water (less heresy xD), ice/sand tileset, some other stuff

ah yes, Cm's Frank Herbert campaign  definitely wise to give the original game a go again since most custom stuff is considered harder, but with some exceptions (like some of the maps in the Frank Herbert campaign), Cm's style is very similar to vanilla. he's by far the most prolific mapper

oh, I'm glad! Feda did a lot of work updating the 1.3 Mission Launcher. if you give the Summers' Solstice campaign window a glance, I hope you enjoy the style of the launcher there too  the splash art view was one of the more ambitious aspects of the update

aye, fuggn 1998 game memes with the setup xD but I'm glad it runs clean and smooth now. that seems to be the general experience, shenanigans setting up but very smooth after some confusing elements are alleviated

well, guess I'll see you there! the thread with the link is pinned, but, here's a link to the thread with the link  if you have any questions, feel free to ping me whenever

ayy lmao

[Cm_blast]

Quote

And there are also some custom maps based off the book there where right in the first one the Gom Jabbar scene is reinterpreted as a battle lol. For now I will stick to the original campaigns though since I haven't played this game properly in ages.

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).

Edited January 4 by Cm_blast

[Zaxx]

23 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

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.

That's cool because when it comes to most games I usually don't really look into custom stuff as I always assume that it's made for people who mastered the game and I rarely dedicate that much time to just one game. I can play any Doom wad but that's because I've been playing Doom and FPS for 20+ years.

When it comes to C&C and Dune 2000 I somehow always found Dune 2000 to be harder than C&C 1 and RA1 so I think I only finished the campaigns once. Other times I usually just tap out when you get those crappy missions where the game gives you a bad spot for a base and then swarms you with higher tier units before you could build up properly. Like now I'm doing the Harkonnen campaign and there's a mission where there is an infantry ramp to the back of your base and it's just incredibly annoying. That's when I usually just set up a nice skirmish and just enjoy the game with a fair setting instead of getting frustrated.

And well, these games are old so hotkeys aren't really there, you can't set up rally points, the pathfinding is bad, there are no unit production queues, no waypoints, no attack move (though I remember D2K having something for that, I dunno) and even the control grouping is a bit lacking (can't seem to be a way to add units to a selection or a control group so you constantly have to repeat the box select). So there is only a certain amount of pain I can take before I go back to AoE 2 DE or SC2 because of the quality of life features.

Edited January 5 by Zaxx

[Cm_blast]

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.

Edited January 5 by Cm_blast

[Fey]

16 hours ago, Zaxx said:

crappy missions where the game gives you a bad spot for a base and then swarms you with higher tier units before you could build up properly

quick, Cm! hide Summers' Solstice mission 2!

6 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

winters equinox

xD naww, what Cm said earlier about "the early missions not being traditional" is right. sure, you have your tutorial-esque first missions, one with small base building and the other just microing around a group of units, but then the second missions (like the original campaign, some missions have 2 versions) are "skillgates" - deliberately tough missions for when they appear in the campaign to test the player and go "hey, you comfy with the difficulty level? adjust if you're having a hard time! or easy, idk lol"

if hard mode is acceptable on the mission 2's, there's probably no other mission in the campaign that'll be trouble, aside from perhaps the very last one

where prior incarnations of custom campaigns had very few balancing options, we have the ability to manipulate quite a lot of different bytes and stuff now. fine-tuning based on difficulty can be more precise than ever! the Summers' Solstice campaign makes use of that new feature, so hard mode is meant to be a bit scary, normal only requests competency, and then easy mode is difficult to lose, with a couple of minor exceptions. like, even losing a hero unit on easy mode just results in that unit being "injured," so it's not mission failure like it is on normal or hard xD

mission design is a lot of fun with all the new features  and to think, variables became a thing right after SS was finished. we're gonna do even crazier shit with that shit lmao

[Zaxx]

4 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

So if you economy is really good, you can just keep your trooper-trike-missile tank queues clicked

Okay I will just stop you right there and say that I have no idea of what the optimal eco is, I don't even remember what all the units are good for exactly. For example I'm at the 8th mission of the Harkonnen campaign now and for now I have absolutely no idea on how to beat it on normal difficulty so that's my "skill level". My last attempt was amazing though, I thought everything was going fine and then my conyard exploded out of nowhere.  Are there invisible units in this game that blow up your shit? How to detect them? I don't remember that stuff at all. Should I read a manual? Any good resource for strats and stuff?

And well generally what bugs me is that I really don't like the classic Westwood mission design where seemingly the devs only idea on how to make a challenging map was to put you on the backfoot, swarm you with enemy AI and then expect you to enjoy the trial and error of excruciatingly defending with low tier units against whatever the hell they programmed in to attack you. That's pretty much the general gameplay of Dune 2K though so I'm mostly playing for the atmosphere and definitely not the dated and overly frustrating gameplay.

Like you just put down your conyard, you're just starting to make basic light vehicles and then the ordos tank that converts your units turns up while I'm 30 minutes away of even thinking about having Harkonnen mammoth tanks, thank you Westwood but I have a strong suspicion on why your company didn't last.

Edited January 6 by Zaxx

[Zaxx]

Lol where does the saboteur get in in this situation? Wut? (Yeah uh the obvious piece of concrete is where my conyard used to be.)

Westwood were like "yeah the engineer wasn't broken enough in C&C 1 how about we make them invisible and give the player no obvious ways to detect them". Save scumming it is.

Edited January 6 by Zaxx

[Zaxx]

Okay so this is me:

https://hard-drive.net/hd/video-games/man-revisiting-game-immediately-remembers-why-he-never-finished-it/

Honestly the balance is just terrible here. A few things:

- Yeah I still have no idea how to detect the saboteur, it seems to be random and I just keep losing buildings. Not giving you a clear option to just detect stuff (like the science vessel in SC1) was a giant mistake. And yeah, saboteurs keep crashing the game so for now I've stopped playing.

- Building concrete for buildings is tedious and pointless.

- Upgrading buildings is a pointless feature that shouldn't exist because the game puts tech upgrades behind the build order anyway. Especially the conyard upgrade is the dumbest thing ever.

- There is no real option to defend against airstrikes which really sucks because the AI just throws them at you early on in campaign missions.

- Locking access to the minimap behind a building that serves no purpose other than to give you the minimap and to unlock acces to other buildings is downright idiotic. The minimap shouldn't be "tech" in an RTS, it's a basic feature of the game that is essential in overseeing what you're doing and in getting basic information.

-I have no idea why "normal" difficulty is horrible in this game when both C&C 1 and RA1 were perfectly playable on their respective normal settings. Who is hard designed for then?

- Kind of the same point as the last one but the campaigns do a terrible job of gradually increasing mission difficulty. There are basically two types of missions here: piss easy and impossible with the first 6 missions falling into the piss easy category and the last 3 into the "jesus christ I'll tear my hair out if I have to play one more minute of this" category. Not even the admittedbly dreadful mission disks of C&C 1 and RA1 were this bad.

There are things that I absolutely love like the atmosphere, the music, the charming looking sprites and even some gameplay ideas (mainly the carryalls and the starport) but sadly this game plays like a weird, rushed mess that was made a by a "B team" that had little idea of what they were doing. That makes me sad but yeah, I guess it's no surprise that I didn't play much of this as a kid and instead just went back to RA1 and later Tiberian Sun.

Edited January 6 by Zaxx

[Fey]

7 hours ago, Zaxx said:

Okay I will just stop you right there and say that I have no idea of what the optimal eco is, I don't even remember what all the units are good for exactly. For example I'm at the 8th mission of the Harkonnen campaign now and for now I have absolutely no idea on how to beat it on normal difficulty so that's my "skill level". My last attempt was amazing though, I thought everything was going fine and then my conyard exploded out of nowhere.  Are there invisible units in this game that blow up your shit? How to detect them? I don't remember that stuff at all. Should I read a manual? Any good resource for strats and stuff?

those are Saboteurs their stealth is temporary but you don't need to wall off your ConYard or anything. infantry can detect them, so if you surround your CY in light inf, they can act as a wall. turrets can detect sabos in adjacent tiles too, but they're quite expensive compared to infantry, better used to ward off vehicles

the campaign missions may be a little bit scarce on Spice or mean on early drops, so you kinda have to adapt accordingly. with the name of the game being economy, you ideally want to get as much Spice flowing as possible without dying to whatever enemy attacks. try Wind Trap > Refinery > Wind Trap > Heavy Factory > Refinery and you'll have two refs and harv production right away. only the Wind Traps really need concrete under them! other structures don't suffer production issues at lower power levels

if that's too greedy and winds up sacrificing too much defense on a given campaign mission, maybe skip the second ref and go into Barracks instead. not only does that unlock Gun Turrets, and you can place a few of them before building a third Wind Trap in that situation because rax / ref / hfact adds up to 255 power and you have a total of 420 between the two traps and the conyard, assuming full HP on all, but it also allows you to churn out infantry too. as easy as they can be to kill in d2k, never underestimate the power of Troopers  they absolutely obliterate Combat Tanks. just keep 'em away from Siege Tanks and you're fine

7 hours ago, Zaxx said:

And well generally what bugs me is that I really don't like the classic Westwood mission design where seemingly the devs only idea on how to make a challenging map was to put you on the backfoot, swarm you with enemy AI and then expect you to enjoy the trial and error of excruciatingly defending with low tier units against whatever the hell they programmed in to attack you. That's pretty much the general gameplay of Dune 2K though so I'm mostly playing for the atmosphere and definitely not the dated and overly frustrating gameplay.

the difficulty balancing in the original game, and thus in many custom campaigns prior to new conditions coming out, was "easy mode stuff builds 25% faster and costs 25% less, and enemy reinforcements are halved." hard is just "stuff for the player costs / builds 25% more." the AI actually doesn't change at all lol

7 hours ago, Zaxx said:

Like you just put down your conyard, you're just starting to make basic light vehicles and then the ordos tank that converts your units turns up while I'm 30 minutes away of even thinking about having Harkonnen mammoth tanks, thank you Westwood but I have a strong suspicion on why your company didn't last.

hey now, Westwood was good  we have enough to hate with EA on our plates. and besides, they weren't totally responsible for how d2k was designed!

anyway, besides infantry being a thing with that early rax strategy I mentioned, one of the most powerful walls in the game is the Rocket Turret / Siege Tank combo. after your economy is established, you could try going straight for Rocket Turrets by building an Outpost and upgrading your ConYard, and then Siege Tanks are just the Heavy Factory upgrade, or a Starport, away. the only downside to Rocket Turrets is that they require power, but they more than make up for that in other ways

Deviators can't do anything to infantry except crush 'em, so if one shows up early, infantry should be able to handle 'em just fine. otherwise just keep your heavy vehicles away from them and let your Trikes or Quads rush 'em

6 hours ago, Zaxx said:

need more inf xD oh, and it looks like you've got the concrete / no concrete thing down. that's a good composition of buildings you've started with, you just need your bases covered from campaign shenanigans. it would probably help to keep at least one ref over on the left though just so the harvs don't have to go quite as far, that should help

5 hours ago, Zaxx said:

- Yeah I still have no idea how to detect the saboteur, it seems to be random and I just keep losing buildings. Not giving you a clear option to just detect stuff (like the science vessel in SC1) was a giant mistake. And yeah, saboteurs keep crashing the game so for now I've stopped playing.

ah shit xD well, you know where to go for the fix for that that bites tho

5 hours ago, Zaxx said:

- There is no real option to defend against airstrikes which really sucks because the AI just throws them at you early on in campaign missions.

if you go into sieges / rockets to wall off against enemy units, the Rocket Turrets double as a bit of airstrike defense. they'll definitely still get some damage though, you can only try to account for that either with concrete under buildings that don't need it for functionality, like anything other than turrets or Wind Traps, or with some Rocket Turrets behind your defense line

5 hours ago, Zaxx said:

-I have no idea why "normal" difficulty is horrible in this game when both C&C 1 and RA1 were perfectly playable on their respective normal settings. Who is hard designed for then?

5 hours ago, Zaxx said:

- Kind of the same point as the last one but the campaigns do a terrible job of gradually increasing mission difficulty. There are basically two types of missions here: piss easy and impossible with the first 6 missions falling into the piss easy category and the last 3 into the "jesus christ I'll tear my hair out if I have to play one more minute of this" category. Not even the admittedbly dreadful mission disks of C&C 1 and RA1 were this bad.

H7 has a notorious design flaw where the enemy's defense area, the area the AI decides is their base, kinda clips over the back of the player's base  if the player builds too far to the right or moves units over there, he gets lots of enemy units on him who think they're defending the enemy base when actually they're attacking yours

fortunately, the only other meme like that is Saboteurs being Saboteurs, but once you know how to deal with them they're... uhh... well they're not jackal snipers, I'll put it that way lol

besides the thing with walling off stuff with inf so sabos can't get in, you can see them coming by scouting in the direction of the enemy base. H8 is pretty cramped, but A8 puts a lot of distance between the player's start location and the Ordos. if you saw one stealth, you can try to run it over with Combat Tanks or force-fire on the terrain, preferably with something like a Sonic Tank or Siege Tank

[Zaxx]

1 hour ago, Fey said:

H7 has a notorious design flaw where the enemy's defense area, the area the AI decides is their base, kinda clips over the back of the player's base  if the player builds too far to the right or moves units over there, he gets lots of enemy units on him who think they're defending the enemy base when actually they're attacking yours

Yeah I think I got that but somehow survived. What's even worse though is that whenever you touch one of the AI's harvs it instantly sends all of its army for you, sometimes you don't even notice that you hit a harv, just see the avalanche of troops lol.

When it comes to H8 the solution I eventually came up with was just capturing the factory quickly to get that faction off my arse and then I walled myself off with rocket turrets because that seemed to be a good counter against the "imma convert your shit for a bit" Ordos tanks and the saboteurs. After that it was possible to build up and slowly take out the two bases.

And yeah I figured out that only the wind traps suffer from a lack of concrete but the thing is that my other buildings are too vulnerable to airstrikes with half HP so I can't really decide if I'm being smart or dumb by not putting down concrete. Overall what I'm struggling with the most is absolutely getting the harvesting going well, it's kind of insane how much you have to invest into it until the spice truly starts flowing.

I had a try at the last Harkonnen mission (the one with the prebuilt base which might have been a bad choice since the refinery is at a really bad spot with a lot of travel time for the harv) and I basically spent 30 minutes just trying to get going. I never really managed that because while rocket turrets are good for base defense and even seem essential against these attacks the AI targets your harvesters if they run across them. So balancing turrets, units and harvesters might be the trick there and seems like you're just supposed to be a sitting duck until you figure that out. 

What's a good army composition for the campaign btw? So far it seemed to me that tanks + missile tanks are fine but I can't really figure out the early game. There was one map where I just dropped down 3 light factories and massed quads and those seem pretty good against some of the heavier units like siege tanks but I don't really know if I'm on the right track there. Is it even optimal to start with lighter troops and tansition into heavy units or should I just try making tanks in a panic?

[Fey]

11 hours ago, Zaxx said:

Yeah I think I got that but somehow survived. What's even worse though is that whenever you touch one of the AI's harvs it instantly sends all of its army for you, sometimes you don't even notice that you hit a harv, just see the avalanche of troops lol.

ah, typical vanilla AI protect behavior  my only advice for that is to be wary around freshly discovered Spice fields, try to scout ahead of time, and factor in that you can use their harvs as bait to lure many of their standing forces out

11 hours ago, Zaxx said:

When it comes to H8 the solution I eventually came up with was just capturing the factory quickly to get that faction off my arse and then I walled myself off with rocket turrets because that seemed to be a good counter against the "imma convert your shit for a bit" Ordos tanks and the saboteurs. After that it was possible to build up and slowly take out the two bases.

oh yeah, the mercs on H8 are good to cap right away. they soak up some nonsense for ya

Rocket Turrets AND Siege Tanks are a lovely combo  you might need a combination that strong for H9V1 or V2, those are probably the most difficult final maps in any of the original campaigns, especially V1

11 hours ago, Zaxx said:

And yeah I figured out that only the wind traps suffer from a lack of concrete but the thing is that my other buildings are too vulnerable to airstrikes with half HP so I can't really decide if I'm being smart or dumb by not putting down concrete. Overall what I'm struggling with the most is absolutely getting the harvesting going well, it's kind of insane how much you have to invest into it until the spice truly starts flowing.

it's probably a good idea if it's actually destroying your buildings sometimes. it would help to spread 'em out some more though. when I buffed the Death Hand for my campaign, it wound up forcing some long-time players to use, uhh... concrete under buildings when they normally never do, just to reduce the collateral from a DH strike. so I guess if they're doing it, it's gotta be a good idea lol

it doesn't take much to get production started, but maxing out is a different story. campaign maps aren't Habbanya Erg, not huge multiplayer maps with tons of Spice everywhere that facilitate ridiculous amounts of Harvesters. with that in mind, building tons of Refineries and Harvesters will exhaust your local Spice fields very quickly, and then you may need to expand or use Carryalls for long distance harvesting. all of this is very expensive too; you can get like 2 and a half new Combat Tanks for every Refinery you build, or almost 2 for every Harvester, which is why it might take so long to reach critical mass

on low economy maps, thus on most campaign maps, it's preferable to try for sustained income rather than raw income potential. on H8 for example, there's a very safe Spice field in the back of your base and one Spice field near the mercs. if you're rushing the mercs, that area will be relatively safe too, though you may have to be wary of enemy Carryall drops. putting one Refinery near each Spice field splits your harvesting, so each field will last longer. and maybe you only put one extra Harvester on the field to the right, but two extras on the field to the left. if multiple refs are piled on the right, all the Spice near your Refineries is gone very quickly, and then the harvs have a long way to go to get to more xD

just as well, as helpful as it is to max out production speed in a surplus, you can only really go up to what your Harvesters are able to sustain. so maybe sticking to one Heavy Factory for a while, or something, is just for the best. the Starport is nice to get early since the units are always cheaper than they are at the factories, so that can make up for not rushing three of a certain kind of factory

12 hours ago, Zaxx said:

I had a try at the last Harkonnen mission (the one with the prebuilt base which might have been a bad choice since the refinery is at a really bad spot with a lot of travel time for the harv) and I basically spent 30 minutes just trying to get going. I never really managed that because while rocket turrets are good for base defense and even seem essential against these attacks the AI targets your harvesters if they run across them. So balancing turrets, units and harvesters might be the trick there and seems like you're just supposed to be a sitting duck until you figure that out. 

ahh, H9V2 xD that one at least starts ya with some buildings compared to H9V1, but it's not exactly the best combination or arrangement of buildings, or at least not quite as good as the atr or ord missions. I mean, ord you start fresh too, but you have mercs there which are huge. for H9V2, there are some very decently sized Spice fields to the right of your base, but the enemy likes to attack them so you kinda have to scout around and be aware of enemy units. pull harvs back, send units out, whatever you have to do to keep them safe 'til you're situated

you can try kiting enemy units back to your turrets if they happen to get angry at one of your fast Trikes as opposed to one of your slow harvs. that's a tried and true meme tactic

12 hours ago, Zaxx said:

What's a good army composition for the campaign btw? So far it seemed to me that tanks + missile tanks are fine but I can't really figure out the early game. There was one map where I just dropped down 3 light factories and massed quads and those seem pretty good against some of the heavier units like siege tanks but I don't really know if I'm on the right track there. Is it even optimal to start with lighter troops and tansition into heavy units or should I just try making tanks in a panic?

the Heavy Factory is the most important to have ASAP since it produces well-rounded Combat Tanks and, of course, Harvesters. after that is the Barracks because Troopers' rockets absolutely annihilate vehicles - just keep enemy Siege Tanks away from them. Quads are indeed good against Siege Tanks, or any kind of long-range artillery unit for that matter, but they should probably be last to start getting produced. they are not as good against Combat Tanks as Troopers are

when it comes to dealing with enemy units, before anything else, scouting is definitely a good idea, even in campaign maps  in RA it's a bit hard to know just how far you can go out, but with buildings limited to rock islands in d2k, that Trike you start with can wander right up to rock edges just so you know which sand is in an area you can potentially control. or, just train a bunch of Light Infantry from your Barracks and send them to random ends of the map, maybe they scout out some enemy positions xD the intel they can gather is worth way more than their training cost

ctrl + one of the number keys can set control groups as you probably already know, but less players tend to know about alt + number of an assigned group, which snaps camera to one of the units in an assigned group. you can use alt + number of your Trike to go to your scout and issue new orders, and H to go back to your ConYard. this is how some folks play without an Outpost, or power. as for grouping, you can box select some new units you want to add to a group, shift + number of group assigned to different units to select the group as well, and then ctrl + that number to include the new units in that group

infantry are definitely a good early-game unit to focus on for defense, esp if your hfact queue is going towards harvs rather than CTs. scattering them around or forming them up around your ConYard on A8 or H8 are anti-sabo, but they make good, cheap support for whatever turrets you put up. they also serve as strong frontliners against enemy turrets later, so having a big pile of Troopers around can help break through enemy base defenses where a mass of Combat Tanks would suffer heavy damage. but yeah, a couple of Combat Tanks are nice to have early to support your early Troopers, but that depends not only on if you're using your structure queue for refs or hfact queue for harvs, but also on where exactly you need your units. Gun Turrets are more efficient than CTs, but if you need to defend your harvs or multiple angles, maybe the CTs are a better investment early

while Combat Tanks, Troopers and Quads are very popular mainstays, you might want to throw a couple of Trikes or especially Siege Tanks in there. sure, CTs can crush inf, but sieges are still important. the faction-specific tanks all have some use too, but they affect your composition in different ways. sonics can be massed but have to be used carefully, should be grouped separately from other units except maybe a small amount of CTs or missiles for support. Deviators should be added at about the same frequency you would use some Missile Tanks. as for Devastators, they basically replace Combat Tanks, with the exception that Deviators are shenanigans against pure Devastators lol

yee

[Cm_blast]

19 hours ago, Zaxx said:

Okay I will just stop you right there and say that I have no idea of what the optimal eco is, I don't even remember what all the units are good for exactly. For example I'm at the 8th mission of the Harkonnen campaign now and for now I have absolutely no idea on how to beat it on normal difficulty so that's my "skill level". My last attempt was amazing though, I thought everything was going fine and then my conyard exploded out of nowhere.  Are there invisible units in this game that blow up your shit? How to detect them? I don't remember that stuff at all. Should I read a manual? Any good resource for strats and stuff?

And well generally what bugs me is that I really don't like the classic Westwood mission design where seemingly the devs only idea on how to make a challenging map was to put you on the backfoot, swarm you with enemy AI and then expect you to enjoy the trial and error of excruciatingly defending with low tier units against whatever the hell they programmed in to attack you. That's pretty much the general gameplay of Dune 2K though so I'm mostly playing for the atmosphere and definitely not the dated and overly frustrating gameplay.

Like you just put down your conyard, you're just starting to make basic light vehicles and then the ordos tank that converts your units turns up while I'm 30 minutes away of even thinking about having Harkonnen mammoth tanks, thank you Westwood but I have a strong suspicion on why your company didn't last.

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.

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- Yeah I still have no idea how to detect the saboteur, it seems to be random and I just keep losing buildings. Not giving you a clear option to just detect stuff (like the science vessel in SC1) was a giant mistake. And yeah, saboteurs keep crashing the game so for now I've stopped playing.

infantry and turrets detect them.

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- Building concrete for buildings is tedious and pointless.

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.

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Upgrading buildings is a pointless feature that shouldn't exist because the game puts tech upgrades behind the build order anyway. Especially the conyard upgrade is the dumbest thing ever.

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.

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- There is no real option to defend against airstrikes which really sucks because the AI just throws them at you early on in campaign missions.

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)

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 Locking access to the minimap behind a building that serves no purpose other than to give you the minimap and to unlock acces to other buildings is downright idiotic. The minimap shouldn't be "tech" in an RTS, it's a basic feature of the game that is essential in overseeing what you're doing and in getting basic information.

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.

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Yeah I think I got that but somehow survived. What's even worse though is that whenever you touch one of the AI's harvs it instantly sends all of its army for you, sometimes you don't even notice that you hit a harv, just see the avalanche of troops lol.

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.

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Overall what I'm struggling with the most is absolutely getting the harvesting going well, it's kind of insane how much you have to invest into it until the spice truly starts flowing.

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.

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I had a try at the last Harkonnen mission (the one with the prebuilt base which might have been a bad choice since the refinery is at a really bad spot with a lot of travel time for the harv) and I basically spent 30 minutes just trying to get going.

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.

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What's a good army composition for the campaign btw? So far it seemed to me that tanks + missile tanks are fine but I can't really figure out the early game. 

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).

Edited January 6 by Cm_blast

[Zaxx]

18 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

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.

I didn't mean pointless as "building upgrades have no point in the game" but rather that it shouldn't exist in the game as a feature and that its benefits should have been put elsewhere. For example prerequisite for the rocket turret could be the high-tech factory and that would fit the usual C&C base progression path better. The same goes for all the other stuff that I called pointless or useless, for example I don't think that the minimap is useless, just that you should get it by default without building anything like in any other RTS except for C&C.

And I know how to play C&C, you don't have to explain basic things like tanks squishing units or how to use the scatter command with infantry and that kind of stuff.

18 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

Also don't feel bad, I think Harkonnen is the thoughest campaign of the 3.

Damn, I was thinking that they might be the easiest since they have those uber mammoth tanks.  Guess what is true for RA1 (where the soviet campaign is absolutely the easiest because the soviets are just OP) is not always true for Dune 2K.

18 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

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.

I've already checked out and played through a few custom maps so while I surealy won't play 70 custom campaigns I'll dabble in a few for sure. I am doing a playthrough of most of these games in order - well, kind of - though so eventually I'll go to Emperor, then TS, RA2 etc.

[Cm_blast]

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I didn't mean pointless as "building upgrades have no point in the game" but rather that it shouldn't exist in the game as a feature and that its benefits should have been put elsewhere. For example prerequisite for the rocket turret could be the high-tech factory and that would fit the usual C&C base progression path better. The same goes for all the other stuff that I called pointless or useless, for example I don't think that the minimap is useless, just that you should get it by default without building anything like in any other RTS except for C&C.

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.

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And I know how to play C&C, you don't have to explain basic things like tanks squishing units or how to use the scatter command with infantry and that kind of stuff.

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.

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Damn, I was thinking that they might be the easiest since they have those uber mammoth tanks.  Guess what is true for RA1 (where the soviet campaign is absolutely the easiest because the soviets are just OP) is not always true for Dune 2K. 

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.

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I've already checked out and played through a few custom maps so while I surealy won't play 70 custom campaigns I'll dabble in a few for sure. I am doing a playthrough of most of these games in order - well, kind of - though so eventually I'll go to Emperor, then TS, RA2 etc.

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.

Edited January 7 by Cm_blast

[Zaxx]

15 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

Well, reminding the scatter command is fine since I didn't know back then, despite playing a gallilion of RTS.

Yeah, same here. Kids don't read manuals I guess.

Speaking of commands, hotkeys and whatnot one thing that I never quite understood was the guard command. It seems to function pretty optimally as an "attack move without the move" command but I never actually tested its efficiency and I mostly just use guard when I feel like it.

15 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

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.

Hm? You mean people didn't know that you can repair by using an engineer or I just don't understand what you mean.

15 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

Well, just as I said, they pretty much pick most of dune 2 into dune 2000

This will be kind of unrelated but speaking of that I never understood why Westwood / Intelligent Games did only half the job with the Dune 2 remake. Dune 2000 isn't super faithful to the original game, even on top of the slight differences in tech and balancing you get things like the Ordos being a totally different type of people. Like they are completely redesigned, in Dune 2 they seem like merchants / smugglers while in Dune 2K they have this weird cyborg look to them to the point that you start questioning why didn't they just replace them with the Ixians or Richese.

So they could have just gone the extra mile and make a game where the 3 factions really play differently from one another, they could have spiced up the campaign with non-base building missions, more tile sets etc. But they didn't and as a result Dune 2k was received badly by the critics of the time simply because strictly on a feature and variety level Red Alert was a much better game. Emperor was more innovative but I think that by that game people just weren't interested (and tbh Emperor's primitive 3D graphics along with the janky dynamic campaigns didn't help either).

[Fey]

4 hours ago, Zaxx said:

Speaking of commands, hotkeys and whatnot one thing that I never quite understood was the guard command. It seems to function pretty optimally as an "attack move without the move" command but I never actually tested its efficiency and I mostly just use guard when I feel like it.

rapid, repeated move + guard or move + stop commands can be pretty good with some units, like Combat Tanks

4 hours ago, Zaxx said:

Hm? You mean people didn't know that you can repair by using an engineer or I just don't understand what you mean.

if you have an ally on the map, you can capture one of their structures as if it were an enemy structure by selecting an Engineer, holding ctrl and clicking on it, similar to ordering another unit to force-fire

4 hours ago, Zaxx said:

This will be kind of unrelated but speaking of that I never understood why Westwood / Intelligent Games did only half the job with the Dune 2 remake. Dune 2000 isn't super faithful to the original game, even on top of the slight differences in tech and balancing you get things like the Ordos being a totally different type of people. Like they are completely redesigned, in Dune 2 they seem like merchants / smugglers while in Dune 2K they have this weird cyborg look to them to the point that you start questioning why didn't they just replace them with the Ixians or Richese.

they're not weird cyborg people the mentat who advises you in d2k may be illegal technology, something the Ordos make a lot of use of between a thing like that and stuff like Deviators. they could still be a mercantile faction, what with buying pricey weird stuff and hiring mercs

here's some info about Edric O:
https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Edric_O

5 hours ago, Zaxx said:

So they could have just gone the extra mile and make a game where the 3 factions really play differently from one another, they could have spiced up the campaign with non-base building missions, more tile sets etc. But they didn't and as a result Dune 2k was received badly by the critics of the time simply because strictly on a feature and variety level Red Alert was a much better game. Emperor was more innovative but I think that by that game people just weren't interested (and tbh Emperor's primitive 3D graphics along with the janky dynamic campaigns didn't help either).

Emperor nailed the aesthetics what with all the different factions and their homeworlds and different soundtracks and stuff, but fell short in the gameplay department. at least, that appears to be the general consensus around these parts. maybe the multiplayer boys see more to it, but the campaign being structured the way it was didn't help the single-player experience

people still take inspiration from it to this day for stuff elsewhere, like some new tilesets we have in d2k

as for d2k, it'll always be the underdog, but its dynamics, atmosphere and macro game remain quite enjoyable and in some ways unique ^^

[Cm_blast]

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Yeah, same here. Kids don't read manuals I guess. 

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.

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Hm? You mean people didn't know that you can repair by using an engineer or I just don't understand what you mean. 

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.

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This will be kind of unrelated but speaking of that I never understood why Westwood / Intelligent Games did only half the job with the Dune 2 remake. Dune 2000 isn't super faithful to the original game, even on top of the slight differences in tech and balancing you get things like the Ordos being a totally different type of people. Like they are completely redesigned, in Dune 2 they seem like merchants / smugglers while in Dune 2K they have this weird cyborg look to them to the point that you start questioning why didn't they just replace them with the Ixians or Richese.

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".

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So they could have just gone the extra mile and make a game where the 3 factions really play differently from one another, they could have spiced up the campaign with non-base building missions, more tile sets etc. But they didn't and as a result Dune 2k was received badly by the critics of the time simply because strictly on a feature and variety level Red Alert was a much better game. Emperor was more innovative but I think that by that game people just weren't interested (and tbh Emperor's primitive 3D graphics along with the janky dynamic campaigns didn't help either).

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.

Edited January 8 by Cm_blast

[Zaxx]

13 hours ago, Fey said:

if you have an ally on the map, you can capture one of their structures as if it were an enemy structure by selecting an Engineer, holding ctrl and clicking on it, similar to ordering another unit to force-fire

Oh okay, that makes sense.

13 hours ago, Fey said:

they're not weird cyborg people the mentat who advises you in d2k may be illegal technology, something the Ordos make a lot of use of between a thing like that and stuff like Deviators. they could still be a mercantile faction, what with buying pricey weird stuff and hiring mercs

The problem with that though is that who would make something like Edric O? The Ixians for example wouldn't make that kind of dude, they are making mechanical stuff, not cyborgs. The Tleilaxu on the other hand are making gholas, artificial spice and twisted mentats (who were replaced by gholas once those became more advanced I guess though in D2k the Harkonnen mentat is referred to as a ghola so maybe here those are one and the same) so weird "almost thinking machine but not really because there's man plugged into it please don't nuke us" thing kind of doesn't make sense.

As for replacing the Ordos with the Ixians or the Bene Tleilax I remembered that D2K could be from before Brian Herbert's expanded Dune books and that's where those two (especially the Ixians) became more interesting. Like if a game like this would be made today then I'm pretty sure that the devs would do something like House Vernius instead of the Ordos but 1998? Nope, House Vernius did not even exist.

The funny thing though is that I've already played through the Ordos campaign and the whole "this cyborg dude's eyes have turned blue from spice addiction and he's starting to become some crazed untsable Kwisatz Haderach" story element was really fun. So the original stuff that the devs came up with compared to Dune II works really well and more of that might have been awesome. 

Btw. I found the Ordos campaign to be a lot more fair than the Harkonnen one, even the last mission I got on my first try simply because having an allied base is a really good distraction for the enemy AI.

13 hours ago, Fey said:

Emperor nailed the aesthetics what with all the different factions and their homeworlds and different soundtracks and stuff, but fell short in the gameplay department. at least, that appears to be the general consensus around these parts. maybe the multiplayer boys see more to it, but the campaign being structured the way it was didn't help the single-player experience

Yeah, I agree with that (also with what CM said about it), sadly Emperor's campaign is just not very good but the faction design is stellar.

[Zaxx]

9 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

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.

Yep, variety can certainly have its downsides and especially in old C&C those commando missions where you don't have a base have aged terribly. On the other hand there are games where that works fine and it adds a lot of variety if designed well, for example AoE 2 has a lot of missions that feel very unique because the more advanced scripting lets the devs do weird, experimental stuff.

And overall I don't think that D2k is monotonous but the maps have a skirmish feel to them and that does have an effect on the pacing sadly. Things like having an ally or an early starport can add some novelty to that but at the end of the day literally all the maps have the same mid to late game.

[Cm_blast]

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Btw. I found the Ordos campaign to be a lot more fair than the Harkonnen one, even the last mission I got on my first try simply because having an allied base is a really good distraction for the enemy AI.

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.

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Yeah, I agree with that (also with what CM said about it), sadly Emperor's campaign is just not very good but the faction design is stellar.

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).

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Yep, variety can certainly have its downsides and especially in old C&C those commando missions where you don't have a base have aged terribly. On the other hand there are games where that works fine and it adds a lot of variety if designed well, for example AoE 2 has a lot of missions that feel very unique because the more advanced scripting lets the devs do weird, experimental stuff.

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.

Edited January 9 by Cm_blast