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

[Zaxx]

3 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

The final mission difficulty also depends on the version you pick.

Yeah, I'm kind of noticing that since when it comes to the supposedly "easy" Atreides campaign I'm having my third go at the 5th mission because for some reason the Harkonnen base just attacks with all of its units and decimates me before I'm even close to being ready to attack. Lol:

That's only the army that's remaining after they totally destroyed mine btw.

The Harkonnen base is very close to the route that leads to the starport that you have to capture so my guess is that there is some invisible line that triggers the AI and if you ever want to reinforce the starport with vehicles then you will go past that line. And of course I passed that line because there is a surprise attack from "Mercenaries" (meaning a third faction that's not even on the map because oh boy we love bad game design in D2K) so I tried to bring some tanks over there. So yeah honestly some of these missions were designed by idiots so it's no wonder if there are wild differences in difficulty between option A and B sometimes.

I started with Harkonnen and Ordos because I remembered the Atreides campaign being shit and hard, guess this map is to blame for that memory.

Edit: I messed around with this mission a bit more because it was just hard to believe how borked it is... but yep, it really does seem to be borked. The way I see it the design intention might have been to attack the front of the base to attract every enemy unit while you capture the barracks from the back entrance to the enemy base, they just executed it really badly. But hey, at least they give you a lot of spice to harvest so just making a ton of units and not attacking until you're ready is a viable fallback, it's just really jank.

Edited January 9 by Zaxx

[Cm_blast]

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Yeah, I'm kind of noticing that since when it comes to the supposedly "easy" Atreides campaign I'm having my third go at the 5th mission because for some reason the Harkonnen base just attacks with all of its units and decimates me before I'm even close to being ready to attack. Lol:

I feel those are not even attacking units but defending units, either the harv got damaged (even if damaged by his own units it count) due the sandworm, or you enter his "base defense area" radious and the AI react by sending all.

The AI on this map has a very big defensive unit.
This is how it goes.
the AI is told to attack the first time (not counting drops) at 17.000 ticks, which it is a bit more than 11 minutes.
Then is told to attack every 7000 ticks, which are every 4.6 minutes (less than 5minutes)
and is being told to build 1 unit every 1700 ticks, so a bit more than 1 minute.

so theorically,the AI will build a total of 10 units the first time it attacks, and then attacks of 4 units per wave. The numbers are not exactly because the AI is set to attack with a 30% of the strengh (hp) of the units, so the first wont be 10, but 3+RGN (there is an increase), to simplicity,around 5-6 units
and then, on those 4-5 units he didn't send+ the 4 new untis he got to build before attacking gain (so he will have around 10 units ready again) he will send another 5-6 units.

so yeah, if they are doing that, or you are ultra unlucky with the sandworm, or you are entering the enemy base (or just being close) making the AI to use all the units he has to defend himself into you. The thing is that, if you go back and retreat your units, they may even stop firing at all. Even if on top of your base, they will be there for a while and just leave to the base (with the harverster they may have a frenzy).

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The Harkonnen base is very close to the route that leads to the starport that you have to capture so my guess is that there is some invisible line that triggers the AI and if you ever want to reinforce the starport with vehicles then you will go past that line. A

this game doesn't have that kind of script (on 2024 custom mods yes, but only because there is a guy that it is actually doing stuff that allow the game to check certain aspect and make the AI to do certain things).

His is just mostly you are going near them and they go mad probably. 

Well, you can play this mission withouth doing the tactic you did (which works with pretty much the whole game). I usually just use infantry to reach the starport, then I move the MCV on the shortest path possible with no other units and never send vehicles on the starport or from the starport into the main base, just infantry or whatever staff I order there. The AI usually gets screwed trying to reach the starport because the narrow path which works in your favor (except for the mercs that can make things hard).

But besides that, is just as every other mission, build your army, destroy every.

The thing you did to win you can do it on the last mission on everycampaign, just atrack all enemy units, let them die to your turrets easily and now, withouth defenses, you send your actual army against an enemy with almost no opposition.

the AI on this game it's always the same, it changes "how often it attacks" or "how often it build" per mission, but even a deployed CY will make the AI to attack it; deploy a CY where you want them to attack instead your main base (or other areas) and you manipulate the AI with just 1 single building (even windtraps works too), but you could have done that tactic on pretty much every mission. There are even moments where the AI will keep training/building units and sending them against you 1 by 1 because you recently attacked, or you damaged a harversters or stupid things like that and things he needs to keep doing that. (eventually it will stop, but you are going to drain resources just dealing with 1 attacker at a time).

An airstrike on top of a harverster can trigger that too. you use one and the AI is "I must defend it" and because it doesn't find the exact unit it just send all against your base. Or walling your ally (if there is any) so they cannot leave and then sell for a 80-100 units wave if you wants.

many people here, on custom missions do the same you did. Attrack, then send an engie, capture whatever random building and then concrete-barrack-engie to dismantle the AI's base from the inside, and there is nothing a modder can do (not unless 2023-2024, but only if you know how to really use the editor) to prevent that to happens, besides, you know, giving the AI 20 turrets so you cannot enter a undefended base (or a gallilion of drops/deliveries so the AI always have some units as back up).

It's even worse once you know how the defese bases of the AI are draw or how far, you can use cliffs to make An AI to die against you even with a smaller army, just for the placement itself.

Ps: There is needed 1 single raider/trike to outrun all the enemy units and luring them into your base if you desire. I only do this trick if I am playing a custom mission with an enemy that has a gigantic base with 3 Cy, 3 Factories, 8 refs and so on. But otherwise I avoid this or the game becomes too much easy. (on a smaller map they still group fine, not much distance to split their army, but on custom missions people tend to do bigger maps, so you get to kill units as they come splitted). And then there are the veterans that I made a mission with an AI with not much stuff, but grow over time so you don't get heavily attacked while you prepared your army, then they send a trike or whatever unit they had, retreat, put other units in the middle, the AI ignores those units, are killed withouth almost not much damage and rush the base to win in few minutes.

You want an extra trick? drop units attack whatever is the nearest, unit, building, doesn't matter. Run with this unit and they will chase it to their death, soetimes they fully ignore being shot for other units because they are hunting "the original nearest unit". With enemies attacking from his base into yours may not do this that often since the AI may swap targets, but from I can see, if you deploy a CY the AI makes that building the primary focus (only if deployed, the one you start with not) and ignoring everything else (or, at best, the unit being fired swap targed, but the rest keeps going into the CY).

Edited January 9 by Cm_blast

[Fey]

17 hours ago, Zaxx said:

invisible trigger

default AI defense area behavior works like they basically draw a box around their structures and if an enemy unit is in that box, they defend their base. the hark base on A5 is shaped in such a way that there's a bit bigger of a box out in front of their structures than usual, which is the most likely culprit. the size of the box also affects guard group size scaling, which is why they're notoriously defensive on that mission

FYI, their protect strength is only 10% on A5, so poking their harvs isn't really the thing that bothers them lol

anyway, the terrain is very chokey and can be used to your advantage, especially around the Starport where Harkonnen units have to trickle in. get some Gun Turrets there, put some Siege Tanks and Troopers nearby, and see if you can't poke the enemy on purpose to lure them in that direction with a fast unit like a Trike

[Zaxx]

On 1/10/2024 at 6:41 AM, Fey said:

FYI, their protect strength is only 10% on A5, so poking their harvs isn't really the thing that bothers them lol

Yep, I figured that out but it's still so strange. Like when it comes to playing RTS what is the thing that you do in basically every single one of these games right from the get go? Scouting! But in this mission if you scout the enemy base and your unit happens to not die in the process then the entire map will attack you.  I kept trying the same thing on other maps after experiencing this and what always happens is that they follow you for a bit and then turn back. On A5 they turn back too... right at the point where your base is about to start so they'll just aggro at something anyway and won't actually go back to base. Seems like a bug or maybe the map is just too small.

And yeah once you figure this stuff out then it's easy to cheese but it doesn't feel like normal gameplay because well, it's not that.

[Fey]

4 hours ago, Zaxx said:

cheese

I'm sure the devs factored in modern esports metagaming when designing their 1998 RTS campaign missions

really though, it was still the 90's when this game came out. Starcraft took seven years or so to perfect. if it were after that became a huge e-sports thing, it would be a different story, but you have to remember the history of games in general, let alone RTS games. campaign maps used to be designed in a much more free-format way! it resulted in weird things happening, like A5V1's Harkonnen defensiveness or H7V1's Atreides defense area, things that hinder the player from doing normal things like scouting, but it's kinda hard to polish things for modern tastes and a modern understanding of game mechanics in a weird era for games like the 90's, yeah?

if you're looking for a more modern campaign, it sounds like you'll want to check out some custom campaigns 

[Zaxx]

On 1/11/2024 at 8:23 PM, Fey said:

Starcraft took seven years or so to perfect.

Yeah but I'm not talking about the esports aspect, rather just the mission design and how the AI is scripted. Truth be told I'm hard on A5 mainly because if the weird issue with the enemy base didn't exist then it would just might be one of the best missions in the game. Conceptually I really like it, the whole "capture a Starport in the time limit to get your MCV" is a good intro instead of the usual skirmish stuff. The map layout itself is nice too, as you've said there is plenty of room to use the unique features of the game like the terrain types that are only traversable by infantry.

And you know, even if we go by the logic of "it's a game from 98, dude" it's kind of hard to ignore that D2K's shortcomings most likely come from the fact that it's a Dune II remake. StarCraft had far better mission design, Brood War was even better than that and those games are from 1998 too. Hell WarCraft 2's expansion pack Beyond the Dark Portal already had better mission design than D2K and that game is from 1996. Age of Empires 1 from 1997 feels dated in a somewhat similar fashion as D2K but even that game had the occasional banger of a mission like Holy Man (the first map of the Babylonian campaign) that could use the admittedly very simple enemy AI as its strenght.

On top of that D2K's scripted attacks can work well too, for example there is another mission (A6 or A7) where you get "betrayed" by the Truthsayer and the Emperor. On your first go you will most likely get squished because it's a somewhat unexpectedly big drop of enemies but it's also very easy to realize the problem and how to adjust your build order to solve it. So they knew how to do it well but if I had to guess the game was somewhat rushed so mistakes were made. Hell according to the credits they had only one map designer, that's insane if true and if it is true then that one guy did a stellar job overall.

I don't know if you played that one but some of the campaign reminds me of KKND in its jank. That's not a huge insult because KKND is a fun game (and in some ways it's a lot more broken than D2K is), it just falls short of its inspiration (C&C).

Edited January 13 by Zaxx

[Fey]

6 hours ago, Zaxx said:

esports

hehe I was only being hyperbolic; it's entirely fair to critique d2k on its own merits

still, it's good to look at it through the lens of the past era and its own history. it being a dune 2 remake, taking obvious inspiration from C&C, what it did differently, and how exactly it succeeded or failed in that regard

7 hours ago, Zaxx said:

StarCraft

I replayed SC recently! BW mission design is great, but the original has so many cheesable maps it's just... kinda nuts xD speedran the hell outta original but BW decided to macro up and kill everything on most of the maps cuz the OG left me wanting af. that was fun! I mean, BW still has a lot of cheesable maps, but the mission design and objectives are better in general. like if you wanna meme on the zerg hives on BW terran 03, sure, the hives can easily be hit from certain angles or spots by bunkers or sieges, but at least you have to take out four of them lol

7 hours ago, Zaxx said:

D2K's scripted attacks

yeah! Carryall drops are a classic, just ask Cm how much he loves them and then suffer when that one tile behind your base is actually dangerous because he put a fucking drop there WHY?! no reason, Cm logic lol

anyway yeah, and thankfully there were a lot of macro maps! I can certainly do without the no-buildings nonsense maps with the classic design style xD hell, delete the spice-mining maps while we're at it, and hark 6 because you can just yeet into the ord starport and it's over lol

I replayed TD / RA recently too and those no-build maps made me suffer 💀

there have been some more modern no-build or limited-build missions that were okay though, more detailed and stuff. I think every mapper does them. even I do, but I tried to make them short or convey something important, or both, like S02V2 introducing a hero unit in a perilous situation and forcing the player to make sacrifices to defend it, or SBON1 being literally only five minutes long xD

7 hours ago, Zaxx said:

KKND

aye, I'm familiar! KKND is another classic. a janky classic, but lotsa fun. and it had a lot of macro maps too, to my recollection

like, exploding scorpions? giant autocannon tanks? the funny briefing text? other fun, over-the-top stuff like that, count me in xD

[Cm_blast]

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I don't know if you played that one but some of the campaign reminds me of KKND in its jank. That's not a huge insult because KKND is a fun game (and in some ways it's a lot more broken than D2K is), it just falls short of its inspiration (C&C).

I really like this game, a bit sad I never played it back in the day (but I play others that leave mid-way since I didn't find it that fun for whatever reason) Even on my last campaign of dune 2k I heavily considered making an AI that behave like that game. I didn't do it because it would be really hard/complicated, and who knows if may work at the end. In theory it can work, like, you can (now) check how many units the Ai going against the player in attack (so not counting units defending), and then check how many units the player has in, maybe, a radious (to not count all the 100 units scattered on the map, but the 40 units that may be next on your base, or in front or your base, or direcly in the path bewteen enemy and player bases...) and making them to retreat if they are in a loosing situation.

At the end of the day, that would require lots of test to do, scrapping my head and brain to do it properly, and then finding that a random player gets decimated (or decimates) due something something doesn't work as expected something.

In a related note. I recorded this game for a channel; I remember having lots of issues with 1 specific level, the kind to restart or reload tons of time (and the same for the last mission); so prior to recording that mission (since it was suppose to be done withouth using saves) I checked how others played it; and I found the surprise that you can use the enemy refinery to put your oil trucks. From an almost impossible mission turned into a more easy one.

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yeah! Carryall drops are a classic, just ask Cm how much he loves them  and then suffer when that one tile behind your base is actually dangerous because he put a fucking drop there WHY?! no reason, Cm logic lol

Come one, don't tell him that. Sure, the tleilaxu one I put has multiple drops behind your back, but those are usually only on the early missions, and so small that are easy to repel; later on that campaign most of enemy drops (the few that I actually put since the AI is so passive otherwise) come from a slighly off angle from their base, or even directly dropping behind the enemy base.

Heh, I even felt so bad from doing that that the last mission where there are drops in the corner behind your base the game tells you 3 times that they happens and where it happens.
Briefing: "Be carefull, commander, the enemy will drop stuff at the corner behind your base".
Intel. "Watch out for enemy carryalls, they will drop units at the corner behind your base".
Ingame: "Alert: enemy carryall dropping units right now at the corner behind your base."

Edited January 14 by Cm_blast

[Zaxx]

3 hours ago, Fey said:

there were a lot of macro maps!

Yep but Dune 2K is weird in a way that defense is really-really good, like the whole "defender's advantage" thing is just maxed out here even compared to classic C&C. That's why the game can keep you under pressure and just expect you to survive but that can lead to insanely grindy missions too. When it comes to the 3 final missions and in some cases even the penultimate missions "winning" the map took me around 45 minutes meaning that after 45 minutes I got into a position where the AI couldn't recover from. Aaaand then it took me at least another 45 minutes to finish the job by fully cleaning up those huge maps. I think that I've played the last Harkonnen mission for more than 2 hours at the close to default game speed of 90.

So less might have been more but I have to say that out of TD, RA1 and Dune 2K I enjoy the macro here the most. I grew up on AoE's fairly complex food economy so I always found the whole harvesting thing a bit too simple but Dune 2K knows how to complicate it a bit and that's really cool. First, you have to look out for worms and even though that's RNG it adds some excitement to an otherwise boring thing... and honestly I couldn't care less about RNG in a game where the balance is a bit out of whack anyway.

Secondly carryalls are great because they speed up the late game but also because it's actually a strategic choice to go for more harvs or carryalls. I found it a really bad idea to start making carryalls when you still have spice fields close to your refineries because harvesters tend to just not move even to the closest fields by themselves and instead usually just wait for a carryall = your harvesting will become slower. On the other hand carryalls are great for the late game once you've exhausted your closer fields.

Also: the Starport does this weird thing where it can actually reward you for stockpiling money since you can just order units in bulk. No other RTS really does that and that's really freaking nice. So uh yeah, I think that Dune 2K has the best macro out of all these games (Emperor is similar but it simplified it which is like... why the heck would you simplify something that was already simple? :D).

 

4 hours ago, Fey said:

speedran the hell outta original

Yeah that's kind of an issue in SC as in we just got so good at playing StarCraft thanks to SC being a landmark game that the original campaigns and even BW can't really offer a challenge. SC2's Mass Recall mod is pretty good at remedying that though of course that one plays more like SC2.

 

Anyway there is one very serious flaw in Dune 2K: I never got to control any sardaukars (or maybe there was one Hark map?) so is there a custom campaign where I can get excited by being able to train sardaukars and then cry when turns out that they are terrible because they get squished by tanks?

[Zaxx]

16 minutes ago, Cm_blast said:

I remember having lots of issues with 1 specific level, the kind to restart or reload tons of time (and the same for the last mission)

Yup, KKND plays like that too and the last missions are pretty bonkers. I still have KKND 2 on my bucket list, I'm curious how difficult that one will be.

[Fey]

3 hours ago, Zaxx said:

defender's advantage

oh absolutely  like, I tried to balance my mod around, like, unit categories n stuff, but one of the results was that formations became even stronger. I guess that's okay when turrets were kinda sorta nerfed and units have some bulky alternatives that can hold the line nicely as turret substitutes, but still, meme balance

and speaking of meme balance

3 hours ago, Cm_blast said:

Come on

no lol

3 hours ago, Zaxx said:

final missions

yeah, it takes a long time to get the snowball rolling there >.> but one of the most satisfying parts of d2k is the snowball, at least after it gets going xD it should be a hurdle to get rolling, but after it does, is yay

3 hours ago, Zaxx said:

macro here

ayyy

yeah! all the little things, like stationing Troopers near Spice fields to handle worms, the Carryall Harvester dynamic, the Starport for dumping funds and stuff, they all add up nicely. and now we have even more options like Mining Rigs to generate funds passively like tib spikes in C&C3 or oil derricks in RA2, cash crates can be placed on maps, other ways to generate funds via special scripted events are possible... lotsa cool ways to spice things up nowadays, but the vast majority of custom campaigns are oldschool due to, uhh, new features being fairly new and all that

3 hours ago, Zaxx said:

good

hahahahahaahahaha if only I were good XD I just took my d2k macro habits back to SC and, uhh... well, when a game you really like doesn't have unit queues at all, you just kinda get used to clicking stuff all the time, even if you never touch multiplayer >.> so SC was like "you have queues and also multiple factories." okay, everything dies i guess lol

anyway, SC2 is alright  it's just so damn formulaic. I imagine its custom campaigns are more interesting than the original campaigns, but I haven't really checked any out

3 hours ago, Zaxx said:

sardaukars

ah, you would have had to have captured a palace belonging to the Emperor. then it would allow you to train Sardaukar. that's kinda bothersome though

there are a few imperial campaigns colored purple in Cm's index:

but there are accessible Sardaukar, trainable or otherwise, that appear in other campaigns you might not expect. my Summers' Solstice campaign for instance permits Sardaukar, among other things, be trained later on for reasons. and if it counts, the main player commander uses Ixian-modified Sardaukar Elite power armor to do stuff  and like Sardaukar Elites is uncrushable, cannot be suppressed, heals to 100% HP over time, but additionally has a minigun that can swap modes

related clip from around the time when 'modular unit implementation' first became possible, or at least the first twenty seconds is the aforementioned unit:
https://streamable.com/ji7kfi

regarding Sardaukar themselves, there was actually a problem with their behavior, originally:
https://streamable.com/mf0hhz

this is one of lotsa things Klofkac fixed, a fix that's in the latest exes. kinda funny that their on-death damage was limited to position xD but now they do actually pose a threat to vehicles that try to crush them

3 hours ago, Zaxx said:

KKND 2

it feels pretty different to me, personally  but it's definitely KKND and has the spirit of the game in it. it also has a neat third faction to murder all the humans and mutants and everything in-between with, so that's cool

[Cm_blast]

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 First, you have to look out for worms and even though that's RNG it adds some excitement to an otherwise boring thing... 

Nice!, there is a modder here that hate him so much that in 80% of his missions there is not a sandworm in sight xD. Glad to hear the opposite.

And like everything else, if you play long enough you start realizing that the sandworm is predictable. I even have a theory on what the sandworm does when it spawns, but I have no proof so I can't tell for sure.

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Aaaand then it took me at least another 45 minutes to finish the job by fully cleaning up those huge maps. I think that I've played the last Harkonnen mission for more than 2 hours at the close to default game speed of 90.

Yeah, the game is like that. This is the reason where I do custom missions (at least the lastests) I tend to make the AI really on the aggresive side, but if you manage to survive all the waves and cripple the enemy economy, then it is more easy to take out. You still have to destroy their base, but the enemy base has basic stuff.

Then there are other modders that gave the enemy 3 copies of each building so even if you rush the CY, take out 2 refs and 2 factories... and you are still afar from winning because it has so much alive and can rebuild.

Another thing is depends on how much you play the game. I did a campaign in which the player is given 1 ally on every mission; the ally may have a small base or a bigger base, but you are never alone on your own. The last mission used to take me 2 hours to win, but nowadays I can complete it in 1 hour and 15-20 mins at most.

I still have around here the game recorded, don't know if those will ever be published at some point. My gameplay is on normal speed, and since it is intented to be into a retro-channel the objetive is winning withouth saving the game, but also not speedrunning it (letting cutscenes, dialogues or not just going against an enemy to win in 2 minutes even if it is possible, like certain RA2 mission); so I spend time deploying concrete and building the whole base even if the building is useless.
The Final mission on the Atreides campaign took me 1 hour and 4 minutes.
Final ordos 1 hour and 8 minutes
Final Harkonnen 1 hour and 22 minutes.

And I am a average player. But I feel that the moment the AI cannot recover or do it slowly, it is just better to just build 200 units at once that sending small groups. There was recently a person playing a custom mission on mine and he was like building 20-25 vehicles (in bewteen tanks and some quads), and moving them near to the AI to harass them, he killed AI units, but then he lost the 20-25, so he send another similar group; he kept doing this 5-6 times but the mission didn't advance, it was a fully stalemate for 20-30 minutes.

Until he said "maybe I should group", he did, and it took one single strike to destroy most of the enemy base.

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Secondly carryalls are great because they speed up the late game but also because it's actually a strategic choice to go for more harvs or carryalls. I found it a really bad idea to start making carryalls when you still have spice fields close to your refineries because harvesters tend to just not move even to the closest fields by themselves and instead usually just wait for a carryall = your harvesting will become slower. On the other hand carryalls are great for the late game once you've exhausted your closer fields.

Is even worse, since the harverster, instead moving 1 step foward leaving the entrance free for another harv, it will wait to pick up. The spice must be really really far to speed the production, if not it will slow down. Either spice too afar, or just so many cliffs that the harv would take forever moving on his own.

I did a campaign that it is heavily inspired on dune 2, so there are no cliffs and for balancing purposes I made the harverster to be 10 tiles minimun of distance to ask for a carryall. And even only if the carryall was just on top of it the take on air/ground was kind of even.

On my custom missions I tend to put multiple small mine fields so you spread the refs, but then putting bigger or just more blooms on distances. I even made some missions that mostly annoy people since it force you to build the HTF and having carryalls. Like, making 70% of the spice being fully unreachable for land xD. Yeah, folks are annoyed by my stuff often.

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Also: the Starport does this weird thing where it can actually reward you for stockpiling money since you can just order units in bulk. No other RTS really does that and that's really freaking nice. So uh yeah, I think that Dune 2K has the best macro out of all these games (Emperor is similar but it simplified it which is like... why the heck would you simplify something that was already simple? :D).

Now imagine if we had the dune 2 thing that could order 50 units at once if you had the money for it xD. But on dune 2 units could be more expensive, while here they are always cheaper.

Maybe you will get to enjoy the tleilaxu campaign and the starport, not the core or anything, but there are a few missions where I scripted that the starpor starts fully stocked, instead being at zero as it starts on the game; so you beging the mission with the CY, 2 windtraps and a starport with 10.000 initial credits, you can get a bit of an army before deploying any factory.

Dune emperor prizes didn't seem to change often. Last time I played a unit was really cheap so I kept ordering 4-5 units over and over, no idea if it was intented or the version I downloaded was bugy or what.

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Anyway there is one very serious flaw in Dune 2K: I never got to control any sardaukars (or maybe there was one Hark map?) so is there a custom campaign where I can get excited by being able to train sardaukars and then cry when turns out that they are terrible because they get squished by tanks?

You can play as Sardaukar on the original campaigns but only if you capture the Imperial palace (last mission). Need to point that as Harkonnen you get the worse version Sardaukar. There are 2, the campaign one, and the multiplayer one. The multiplayer has a slower Rate of Fire, and it cost 200 (campaign sard cost 120). As Harkonnen you get the bad version due the game having 2 units named "Sardaukar" and since Harkonnen actually trains them on multiplayer the game still pick that version even if you are getting the requirements from the originals. sad.

Fey already pointed to you the index, but to be more specific.
If you really really really want to use sardaukar, go to play my "Emperor return`s". 

The campaign is modded, so be sure to copy everything right (and assuming you have the mission launcher 1.2.0 (by funky and Feda). If you don't have it, on that index you can find it.

Mods works by overwritting files, but if you have the mission launcher (at least 1.2.0, if it is more recent it works too) then the launcher will overwritte the files on his own, and then revert to the original when you finish the mission, so other custom missions or the original game is not affected.

Although if you downloaded the "all in one" from Dato then you have nothing to worry about, as everything needed is already there, nothing to download then. If not you can get it here: I forgot if you already have it or not, so just in case I put the link here. This contains around 90% of the campaigns/missions on the index, so once you download it once, then it is fine to play everything. <-- if you already have it or just download it, the index purpose is just to check which missions, which author, and if the author wrote the story or gameplay stuff to see what to expect, but no need to download any extra. Dato was kind enough to give us this to compile most of the index package and ready to play.

 

Emperor return's was like the 2º custom campaign I ever made, so gameplay wise is not much complex. But it has the mod that you get to train sardaukar from your barracks withouth a palace or whatever. However, you don't get to build light vehicles. So your main army will be tanks and sardaukar (you cannot even train troopers).

If the lack of light vehicles for you is a turn off, then you can play my other imperial campaign called "The Emperor's plan"; this one is not modded, whole thing is vanilla, so you don't get sardaukars on the earlly missions. Then, around mission 4 or 5, you start getting them on the starport for free plus having the imperial palace to train them on your own.

This other campaign has a couple of middle missions that may be a bit oppresive, but I think the final mission is kind of easy. The modded one is more easy overall since it was done on the early era where I had no much idea, thus my Ais tends to be slow-building ones, but the last mission is kind of long due enemy massive base (although the objetive is not to destroy the whole base).

The unmodded one has a small issue that, unfornatelly, only discovered in recent times. If you go play that cmpaign and at the very beggining of mission 1 the enemy infantry units don't move, you must restart the mission. if they do, then everything is fine and there are no other issues (that I am aware). <-- this issue happens on the first 5-10 seconds, so is not like the mission is that much broken. This is a thing that back in the day worked 10 out of 10, and they never ever went iddle, but now for some reason sometimes they do... meh

These are the Teasier/trailer on both campaigns, if you have any preference.

On both you get sards, on one from the very first mission and it is the core of your army, and in the other you get them for free and can also build them more mid-campaign, while on early missions you get 1-3 at most.

Don't worry about the language, on dato's pack is in english. or at least as good as my english is :P.
 

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Yup, KKND plays like that too and the last missions are pretty bonkers.  I still have KKND 2 on my bucket list, I'm curious how difficult that one will be.

When I checked another guy and saw that you are suppose to rush the nearest oil ref, the mission turned out much more manegeable. Enemy get's less resources and you get more, even if I end loosing it at least I wasn't against an AI that had 3-4 times more resourcesharversting that me. Also, AI cheating with unlimited oil to harvest xD.

I tried the 2º game but it never clicked to me, I felt it was so slow...
On KKND you spend I think it was 1400 or 1500 on the refinery, and then you get 700 money back, so in 2 travel, you recover the money.
on KKND 2, if I recall the ref cost 2000 and you get 400 only back. You need to wait your harverster to travel 5 times just to get the money back (and 5 more if you want a second refinery).

Maybe I am playing it wrong and you are suppose to just have 1 refinery or whatever. Dunno.

Edited January 14 by Cm_blast

[DoMiNaNt_HuNtEr]

On 1/13/2024 at 7:15 PM, Zaxx said:

....

No offence, but all your complaints with Dune 2000 campaign being too hard is a skill issue.