[Release] Butlerian Jihad: Zone Zero - Dune 2000 Campaign

[Cm_blast]

Congratulations.

if you really want to give a try on another hard-unfair mission but with slow AI, go to play my antifremen campaign. I did a "Fremen Warriors" which it is a campaign that you play as Fremen and you never deploy a base, train an unit or anything, is pretty much a full-commando campaign that you do sthealth and stuff. I didn't want to just discard those maps and instead making playable, so I did the "antifremen", in which you play the same campaign but roles reversed and now the missions are more similar to a traditional campaign style.

As Fremen you are to search and destroy Harkonnen harversters? on antifremen you are the Harkonnen and your harvs get attacked.
As Fremen you are to protect the Atreides from some Harkonnen waves? on Antifremen you deploy a full base as Harkonnen and have to destroy Atreides and Fremen random attacks.

The thing is, that I playtested this campaign so much that I didn't realize how hard I made them. It is very similar to the butlerian, just a gallilion of enemy drops comming from every corner, but the enemy base has mostly a slow production rate.

So if you want something hard border-unfair but not a fast production AI, go play that one (and if you want to switch gears, you can even play the warriors fremen first, and later the anti-fremen just to get the roles reverses). just to point, maps were altered for the anti-fremen, as some missions are kind of a corridor so you enter whatever enemy base or units from an specific position, but on the antifremen the map is more open so you can move around more freely.

Edited June 8 by Cm_blast

[Ghost.B88]

Thanks for the suggestion. I played both the Fremen Warriors and Anti-fremen campaigns. There were interesting and unique. I like to build bases and attack so I naturally preferred the Anti-fremen campaign better, especially the last mission where you have to beat the Atreides and Fremen as the Emperor and you have a Harkonnen ally. Even 2v1.5 it was still hard (but fair)!

I think I will go with your first suggestion and play Coalition of Nobles as the idea of playing as a bunch of weak houses to take down a strong house sounds challenging, fun and requires lots of teamwork (with computer allies is yet another challenge of its own).

Btw, I beat the Final / Ending mission of the Butlerian Jihad! It wasn't as hard as mission 9 like you said, mainly because the enemy bases don't produces that fast and attacks with just a few units at a time, and the spice at the bottom of the base does grow, at least a few spice blooms did appear. I was expecting a full blown 1v5 kind of situation, but it felt more like a 1v2 and the computer enemies don't wait for a Huge force to attack, which is really really a relief when you are on your own.

Oh and the extra MCVs + reinforcements every time I destroy a machine base really help a lot! I can build much faster and don't have to worry about sabateurs blowing my my main Con Yard. Also there were a lot of reinforcements like the devastators made the offensive easier (though you do have to watch out for those insidious deviators!)

[Cm_blast]

On 6/13/2024 at 11:11 PM, Ghost.B88 said:

Thanks for the suggestion. I played both the Fremen Warriors and Anti-fremen campaigns. There were interesting and unique. I like to build bases and attack so I naturally preferred the Anti-fremen campaign better, especially the last mission where you have to beat the Atreides and Fremen as the Emperor and you have a Harkonnen ally. Even 2v1.5 it was still hard (but fair)!

I think I will go with your first suggestion and play Coalition of Nobles as the idea of playing as a bunch of weak houses to take down a strong house sounds challenging, fun and requires lots of teamwork (with computer allies is yet another challenge of its own).

Btw, I beat the Final / Ending mission of the Butlerian Jihad! It wasn't as hard as mission 9 like you said, mainly because the enemy bases don't produces that fast and attacks with just a few units at a time, and the spice at the bottom of the base does grow, at least a few spice blooms did appear. I was expecting a full blown 1v5 kind of situation, but it felt more like a 1v2 and the computer enemies don't wait for a Huge force to attack, which is really really a relief when you are on your own.

Oh and the extra MCVs + reinforcements every time I destroy a machine base really help a lot! I can build much faster and don't have to worry about sabateurs blowing my my main Con Yard. Also there were a lot of reinforcements like the devastators made the offensive easier (though you do have to watch out for those insidious deviators!)

Not that fair considering that the enemy drops are ally with your ally to avoid heavy exploits XD. But anyway.

good luck with the coalition. For the most part, unless you lure enemies into their allies the hold well, there is a mission that both sides are equally strong. You ally may hold well, or may fail, or may get the upper-hand on their own. And yes, other levels later you may need to protect them at least a bit. If you hold on your own withouth using your allies as a meat shield they will send units and luckily (depending on random ai behaviours) they may even be calpable of push back. <-- I refer to traditional missions, maybe a mission is more on the "you ally needs help, defend it with your life", but I tried to have some allies that will do good their own. 

yeah no, the last mission is just enemies coming from multiple directions, but not as strong, the only hard part is struggling to get enough spice and getting overrun on the long run. Taking out every machine base I gave units and a MCV as a huge reward, just to make worth it to destroy those. As an alternative challenge you can go against the ordos directly, but then those bases will keep sending units into the main ordos first and there are less rewards (and harder to take due the safe harversters and the 4 enemy CY that will rebuild really fast).

But yeah, once you take all the machine bases the Ordos are fully done. I revealed the silos on the enemy base just for players to see the enemy spice going down. I don't remember, maybe it takes 15-20 in game minutes for their silos are emptied withouth the option to build units fast again (15-20 mins assuming you do nothing, if you send waves and the AI needs to spend money on rebuilding units, turrets and repairing they will use the money in 10 mins). Either way, they won't get more money again.

Yeah, the Ai using deviators is not too much of a big deal, so I went into "you get devas, the enemy send deviators" but the odds are still in your favor.

Good luck with the coalition and hope you can defeat them.
 

Edited June 16 by Cm_blast

[Ghost.B88]

Oh I don’t know what heavy exploits you are referring to but I did build directly into my Harkonnen Ally base and noticed that some of their units don’t attack the enemy. But It was ok, some of their units did attack the enemy.

Yeah, I’m onto the coalition now, and I’ll post in that thread, but yes, the computer allies are awesome considering they cover what the player lacks! I just hope their mission where I have to defend my ally to death won’t give me PTSD like mission 7 of this campaign. 😜 

Anyways, chat with you there!

[Cm_blast]

17 hours ago, Ghost.B88 said:

Oh I don’t know what heavy exploits you are referring to but I did build directly into my Harkonnen Ally base and noticed that some of their units don’t attack the enemy. But It was ok, some of their units did attack the enemy.

Yeah, I’m onto the coalition now, and I’ll post in that thread, but yes, the computer allies are awesome considering they cover what the player lacks! I just hope their mission where I have to defend my ally to death won’t give me PTSD like mission 7 of this campaign. 😜 

Anyways, chat with you there!

well, deploying on top of your ally is the exploits I was refering, as you no longer deal with the enemies but you ally which have a gigantic base. The drops were made so even if you move units around the enemy still focus on you; of course, the units produced on the enemy main base are still enemy with both. You ally is kind of useless (they have a hard time grouping units), but as gigantic is their base and lots of units around it is really too hard for the enemy AI to even destroy it.

Hard to tell, but the main difference is that the enemy won't come from multiple directions, once you get going on the campaign you will see that most of the time the enemy just come from 1 direction. That defending mission is that, lore-wise, that specific ally is a bombing specialist (super-weapons) so it lacks at army.

In this situation, it is not a situation of "random Ai vs random AI the results will varied" and more a "player vs Ai but you cannot deploy turrets to protect yourself since you are not protecting yourself".

that mission may make you to restart a couple of times, but mostly because the AI does something unique on their waves that the first two times you may no realize. I won't spoil, just paid attention at the enemy and you will fine.

Both Butlerian and Coalition are hard campaigns, but the main difference is that on butlarian you will have to deal with lots of enemy drops from multiple directions. On the coaltion it is the "golden rule"= no drops. So you may die against the enemy that build fast, not because he just drop 2 missile tanks and 5 troopers behind your base that you have to paid attention.

One thing is true, if you are in top area and the enemy is at bottom, place your units well (like tanks behind, troopers at the front, some trikes/quads in bewteen) and you will have a more easy time that just having them grouping in random position.

[Ghost.B88]

Ah I see what you mean by exploits now, but I thought the last mission of anti-fremen was meant to be played that way because you get an MCV to start the mission instead of a Con Yard. In fact I thought all missions were designed with that in mind, so when I see a MCV to start, I’m thinking where can I move this thing to start in a better position, and my Allies come to mind. 😄 

haha yeah, tough but fair is how I like it. Defending against drops around the base gets old when you play the same mission multiple times, and it’s no fun to watch when a YouTuber moves all his / her tanks to the drop positions before they arrive as if they played the mission  million times.

I’ve seen people put troopers in front of tanks and works well, but for me, when a siege tanks comes, all my troopers die  

So I’d rather put my troopers to the side or behind in guard mode so the tanks soak up siege fires first. But nothing works better than building turrets and out siege tanks behind them.  

[Cm_blast]

12 hours ago, Ghost.B88 said:

Ah I see what you mean by exploits now, but I thought the last mission of anti-fremen was meant to be played that way because you get an MCV to start the mission instead of a Con Yard. In fact I thought all missions were designed with that in mind, so when I see a MCV to start, I’m thinking where can I move this thing to start in a better position, and my Allies come to mind. 😄 

haha yeah, tough but fair is how I like it. Defending against drops around the base gets old when you play the same mission multiple times, and it’s no fun to watch when a YouTuber moves all his / her tanks to the drop positions before they arrive as if they played the mission  million times.

I’ve seen people put troopers in front of tanks and works well, but for me, when a siege tanks comes, all my troopers die  

So I’d rather put my troopers to the side or behind in guard mode so the tanks soak up siege fires first. But nothing works better than building turrets and out siege tanks behind them.  

the reason you start with a MCV is mostly because when you play the previous one, the imperial gets some units and a MCV, so the beggining of the mission 10 is exactly how mission 9 ended (except the Harkonnen AI base that it won't be the same). Nowadays I could replicate both the positino and the way the units look at the start of a mission, but on that era units always face up, but still, you start mission 10 as imperial the same way they get the units/MCV when you take the enemy base, it is like a continuation.

Other times I place MCV is because for example the Imperial side was never mean to be played as, so it has a "oversight". To deploy the High tech factory, the game requires any of the three Constructions yards. If you have the Atreides, you get the Atreides High tech, if you have the Ordos, you get the Ordos one. However, the imperial Construction yard doesn't count, which means you won't get to build the high tech.

Now, there is another "oversight", If you deploy a MCV as imperial, the game will give them the Harkonnen instead, this will give you access to the high tech factory AND the Harkonnen palace (if you mission has the highest tech). This means that if you play any mission with an CY as imperials already deployed and you build a MCV and deploy it, you will get access (if the tech allowed it) to those 2 structures.

For this reason if you play any imperial campaign of mine (or another house that reuse the imperial tech), you will probably start with a CY on early missions (as you don't have enough tech for the HTF) but later you get a MCV to deploy, it doesn't really mean to move them around, is more on to get the building. Sometimes you may get a CY directly if the mission don't really ask for a HTF (or it is not good to deploy it).

[Ghost.B88]

Oh interesting. I didn’t know the game asks an official imperial side and has to use the Harkonnen tech tree. So you are saying if the imperial side starts off with an MCV, then they get their own tech tree and can’t build Harkonnen palace and devastators?

[Cm_blast]

On 6/30/2024 at 7:29 PM, Ghost.B88 said:

Oh interesting. I didn’t know the game asks an official imperial side and has to use the Harkonnen tech tree. So you are saying if the imperial side starts off with an MCV, then they get their own tech tree and can’t build Harkonnen palace and devastators?

with a CY on the map (not deploying a MCV), you get all harkonnen structures except the High Tech and the Harkonnen palace
if you deploy a MCV (even if you started with a CY already), you will get access to those two

You still won't get Devastators, unless you specific capture a Harkonnen fact.

 

[Ghost.B88]

Interesting. Good to know!

[Zane0440]

On 5/27/2024 at 5:30 PM, Ghost.B88 said:

This campaign has been really fun!

However, is mission 7 bugged? The Machines seem to be wayyyy to powerful and aggressive towards the Fremen, so if I don’t eliminate a majority of the their factories and barracks, the Fremen will die before I can build even get a high tech factory for ornithopter bombings, which the mission intel hints at doing.

I’ve lost the game many times trying to build up my forces, so I think the only way to win is to rush early.

Am I missing something critical or playing this wrong?

Mission 7 is bugged in my case, at the start of this mission like 2 seconds, it gives me mission failure that I destroyed mercenaries which I didn't, unless its related to previous mission. How to avoid such bug?

[Cm_blast]

17 hours ago, Zane0440 said:

Mission 7 is bugged in my case, at the start of this mission like 2 seconds, it gives me mission failure that I destroyed mercenaries which I didn't, unless its related to previous mission. How to avoid such bug?

Did you download from this post or the all in one installer? (or any other site).
Also, if you played other custom campaign/mission prior to my campaign, your game may have loaded wrong stuff on it.

The butlerian is a vanilla campaign, which means it doesn´t use any mods, so you know for sure that it is not a mod of mine wrong applied (this campaign showcase intel and tactical map, but it is not modded in anyway). So what may be happening is that you applied whatever mod from other mission, and now the mercenaries (ordos) structures no longer exist, maybe whatever mod reused those structures for a different side, or removed from existing to the ordos/mercs side and, when trying to play my mission, they don´t exist to beging with, thus failing the mission, as mercs loosing any of the heavy/light factories or barracks is what make you loose.

So at the end, a random mod removed any of those 3 building from the ordos/mercenaries and because of that you "fail" the mission instatly.

Only way is to recuperate the game to the original state, either using files from the "MissionLauncherBackups" folder (if you have it), or reinstalling the game. I know the mission works fine as the previous user just played it right, hard, but right.

Edited October 10 by Cm_blast

[Zane0440]

Thank you so much for your time and quick response CM_Blast. Yes, I may know what caused this and I'll attempt to fix this, thanks for pointing it out for me (And yes, I downloaded it from GruntMods.com Update Blog).

Also, another issue occurred while playing New smugglers campaign: summer's solstice, S02V2 (scavenging the wastes), after I downloaded Grunt MoD 1.6.4, every time I play any mission, everything seems to work normally, but after I attempted to play that mission (S02V2), suddenly after like 5 min of playing, the sound went off, no sound at all and still the game works. Any idea what caused this and how do I fix this? I even tried to uninstall and re-installed and still no sound, doesn't matter which mission I play.

[Zane0440]

4 minutes ago, Zane0440 said:

Thank you so much for your time and quick response CM_Blast. Yes, I may know what caused this and I'll attempt to fix this, thanks for pointing it out for me (And yes, I downloaded it from GruntMods.com Update Blog).

Also, another issue occurred while playing New smugglers campaign: summer's solstice, S02V2 (scavenging the wastes), after I downloaded Grunt MoD 1.6.4, every time I play any mission, everything seems to work normally, but after I attempted to play that mission (S02V2), suddenly after like 5 min of playing, the sound went off, no sound at all and still the game works. Any idea what caused this and how do I fix this? I even tried to uninstall and re-installed and still no sound, doesn't matter which mission I play.

Wait, it seems that after I restarted/shutdown my laptop, the sound came back and its working normal so far, I'll keep you updated if anything comes up, still if you have any suggestions regarding no sound issue, I'm all ears and that way avoiding consuming your time for me LOL! I really like playing this game, specially the new campaigns you all came up with (other admins like Fedaykin, Luminar and many others), its fantastic and pretty impressive! I salute you all for your hard work, truly legends among legends! I never thought I'd play dune 2000 after all these years and you all made it happen which made me very delighted.

[Cm_blast]

8 hours ago, Zane0440 said:

Wait, it seems that after I restarted/shutdown my laptop, the sound came back and its working normal so far, I'll keep you updated if anything comes up, still if you have any suggestions regarding no sound issue, I'm all ears and that way avoiding consuming your time for me LOL! I really like playing this game, specially the new campaigns you all came up with (other admins like Fedaykin, Luminar and many others), its fantastic and pretty impressive! I salute you all for your hard work, truly legends among legends! I never thought I'd play dune 2000 after all these years and you all made it happen which made me very delighted.

Same, only reason I keep playing the game since the last 10-15 years is only because the custom missions, if not I would have this game totally forgotten (and only ocassionally playing the original missions once every +5 years).

Also, I just finished a new campaign, a sequel of a really old campaign of mine, which will be release really soon, so that´s even more stuff to play!