[Release] Coalition of Nobles - Dune 2000 Campaign

[Ghost.B88]

Hi CM_Blast, reporting back after playing mission 9, 10, 11 and 12!

Indeed mission 9 was harder than I thought! Initially I thought I was able to just simply defend and counterattack to win, but I underestimated the combined attacks from Ordos and Atreides. But once I took them seriously, I was able to win no problem.

The epilogue missions after 9 are indeed very different. I can see how many players don’t like it because the gameplay moves back to espionage missions and fighting by yourself with very limited tech, like mission 11 where we only have infantry, it was such a long grind to build up and counter attack, especially when tanks come and crush the infantry and fighting siege tanks with infantry…

But I think those missions are absolutely critical for the story! They compliment it very well! I love the trap the emperor laid in mission 10 so that in the subsequent missions, the coalition must establish back their foothold. Also playing as the other members of the coalition because their leaders were captured is a nice touch to the story and gameplay!

Anyways, awesome story writing skills and game design skills! How do you come up with the material? Are they actually from the Dune books?

Edited July 21 by Ghost.B88

[Cm_blast]

just consider that in the mission 11 case, there are multiple ways to defeat the Ais. For example, on the top right side of the map, There is an AI that has 1 barracks and 1 refinery only. Instead of going against the harverster (which can kill your units), you can go to the top area, and going on a narrow area with like 3 pieces of wall (or something like that), you destroy it and you can enter the base to either take the refinery or the barracks, either way, you fully nullified one AI.

On the bottom side, is similar, slighly harder but there is also an only infantry entrance, and the enemy only has light vehicles, if you destroy the fact or the ref, you also remove another AI. the Ai that focus on combat tanks and sieges is thougher because it doesn't have anything like that, but you don't really need to take every single AI, removing those 2 which are more weaker and easy to break will help.

Just as a reminder, the grenadiers have more armor, incredible more armor than usual. 2 grenadiers wins against 1 siege tank. The grenadiers have a different armor, I don't remember which one but think of them as Combat tanks but with hp and movility of an infantry. So troopers can kill them easily, but trikes and siege tanks or even light infantry had trouble with them.

I didn't follow anything in particular. There is (or was) a wiki-page that had a list of names from houses, some are really well know, and others had just the name but not an entry. I think the Lassoki were the only ones that had an entrance but it was a 3 lines long containing just a bit of "the existed bewteen this and that year" but not more. I chose on purpose names that existed in some books, but at the same time being totally unknown houses so I could write my own story about them without canon problems.

The butlerian trilogy uses a line from the first book that mention an era where humans using AI machines to control and slave other humasn. This is why On that campaign the Emperor is the mastermind and there is no any kind of advance skynet that controls all the AI. Either is an human, or just a machine following their programming with no real goal.

The only story I made following the first book is the  Frank's herbert, with some liberties here and there. And then it is Feda´s war of assasins that took some parts of the books for characters and certain events.

So probably the closest is my Frank Herbert one, which also I made (briefing wise) simple enough for people that didn't read the book (nor saw any movie) to see where the story is going withouth going too much in detail.

[Cm_blast]

Small update: on mission 2. the enemy was suppose to deploy the MCV on top of where the player starport was, but due a different logic used on the lastest .exe of the game, the game stopped considering that area "deployable" making the enemy to move the MCV on a different area. Everything else is unchanged.

[Ghost.B88]

Ah yes, it was indeed mission 11 where we had to fight with infantry only, I corrected it from "mission 10". Thank you for figuring it out by reading the context.

I think that mission was also challenging and grindy because Dune 2000 doesn't allow unit wiring, so clicking so many times to build one single infantry at a time is tedious, making the battle drag for a long time. But yes, once you have a large enough group of infantry, you can move out and explore enemy weaknesses. I only lost that mission once in the beginning when I didn't pay attention to the siege tank and lost all my infantry.

Anyways, I just beat mission 13. I thought the beginning of the mission will be very difficult due to the lack of resources, but somehow I made it through with the few quads and tanks plus a turret. Whew!

The Harkonnen attacks do get very strong later on so one must be ready to lure them into the rebel's base, or else it's not possible to hold with just starport ordered units. Anyways, very fun and innovative mission!

Ah thank you for giving insight on how you write the campaign plot. Even though they're not from any books, they are of equal quality! 😀

[Cm_blast]

22 hours ago, Ghost.B88 said:

Ah yes, it was indeed mission 11 where we had to fight with infantry only, I corrected it from "mission 10". Thank you for figuring it out by reading the context.

I think that mission was also challenging and grindy because Dune 2000 doesn't allow unit wiring, so clicking so many times to build one single infantry at a time is tedious, making the battle drag for a long time. But yes, once you have a large enough group of infantry, you can move out and explore enemy weaknesses. I only lost that mission once in the beginning when I didn't pay attention to the siege tank and lost all my infantry.

Anyways, I just beat mission 13. I thought the beginning of the mission will be very difficult due to the lack of resources, but somehow I made it through with the few quads and tanks plus a turret. Whew!

The Harkonnen attacks do get very strong later on so one must be ready to lure them into the rebel's base, or else it's not possible to hold with just starport ordered units. Anyways, very fun and innovative mission!

Ah thank you for giving insight on how you write the campaign plot. Even though they're not from any books, they are of equal quality! 😀

Has been implemented the concept of "auto-queue", so far there is only one campaign that have it, but I have in mind a sequel to a very old campaign of mine with that. Long story short, you click on an unit, like a trooper, and the game will continue to do it until you have less than an amount of money (based on what the creator set). So I hope that turns different.

Is also true that on that mission the recoletion of money is not as fast as other missions, and the enemy is not that aggresive, so that balances it out a bit.

Mission 13 is harder the more take you take, as the enemy will send bigger and bigger units, or simply your resources on the starport won't be enough to hold. So it is a bit a "against the clock" mission. Once you have your repaired refinery, you can deploy a MCV and use the rebels to help you you win, but overall I wanted to bring that you are the bromeli, and you have the limitations the bromeli have on the game when they are your ally.  you get enough to hold or even to do a bit of a push back, but on your own you have no chance (so the rebels are there). Although it is true that to not make the mission too boring the amount of units you can order on the staport is faster than usual.

Well, It seems that you have properly finish the non-arrakis mission, so now it is time to return to the desert planet and to complete it.

you are not too far to finish, so if you want to play the sequel of this campaign I did a small change on a mission on the bonus mission on the sequel, so I hope everything is good there.

[Ghost.B88]

Wow Unit queueing sounds very cool! Like the Axotl tanks in your Theilaxu missions. Will it deduct money when new units queue out?

It would have been a good idea if the original Dune 2000 game allowed players to train groups of infantry like Dune 2. For example, an upgraded barracks can now train a squad of 5 troopers for 5x the trooper cost, and a whole squad comes out. That would alleviate the queueing problem too.

Anyways, looking forward to try your queueing solution.  

Oh I didn’t even realize mission 13 had faster starport unit refills. Cool!

I just played mission 14 over the weekend and the beginning was a lot harder than I thought! (Or I messed up too much micro-ing the infantries) I lost 4 times when my infantries got crushed by tanks or didn’t focus fire on enemy units enough. But anyways, I’m glad it’s done.

Mission 15 looks mad hard if one must stop the convoys from reaching the end. I’m thinking of parking massive amount of troopers in the convoy landing spot, but also afraid the sonic tanks will kill then in one hit. Lol. We’ll see.

Cool! Thank you for updating the bonus mission. Did you update both bonus missions or just the New Enemies one?And does that mean I should re-download it here?

[Cm_blast]

Unit queueing is like playing a moderm Rts, that you click 10 times on an unit to be produced 10 times. Dune 2000 doesn't have that, but we manage to do kind of similar. You click on that unit and the unit will repeat producing itself until your cancel it. You can run out of money and all like just traditional, but if you just want to spam troopers instead of having to paid attention to the queue and keep clicking every few seconds, you can go full focus on whatever fight against the AI is while the game keeps producing troopers for you as long as you have enough money.

On dune 2000 you cannot train in group but they group already, so I guess they didn't want to just build 3 troopers in 1 click.

I made 13 to refill faster just because it was too boring waiting for them, it is not that much faster, but at least you can order at least 1 or 2 units more often.

For the convoy mission it is suggested to have quads and, if you can, have them not close from the enemy drop landing, but when they arrive you can send the quads and, if possible, attack them from behind. Enemy's sonic tanks and devastator may try to turn around but then turning around again and keep moving foward, ignoring your quads. Another good alternative are combat tanks since the Ordos combat tank is the faster and the one that shoot more often of the 3 combat tanks, You use the same tactic of attacking them from the flank or from behind.

Just to be clear, you are not forced to stop the convoys, it is not a main target. If one of the enemy convoy reach their base, the AI will began producing the 3 special tanks. This makes the enemy attacks stronger, since the AI will produce both traditional tanks and special tanks at once. Sure, the enemy waves now will be stronger, but you can still deal with them, you just may need more efford to protect your allies or when attacking.

So if you are having trouble having managing to both building your base, protecting it (or your allies) and also stopping the convoys, just ignoring them, try to focus on your army instead. Just keep in consideration that the worst you can do is placing units where the enemy is landing, they will insta-shoot, but if you place units on the path you may get 1 or 2 to be killed (if your troopers are not being crushed over).

 

I only updated the sequel one. The bonus mission on the first half (the one you are playing) is just a callback of old modders. big maps, multiple sides figthing against each other, both player and the enemy gets units for free with deliveries, massive bases... gameplay wise is just simple, but it is not canon.

The sequel bonus mission is a callback to dune 2, the tileset, the way the AI behaves, the way you can get attacked by Fremen (using troopers, not the fremen unit) from any position instead of being produced by the Atreides Palaces... and so on. The update was because with the new exe the starport prizes weren't updated properly, cost of the units should be sometimes cheaper and sometimes more expensive (just like in dune 2).

[Ghost.B88]

Ah unit queueing mod sounds cool! I’d like to try it!

 

Ah shucks, I was gonna fill the landing space with troopers to 1 shot all the special tanks as they drop. I guess that’s not feasible.  

I might end up just let the convoys slip and work on defending my allies.

If I don’t destroy the convoys, will they come back to attack me once they reach the enemy base? Meaning there is still value in destroying some of them before they reach the enemy base?

Also, how much harder is it to win the game if the enemy had special tanks? 
 

Ah I like that prices in Starports can go above and below the regular price. Emperor had that too. I wonder why Dune 2000 decided to always go below regular price.

[Cm_blast]

maybe if you fully cover the tile they drop with troopers you can kill them 1 by 1, but still, possible to just send quads to destroy them.

If you don't destroy the convoy, the enemy will produce them, I don't remember if the enemy still gets more convoys, I think not. You can try, the only thing is that you may need to protect yourself a bit more, but it is worth trying, if you feel multitasking is hard, maybe grouping units and just attacking whatever they send it is more feasible.

Probably they did it for balancing purposes. building a starport and not being able to order anything because the expensive cost may feel bad, but also since now the AI also can buy and the Ai always buy in order, from trike first, to siege tank last, so it would do damage to the AI if units could cost more.

Edited August 7 by Cm_blast

[Ghost.B88]

Ah I beat mission 15 and 16!

 

The convoys weren't as difficult to destroy as I thought! The initial quads were pretty much enough to destroy all the waves. I only had to build a few more. There are also 2 ledges the infantry can stand on without being crushed close to the drop zone of the convoys.

The more challenging part of mission 15 is protecting the Bromeli from getting destroyed. I thought I did a good job building turrets on their territory but they were still not enough. Good thing I didn't need to keep all the allies alive in this mission to win.

 

Mission 16 is interesting. I keep capturing the emperor's newly deployed construction yards, yet they keep deploying more! =D 

It was an interesting game of cat and mouse.

However, the newly build bases seem to only build structures and not any offensive units. Is that intentional?

Overall the mission isn't so difficult as my allies built up and helped me destroy the emperor together.

 

By the way, I see you have a scrapped version of mission 16 that's supposed to be harder. I played a little bit but couldn't tell where it is different, but indeed it felt a bit more challenging. Can you clarify where the challenge is? I might play the level if there's something unique about it.

[Cm_blast]

yes, I wanted to pretend that you were figthing only 1 AI, not 3, so like the player. Some people just capture or deploy on a nearest (to the enemy) area, and then deploy multiple turrets (sometimes extra factories for increasing speed or simply having the new units closer to the enemy). They are still 3 enemy Ais.

So pretty much this is a bit of "enemy sending lots of forces to hold your ally from the first wave", and then the AI keeps trying to push foward to break through and... meanwhile, he will deploy a bigger base (with more refineries, starport, and other structures missing from the main area). but also, deploying turrets on those 2 new other areas, so if you are too defensive, you will have to fight 2 Ais that will deploy around 15 turrets (both gun and rocket turrets), it will build other structures like barracks and outpost because are mandatory to deploy the turrets, but won't make use of the barracks.

If you let the AI live really long enough, it will start deploying pieces of walls. 100 total. The AI usually builds them in a diagonal-chess pattern, but since he is building 100 pieces, eventually due lack of room or just random, it may have an actuall good line up.

Mission has to go really really long for that to happen, but it is also true that if you let those Ais having so many turrets, your allies become almost useless.


The Scrapped mission 16 is much harder. The main thing on the mission 16 scrapped version is that your allies are almost completelly useless. On the actual mission your allies help, they send forces and they can do damage. Sure, if the enemy has turrets they will die, but even if that's true they still destroy some on every wave and, if no turrets are alive, they will do damage to the main enemy on the top side.

On the scrapped version, you fight 3 enemy Ais which use each one his own queue, which means they will attack with triple amount of units (a bit less since they only have 1 fact each, as that doesn't build as fast as having 3). But on the other hand, before you have 1 single AI trying to covering all the areas. Like the top one and the other 2, as it will try to protect. On the scrapped every AI will dedicate to defend his stuff only.

Other differences goes into for the scrapped version you have more spice and 3 blooms instead of 1, as you really need the money to not die against the enemies. And finally, on the actual map the AI deploy a CY and then multiple turrets, pretending what a player could do on a expansion area. On the scrapped map, they will actually start producing fully functional bases.

There are few other differences here and there, but those are the mains one. It is not like this mission is imposible´s level. But when I was playing it multiple times, I realize that the mission was pretty much "player vs multiple enemies" and your allies had no input, they could be removed from the map and won't make much difference. After doing so many missions that they are key to the mission (a player on their own can win, but having 2-3 allies will help a lot), suddenly having the final map being just a solo-player felt wrong. So I pivoted, I reduced the enemy aggresive, stopped making extra bases, in return the player have acess to less spice/blooms but your allies will have something to do to help you.

With this info, feel free to play it. And the bonus mission too although it is too simple.

And if you really want, you can go into the sequel straigh away. It is going to feel a bit different, as story wise, you defeated the major enemies, so now these "new enemies" will be weaker but it balances out because you won't have all the coalition to back you up. the coalition still exist and you will have help from them on the missions, but no longer is a 4 vs 1 enemy AI, it is more into 2 vs 1, or 2 vs 2 situation.

Edited August 11 by Cm_blast

[Ghost.B88]

Ah thank you for the insight! One thing I should report is that mission 16 crashes frequently if I'm playing higher than 1920x1080 resolution (it was fine for 1080p). The scrapped mission crashes even on 1080p resolution, so I couldn't finish the mission in my preferred resolution setting. I'm not sure why it crashes the game as the crashes seem random, and I can't pinpoint to any game event either.

That's interesting you can make the AI focus on building towers and walls.

Oh and regarding your previous comment on AI making starport purchase, I do notice they buy units in order only, and not based on need. I wish they bought units based on need or price.

[Cm_blast]

Sad to hear the crasers, it is interesting since both missions are very similar, just 1 enemy AI vs 3 enemy ais, but everything else is pretty much the same. Only reason I can see that scrapped mission crashing (It never did to me) could be that having 3 ais togheter in a small spot make them to have issues navigating. But if I recall those Ais have really low attack timers as they build fast but attack often, so it shouldn't be that, who knows. 

The AI has 1 specific rule on ordering units, it does it if the silos/refs are full (when it happens it insta buy). They will buy too if they have no other structures to deploy units, so the starport is the only thing that can give them units. Sometimes the AI order when it has lots of money, dunno, 10.000 maybe... but I saw them doing it on less amount, sometimes they do, sometimes don't (with all the refs/silos full they 100% does it all the time).

And I am not sure but maybe under attack and maybe if they have certain money they do to. Not sure if the AI will rush to order if the amount of initial units is not big enough (you know, when the AI use X amount of units to wander around the base, any other units being produced is waiting on the factories exit to attack theplayer).

On a campaign I did recently, the "vs ixian" one (you are not the ixian, you fight against them) I used events so the AI never orders early, it starts the mission with the value set to "0", so the AI cannot order even if any requirements (being attacked, storage full...). And later on, when it is sure that the player is developed enough, I let them order to increase their army and have a bigger attack. This is something that should happens on their own, but as mentioned, the Ai sometimes order early.

[Ghost.B88]

If this data point helps, the normal last mission crashed a lot when I played the game higher than 1920 x 1080 resolution. I noticed a specific mission for aimed for 1080 resolution so I turned it down and it ran fine. But somehow the scrapped version crashes even in 1080 resolution. Maybe it doesn’t crash in lower resolution?

it makes me think maybe the AI or the script miscalculated the map size and does something outside the map boundary?

ah thanks for explaining the AI logic for starport purchases.

 

p.s. I started playing the new enemies campaign and will circle back to the bonus mission since that one will take some time to beat. 

[Cm_blast]

19 hours ago, Ghost.B88 said:

If this data point helps, the normal last mission crashed a lot when I played the game higher than 1920 x 1080 resolution. I noticed a specific mission for aimed for 1080 resolution so I turned it down and it ran fine. But somehow the scrapped version crashes even in 1080 resolution. Maybe it doesn’t crash in lower resolution?

it makes me think maybe the AI or the script miscalculated the map size and does something outside the map boundary?

ah thanks for explaining the AI logic for starport purchases.

 

p.s. I started playing the new enemies campaign and will circle back to the bonus mission since that one will take some time to beat. 

Oh, bad timing, meanwhile I am doing the new house sequel, I also doing a few balance fix on the original one. Only about 3 missions will be easier, the defensive one will give you reinforcements (every other mission on the game give you at least 2, but this one none at all), including a harverster for free which will help making the 2º part of the mission less tedious.

Later on there is a mission with some enemy which is not just that it gets multiple reinforcements, but these don't go hunt right away, instead they group on ther base, which will happen is that if you don't deploy multiple turrets next to each other this enemy will overrun you.

also, Fremen gray color are a bit hard to see with Atreides units colors (hard to see which side the combat tank or the quad are) so I am also applying a small blueish color to the atreides so they are easier to see.

But anyway, the New house is easier than the Coalition and you defeated it already, so you can win that one even withouth the future balance-difficulty patch I will release. It just will have maybe 2 difficulty spikes that makes the mission harder than the next 2 missions after that one, but no mission is though that Coalition 9, for example. 

Edited August 14 by Cm_blast

[Ghost.B88]

When you say “New House”, do you mean “New Enemies”? As in the sequel campaign to the Coalition Of Nobles?

If so, which missions are you patching? I just finished mission 5, maybe I still have a chance to download the patches for the later missions.

I also finished the bonus mission of the Coalition campaign, and it was easy like you said. However, the game always crashes in the end with the error popup: “Too many deliveries, game tick =110000”. It was around 1 hour and 10 minutes in.

[Cm_blast]

I missread, since you were skipping the bonus I though that before finishing that and going into the sequel you started playing a different campaign I made named "New house". So nevermind. nNt so good for naming campaigns :P: new house, new enemies... too similar, and I am already stopping myself to not call the "new house sequel: more enemies".

I never had that error, and I don't recall anybody else reporting it, but I can see that it may be possible depending on the circunstances. At 100.000 ticks all the three enemies get 15 special tanks each one; the regular small deliveries (tanks- missiles - sieges) happens every 9.000, which it is a good timing to not mess each other, but I can see the AI doing an order before the 99.000 tick mark, then getting my delivery, then at 100.000 getting another in queue, while the AI in bewteen does a new one, but considering is exactly the 110000 is odd. I will check it.

good luck with the sequel, those early missions are not too though due having the numbers advantage, but let's see how you deal in some of the traditional 1 vs 1..

[Ghost.B88]

Haha “new house: more new enemies” is a good one for lolz! 😄 

Yeah the bonus mission for the original crashed when there’s only Atreides left and they only had a starport, hence they probably ordered all they can from it with the money they have left. 
 

oof, I’m not looking forward to the 1 on 1 missions since I like to have allies and fight in a big battle, and it’s sad to see the coalition is now fighting among themselves. 😢 

but nonetheless, I’ll play the whole campaign to see how the whole story turns out.

[Cm_blast]

7 hours ago, Ghost.B88 said:

Haha “new house: more new enemies” is a good one for lolz! 😄 

Yeah the bonus mission for the original crashed when there’s only Atreides left and they only had a starport, hence they probably ordered all they can from it with the money they have left. 
 

oof, I’m not looking forward to the 1 on 1 missions since I like to have allies and fight in a big battle, and it’s sad to see the coalition is now fighting among themselves. 😢 

but nonetheless, I’ll play the whole campaign to see how the whole story turns out.

I wanted to do some kind of progression, and you need actually new enemies to fight against. Good luck, hope you like the Lassoki´s homeworld planet, there are new resources and an interesting set of fights. You will see that one mission has 3 versions. It is not needed to play the 3, it just changes where you deploy, if north, east or south. I mean, if you want to play the 3 versions fine with me, but in any case, check the briefings, as every version has a advantage or disadvagate depending on the version you play, so read to see which you prefer.

The intel has a summary of the pros and cons of every version if you want a quick check instead of reading the whole briefing (the briefing is the same except for some lines).

Edited September 1 by Cm_blast