[Release] The Ixian Problem (Dune 2000 custom campaign)

[Cm_blast]

About time I bring a new campaign to the table, an Imperial campaign that have the Ixians as the main enemy during it.

Story: 
The story of this campaign is simple. The challenge issued by the Emperor have all the 3 Great Houses of Atreides, Ordos and Harkonnen, figthing for the control of Arrakis. The Emperor has send both his mentat and his best commander to oversight the dispute and being sure that nothing wrong happens. However, soon some Ixians appears into the field and start messing with all the 3 Great Houses by unknown reasons.

The Emperor order his Mentat and his Commander to take action and expel the Ixian from the planet.

Campaign: 
This campaign is using vanilla stuff, which means it has no mods on it. However, the Ixians will have access to units you cannot normally get. These units are produced by the Ai itself, they are not being delivered. This means that sometimes, when the Ai produce a light infantry, there is a % chance that the unit will convert into a grenadier. With this method, the Ixians will have access to multiple units and different versions of the same/similar unit.

Also, all the Ais will start with the refineries and silos full of spice, but this will actually help players as you won't encounter an AI with initial 10.000 credits that stores 15.000 extra due the refineries/silos. For this campaign, if an AI silos are empty, it means it has no money left.

The player, on the other hand, has access to reinforcements (the Ai doesn't!!!); on top of that, the player also has a chance of getting Sardaukar for the cost of a light infantry or a trooper. This is a random chance, but player will get to use Sardaukar even if the Imperial Palace is not even there. The reinforcements will bring units during the whole campaign in endless loops. The game will provide a timer on screen to tell the player when the next reinforcement will arrive.

Difficulty differences (new 2024 update): 
This campaign has differences depending on which difficulty you are playing (on top of the default differences of cost/speed of units/structures).
Easy: The Ai starts with only 10 credits and it has to do all the upgrades,
Normal: The Ai starts with all the upgrades done from the beggining of the mission.
Hard: There is only 1 mission that make use of the specific hard difficulty, and it is a non-traditional base so there are extra obstacles.

Screenshots:
Ixian army attacks with a combination of infantry, troopers and grenadiers.

Imperial may get Sardaukar when training Infantry or Troopers.

Imperials helping the Ordos to hold Ixian attacks

Ixian base heavily wiped out after a tough battle.

Sardaukar avoiding Ixians patrols.

Teaser:

File: 
The Ixian Problem.rar <-- there was a bug on mission 1 (hard difficulty only) where the AI was removed all the credits.
Little Warning: When completing the missions (most of them) an error may show up, it is an error tied when using the Sandworm side (ixians). It only appears after you finish the mission (mission accomplished) so it won't have any effect during the actual gameplay.

How to install:
This is a vanilla campaign, which means that it doesn't use mods nor any other custom/added asset.
Download the file and extract the rar file and move "data" folder into the root folder of your game (or simply move the files inside the "missions" folder into your "missions" folder).
Be sure to download the lastest exe from klofkack to avoid crashes while figthing against the sthealhed unit.
Download the required 2024 Exe from this post: 

File name are in spanish, but on the launcher and in-game it should show up on english (if not report to me).

Update 7th March 2024.
Due a issue with the exe, there was something I couldn't do withouth crashing the game: making all the fremen (units and vehicles) to be sthealed. Currently, on the new stable exe recently provided, that is no longer an issue, so the missions have been changed to add that (plus other balancing issues).

Although the campaing is still a vanilla one (so there is nothing modded in here), it is needed the new exe from this year, which you can check/download from this post:

Withouth this one, The missions that have Fremen on them are prone to crash.

Balancing:
-Now all The fremen units (infantry and vehicles, but not harversters) are sthealded. Fremen (the unit) will have 80% of the total hp instead.
-On hard difficulty, the enemy no longer will fill their silos/refs every time a harverster unload spice. This means that now the game is played the same (besides speed/cost) on either normal or hard difficulty. Easy difficulty still keep the enemy AI starting with just 10 credits and require to do upgrades for all their buildings.
-Mission 6 still have some differences depending on the difficulty chosen, but the units you get later have more hp (almost full hp now).
-On mission 8 there was an exploit that allow the player to build a MCV. Not fixed, but the unit will explode instead.
-Other minor changes or fixes.

Edited March 7 by Cm_blast

[djbaskan60]

Hello, Thank you for new campaign.  I can't log in for a while. I'm glad the new campaign happened.

But ,  I get the following error in every section.  Can you help me ?

Best Regards

[Cm_blast]

it seems you may have applied a mod from somebody else and then you tried trying to play this and the game is mess up, like a mod that had "flame tank" but here doesn't exist and show up that error.

This is a fully vanilla campaignm which means it has no new units, no new colors, not intel nor tactical map, nothing fancy at all, just a straigh regular campaign with vanilla values on it.

only way for you to fix this is to reinstall the game unless you figure out which mod you used the last and trying to recuparte the original (if using the mission launcher check the folder "MissionLauncherBackups" that it creates, you may find the original files in there), if you played any specific mod by just appling the files manually/directly then you altered your game forever and has to reinstall.

There is 1 error that will probably appear during most of the campaign, but this is when you finish the mission and it has to do with the "ixian/sasndworm" side that don't show the screen-score correctly, but this happens after the "mission win" so no issues there and it won't afect the gameplay.

Hope you get it played soon.

Edited October 29, 2023 by Cm_blast

[djbaskan60]

Hi,

Thank you for information.

I understood. I installed the latest version of Dune 2000: GruntMods Edition. Error is the same. What should I install for play? I forgot most of the things. Is there a vanilla campaign link?

Best Regards

 

[Cm_blast]

 

6 hours ago, djbaskan60 said:

Hi,

Thank you for information.

I understood. I installed the latest version of Dune 2000: GruntMods Edition. Error is the same. What should I install for play? I forgot most of the things. Is there a vanilla campaign link?

Best Regards

 

Since gruntmods is pretty outdated maybe there are other issues or minor files that gruntmods don't even have, which I am thinking it could be the possibility.

My suggestion is to download dunemaster version from this other post here:

Just to be clear, gruntmods and dunemaster are both the same game, just different name, they both works the same, is just that gruntmods did his own webpage and dunemaster version was done by another person and hosted on a different page (although right now the page is down, but the forum one is still available). The only difference is that gruntmods no longer updates so to play the original campaigns should works fine but for certain custom missions it will trigger diferetn errors. 

dunemaster it is often updated so it will included any possible file you may have missing, so to avoid having to check files individually try this.

This also includes all the mods ready to be played (except this one), but this one you can move the files into the "mission" folder and you will have all again. Dato prepared the packaged to be "plug and play", so it has every custom campaign and mission withouth having people to worry about it, you simply open the launcher, you will see all the custom missions-campaign there.

Just remember this ixian problem campaign is too recent, eventually it will be included too; but moving the files on your own is enough.

hope that other version works fine.

 

Edited October 30, 2023 by Cm_blast

[Cm_blast]

First post updated.

I always had in mind Fremen being sthealed (that's the reason why they build so slowly and the units don't have 100% hp. But some bug on the exe would crash the game (at random intervals, but very often while battling the Fremen units).

the current stable Exe provided by Klofkack fix that, so I could recover that gimmick. The fremen (the unit) no longer has 100% hp either, same as vehicles, but all of them are sthealed. The AI still builds really slow and the Fremen are barely considered an enemy but more "these annoying little guys".

On top of that, seems that people overall didn't like too much the idea of the enemy AI filling the silos/refs on hard difficulty even if just 1 single harverster is alive. I completely removed that. this means that now, both on normal and hard difficulty the missions plays the same (except for the cost/speed production from the game itself); mission 6 (the only non-traditional base) is the only mission that has difference per difficulty, but I toned down the difficulty on that one for hard difficulty as well.

There are other few fixes here and there. Overall, only 3 missions plays slighly different on normal (Fremen being invis), and on hard difficulty the AI no longer will be able to have "unlimited" money so hunting harversters is an actual valid tactic.

just remember to download and apply the new stable exe from klofkack, link on the first post, or otherwise the game will crash in at least 2 specific missions a lot (and depending on luck, even unplayable).

Edited March 7 by Cm_blast