[Release] Arkanon tileset

[Fey]

for those with no attention span or who are only having a glance: CHECK THE FIRST POST UNDER THE OP FOR A PLAYABLE MISSION AND THE FULL / EXPANDED TILESET. THE OP HAS ADDITIONAL INFO AND A VANILLA-COMPATIBLE 800-TILES VERSION OF THE TILESET, WHICH MIGHT BE USEFUL FOR MAPPERS LOOKING TO MAP FOR CO-OP BECAUSE MULTIPLAYER DOESN'T HAVE THE COOL NEW FEATURES YET. HOPEFULLY SOON THOUGH. ANYWAY, YEAH.

hallo. this thing is almost done, so I guess I'll put it out there kinda sorta maybe a little. technically the tileset is complete, but I'm still working on the playable example mission (check the post after the OP), and I'll be continuing to make tweaks to the tileset until that's done, so... ya know, it ain't official just yet it's official now! good luck and have fun!

anyway, here's a full map image of the current state an earlier draft of the debut mission-to-be:

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and here's an image of just the starting area. this is the sort of thing that will be pictured in the tactical map, so it's not a spoiler. I mean, you clicked on this thread to get a look at the new tileset, yeah? surely this is fine! nobody had better come complaining to me later about spoilers when I hid the full map image!!

this tileset is hand-drawn primarily by ZoeO, AKA my sister who did the lovely splash art for the Summers' Solstice campaign, among other things like those new Barracks we've been seeing in-game, the new smuggler sand mouse or mercenary rock dragon minimap emblems, and more

this download link is for d2k editor v2.0-compatible mapping assets. again, nothing playable here just yet, but check the second post in this thread for a playable example mission. if you're a mapper and want to mess around with the tileset, knock your socks off with this zip. you can find a summarizing list of credits under the FAQs section around the bottom of this post. also included are .r16s of the recolored crater assets. auto-smooth works for water and water bridges too, making that easier to map with
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Gb2I4-xpLj1UG5rShNWdwna-RSloT6yG/view

what's auto-smooth? it's that feature you might be familiar with from Arrakis maps that automatically paints borders. shift+click the edge of a whole buncha painted water tiles like the first screenie here, and you'll wind up with the second screenie. makes painting water or water bridges very simple and easy

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EDIT: I was made aware of an issue with auto-smoothing on vertical bridges. for some reason I'm not yet aware of, horizontal bridges are auto-smoothed perfectly around water, but vertical bridges are not. you can paint a vertical bridge on any other terrain, auto-smooth it there, and then use select mode to drop them where they're meant to be. my apologies for the inconvenience. also, the bridges MUST be square! they don't have turns and whatnot!

EDIT 9/27/25: turns out there was a conflict between an editor attribute and the paint group vertical bridges are in. for some reason, that messes up auto-smooth. I updated the zip and moved the paint group over one. it's the same link; just redownload it and vertical bridges will auto-smooth as expected

before I continue, here's a clip testing the first five minutes or so of the debut mission-to-be linked in the second post in this thread
https://streamable.com/04dlae

EDIT 9/27/25: also, I did a lot more polish on this here test mission. took some more clips, threw 'em up on Streamable... spoiler alert!
https://streamable.com/g04e9w
https://streamable.com/sxc06d
https://streamable.com/9n5o07
https://streamable.com/eitr1b

this is the entire mission, so, spoiler alert, obviously xD apologies for my cruddy macro; it was like 5 in the morning and we did some insomnia ahh gaming. still, this should be a decent showcase of the new features

this mission is released, and you can find a link in the second post in this thread. I'll be working on the art assets for these new units now that the debut mission and the expanded tileset are released

all that said, the details for that first Streamable link from before this edit in the post continue below:

this streamable link will expire eventually, but it's here for now to give a peek at what will be the first playable mission, by me at least, on the tileset

it's rough around the edges and totally unbalanced at this stage. my intent with this test was merely to examine the macro game rebalancing, and I got a pretty good look at how the early game goes. very safe build order, lots of production off two refs and four harvs with hard mode's build costs, and I would have had more income after getting a couple of rigs up on the southern island. when I tweak the AI so they don't send end-tech stuff in their first attack, this should feel pretty good

anyway, below is a list of features, some purely about the aesthetic and some involving concepts and plans I have for this tileset. no spoilers, really, this is just hidden for the purpose of sectioning and condensing the thread. it features:

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 - primarily-shale plateaus upon which players may construct their bases. shale is not exactly the best building material, so concrete rules from d2k can be justifiably preserved
 - vast salt flats making up the sand-equivalent terrain. sans the sandworms, of course... but there are plenty of other dangers hidden in the environment
 - pink salts as the harvestable resource. these crystals have practical applications in the construction of energy-based devices, such as hovertech, shield generators and laser weaponry, so the locals mainly make use of these things. we have a variety of recolors available for the salts, such as RA ore gold or TS tib green or blue. Spice blooms are not intended to be used with this tileset, so the salts can be mined out of the map
 - dedicated Mining Rig build locations. those big salt crystal clusters on the bottom side of that screenshot, to the right of the Carryall wreck, are drawn to fit perfectly underneath a Mining Rig's sprite. these are an element of counterbalancing against the salts being depletable
 - low-floating corrosive chemical mists that erode non-hovertech units that wander over them. Arkanon's lowlands are completely submerged in this substance, so only its upper regions, its aetherlands, are livable. from orbit, the world looks like a gas giant. the mists assets are not pictured in the above full map image
 - purple infantry rock-equivalent crystal formations. these are solidified mists. while harmless in this state, and even able to protect infantry from being crushed and obstruct vehicles, the crystals are not particularly valuable except in the usage of chemical weaponry
 - purple specks can be seen in the concrete (as ConYards use locally available materials), more-so when illuminated by light fixtures built in to the building skirts. d2k's art is very bright and this tileset is naturally dark, especially its buildable terrain, so the addition of lights within turrets' towers or in those building skirts is our attempt to correct the lighting discrepancies without a complete revamp of all building sprites in the game, which would be a headache of brobdingnagian proportions
 - water! complete with fish, able to support alien flora (like trees), and traversable by hovertech or naval units, both being heavily used by the natives. Kipp is responsible for the water assets, and you may remember them from a couple of Summers' Solstice maps or from Flippy's Great Battle of Arrakis campaign. he kindly recolored them for use with this tileset, and I was responsible for blending them with ZoeO's salt flats tiles. she later gave them faded purple highlights like the cliffs and shale/flats borders have
 - an immense underground bunker with multiple entrances scattered around the livable regions. it descends deep into Arkanon's inhospitable lowlands. while mostly unexplored by humans, its inhabitants are the sole reason the locals settled on this world roughly ten thousand years ago. we now have an increased maximum capacity for tiles in a tileset! therefore, I went ahead and blended some Heighliner assets with the Arkanon ones, producing the superstructure entrance on the left side of the full map image up there under the first spoiler

I've been detailing progress on the creation of this tileset in a dedicated channel over in Feda's Landsraad discord server. if y'all wanna check out my diary, you can find it there. spoiler alert, obviously, but you could hang around the server anyway for all sorts of other d2k stuff. here's a link to the pinned thread which itself has a link to said server:

I'll go on to elaborate on the development process and list answers to some frequently asked questions here though

first, here are a buncha development screenies. apologies in advance for crashing your computer if you look under here; there are a ton of images. I guess maybe it might help that most of them are hidden under secondary spoilers? maybe?

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these are the very first assets that were drawn for this tileset. they were a texturing test, familiarization with tile size, choosing of the palette... it was always envisioned to have rather monochrome colors, black and white, with its main features being distinctly colored.

or, at least, those were the first assets my sister drew. after the tileset's concept was out there, Kipp drew these funny crystals on Arrakis cliffs...

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kinda pretty, ain't they? a bit too dramatic though. as you can see in the final result, if you look closely, we went on to use a very much faded purple coloration in the cliffs and shale/flats borders. that came much later though. initially, they looked quite different...

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we took obvious inspiration from existing Arrakis assets, but these are not traced. my sister is much too skilled to trace!! it was important to strongly refer to Arrakis assets for the sake of making cliffs mesh seamlessly, that's all!

these were in an extremely rough state and did not mesh properly with one another at this time. it took many revisions to get them looking correct. I wonder how Westwood did the original cliff pieces with how complex they are... 3D models, photographs and digital altering? vehicles' models could be seen in their sidebar icons. hand-drawing cliff assets was probably the toughest part of the entire tileset

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a lot more work was done to finish up the first draft of the rock/sand cliff pieces and rock/sand borders. with all that sorted, I plugged what we had so far into the BLOXMEGR tileset - the one used on S05V1 in the Summers' Solstice campaign - to get a look at how stuff meshed in-game

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and this is how all that stuff looked on the map itself:

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really puts into perspective how much goes into a new tileset when all that effort only takes up that much space, huh? now have a glance at your scrollbar on this webpage and see how much more there is to go... presumably, that's with all the following images hidden under spoilers, too!

we moved on to other tiles to try to fill in some of that space. the sand- and rock-equivalent terrain needed doing in order to smooth the cliff tiles, anyway. here was the first go at the buildable terrain, the sand-equivalent, and those chemical mists

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all this stuff takes up much less space than the cliffs do...

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...but it fills a lot more space on a map.

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with these pieces' first drafts completed, I could take some steps to try to address the meshing issues in the cliff pieces. even though the passable tiles themselves didn't mesh well yet, a little blending can go a long way! below is just one example of how broken the cliff pieces were

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so I took some shale tiles and put 'em atop the cliff pieces, and got to work erasing them strategically to try to keep some details, but blend them with the terrain meant to fall atop them

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eventually, we wound up with some better-meshing cliff pieces...

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and the result of that effort is here, along with a comparison to Arrakis terrain

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yeah. not exactly good just yet, yeah? and I hadn't even touched some of the cliff pieces, like those turns. this is only half the work on the cliffs, by the way. my sis worked over the sand cliffs next

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which needed their own blending done. you can see what a lack of blending looks like below the Arrakis screenie there for comparison, here:

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and the shale borders, too. needed to blend those. can't forget those

that was on Red Chasm, a skirmish / multiplayer map. yes, other multiplayer maps exist besides Habbanya Erg, believe it or not...

all of these pieces looked at thus far made up the majority of the main terrain of the map. another difficult component remained, however: the Spice. while there are only four thick Spice tiles, the thin Spice is drawn in a crapload of different ways depending on which adjacent tiles are harvested. fortunately, I had already done much of the preliminary work with determining how this plays out for when I designed the crates on the Heighliner tileset. we used those tiles as a basis then because their border lines make it very easy to determine where not to draw

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for comparison, have a look at this same reference image with Spice tiles. they are very bright and it's hard to get a proper read on them, ain't it?

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that, and new tiles have to be arranged accurately into that jumbled mess in the bottom right (every single time there's a new draft) because that's how the game reads thin Spice tiles

there were other custom tilesets to look to as well, but it turns out they're pretty bare-bones about their resources. many duplicated tiles. functional, sure, but not a good reference for what we had to do

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so my sis got started. from the looks of it, the original devs for the Arrakis tileset worked off one thin Spice tile designed to seamlessly mesh with itself, and airbrushed around it to get the various shapes it could take on. she is not one to cut corners though! no disrespect to the original devs, of course. the Arrakis tilesets look really nice. my sis decided to go a few extra miles though and draw each tile individually, so we get to see them shift and shuffle around as Harvesters suck 'em up

it started here. each time there was a new draft, I would arrange them properly in a tileset image...

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and then we would get a look at how they meshed, or didn't, in-game. only a small handful of thin salts tiles were done there, but they appear frequently and took up a good amount of space in the first test, also on Red Chasm:

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the thin salts tiles were going to be a long and arduous journey all on their own, so in the meantime, I looked for other problem areas that needed adjustment. Helkor very helpfully arranged, like, a bajillion different cliffs tiles in the editor and provided this map image, which made it much easier to see which pieces were screwy

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and did what little I could on my end to further improve the blending. lots of tile arrangement, lots of erasure...

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and then we had some better-looking rock/sand borders, and sand cliffs. or, shale/flats borders and flats cliffs, as they're called in this new tileset

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this was also around the time I started seriously thinking about how to bridge the gap between d2k's extremely bright entity art and this darkly-colored new tileset. this is a base on Red Chasm without any concrete underneath:

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which simply wouldn't do. concrete must be left in the game for the AI because it breaks hard if it can't build concrete under its buildings (maybe something Klofkac can tweak, but still). there was the consideration that we could do away with concrete rules because it's a new tileset, but concrete is also a fun and unique aspect of d2k base design when compared with other Westwood games. even if I'm personally not part of the Concrete Club™ and build my bases by committing countless OSHA violations, I appreciate what concrete adds to the game. and, the bedrock being primarily shale warrants its appearance

the opportunity to test concrete as a way to bridge the brightness gap came before long. water was not originally part of the vision for this tileset, but we have these lovely water assets Kipp had done up for Arrakis

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yes, heretical and all, yadda yadda. I don't care! it looks perdy!! and even if we don't see too many maps using water on Arrakis, now that we have these assets we can put them to use on this new world. Kipp kindly recolored the tileset with his magical photoshop wizardry and we wound up with a buncha different options

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and we even got this new asset for the dark cyan Kipp drew into one of my sis' cliff pieces:

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I got a LOT of opinions. the dark blue and dark cyan were close competitors, but dark blue pulled ahead in the end narrowly and was decided upon as the default color for the water on this tileset. seeking a place to test the assets, I relied on mission 27 (chapter 3, mission 7) of Flippy's Great Battle of Arrakis campaign. plopped a naval yard (it's a tech center in his campaign, but Kipp originally drew it for Feda's use on RA/TD temperate tilesets as a naval yard) in the water, and converted the tileset:

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the water rounds out the palette some: blue, purple, and eventually pink. the salts only started out as purple, but they were envisioned as pink, and we were gonna get more purple from the infantry rock and the mists, uhh... but anyway, uhh... yeah

the concrete was recolored along with the water, so I gave it a look under the buildings

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way too dark. doesn't help the lighting issues; doesn't work. how about we replace the concrete here with the brighter gray concrete from the Heighliner tileset though?

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nope. too bright. we needed something in-between

I thought: the building skirts are built into the tileset itself, so what if we slapped some lights in those? infantry rock were planned to be crystalline too, so maybe they could have a bit of a glowy or reflective look and give the impression of additional ambient lighting. or, at least that while the terrain itself is dark, the world is still lit up plenty. and then we had that idea to reskin turrets and maybe walls too, and fit some lights into them...

until we figured it out, there was more work on the salts to do. the first draft on all the thin salts tiles was eventually completed

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and I had a look in-game at some of the new units intended for use on this world. here are some hover tanks chilling over the water

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eventually, a test thick salts tile was done

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but it was extremely dark

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we needed to base it off the fully-surrounded thin salts tile, but that itself also needed touching up because it was so griddy-looking. we had also tried the first recolor at this time. it took some tweaking to get the right shade of pink, but that was the first shade we tested

while my sis continued her work on making the thin salts tiles seamlessly mesh, I set out to blend Kipp's water tiles in with my sis' salt flats

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although only subtly off only in texture thanks to Kipp's skillfull recoloring, every detail is important, and I wasn't about to half-ass this with my sis working so hard. we wound up with some cleaner water borders and salts before long

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the thin salts were really looking smooth now! I tested every combination, of course

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that blobby field on that mission of Flippy's wasn't ideal for testing, so I went to my expanded version of H9V2. here's an older screenshot, testing a prior draft of the thin salts with the much-too-funky thick salts test tile

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did I release these maps on the forum? the expanded versions of the vanilla maps, that is. I made some co-op campaigns with them, one vanilla and one modded. I posted them up in the Landsraad and Missionaria Protectiva... maybe I didn't quite make it official here. I intend to do a proper single-player campaign on those, so that might be why. I guess I should post 'em up regardless

anyway, some proper thick salts tiles were drawn, and the curvature of the thin salts' edge tiles was greatly improved

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TheRings0fSaturn, my generic infantry VA, kindly handled recolors for the salts after they were wrapped up

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it had gotten to the point that most of the tileset was filled out. we still had dunes-equivalent terrain to correct, concrete to do, infantry rock, special cliff pieces... so I marked the available tiles in the tileset to account for where I could squeeze in the infantry rock assets yet to be done

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we wrapped up the shale bedrock. after it was smoothed out, I blended it with the shale cliff pieces

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my sis did the couple of tiles we needed for the Mining Rig build spots too

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and then it was time to tackle the infantry rock. they don't have to mesh with one another, so they were actually on the easier end of things to do, though it took some effort and several opinions to figure out the right brightness level for them

there are even more Arrakis tiles than these, but surely there were sufficient infantry rock pieces to work off of here!

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after their completion, I cropped 'em outta the reference image...

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and then tried to choose some good tiles. we went on to expand the maximum capacity for tiles in a single tileset, but I still had to be decisive for the sake of the vanilla-compatible version of the tileset

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those screenshots are from a much later draft, by the way. each time a new draft was drawn up, I had to complete this process or some portion of it again in order to test brightness adjustments. the following is one of the first screenshots (from that mission of Flippy's I had been testing water on) getting a look at the new infantry rock, and they are dark! we had also implemented that turret reskin and artificially-lit building skirts by the completion of the first draft of infantry rock

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a tileset is hard to map with without presets in the editor, among other things. with so many tiles done, I set out to customize an ini for the editor. we're getting some very cool new tileset-related mapping features in the editor, but this served as a helpful basis for creating the .TLS file, helped me understand more about the backend, and it remains useful for v2.0 mapping. which to my knowledge remains kind of important for multiplayer

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the ini can be used to assign colors on the minimap

this isn't just for the editor, but can also show up in-game nowadays. this map the above image belongs to is mostly covered in salts... as that's cleared out, it looks more gray. and the Imperials are purple and ubiquitous on the rock islands

a bit later, we had those brighter infantry rock drafts done up

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the dunes-equivalent terrain was revisited

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and I went on to test the new drafts on that expanded version of H9V2. we got it all smoothed out eventually

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remember those purple crystals embedded in the Arrakis cliffs from way earlier on? that seemed like a bit of a busy design, too busy for impassable terrain. my sis portioned the cliffs well, so I did a crappy attempt at conveying this different idea. if we highlight the existing details and never touch the cliff edges, then we don't have to worry about messing up the seams between the pieces!

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we went with a more subtle, muted and also more purple coloration, similar to the infantry rock-equivalent pieces

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the tileset is largely on the grayscale, but it was my hope with this that that would appear like the deliberate stylistic choice it is. these are not unfinished sketches or something! it's an alien world with an alien look to it! the player should be the one to paint the map with color and light through base building, resource harvesting, and battle over the open terrain leaving craters and such behind

knowing that the salts can be depleted though, and figuring that the water could support something, my sis did up some pink trees for the tileset. she used the RA/TD temperate trees as a reference

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and those trees naturally took a few drafts to get looking right too

I also isolated some wrecks and barricades from Arrakis tilesets. I had to get rid of the river tiles in the vanilla-compatible version of the tileset in order to squeeze trees and wrecks in there. but after everything on that front was sorted, we wound up where we're at today. hello, Arkanon!

it is impossible to fathom how much effort this was without witnessing the absurdity of the development process. this is the extent of my sister's generosity - she's owed our highest praise for all her hard work! and I make sure any she receives is passed along to her, as she doesn't frequent this locale

I will be doing my best to justify all her efforts: make this tileset simple to draw for other mappers through carefully customized editor presets, come up with remaps for Arrakis tilesets so they can be quickly converted, characterizing it strongly through a passionately-crafted series of campaigns including old and new factions... all that stuff

here are some FAQs

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Q: Where did all this come from?
A: Nothing more than a dream. I dreamt once that we had a weird ass purpley tileset with chalky salt flats, great shale mountains, purple mists and pink crystals... and I mentioned it idly to my sis and she was like, "Hey, want me to draw that?" So I was like, "Yeah!" And then we started with this whole thing. She, uhh, didn't really know what we were getting into at the time, but stuck it through anyway, no matter how ridiculous things got, no matter what complications we encountered along the way to achieving my vision. I'll forever be thankful to her for all the effort she selflessly puts towards bringing my dreams to life.

Q: "Arkanon"?
A: That name also comes from a dream. Once, my sister was awoken early and, in her groggy state of half-sleep, muttered that we have to find the flight master in Arkanon, a city in World of Warcraft that does not exist. Considering the origin of the tileset itself, and the one drawing it, I remembered this amusing moment and bestowed the name upon this world.

Q: Are there any maps or something of this world? Like, world/concept maps. Not the in-game maps upon which we play missions.
A: Nope lol. However, I did come up with a buncha names for its regions. Arkanon looked kinda like a Greek word to me, so I've been going with a naming scheme involving corruptions of Greek words both for those region names and the natives' various units. Places like the Vathys Trench, Kydonos Basin, Ayyevros' Ascent, Mikros Shore, Ammodys Beach, the Kokytal Ashlands... translate some Greek words with the internet and see if you can jumble the letters or blend some words in a way you like, if you like that route and want to come up with some more of your own. As for the natives' units, you can see the Keravnos (thunderbolt) Laser Tank and Pyrkagia (conflagration) MLRS in the clip of the debut map up there around the top of the thread.

Q: Did you name anything else?
A: Kerasya trees. 'Cherry,' as in cherry blossom. Not that kerasya trees are the same thing, but they're pink and cherry blossom trees are a beautiful real-life inspiration for these, so, yeah.

Q: Can I use this tileset?
A: Of course! The download link to the assets for use in map making is up there, with a debut mission to come a bit later. Here are the credits:
 - ZoeO drafted and perfected the art. She also colored highlights on the water tiles.
 - I guided the vision, organized references and assets, and handled technicalities and implementation.
 - Kipp is the original artist behind the water assets, and recolored them for this tileset. He also recolored the craters.
 - Klofkac's work makes it possible to map with this tileset, not to mention that he expanded max tile capacity.
 - TheRings0fSaturn is responsible for the set of alternative colors we have for Arkanon's salt crystals.
 - Helkor assisted by helping to point out misaligned cliff pieces with the test map he drew up.

And I got lots of opinions from lotsa folks that helped guide the design in the most well-liked overall direction. That's a bit too vague and incidental though. The point being: Lots of people contributed to this tileset! Please attribute its assets properly to honor their hard work! Copy that list (replacing I with Fey in the second line) or link to this thread, if you'd like. If you want alternative colors for the salt crystals to swap in to the tileset, you'll find those under the long spoiler full of development screenshots. Just do a ctrl + F for TheRings0fSaturn.

Q: I wanna remap existing Arrakis maps to this tileset. How do I do that?
A: After picking up the assets and putting them where they belong, load any Arrakis mission and in the top bar, click Tileset, and then Change Tileset to Arkanon. It will make everything a jumbled mess. Go then to Map, also in the top bar. Click on Remap Tiles, and load up the appropriate ini. There's one for each Arrakis tileset to account for their differences. That's it. FYI, we have more advanced remapping capabilities nowadays! Like, we can randomize which sand tile those extra ones turn into, making conversions look much less samey. I'll be officially releasing those more advanced remaps with the debut mission for this tileset. Note that even then, remaps are NOT PERFECT and cannot account for everything! There are surely some tiles that will be screwy, especially where there are no equivalents, like with BLOXXMAS' bridges or BLOXICE's unique ice cliff pieces. I did what I could. They still save us an absolutely stupid amount of effort. If you want to tweak the remaps yourself, you'll find everything labeled and ordered so it can be more easily customized.

Q: How do I configure units to be amphibious?
A: There's a relatively new feature Klofkac implemented. Hit ctrl + X in a modern version of the editor as of the time of this post, like v2.3, and then mouse over the stuff under Restriction. Their tooltips will explain how it works.

Q: Hover animation on applicable units?
A: Export events is a thing. Refer to PsYcHo's smugglers restructure campaign, export the unit loop, import in your map. It's easy to find since it shows up colored in the events and conditions column. You can also find graphical assets for those new hover tanks over there, though more have yet to be created.

Q: Agh! Where is this campaign?!
A: Right here. 

 

Q: I'd like to use this tileset, but I need mission ideas... What kinda stuff goes on on this new world? Who should even be involved?
A: Questions below the following secondary spoiler get into spoiler territory for campaigns I'd like to put out later. If that doesn't matter to you, proceed. You'll get all sorts of insight into my plans for this world and the sorts of conflicts that might unfold here, and why. If it does bother you, then I'd just refer you to the list of terrain features around the top of the thread: Shale plateaus, vast salt flats, corrosive chemical mists, water and trees. Go wild. Maybe you can pit some factions against each-other over the trees, or something.

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Q: Okay, so we've got this new world to mess around on. Context?
A: Nothing that's been formally established, but here's the idea... Around the end of the Butlerian Jihad, remnants of the Thinking Machines fled somewhere humanity couldn't find them. Humans settle on this world after the Machines have burrowed down into its unlivable regions. A stalemate ensues. Simple setup, fine excuse to fight some robots or whatever cuz that's cool, lots we can do with that concept. ...For your information, the bit of Heighliner tileset in the debut map's full map image is mostly just a test of the expanded max tileset size. The conceptual existence of the Machines' bunker is just to justify large-scale superstructure interior macro missions since I'm not sure we have a suitable environment for that at the moment. Unless you were to draw a Heighliner without any Void tiles, but that only feels interior. It's in space. It's different!!

Q: The Machines aren't a new faction though. Cm_Blast did the Butlerian Jihad campaign, Thel'Vadam Flippy had Legion. New faction wen? Wen new faction? New faction? Wen?
A: The Order of Aether Knights was established to stand watch outside the Sarcophagus of the Thinking Machines. They hold total dominion over Arkanon's livable aetherlands. There are also The Culled, a small group of humans who don't submit to an Aether Lord.

Q: So there are three 'new' factions on this world. Let's start with the Machines. How big is this 'sarcophagus'? What have they been up to?
A: Nine layers, like hell. Portioned to let in the environment's greatest hazards if humans try to breach it. Big enough superstructure to support full-on macro battles in an interior environment. Underground mining efforts continue to maintain the remaining Machines' environment and keep a stockpile in the event of invasion - that being a breakthrough by the humans, or the opportunity to invade the aetherlands. The Machines are on the brink of annihilation and know it though. Regardless of their numbers and advantageous position, they keep to themselves. The Aether Knights, from repeated failure to breach or collapse their bunker, have only established defense lines at its exits around Arkanon's aetherlands. Not even they dare venture too far inside.

Q: The Aether Knights?
A: The 'natives' on this world who have been here since the end of the Butlerian Jihad. These ancient humans went through a bloody cultural revolution and maybe they stranded themselves here, or maybe even then they chose to remain. Whatever the case, their society is a social response to hundreds of years of battle against an unfeeling and uncompromising foe they're united in hatred of. They fall under the banner of one King who defends the crown through superiority in combat. The Aether Lords beneath each hold dominion over a section of Arkanon's aetherlands. There are quite a few of them, and they constantly wargame with one another to keep their teeth sharp. Although an isolated faction with no standing whatsoever in the Landsraad, they represent an extraordinarily capable force that has been keeping stubborn remnants of the Machines in check long after the rest of the Known Universe thought them utterly annihilated. And backing up their fighting prowess is a specialty in electronic warfare: ECM systems that throw off homing rockets, the ability to hack other factions' units and structures, superior surveillance tech...

Q: What about those Culled guys?
A: Basically the Fremen of Arkanon. They're forced to skulk around in the shadows because of The Order's dominion over the world. Having been subjugated time and time again and still refusing to submit to an Aether Lord is a rejection of reality, in The Order's eyes. The Culled are descendants of survivors of that bloody cultural revolution from long ago, and so hate The Order to such a degree that they actually would betray humanity if it meant the collapse of everything The Order had built. Their situation is a good excuse to re-use Dune 2000's Fremen assets. Stealthy hardened warriors.

Q: So what are you gonna do with these guys?
A: I'll elaborate beneath this tertiary spoiler.

Spoiler

There are five campaigns planned: Imperial Sardaukar (15 missions), Culled (8), smugglers & mercenaries (w/ the dual faction system, 15), Thinking Machines (7) and The Order of Aether Knights (15), for a total of 60 missions.

That might sound really ambitious. When Summers' Solstice was created, I had to customize eeeeverything on a very specific level. Variables make it easy to do all sorts of cool mapping tricks and can just be copy-pasted between missions to some degree. I also already have tons of maps drawn. It's ambitious still, sure, but in a different way.

Anyway, here's how it goes:

Dune 2000 happens, Sardaukar are kicked off Arrakis. The Guild is not happy that the Emperor's gambit interrupted Spice production and tells the Sardaukar, "Hey, you guys aren't going home until you pay off this debt. Go conquer this world for us. The natives are jerks." So the Sardaukar wind up on Arkanon and fight The Order on behalf of the Guild. They can't leave for a while anyway cuz the Aether Knights struck first when the Heighliner appeared in orbit, damaging some key navigation systems during their attack.

Playing as the Sardaukar in the first campaign of the series is also a chance to fight unfamiliar enemies with a familiar enough roster. Similarly to how, in Summers' Solstice, I deliberately kept vanilla-like units like those most similar to Light Infantry or Gun Turrets during the prologue, with only some occasional new units showing up. Arc 2 was when new stuff like Shotgunners showed up. Gotta give the player the chance to get comfy...

The Sardaukar eventually beat up the Aether Knights' king, with a little help from The Culled. Their ulterior motive, however, is to obtain forgotten information on the Machines' bunker whereabouts, as The Order doesn't just lock them down. They try to keep them secret, and blind the Machines to matters in the aetherlands. Their goal then becomes to sabotage the Aether Knights' defenses in the first level of the Machines' bunker, revealing to the Machines the extent of the chaos going on and providing a catalyst for their emergence.

That catalyst comes in the form of the smugglers and mercenaries, who are misled into thinking said bunker is actually a great vault. The Aether Knights are universally uninterested in the affairs of the Known Universe and have very different motivating factors... They're openly hostile to the Guild and even view Spice mutations as some kind of horrific attempt by the corrupt elements of humanity to emulate the functions of Thinking Machines. So where do they keep their wealth?! Surely it must be in this bunker!!!

Nope. So the Machines go join in the fun on the surface, the Culled formally join them, shenanigans ensue and the Machines wind up taking over the Heighliner. Oops, that's kind of a problem because besides Guild Navigators, Thinking Machines can also calculate fold space stuff. And they just killed the Navigator, so the situation is FUBAR for the humans.

Didn't the Guild see this coming with prescience? Well, maybe their ulterior motive for seizing this world wasn't for its salts or other resources, but to put an end to the Machines the Aether Knights are incapable of finishing off. It's not like foresight THAT far into the future is perfect, and it wouldn't be the first time they messed with stuff and brought shenanigannery upon themselves.

So the Aether Lord in the final campaign has to repel the Machines from the home front, beat up and induct some Sardaukar vassals, deal with yet more attacks by the Machines, butt heads with the Aether Lord responsible for failing to hold the primary line of defense outside the Machines' main bunker entrances, destroy the remnants of the smugglers and mercenaries that are hiding out in some corner of the aetherlands after having provoked the Machines, fight the remnants of the Sardaukar to decide the fate of the Heighliner, and then go blow up the compromised Heighliner in orbit. Many floors of scorched, twisted metal makes for a nice makeshift meteor to bury the Machines' bunker, cut them off from their forces on the surface and give The Order a chance to rebuild. It also makes for a big, perdy fireball. And wraps things up in a neat little bow, yay.

Q: Debut mission wen?
A: It's out! Check the second post in this thread!!

that's all for now. check back later the next post in this thread for the debut mission

Edited September 29 by Fey
official release time! horray!

[Fey]

the time has come!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vjWZ9eoLXpar6STEkWh8i9-ijP7VsRWz/

^^^ you'll find it under "Atreides" in "All Missions" in the Mission Launcher, as "Arkanon Debut Mission." many thanks to, primarily, Nguyen, Fo-ehn and PsYcHo, for having a look at so many drafts of this debut mission! y'all really helped during the design process

details and, if you need them, install instructions below:

Spoiler

this is the full version of the tileset. taking advantage of Klofkac's new developments that allow us to have more than 800 tiles in a tileset, this one goes up to 900, and the debut mission included in this zip to show off ZoeO's tileset and a variety of new features made possibly by Klofkac goes up to 1,000 tiles

although the TILESET is considered finished, with regards to new units and structures, MANY ART ASSETS ARE UNFINISHED. I know lots of stuff is rough-around-the-edges! I said I'm working on those after I release the full version of the tileset, so here's the full version of the tileset so I can go get to work on those. any strangeness on that front you happen to see on the debut mission, like Lyovros appearing at the bottom of the sidebar even though they're the Quad-equivalent unit for AK, or them using the Raider icon, should be ignored. I'll get 'em sorted eventually!

how to play? copy:

and paste:

the stuff under "editor assets" and "recolors & remaps" are for mappers to mess around with. for players, all you gotta worry about is that stuff ^^^ under the "game assets" folder. it's set up to be an easy copy-paste from the unpacked zip to your d2k folder.

that's all. go have fun!

if you're a mapper, are running into problems, or are curious about other details, including some details about the new faction playable on this mission, read on:

a cutting-edge (as of this post) version of Klofkac's exe is included for the sake of new features. a version of the d2k editor capable of reading this mission is also included. I've left notes all over the events & conditions window so y'all maybe have an easier time poking around in there. while the vanilla files will not be replaced, note that this exe is not yet considered stable. although no crashes have been reported by numerous testers, nor found by myself on this debut mission, there's always the possibility something in some other campaign gets screwed up. if this is a concern, consider just using a fresh install

also, if the Mission Launcher ain't properly copying files over, try running it in admin mode. got some bug reports related to that. sounds not showing up or playing properly may be a separate issue though; the ONLY folders with sounds for this mission in it are default and English. if you have d2k configured to use some other language and you're not getting sounds, try setting it to English and see if that helps

here's some info about the new guys' roster of units, or at least those that are finished so far, along with VA credits if the units have new voiceovers already

Spoiler

The Order of Aether Knights' basic infantry unit is a lasgunner / energy swordsman. Kilkakon voiced 'em over.

The energy swords ain't done yet, so you've just got lasguns to play with. Actually, the lasgunners ain't done either. They're using Sardaukar Trooper sprites as placeholders for their idle, death and prone frames, but their regular standing, moving and shooting frames are sorted thanks to PsYcHo.

Energy swordsmen and lasgunners are supposed to be available without a Barracks upgrade. I was thinking the rax upgrade would let them switch freely between weapons on the battlefield. On this debut mission, the lasgunners just get a damage boost from the Barracks upgrade.

With only lasgunners around, their infantry roster feels pretty plain at the moment, even though they are all-rounder infantry. Moving on from that, they have lots of new vehicles implemented, even though the art assets for most of them are not finished. One unit with finished art assets, including sidebar icon, is the Mavrys Buggy:

These guys are basically the AK Trikes. They're pricier and slower, but after you process data at the Research Center through the upgrade menu, they will be able to EMP nearby vehicles, turrets and infantry that happen to be wearing power armor, like those Sardaukar Flamers.

Yeah, I'm trying fire out on those guys. I hate the big tanks on their backs! Why do they have those if they're supposed to be minigunners? Ree! Hopefully this feels a little less immersion-breaking.

Anyway, 'Mavrys' is a corruption of the Greek word for 'black.' Like I mentioned in the FAQ in the OP of this thread, I went with a Greek naming scheme for the new faction's units and the regions of this world, since the world's name, Arkanon, looked vaguely Greek to me. This is a reference to its EMP ability, as in 'blackout,' at high tech. Also, Mavrys bears some resemblance to the English word, "Maverick," which isn't a coincidence. I'd like to give these guys suitably gung-ho voiceovers.

Hovertech units subjected to EMP only get their weapons and, if they have them, shields disabled. Propulsion systems are EM-shielded, as far as I'm concerned. Thus, they can still move around, because designing crash mechanics for an EMP'd hover unit would be a huge pain in the ass.

The Quad equivalent unit is the Lyovros Smelter, the guys at the top of this here screenie:

I really have no idea what suffix to give these guys. We had the thought that they have origins in the mining industry and when they're not used in combat to blast apart enemy armor, their plasma canons are helping to bore through rocks and stuff. They could be Lyovros Borers, Lyovros Excavators, Lyovros Smelters... it's very up-in-the-air right now. If y'all got any suggestions, hmu.

These guys were created on a whim by PsYcHo because the AK desperately needed an early-game brawler and anti-armor unit. Before their addition, I tried an RPG Quad-like setup for the Diakotn Howitzer, which I'll get to later. That was REALLY clumsy and didn't work out. Total crap. So, he whipped these units' voxel up and passed me the work-in-progress sprites for the Aether Knight Lasgunner, and both of those were implemented at the same time. Before that draft, the AK were using merc infantry (Shotgunners, Troopers, Grenadiers) and only had Mavrys Buggies and Diakotn Howitzers in the early game. Eugh...

Lyovros is based on the word for 'melt.' Like what they do to their targets.

Anyway, yeah. These guys have a warhead similar to Devastators, being units that use plasma cannons. Lyovros Smelters are basically light tanks you pop out of the Light Factory, and they make great companions for Keravnos Laser Tanks. The latter being the Aether Knights' main battle tank:

Yes, that's a shield. So what if it's on a laser tank? Look, if Westwood can do it in Emperor: Battle for Dune, then like hell I'm not doing it! Besides, those Ordos Laser Tanks were really cool.

With all the new macro systems making it much easier to amass a great army and stuff, I wanted to lean more into micro for this mod. Not that it's a good idea to make the main battle tank of a faction require lots of micro... that would be really crappy. Nah, these guys naturally do their thing as you move them around. So, like, it's kind of vague micro. Not like the Mavrys' EMP. You just have to decide when you want 'em to move, you know? And when to hit that S or G key to make them stop and return fire. That's something we already do with Combat Tanks, so it shouldn't feel TOO different.

See, their shield and weapon systems are mutually exclusive. If they're actively engaged in combat and returning fire, their shields won't go up. If enemies are focusing fire onto a Keravnos, the shield will stay up and it will not strike back. This produces an interesting dynamic where some of these tanks that have reached the enemy first will absorb damage for their friends, and their friends can put out the real damage. It also makes for an interesting new dynamic with rapid-fire weapons like Autogun Turrets, since they'll keep a Keravnos permanently suppressed.

Outside of brawling with enemies in this fashion, the shield also makes pathing errors more forgiving. Did your Keravnos decide to be stupid and wander through the enemy base? You might still have an intact tank, maybe, because its shield protected it the whole time it was on the move. And if you need your tanks in a certain position before you want to engage the enemy, the shields will protect them until they're there and you're ready to fight. It also facilitates tactical retreats, if you find you're being overwhelmed.

These are a pretty interesting new main battle tank. They can't crush enemy infantry, but their laser cannons are effective against all targets and they're easily more mobile than regular treaded vehicles, so... I know they will feel quite different, but I hope that makes them more interesting to play with or against.

Keravnos is the word for 'thunderbolt,' if you were wondering. Knick Knacky did their VOs, in a similar tenor to how the Combat Tank lines were done. Not by coincidence, he is the Pyrkagia MLRS VA's brother since the Keravnos is considered a counterpart unit. Maybe not in-game, the Lyovros will probably be seen more often paired up with the Keravnos, but the two were designed together by PsYcHo. Development history stuff.

Moving on, the high-end tank for the Aether Knights are Syravyns, meaning 'shroud.'

VolcanoMonkey made these lovely giant tank sprites a while back and we haven't really done anything with 'em. Well, now we are! I named them not only for their gargantuan frames and how they cast long shadows over the battlefield (not literally, I haven't drawn shadows on them yet), but also because they provide electronic countermeasures to themselves or nearby friendly units, throwing off homing rockets so they hopefully don't hit their intended targets.

Missile Tanks and Rocket Turrets are pretty powerful with their long range and high anti-armor burst damage. Although they can still hit Syravyns or ECM-shielded targets in close range, this sort of system forces them into close range if they want to be effective at all. Which really isn't where they want to be. Rocket Turrets' great area coverage in enemy bases is normally a big hassle to deal with, so having just one of these guys around counters that.

I'm trying a new system for top-end tanks where they take a really long time to build so the player doesn't spam them. Having one Syravyn or Tyrant around can make a HUGE difference, but y'all should be spamming stuff like Combat Tanks or Keravnos Laser Tanks instead! So, big cost, long build time. Yep.

Although you could put one of these guys behind your siege units and they could cover them against homing rockets from there, the AK siege unit is the Diakotn Howitzer, a light vehicle:

And they might want something tanky in front to handle damage. Sure, they're fairly tanky for light vehicles, but they are still light vehicles.

They're basically faster Siege Tanks. Their name is a corruption of the word for 'break,' because they break walls and fortifications.

The Pyrkagia MLRS is definitely the more interesting of the two AK LRA-class units though...

Fancier Missile Tanks, basically, but so much more. They're the most advanced unit ever created for d2k if you add up all the new features that apply to them.

Very fun, too. Fast, mobile, huge burst damage with that one extra rocket, shielded so they can get where they need to go or retreat as needed... they can be overwhelmed easily in a prolonged fight, but if you pump out a few of these gals and go Harvester hunting with them, you may be pleasantly surprised by how little the enemy can do to keep them from moving around. Quads are faster though, so maybe keep a couple of Keravnos handy to body-block those while the Pyrkagia retreat.

Fluoride Sting generously provided their voiceovers. Their name, Pyrkagia, is the word for 'conflagration.'

The new faction has some fancy new turrets too. Here's one:

In development terms, I whipped up these turrets for Feda as 'Tesla Towers' based on the Storm Lashers' finished frames. In-universe, the Storm Lasher from Summers' Solstice may have been inspired by these turrets. Supposedly, the Guild had run into this new faction at some indeterminate point in the past...

These have attacks more like Shock Raiders. They zap stuff. Good against everything, as is the trend with this new faction. Kinda squishy hardware, but walls are easier to spam now with that neat new B hotkey. Give that a try, eh? You get some Diakotn and Pyrkagia to start the debut mission off with, too, so try plopping those behind some walls or Shock Turrets. Or the starting Syravyn. Those work too.

The other new turret they've got is the Pulse Turret, inspired by the GMC Pulse Turret from another Petroglyph game, 8-Bit Invaders:

These have the lowest range of any turret in the game, but there's no contest when it comes to annihilating lots of light vehicles or infantry. They're also relatively tough turrets to destroy. Consider them crowd control, basically. Also, they deal dynamic damage against structures, so if you happen to have a building in the enemy base and can plop one down next to an enemy something, watch the nearby stuff go kaboom!

One of the new support powers can help with that. First, there's the reinforcement drop from the once-upgraded High Tech Factory plus an Outpost...

This is actually intended to be a smugglers / mercenary support power, but I'm using it here because I haven't designed the AKs' other support power yet. Nothing much to say about it; it drops some lasgunners and LAVs wherever you want.

The interesting new one is the Hacking Field from the Palace:

No, concrete and walls don't provide build radius anymore, so you can't just use this to "capture" an enemy base, drop some concrete, and then spam Barracks + Engineer to capture their base from within. You also can't just sell the hacked buildings, though they do provide build radius. The enemy will also try not to hurt hacked buildings other than stuff that can attack them, like turrets. There are still a lot of creative uses for this support power though... You can turn enemy turrets inwards, using them to help you break into a base as opposed to helping the enemy keep you out. You can capture a ton of clumped-up enemy vehicles responding to your attack. You can grab an enemy Refinery or some Silos to steal cash for an expensive Starport order. You can grab enemy factories to produce units inside their base, including Engineers so you can capture stuff for real after the Hacking Field wears off. Enemy vehicles plugged in to certain buildings, like Harvesters into Refineries or anything on Repair Pads, might be more vulnerable and could, possibly, be permanently turned over to your side...

This is quite a different support power from stuff like the Atreides' Airstrike or the Harkonnen Death Hand Missile. You're likely to get the best results from this one with a plan in mind. Bring an army to the enemy base, and watch them prepare to fend you off... only to have it turned into a one-way battle with a well-timed Hacking Field.

It took a LOT of finagling to get this crap working anywhere near how I intend it to. If y'all happen to find any other bugs with it while playing, like being able to hack airlifted units even though I specifically added exceptions for units attached to Carryalls, please let me know...

that's all for now, guys. although this debut mission is a bit rough around the edges, I hope it proves to be a beautiful show of the new tileset, and a fun play nonetheless. it is NOT designed to be difficult, either, since it's meant to just show new stuff. still, you will find substantial differences between easy, normal and hard. even if it's easier on any of those difficulties than you might expect. enjoy! hopefully!!

EDIT 9/30/25: I'm told that the debut mission is a little harder than expected xD at least on hard mode. so, umm... well, here's Nguyen's run from, uhh... today. and some other details about design goals and also a helpful build order in this section EDIT 10/14/25: Danku did a normal run too. I added it here

Spoiler

I had this here recent test run of a prior near-complete draft (split up cuz Streamable has a 10m limit)
https://streamable.com/g04e9w
https://streamable.com/sxc06d
https://streamable.com/9n5o07
https://streamable.com/eitr1b

and I'll give y'all a very safe build order to start with. NOT that this is essential by any means, but a strong foundation allows for lots more leeway to eff around so ya don't find out! maybe helpful if having trouble
ConYard (80 power, 0 drain)
Mini-Reactor (120/0)
Refinery (120/80)
Barracks (120/120)
Reactor (320/120)
Heavy Factory (320/240)
Refinery (320/320)

^^^ this is the build order I started with in my clips up there. it assumes ya put your Reactors on concrete cuz it's perfectly optimized power distribution. the mini-Reactor first allows you to get a Refinery out about 14 seconds sooner, and then you've got income started before infantry production. get a couple of Harvesters out of the Heavy Factory, and there you go; you've got income, infantry and tanks

oh, and be sure to try that new W hotkey Klofkac added a while back. it's type select, meaning if you click a Mavrys and press W, all Mavrys on screen will be selected. we really should document those new additions; I only added EVA lines for the custom ones I did up... but yeah, it can make a huge difference to command or position, say, your slow infantry separately from your fast light vehicles. or your artillery separately from your frontliners

anyway, hope that helps anybody running into trouble on hard mode 

from a design perspective... I'm hoping to refine the core gameplay loop of gather resources, amass forces, defeat enemy with all the new stuff we can do nowadays. normally, the player has a whole campaign to get used to how a mod changes things up, but this single mission drops ya in at tech 7 to a new faction. which is why I toned things down from where I intend them to be, but I suppose my estimations were still off... I suppose those who have played Summers' Solstice are familiar with some aspects of how this new mod feels, but those who have not will be totally thrown off!

not that I recommend playing hard mode in that case, at least not on the first run, but xD

though the basics still apply, the way the snowball rolls is a bit different, and it's all about the snowball. repeat queue makes macro more about income vs production management as opposed to spam-clicking the sidebar. which I hope is more interesting, even for our multiplayer enthusiast friends who love spam-clicking the sidebar  Refineries and Harvesters are more expensive and take longer in order to discourage greed, to discourage going straight eco until it's at a place you want it. which naturally prolongs the macro game and maintains an element of economy management even late into a mission. need some production to keep up with enemy attacks, and they do ramp up over time to encourage the player to strike out before being fully teched up. this principle is sure to apply more on missions with small enemy outposts in more vulnerable positions, stuff designed to be handled at T0 or T1, but this one kind of puts the player in the position to chill at home for longer. I did add those central islands to give the player someplace to fight over, but there are so many resources around and there's enough room to wander in front of your base that expansion is totally unnecessary. by design, of course... don't want to make it THAT important for the player to do that on the debut mission... these are just things I've considered for the eventual campaign mission design. encouraging the player to move around the map not only makes the macro game more interesting! it also affects how and where the battle plays out, and non-linearity is veeery important to me. there are non-linear aspects to everything from the tech tree to the map layout. the more choices the player has, the more about "strategy" the RTS game becomes. ya know? that includes not making it totally implausible to turtle up either though. that should still be an option, even if it's not as efficient, as I know there are lots of RTS campaign enjoyers out there who prefer to turtle and chill. turtling is just SO efficient in general that it may be the clear winner in efficiency on some RTS campaign missions. H9V1, anyone? so I've gotta do what I can to improve the viability of other options. even incentivizing them in various ways.

ah, I'm rambling. I have spritework to do, so I guess I'll get on with that. this all has merely been some insight into my thought process, I suppose

EDIT 10/1/25: some other folks are saying the debut mission is not hard enough  fine!! here's a "hell mode" version of the mission for y'all masochists out there then!!!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kZOtzJr--mwttcEE1aHarocH-A_8X3_j

this zip assumes you have the regular game assets in place from the first zip in this post, such as the cutting-edge exe. be sure to download that first!

i also tested the first ~20m. seems totally doable to me! so, good luck!
https://streamable.com/b8rwm8
https://streamable.com/23vtej

i noticed the special weapons were broken due to an oversight in my last round of bug-fixing. that's only in these clips; they work properly in the uploaded draft

if you thought easy was too easy or normal was too normal and want a bit more spice without going up to the level of hard in the prior version of the map, you can give them a shot in 'hell mode.' details for that are in this section here

Spoiler

I came up with this dumb BS the other day.
https://streamable.com/hroux2

The tests at 0:00 and 0:40 are normal behavior. In the tests at 1:25, 2:18 and 3:02, the AIs' fast units kite out units on guard mode, leading them out of position and into danger. Frontliners like Flame Tanks and Combat Tanks stay at the front, maintaining a stronger formation while their friends are disrupting yours. This pesky behavior has been implemented as a response to guard mode or direct targeting in the 'hell mode' draft, warranting stronger consideration of static positioning or the Stop command as opposed to Guard.

Do you like to scatter + guard your infantry, like most d2k players? Especially because repeat queue warrants gigantic enemy numbers and there will be lots of stuff going on all over the map, so you'll need to rely on that kind of thing to cover all the ground you need to? Yeah, get kited, n00b. Lol.

Granted, this test was done with Shotgunners, who don't really damage stuff like Quads or the unknown mimicries. One good volley of lasgun shots will instakill a Quad, so you're sure to see it much less often with the AK arsenal, but hey, if it does happen and you're not paying attention then your units are gonna have a bad time.

Look, strategy games aren't fun anyway. Why start now? The only way to go is down further into the depths of despair. Suffer. 

Anyway, here's what actually changes:
 - That """fun""" new kiting behavior was added to the AI. If you can do it to them, they can do it to you, right? It's only fair, right??
 - Capped Syravyns and, if you capture an Imperial Heavy Factory, Tyrants at 5. Shouldn't be able to build more than 5 of each.
 - Increased the rate at which AI build rates ramp up: 10% faster from primary factories every 10 mins, 12 times.
 - AI build rates from their primary factories has been increased at their baselines.
 - AI build rates from secondary and tertiary factories have been increased.
 - Sliiiightly increased the rate of enemy Starport deliveries.

Regarding Syravyns and Tyrants, I had tried giving them a low build rate in the regular version of the debut mission to discourage spamming them. Having some on the field to hold the front or provide ECM support is really helpful, but you get more firepower overall by spamming the main battle tank. A patient player will spam them anyway though, and it doesn't feel good having such a ridiculously slow build rate, sooo I'm trying this other method by giving them a build limit. I intend to give them more special abilities, like Syravyns may get a disintegration field around them that damages adjacent enemies constantly. Don't stand in their shadows. Something I intend to make applicable to any vehicle temporarily via the HTF support power, but I haven't invented that yet, hence Reinforcement Drop. And we were thinking that Tyrants could light stuff on fire and deal additional damage over time and/or have a basic version of Phoenix Mode, which you might be familiar with from the Summers' Solstice campaign. If not, have a glance at this clip of the totally fair and balanced gameplay mechanic:
https://streamable.com/ya19v0

So yeah, like, if you can only build a small amount of them but they're more epic in general, that probably feels the best, yeah? Better than a crappy build rate for a crappier version of the units. That stuff ain't in yet though; only Syravyns' ECMs are in-game.

I've gotta figure out a way to condense more stuff though. I'm actually out of events. The hell mode version of the map goes right up to the limit of 1024 just to get all the unique systems and such crammed in. After I manage that though... then we can have more stuff. And then we run out of space again. Such is the way of things in the backend.

there. take it!! take it and like it!! 

EDIT 10/2/25: updated the regular version of the debut mission with the new sidebar icons, and moved them into their proper places. AK Lasgunners, Lyovros and Diakotns now are represented on the sidebar. this is just a cosmetic change, so... ya know, no worries about redownloading or replaying if you already checked out the map or w/e. just saying. it's the same link at the top of this post

the unknown mimicry used by the Imperials doesn't have a sidebar icon yet, so that one's still got a placeholder if you happen to capture an Imperial Heavy Factory

please note that if you redownload anyway and have a saved game on the version without the new sidebar icons, I expect that saved game would be broken! moving stuff around on the sidebar involves a mod change!

Edited October 14 by Fey
difficulty balancing is the easiest thing in the world, you guys. i always get it right on the first try, every time, fr fr ong fr ong no cap ong fr ong fr fr

[X3M]

Looks awesome...

 

...

 

 

Went back to the start... watched the video...

Wow....

 

 

 

 

Went back to the start again. Read it all. This is a remarkeble work dude!!! Many of us must have dreamt to be able to such a thing like what you did. You got an entire new theme to it all. Although, dark and purple is in these days. Yet, you just did it. My hats of for you. And your sister, she did an awesome job on the tileset etc.

I couldn't help, but chuckle at the voice lines. Still, you got your own voice lines. Consider the chuckle as a nod to a job well done!

I love to crush numbers. Care to share the stats you are using for your designs?

Once you are done with the campaign etc. Would love to play it, if you know what I mean.

[Fey]

1 hour ago, X3M said:

Went back to the start again. Read it all. This is a remarkeble work dude!!! Many of us must have dreamt to be able to such a thing like what you did. You got an entire new theme to it all. Although, dark and purple is in these days. Yet, you just did it. My hats of for you. And your sister, she did an awesome job on the tileset etc.

thank you very much!  I'm enormously grateful to my clinically insanely generous sister, and to Klofkac who enabled us to use all the tiles she whipped up for us at once

is it? I had no idea  it was only a weird alien world from a dream

1 hour ago, X3M said:

I couldn't help, but chuckle at the voice lines. Still, you got your own voice lines. Consider the chuckle as a nod to a job well done!

many thanks! most of the new units don't have lines finished yet, but we've got plenty of placeholders. I'll still be using plenty of lines for more traditional units that were whipped up for the Summers' Solstice campaign, but the new ones are intended to get their own setups. there are even additional 'generic' versions of some takes I've got just for the purposes of other modders who may not refer to the units by the same monikers, like 'laser tank ready to cook' or 'MLRS, death from afar' as opposed to Keravnos or Pyrkagia

technically, we only need 12 new lines for any new faction, but... if we do the lines up based on units as opposed to factions, then they're good for any faction. so that was my approach

2 hours ago, X3M said:

I love to crush numbers. Care to share the stats you are using for your designs?

I'd love to! there are quite a few numbers though, and there's a lot to go into! just the Pyrkagia is subject to a multitude of new features, each of which could be its own topic of conversation

so, uhh... do you mean unit stats, weapon damage, new warheads, build speeds, costs, new systems like bulk shot or shields, all of the above...?

although I included unit stats under a spoiler over in the Summers' Solstice campaign thread, these new units don't really have finalized stats just yet ^^ and the testers over in the Landsraad Discord server have no shortage of feedback! hence not producing a similar section over here just yet. however, umm... included in the zips up there (in the second post in this thread, counting the OP) is a version of the editor capable of reading the debut mission. ctrl + X is the hotkey to bring up the 'structures editor' as seen there, and if you tap F11 and peek at the events, most of the various systems are notated like so:

which can offer some insight into what this stuff does, even being unfamiliar with the new events and such Klofkac has developed

I invite you to go poking around on your own! if you have any questions about something more specific, I would be happy to answer them

2 hours ago, X3M said:

Once you are done with the campaign etc. Would love to play it, if you know what I mean.

I'll be working on it after getting some other stuff sorted. first priority was releasing the tileset so other mappers can mess around. next, I've gotta polish up some new spritework PsYcHo lined up for me (many units in the debut mission have unfinished / unpolished art assets. the Mavrys is considered complete, and the Keravnos just got a new body so that needs work). after that I can do some more mapping and stuff

in the meantime though, there's at least this debut mission to showcase the new tileset in all respects! technical, aesthetic, gameplay... it's packaged with the cutting-edge editor over in the second post in this thread

none of the testers have reported random crashes, but they have been able to break the map in various ways, and one player today ran into a random crash for unknown reasons. but that might just be related to his machine and not to the debut mission itself; some players get random crashes no matter what d2k mission they're on and just need to save the game on occasion. we dunno why lol, 1998 game voodoo. anyway yeah, although i expect it to be smooth-sailing it's best to save on occasion regardless

if you give that debut mission a play, I'd love to know how it goes! any feedback helps polish things up for 'real' missions later

[X3M]

I will put it in my todo list. Although, it is one mission. I understand you need proper feedback on it. Since I did one on Barkhan, why not. Right now, I am in a flow, right before a very busy month. So, earliest would be December I think.
 

Would love to poke around. But it is new territory for me. Still, it is similar to how Forge looked like. So a traditional editor. I will find my way. (I mis Forge)
 

 

I got some insights on balance. It can be a tricky thing. There are several steps (not in order).

- Theoratical balance; all designs follow the same formula. This formula is based on the combat mechanics. Unique to every RTS. All numbers that I like to crush.
- Practical balance; some designs might be a bit too unique, or are part of a group of similar designs. Uniqueness means less choice. And it depends on how it can be countered, thus a buff or nerv would be required by mapping the RPS between designs. Practical balance is also depending on a map layout. Personally, I like adding new units to cover this section. Or redesign others.
- Skill balance; due to certain players being extra good. Some units might be overpowered. If they are bad in the hands of noobs, you are all good. But if they are also good in the hands of noobs, they certainly need a nerv.
- Single player balance; can often be different than the multiplayer balance.

All steps are important. Most discussions appear around the practical balance. But their true roots are in skill balance. I had one a couple of days ago about the new axethrowers and archers in the remaster of WC2. The skilled player felt it was too powerfull for now for him. He mostly plays chokepoint maps. Yet the balance that Blizzard had in mind was for the single player campaign.

The balance that YOU pick, is YOURS. You can ask for Feedback from others. But YOU as the game designer are never wrong in this for YOUR own game. Meaning, no matter what I or others throw at you. The decision is yours. You need to feel comfortable playing your own game. Well, having said that. Consider Feedback as advice. And you can organise advice. So, if you want to collect the massive feedback in landsraad. Perhaps make a simple tickbox poll. Not sure if it is possible. But a table per unit design would be usefull for you.

The columns could be: cost, health, damage, firerate etc.
While the rows cold be: way to low, to low, good, to high, way to high. People could change the tickboxes.
Maybe prepare an excel file with this and some explanation.

Firerate....i know it as Rate of Fire, Cooldown, DPS. Well, people gave it all kind of names. But make sure that you and the one filling in the questionaire are on the same wavelength.  Because some think of Rate of Fire as Cooldown, yet they are each others opposites. Rate of Fire in physics means, the rate, on firing. Thus higher is faster. Cooldown is the time between shots. I don't care if people still get it wrong and strongly believe they are right, just make sure you are on the same wavelength.
I also spotted time between shots, this is good, there is salvo. I could explain to you in a PM/DM how salvo balancing works  It is theoratical though.

Well, cheers, X3M

[Fey]

1 hour ago, X3M said:

I will put it in my todo list. Although, it is one mission. I understand you need proper feedback on it. Since I did one on Barkhan, why not. Right now, I am in a flow, right before a very busy month. So, earliest would be December I think.

appreciated, mate. take your time

1 hour ago, X3M said:

Would love to poke around. But it is new territory for me. Still, it is similar to how Forge looked like. So a traditional editor. I will find my way. (I mis Forge)

ah, you're unfamiliar with Klofkac's editor? if you've used it at all since v2.0 or so, it'll be familiar enough. otherwise if you're talking, like, shai-hulud editing or something like that, Klofkac's editor will spoil you rotten with the amount of stuff we're capable of now.

for reference, v2.0 is the most advanced version of the editor BEFORE new features were added, and remains suitable for co-op or multiplayer mapping. the vanilla-sized version of the tileset I published can be mapped with via v2.0. we're currently on v2.3!

if ya got any questions about the editor, I should be able to answer 'em. I frequent the Landsraad Discord if you gotta rapid-fire 'em, otherwise I try to check back here.

1 hour ago, X3M said:

I got some insights on balance. It can be a tricky thing. There are several steps (not in order).
- Theoratical balance; all designs follow the same formula. This formula is based on the combat mechanics. Unique to every RTS. All numbers that I like to crush.
- Practical balance; some designs might be a bit too unique, or are part of a group of similar designs. Uniqueness means less choice. And it depends on how it can be countered, thus a buff or nerv would be required by mapping the RPS between designs. Practical balance is also depending on a map layout. Personally, I like adding new units to cover this section. Or redesign others.
- Skill balance; due to certain players being extra good. Some units might be overpowered. If they are bad in the hands of noobs, you are all good. But if they are also good in the hands of noobs, they certainly need a nerv.
- Single player balance; can often be different than the multiplayer balance.

oh yeah, you're preachin' to the choir here

Spoiler

with Summers' Solstice, I tried to balance the units not individually, but around their unit categories. Grenadiers had to be made suitable for swarming with, because they're infantry. they got a huge host of changes to make them a viable alternative to Troopers. the Ordos needed a proper armored unit in their tech tree that could handle higher-end damage. hence, the Duelist Tank. and the Saboteur needed to be made easier to use, because it's a Special like the one-clicks, the Airstrike and Death Hand. so they got some major on-death damage to go with their cloaking, ensuring they dish some damage out even if they're one-hit as soon as they're discovered

by all metrics observed and gathered, it appears players are fond of how the balance turned out. so I'm trying to keep the same mindset in this new mod

given the new environment, my focus has been on polishing up the gameplay loop. I had some ideas back when this variables example map came out:

to take advantage of repackable ConYards and Mining Rigs and stuff. but... it's not quiiite necessary on Arrakis maps because Spice blooms exist. granted, Spice could be painted differently so that the battle is smaller in scale, there are less units on the field, and expansion becomes important regardless. in Kipp's test run over there, he seemed to be running out of Spice back home around the time he was looking to expand. good timing, and i suspect there's enough leeway for regular players who aren't absolute gods at d2k like Kipp is xD

that's technically built for a lower tech level though, like, 4. this debut mission for Arkanon is painted like a 1v1 multiplayer map (and I did actually publish an Arrakis version for the multiplayer boys before converting it and starting work on this mission), so it facilitates a tech 7 battle. there're enough salts around for a player to turtle up for a bit thanks to that. and, I did want to give the player an excuse, and a chance, to play it safer on this one just to check out the new stuff and enjoy it. that's why the area in front of the player's base is designed to facilitate the free roaming of hovertech units over the water, whereas most Imperial forces are obstructed by it. the player doesn't NEED to expand on this one; defending Harvesters in front of the base through repeat-queued Keravnos and Lyovros is a perfectly viable alternative to plopping down a blob of Shock Turrets at one of the potential expansion locations

ah, but all of that is on the subject of this debut mission alone... more to the point:

back in Summers' Solstice, we had less freedom with how the flow of the map could be controlled. missions were designed more around unique gimmicks, even if objectives remained similar (i.e. defeat the enemy). if you don't remember some of those missions I'll bring up as examples or haven't played the campaign, you can find vids of each mission under the Details & Strategy Guides section

gimmicks should always be created atop and in service to a strong gameplay loop though. if S16V2 for instance were in Starcraft 2, particularly with how many Legacy of the Void missions were designed, you might be able to take down the big enemy base, but they'd always get infinite forces from off the map behind it anyway, so it doesn't really matter. and it doesn't end the map either, and it's way too big of an investment to be worthwhile. you'd capture the side objectives, and that would be it, the mission's over.

instead, the side objectives facilitate the climax of the mission, helping the player break a heavily-fortified position. 'sending things out with a bang,' so to speak. a more satisfying climax for the player, the most resounding crash of the snowball at the bottom of the hill

no shade intended to Blizzard, of course. SC2 had plenty of missions quite like that, where the gimmick or side objective or whatever actually supported the completion of a more traditional objective, and it's remarkably well-designed in so many respects. and I know my designs ain't perfect either. in some other respects, I happen to... disagree, that's all. I only bring that up as an example to compare to!

so the snowball design is super important to me. my main focus in mission design is to give the player a sense of momentum and a satisfying conclusion. how that snowball rolls may differ, of course... some missions are designed to be sloggy and put the player on the back foot, into a hole to be dug out of, and some missions are designed to demand aggression. and, depending on difficulty level and mission number, I may expect more or less of the player. but there's never a point my goal is to put an outright stop to the player. that'd be detrimental to the experience of the campaign, after all. I do want to tempt the player out of the comfort zone though, to make the game more about strategic decisions than, you know, unit spam and stuff. even though d2k will always be a spammy game at some point in a mission, I can at least try to keep things interesting for longer than 'survive the start of the mission'

Summers' Solstice was designed before variables though. now that we can do stuff based on where the player clicks, the player can choose a start location. now that we can check object location, ConYards can be repacked into MCVs and even a low-tech mission can promote free-roaming. now that we can requeue stuff for the player, macro becomes less about the tedium of spam-clicking the sidebar and more managing income versus production. reduction in APM demands for the macro game makes for more tactical decisions, something I can lean into via the complication of the tech tree and encouragement of expansion

turtling is the default state of the average RTS campaign enjoyer. there's nothing wrong with that and I don't want to make turtling up unviable, given how widely-enjoyed it is. we no longer have to go to extremes to encourage aggression though, like how S09V2 or S17V2 were designed. we can keep some elements to encourage scouting, like hey, maybe there's a cash crate on the map not far from a starting location. but now maybe there are Mining Rig build spots, since those are buildable at specific locations now and this tileset has specific tiles drawn just for Mining Rigs. and maybe the player only drops a Barracks, Heavy Factory and a couple of Refineries at the starting location before repacking the MCV and heading closer to the enemy with it, because all the salts are in front of the starting location chosen and the player wants turrets or production structures in front of those fields. and dropping the building queue for a bit allows two refs to support one-factory infantry and tank production just fine

all these systems mean I don't really need mission-specific gimmicks to encourage a player to move around the map because expansion has become a natural part of things. which is great, because they take up space in a mission's events list and I have some serious reworking to do on the stuff seen in the debut mission here to have enough space for mission-specific stuff lol

the stuff that needs compression is mostly the Aether Knights' new units' stuff though. Klofkac basically wrote a new programming language for d2k that lets us design whatever we want, so I went designing stuff and decided to figure optimizations out later. on the subject of 'skill balancing,' another thing the simplification of the macro game enables is leaning more into micro, sooo I did for the new faction's roster. or, for some of their units, at least. many of their units are all-rounders, making them simple to work with in a deathball, but they have additional complexities that reward good micro

the Keravnos Laser Tank's shield mechanic is a good example. for a regular player who just wants to spam tanks and throw them at stuff, they work just fine. they hit hard, are pretty mobile, and the first one to engage that Autogun Turret will automatically soak fire for its friends. if you gotta retreat, the shields enable that. although they can be lost quickly because when shields are down, they're actually squishier than the Ordos' Combat Tank, a regular player spamming them and throwing them at stuff will still get comparable mileage out of them to any other main battle tank. a skilled player who takes advantage of their mobility to position them for favorable engagements will get enormous mileage though, and unlike the Ordos' Combat Tank, it doesn't seem that that level of micro is actually essential with the automatic nature of their shields and how hard they hit. except against infantry, of course... they can't crush infantry, being hovertech, which quite changes up playing as or against this faction

besides having lotsa all-rounders in their roster, there are some other counterbalancing factors to the weakness against infantry. their Trike-equivalent unit, the Mavrys, is exceptionally tough and remains useful against vehicles in the late-game thanks to the EMP ability. I need to give it a tri-burst shot (with ~x.33 damage) when Klofkac makes sound limit adjustable, which should help reduce overkill and spread damage better among infantry. and their Siege Tank-equivalent unit, the Diakotn, can be built from their Light Factory

there're more details about this faction's roster of units in the second post in this thread, so I guess I've said enough on that subject ^^ I should only add that, due to the currently-unstable nature of new features in multiplayer, I'm mostly focused on the single-player aspects of things. sure, we can try to keep things theoretically balanced in the sort of way they would be in a multiplayer scenario just for the sake of, you know, gameplay and stuff... but at the moment, this stuff can only exist in single player

not too much longer, hopefully. those multiplayer boys are hard at work porting over the new stuff

I hope that's enough insight for ya into my thought process on the design front xD

[X3M]

I like your train of thoughts. 
I like that you also considered balance around resource managment. But also allow for turtling. That is a very awesome approach. I am glad that you called them RTS enjoyers. It is true, campers on RTS are enjoying their line of defence. I had this in Warcraft 2, Starcraft and also in Tiberiun dawn and sun. Would be funny though, if you slip in 1 mission that requires the player to camp first for an hour or something. Like, being stuck in the mountains with limited resources that grow slowly overtime.

I did something similar in regards to resources. Although resources were limited. And expansion should be done if you are an agressive player. A turtle player could camp. till the resources were depleted. Then all the forces should move. That kind of deal. That was a so called mission 8 I once made in Starcraft. (It is lost forever  ) 
In short, you could camp with the correct defenders. And for an attack, you could either repair/heal them almost indifinately. And after defeating 1 of the 2 bases, you got that expand. I literly made that mission with the goal in mind. Defeat 1 base, and you could spend the remaining resources entirely on only half your units.

As for secondairy objectives. I feel like they should be there from time to time. Especially in later missions. But they should be there for adding a reward for the player, during the mission. Which would help the player. One such secondairy objective was often the capture of enemy structures in C&C td. But the resque of units or whatever, are also valuable options. Unless, you have secondairy objectives being part of the primairy one. Then it is simply all primairy though.

Perhaps, when the campaign is almost done. You could test the different difficulties, together with the resource managment. Where on easy difficulty, expansion is not needed. On normal, recommended. And on hard, a nessesary objective. Something like that. It is very hard to achieve though. So, if you manage, you can consider it as a trophy as designer. 

I will come back later on that editor. I never used it. But you mentioned it by name specifically. Once I have more time. And after playing the mission. I might ask for the other stuff. 

Wow, you can allow the player to select their start location? That is awesome! I always liked that.

Ehm. you mentioned theoratical balance at the end for multiplayer. I meant that theoratical balance is solely based on numbers and formula's. For all the other balances to grow on. An example would be that the bazooka infantry in C&C td costs 300. But testing already showed that they are too weak that way. Practically speaking, they needed more health or cost less. This was even the case for single player. In multiplayer, they are only used as anti air units at the start. They were....tested very late. You can see the result in tiberian sun. Where the Nod rocket soldier has A. more health, and B. costs 250.
 

[Fey]

37 minutes ago, X3M said:

I like your train of thoughts. 
I like that you also considered balance around resource managment. But also allow for turtling. That is a very awesome approach. I am glad that you called them RTS enjoyers. It is true, campers on RTS are enjoying their line of defence. I had this in Warcraft 2, Starcraft and also in Tiberiun dawn and sun. Would be funny though, if you slip in 1 mission that requires the player to camp first for an hour or something. Like, being stuck in the mountains with limited resources that grow slowly overtime.

thanks very much!!

ah, I don't like to restrict the player too much  even on missions with pure defense objectives, I've gotta account for if the player's gonna be aggressive and attack the enemy and stuff. quite a few players have been taken off guard on S02V1 by trying to beat up the high-tech enemy lol

there are some exceptions, of course. like, S02V2 was designed to introduce hero units in a controlled environment, to teach the player to sacrifice ANYTHING to keep them alive, and show their strength without the macro game in the picture. that was only for like... 22.5k ticks or something? and I don't think we'll need missions like that in the next series. no hero units

so yeah, defense-oriented missions, sure, but I gotta spice it up if it's pure defense, somehow xD

1 hour ago, X3M said:

I did something similar in regards to resources. Although resources were limited. And expansion should be done if you are an agressive player. A turtle player could camp. till the resources were depleted. Then all the forces should move. That kind of deal. That was a so called mission 8 I once made in Starcraft. (It is lost forever  ) 
In short, you could camp with the correct defenders. And for an attack, you could either repair/heal them almost indifinately. And after defeating 1 of the 2 bases, you got that expand. I literly made that mission with the goal in mind. Defeat 1 base, and you could spend the remaining resources entirely on only half your units.

ah yeah, and the Wings of Liberty campaign had that one with the supernova and the banshees and all that. terran buildings being able to pick up and wander the map was integral to that one. fun concept, very memorable

it took the forefront in that mission though, whereas the natural progression of wandering the map for resources is, uhh... more of an encouraged course of action than a necessity. an underlying gameplay mechanic supporting the main gameplay loop, the focus remains on defeating the enemy. less, uhh... distinct, but hopefully more fun to be had with more flexibility on more missions. less linearity and stuff

damn, mate. aye, I've lost some missions too. dang computers

1 hour ago, X3M said:

As for secondairy objectives. I feel like they should be there from time to time. Especially in later missions. But they should be there for adding a reward for the player, during the mission. Which would help the player. One such secondairy objective was often the capture of enemy structures in C&C td. But the resque of units or whatever, are also valuable options. Unless, you have secondairy objectives being part of the primairy one. Then it is simply all primairy though.

perhaps what I refer to as gimmicks are what you're referring to here as secondary objectives ^^ I would classify the end stage of S06V2 as being its secondary objective. the production goals on SBON2 are secondary objectives. perhaps 'xyz hero unit must survive' is more of a secondary objective than a gimmick

even if it's all primary though, missions can remain interesting with a strong enough gameplay loop. I've replayed Halo: CE lots of times just because its gameplay loop is so well-conceived, despite its repetition in mission layout and stuff

1 hour ago, X3M said:

Perhaps, when the campaign is almost done. You could test the different difficulties, together with the resource managment. Where on easy difficulty, expansion is not needed. On normal, recommended. And on hard, a nessesary objective. Something like that. It is very hard to achieve though. So, if you manage, you can consider it as a trophy as designer. 

aye, that's the plan ^^ actually, that was chiefly what I was looking for in Kipp's test run of the variables example map in the thread I linked in the last post! he had to expand a bit to support his offensive, but wasn't overwhelmed by the enemy before he could do that. target hard mode balance achieved! and now I've got the data to go off of for future missions' designs. a factor in helping to balance this debut mission, despite it being very different from that variables example map

didn't mean it was perfect from the get-go though. not that that was my fault... during this process, we discovered the AI on hard mode in d2k gets a x.75 modifier on its unit build rate, which was enough to screw up my calculations without an AI parameter-adjusting event using the index number of the assigned variable as opposed to the variable's stored value too. that also happened. what a headache xD after those problems were accounted for though, the theoretical balance I had been aiming for worked out perfectly. the testers reported it was quite manageable! thank goodness

1 hour ago, X3M said:

I will come back later on that editor. I never used it. But you mentioned it by name specifically. Once I have more time. And after playing the mission. I might ask for the other stuff. 

Klofkac really went all the way with enabling us mappers to do stuff ^^ impossible to overstate the meaning of his contributions

1 hour ago, X3M said:

Wow, you can allow the player to select their start location? That is awesome! I always liked that.

aye. the variables example map was more dramatic on this front, allowing the player to start in the top right, bottom left or bottom right corners, so you'd get three very different ways to approach the rest of the map. this debut mission already introduces lotsa new units, not to mention the new environment, so the three start locations here just change the order in which you get the units you're meant to start with. the player gets an MCV at the same place on the debut mission no matter which start location was chosen

2 hours ago, X3M said:

Ehm. you mentioned theoratical balance at the end for multiplayer. I meant that theoratical balance is solely based on numbers and formula's. For all the other balances to grow on. An example would be that the bazooka infantry in C&C td costs 300. But testing already showed that they are too weak that way. Practically speaking, they needed more health or cost less. This was even the case for single player. In multiplayer, they are only used as anti air units at the start. They were....tested very late. You can see the result in tiberian sun. Where the Nod rocket soldier has A. more health, and B. costs 250.

oh, yeah  well, time will tell about the Keravnos. it's probably in a pretty good spot for an MBT, but some other units may need adjustment. the Diakotn for one feels weak, but with its low cost and some other stuff, maybe that's just fine. I already made some other adjustments, like to its armor type

[X3M]

Have you any thoughts on a tech tree?

How will it progress?

Sorry to say, the techtree needs to be balanced as well. And this might be the hardest job. Since you introduce a player to a new unit. The mission might depend on that particular unit. And the multiplayer techtree should be balanced as well. I think, the latter is even more important than the single player campaign. Because a new unit might actually be over powered for its first job. Just for the fun of it

It is how I introduced some of my units in the past. "o my, we don't have enough resources for dealing with the bunkers. Let's get 1 artillery unit, we know it is expensive, but that attack range of 13 is more than enough to protect it from wandering survivors".

[Fey]

4 hours ago, X3M said:

Have you any thoughts on a tech tree? How will it progress?

oh, of course! thanks to the various ways the macro is simplified (repeat queue, B hotkey, etc), the tech tree can and should be more complex

Spoiler

I had tried to give some more weight to player decisions hopefully without overcomplicating the tech tree back in Summer's Solstice. simple change, really: upgrades cost more time and credits. time is the more important thing though, so the player has to choose which route to go first. so you've got a High Tech Factory and a Heavy Factory... are you gonna upgrade that Heavy Factory and get Siege Tanks, or are you gonna upgrade the High Tech Factory to get the Research Center and Missile Tanks? you get both eventually, but splitting up those units like that can change how a player approaches the mission in the early- to mid-game

this was kind of a clumsy system in SS because upgrades cannot be assigned prerequisites. coming at it fresh in the debut mission there, I more firmly established the tech structures - the Outpost, the High Tech Factory and the Research Center - and used some events to give some upgrades a prerequisite

the prerequisites are hardly the only thing though. I've accounted for power / drain and costs in the rebalance to enable a variety of build orders and to discourage quickly advancing tech. the new power tooltip should help players learn about that if they want to. and, I developed how the AI advances in strength in the debut mission so production is a priority (at least on hard mode) early on. those low-tech units are perfectly capable of clashing with the enemy until the player advances up the tech tree. as seen in the hell mode clips, which are closer to where I'd want hard mode to be in an actual campaign where the player has had the opportunity to gain experience with a new faction like this over plenty of lower-tech missions under lower-pressure scenarios first

this all makes the act of teching up much more deliberate. if you go for turrets, it might be a couple of minutes before you can get around to the Barracks upgrade. the Heavy Factory and High Tech Factory upgrades unlock at the same time, so that choice between Siege Tanks and Missile Tanks in a more traditional tech tree occurs then and there. and as fancy as some of the new units are, how much pressure can the player withstand to get a couple of those out by the time the player would have had a blob of main battle tanks and accompanying infantry by focusing on production before tech?

with the B hotkey, the addition of those mini-Reactors is much less clumsy. the APM cost of spamming mini-Wind Traps was kinda too high to justify their existence from a practical perspective back in SS, with the notable exception that a mini-Wind Trap fulfills the same prerequisites as a regular Wind Trap and you can get a Refinery out fourteen seconds faster. I think this only really came into play on a mission like S16V1 though, otherwise, you start with some base structures xD they had a higher power generation to help justify their existence at the time. now, they generate 1/5 of a Wind Trap's power as opposed to 1/4. still costing more overall, but being viably spammable and comfortably satisfying the power needs of certain structures, even coming into play at later points in a build order. and fresh starts will be much more common in the next campaigns

uhh, just to be clear, Wind Traps and Reactors are different names for the same thing. the structure is referred to as Reactors on Heighliner missions or on the Arkanon debut mission

so, fresh off the ConYard, you've got access to the Barracks, mini-Reactor or Reactor. could go rax > minitrap > ref > trap > hfact > ref for max prod, early eco, coming out to 320 power / 320 drain... could switch it up with minitrap > ref > trap > hfact > rax > ref for more focus on eco, but still with tanks/inf available ASAP, which might also enable a ConYard upgrade into rax upgrade... could lean pure eco with trap > ref > hfact > ref, coming out to 280 power / 280 drain... or maybe there's an enemy Barracks nearby on a certain mission, and if you get a single tank out, you can crush everything there easily, so you go minitrap > rig > minitrap > hfact for 160 power / 160 drain, because Mining Rigs satisfy the same prerequisites as Refineries do

or maybe the player just builds excess power right away and doesn't interact with this mechanic at all. just because I design the tech tree for perfect power calculations doesn't mean it's a concern to most players. lotsa games have hidden depth that's delved into by speedrunners, or repeat players, or other folks like that. maybe most players learn an initial build order for the first couple of Refineries and don't worry about it so much. those that do worry about it though will find it mapped out from start to finish. excess power is actually a consideration even for players who's want to tow the line, too, because your production speed isn't only increased by factory count anymore. it's also boosted by excess power, but capped by the number of power-generating structures you have. making Wind Traps a more impactful 'economy' structure important in the late game, though the bonus is not sufficient to warrant the spamming of Wind Traps early on. when it's best that the player starts keeping excess power and stops towing the line is anyone's guess...

one Reactor after that can support a Light Factory and an Outpost, or an Outpost and a Starport, or maybe a Light Factory, a third Refinery and a Barracks, or a Light Factory and a second Heavy Factory, but not an Outpost directly into a High Tech Factory. one mini-Reactor would allow the follow-up HTF though

the Outpost also makes the Barracks II upgrade accessible, and that just unlocks Engineers

the HTF and Heavy Factory upgrades become available at the same time. both are important for the end-tech tanks (like the OG sonics / devas / devis), but the Heavy Factory upgrade on its own makes MCVs and an artillery unit available (Siege Tanks or Pyrkagia in the case of the AK), whereas the HTF makes a support power available along with access to the Research Center, which in a normal tech tree is the prerequisite for stuff like Missile Tanks and Rocket Turrets. for AK, they get the Pulse Turret in place of the Rocket Turret, aaand the RC provides important upgrades to their light vehicles, such as making the EMP available on the Mavrys

the RC also makes the HTF II upgrade accessible, which allows for the construction of the Palace for another support power

it's important that each upgrade or tech structure immediately makes something substantial available. like, if you were to build an Outpost and ONLY get access to an upgrade which would THEN grant access to Engineers, that would suck. best to just cut out the middleman in that case and make Engineers require an Outpost. but nah, the Outpost is essential for the Starport, a new production structure that can immediately provide access to limited amounts of late-game tech even if you don't have the HTF or RC. so the Engineers thing is just a bonus. ...and I guess the minimap is arguably kinda helpful too, yeah? I've gotten used to playing without it, but I suppose it's kind of a big deal for most players lol

at the moment, there are some middlemen in the later stages of the tech tree, but, obviously this mod is in an unfinished state. there are quite a few new units not shown at all in the debut mission that could fit in those spots, so we'll have to see what happens. the tactical map makes mention of a naval fleet and swordsman infantry, for two, that are 'busy elsewhere' and are intended to appear in this faction's roster eventually. if not, I know where to cut some upgrades and call it a day

it may be best that I just let the player go Outpost > HTF > RC, but I could tie the two support powers behind the RC. the place teching up really slows down is at the HTF upgrades and how those currently work, but it seems there are plenty of reasons for the player to slow down without having that choking things up. still, the way it's currently set up means the player has to choose between Siege Tanks and Missile Tanks and some other stuff like that around the time of the HTF's construction. if the RC's buildable without an HTF upgrade, that means the structure queue can be used for that while the Heavy Factory upgrade can be done simultaneously. despite the additional cost in credits, the time saved is the biggest factor by far and this would indubitably be the most dramatic method to simplify the tech tree in its present state. this is something I'll be thinking on while doing spritework for the new units. gotta have enough for all fourish factions (the two with mini-campaigns are planned to merge)

I've seen the various testers and the players who have checked the debut mission out so far take wildly varied approaches to the macro game. I anticipate you'll see those problem areas I described while the tech tree is in its unfinished state when you eventually get the chance to give this debut mission a shot, but it's hopefully also much more interesting than vanilla d2k's handling of upgrades and teching up, even at this juncture

4 hours ago, X3M said:

Sorry to say, the techtree needs to be balanced as well. And this might be the hardest job. Since you introduce a player to a new unit. The mission might depend on that particular unit. And the multiplayer techtree should be balanced as well. I think, the latter is even more important than the single player campaign. Because a new unit might actually be over powered for its first job. Just for the fun of it

eh, that's not too difficult, if ya ask me... if a mission is meant to spotlight a certain kind of unit, and those units are already balanced with certain roles in mind, then we already know where that role shines. the mission just needs adjustment to emphasize that role. frankly, the tougher part is getting a player to realize "this unit is imba on this mission" because everybody just spams Troopers, Quads and Combat Tanks. xD before yelling at me for locking Rocket Turrets behind T3 because they're OP and very much desired on hard mode. ...maybe with a new faction in play we'll see players pick up what I'm laying down more often, ya know? lol

not that I want to make that unit the only viable answer on its associated mission or whatever. that's the other tough part. Starcraft 2 leaned a bit too heavily into that, in some places. some very one-note missions that wind up feeling like a glorified tutorial. I get the sentiment that campaigns may be meant to lead the player onto the ladder or something, but for those who want only to enjoy the campaign, I've gotta take special care in gearing a mission towards a certain kind of unit so all the other stuff the player has been picking up still applies. better experience that way

regarding the multiplayer thing: that's unfortunately nothing more than theory until they get access to the new features we've got in single-player that make stuff like this new faction's units possible. I hear they're making good progress on it, but who knows when they'll formally wrap that up. the theory can be important for making a satisfying balance in single-player, but it ultimately only applies to single-player

even if we do wind up with some overpowered stuff though, uhh... I mean, RA2 is unbalanced as hell and still very popular just cuz its wacky roster of units is so much fun. so, while balance is absolutely a consideration as you can see from... all of the above, and all to follow, it does actually take a backseat to fun factor and rule-of-cool. cool / fun new thing comes first, attempt to balance cool / fun thing comes second

4 hours ago, X3M said:

It is how I introduced some of my units in the past. "o my, we don't have enough resources for dealing with the bunkers. Let's get 1 artillery unit, we know it is expensive, but that attack range of 13 is more than enough to protect it from wandering survivors".

 that's a good approach. I went a bit of a different direction with maps like S02V1 back in SS... that was balanced as a 'skillgate mission,' a tougher mission that appears early on just to ask the player, "hey, are you comfortable with the difficulty level? if not, turn it down. if so, carry on." that sort of thing takes players off-guard, but helps shape their experience in the rest of the campaign in a more positive light. or so that's the intent. it worked out well for a lot of players who, after butting heads with S02V1, started experimenting more on the later maps and discovering subtleties to the submods that really helped them survive in ways they may not have found if not for S02V1 frontloading some pain in their faces

I had spotlighty missions too. like, S06V2 very much so encourages the use of stuff like Siege Tanks or Duelist Tanks. it was more about missions like S02V1 though, strategically raising or lowering the difficulty level to gauge or tamper with the player's expectations, or for story reasons

doing things a bit more traditionally in some respects this time around, I don't think there will be maps like that where the enemy has high/end tech early on, like on S02V1. specifically because it involves a new faction and players are 100% not going to be familiar with it from vanilla. I'll thus probably be doing it that way, spotlighting units as they become available through subtle mission design tricks to encourage the player to try them out in favorable conditions and understand those favorable conditions. smoother difficulty curve. strategically-placed difficulty spikes can do a campaign favors, but they're not for every campaign

Edited October 10 by Fey