[Developing] Arkanon campaigns [4 missions available]

[Fey]

I'll be updating the OP of this thread periodically with new levels. there are currently 4 playable missions:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XDkNfZVmBoC8dSk5KL2u-zETcaTbJvsn/view

please keep in mind however that this is a development thread. these missions are considered rough drafts. that said, feel free to try them out anyway! any data y'all can send my way will be helpful for improving the final result!

some general dev commentary and/or FAQs:

Spoiler

    Questions about the tileset...
It's got its own thread, as it was drawn before I started working on this campaign. You can find that thread right here:

    Custom music?
Klofkac made it possible to play music from the GAMESFX folder via events. Modders can now add music to individual missions without intrusively adding that music to a player's regular music playlist.

Given that file size would be an issue while trying to add a whole bunch of custom tracks, I make some adjustments and convert the tracks via XCC Mixer to .aud format, which is majorly compressed.

Choosing tracks that aren't really subject to copyright enforcement is important to consider for the streamers, let's players, and others who want to give these missions a go online. That is, there might be some tracks that are copyrighted, but the holder of the IP doesn't necessarily care to enforce that so strictly. I suppose it also helps that I like to transform the original material in ways, rearranging or mashing up themes, for which fair use rules could come into play. Especially because this is not a commercial endeavor the tracks are accompanying. Just a mod for a beloved old game.

Regardless of whether a track is copyrighted or not, I'm including credits in the missions where the tracks play. Please pay your respects to the original artists; they deserve our admiration and support.

Sound identity is important too. The themes I choose have to be associated somehow, at least within the same campaign on Arkanon. You may recall from ArkDebut, if you played that mission, that themes from both Halo and Freespace were used. Heavy percussion, accompanying choir... there were some thematic similarities between those tracks.

I would prefer to avoid using especially iconic themes, or rather, themes using the main motif of the game. Like Rock Anthem for Saving the World, from Halo, for instance. Doesn't mean I won't find nice spots for some such tracks, potentially, but that's why I look for pieces that are different, like Impend on level 1. Musical accompaniment is supposed to add to the moment, you know? Players are likely to recognize certain themes, but my hope is to keep things focused on the moments in the game where these themes are played rather than take the player out of those moments.

There's no perfect solution when using material from other games, I suppose. I'll just try to be judicious about where I use each custom track.

    Usage of AI?
Remember, my sister's mostly the one who drew this tileset by hand (with certain aspects falling to others, like Kipp was responsible for the water assets). I've got a personal beef with AI on her behalf. Not to mention that I'm fond of writing, and there's plenty of generative AI for that too! And I've got my own history with fighting bots...

Look: I don't judge anybody for using it as a tool to SUPPLEMENT human creativity. If it SUPPLANTS human creativity, that's definitely a problem. As for myself though, I prefer not to rely on it.

That said, AI is in a lot of things nowadays and often serves some kind of underlying purpose, if it's not front and center. I picked up Voicemod at the suggestion of PsYcHo, our beloved voxel artist, and I'd imagine it uses some degree of AI to deal with transforming voices to sound like somebody else, or to clean up audio. I still intend to use it to handle the voiceovers for scripted lines in the Arkanon campaigns. Back in Summers' Solstice, I used koe.ai, but, again, that was for the sake of transforming human-spoken lines. I said words, the thing made it sound like somebody else, and then I cleaned stuff up and edited it manually in Audacity afterwards. That's in contrast to, say, something like Elevenlabs, which to my knowledge generates speech from written words. While powerful, it lacks that human origin.

So, if Voicemod uses AI at all to serve its purpose, then that's the degree to which I use it. I have my own human ideas, I bounce my ideas off other real humans, my human sister handles a lot of art, I do my own human edits to that art, I use my own human voice as a basis for transformative works... It's always something on my mind.

In fact... You know, Frank Herbert did away with AI in his work because he wanted to focus on the human element in his storytelling. I think we can bring it back without compromising on that vision as long as the humans' reaction to AI is a main focus. This is something I hope to explore in the Arkanon series, so please look forward to it!

    Mission briefings got shorter.
Summers' Solstice personified the factions in play through various characters. Briefings had to focus more on character interaction and rationale and all that. In this new series, I intend to convey more information with less words.

I mean, I'm yapping plenty in these dev commentary sections, but that's not the in-game stuff. You're here looking for more info, so here it is.

The player will be addressed typically by some unnamed advisor. The faction in play will be characterized through things like its plans of action, its unit roster, and the phrasing of this advisor's words. Given plenty of love, I can keep the briefings from being long enough that they generate a scroll bar in the Mission Launcher, but adequately characterize each faction at the same time. That's the goal, and the challenge.

    What's with the weird names for stuff? Like "Ayopa Channel" in level 2?
I'm going with a Greek naming scheme for the new faction and their world. You might have noticed the name of their attack buggy, for instance: "Mavrys," which is a corruption of the word for 'black.' As in, blackout. Frank Herbert took inspiration from arabic terms and culture for the Fremen; you can think of this like that. I mean, I'm not really lifting culture, the design of the Aether Knights' culture has more to do with other things that'll factor in later in the campaign series, but a solid source for inspiration really helps keep the naming scheme consistent.

Nobody's gonna remember this crap though. I can't sacrifice practicality for the sake of worldbuilding. So, it's even more important that I attach plain-English suffixes to just about everything (after I get the text.UIB sorted in this campaign; I know these suffixes don't show up in the rough draft maps as of the posting of this commentary). "Mavrys BUGGY." "Lyovros BORER." "Keravnos LASER TANK." ...There'll still be some eccentric units, like the aforementioned plasma borer, but the player will be able to much more easily remember in general, "Oh, this is the pink guys' attack buggy. It has a machine gun and does attack buggy stuff, like what I'd expect from Tiberian Sun or whatever. It's got 'buggy' in the name." Yep.

for ease, I included the latest exe from Klofkac in the zip. if you'd rather grab v3.0 yourself, the thread's right here:

but, please note that there are some occasional hotfixes Klofkac does that are tested in the Landsraad Discord server pinned at the top of this forum. there might be something important in the exe in the zip. at the moment, I don't think it'll crash the game or anything if you use Klofkac's "stable" exe over the one in the Arkanon campaign zip, but I'm just throwing this out there in case somebody runs into a problem. I'll adjust this advice if something in particular is added that makes it vital to use the one in the campaign's zip

that's all for now

Edited 1 hour ago by Fey
levels 3 & 4 published

[Fey]

with level 2 finished, I'm gonna do it this way... details about each new mission will be done up in a new post (and I'll move the details for level 1 down here too), and while I'll only add onto the OP if there's some kinda new FAQ that pops up, I'll at least change the thread name to reflect how many playable missions there are. that way folks can keep up easily

here's the original info for level 1:

Spoiler

for now, I have only one, and it's not even on the Arkanon tileset, but it's part of the campaign so screw it, we're starting the thread lol. here's a link to the rough draft of level 1:
check the OP! the link's there now!

and here's some more information about the first level, including a full map image (with and without events displayed)

Spoiler

FULL MAP IMAGE:

Spoiler

lotsa rough draft crap. no new EVA or voiceovers for the scripted lines, the swordsmen are using placeholder frames from sard flamers, lasgunners need realignment, things don't have their proper names when moused over, some other stuff... there's also no mission intel or tactical map yet mission intel & tmap were added. but it should be a playable mission from any start location. albeit an easy one, since it's just level 1. except maybe on hard mode? it can get a little spicy, I guess

I took a more traditional approach with the tutorial level in Summers' Solstice and gave the player a feel for some changes in the tech tree before introducing a simple but kinda scary AI opponent in the second phase of S01V1. this one is more akin to S01V2, but is built much more like a tutorial level. the player MOSTLY gets the basic infantry, Sardaukar Riflemen, to work with. some Trike-equivalent units are introduced a bit later, and there are scarce Sardaukar Troopers, Flamers and Buzzsaws to find as well. the idea of giving the player a mostly homogenous deathball and asking the player to go have fun is so I can introduce the more eccentric enemy units in a controlled and low-pressure environment. the player is more likely to be observant of the enemy units' qualities in this kind of scenario

those heavily-armored Mavrys buggies are probably the biggest threat on this map. that's why there are some Sardaukar Troopers included in the mix, even on hard mode. sure, you can tank their hits with Scythe Bikes, AKA Scythers, and gun them down with Riflemen eventually, but they're essentially minibosses at that rate

as for the enemy units, lasgunners are fine against infantry. not as efficient as riflemen, but they deal respectable damage to light armor and very slightly better damage against structures or heavy armor than bullets-based weapons do. the other enemy infantry, those paladins, are the tankiest infantry unit in the ga,e. their energy shields stay up until they take a swing at their target in melee. attempting to crush them (like with Buzzsaws) will EMP the crushing vehicle, temporarily stunning it and slightly damaging it. Harvesters are EM-shielded and cannot be stunned, not that you get to run any paladins over with those on this mission, but I'm just saying. and while you might think a sword does little damage to armor, they do have a small slash wave projectile because what they're carrying is less a sword and more a hyper-stylized handheld plasma cannon

hard difficulty puts a crapload of paladins at the final enemy position you assail before phase two of the level, and Shock Turrets will return fire on your forces

there's a new gameplay mechanic introduced in this campaign where although your infantry can still heal to 50% while idle, like in SS, leaving them near Barracks will heal them up to 100% over time. on this mission, friendly Barracks can do this for your infantry. not that I intended to make the player wait, or slow down the action, or anything... the heal crates scattered around the map are global. if the player picks one up, units on the other side of the map will be healed too

although this mission is designed to be non-linear, the start location system adds another layer of non-linearity. I hope to leave an impression on the player with its level of detail, despite how brief a mission it is.

I did test runs on hard mode from all three start locations to make sure the rough draft works correctly. these clips will expire eventually. for now, here they are:
top left: https://streamable.com/bq4f9o
top right: https://streamable.com/fg8lbw
bottom right: https://streamable.com/5r2nys

EDIT 8/30/26: made a bunch of tweaks and fixed various oversights and errors. moved the crate at the garrison down to the bottom so it's harder to accidentally pick up. also added a (generous) timed section to the end of the mission. the enemy will actually set off those explosives if you let them.

Nguyen did runs of this mission too, before the tweaks I just mentioned. his playthroughs gave me some helpful information on what to fix. here are his runs:

thank you, Nguyen!

EDIT 8/29/26: an uncommon issue was found where if the player didn't explore all expected locations, the enemy would keep some extra units. I also fixed an issue where an unmanned unit would move. and, some more failsafes were added in case of funni unit pathing. the zip's been updated with those tweaks

I also got this footage of mapping this mission, and mapping the next. level 2 is not done yet. and, again, streamable clips will expire eventually. still, for now here are the clips:
level 1: https://streamable.com/jnyu1f
level 2: https://streamable.com/0kfqpn

ADDENDUM 9/13/26: I'll start doing proper dev commentary sections on each mission. here's the one for level 1:

Spoiler

SARD 01: First Contact
    A Heighliner mission to kick off the Arkanon campaign?
What can I say? I'm an incorrigible tease.

It was important for story reasons too though. Attacking a Spacing Guild Heighliner, let alone the Imperial Sardaukar of House Corrino, is an unthinkable act in the Dune universe.

Yeah, I know we did that in Summers' Solstice, but look, Westwood did it too, so I can justify that as the Imperials seizing those Deviator prototypes and keeping the illegal tech off Arrakis, alright?!

Anyway, like I was saying: The scenario itself immediately conveys some key details about the new faction that will be the main antagonist in the Imperial campaign on Arkanon to any familiar with Dune lore. They don't care about the rules of the Landsraad at large, they present as extremely territorial, they have the means to navigate their world up to objects in orbit around it, they demonstrate a tactical approach in trying to control movement of Guild and Sardaukar forces on the Heighliner with the RFGs and all, and they either had the means to identify a structure of importance quickly or are already familiar with Guild technology. This new faction should leave an impression in their very introduction on both the player and the Sardaukar.

Not to mention, it serves a story well to start in the middle of the action, so to speak. Prologues are tough to do well. This method of starting the campaign says, "Hey, all the context you need is that this happens in the aftermath of the original campaign(s) of Dune 2000. The Sardaukar lost Arrakis. To who? Somebody, I dunno. Anyway, shenanigans ensue. Go, go."

Just as well, it needs to be established that the Guild and Sardaukar are working together here because the custom special weapons the Sardaukar will get involve Guild support. One of them, which is already designed and implemented, will be teased as a scripted setpiece on level 2, but it will be player-targetable anywhere later on.

    Infantry can hop into vehicles?
Summers' Solstice made use of a simultaneously clever and stupid trick after crates were implemented for campaign missions. I used the images of units as specific-unit crate graphics so when the player touched them, they'd get that unit. Like the Flame Tanks around the player's starting base on S06V2.

I like this mechanic of giving the player extra vehicles to use. However, you can't destroy them and they don't take damage until obtained, so it was kind of immersion breaking. The new systems Klofkac designed... well, they're basically a new programming language that allow us to build our own systems.

Reinforcement drops have a variety of great uses. Putting things like crates or idle units out on the map, however, are ways to encourage the player to scout around on the average macro mission. They're there to reward the player for exploring beyond their comfort zone.

In the case of a no-build mission like this, the idle units are there to create a short lull in the action. The aggressive reinforcement drops on top of enemy forces are used to encourage players to press forward with their deathball and clash with the enemy, while players have to pause a moment to position infantry when the idle units are discovered.

I don't want to delay the action for too long. Brief moments of downtime, however, are good for getting players to naturally absorb more information. They can go into the next fight mentally refreshed when things are clearly structured and sectioned off.

This new system comes with its own problems. The Scythers on level 1 belong to an enemy faction on level 1 so players can't see them through the shroud until they're meant to. This has to be handled carefully so the AI doesn't do something funny with them, or doesn't attack the player's units before they turn friendly and get revealed. However, it should be a more immersive system than the last and it should allow for idle units to be more frequently found.

    A no-build mission to start us off?
The purpose of giving the player a mostly homogenous deathball and simplifying the gameplay in this fashion is to place more emphasis on other new things revealed on this mission. The new enemy faction has some very eccentric units, and it's easier to notice how they are different when the player doesn't really have to think about their own units.

In S01V2 back in the Summers' Solstice campaign, I tried to apply a similar principle by having familiar units like Riflemen or Cannon Turrets appear in its prologue, or Arc 1. That was intended to allow the player to focus more on the differences in how the mod feels before introducing new things like Shotgunners and Autogun Turrets in Arc 2.

Where S01V2 differs however is that it was a lot more micro-intensive. This level 1 is much less-so, while still being quite actiony. It gives the player an immediate taste of clashing with the enemy in a low-pressure environment before changes to the base-building elements are introduced on level 2.

    Impend? The Champion of Sanghelios?
Halo has some beautiful and memorable tracks and strategic use of music in games like it are an inspiration for big setpiece moments. In the case of this mission, the custom mix between Halo 2's Impend & Killer Instinct's The Champion of Sanghelios can last for its entire duration on fastest game speed, so it's less a setpiece track here and more an introduction to the campaign in general.

It just so happens that this first mission features a clash between rival elite infantry alien to each other while the enemy uses a bunch of plasma-based weaponry and sets up explosive devices on a space ship you have to go disarm. Although an extremely similar scenario to where the theme, Impend, plays in Halo 2, I choose themes AFTER devising the premise for a level. So it really was just a coincidence! The Aether Knights have a bit of a history with the Spacing Guild, and having them strike the first blow in this fashion was important to convey this detail! Besides, it was not setpieces alone that made Halo 2 so excellent. If I sought to mimic greatness in mere fragments, it would be disrespectful to the source material and do my own work no favors whatsoever either.

I did consider having Impend play when the second phase of the mission starts up. However, having taken the opportunity to create an extension and mash-up the Killer Instinct version with the Halo 2 one, and considering the length of the mission since it's level 1, I opted to open the campaign outright with this theme. The way this mix ebbs and flows should make for good accompaniment for most players' runs. And its immediate appearance helps convey to the player that while commanding a legion of Sardaukar might be familiar, they should expect something new and different nonetheless!

that's all for now. any feedback while this crap is under development is greatly appreciated!

and here's some info on level 2:

Spoiler

FULL MAP IMAGE:

Spoiler

dev commentary here:

Spoiler

SARD 02: We Descend
    Repackable hovertech MCVs?!
The player could already do some pretty clever things with the mechanic introduced in Summers' Solstice that spawns Engineers from sold or destroyed Construction Yards. In fact, there's an easter egg on level 2 if you capture the enemy ConYard. Besides some alternative dialogue, you can repack that one, although you can't repack your own.

After this mission, the player will receive MCVs for macro missions and will be able to repack them freely. They will use the hovertech body. I look forward to seeing what creative things players get up to with this new game mechanic.

    Drop pods?!
Back in Summers' Solstice, certain missions featured orbital artillery bombardments. They were at scripted locations and went off based on specific criteria.

We can produce custom special weapons in Dune 2000 now. Although nothing more than a scripted setpiece on this mission, Drop Pods are going to be one of them, for the Sardaukar faction. I set them up in this mission in that format so they can be easily used again later.

They're done up in, like, five parts. A bunch of math is done to determine the impact point and spawn spot, Drop Pods are a projectile that spawn other projectiles, infantry spawning is, uhh... inconsistent. If the tile is occupied by anything, I don't allow the infantry to spawn. However, only unoccupied tiles are chosen for the Drop Pods to fall to. Something would have to move to one of those tiles to obstruct it.

I'm definitely going to have to do some more work on this system to make it feel best. Do y'all suppose I should force infantry to spawn in adjacent tiles if the tile the Drop Pod lands on is occupied? I could do that instead so the intended amount of infantry is spawned every time. The Drop Pods are plenty damaging on their own, even to what infantry DO spawn, so maybe that approach would be for the best...

    Farthest Outpost?
It's just a coincidence that Arkanon has 'ark' in it and the song for the first mission on it is also the first time you drop down to and step foot on the Ark in Halo 3. Again, the name Arkanon came from a silly moment with my sister related to World of Warcraft. There's more info about the background of the tileset in the tileset's thread.

It happens that Dune 2000's soundtrack by Frank Klepacki has a lot of long choir notes scattered around. Halo was also originally envisioned as an RTS. In theory, it fits rather nicely.

Anyway, considering the Drop Pods and all that, I had to pull this one out. The timing was a bit tricky though. I play on fastest game speed, but I have to try to account for other game speeds too... What I did here was, I split up the beginning of the song, which ALWAYS can play all the way through even on fastest speed and had that play as soon as the start location is chosen. When the Drop Pods burst through the atmosphere, the song actually kicks in. I had to sacrifice some of the intro, but it's better than cutting it off in the middle.

I don't intend to make frequent use of multiple music files for one mission. There are some specific places I have in mind, this being one of them.

    Tech zero?
I got some reports from players that the first level was actually significantly more challenging than expected. There are A LOT of new things this campaign introduces! Not just the flashy stuff like the Drop Pods, but things under the hood. Simple macro missions like this are really important to help the player get their bearings.

Keeping things contained in a mostly-homogenous deathball also helps the player soak up information about new things rather than focusing on their units all that much, as I mentioned was the intent behind how level 1 was designed. You get a free second Harvester with your first Refinery. Barracks can heal infantry nearby. That weird purple stuff in the corners eats your health if you stand in it. Oh, the enemy is actually holding choke points and splitting their forces to attack me.

Given how different things are between the various factions in this series, let alone how different things are from vanilla d2k, I'm hoping that the early missions in this campaign prove more interesting than those in Summers' Solstice. I'm still aiming for them to be short so they don't overstay their welcome, especially if played in rapid succession as many players did on the early missions of SS before butting heads with the "hey, go take a break" level that is S05V1, or getting frustrated with the funni first bonus mission... but, yeah, there should be a buncha things making these even more interesting.

SS was very gimmicky. While that can be interesting in moderation, my focus in this campaign is on refining the gameplay loop. I think SS' strongest missions were the ones where its gimmicks played to the strengths of the gameplay loop. i.e. something like S14V2, where the randomized airstrikes changed how the map played out between runs and where the Fremen Gholas offered a snowballing mechanic to help keep the momentum going. Or S16V2, cluttered though it was, where the player could kind of ignore that clutter by pursuing specific targets, and then the gimmick helped bring the map home in an all-out assault on that tough enemy base. Those were still macro missions where the player had to build up and fight the enemy, but the special events on those maps added something positive to the macro game: Small objectives to go for, compartmentalizing the mission.

    Scythers still feel really weak...
Yeah, and they're way too similar to smuggler / mercenary Trikes / Raiders. The factions are very different from one another in this campaign, so I'm inclined to tweak this.

I might retire them and adjust the Buzzsaw to be the basic Imperial LAV. Scythers can stay in the first couple of levels so the player sees, "oh, those lasguns are kind of scary," and then a new LAV can take the currently intended place of the Buzzsaw after the Light Factory is upgraded.

PsYcHo, our voxel artist, suggested another route in making the Scyther deal area-effect damage while the Buzzsaw can crush. It's an interesting concept. I'll be thinking on it.

    There are water cliffs in this mission that weren't published in the tileset thread!
Yeah, those are still a work in progress. I did a bunch of new cliff blends, some of which appear on this mission. I'll be releasing an update to the tileset after I get some more work done on the water cliffs, among some other things.

Nguyen gave the rough draft of this one a test run. thanks to him and some other testers' data, I was able to make some good tweaks. here's his run:

and for however long this clip will stay up on streamable before it expires, here's my test run of a later draft from the left start location
https://streamable.com/ctbxag

another simple one for the player, but still quite complex on the back end

that's all for now. the OP's been updated with the new link and stuff. good luck and have fun

[Fey]

levels 3 & 4 are finished. the link in the OP is the same, but the zip was updated

now for some info. first, here's a changelog for general adjustments and levels 1 & 2:

Spoiler

In general:
 - The Order's Mavrys Buggy has a new body.
 - Fixed enemy Barracks not drafting infantry when destroyed or sold.
 - Added a 'medium' armor type for heavier light vehicles, such as the Mavrys Buggy or Imperial Buzzsaw. They're somewhat less resistant to attacks than they were before.
 - Mavrys Buggies use the MG warhead as opposed to shotgun (less area-effect, less impact against armored targets).
 - MG-type weapons received a small boost to their damage against structures.
 - The Imperial Buzzsaw's weaponry has been redesigned. They maintain crush capability, but now have dual shotguns and a functional melee attack that carves chunks out of their target, scattering debris or gore (thanks, PsYcHo for assisting in gathering sound effects for me to mix, and for drawing the gore effects). Their primary fire is only really effective against infantry, while their secondary deals respectable damage to armored targets.
 - Scythe Bikes / Scythers can now be kitted with lasguns at the Light Factory by upgrading it. Currently, this is only doable on Ark04.
 - A new game rule has been added that makes the intended amount of enemy reinforcements drop on easy difficulty.
 - All weapons are 30% less effective. This change is intended mostly to make fights last longer and allow for more time to micro units in the midst of battle.
 - All weapons' lethality against infantry has also been boosted by 30%, effectively keeping that the same despite the change above. Infantry are still overperforming; this was a sorely-needed nerf.
 - All Sardaukar-type infantry have received a minor health boost.
 - Sardaukar Flamers' damage resistances were adjusted (heat-resistant, vulnerable to explosives)
 - New game rule added that allows Harvesters to be ordered to undock from the Refinery. If player infantry attack a docked enemy Harvester, they will take advantage of this new rule to attempt to crush those infantry.
 - Harvesters and MCVs have new voiceovers. There was nothing wrong with the old ones AZ-Stalker voiced; I needed to branch out with hover engine noises and lines for the new MCV body (though an alternate set for a wheeled variant was completed too), and the Harvester got some less professionalism and more personality. We send our thanks to mslvsk for the new MCV VOs, and to ritz for the Harvester!
 - Proper unit / structure names were added. Sidebar icons are still screwy.

Ark01: First Contact
 - Added navpoints over accessible, idle Scythers.
 - Implemented a system to make commanding infantry to use Scythers more intuitive.
 - Added extra dialogue if the Sardaukar base sustains significant damage.
 - Added alternative dialogue if the player causes needless destruction or cheeses phase 1 of the mission.
 - Fixed an oversight where the mission could end before the main enemy force was defeated.
 - Fixed an existing message conflict where multiple sets of dialogue would play unintentionally.
 - Prevented allied Sardaukar Harvesters from attempting to crush enemy infantry.

Ark02: We Descend
 - Fixed an oversight causing enemy Harvesters to have unintended preferences.
 - Fixed an oversight causing some enemy infantry from phase 1 of the mission to potentially be left over.
 - Adjusted enemy behavior if the player attempts to sequence break. Some formerly spawned enemies arrive via Dropships, and the enemy will deploy their MCV and begin building up normally. Overall, the amount of enemies that arrive to challenge the player for attempting to sequence break has been reduced, and those reinforcements are affected by difficulty level.
 - Added markers pointing out salts deposits if the player has a finished Mining Rig, but hasn't placed one yet.
 - Added recursive reinforcement drops for the player if no Sardaukar Troopers or Flamers are on the field. Running out of those makes this one a slog...
 - Increased homogeneity among available reinforcements. i.e. more Riflemen, less other stuff. There was too much other stuff.

SARD 03: Cutter Teeth

Spoiler

full map images with & without events:

Spoiler

dev commentary below:

Spoiler

    No custom music?
Not every mission needs custom music. It should be used selectively for setpieces of note.

    Mavrys Buggies still feel tough. You nerfed them?
Yeah lol. Medium armor down from heavy, MG warhead rather than shotgun, so, lower radius and lower impact on armor... Mavrys are definitely supposed to be tough units. They're pricier than Scythers by a significant margin and will have a special ability later that justifies their armor type.

Despite still being kinda scary, they can be dealt with by having a healthy mass of Troopers and keeping some Scythers nearby to eat hits from Mavrys' MGs. This is the worst they get across the whole series since they're most powerful at the tech level they first appear as a buildable unit.

    Why's the enemy base so big?! It's tech 1!!
The addition of queues made me rethink how missions should be designed. You no longer need 500 APM to keep an infantry force. Not only can you just shift + click the sidebar a couple of times to cap out the queue on Troopers, but this campaign's infantry healing mechanics allow you to keep them in good health. You can even take your MCV along to the enemy base any time you'd like.

In short, the enemy's gonna need extra factories to put up a fight at all. I'd rather not just give them tons of off-map reinforcement drops to beef up their numbers; there's no counterplay for that. I mean, I tie enemy reinforcement drops to SOMETHING on the map that can be killed, usually an Outpost, but the extra factories operate conditionally on enemy power levels, available resources, tech structures... it's a lot more dynamic. Those units being produced at their secondary, tertiary, etc. factories aren't free.

    So there's gonna be naval combat...
Yeah, I dropped a test map over in the tileset's thread with the new naval units. Very rough around the edges, barely a playable mission, and some different dynamics from what we've seen in this campaign so far. Still, you can get a look at all the ships there. One of those ships, a Machyrie Corvette, pops out of the Shipyard on this level after it's discovered, then hecks off and leaves the map.

"Cutter Teeth" is a related pun. To cut your teeth on something is to get your first experience with it, while a cutter is a category of ship.

FYI, there aren't actually plans to add naval units to the Sardaukar or other factions' tech trees. The AK are big into this theater of war on their own planet for reasons. You'll get to interact with them, obviously, because otherwise their addition would be pointless. Hovertech units will make up the majority of the stuff fighting over water by far. The pure naval units though? AK only.

Asymmetrical warfare and wacky gimmicks can be memorable and fun if done right. I mean, think about how batsh!t crazy some units in Red Alert 2 are, and the weird dynamics at play there. I'd rather lean into fun new things even if they don't wind up particularly well-balanced than shoot for perfect balance. ...I will still try to balance things fairly though.

    The economy's tighter on this one.
The new economy systems - rigs quickly reimbursing their cost if placed on an untapped deposit, the first ref granting a free harv, the ref upgrade - are meant to minimize the wind-up portion of the macro game and get the player into the action ASAP.

Something I'd prefer to do as much as possible in this campaign is start the player from nothing. I put a lotta thought into how many choices there are in the tech tree, how many different ways you can start the game and how many directions you can go in fleshing your base out. When the player gets to build their own base, they get maximum choice possible in how the mission plays out. They get to make the mission their own. So the ConYard provides enough power for you to go for a Barracks first if you wanna be getting infantry out with your starting cash while building your first Refinery. You could go for the fastest Refinery possible by building a mini-Reactor plus a Refinery (and the mini-reactor + the ConYard supports a ref / rax opener). Or, maybe you wanna go for the Light Factory first. You could drop a regular Reactor so you have power to go straight into the Light Factory after your first Refinery is down.

Starting with nothing runs the risk of becoming tedious if the player is locked into the same choices every single time: No more, "I HAVE to go Wind Trap > Refinery > Wind Trap > Heavy Factory > Refinery for maximum economy," or you just get your butt kicked. No, with the addition of the Refinery upgrade system, there's room to try other things. And with the addition of queues, I'm trying to lean into getting the player to try to balance their income and expenditures. If they're able to consistently produce units while not running dry, that's the sweet spot. That's what I wanna balance hard mode in this campaign around mastering.

To bring it back to the premise though, the first few missions make it extremely simple to cap out your economy. It's very easy to ramp up production and I want to give the player a feel for that. I've seen some testers start with two Refineries, and they wind up floating tons of funds as a result. That's something I'd rather discourage, so a lot of the reinforcements on this mission are tied to building multiple factories. This mission sends more enemies at the player to nudge them into building production sooner, and level 4 will continue that trend.

The addition of the Heavy Factory queue later will further tighten the systems and make it even harder to max your production. This one adds the Light Factory queue, so that singular Refinery that worked on level 1 is no longer sufficient. When does it become insufficient though? That's part of the balancing act I want the player to try to figure out on their own.

    "Mikros Lake"?
I have a document with a whole bunch of region names I may or may not use. This was originally listed as Mikros Shore, but 'mikros' is derivative of the Greek word for 'small.' The lake's in the middle of the map, splitting up the enemy so they're more likely to attack from multiple angles. If I built the map so the water was only on the edge, the original name would make more sense. I didn't though, so, it's now Mikros Lake.

 

SARD 04: Skullcracker

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full map images with & without events:

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dev commentary below:

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    This map kinda looks familiar...
It's an homage to the third Terran mission in the original Starcraft. The terrain is structured very similarly, and the end result wound up being much bigger than originally intended just to try to get all the details correct. Have a look:

This is fine. It's not like the player has to blow up everything on the map, and I want to establish a sense of scale. Arkanon is a bigger world than Arrakis.

    Why would you pay homage to a crappy level?!
Because I felt like it, alright?! Shut up!

Look, nobody really likes defense missions. They're hard to do right at all, and even if you get them right, people just tend not to like them. They're important for various reasons though, and I'll give you the background on some Summers' Solstice maps to convey my point.

Starting with Terran 03 though, that kind of defense mission is in the game so the devs can throw bigger attacks at the player and test their understanding of the fundamentals. If they haven't really been paying attention to their SCV count, they're gonna need to get that up to afford the Marines to put in bunkers, and the bunkers' repairs.

I did SOMETHING similar in the prologue / first arc of Summers' Solstice with the S02s. V2 introduced hero units for the first time, so let's put that one aside. V1 was really mean and was intended as something of a skillgate level and it was my way of asking the player, "Are you comfortable with the difficulty level you're playing on? I throw a lot of stuff at you on hard. Bump it down if it's too much." That map had some curiosities though - the defensible area in the middle of the map, the Fremen, and there was no attached timer. The player completed it at their own pace. That got SOME ambitious players asking, "Can I blow up the Imperials on this mission?" And sure, it was designed to be a tough base to crack, but it was also possible. I had to stoke some curiosity in the player about what else might be possible on other missions across the rest of the campaign.

That's a mission that COULD turn into offense though. What about a pure defense mission, like S11V1? Well, my goal with that one was reminding the player of the usage of the lower-tier units before the second half of the campaign really kicks up. By the time you get to it, you've completed a string of high-intensity macro missions, like either of the S09s. The player is punished on S11 for taking a deathball and trying to roam the map with it; the enemies come from too many angles. Keeping the slow infantry spread around and roaming with light vehicles was designed to be the cleanest play there on purpose. The player's reminded of the strengths and weaknesses of infantry and LAVs before we re-introduce Combat Tanks, let alone before we have the toughest light tech missions in that campaign in the S13s. ...And even then, on S11 I still gave the player the option to go beat stuff up around the map and find some goodies, because maintaining the viability of a variety of playstyles is important.

So, as long as there's a clear vision for a mission, a goal as the designer to accomplish, even something like this can turn out fun.

All that said, my goal for this one is in a similar vein to OG Terran 03 and SS 02V1. The faction dynamics are completely different in this campaign, so I really need to try to dispel whatever misconceptions the player might have from experience with OG d2k, and test their ability to optimize with what new is on the table. And, I need to give them a taste of some ridiculous numbers of enemies so they're sure of what difficulty level they've chosen to play on - or are gatekept and forced to bump it down.

    This one is a step up in difficulty.
It has to be, or a majority-defense mission is going to get boring.

Like I mentioned in the section above, variety is important. The new start locations system does a lot to help how this map is structured... You can start with a Refinery and more economy, but you quickly lose your available factories. Or, you can start with those factories, but need to ramp up your economy while under attack by the enemy.

I like to put some things on the map that the player can find by exploring. There are some bonus units and a cash crate around, there's an island accessible by your hover MCV that can be used to attack the enemy from a better angle, and the enemy's defense lines are asymmetrical. On normal and especially easy, it's more than possible to bust their lines early. I dunno about hard. I've taken some very efficient engagements in test runs on hard, but getting put in the hole on hard is painful and getting out of it takes a lot more effort.

Just ending the mission right after the defense section would be lame too. I mean, the fact remains that the mission climaxes during the final enemy waves, but I'd rather allow the player to take things at their own pace. They can explore the map if they want. So, the map doesn't end after the timer. It's thus up to them to finish things, and I make it as simple as possible so the mission doesn't overstay its welcome.

    Scythers are fixed!
The lasguns are pretty nice, huh? I finally figured out what I wanna do with the Imperial LAVs. Scythers will be your light, fast option that are better at clashing with enemy vehicles. Although still reasonably effective against infantry, Buzzsaws are way better at that role, being able to crush them and even respond to Paladins in melee with their big ahh sawblades. Until the Light Factory is upgraded though, Scythers still have their standard armament and are dedicated anti-infantry.

That Scythers change role when the upgrade is done could make for some interesting timings, you know? If you go Barracks upgrade first and mass Troopers, the Light Factory upgrade is less important. If you wanna go hunting for enemy Harvesters or give your Scythers an edge against similar units like Trikes or Raiders (yet to be seen in this campaign), the Light Factory upgrade takes priority.

This leaves the Imperials without an LAV at the Light Factory suitable for dealing with structures. The best you'll get is moving some Buzzsaws into melee and letting them have at it. With the addition of Flamer infantry, the power of Flame Tanks, and other things like that, though? This should be fine. This is an interesting new dynamic.

    Why do we need Flamers if Riflemen are around? Or vice versa. Their roles overlap.
Only partially. The better range on Riflemen makes them better-suited for hanging out on infantry rock. They're not volatile like Flamers are. And, with the way hovertech armor works (where each hit on an unshielded hovertech unit deals additional damage), Riflemen are surprisingly capable of dealing with AK plasma borers. Flamers' volatility may make them undesirable in great numbers, although they deal even more retaliatory damage than Troopers when crushed by an enemy vehicle. They might be more resistant to heat-based attacks like lasguns and plasma, but they're more vulnerable to explosives like the Diakotn Howitzer's projectile.

So they both have their strengths and weaknesses. Troopers are positioned as probably the most important infantry overall, and they synergize well with either Riflemen or Flamers. Flamers and Riflemen themselves have better synergy than Shotgunners and Grenadiers did from Summers' Solstice.

    This feels kind of involved for a tech 2 mission.
It's because of the new faction dynamics! You've got a complete set of units to play with, and so does the enemy.

Back in Summers' Solstice, tech 2 gave you Trikes/Raiders and Quads, and Shotgunners, Troopers and Grenadiers. Lots of squishy stuff and no frontline at all. Incidentally, this made missions where the enemy had turrets kind of clumsy. It gave the impression of a tough enemy, but you had to rely on allied forces, limited armored units, Harvester cheese... that kinda thing, to get by. Tech 1 sard felt limited like that with Riflemen, Troopers and MG Scythers being the only things available. Very vanilla-like unit composition.

The tech 2 Sardaukar deathball is something quite different. You've got two bulky frontliners in the form of Flamer infantry, which can also deal area-effect damage to clustered enemy infantry, and Buzzsaws at the Light Factory, which have 25% more HP than Scythers in addition to the medium armor type, like that on Mavrys Buggies. Riflemen and Troopers are still a-okay to mass in great numbers. Scyther lasguns feel very all-roundy against enemy infantry or LAVs. And, although most tech 2 Sard units have a uniform range of 3 tiles (besides Flamers at 2), Buzzsaws have a secondary attack with a 1-tile range that's better in general. So, whether crushing infantry with them or moving them up against enemy LAVs or structures, the player's encouraged to move them to the front.

On the flip side, AK tech 2 has a huge diversity of weapon ranges, from 1 tile on the Aetherys Paladin to 5 tiles on the Diakotn Howitzer. Their other three units have a uniform range. One's basically a light plasma tank and can come at you from unexpected angles, buggies and Paladins are both rather bulky, the latter has a unique way to punish d2k's infantry crush mechanic, lasgunners are plenty capable of returning fire on your infantry or LAVs alike, and then you've got the howitzer lobbing grenades from behind 'em all. Their ability to strike your units atop cliffs makes the cliffs on this mission less defensible than they might appear.

I hope that makes them fun to fight, by the way. I really tried to branch out with this new faction and come up with a roster of units that encourages a variety of approaches. Their mechanics should make them interesting to play as, something I think was tested on those test maps released in the tileset's thread. It's just as important though that they're also fun to fight.

    "Kranyos Rock"?
Skull rock.

This mission was originally slated to be called "Guild's Glory," an ironic name because you're fighting a defensive battle for the sake of another faction you don't particularly like that's strong-arming you into this whole ordeal. There's not even any finality to this battle... You just get attacked by a large enemy force and fend them off. It's the furthest thing from glorious, even allowing the player to take a victory lap at the end. There is some strength in irony, but on getting some feedback from friends, this was regarded as one of the weaker mission names.

Since I chose Kranyos Rock as this region's name after mapping it, I decided on Skullcracker. Two obstinate factions butt heads, with the hardier one prevailing. It's also a more metal sounding name, accompanying the addition of Flamers and Buzzsaws to your roster of units.

 

oh yeah, and although Nguyen or other testers haven't recorded runs just yet, I've got some test runs right here. streamable links will expire eventually, but by whenever it is that that happens I'll surely have edited this post with Nguyen's runs. he always comes through

level 3: https://streamable.com/rfved4

level 4: https://streamable.com/j4oegl

these clips were of earlier drafts. certain things are different in the current result

have fun! there's a lot to play around with on level 4. even if striking out early on hard mode isn't really feasible, it's possible on normal and especially doable on easy mode

Edited 46 minutes ago by Fey
forgor 💀 somethin'