This mod is dead right now, or at least sleeping so soundly that it may as well be. Therefore, all of the scripting work put into it is now Open Source. Feel free to use any of my work (art, sounds, code, whatever) in your projects, and hopefully somebody will revive the mod for 1.0+





If you love the basic ideas behind CC, but would like to see CC's gameplay be a bit more polished and balanced, this mod is for you.





This is a mod basically built around gameplay changes and fixes.

This is a full conversion mod; it fixes areas of the Metagame and the AI, changes Actor behaviors (primarily how Actors move and interact with the terrain) and re-balances the factions, their weapons, their special abilities... basically, everything is different.

Disclaimer

After reading several posts by people who feel, however justifiably, that they didn't get what they wanted from this, I've written this disclaimer. Please read it carefully.

This mod changes everything important about how CC plays.

If you're expecting minor rebalance of weapons, maybe some new guns... this is not the mod for you. Don't download it; you won't like it.

Please don't flame me, or tell me how terrible I am for "ruining mah CC"; you've been warned

However, if you feel that the Campaign mode is about as hard as overcooked spaghetti and you're tired of letting the AI build a base or maybe land an army before you bother fighting it; if you think you should be fighting for your existence every mission and desperately fending off an AI that's smart, aggressive and can move well enough to kill you; if you believe CC should be a game with more serious twitch and skill and less just leisurely buying an OP gun for your OP dood and marching through enemy bases... well, then you're in the right place.


1. All of the troops and mecha move smoothly and easily and will feel natural and fluid. I really can't overemphasize that this makes playing CC a very different experience.

2. Metafight missions start with an orbital bombardment to give offensive troops an edge.

3. Each faction's themes have been made deeper and more interesting. For example, the Brownshirts are tougher than in Vanilla, regenerate their wounds, and are very expensive. Play each faction to discover their nuances and differences.

4. The AI takes appropriate actions and attacks you mercilessly. Huge armies will roam the maps, destroying each other.

5. Your troops no longer stand around; troops decide what to do based on their "job description" and will react to battles appropriately. For example, if you land three Coalition Heavies in a Dropship, they will immediately start hunting down the enemy.

6. MOIDs are kept < 255 so that Lua behaviors function correctly at all times. Note that this may cause Actors to explode on certain maps; it's not a bug, it's a feature. I'll try to talk to Data about the bug this feature is addressing if I can

7. All faction Loadouts have been built to give the AI an advantage over humans, especially if it has enough money.

8. Changes to materials and many small details of the faction troops, making forts tougher, diggers better at digging but not at killing, robots tougher than humans, snipers are superior at their specialty, etc., etc.

9. Actors no longer lose weapons if sneezed on.

10. All sides are allowed to buy a hovertank that's expensive but balanced.

11. Almost every gun is worth buying (I think).

12. The Dreadnoughts and other ACrabs have jetpacks, just like troops do.

13. A lot of sounds got re-mastered to reduce lag somewhat.

14. Rockets are no longer deathtraps and can be reliably steered by humans.

15. New actors, sounds and art alongside the old classics.

16. A bunch of other stuff I can't be bothered to write down

INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS

1. Download the mod from the link above.
2. Download and install the latest build of CC B27 from Data Realms Licensing. This mod is incompatible with stock B27; the newest build fixed some very important engine bugs.
3. Unzip the entire mod over a clean install of the latest B27. If it asks you if you want to copy over the files, tell it "yes".

That's it.

FAQS

Please feel free to offer your comments on the balance and the direction the factions should take below. In particular, I'd like to hear feedback about the guns and the faction balance and their general concepts.

I feel like every faction can win 1 v. 3 AI right now, but Imperatus is obviously very unfinished and needs at least 3 guns (I have neat code for one of them atm but haven't made sprites), the Dummies' Annihilator is still not working like I'd like, Browncoats are probably still OP even at their price point. That's where I'm at on the balance atm; I decided to release it anyhow because I'm enjoying playing it enough that it probably means it's time to get some feedback.

Any constructive and kindly comments on how gameplay is shaping up would be helpful if I choose to continue to work on this in the future

By 'Stock B27', do you mean the HIB3 one? Or if I re-downloaded it from there, would the mod not work?

My understanding is that the CC on HIB right now has not been updated to the current build. If your CC folders don't include Techion.rte, you need to upgrade or this mod will crash and burn, unfortunately

HIB2 doesn't have Techion yet, so you'll need a copy straight from DRL.

I hope that I can get a few testers; I know it's a pain to have to upgrade CC via DRL but I couldn't make the mod work without the Loadout bugs fixed so that Imperatus could have their own droids and stuff, amongst other things.

Eh. I guess that I'll have to wait until the HIB gets the new version before I can play this.

The Roamer is epic.

But I don't know, some things are wierd, like the coalition auto-shotgun can't hurt the brain bot (not even the case), some weapons are plainly useless against metal foes and the diggers can't dig through concrete. Also movement is great, sometimes things are too bouncy.

Probably the best short-term solution is to buff the shotguns a bit more but then penalize them with a variation of the anti-terrain-destruction script and raise their air resistance to keep them from being all-purpose de-thingonators. I just don't want them to be quite able to hurt the ACrabs or other heavily-armored guys, as I don't feel like that's realistic vs. high-tech super-armor.
I'll look at them for a bit, put up a new version when I've tweaked their balance again

As for the actors, it'd help to hear which ones are having issues; it's pretty tricky getting them tuned just right due to all of the forces involved (basically, Actor mass vs. my simplistic force springs) but I'll try to tune ones that are a bit too floaty down without making them not able to go everywhere and kill everything

technically the rules require an image in the first post. just saying.

edit: you can't pick up weapons on the ground. at least, not manually.

In this case, you would need a .gif or a video, not necessary, but it would be very useless to use just images to explain such a mod.

NP, I'll get one made real quick

It's really not about the eye-candy (although there is some), though

It'd help to have a video, yes, but frankly I have no idea how to do capture of this yet and I'd rather spend the next couple of hours taking care of bugs / balance stuff- I haven't finished the edits to the rockets and dropships or made a sprite for the Techion drop-crate yet, amongst other things

Oh, and on the diggers vs. concrete... that's more-or-less a feature. Basically, I want players to have to fight their way into those huge, elaborate bases Data Realms spent so much time and work on instead of digging through them. I spent a lot of effort on making sure that guys like the Medium Tank can't be used as practical digging tools vs. bases as well; if you want to take out brains, you'll have to dig them out with your troops the hard way. It keeps the whole reality of bunker warfare intact and feels a lot more real to me; if, in The Future, they have magic ray-guns that can tear through any armor at all, then why bother using any other weapons?

So, IDK, it's not "concrete", it's "nanotech self-organizing crystalline matrices that self-heal" or something like that that's incredibly strong. Which is why they don't bother using nukes from orbit, because it'd take such a powerful nuke that the whole planet would be irradiated. Or something. Don't ask me to make CC's backstory make sense, k?

If the issues with n^2 performance and MOID problems are ever resolved, those bases will be truly epic to fight through; right now they're merely difficult.

Yeah, apparently making them not get shot also means that Actors can't pick them up. Engine bug; whether an Item can be picked up or not should be a boolean exposed to Lua and not dependent on whether they interact with MOs when held or shot while laying on the ground. Basically nothing I can do about that one; weapons getting shot is not a feature I want, it's completely unrealistic to use your rocket launcher as a shield or parry bullets with your AK-47's barrel.

Something is wrong with my download, it says it can't find 8 pastes, and I ignore and when I try to run the game it stop responding. Help?

Did you follow the installation instructions, exactly? It really won't work right unless you've installed it over a clean install of the latest B27.

What you mean with the latest version of B27?

EDIT: Oh, and it stops responding after loading the meta game index.

You need to download the latest installer from Data Realms Licensing and update to the latest version of B27.

Basically, Data Realms released a point release without telling anybody or updating the version number. It fixed some very important bugs in the engine, and the mod won't work without it, because it's using bleeding-edge features of the engine atm.

Also, do a clean install (i.e., empty out the folder, copy your mods to another folder and install a totally fresh build); you don't want Metagame saves to cause any crashes and it's probably not savegame compatible, which is unavoidable given the structure of Metagame saves.

[EDIT]Almost got the shotguns rebalanced so that they aren't terribly useful as digging tools or kill armored stuff (with the notable exception of the Browncoat fire-shotty, but that's a beast of a different color, heh) but can all kill Brains (although with some of them it may take multiple shots).

Now I need to get back to the Actor scripts for the ARockets / ADropships, which will basically make them all easier to fly manually and get rid of their tendency to immolate themselves even when they're not being shot at and have selected a fairly-flat place to land. I'll issue a patch after that and then get back to work on the Imperatus guns if I can stay awake long enough [/EDIT]