Red Alert Extended Arsenal

[devilslayersbane]

Today friends, I release to you the first alpha build of my mod for OpenRA: Red Alert Extended Arsenal! This mod is meant to build up the arsenals of each of the 5 factions in the RA mod of OpenRA in a lore-friendly and balanced manner. After reviewing much of the equipment of the Red Alert universe, much of it can be determined to be similar to anywhere between our own WWII and Vietnam war era tech, with some exceptions (the AH-64). It started out as a rules tweak to give the vehicles the designations of the names listed in my Red Alert: A Path Beyond guides and turned into a full-blown desire to make each faction feel truly different without destroying the playstyles of the allies vs soviets. In general most units kept many of thier stats and attributes without much change, though the different variants will have some noticable differences. There are also some new vehicles which were initially pulled from scorp's mod though now they have been tweaked.

Download: Red Alert Extended Arsenal Alpha 0.1

For release-20151224

Unit changes:
Rocket soldiers rockets no longer follow ground targets
Rocket soldiers no longer target infantry
M110 Artillery and V2's have increased range and prices.
Both sides now have APC's

Faction changes:
General Allies:
-Faction Specific Variants of the tanks have been added
-M113's added back and can carry 8 soldiers
-Chinooks can carry up to 16 soldiers
-The UH-1 Huey Gunship has been added and can carry 4 soldiers

England:
-M24 Chaffee light tank is the RA light tank.
-XM1 Abraham Medium Tank is the RA medium tank

France:
-AMX-13 Light tank is the fastest Light tank, but also dies faster
-AMX-30 Medium Tank is slowest Medium tank, but has the heaviest armor

Germany
-Panzer V Light tank is the slowest, but heaviest armored light tank available to the allies
-XM1 Leopard is Fastest Medium tank, but has the lightest armor

General Soviets:
-Reintroduction of the Hind
-BM-14 added as general soviet Artillery
-BTR-40 added as the Soviet APC (can also carry 8 soldiers)

Ukraine:
-IS-2 Replaces the dual-barreled T-52U's for Ukraine (older equipment) Heavier Armor, but slower than the AMX-30. Slightly costlier than the medium tanks as well
-T-34/55F Flame Tank general Anti-infantry tank, Ukraine home to the "Flame Corps" of the USSR
-V2's are not availble to Ukraine

Russia:
-No changes yet.

AI:
Will use all of the new units.

Bugs:
-Hind currently inaccessible.
-Game crash after finishing match (need help with this)
-Game crash after opening multiplayer/skirmish options menu (need help with this)
-BTR-40 and M113 stats switched
-Game is not really balanced yet
-Rocket Soldiers will only attack vehicles
-Phase tank cloak crashes the game
-Most vehicle variants use the same SHP's as their counterparts
-UH-1 rotors aren't correctly aligned (don't worry, their pilots are well-trained)
-Most new cameos aren't original (will be fixed in next version)

Other notes:
-Right now, standard skirmish settings are set to where the entire map is visible for testing purposes only. This is essentially a debug build, where I'm trying to work out the biggest kinks.

Future Plans:
-Add in more units, including faction specific sea and air units
-Add in allied fixed-wing aircraft such as the F-86 and F-4
-Soviet Dedicated transport
-SHP's for faction specific variants

Have ideas? Desire to help out? PM me or let me know in the thread!

Please leave feedback below. Thanks in advance!

[Norman_]

nice, will try your mod later

to be able to balance your mod, it might be a good idea to first try new settings using modmaps. its really handy/faster because player can just click on install map and try it directly.

tested scorps mod and it has the same crashes in the same situations, maybe he already found a solution for this and can help you.
also try the irc freenode openra channel, there you can find openra devs who have answers to all openra related questions.

[Graion Dilach]

What version of OpenRA is this against? If you tell it, I'll probably also give a helping hand here'n'there.

[devilslayersbane]

You'll have to forgive me. This mod is for release-20151224 of Open RA. Just discovered a new bug. The Phase tank, which I have yet to touch, crashes the game when it tries to cloak. Updating OP.

[devilslayersbane]

I will be releasing a small patch soon. This contains minor content updates and a few unit stat fixes. I'll list those specifically in the changelog soon. Stay tuned!

[scorp]

tested scorps mod and it has the same crashes in the same situations, maybe he already found a solution for this and can help you.

unfortunately not. I didn't find the time to trace every engine change that lead to crashes in newer versions.

But the Phase tank's cloaking for instance crashes due to an engine change relating to its palette. To fix it, have a look at how the current openRa revision treats the palettes of cloaking Units.

The OpenRa devs have apparently a tool they suggest to use when updating mods to never Versions of OpenRa. Maybe the OP has the time and resources to make the best use of that tool (and i guess the OpenRa devs will gladly advise on the use of that tool)

[devilslayersbane]

tested scorps mod and it has the same crashes in the same situations, maybe he already found a solution for this and can help you.

unfortunately not. I didn't find the time to trace every engine change that lead to crashes in newer versions.

But the Phase tank's cloaking for instance crashes due to an engine change relating to its palette. To fix it, have a look at how the current openRa revision treats the palettes of cloaking Units.

The OpenRa devs have apparently a tool they suggest to use when updating mods to never Versions of OpenRa. Maybe the OP has the time and resources to make the best use of that tool (and i guess the OpenRa devs will gladly advise on the use of that tool)

Ok, well, maybe we can try and work with the devs to figure this out. I also want to know if you got the rotors on the UH-1 to look right. I can't seem to.