Starting a few mods

[ndchristie]

Good evening all,

I've decided for my own benefit to start modding the RTR 6 series, which I think is by and large the best version of the game. This will be on my own copies, but I figured I'd post my ideas to see if anyone else would be interested, and also to ask permission from the team to share.

I should mention that everything here is subject to further testing and should not be considered final.

There are a few concepts in all, which will alter the game to varying degrees:

1 - Soldiers of Fortune
modify unit list to significantly increase "ownership" of key units in order to increase the effectiveness of bribery and reflect a more fluid understanding of antique armies.

2 - Slings and arrows
Specifically target the range and power of bow types and slings to provide a more stable, generally weaker, impression of common missiles.

3 - Siege and fortification
3a - Weapons
Introduce a greater variety of siege weaponry by modifying units and projectiles. Specifically intended to include:
oxybeles - a small, accurate bolt-thrower which lacks the power or range of the torsion-powered scorpio. Specifically designed to pressure elite units, including hoplites and heavy cavalry. 4 to a pack.
ballistra - a high-arching, modest-damage stone-thrower for use against walls and other structures. Kept from being anti-personnel by requiring a high angle of fire and slower projectile as well as general inaccuracy. 1 to a pack with plenty of ammunition.
catapulta - a replacement for the current ballista, removing most importantly the BP attribute, which has never been demonstrated. it features improved range and power over the oxybeles. 3 to a pack.
roman ballista - a late weapon which features a lightweight bolt. it is a heavier, clumsier scorpio, but may also be employed to some effect against fortifications.
onager - a late weapon which resembles a scaled-down version of the vanilla onager. as the the ballistra, the low rate of fire and high-arching shot demands that it be used exclusively against buildings. 1 to a pack with plenty of ammunition.
scorpio - the apex artillery piece, it is accurate and mobile allowing it to snipe enemy units with range and impunity. coming 5 to a pack, it is intended to represent the height of roman engineering and represent a more appropriate ratio of artillery to line infantry.
general changes to vanilla - the mass, damage, and AOE of all equipment will be significantly reduced. Only stones will maintain the BP attribute, and as mentioned are not for use against moving enemies. Flaming ammunition will see its effects against troops significantly reduced. Crew number and personal combat skill will be significantly reduced with the exception of roman forces, which will use proper infantry. Scale will be significantly reduced to limit the ability of opposing engines to destroy each other, to increase mobility, and to remove the (unintentional?) ability of crew to use their engines as portable shields against arrows.

3b - fortifications
To increase the realism and aesthetics of fortifications and provide a more complete scope. specific changes include:
new hierarchy:
lvl 1 - stockade
lvl 2 - a hybrid of the vanilla wooden wall and palisade. in western cultures, the wood itself is very slightly shorter, but set atop a small earth rise.
lvl 3 - different for cultures. in the north and west, this is represented by a stone-and-wooden wall with ramparts, set atop modest earthworks. it is significantly lower, narrower and weaker than vanilla stone wall. it will feature smaller, wooden towers. in the south and east, a low, all-stone wall of approximately the same size and durability is seen, without the earthworks. The difference is cosmetic.
lvl 4 - a higher stone wall roughly equivalent to the vanilla version.
lvl 5 - a stone wall not unlike the "large stone wall" from vanilla, but featuring level 2 tower defenses.
epic walls will be GONE. I'm not convinced they ever existed and if they did, they certainly couldn't be built in every city. If these are included at all, they should likely require a hidden resource as well as require the complete bankrupting of a city/faction.
general changes - does anyone know if boiling oil may be added to wall segments? I should like to remove them from the gates, where they are prone to destroy the wrong units and rams rarely reach the target anyhow, and move them to where they may assist in defense against ladders.
This part i have the most questions about. I am an artist first and foremost and know that, while I could easily sculpt the differences, coding in the height changes could prove the largest hassle. I am not able to find anything in dbb_walls_xxxxx.txt which explicitly states the height of a wall and may be forced to give up some hopes of scale changes. I'm also having mild difficulty locating the .CAS files, but have hiiiiiigh hopes, we got hiiiiiigh hopes...

4 - recolor and retexture pack
this might *just* be for me, but personally the pageantry and accuracy of the RTR artwork prevents me from readily identifying units. Maybe other people like playing the game on pause. Maybe they like hoving the mouse to get a sense of what they are looking at. I just find that it prevents full immersion. My hope would be to bring back the sleek, professional, clarity-first rendering and coloring styles of the vanilla units using the (exceptional) models and designs put forth by the RTR team, along with the (hate me for it, you might!) faction-based color signifiers.





Does any of this sound interesting to folks? Does anyone have any helpful tips/horror stories from trying similar things?

[Carados]

1) It's an interesting idea but you will be unlikely to get much use out of it unless you modify how much money you need to bribe an army. Back in vanilla, before the patches, I used to bribe any Roman army that happened to be passing through Cisalpine Gaul (I was usually the Julii). It's not quite so feasible at the moment, but a very interesting concept that should be workable.

2) You ideally need to look around for someone who has messed around with these things before. Otherwise you're in the dark because I'm not sure any of the extant RTR team(s) know a great deal about this.

3) Remlep has been mucking about with walls for RTRVII, you should send him a PM.

4) A hybrid of the two is likely to be a good idea. For the ExRM mod, we're keeping the general drabness and neutral colours (especially for non-faction units), but when it comes to faction units there will occasionally be more colours used. Although the way vanilla has done it is very good from a gameplay stand point, I think it's completely over the top and you can certainly get away with having just a couple of colours on the unit.


Incidently, have you tried any of the newer mods at all? I'm talking ExRM, TIC, FOE and AqD's specifically here.

[ndchristie]

thanks for the info!

1 - I think that ownership (the following units will join your faction) does increase the pay needed to bribe. Also the newest iterations of the game mean that bribing anything more than 3-4 units should take a fairly large amount of money. that said, I play barbarians, so a greek faction might buy too easily.

2 - I've done a lot of experimenting already with missiles and this wouldn't present a huge hassle. one of the most simple if tedious changes would be assigning most missile weapons to be "other" instead of "archery", preventing the improvements that you mentioned were so critical.

3 - sent him a PM. thanks! I also forgot to mention that there should be a significant reduction in wall coverage, which means that combined with the lowered height there should be a lot more exchange between missiles, particularly from the besieging forces, such that you won't expect to defend a wall with so few casualties as currently. the narrower walls will also limit the number of men you can have on them, so that placement of missile and melee will become much more important. I also want to see if I can put in a greater frequency of attack positions by halving the length of the straight wall portion, meaning that you'd be able to place ladders closer together and create larger, more contiguous breeches.

4 - I haven't played a lot of the newer stuff and I do agree there's a happy medium. Also vanilla clothing patterns were a ridiculous fantasy, so most of the work would be unifying the stellar work that's already been put forward by the RTR teams.