1.0.0 Release Details: New Vehicle Content & Mechanics news

Ah yes, new year of 2024, the time of new exciting possibilities such as...the Anglosphere unleashing full-on fascism, the collapse of the neo-liberal world order and upcoming WW3.

Things aren't looking too good in all honesty, don't really look forward to it and I would be lying if I pretend otherwise. Times are tough and all we could do is to push forward for a better world and shared future for humanity.

You know, when I heard stories about US bombing in Bangkok a couple of blocks away from my home and my grandparents and parents hiding in a fucking underground bunker, it all seemed very faraway with the way the Western media portrayed the dissolution of the USSR as "end of history"; never I would have thought of the possibilities of experiencing such a thing in my lifetime. But oh boy, was it a BIG fucking lie lmao.

I mean I hope not but that maybe a wishful thinking at this point. Only Washington knows the answer.

Doom and gloom aside, in other news:

This blog will be a short one, I promies.

In vZH or other RTS titles in general, arguably one of the monke brain tactics the average player engages in is tank blobs; build a massive blob of tanks and just roll em over in two clicks.

Much like our ancestors, monke can grow some brain power and started to operate with somewhat more complexity.

Hence now your monke tank blobs will have some depth to them for the player to adapt and utilise in various situations at hand as an option to just outright committing to other units. Usually by the time, the newly built units get to where your vehicles were at, the vehicles would most likely already been pulverised by the enemy AKA the average Starcraft 2 match.

Another feature that makes a comeback from classic ZHE versions are the co-axial machine guns. Personally, I never liked the no MG tank designs in any games so I just added them even way back when MSN messenger was the new telephone.

While the machine gun can suppress the enemy infantry, it's still not the ideal weapon to deal with them. That's where anti-personel weapons e.g. anti-air guns, HE munitions, incendiary weapons, etc. comes in.

In 2003, Generals tank blobs might have looked revolutionary at its time but now, not so much. Many games released following 2003 have done a great job in developing a somewhat realistic and stylised vehicle combat in such a way that is amusing to look such as CoH. And that's just it, that's the only game series to do just that.

Well, this is just that but in Generals.

Btw, Generals and CoH is just 3 years apart, let that sink in.

So, what convoluted features I added this time to the vehicles and tanks that infers the so-called depth, you're just about to find out.

---

Armour Penetration System:
Well, sort of. Technically speaking, this is more like a glorified PDL system without the laser part. With the laser part being invisible, when incoming shells that are about to hit an armoured vehicle, there's a relative chance that the shell couldn't penetrate the armour and bounced off.

Depending on the armour in question of course, shells of various caliber and velocity at what angle will more or less get deflected by the armour.

General rule of thumb is:

‣ IFV armour can relatively deflect light anti-tank and mortar shells. Other warheads, not so much.
‣ MBT armour can easily deflect light anti-tank and mortar shells while relatively deflect anti-tank and tank shells. Others, not much.
‣ Super-heavy Tank armour can easily deflect light anti-tank, mortar shells, anti-tank and tank shells and relatively high caliber tank shells. Cannot deflect artillery shells, rocket artillery or high explosives.
‣ Aircraft munitions can't be deflected by any vehicle since they always hit the top part of vehicles (generally the weakest part)

Honestly, this is a rather experimental feature so I don't know whether how well this would received generally or how long it would last. It can look weird at times like when mortar shells getting bounced off since PDL is coded in such a way that it scans for shells in 360°.

But it looks super cool so maybe I'll just keep it in indefinitely.

---

Anti-Air & CIWS Deployment System:
Maybe a downgrade for some, an upgrade for others but for me personally, it had to be done. I had no other choices.

I ran out of weapon slots especially on PGZ-95 and PGZ-08 since they have smoke dischargers, the main cannon and missile launchers.

Obviously, there has to be two version of the main cannon and missile launchers; one for ground and the other for air. That's just how SAGE works. This makes it requires four and plus one more, making for five in total, which is impossible to be coded in normally as the hard limit per set is always 3.

Technically, it could be avoided by moving some weapons to an Overlord style invisible turret but it's rather buggy and ideally, I would wanna avoid it entirely.

There are two vehicles in the mod that I utilise the Overlord style invisible turret thing: the ZBD-04A and the UH-60M. The UH-60M works flawlessly. The ZBD-04A, however, can be buggy sometimes. How buggy? Well, I'll let you find out. It's kinda hilarious xD

Back to the deployment system, it's as said in the subtitle. You, the player, must deploy the anti-air system first before the unit can engage air targets.

Once deployed, the unit becomes stationary and switch to their anti-air set of weapons that could only engage air targets. If you want it to engage ground targets again, simply undeploy the unit and it could once again move out and operate as it once before.

But does that mean EVERY anti-air capable unit uses this system?

The answer to that would be no. The exceptions are usually solely mounted with heavy machine guns e.g. Technicals, Humvees, Warriors, HMG Gunners, etc. Otherwise, they use the anti-air deployment system for consistency.

But to compensate for the lack of mobility, anti-air range is extended considerably so it could stand up to enemy aircraft.

---

IRL Accurate-ish & Individualised Upgrades:
Ranging from the BGM-71D 'TOW' ATGM on M2A3 'Bradley' IFV to GP125 ATGM on ZTZ-96B 'Tigress' MBT, by default, can be upgraded on individual unit level. Since they're supposed to kind of be limited special type of munitions, I think they need to be made into upgrades rather than just being installed by default.

"But does that mean that one would have to upgrade everything individually?" You may ask.

Not really in some cases.

For each faction, there should/will exist at least one upgrade you would expect to see from vZH i.e. TOW Missile Upgrade and Scorpion Rocket Upgrade. In ZHE, it works kinda the same as vZH i.e. every vehicle is upgraded plus the ability to upgrade units individually early on and even more options across many vehicles.

Even more, armour skirts and pintle-mounted gunners can be also be upgraded in some vehicles to even further increase their effectiveness. Maybe it's getting a little bit redundant at this point but hey, redundancy is the name of the game. Also, It's cool to see Battle-master Tank firing missiles while the HMG gunner's blasting the enemy and that's all that matters!

If you've played CoH before, you may know exactly what I'm talking about.

---

Minor Air Rework:
So before we go any further, let's hear from today's sponsor: EmpireVPN! Just kidding. EmpireVPN isn't real and they aren't sponsoring me. I'm only getting paid in Xi bucks.

Let me rephrase that aircraft is getting some updates.

That's right! Even though the models haven't even been upgraded yet, the available aircraft both from vZH and 0.9.x will receive some mechanic reworks in preparation of future updates. It also has to play well with other stuff added.

That being IRL accurate-ish weapon set (having machine guns, accurate payloads, etc. like updated ZHE vehicles) and roles. Now this will be getting expanded whenever I get to actually modeling the things so consider this WIP (work in progress) so don't expect much from this.

Here are how things are so far:

‣ Air Superiority Fighter - These are stealthed fighters specialised in fighting other aircraft in order to establish air superiority meaning friendly close air support and bombing run campaign can be carried out more effectively.
‣ Close Air Support Attack Aircraft - Aircraft specialised in ground attack missions alongside friendly troops utilising a wide range of armanents including bombs, missiles, rockets, autocannons, machine guns or directed-energy weapons.
‣ Stealthed Attack Aircraft - Aircraft specialised in ground attack missions much like close air support except rather than getting in close, instead missions are carried out further away to avoid enemy retaliation.
‣ Super-Sonic Attack Aircraft - Aircraft specialised in ground attack missions equipped with advanced super-sonic capable engines enabling them to reach their targets intact deep within enemy territory.
‣ Multirole Combat Aircraft - Jack of all trades. Can be refit into variety of roles i.e. attack aircraft, fighter, reconnaissance, etc.
‣ Attack Helicopter - The helicopter version of the close air support aircraft. This class isn't required to return to airbase for replenishment of payloads like vZH.

Smoke Generators & Smoke Dischargers:
Perhaps a small recap, IFVs and MBTs by default in most cases will be able to generate smoke using its engine and in some cases, dischargers for range cover smoke capabilities.

Is it the most realistic thing ever? Probably not. Look, I'm not an engine nerd, I can't be bothered to look it up, so there's probably someone angry in the comments already saying "HOW COULD YOU DARE SAY X ENGINE CAN PRODUCE SMOKES WHEN IT SCIENTIFICALLY CANNOT??? ARE YOU STUPID???😡😡🤬"

To that I say, to Alsume I go! And naturally, vehicles without the dischargers can be upgraded with it with a small cost.

---

Vehicle Mine Clearance Upgrades:
Well, also sort of. Only two vehicles in ZHE have the ability to upgrade with the LEGENDARY Dozer Blade! (that being: the T-62M 'Marauder' MBT and the T-292 'Ravager' Improvised Superheavy Tank)

When upgraded, the vehicle now has the passive ability to automatically clear explode mines in front of the vehicle.

But don't get too cocky with the dozer blade as the vehicle might be able to clear said mines but they're not immune to them! Meaning there's a small your vehicle could rotate at a weird angle then exploded in comedic fashion.

And that's about it.

"But what of the other faction's dozer blades?" You may ask. Well, I can't be bothered to add them at the moment but I do intend to at some point. And that's the end of that.

Totally worth many sentences I've written!

---

Full-Salvo & Half-Salvo Rocket Artillery:
As the subtitle suggests, in place of the 0.9.x high-angle & low-angle barrage, SPMRLs now utilise full-salvo and half-salvo instead. Meaning that firing in full barrage will exhaust every single shell at its disposal then the vehicle will enter a long reload cycle.

However, when firing in half barrage will exhaust only half of the shells and then vehicle will enter a shorter reload cycle. Very useful when targeting soft targets, a short barrage will already destroy most if not all of the targets while full barrage will just waste ammunitions if you're not babysitting the thing.

I had to ditch the 0.9.x feature because it was buggy visually speaking and I need an excuse for this paragraph to exist.

---

Preattack & Reload System (Again):
Like infantry's system but there's no need to do any animations this time :D

Also taken into account each vehicle's IRL capabilities e.g. auto-loader, cailber of the gun, game functionality, ability modifiers, etc.

Is it 100% REALISTIC??? Probably not.

"How does this even affect vehicles?" You may ask. Well, I'm gonna save it for the faction overview next time where some war doctrines and GPs come into play!

---

Reworked Crusher Level:
Perhaps the most controversial ZHE change of all time.

When the new infantry being played in early game, it's rather comedically stupid that one fast moving vehicle could just wipe out a whole squad of infantry in a non-sweaty match between the average players. And then, nobody would want to ever build infantry ever again; just like in vZH!

And that's why I made every single wheeled vehicle (except Dozer and Bomb Truck) unable to crush infantry! Infantry can now be played without constantly trying to hide in buildings anymore.

And now it's time for me to hide in my basement from the mobs of angry sweaty ZHE players coming for my head with massive guillotines!

Next time, we'll covering the new doctrines and GPs for each faction in 3 separate blogs. Until then!