Comments - KimJ0ngillest

Oh c'mon, shouldn't it be obvious!?

:D

Really awesome idea. It couples with the Scouring of the Shire somewhat; Eriador is prone to ambivalence or easy distractions. The Rangers are a largely external, passive force, and are scarcely known to the region. They are not directly protected from corruption/insurrection. An evil faction would have just as much opportunity to sway them as the Rangers. What Saruman did there was very small scale as a thoroughly defeated shell of his former self, yet he managed to do substantial rabble-rousing. If agents of Sauron sniffed out a resurgence of Arnorian spirit? You'd be damn right he'd have someone under his control trying to prevent any reconsolidation of power in the North.

Sauron wasn't just working against Gondor afterall: he wanted a conquest to be assured by fractionating all of middle earth. A proactive North would be highly problematic, thus he vied against the Dwarves to ensure they'd be irrelevant/ineffectual, then left the task of their conquering to Rhun.

All in all? An idea that is fully in character with Sauron's grand strategy, and would play in perfectly to an expanded understanding of Middle Earth's geopolitical struggles during the War of the Ring. Please, please flesh out this evil faction. It's going to make for some really memorable gameplay!!! This is coming from an Arnor fanboy. Just as I love fighting Angmar in DaC, I'd love to see something fresh in Eriador.

Somewhere in the middle perhaps: have a feature-limited, but stable and satisfying campaign that allows us to test army comp, economies, progression, scripts, et cetera. Just enough to be Middle Earth during the War of the Ring to give constant feedback through playtesting.

As of now, the mod has been all about getting assets into the game and having armies that properly function as representatives of these fictional factions. Now we have to add the layer of complexity that is grand strategy. Getting that design philosophy down is going to take a lot of time, and a different mindset. It'd be good to get the die-hard community engaged with the mod once it's in a solid Alpha build. Maybe have the download posted on the Discord strictly, then don't release anything on the main pages until you're comfortable with the state of the mod?

I suppose it just comes down to how you all want to manage it. I think you know that if you release an unfinished build, you need to be very good about community management and communication for it to be successful. I'd assess case-studies of what successful games have done with it. ArmA 3 is just one example of a public alpha build being persistently updated until it became a full release, and it worked to their advantage since ArmA 3 is a community-driven game.

Someone fetch Eowyn: he be lookin' scary.

Lovely work. Can't wait to face off against him and crap my pants during Gondor campaigns.

I never knew I wanted this LOL. Brilliant concept. I hope it sees full implementation.

0_0"

Holy smokes, I didn't think you guys would make these so fast!!

Would they be a potential Area of Recruitment/Local unit that folks can recruit when taking over Umbar? They could help bolster the relatively light/unarmored infantry core of Harad or Khand...

...or perhaps these men might be reformed? May they abandon usurpation as mighty ships from Dol Amroth carry the great armies of the faithful?

Oh hell yes!!! This is awesome, pure and simple.

Having a Europe map converted to LOTR would be a good placeholder to implement campaign changes/get everyone used to the style of campaign balance (which I believe is what was done before). Otherwise, Total War is incomplete without veteran generals and headcanons: Sauron ruling the world, or Khand turning against their masters. A few historical battles could give that context some life though.

I cannot entertain myself for long with custom battles solely. I need to be able to tell a story with characters, settlements, armies, the works.

...wow. Just...damn. I didn't think we were going to get another baller elite unit for Minas Ithil/Ithilien a la Minas Ithil Guardians in Third Age.

Couldn't be happier!

The plated shoulders are such a good design choice for these mid-tier fiefdom units. It makes them look brilliant, and denotes a degree of quality that's characteristic of such a militarized people- yet they are still not as well-equipped and drilled as Minas Tirith's hosts. That clear sense of progression is so satisfying!

Makes me wonder if Gondor will have a fiefdom barracks tree available to pump out these supporting units. God I can't wait to play campaigns with these units.

Hell yeah!! These guys look great!

Holy **** man. I can't fathom that degree of stress you went through. Honestly, it's astounding, because the work you've looks fantastic, and is precisely the direction I think this mod needed to go. Hats off to brilliant work while overcoming such gross malice and adversity.

Cheap shock infantry <3 I hope there are some beefed up variants for late game shenanigans too!

This is so exciting!!! Keep up the fantastic work!!

That's the kind of elite-tier unit that gets Total War players excited! I can't praise that concept enough!! I only hope to see its implementation by this point.

I'd grind tons of Eriador/Arnor campaigns just to have these guys in my army comp over and over. Fantastic work!

I'm just glad you guys are trying to make LOTR terrains. I thought that was never going to be attempted after Medieval II's era.

Something tied to the tech trees akin to the Divide Et Impera style reforms from Rome II, if that's a transferable kind of concept. Good stuff. If it's not the modding team, there'll always be sub-modders who hungrily await their chance.

New campaign map? Glorious! It's been far too long since we've had a LOTR terrain! Best of luck in what's undoubtedly an arduous modding process.

The obvious query (one I have the feeling has been answered) is if there'll be a Reunited Kingdom's reform in the game somewhere. Either way, super excited for this!!

Thanks for replying. I see your point, especially in regards to offensive, long-range wars. I agree; much the same in Medieval where you need the proper facilities to replenish your own troops (and with the prerequisite culture percentage depending on the version), attrition makes stacked, powerful foreign armies susceptible to the real repercussions of Pyrrhic victories beyond momentary vulnerability before replenishment. Fighting long-range wars is challenging in its own right, especially without large local forces in support.

If only replenishment were more nuanced! I hate to lose super veteran units.

No replenishment? What's the logic in that? Units do so all the time IRL. Sure, it's a rough abstraction at best in the game that's less than ideal, but it's also a quality of life feature to make the game less tedious. That alone makes me unsure of trying this out tbh, and I'm all about historical authenticity and realism.

I literally have the same issue. Seems to trigger upon certain death animations. Crashed while using the AK-102 (presumably that's the model, since it fires 5.56) AND while using the AS Val (or "Avalanche", the 20 round mag, folding stock 9x39mm suppressed rifle). I didn't have such CTD issues when fighting the Monolith soldiers in the underground passage. Weird.

Good so far, but there's a lot of points of improvement.

The grenade launcher sight on the M320 needs to be flipped down. It's mostly superfluous and clutters the first person view.

I'm sure you're planning to remove the crosshair from the Aim-Down-Sights (ADS), just want to make sure you know it's rather annoying to see. The sight alignment is very nice though.

The animations in general are stiff and unsatisfying, with the pistol in particular looking underwhelming in its recoil animations. The standards for reload animations have become much higher these days, even in mods. The gunplay will be very outdated and dull without putting a lot of effort there. This is critical.

Enemies seem to take a lot of damage. Gotta make sure firefights are short and brutal for both parties: that was a big point of the Smod Combat formula. I'm assuming you're not trying to copy it verbatim, but capturing the soul of the combat is important, especially with your brand.

I hate to be negative though, because this looks like a very promising project. The blue-ish filter is appropriate for the mod, especially with its setting. I like the HUD and arsenal selection; the AK-5 and Remington are very nice choices, you just have to work on the presentation. In particular, I like how you've handled the shotguns. Crosshair zoom versus irons is nice, even if it's less "realistic". The game is still sci-fi at the end of the day.

The audio ranges from good to great, just step it up in terms of amplification and power to really sell the intensity of tactical combat. Explosions should especially be concussive (minus the actual trauma). Give a bit of audio-visual shock from the experience. That, and firefights should be really, really intense too, of course. :)

I'm not on this project, so I don't want to harp on you too much without knowing the full picture. You've built a very nice platform for yourself to work off of, and I'm really, really hoping you bring this mod idea back. I loved Smod in all its permutations, especially Tactical and Outbreak. If you could breathe some life into Smod, I'd be forever grateful. You're rough around the edges right now, but that's okay.

Best of luck. I want to play the **** out of his mod. I hope you bring it really far!

It's been a long road for you guys, but the mod's almost finished by the looks of the excel list you've posted. I'm anxious enough to hope for an early release, even with some of the guns/functions missing, just because I want a taste so badly!

I can only load Point Insertion, Red Letter Day, and We Don't Go to Ravenholm. It refuses to load the rest of the story, and crashes from Ravenholm to the Mines.

Do I need SMOD base to play? It's been so long I can't remember.

Hopefully someone sees this, it being two years old and everything. ;_;

I am loving this mod so far and am on my second playthrough, though I'm a bit concerned as to the lack of strong storytelling. Everything is too detached, where I have to remember the past titles' stories to feel satisfied with the game's progression as Strelok working toward the NPP. I love the freedom of the mod, but some more writing could go into tying it together without feeling too linear for an open-world mod. I know it wouldn't be easy, but it'd be a commendable effort.

There is a quest submod that I'm going to try out that seems to improve the situation, though I was wondering if the Devs were going to put a more involved story into the game in the future. I love much of the choices you made to create an open feel to the story and instill consistency, and the ending with the NPP was phenomenal. That said, looking at Shadow of Chernobyl, there was a real sense of mystery and wonder as you battled and bled through the zone. I felt that same sense here with the mod, but there was the potential for a much more satisfying experience. Where's the heavy dialogue discussing the conspiracy to create tension and build-up, or bringing it to barkeep or Sidorovich like in the past titles, only here they'd say, "That's ******** man, it ain't worth a dime." or something to that extent.

I dunno, I'm rambling off the cuff here, but I hope this generates some kind of discussion.

This will be one of my go-to mods for sure now. I'm super happy with it, so I'd like to see it succeed in every way possible.

Jesus man, every video hypes me up! Don't stop! Call of Pripyat NEEDS this mod!

Hot damn this is awesome. You're doin' God's work: every good man needs proper weaponry to butcher dirty bandits, zombies, and monolith soldiers.

>Decidedly Tookish.

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