Absolute Chaos 2.0- Coming Soon! news

Greetings! I am excited to let you know that Absolute Chaos isn't in danger of dying anytime soon. Reeb99 has handed the mod over to yours truly, and I am already at work preparing a 2.0 release. Here is what you can expect to see in the coming weeks and months as version 2.0 begins to take shape:

Galactic Conquest: The focus for the next release will be optimizing the UGC conquest scenarios and making them as immersive and playable as possible. I plan to add more starting forces, slightly remap the galaxy, add more trade routes, and remove some of the peripheral and obscure planets in favor of more strategically significant and canonically important worlds. I also plan to flesh out the local campaigns with more and better starting forces and to make them genuinely playable.

Now, In previous releases, there have been issues with the camera zoom and the spacing of the planets. These issues have made the interface cumbersome and have caused a lot of problems. These problems come up because the game really isn't designed to accommodate two different galaxy maps with huge differences in scale, because this requires two different sets of fleet movement limitations and two different sets of camera angles and zooms and so forth. I think these problems are enough of a drag on the game play and the visuals to warrant dividing the mod into two releases. I intend to release one version of the sub-mod that features the original ACM 2.4 galaxy maps, in addition to a second version that showcases the larger and more expansive UGC style of game play. This second version will be the next release.

Content: I plan to add a few new units to each of the factions but not too many. ACM is already pretty loaded and there is no need to add a ton of new units. I plan for each faction to get a couple of extra space and ground units, and have been in talks with other modders to get access to some new models and units. I also hope to add Golan platforms as buildable defense structures for galactic conquest. Additionally, I plan to add back in the content from the old Absolute Enhancement Mod that was cut from Absolute Corruption 2.4- droid factories for the Empire and Rebels, General Dodonna as a hero, etc.

Visuals: A few visual updates are in the works also. I plan to add some new particle effects and to return the interface to the classic blue GUI from Empire at War. Also, many of the units are missing proper death clones, presumably because there was no way at the time to convert the .ala files when the content from AEM got moved over to Forces of Corruption. I plan to restore those death clones, so that units like the Dreadnought and Alliance Assault Frigate will now go out in a flaming hulk of glory instead of simply vanishing from view in a generic space explosion.

AI: The AI will be streamlined and I will do what I can to make it compatible with steam. This might mean changing a few dynamics such as the way in which the Zann Consortium advances tech levels, but I am confident we can a find a workaround that will let us keep those features in game. Most of the AI improvements that Reeb introduced can be implemented, I think, using lua scripts and story events and without the need for an overhaul of the AI XMLs.

Balancing: Balancing is pretty good as it stands, but I still plan a few tweaks. First, I will try to make infantry a little less fragile and bring their stats closer to the default settings. I will also tone down some of the battle cruisers and super capitals which are virtually unstoppable in their present form. Finally, the fighter and bomber units will get a slight rebalance, as will the Starbase garrisons. Garrisons will be reduced, but will return to the old system in which they continuously spawn reinforcements until destroyed instead of loading all at once.

That's all for now. I don't have a release date ready to go just yet, but expect the new release sooner rather than later. Until then, please continue sending in bug reports and suggestions as we strive to deliver a top-quality enhancement for this classic mod.