Ruse Overhaul Mod for R.U.S.E.

Finally after over a month of work the Ruse Overhaul Balance mod is finally completed! So you might be wondering what on earth does this mod do? Well its simple really, it is an attempt to rebalance the entire game of RUSE. So you might be wondering what does this mod change? Quite a bit actually but I will primarily be covering the major changes, for all changes refer to the changelog in the ZIP file containing the mod!

What's Changed?

Artillery Rebalance

Artillery has received several new changes to make each class of artillery more unique and useful! Artillery hit chance/spread fire now is standardized, what this means is that all towed artillery now has the same accuracy over distance. So up to 800m all 3 Arty classes have the same hit chance. This means the heavier your artillery the more useful it will be and no longer will light arty reign king with its broken hit chance while the heaviest of artillery unable to hit the side of a barnyard.

Rocket artillery platforms also go a spread/hit chance buff as well and now acts as a extremely effective and fast moving shock artillery piece able to reliably saturate an area with heavy fire and then quickly reposition before your opponent can counter battery their position.

Finally Super heavy artillery pieces like the Morser or the Long tom have received a total rework in now instead of firing burst of 4 shells at a time, it now fires a single shot at a consistent rate. While their accuracy is still somewhat worse then typical artillery, being able to constantly apply pressure against your opponent can be a very powerful and useful tool.

Emplacement & Engineering Changes

Defensive buildings have almost always taken a backseat in RUSE simply due to issues of how long it takes to build them and how easy it is to destroy them, now, no more! Defensive buildings are much more harder to destroy and are cheaper to deploy on average. However their defining weaknesses to Artillery and Bombers are still apparent so they are not immune to being knocked out of action.

Along with the new tougher and more accessible defenses are the new engineering trucks. The new trucks are much faster then vanilla and are much more resilient. You can now play far more aggressively with buildings then ever before, even while under light fire. However you still dont have a golden free ticket to deploy buildings anywhere you please as even the new engineering trucks become more and more vulnerable as tech increases and unit power goes up.

Unarmored Vehicle Rework

Remember Unarmored Vehicles? Yea I dont either. In vanilla RUSE Unarmored vehicles were the bottom of the barrel, the worst of the worst. Unable to take any damage without erupting into a fireball of death. No more as now Unarmored Vehicles have received an armor overhaul! Instead of being treated as flimsy paper they now act as an armor 0.5 class unit. This means while alone they struggle to stand toe to toe even with armor 1 units, however, in numbers they can easily defeat units that far surpass their own combat abilities! No more the days of watching Unarmored vehicles blow up because a single MG nest was laughing at them, now is your time for revenge!

AA & Aircraft Combat Overhaul

AA guns and Aircraft stats as a whole have been drastically overhauled compared to Vanilla. Currently AA is insanely powerful and can completely block air power from interacting at all with the match which usually results in crazy suicide air mission just to put a dent into your opponent. Instead now both Aircraft and AA guns are now much weaker however the HP of aircraft have stayed the same while their morale is very low. What this means now is Aircraft are pretty hard to kill without hunting them down with fighters or with supporting fire. On the other hand they are very easy to scare off with AA guns. This means air casualties are reduced unless your are actively trying to obtain air supremacy. What about huge flak walls to stop planes dead in there tracks you might say. Well while fighters and fighter bombers suffer from low morale, bigger bombers do not and as a cherry on top they have even more HP! As long as you control the skies you can have free reign on the battlefield with bigger bombers unless your walking into heavy flak guns. Very little can light AA do to turn your big plane around so your opponent must adapt or suffer heavy bombing damage!

While it looks really gloomy for AA guns not all is lost! AA guns are now more accessible then ever are now more properly tiered + mechanized AA guns are much more powerful and harder to kill! On top of all of this, AA guns lost their HE shells and instead now get a 250m ranged Light AP attack! All AA guns now can protect themselves against tank pushes and early on can even stop light tanks dead in their tracks! However beware they are completely defenseless against infantry now!

Economy Overhaul

Gonna be blunt here, the economy in vanilla ruse is horrible, its bad, its awful, im running out of negative adjectives here! Long story short, the scaling of vanilla ruse economy is really bad and promotes very bad play styles and strategies which really stagnates the match. Here I have gone out of my way to rebuild the games economy so that it promotes fun, aggressive, and constant play. So what's different? For starters your starting resources is slightly lower then vanilla, however, supply depots are slightly cheaper to make up for it. Thus your economy can grow more quickly then vanilla but you will have a somewhat slower start. On top of this supply caches now have double the resources so they can last twice as long! For reference there is just enough resources on in a single supply cache for a good old fashion 30 minute 1v1! With this change means the the infamous admin building is no longer required and outright removed from the game as it is the anti-thesis of what makes RUSE, well, RUSE. This means the raiding convoys and disrupting enemy supply chains are going to be extremely important if you want to pull ahead in a match, instead of well ya know mass building admin buildings in the corner of the map.

Infantry Combat Rebalanced

In this mod even the poor and muddied up infantry got a nice little rework as well! Infantry now have standardized speed at 28kph instead of 24kph so faster infantry means they are more likely to reach where they need to be. Infantry on infantry combat has been overhauled as well. In vanilla heavy infantry reigned king by literally being 4x-5x stronger then basic infantry, so upgrading was kind of a no brainer. In my mod infantry combat intensity has been greatly reduced so the difference between the best infantry and basic riflemen isnt as ridiculously huge but still fairly noticeable. This also means infantry on infantry combat lasts long enough for you to actually notice there is combat at all! Infantry AT weapons also received a rework. There is now real differences between the various AT weapons. Piats and Panzerfausts are now more ambush weapons then a chase down AT weapon as they have very low rates of fire. On the other end of the spectrum Bazookas and Panzerschrecks are a really strong tank hunting weapons as they can fire fairly fast. Finally satchels* are still... Satchels* they are suppose to suck sorry guys.

***Except one satchel charge, the Japanese combat engineer gets a unique satchel charge thats actually good! Try them out as they are dedicated tank hunters!

Recon Changes

Recon units more specifically recon cars and armored cars got a pretty big overhaul. So now unarmored recon is no longer the king of the battlefield as previously was. They are slow and vunerable to many sources of attack. On the other hand armored cars got a substantial buff and are significantly stronger. AC's are extremely fast and now make the perfect convoy raider. On top of this they are far more accessible now then ever before. However there is but one downside to AC's, that is their vision range is reduced. Its harder for AC's to detect enemy units compared to unarmored recon but that is a small price to pay for the new versatilely of the AC's. Do note one down side to the new AC's is that while they are extremely fast and easier to get, they do have reduced HP and morale so they are not replacements for your line tanks!

Minor AI rework

So you thought vanilla AI was too easy? Well give my reworked AI a shot! Although I did not change the core AI scripts the AI is however much more aggressive and willing to take opportunities. On top of all of it they are much more willing to diversify their army instead of singular unit spam most of the time at least. I recommend trying Easy AI to get the hang of the mod, then try medium to try some strategies out then when your ready to get your butt handed to you try hard mode for a good challenge!

Major Nation Changes

While there is various changes to the game via the mod The nations themselves have been somewhat redefined while others completely overhauled, Here ill quickly detail those changes!

United Kingdom

The UK has been the bastard child of RUSE for far too long. Obviously they were hated by Eugen because they deliberately sabotaged their whole faction to be useless except for air power. Not any more! While the UK still brings out a good airforce, there focus now is on intelligence and raiding! They now feature the best Recon units in the game as their AC's dont even have detection range maluses along side some of the best raiding units in the game! However there weakness will soon be apparent. They have slow build times for their units so the UK cannot afford to suffer a major defeat least they be easily knocked out. Take your time to pick apart your opponent with smart raiding with your superior recon. Easily counter enemy attacks with the new emplacement system now you can utilize your forward observation posts in tandum with AT guns and artillery. Finally deliver the knock out punch with the new and improved churchill heavy tanks!

France

France was massively over tuned in vanilla and its but high time to bring them in line with the other nations. France still features a very powerful start with the best starting tanks, defensive buildings, and infantry. Your new tanks are now divided between offensive speedy S35's and defensive B1 Bis. These are augmented with proper functioning H39's that no longer suck! If your struggling in the mid game take advantage of the newly retuned AT weapons! While your TD's are weak they are very fast to build as a quick mobile AT platform to pin down enemy tanks while your accessible towed AT can lock down the map early on. However the French inflexibility may be the doom of you. Upgrade times are ridiculously long so you must make do with your strong start, dig in, fortify, and hold till your late game upgrades come on line so you can turn around and bring the fight back to the enemy!

Germany

Surprisingly Germany really has not changed at all. Thanks to all the other major changes combined they now shine like they should of all along without actually having to change much of the German faction. So not much to say but beware as they can easily reach their late game and crush their opponents with easy.

Italy

Italy in vanilla is a dangerous opponent to play against, while they still are in my mod they have more accessibility to their army then before so there is more to Italy then just rushing crappy tanks now! Utilize their new super heavy artillery to keep pressure on your opponent to play a more slower pace match. Use your new AC's to outfox your enemy and force his hand. The new carro veloce is now a menace since they cannot be killed so easily now. Take advantage of all these new changes and unleash new strategies that were never possible before!

Russia

The Russian juggernaut was an interesting faction, but in my mod they got even more interesting. Now that emplacements work more aggressively you can apply enormous artillery pressure on your opponent. With reworks to their tanks they are even heartier and more dangerous then before! Their airforce is now no longer a joke and more accessible so reign terror from the sky with IL-2's and PE-8's! A quick look at their infantry youll notice that heavy and light infantry are now split! Russian heavy infantry are one of the best in the game but have a long build time where as soviet light infantry builds at a lighting pace! Choose your infantry for your needs now! Finally unleash the ultimate artillery pressure with the god-like Katyushas the final authority and word in artillery bombardment!

USA

The USA was suppose to be a faction that was flexible and could adjust to the changing battlefield. Lets get real however, they never happened in vanilla. In my mod though, it does happen! With the emplacement changes USA now has proper early game defensive options or flexibility options. US artillery is now more accesabile and affordable then before. The US is also a production juggernaut, their tanks are highly affordable and with good production times. With all the options now on the table the US can do what do it originally was meant to be like instead of just simply spamming Sherman's or perishing's for days.

Japan

Ok so japan was a broken DLC nation that constantly got banned from rooms because of how broken good they were. Well not anymore! Japan got a lot of nerfs and was scaled back heavily. Now they are a nation of choices. There are tough decisions you will have to make as getting certain upgrades will lock you out of unit types or make it harder to get other options. If you take mechanized AA you risk losing your Light tank, Towed artillery or mechanized artillery, or perhaps do you chose anti-infantry/support sniper or anti-tank engineers? Japan also now has a unique advantage of morale. Their units are willing to die for their emperor and now will almost fight to the death only retreating in their final moments. While it seems powerful the Japanese units are on average weaker or more vulnerable then their counter parts.