Change of plans news - Star Wars: Command & Conquer - Tiberium Empire mod for C&C3: Tiberium Wars

So, fellow user ThaneWulfgharn kindly informed me a few days ago that the C&C3 skirmish AI apparently has a built-in limitation of four factions. After discussing the issue with the developers of Tiberium Secrets (a mod that has three additional playable factions planned, making it six in total with the vanilla three), I have come to understand this:

Basically, each faction in the game has a "faction value" assigned to it. Let's say for the purpose of this explanation that GDI has 1, Nod has 2 and Scrin has 3. One more faction wouldn't be a problem since it fits well into the AI limitation, such as the mod The Forgotten or the future 2.0 version of Tiberium Essence that adds a similar faction, for instance.

The tricky part is that any factions that are added beyond those four simply stand still and do nothing or, in the worst cases, crash the game. In other words, any faction that has a faction value of 5 or above simply cannot be handled by the game's skirmish AI. The workaround to this problem is to apply the skirmish or story map's faction values 1, 2, 3 and 4 to the four factions that the developer wants to make playable on the map, and has to repeat the process for each of those maps.

As a result, the change is three-fold:

1) Since it wouldn't make much sense lore-wise to see X-Wings or TIE Fighters fly around in vanilla C&C3 maps anyway, the only maps that would be able to handle the factions in question would be the ones created for the mod, in addition to the story maps, of course.

2) The mod's story mode will be separated into three era-specific versions:

• The Aftermath War (Peacekeepers vs. Mandalorians)
• The Clone Wars (Clone Army vs. Separatists)
• The Galactic Civil War (Rebels vs. Empire)

3) The mod's skirmish mode will be separated into three versions that mix the warring factions of two specific eras together:

• Era 1 + Era 2 (Peacekeepers, Mandalorians, Clone Army, Separatists)
• Era 2 + Era 3 (Clone Army, Separatists, Rebels, Empire)
• Era 1 + Era 3 (Peacekeepers, Mandalorians, Rebels, Empire)

So that's it for now. Stay tuned! :D