Back to Basics v3.0
Back to Basics fans,
Version 3.0 has been released! It has been more than eight months of development and we have a lot of changes included. Now for some details of what this release contains:
- Global combat mechanics have been improved in many ways, creating a more constant, less random and more skill based battles, while maintaining the lethality of all the weapons. The combat system of the mod continues to improve with both being balanced yet cruelly realistic and deadly.
- Every nation has received a lot of attention in terms of balancing and design. These changes create more diverse army composition options, making everything more viable to get and use, adding depth, but maintaining balance.
- Every Commander Tree has been redesigned and rebalanced. every tree now takes 18 Command Points to unlock. Every unlock path has been more viable to take, allowing for more diversity in your games.
- Cleaned up and improved a lot of the game's UI. All descriptions and names have been improved drastically, all the hotkey fixed issues have been resolved, a lot of the graphics have been updated.
- High definition ground textures have been added, adding additional detail while maintaining the original feel of the maps.
- Local ambient occlusion masks have been improved and added for every faction unit creating a nice visual addition to the game.
- Improved all crater normal maps, creating a more realistic and nuanced look. Crater sizes and depth have also been adjusted and improved.
- The AI has been greatly improved once again. Script performance has been optimized, large part of the code has been completely rewritten to majorly improve AIs target choices and resource spending.
- All maps have received up to 100 AI markers per map. This means that the AI will form better front lines, have a better idea where the weak spots in enemy defenses are and it'll also use thee markers for possible positions for building its emplacements.
- Fixed nearly all reported bugs, errors and imbalances. This includes save game crashes, campaign and tutorials.
Read full changelog over 500 changes! written in a readable format, in case you're interested in something specific
We would like to thank everybody who plays the mod, and especially those who send us all the feedback. We express our apologies for postponing the release for such a long time. The work wasn't idle during all this time, however, we hope it will be fully worth the wait!
As it is only AGameAnx and I who develop the mod, there's always a chance we have overlooked something. Please remember to give feedback about your gameplay experience while playing the mod!
Good luck, have fun!
the mod doesnt work for me, when i try to launch it from the shorcut it says that it cant find any of the files
Hello. The shortcut provided is only an example, and will only work on default installation of company of heroes. The intended purpose of the shortcut is to show you how your own shortcut should look.
To play the mod you need to create a shortcut of your RelicCOH.exe, which is located in your Company of Heroes folder. After you've made a shortcut, you'll need to change its target with a couple of parameters, which will indicate you're launching a mod. To do so, right click your shortcut, go to properties and add " -mod Improved -dev" to shortcut's target (2nd tab). Like I mentioned, you can use the shortcut provided in the package as an example for how the result should look.
IMO this is one of the best mods, but there is 1 thing that drives me nuts and probably will lead me not to play it on open maps. This issue seems common to all mods and is present in vanilla to some extent also. Its the AT gun God mode. Here is how it played out in my last game. The AI's AT gun was leading an assault with the an MG squad and volks inf a ways behind it. AT guns are not meant to lead assaults because a 3 man crew should go down quickly to all manner of attacks out in the open.
So the AT gun has no cover and I am hitting it with two quad half tracks at point blank range. One from the flank and 1 from the rear, while the AT crew fires at me with revolvers. The AT crew itself appeared to take no damage, while the actual gun had taken just a sliver of damage over 20 seconds of firing. My half tracks were taking significant damage from the MG and volks squads and I would have had to withdraw simply because it appears it would take over 2 minutes to destroy the AT crew or better with 2 quads. The AT crew never was even phased, didn't try to withdraw or anything. I was playing on hard difficulty, not sure if they get HP buffs or what.
The thing of it is, those side shields offered little protection for AT crews and certainly none while attacked from the rear. They wore no armor and in fact Allied crews rarely even used the shields. In so many mods, the AT gun is the most powerful single unit on the entire battlefield, especially for the cost.
Hi. Thanks a bunch for your feedback!
Just to be clear: AI doesn't have any health buffs and the fact that it leads the attack with AT crews is just a random occurrence which I don't have control over.
Otherwise, seems like a bit of a bug. We'll definitely take a look! Even besides what you said they felt a bit weird before. It was a matter of balancing why they ended up as strong as they did, and other times it still feels like they die pretty fast, but what you've reported definitely doesn't seem right. Again, thanks, and expect this to be looked at in the next patch :)