Dev Blog #2 news

August Update, WARNING: lots of animated images beyond this point.

A few months have passed since the last update, a lot a things got in, some units got reworked, some dummy workarounds have been replaced with proper traits, and the most important incorporation are the new Super Weapons.

First things first, CABAL’s artillery got reworked, the idea of it being a sneaky unit that slowly dealt damage didn’t fit his style, instead now it’s a heavy mech that floods the enemy with drones and also converts killed enemies into cyborgs, nom nom nom. Their tier 1 anti armor drone has been removed from the rooster and it was replaced by something more interesting...

It’s a hover drone that can be deployed, once it’s deployed it cloaks itself and will fire on any target near without breaking it’s cloak, similar to a good old Zerg Lurker, well I played Lurker Defence for years so there was no way I wasn’t going to add something like it, the only catch it has is that this unit also converts killed enemies into cyborgs, so it can be useful for defence and ambush operations (Cabal’s main turret is anti armor, so this unit pairs well with those).

The Forgotten Bull got a new mechanic since I felt that aura units give little to the gameplay, so it switched to something more active, when attacking, it will spit gas as its enemy as well as it will also release hormones nearby, making any putting infantry units near in a berserk mode, that means their speed is increased along it’s attack speed, but they also lose health in the process, at the start I tweaked them so your units could die from the effect of your toxins, but since that can also lead to some good amounts of trolling, the poison will stop draining health when the unit has less than 60% health, here you can see an example of how not to use the unit, the lesson here is that you should be very careful when using the Bull and also the Forg MRLS, which is the unit that created those nasty gas clouds.

Another small detail with the Forgotten Beasts that I felt was needed to differentiate them from standard infantry is that now once they reach less than 50% health they become frenzied, which means they become uncontrollable but gain increased combat stats, mostly damage resistance, speed and attack speed, they heal back to a controllable state moderately fast once the fight is over of course but yeah, beasts are not meant to be disciplined and controllable, so be careful how you handle them in a fight.

Also, I decided to give the Scrin Colossus an aura damage effect when ordered to deploy, similar to a desolator, the reason for this is that the unit was mostly a tanky infantry that could be ignored very easily.

Finally we also got Super Weapons, for this mod I decided to follow the red alert 1 and 2 Super Weapon designs, meaning 1 Offensive power and one utility power, now I’m going to show you an improved version of the Forgotten and Scrin superweapons, which was made possible thanks to the effort of Graion Dilach.

CABAL also has his own Super Weapon: a Plasma / Energy / Hype cannon named after my favourite band that fires three shots at the targetted area, I’m still unsure how I am going to balance all of this but, atleast it exists.

About the Forgotten and CABAL support super weapons, the Forgotten get to spawn neutral Veinhole monsters on the map and CABAL will be able to flood a location with nanomachines, repairing nearby units and converting any fallen unit into cyborgs, I would show some graphics for those but there are not enough to justify.

Finally, even tho the Beta stage of the mod could be considered ready at this point (the primary goal is completed but the game still misses sounds, voices, maps and animations), the mod won't be released in this website until the Tiberian Sun mod for OpenRA is out, that doesn't mean people can't play it tho, you are free to join as a tester if you desire to, the mod still lacks a great deal of balance, so any help in this matter would be really apreciated. You can join this discord server if you are interested. Discord.gg.

That is all, I hope you like what you see, until next time.