Spring RTS Engine

Hello there =)

Current version : 0.10 - Check the bottom of this post.


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What is this mod about :

This mod focuses on battle management.
Theres a very primitive form of economy, and a few defensives structures, but its very limited on those "base-building" aspect.

So the three important points of this mod are :
- Your warehouse is your only ressource source. You wont get any metal or energy from other structures (tough you can reclaim features & wreckages). This mean you should 'buy' units carefully. If your units get wasted, your metal will start raising again, so the first battle lost wont be the end of the game.

- Your units requires energy to shoot or move while cloaked (still cloaked units dont use energy). This mean you should keep an eye on your energy stock and improve your total capacity to run stealth missions.

- Your units move *slowly*. This offers more time to do micro management in battles, but moving troops to a distant point will be a pain, unless you understand you should use transports convoys. Transport convoys are faster than most units, but they should be escorted (light infantry and weak missile/AA bot goes fast enough for that).

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Units Overview

You can build the followings ..
Close range units (3 units + 1 special + 1 air)
Medium range units (3 units + 1 special)
Long range units (3 units + 1 AA + 1 very long range)
Tools units (radar, jammer, scouts, paralyser, fake unit, builders)
Transport unit (transport are important in this mod)
Structures (A fake Warehouse that can be a deadly trap, energy storage, 3 different 'turret' defenses', mines & dragon teeth, radar ...)


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A few tips ...

- 2 units are labeled "Transport Interceptor". Those can quickly shoot down an unescorted convoy, but wont be that much of a threat if the convoys are escorted.
- Prefer resurrecting wreckages than reclaiming those. The "many units" = "less metal income" rules also means when you have many units, you'll be in metal deficit. Means reclaimed metal will disapear in the air.
- Infantry have a power bonus against defensive structures - if you can get close enough !
- Cloakable mobile unit deals almost no damage to the Warehouse. Means that you wont get your warehouse suddendly destroyed by units sneaking directly next to it.
- Dont think you can build an invincible stronghold with defenses. Defenses lower your metal income. If you have many defenses arround your base, you dont get metal anymore, so if your enemy shots down your defenses, you wont have time to recover.

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SCREENIES !
(Well this is not really relevant of the gameplay, and the model are not custom so its not really interesting ... but still =P ...)

All the units ...



All the structures ...



Battling ...



Battling ...

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CURRENT VERSION

Current version : 0.10 (updated 18/02/2007 at 19.30)

Download :
On Unknown Files :
==> http://spring.unknown-files.net/file/23 ... _0.10.sdz/
From FREE (better d/l speed if you're in France) :
==> http://ptikasu.free.fr/Skirmishes_0.10.sdz

Changelog :
v0.10 :
- Spider should now *really* be able to capture foreign units
- Reduced Peeper sight range -30%
- Reduced Flea sight range -20%
- Laser turret HP lowered 1300 -> 900 HP
- Surprise Laser turret HP lowered 1000 -> 700 HP
- Surprise Rain turret HP raised 1000 -> 1300HP
- Shooters precision lowered (except for Janus, which was too imprecise)
- Arty presision raised (except for light arty : lowered)
- Medium Arty rate increased approx +45%
- Heavy Arty rate lowered approx -15%
- Heavy Infantry and Shooter energy cost raised
- Slightly raised Heavy Infantry HP 1200 -> 1300 HP
- Slightly raised Eater power 19 -> 21 damage
- Set factories to stay open
- Slightly reduced Heavy and Medium Shooter range

v0.09b :
- Halved mine power - what was I thinking about, 900 damage for 10 metal ? o_o Set to 450 damage and costs 20 Metal
- Heavy Shooter (pitbull) weapons corrected (was using the original pitbull weapon). Less damage, and now cost energy
- Light infantry and Weak Missile Launcher now dont consume energy when firing anymore, so when you're out of energy those could be usefull.

v0.09 :
- Added 2 hovercraft units for overseas convoys escort
- Corrected a crash with the fake main lab
- Sniper, Jethro and Spider units are now amphibious (should be able to fire underwater in a future version)
- Combat Helicopter (brawler) now has ability to fire underwater
- Combat Helicopter (brawler) damage bonus against transport slighlty reduced
- Improved Landmine power
- Spider unit can now capture other units. Has +50 HP and cost +10 Metal
- Remote Warehouse now have an efficient building speed
- Heavy shooter energy cost per shoot corrected
- Fido firing rate corrected
- Artillery precision and rate of fire tweaked
- I still cant play guitar

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THANKS

Thanks to people who helps and encourage me making this mod :
- The first Skirmishes Stories Fan : pcasts
- The testers :
hgalb, [EvD]DoJeH, AlcariTheMad, Baphomet, Cabbs.
- TAS Forum and Lobby people giving tips on mod making problems ...
- Clan SY for Spring, and the usefull Wiki =)

\o/[/img]

oh goddamnit, another one???




I'm sure you have a good idea in your head, but is it any better than the other 3 million ta varients out there?

FA, did you even read the post? By the sounds of it, its NOTHING like TA. You buy units for one, how is that TA?

Ill download the mod and take a look at it if you give out a link

I'm a little dissapointed and surprised by FA's comment, I expected criticism that would be a little more constructive.

This mod idea looks very interesting and appears to be one that won't be difficult to implement. Obviously, balance will be a key issue, run it through vigorous tests, and make sure no single unit will be overpowered.

Make your own models and you won't get bashed for using 1997 cavedog stuff. :P

Actually, I was planning a very similar mod, but obviuosly with from-scratch units.

And I wouldn't be hard on him for using TA models - after all, this is a gameplay experiment - what if it sucked? What if he poured a ton of work into it and found out that the gameplay was all wrong?

My only difference is that I don't think these modders should be using TA, but rather one of the "3rd race" sets for TA, just for IP reasons.

argh started with TA units....

W/E NOOB! :)

Well if the gameplay sucks he can still think things over and redesign where neccessary. It's refreshing to see something which doesn't look like TA.

This is one interesting idea... and remembers me of one interesting idea I had other day...

Thanks for the comments =)

Well if the mod sucks in the end its okay : my main motivation for doing this mod is because I like building stuff for games (good thing regarding my job) =)

Ok tonight was the second test session with v0.02, it went quite well, and tough its balance still needs lots of work, its actually not so severely unbalanced at this point. The main issue for now is the fact that metal wreckages contains more metal than the price for building those units, that'll be corrected in the next release - I hope so.

For tonight session, thanks to Pcast (he is officially the first fan of this mod xD), [EvD]DoJeH, AlcariTheMad and hgalb.

EDIT : Main Post updated. Next testing session should be arround 23.00 tonight (GMT+1), or the next day. Ill be looking for testers, hope some of you will be interested =)

Day wrote:argh started with TA units....

I started with the lightgm

Indeed this is a great mod.
In TA, battles often are only a produce and send work. Who has more resources and more productivity is the winner.
In Skirmishes Stories is very important the strategy of the battles.
You have to command every single unit to obtain the best result. You have to plan the right invasion and the best defense. Mines, cloack, transport, jammer... permits a great variety of strategies.
In this game u're not the... supreme ruler... u're the Field Marshal!!!

Thanks to pcasts, tonight session was a great one, we had quite some fun and I still couldnt beat him.

I must confess the fact that he beats me at MY OWN MOD makes me nuts, but I guess this means the learning period understand how to play this mod efficiently is very short which is obviously a good thing. \o/

I've updated the changelog of the main post to reflect the version we played tonight (0.03) and the changes I made after this version (0.04) which will be tested tomorrow =)

Yatta wrote: I must confess the fact that he beats me at MY OWN MOD makes me nuts, but I guess this means the learning period understand how to play this mod efficiently is very short which is obviously a good thing. \o/

actually its an unwritten law that a mod maker will be trounced by players in his own mod... ask Smoth or Fang they know from experience

This is not true of Nemo.

Nemo is different and therefore the rules don't apply...

Glad to know im not the only one in this situation =))

Tonight we tested one again a new version. Actually 2 new versions, those where the 0.05 and 0.05b. There still a few issues to solve, but I think it is becoming interesting =)

Ill update the main topic tomorrow or this week end, and the 'public release' should be done at the same time.

Thanks to tonight testers :
Baphomet, AlcariTheMad, Cabbs, and pcast again =)

Once again tonight session went well.
Testers were [EE]ShadowSage and [EvD]DoJeH.

Ok, just to honour the mod title, heres the Story of the battle :
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After everyone checked a few units, ShadowSage - who was the first to scout and try to attack - got his undefended warehouse shot to death by a air droped sniper which was running arround the building to avoid being picked up by ShadowSage air transport (that was the only unit arround since troops were traveling xD).

After that I did an incursion on ShadowSage heavily defended base and managed to destroy his energy stock. However it seems the sniper that got ShadowSage (I keep thinking "ShadowSausage" when I write your name, pal xD ...) had the same idea so I lost mine as well, which seriously compromised my plans of cloaked assault.

After that Ive put a dragon teeth wall arround my Warehouse to stop further incursions, and it looks like that saved me from a group of ghosts lurking arround. Then DoJeH air dropped a Heavy Rocket launcher near my base but since it was undefended I could catch it with an air transport.

Just after that I tried to send a convoy to DoJeH's base but got interupted on the way by Heavy Shooters and Weak Missiles bots. But that was the final encounter sinced this last attack effort from DoJeH was being funded by reclaiming his own base defenses ... DoJeH had to go so I couldnt actually destroy is warehouse, but thats a win ... my first one ! =))
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Ok this was a nice little game.

The main problem was that the game was not evolving so fast, since the map was quite big (Aavikko v2), and it took time to move units from the warehouse to the battlefield. The solution seems to be to allow players to build remote Warehouses, and ShadowSage suggested to allow them only on geos. This sounds like a good idea but maps without geo will still have the problem. Anyways, theres something to do about this problem.

A 'major' bug was found : when units are in transports, they dont consume metal anymore (they usually do to make the metal income inversely proportional to the unit number). But in the end its not a bug that I will try to correct, since the idea of having to "stock" units in transports to prepare a bigger army sounded fun, plus it makes it those transports an even more interesting target !

Theres also still a lot of unit balancing to do, but that will be corrected in the long term =)

Altough there still a few issues, they dont seem too critical now, so I consider the mod good enough to be 'offered' to the public (at least "not too time-wasting") so, ill just tweak a few values and Ill put the 0.06b on unknown files as the first 'public release' =)


gnite !

Try the google cache for an old copy of your post.

Thanks but I had already rewritten it ... :)
Updatet topic : version 0.08
You can download it now ! woot \o/

-> http://ptikasu.free.fr/Skirmishes_0.08.sdz