Future: Total War?

[mysticflame]

I just wanted to suggest a mod for total war that is futuristic with armies that uses almost ww1 tactics. Infantry lines that fire guns one after another and have some futuristic swords maybe for close combat and an alien race that has superior armor and rushes these soilders with energy blades, (almost like protoss). The campaign could be that some human-looking races planet is invaded by aliens but the different nations have conflicts too and fight with eachother as well as the aliens etc. etc. And siege equipment or elephants can be changed too sci-fi combat machines, think it would be cool if someone actually could mod it like that, do not even know if its possible and if it was it would take alot of work i think. Well it is atleast very original and i think it would be fun to play

Hmmm.

So, in the human campaign, you be one of the factions of humans, and you fight all the other tribes for a while, then, mid-late in the campaign, the Aliens come in and decide to invade, just like the Mingols in MTW, except there is no exact date, and they're all futuristic with laser swords and guns and the like. So you, as a human faction, have to unite the other factions under your banner have to destroy your rival humans to become a power to fight the aliens, as they will be powerful, and the humans will need a united force to stop them. You can also just suck throughout the entire game and have a rival human faction rise to power.

As the aliens, you arrive at some date (say, 2331 AD) and all the human factions are equal (unless it's possible to have the factions with random strengths, so the so-and-so human faction has become the largest and most powerful) and you have a couple of advanced little armys to keep you alive. You have little income (you just arrived at an entirely new world, what do you expect?) and you have to fight to eventually create a peaceful co-existance with the humans conquer the entire human race.

How close am I?

[Jinji]

Yes, that is precisly what I am going for, and you gave a better idea with the aliens arriving in mid-game, I am not by the least adept in modding R:TW but ii think weaponry could be pulled off because the humans could use automatic rifles with bullets and that could probably be done with a really fast going arrow and then the artillery could be energy weapons so just change a fireball to a blue color or something like that. I suggested this mod because I wanted to see loads and loads of desperate humanbeings rapidly fire at a small force of strong aliens that almost shrug their fire off them as they advance at them with their energyblades, but what i think maybe would be hard is machinery, it is not impossible but it would take alot of skill in 3d-modeling to make a horse into a war-robot or a onager into advanced artillery. But if it is pulled of nicley it would be a lot of fun, so if someone think he or she could pull this off, please do so!

[Bacchon]

Hmm... I actually think this is possible, although it would require a fair amount of work, but no more than is being done on Sengoku Jidal or hoggy's mod. I've been giving consideration to this idea myself, really, although more in context of a Warhammer 40k mod. I think that the RTW engine is actually better suited to this style of combat than to, say, WWII.

Jinji is spot-on about the projectiles. And there's plenty of examples of altered animations, thanks to Vercingetorix.

The only thing that couldn't be done, sadly, is the mid-game arrival of an alien culture, as there is no ability to add that, since that kind of behavior is hardcoded, as it was in MTW for the Golden Horde.

I actually thought long and hard about doing a multi-planet sci-fi mod for MTW (using the sea as space), since we had a little more leeway on the campmap in terms of the appearance. If only we could crack the tileset for RTW...

[mysticflame]

Well, maybe you could have them be on a far off corner, Which is surrounded by rebel provinces, so it would take the alien race quite a while to be able to build up the forces to destroy the rebels.

Bah, stupid hardcoded thingy...

[Jinji]

Well, the aliens could be there from the beginning and the campaign could start right after a surprise attack on the planet and countries are now struggling to mobilize defense against the attackers, The senate could be some kind of superpower named something like West World Alliance and then there would be some independent nations and it should not be so easy that these people are all allied against the aliens, some might think that it would be smarter to ally with the aliens to survive, others might hate the WWA and also the Aliens and stand for itself and of course Aliens do diplomatic things to easily get cooperation from the world they are invading (Resistance is futile, surrender or be assimilated) so it would indeed be Total War. The wartactics would focus at infantry, like WW1, and there would be few vehicles in action. A nice strategy would be to know when to switch from ranged bullets to melee and such. So maybe the unit assembly could look something like this:

WWA (The superpower)
Civilian Militia: Men that took the weapons they had in their homes and set out to defend their country.
West World Infantry: Proffessional soldiers that has been training all their life for this, better equipment.
White Sword Batallion, West Worlds finest: Elite troops, creme de la creme, special forces with very advanced equipment and strong morale and stamina.
Division 6: Highly trained covert troops, focusing on long range weapons and stealth to surprise and pin down enemies.
Blitzers: Highly trained in close combat and have lethal meleeweapons plus high tech armour, usually stand back until the enemies are close to the lines and then charge to defend their less melee-adept comrades.
Mobile War Suit: Robotic Armour with man inside, exeptional armor and heavy weaponry, but slow movement. Weak against artillery.
Battle Commander: A smaller elite squadron with the battle commander that takes orders from the generals in their safe places and applies them to the battlefield.
And so on in that style, the WWA army could be very straight foward and rely on firepower. Not so original names I know, but someone could probably do this better.

Ghezaksté (Desert Country, geurilla tactics)
Fanatics: These melee armed civilians dont like other people going about in their country
Ghezaksté Defenders: These men are trained infantry with lighter weapons for fast movement but can hide anywhere to surprise attack and then dissappear again. Can hide in tall grass.
Men of the Burning Sun: Elite troops that are heavily armoured and highly trained. Loyal to their home country they never retreat, rather would they die a warriors death. Can hide in tall grass.

The Gezaksté army could be a hit and run army, harrasing enemies until they break and flee, relying on speed, ability to hide and outnumbering the enemy.

Aliens:
Hunters: Basic infantry with two energyblades in each hand and hightech armour, they rush the enemy sustaining alot of fire and then cutting them down mercylessly

The aliens would rely on close combat and heavy armour to storm into human ranks and cutting them down with their superior closecombat effectivness.

I dont have the energy or inspiration to make a full armylist now, I am just proposing ideas that I think would be rather cool and i would be very delighted to see someone else do the same. More countries could be added and all with their special tactics and units, sometime some good modder must notice and help me do this! I really want to play a total war mod like that. =)

[Zharakov]

Or you could wait for ROME TOTAL WAR: HUN INVASION....

[mysticflame]

Sounds very nice. But I don't think 'division 6' would work because, well, think about it, having 7 'division 6's' in an army just doesn't sound right. How about something simple like 'snipers' or 'WWA Snipers'. Then again, none of these names are remotely original, but it should give you an idea.

Also, I think haveing one faction of aliens to be, well, boring. How about 2 or more? We could have it that the 2 alien races start on seperate sides of the map and are ALWAYS at war with eachother(Fighting over the planet like little kids fighting over candy)

It could work like this. Both aliens come from the same world but are different. 1 race could be larger, and dimmer, and the other would be the race already mentioned. The 2 races have used up their resources on their home planet because of their constant war (a bit like us humans really ) So, the intelligent aliens could have left on spaceships, but on the final launching the bigger, dimmer ones attacked and took a few of the ships before they took off. They both went to planet earth (if it's gonna be planet earth), the dim ones following the smart ones. They landed on different sides, and started building up. so now the humans have TWO alien races to fight against, and now as the aliens you have an alien enemy as well has the humans. Fun. The dimmer ones could make up for their lack of technology (I guess they would be at the WW1 era) with their size.

Here are some ideas about the dim aliens:

Losarian(I was thinkin' that the alien world's name could be 'Losar', so they would be 'Losarian') Mutants: These Losarians have descended from the mighty Korat family, so essentially every Losarian in the unit is family, but barely related. The Korat's men and women went to war, and were captured and experimented on by the intelligent Losarians. The intelligent Losarians cloned them, and the clones became the Losarian mutants. They broke out and lived in exile, until they decided they could use their mutant abilities for war. They came just in time to come along with the losarians to Earth. They are small, just 3 - 4 feet tall, thin (thin as an average human) but are wicked fast and have loads of stamina. For weapons, they have large blades, that come in and out from 3/4 of the way down their forearms (down is from elbow to hand), they can suck them in and out at will.


Losarian 'High Ones': The High ones are called the High Ones because they were the smart ones who flew the space ships to earth, so they are highly respected. They ar, on average, 6.5 feet high, which is small by losarian averages. They are thin, like humans. They carry sniper rifles and are great shots with them, able to match any human riflemen. They have a long range.

More to come later, what do you think of the ideas above?

[Jinji]

Yeah that would be even cooler to have two alien races fighting over the planet, adding some spice to the campaign, very nice suggestion Mysticflame.