I'm happy to announce Bellum Æternum after about a year of development. I know that this mod has just passed the basic construction, but I still want to share some informations with you. No matter you are a player of C&C Red Alert (Yuri's Revenge), or a modder like me, hope these info can give you some inspiration in future gaming or modding.
Modding Experience
Personally, I'm a C&C Red Alert 2 lover. It is the symbolic video game of my time. Then, the Yuri's Revenge comes out, and for me, I'm not a big fan of its design. In my opinions, war machines and atomic bombs are romatic, but psychic dominator isn't.
When I start modding, I figured out that there is nothing too perfect. Red Alert 2 has better overall design, and Yuri's Revenge has better game engine, so my first personal mod is to rebuild a Red Alert 2 based on Yuri's Revenge. It sounds silly but that's really what I did. Then, I found out that, the campaign is a big problem, and that's the reason I gave up this non-sense.
After many years, I decide to rework on the "perfect" Red Alert 2 in my mind, and that is Bellum Æternum.
Concept of Bellum Æternum
Before I start the modding, there are several things I think painful for the original Red Alert 2:
- Unit size: I'm not a paranoid that demands the excellent sizing, but I still think the size in Red Alert 2 isn't well-scaled. Like a battle tank is actually smaller than a AA missile launcher of an IFV.
- Unit design: The design of the original units are impressive, but personally I think that the designers of WESTWOOD are good artist, but not good engineers or historian. Especially the Soviet units, they looks more like German design to me(eg. V3 Rocket/Sd.Kfz 251 half track).
- Missing mechanics: There are a lot of mechanics that WESTWOOD didn't achieve. For example, the EMP effect for Tesla Tank. This unachieved mechanic makes the Tesla Tank not as special as it should be.
- Lack of Reality: Again, I'm not a paranoid, but I do want a better explain of things. Some design, like Chrono technology, is too far from reality.
- Unbalanced Gameplay: The original units doesn't have a countering mechanic. Even though WESTWOOD has tried units like Tank Destroyer, but it isn't enough, players can still use one unit in a mass and win the game.
Now, in Bellum Æternum, I'm trying to get rid of those painful points, and combine them with some new ideas.
Units Design
Units designs now are based on real model or concept, and in a reasonable size.
For example, the KV-550 Apocalypse Tank. Original Apocalypse Tank is impressive, but there are three things that I don't like. First, it has four sets of chassis, which make maintenance over complicated, so no heavy tank will be designed like that. Second, its turret is too small for twin barrel cannon. Three, the anti-air launcher is actually a German grenade launcher, and can never anti-air. Therefore, I redesigned the Apocalypse Tank based on Soviet KV series heavy tank. The secondary weapon has also changed from anti-air missile to rocket launcher, which is a common modification on turret during World War II(Such as T34 Calliope).
All units now has their own role to play on the battlefield. If you don't carefully organise your team, you might lose the fight even with massive units.
New Mechanics
For Red Alert 2, it is very hard to apply new mechanics, but for Yuri's Revenge with addons like Ares and Phobos, there are a lot of fun mechanics can be designed. For example, the Original tanks can easily be destroyed by a small group of basic infantries, but now a tank is the nightmare of any infantry. You might ask, if a tank can kill a team of infantries, isn't it too overpowered? Well, the cost of tanks are now very high, so you need to consider the economy when you want to build a lot of them. Also, there are infantries that can destroy a tank with lower cost, so tank isn't invincible at all.
There are much more new mechanics, and I will introduce them to you in later devlogs, so please stay tune and check the official site continuously.
Balancing and AI
The original AI isn't as fun as they should be, since WESTWOOD didn't complete the whole thing, the AI uses very simple action script for attacking and defending. Now, in Bellum Æternum, the AI has greatly improved. With units countering mechanics, the AI can use the units much smarter.
A common knowledge is that AI have to cheat. No matter how complex their action is, it's just a script. If AI doesn't cheat, it will be too easy to deal with. In my opinion, a strong AI doesn't mean it cheats and use a huge team to defeat you, or continuously attack your base. A strong AI means it will make you struggle, gives you no option but play the game more wisely, and let you win as the reward of effortness.
Campaign Missions
The Red Alert 2 original campaign is epic, and so do the Yuri's Revenge.
Since original units has been remastered, campaign will be remastered too in order to showcase all of them. Personally, I will regard a mod without campaign as unfinished. There got to be some backgroud for all new things appears in this mod, and there got to be some reasons one technology applied for specific faction.
Mod Design
For Bellum Æternum, my goal is to reconstruct the ecosystem of the game. Different from other mods which put every possible things into the game, I prefer a clear, simple and better designed system.
Faction Structure
Factions in the vanilla Red Alert 2 isn't really working well, even though there are 9 countries you can choose to play, but with just a single special unit, they aren't much different from each other. Therefore, I cancelled the countries, reorganise all units in one faction, and that lead the mod only have two factions, the Allied, and the Soviet.
Tech Tree
In my opinion, the tech tree shouldn't be too complex at all. Too much units only makes the tech tree too big, but not all of them are that useful. This is the reason that Bellum Æternum has a clear and simple tech tree.
All units has their own trait, and some of them can do more than they can originally do. For example, the Nighthawk transport, originally it is just a transport with a small machinegun, but now the Allied helicopter is capable of not only transport passengers, but passengers can also fire inside of it. With no armament, the helicopter gets another function, a stealth detecting radar. In skirmish, this will be a handy battle fort to counter the Allied stealth units.
Campaign
I set the story line from the end of 1950s to the beginning of 1960s, not only because the units design are around that period, but also it's the most dangerous period in the real world.
Also, the campaign will be more dramatic, because on the battlefield, everything will happen. I'm tired of skirmish-like campaign, and the campaign of Bellum Æternum should be more like an RPG game, but the main character you control is actually a battalion.
Epilogue
I don't want the Bellum Æternum to be only a mod, but an innovation of the Red Alert 2 gameplay. There are a lot more details to explain, but I think it is better for audience to explore themself in the future.
It is a journey, for you and me.