RTS Quality RTS mods and fan campaigns

[Vlajdermen]

I'm here to solicit good fanmade RTS. Anything that adds either a good new campaign, or good new faction design into the game, or preferably both. I'm playing Rise of the Reds, and it sold me on the idea, but I also know about the following:
-Legacy of the Confederates (SC1)
-Mental Omega (RA2)
-UED: First Light (SC2)

What else should I look into?

 

[JarlFrank]

Not a classical RTS, but Thrawn's Revenge for Star Wars: Empire at War is excellent.

 

[Vlajdermen]

Not a classical RTS, but

I never said it had to be an older RTS.

 

[JarlFrank]

By "not classical" I mean it doesn't play like the classics, it's more like Total War in space but the world map is also real time, not turn based, and land battles feature some minor basebuilding mechanics.

 

[Lagi]

Dawn of War 1 Pro mod is good
https://www.moddb.com/mods/dowpro
it make much more interesting options in game. it makes DoW1 a better game. But thats skirmish.
----
as i read on net, but didnt play it, for warcraft 3 Chronicles of the Second War is interesting

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/w...ne_2022.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20220618170838

 

[Vlajdermen]

as i read on net, but didnt play it, for warcraft 3 Chronicles of the Second War is interesting

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/w...ne_2022.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20220618170838

''Remake of old game in new engine'' is the shittiest type of mod.

 

[Luka-boy]

Age of the Ring for Battle for Middle Earth 2 is pretty neat. Adds a bunch of fully fleshed and voiced factions and it's adding some long campaigns following the books/movies. So far I think they've covered up to the end of Two Towers.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-horse-lords-a-total-modification-for-bfme

 

[Vlajdermen]

Age of the Ring for Battle for Middle Earth 2 is pretty neat. Adds a bunch of fully fleshed and voiced factions and it's adding some long campaigns following the books/movies. So far I think they've covered up to the end of Two Towers.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-horse-lords-a-total-modification-for-bfme

That sounds like an absolute treat.

 

[Suicidal]

I'm here to solicit good fanmade RTS. Anything that adds either a good new campaign, or good new faction design into the game, or preferably both. I'm playing Rise of the Reds, and it sold me on the idea, but I also know about the following:
-Legacy of the Confederates (SC1)
-Mental Omega (RA2)
-UED: First Light (SC2)

What else should I look into?

I liked the Contra mod for C&C Generals. It adds a whole bunch of units for every general, making them more distinct from eachother, and also a new general for every faction. Don't think it has a campaign, but it updates all the general challenges to use the new units and buildings. It's a bit on the ridiculous side (nuke general gets a nuke array that basically deletes a section of the map if you let it count down from 15 minutes, stealth general gets tanks that are permanently invisible and have sniper cannons that oneshot nearly everything on ground) but it's a lot of fun and I spent many hours playing PVP and comp stomps with my friends a while back.

Speaking of Rise of the Reds, was it ever finished? I remember trying it and thinking it was cool and the devs promised a bunch of features like generals for each new factions and a campaign but then just went silent and I checked ModDB recently and the last files were still from 2015.

There's also a bunch of work in progress mods for RA3 that look promising.
Corona (lol) mod adds China as a new factions and new units for the existing ones and the new units look very professionally designed and don't stand out from the rest of the game.
There's also RA3 Rejuvination, which adds sub-factions similar to Generals and the new units also look very much in line with the rest of the game with custom voice acting. I only recently learned about it through random recommended vids and checked ModDB. It's playable but the dev said he's putting work on hold due to personal problems.

 

[Vlajdermen]

I'm here to solicit good fanmade RTS. Anything that adds either a good new campaign, or good new faction design into the game, or preferably both. I'm playing Rise of the Reds, and it sold me on the idea, but I also know about the following:
-Legacy of the Confederates (SC1)
-Mental Omega (RA2)
-UED: First Light (SC2)

What else should I look into?

I liked the Contra mod for C&C Generals. It adds a whole bunch of units for every general, making them more distinct from eachother, and also a new general for every faction. Don't think it has a campaign, but it updates all the general challenges to use the new units and buildings. It's a bit on the ridiculous side (nuke general gets a nuke array that basically deletes a section of the map if you let it count down from 15 minutes, stealth general gets tanks that are permanently invisible and have sniper cannons that oneshot nearly everything on ground) but it's a lot of fun and I spent many hours playing PVP and comp stomps with my friends a while back.

Speaking of Rise of the Reds, was it ever finished? I remember trying it and thinking it was cool and the devs promised a bunch of features like generals for each new factions and a campaign but then just went silent and I checked ModDB recently and the last files were still from 2015.

There's also a bunch of work in progress mods for RA3 that look promising.
Corona (lol) mod adds China as a new factions and new units for the existing ones and the new units look very professionally designed and don't stand out from the rest of the game.
There's also RA3 Rejuvination, which adds sub-factions similar to Generals and the new units also look very much in line with the rest of the game with custom voice acting. I only recently learned about it through random recommended vids and checked ModDB. It's playable but the dev said he's putting work on hold due to personal problems.

It was never finished, but it is still (somewhat) alive. You can see this channel uploading beta testing videos of the next version, also SWR's discord is very alive, with frequent matches.



Good to know about the RA3 mod. I consider that game a guilty pleasure, and I'm surprised that it's from an actual chinese studio. You'd think calling it ''Corona mod'' would be on par with calling it ''Tiannamen mod''.
Rejuvenation also sounds promising, even though nato, communists, and japan can never be as appealing as the Mad Max taliban, I can appreciate any project to put some meat on the game's bones. Hell, that's why I like rotr.

 

[Suicidal]

I'm here to solicit good fanmade RTS. Anything that adds either a good new campaign, or good new faction design into the game, or preferably both. I'm playing Rise of the Reds, and it sold me on the idea, but I also know about the following:
-Legacy of the Confederates (SC1)
-Mental Omega (RA2)
-UED: First Light (SC2)

What else should I look into?

I liked the Contra mod for C&C Generals. It adds a whole bunch of units for every general, making them more distinct from eachother, and also a new general for every faction. Don't think it has a campaign, but it updates all the general challenges to use the new units and buildings. It's a bit on the ridiculous side (nuke general gets a nuke array that basically deletes a section of the map if you let it count down from 15 minutes, stealth general gets tanks that are permanently invisible and have sniper cannons that oneshot nearly everything on ground) but it's a lot of fun and I spent many hours playing PVP and comp stomps with my friends a while back.

Speaking of Rise of the Reds, was it ever finished? I remember trying it and thinking it was cool and the devs promised a bunch of features like generals for each new factions and a campaign but then just went silent and I checked ModDB recently and the last files were still from 2015.

There's also a bunch of work in progress mods for RA3 that look promising.
Corona (lol) mod adds China as a new factions and new units for the existing ones and the new units look very professionally designed and don't stand out from the rest of the game.
There's also RA3 Rejuvination, which adds sub-factions similar to Generals and the new units also look very much in line with the rest of the game with custom voice acting. I only recently learned about it through random recommended vids and checked ModDB. It's playable but the dev said he's putting work on hold due to personal problems.

It was never finished, but it is still (somewhat) alive. You can see this channel uploading beta testing videos of the next version, also SWR's discord is very alive, with frequent matches.



Good to know about the RA3 mod. I consider that game a guilty pleasure, and I'm surprised that it's from an actual chinese studio. You'd think calling it ''Corona mod'' would be on par with calling it ''Tiannamen mod''.
Rejuvenation also sounds promising, even though nato, communists, and japan can never be as appealing as the Mad Max taliban, I can appreciate any project to put some meat on the game's bones. Hell, that's why I like rotr.

I was following development of several big overhaul mods for RA3 back when I was playing the game a lot and all of them gave up, saying that the RA3 engine is too hard to work with (one of the reasons there's dozens of mods for Generals but only a handful for RA3). It's a shame, because the game looks great, especially for its time (the toy soldier art style notwithstanding) and is probably the most stable of the C&C games of that era. I've had crashes and desyncs in multiplayer in both Generals and C&C3, but zero in RA3.

 

[Vlajdermen]

The toy soldier art fit the new tone, and the tone was the best thing about the game.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

Here you find the most popular mods for RTS games on Modb:

https://www.moddb.com/mods?filter=t...ayers=&timeframe=&game=&sort=visitstotal-desc

Here they're sorted by rating, you can see the popularity by the number of ratings:

https://www.moddb.com/mods?filter=t...e=&players=&timeframe=&game=&sort=rating-desc

to see what game the mods are for just hover your mouse cursor over the icons.

 

[Vlajdermen]

Here you find the most popular mods for RTS games on Modb:

https://www.moddb.com/mods?filter=t...ayers=&timeframe=&game=&sort=visitstotal-desc

Here they're sorted by rating, you can see the popularity by the number of ratings:

https://www.moddb.com/mods?filter=t...e=&players=&timeframe=&game=&sort=rating-desc

to see what game the mods are for just hover your mouse cursor over the icons.

>Total War

 

[hayst]

Crisis of The Confederation for Crusader Kings 2 is very fun. Played this a lot before Stellaris came out.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/crisis-of-the-confederation

 

[Vlajdermen]

Crisis of The Confederation for Crusader Kings 2 is very fun. Played this a lot before Stellaris came out.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/crisis-of-the-confederation

CK2 isn't RTS.

 

[catfood]

The AOE series has a lot of custom content available. I have tried a few campaigns, but I did not find most of them to be as fun to play as the original ones. By that I mean that modders seem to enjoy making heavily scripted missions, using the construction set to its fullest potential. I understand that some people like that approach, but I prefer a simpler mission design.

https://aoe.heavengames.com/dl-php/lister.php?&category=spcampror&start=0&s=d&o=d

https://aok.heavengames.com/blacksmith/lister.php?category=campaign

 

[Quatlo]

Twisted Insurrection for TibSun, its pretty much Mental Omega for TibSun.

Warcraft 2 hard AI mods - pure fun, AI is actually playing the game so maps with 3v1 become really interesting to play, and even simple early maps become hard as nails because enemy starts with fleets or more buildings than you. Its not just all units -> attack palyer base, he still is sending them in groups, but they get progressively bigger, casts more spells etc.
https://gamebanana.com/mods/418350 for some new features to freshen up or download more "basic" one here: https://en.war2.ru/downloads/ and check "Hardcore AI" or something like that when installing the mod.

 

[thesheeep]

It would be criminal to not mention the great WBC 3 complete overhaul / game of its own "mod":

The Protectors (0.9 is around the corner, probably in April or June)

0.9 will be biggest change yet and actually bring with it an entirely new conquest-style campaign (and not just a few levels of one).

 

[catfood]

Urban Assault not only has two custom campaigns featuring the Ghorkovs and the Taerkastens but it also comes with an open source build which means that you can run it on modern OSes. You can grab the entire thing from here:

https://metropolisdawn.de/filebase/file/10-openua-standalone-package/

 

[Vlajdermen]

Warcraft 2 hard AI mods - pure fun, AI is actually playing the game so maps with 3v1 become really interesting to play, and even simple early maps become hard as nails because enemy starts with fleets or more buildings than you. Its not just all units -> attack palyer base, he still is sending them in groups, but they get progressively bigger, casts more spells etc.
https://gamebanana.com/mods/418350 for some new features to freshen up or download more "basic" one here: https://en.war2.ru/downloads/ and check "Hardcore AI" or something like that when installing the mod.

That's nice, but as I said in the OP, this isn't the thread for that. I'm happy to hear about Twisted Insurrection, though.

 

[Suicidal]

Remembered 1 more thing I saw and thought was kind of cool, but never played.

Mod for C&C3 that adds the mutants as a separate factions with new units and a campaign and the devs even created their own cringe life action cutscenes for it. Not sure if it's good but seems to be well-reviewed on ModDB.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/cc-3-the-forgotten/

 

[RaggleFraggle]

I'd like to see some quality standalone RTS. Asking about mods for games that are 10-20 years old is not a great sign for the genre's health.

I do respect the people who have been working on C&C mods for 10-20 years. That takes dedication.

But I feel nostalgic for the golden age of custom campaigns from the 2000s. Yeah, most of them don't hold up for adult me now but why did the tide dry up? I've tried finding SC2 campaigns and they don't interest me. A large part of that comes down to the canon writing being terrible and every campaign using it suffering as a result of poor foundation. The level of creativity in general has hugely dried up since the golden age too.

 

[Vlajdermen]

It's a genre past its prime, dude. I'll take what I can get, and fan campaigns and elaborate mods have an appeal that ground-up stuff can't replicate. It's a niche appeal, but still.

 

[Demo.Graph]

Wanderers of Sorceria is the best Warcraft 3 custom campaign(s) out there.
If you can handle anime style, you should try it.
If you can't, still try it, but download 2nd edition of the campaign. It has mostly vanilla WC3 models and a very limited amount of Mickey Mouse eyes, but the plot and difficulty are already there.