The Beginning history
Robot Storm began as ordinary Yuri's revenge edit (yes basic idea to balance/fix YR and add more content) mod with initial inspiration being the Soviet's Terror Drone and the Allies' newly Robot Tanks which i liked but felt that there should be a fully robotic faction and then noticed some fans making more robotic units to add to existing factions which i began collecting together to form a robotic side basic unit arsenal so obviously the robot tank from YR would be basic light tank and then terror drone as another basic thing so were utilized as building blocks to begin the mod.
Initially I was mostly inspired into RA2/YR modding by trying out Mooman's rules and then classier mod called Red Storm for RA2 by MHR whom i contacted and learned quite a few things as well provided ideas like grenade/rpg truck unit but unfortunately MHR's interest didn't last long and thus he left the scene so I make multiple "test" mods of newby ideas like chrono dogs and AA tesla coils just to see what i could do.
The founding mod design idea of RS was following:
Original countries left intact mostly and given additional units while germany is changed to NEXUS entirely and france was lost in the war and its slot would be used by the Special Legion forces and Cuba would be the source movement for Terror League founding, later renamed to Freedom League.
Some of the earliest RS Builds without any numbering were from 2002 and finally i happen to come upon a modder called Sydr0 that plays my mod and then introduces me to Tom aka Des08tor at the time and now known as Hybrid to come hosted in cncguild and thus first numbered beta 1.0 arrives in 2003.
Incase Sydr0's name not ring much bell he is the founder of the Sudden Strike mod hosted here still and yes i did help him out unofficially in its development
I work over a year to try make this massive forced extra factions from countries work flawlessly without enough success and plagued with problems similar to cnc reloaded and more, over time even gaming sessions over WOL prove that new factions are becoming much more advance in available tactics and otherwise more flexible than original sides did so for example Nexus would often kick Yuri's ass without much of a major contest given Yuri side design over reliance on mind control/chaos tactics and given yuri's heaviest armor land unit was mastermind and gattling cannon not do so well vs robot tank swarms when psychic tower useless and ultimately i want to expand Nexus to have hacking powers to go further with the story but then Yuri mind control logic can't exactly be split either.
So from design viewpoint, it was kinda simply trying too much when existing sides would have also needed vast adaption which i began do but unit amounts also went too high thus breaking 100 units limit so enough is enough and with some disagreements with mod tester friends I ultimately split mod into two.
RS: the new factions solely and then YR: Warzone would do YR balancing and adaption ideas as separate mod and serve as precursor to RS.
Most of the years me and Volkov (one and only) run the mod while try recruit more staff as eventually gamemate comes aboard and I decide to take the mod the full intended course even if goals are little too ambitious while it helped it is based in YR world but in future setting to ease that.
NEXUS Inspirations
Obviously inspirations for the NEXUS side were especially from Warzone 2100 to take AI personality from as meant as great tribute to it as in comparison...cabal was not really evil but when you heard nexus, you knew he was out to kill you with every means at his disposal. However while WZ2100 served as good AI persona source, it sadly only had pretty human like arsenal for even Nexus while advanced weapons consisting mainly of railguns & lasers and some plasma weaponry which of course served as fine guideline to base the RS nexus faction weaponry into and then make the faction actually have robotic arsenal to feel more solid design than half full.
Then of course Terminator movies served as nice potential idea for the side infantry and that YR came with arnd.shp it was quick route as back then and even still now Infantry remain the hardest one to make while otherwise the movies had great setting to them which was somewhat adapted to RS story while most of SkyNet designs i never liked, too ugly or humanly dull design feats too obvious in them so unit wise wasn't utilized much as inspiration.
Other games i took ideas or was inspired by was Krush Kill'n' Destroy 2 Krossfire where was faction called Series9 that was agricultural robots turned to warfare then Dark Reign's Imperium side had the Shredder unit which felt as nice unit idea for NEXUS at the time.
also Dark Reign expansion had AI called Osiris go berzerk and turn on its Imperium creators with new weapons it created with creator's tech base but more on that later in Osiris inspiration section...
Allied Legion Inspirations
This one is easy answer, look wise I was inspired by Dark Reign 2's JDA side with similar role so little selfish high techy side i adapted to serve as futuristic Allies and afaik AR2 also was inspired by DR2 somewhat.
Anyway with AL i set out to do a more futuristic side than RA2's but still keep old tech hints in them so don't endup like Future Crisis' UF faction which would mean too high techy considering timeline.
I did not like RA2's allied faction, it kinda wasn't as interesting as RA1 allied where they had to mix their units alot more to succeed but here it was mirage that, prism that and battle fortress defining whole side to the same old pew pew pew laser show that even accidentally kills buildings with bounce beam so instead i wanted massive variety of options in high tech warfare and thus AL is most crafty faction in RS IMO.
Freedom League Inspirations
Ah, the everyone's favorite or hated ragtag army
Yeah like Elerium said, most inspiration was Earth2150/2160 series ED faction, besides it wouldn't have been interesting to just kick in the soviet union faction again as it would have been little far fetched to think IMO that soviet union would have lasted that long.
Originally it was called Terror League when RA2 factions were still left but given world got nuclear cleansed by NEXUS to begin his era, it didn't make much sense to terrorise anything when world governments and any remains of order had fallen like table of cards.
Thus some inspiration from Dark Reign's Freedom Guard faction (including freedom bit in name) that fought their oppressors the evil Imperium with far lower tech weapons with considerable devotion while mostly always outnumbered.
as for FL's chain of command, there is no single DICTATOR or madman/fanatic controlling them as a faction they are kinda loose group that exists in smaller tribal/mob/gang pockets with their own leaders that form a high council of sorts where majority vote goes and usually they do not get along and what they do, they do it for common needs/business/outside threat otherwise they tend to have civil wars over food remains and other such petty concerns as nobody trusts each other there, its black market all along, unfortunately due to NEXUS, AL and now Osiris, they've had to form their army to hold their common interests as a loose collective.
To maintain balance of sorts, the high council of sorts holds the more advanced technologies so single rebel leader can not take control of whole FL, just increase own territory.
As an army, FL are most unexpectable opponent with surprising moves and some of their devious tech is devised of Yuri's tech left over scraps but there is no telling how much left over Yuri techs are still in unknown hands while officially most were destroyed as unethical creations.
Osiris History
**** Spoilers Alert****
Alright, perhaps the most enigmatic faction to enter the war and potentially warped one to even try understand truly.
First of all, they are not egyptians or having anything to do being Goa'uld...
To understand them, you should think of them as an hive collective of sorts but instead of queen, you got entity that assumed Osiris' egyptian personality to the letter and wants to lead humans in new fashion that is being forced upon them to join the collective as drones as flesh alone is considered inferior while potential but to become pure perfection they must become one with the machine much to the dismay of NEXUS.
so what is this faction leader exactly ?
a volunteer that volunteered for melding of human and computer datastreams experiment as one sole entity while body would be kept in a holding tank/vat of sorts while joined with the machine but as every black ops project given tight schedule the funding was eventually cut when not enough progress was being shown and project was to be terminated and deemed as failure.
However volunteer in question saw fellow country men as weak minded and took matters to own hands and tried revolt while unfortunately masters managed to box Osiris for time being in an old bunker on the mountains.
Explosion having damaged the sensitive systems that kept the body alive and shortly after mind had no other place than datastreams to store itself as hard disk data and being forcibly shut down by damage.
only to be forgotten and erased from all knowledge of ever existing, time passed and one day somebody came looking for more technologies from ruins only to unleash the monster that vowed revenge and set out to bring the world under more proper rule like the former masters had but this time with way more twisted view on it.
Of course the hard disks had damaged and some pieces of mind stored were lost leaving behind a rather fragmented personality as well mentally insane...
More on this later and who the mysterious masters were
Osiris Inspirations You will be ASSIMILATED to the fold?
The faction was originally planned to be just campaign related obstacle in nexus/human campaigns to keep it from being so simple and the units like stalker mech, inferno hover tank, sniper drone, and goliath tank were to feature in the missions but over time were just turned to temporary nexus stolen techs.
The design inspirations came from many things like mech warrior, dominion storm over gift 3 darken faction, earth 2160 UCS faction, emperor battle for dune, ideally combined TS GDI+Nod (mechs+cyborgs) but evil.
Initial name idea came from Dark Reign 1 expansion rise of the shadowhand where newly tested osiris AI persona goes against its creators with new weapons it developed, like one mech with energy cannon and other bits and additional cruelty ideas came from Shodan thus cybernetic freaks and other mechanical walkers joined with flesh parts it would be.
They would be the ultimate brutal faction to be introduced with their greatest threat being enemy cleverness rather than sheer firepower as head-on Osiris forces would punch thru most conventional obstacles and given their upgrading capability they would have a flexible but very dedicated arsenal.
anyways thats all for now, enjoy & discuss and wait for additions to this epic indepth thread.
Edited by Apollo, 07 October 2007 - 12:58 PM.
