Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection has been released!

Posted by Banshee at Petrolution News on June 6, 2020

Command & Conquer: Remastered collection has been released yesterday. Here's the press release:

 

 

 

Command & Conquer™ and Command & Conquer™ Red Alert defined the RTS genre 25 years ago, and now they’re back and fully remastered in 4k by the former Westwood Studios team members at Petroglyph. The Command & Conquer™ Remastered Collection includes all three expansion packs, rebuilt multiplayer, a modernized UI, Map Editor, bonus gallery of unreleased FMV footage, modding support, and over seven hours of legendary remastered music by Frank Klepacki.

Check out the remastered experience in the official launch trailer below:

 

 

Both the Origin and Steam digital Standard Editions include the remastered versions of Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert, plus all three expansion packs (Covert Operations, Counterstrike, and The Aftermath), and tons of bonus features and improvements.

Head over to the PC Specs and Requirements page to find out what you'll need to start your campaign on the battlefield. And if you have any questions about how modding will work in the game, check out our FAQ or dive deeper with the Remaster Update and Open Source / Mod Support article here.

Welcome back, Commander.

 

 

It is worth mentioning that we have added support for both Conan Unconquered and Command & Conquer: Remastered Collection here at Petrolution. Also, the OS .BIG Editor tool has been updated to its latest version, with 64 bits support, being able to load and save .meg files, and correctly displaying the high resolution textures (32 bits TGA files) used in C&C: Remastered Collection. Enjoy the game and happy modding!

EaW Remake Mod - Review

Posted by Digz at Petrolution News on December 28, 2018

I'm sure everyone has heard about Petroglyph re-mastering Command and Conquer and Blizzard working on remastering Warcraft 3, I'm sure a lot of people are wondering whether Petroglyph will ever remaster Empire at War - no need Petrgolyph, The Empire at War remake team have us covered!

 

The mod has overhauled the graphics of the game and has produced such quality and depth in design it really feels like a re-mastery, maybe if Jeroenimo, the creator of the mod reads this he may change the title to Empire at War Re-mastered! Before I go any further, I truly believe a picture, or in this case a video paints a thousand words so I'll just let you watch a video on Jeroenimos YouTube channel that was released a few days ago that shows off the new control ship and battleship skins:

 

 

The level of detail in the skins is completely out of this world and when playing the game it really gives you the feel of a modern day game and when you take down a ship you smile from ear to ear, just turn up the volume and play to your hearts content!

 

The mod also makes a big statement in trying to turn the world into an ever changing environment, we have seen big developers try and fail at this, we have seen others succeed. To quote the development team "The idea is to give the galaxy a more varied and alive ecosystem where you can build different units on different planets." This is a fantastic idea and to an extent EaW vanilla already has this concept but nowhere near the scale that this mod brings, you certainly do not want your enemy to be making those all powerful interdictor ships, this means expanding your empire in the campaign map and in the correct way is crucial. The level of thought required in your campaign has just increased tenfold and this, as gamers, is what we want. We want to be challenged, we want a living world that constantly changes and it brings into perspective the way we plan ahead in our campaigns. Different planets also have increased values in regards to your economy, so for example you want to go for Bespin alongside other climate planets that will give you income boosts according to its climate.

 

The gameplay itself is smooth, aggressive, and visually appealing with an expanded roster of ships. Many people will think just putting lots of ships in a game does not make it awesome, you're quite right but ensuring the factions are balanced with a large roster of ships does it make it awesome and this mod certainly does that. If you're undecided my advice would be to give the mod a go and I promise you won't turn back. A forewarning the mod is still in development stages, it has not been fully released yet so there is still some work to do and I think a top priority is to increase the stability of the game as it does crash from time to time, that is essentially the single drawback so far. It is on the Steam Workshop or you can find it on ModDB here. The Mod won an honourable mention in this years ModDB Mod of the Year Awards in the Players Choice Awards category, I'm a little sad it did not get into the top 10 but I'm sure next year upon even more work and exposure in the community it will. I've been watching Jeroenimos YouTube channel lately, particularly the tutorial videos on the mod which is essentially him doing a walkthrough playing the Empire campaign, there must be about 10 hours worth of footage in this walkthrough split into different videos so please give them a watch and by the end of the first walkthrough which is below I know you'll be hitting that download button.

 

Petrolutions official rating review of this mod is an 8/10

 

 

We're on the workshop!

Posted by evilbobthebob at Phoenix Rising News on September 3, 2017

Hey guys

 

With the update(!) to Empire at War on Steam, turning multiplayer back on, fixing some bugs, and adding Steam workshop support, I worked all day yesterday getting Phoenix Rising onto the workshop. It's available for download here: http://steamcommunit...873&searchtext=

 

Please post in this thread if you have any troubles installing/running the workshop version, as I haven't had much chance to test it myself.

Mega File Editor reads Config.meg from GreyGoo

Posted by Banshee at Petrolution News on July 30, 2015

Hello everyone!


Mike.nl has released a new version of his Mega File Editor that is able to read the encrypted config.meg file from GreyGoo. That file stores the core rules of the game, such as unit stats, behavior, AI and much more. Humans are able to understand the .XML files and the .CLP files. It is unclear at the moment if the game is really moddable or not and what would be its limitations. Mike.nl has also updated his .MEG File Format document to cover the changes in GreyGoo.



(Click the picture for a high resolution screenshot)


Head to Petrolution Mod Tools Website to download the Mega File Editor and much more. If you have any successful modding experience with GreyGoo, please, report it here and show it to us. It can seriously affect the future of this site.

A Top 100 Thank You

Posted by Ghostrider at Phoenix Rising News on December 13, 2011

We made the ModDB Top 100!

Thank you to all the community support we have received in the last few days, and the news is that we made it into the ModDB's Top 100 Mods.

We are still polishing V1.2 and should update you soon, and just to remind you, a fresh round of voting has started, so please spare a minute or two to follow this link and support this mod.

Vote Us Mod Of The Year 2011

Posted by Phoenix Rising at Phoenix Rising News on December 1, 2011

There's a really easy way for us to get all the talent we need to complete v2.0, and that's to be awarded Mod of the Year. Well, maybe it's not easy to win, but it does only take five seconds of your time to vote. Just follow the red button to Mod DB and click the green "Vote For This Mod" box on our profile.

Look, awards are nice and all, but the real goal here is to increase our exposure. If one person downloads PR because they saw a vote for us on the live scoreboard, then that's a success. So please vote for us if you can spare five seconds, and if you can spare ten, hit up The Dwarf Holds as well. Cheers.

Prepare For Ground Assault

Posted by Phoenix Rising at Phoenix Rising News on November 30, 2011

In December 2009, I received an unexpected message from a fellow mod leader here at Revora that would alter the path of v1.2 development. Nertea, from The Dwarf Holds, offered his expertise on vehicle modeling. This set in motion a course of events that would come to define the release. What v0.1 was for space combat, v1.2 will be for land combat. In effect, this will be our Land Mini-Mod.



The last version was a false start for ground battles, more raw specs than mechanic. While there is still much work to be done before we can declare a PR v2.0, the essence of Land is here now. We have a robust framework in place that is just waiting to flourish into a complete game mode. Our goal? To bring epicness and accuracy planetside. And to do it even better than we did for space.

There are obvious drawbacks in our decision to delay ground development, but one of the benefits is veterancy: we're all better at this than we were five years ago. Given the opportunity to start again essentially from scratch, I'm certain we can craft a superior experience.



The difference between land and space, however, is more than a matter of gravity. There is a real dichotomy here for a number of reasons, at the root of which is the science fiction axiom of "why bother with land battles when you can fight in space". We know relatively little about ground combat during the Galactic Civil War - it just isn't written about. This leaves us with a fairly open canvas.

While depictions of army battles in our era are few, we fortunately have some phenomenal roleplaying material from which to draw individual units - great concepts that have been perpetually trapped in stat blocks and two dimensions. Given the movie models we had on-hand already from EaW, our most dire need was clear: the Armored Freerunner. That was the unit Nertea first set out to recreate that winter, thus commencing our renewed take on land combat.



The Freerunner is the product that put its manufacturer, Kelliak Arms and Armor Company, out of business. This nefarious distinction had little to do with battlefield performance - the medium repulsortank features great speed and fire coverage. Rather, it was the result of walker bias beginning to take hold on the Imperial Army following the Clone Wars. The Armored Freerunner never entered general deployment with the Empire and KAAC went bankrupt, forcing the units to be sold off to anyone who would pay. Ironically, the versatile Freerunner quickly showed up in the hands of dissidents, where it would become the foundation of the Alliance cavalry.

As the model neared completion in February 2010, I began jotting numbers down on my whiteboard, starting with damage values and recharge rates for blaster archetypes. The roleplaying literals used in v1.1 failed for us because that genre is handicapped for player characters; the new format would be customized and exclusive to PR. Small arms got weaker, while cannons became more powerful. Recharge times, which used to mimic relative cyclic rates, would return to the familiar two-second cooldown of space combat, with two notable exceptions: carbines and repeating blasters fire 50% faster; turbolasers fire 50% slower.



The next step was to come up with armor and shield classes. Normally, this is where EaW applies its rock-paper-scissors logic, but that's not us - our armor works by subtracting from damage received, while shields offer protection in terms of percentage. The mistake I made last time was allowing units to become invincible if armor exceeded damage, so a half-point minimum is now in place for any regular hit. The exception to this is special damage, which is tied to armor type: Organic, Droid, or Vehicle. An Organic attack, such as a poison, ignores armor reduction when used against Organic armor; however, it does no damage to other armor types and generally should not target them, in practice. Non-lethal effects, such as stun, are also largely based around armor type.

Ranges then rapidly fell into place. From v1.1, it was clear that literal distances and speeds would not work in a game that rarely represented more than 200 meters of a planet using its own scale. Authentic values could still be used for small arms, but they would need to be condensed. The range of cannons, which can even exceed the size of our biggest land maps when done exactly, would best be planned around the camera and how much can fit on-screen at a time. Once I decided that blaster accuracy should be inclined towards infantry and laser accuracy should be inclined towards vehicles - similar to the laser/turbolaser dynamic of space - the basis of combat was established.



Before anything could be put in data though, it would be prudent to go back to the source materials and reevaluate mechanized armaments under our new framework. Problematically, different titles use "blaster" and "laser" interchangeably, or seemingly at random. On top of that are RPG damage values, which tell another story of how the gun works, separate from the caliber descriptor. These inconsistencies were largely mediated by role and context, so while our armaments may not match every official claim, we stand behind their legitimacy.

At this point, I began updating the damage-to-armor matrices, projectile code, and hardpoints - enough to get vehicles running. By March, the new ground mechanic was ready for its first real test. I built Freerunners and headed for Brentaal. The ensuing battle was one of the most rewarding moments I've had as a developer. Land was playable again. And, for the first time ever, we had an exclusive unit that we alone took from paper to game, fighting on a map made for this mod.



With vindication came distress: the number of land models available to us was still terribly limited, perhaps unbalancingly so, and there was no quick way to remedy that. The best option, we decided, was to delay the release and commence work on upgrades, essentially adding the functionality for what we dub a "mini-mod". That meant that Ghostrider would more or less have to scrap the ground portion of the campaigns that were already finished. Nertea moved on to the next model and I went back to the whiteboard.

Just as space upgrades were originally metered by the prolific X-wing series, the AT-AT would serve as our gauge for land. Everything we needed to accomplish with a unit - both historically and for depth of gameplay - could be done in four variants. Breakthroughs for armies seemingly progress at a slower rate than they do for navies, so this represents only half the improvement of a fully upgraded space unit, but also costs half as much.

Once again, I've tried to ensure a niche role for each faction unit; however, in a departure from space, abilities are no longer mostly class-based. Instead, we have some innovative powers that might only be available to a single unit: self-healing armors, repulsorlift jammers, point-blank EMPs. Pure combat abilities in the style of Power to Weapons are less common and have been reserved for true battlefield juggernauts.



Dealing with upgrades gave me a chance to clean up unit tooltips as well. Obviously anything would be an improvement over the non-descriptions in current use, although the space unit block text isn't ideal either. I had naively thought that EaW would parse newlines for popup strings when I first started writing them for space; of course, it doesn't, and the format just stuck. The only way to get text on different lines is to use multiple strings, so I trialled a modular format this time to take advantage of that. The stat blocks are much more clean and readable now and buildable land units have even begun to show prose descriptions, for those that prefer words to numbers. Progress!

Hitpoints took a while to calibrate. We've normally used strict conversions from official figures to determine the amount of punishment a unit can take before it's considered destroyed. Those numbers were in place from the previous release and were immediately quadrupled for all vehicles. That gave them the longevity that was missing, but certain units still felt off during testing. On paper even, some of the canon stats just didn't make sense - speeder bikes were rated tougher than skyhoppers. It became necessary for us to find our own way. So, while I haven't abandoned our sources if they can fit, I will supersede anything that does not with a value that works in the engine. And the game plays better for it.



The vehicle focus up to this point is intentional, as infantry had suffered from longstanding coding complications dating back to retail EaW, when most land units and all infantry had perfect aim by virtue of non-working XML accuracy tags. This is the default implementation and was never acceptable to us. The alternative is to use hardpoints, which were not meant to go with containers, the "circles" that form infantry into squads, since they create a disconnect in targeting, among other issues. The jury-rigged fix for the previous release was to use the simplest container possible, but that meant that individual troops were doing their own pathfinding, were uncohesive, and were getting stuck all over the map. When I sorted out team targeting and locomotion in April and infantry started firing on their own, all the intricacy and nuance of our small arms design from v1.1 became apparent for the first time.



Is Han the same character without his DL-44? We think not: blasters are too varied in terms of damage, range, and capacity to simply call two pistols equal. Although lacking art and tooltips, our soldiers have always used specific weapon models where it counts, in data. And not just a single weapon like vanilla - thanks to hardpoints, combatants can brandish as many arms as they can realistically carry. In fact, we've simulated almost every weapon in existence for this era, down to the esoteric, from power hammers to wrist rockets to shatter guns, with special care taken to preserve connotation and rarity in how they are used.

These were essential in correcting my previous oversight of indigenous units and structures. Due to release expediency, many files were simply left in their original state. These have since either been converted or met the delete key, with the most noticeable changes for players being to indigenous. Houses are still in place on the maps, but nothing spawns from them, there is no associated bounty, and they're not destructable. Essentially, they're just ordinary props now, with mobs being placed exclusively through starting forces. 19 alien species were added under the civilian archetype, which will be the standard way of representing non-Humans to prevent excessive variantation. Civilians are also unique in that they come in double-strength platoons of 80 to showcase their numerical advantage.



Unfortunately, no one was ever missing in a firefight. I'd always thought of in-game accuracy as an angle and thus was sitting around doing trigonometry trying to figure out better values to use, until Ghost mentioned in May that it's actually a measurement of spread between a group of shots at maximum range. The last point is key, since that's what ultimately determines the fire cone. All land hardpoints were redone to account for the mistake. Infantry were divided into accuracy groups - civilian, military, elite, and hero - with each group using a consistent angle, irrespective to range to simulate shooting with the naked eye. In other words, at 100 meters, a pistol and a rifle are equally inaccurate, even though rifle fire likely has triple the effective range. The opposite approach was taken with vehicles: we've assumed that targeting computer quality is proportional to weapon range, so all mounted cannons are just as inaccurate at 50% of their respective maximums.

With ground combat in excellent shape for testing, my focus shifted to aiding Ghostrider with Operation Shadow Hand, which hadn't been overhauled since v1.0. By June, Nertea had completed his second vehicle, the Heavy Tracker.



The Mekuun Heavy Tracker is a repulsorlift support vehicle designed to house an omniprobe sensor array. This technological breakthrough in the wake of the Clone Wars allows for ground-level detection unimpeded by terrain, a blind spot for existing omnidirectional sensors. Long-range scanning is used to great effect with the topside artillery laser. Trackers typically double as command units for the Rebellion, where they are able to set up rogue reinforcement points with the aid of a landing zone beacon repeater. Although very well armored, the abundance of electronics makes them fat, somewhat fragile targets.

Much of the remaining year was consumed by countless attempts to implement a custom AI, although I continued to expand our projectile roster and convert vanilla units that had been missed. In total, five previously unused troopers, three droids, and eight vehicles were adapted from Petroglyph assets, while the T-16 Skyhopper, Luxury Sail Barge, B1 Battle Droid, B2 Super Battle Droid, Low Altitude Assault Transport, and Mygeeto land map were assimilated from community releases.



One of the last major changes was to reinvent the bombing run for PR. When bombardment was added in FoC, little was done to differentiate it from the carpet-bombing runs of EaW: both were indiscriminate area attacks. Additionally, there was only nominal difference between bomber types. Given our emphasis on statistical transparency, this grew intolerable in the new mechanic, so I devised a way to reliably bridge space and land. All ground bombers were afforded the same characteristics as their orbital counterparts, including weapon systems. There is now a huge difference between supporting an invasion with TIE Targeters and Scimitar Assault Bombers, although in case both are present, the game will automatically pick the better unit. Pilots strafe with energy weapons and actively target enemies with warheads - no more dumping the bomb bay. This is accomplished with conventional land projectiles; the only special case is for reloads: bombers can't launch more warheads on a run than they can carry.



The rest of the time was spent collaborating, documenting, experimenting, implementing, testing, fixing, balancing, and optimizing - the daily grind that often isn't newsworthy. Special thanks must go out to the testing team for a year and a half of silent toil. I put off announcing the land revamp this long to avoid a repeat of the last release, where when it came time to wrap up, land was barely a concept. This time, we ended up with something tremendously polished, yet still very much incomplete. Whether or not we can see this through to the end partially depends on fan and community support, so after you download the upcoming release, tell us what you think about it on the forums, and if you like it, tell a friend! That friend might just be the next member of our team.

I Think, Therefore I Am

Posted by Phoenix Rising at Phoenix Rising News on February 16, 2011

It never worked.

No one could tell in the beginning, when we were still like vanilla. We got our first hint of the truth with research. Then the attacks began to quiet, and colonies disappeared. If we continued to change, there would soon be no game.

We changed anyway.

The task ahead was unprecedented: create a fully customized artificial intelligence. Despite a community's best efforts, it had never before been achieved. All attempts to alter the equations, the AI's means of perceiving the state of the game, had failed.

It turns out that FoC actually runs two distinct AIs: its own and EaW's. There is no way to alter the original EaW AI through modding FoC. It can, however, be circumvented.

And we have finally done so. After an arduous process of black box testing with no debug tools and too many distinct exception fixes to remember, Phoenix Rising can think.

My main objective with the AI in this release, besides deciphering a confusing system architecture so that it might work, was to return all the functionality it had out-of-the-box. It would need to be taught to reason in terms of our rules instead of those of the original game. Every line of every script and equation would need to be reviewed and, if necessary, converted.

In previous versions of PR, the base AI became dysfunctional as gameplay gradually changed. Some features went unaffected, while others shut down entirely. This iteration should return everything to its disposal.

A few aspects of the original AI would explicitly not make the transfer. Gone are the cheat scripts that spawned everything from cash to structures to dreadnaughts. The future will be won or lost on our own merits.

Before I began, a unique category type was created for each unit class in the game. It's now possible to easily distinguish between freighters and corvettes in the code, which, despite their very different roles, wasn't previously practical. More than just an AI improvement, this has benefits for anything that deals with units.

The conversion yielded an operational AI adapted to our scope and terminology, but with essentially the same logical processes as vanilla. For the space and land portion of the AI, this was acceptable - reformulating equations from scratch and adding new behaviors are projects for a later date.

Galactic AI was another matter. In EaW, a surprising portion of it simply did not work - rarely would you see an enemy Infiltrator Facility, Officer Academy, Cantina, Hutt Palace, or Mining Facility. Given its reaction to our splitting the Star Base, there was little left to salvage. Infrastructure, as it were, would have to be built from the ground up.

Once again, a subproject was called for and all structures were reevaluated. Why teach the AI how to build when the blueprints might be outdated? Basic stats like cost, time, and integrity were tweaked, but that's just the start.

We had a clean slate for land, so nothing would be held sacred. Starships are naturally organized into classes based on their size, but what about ground vehicles? EaW split them into indiscrete groups of "light", "heavy", and "advanced". I prefer to think of vehicles in terms of their method of locomotion. In that trend, there will be three types of factory: the Crawler Factory, for traction-based units; the Walker Factory, for legged vehicles; and the Speeder Factory, for anything that hovers. All building prerequisites were removed.

What's the difference between SecForce and SpecForce? We felt it was more than just a letter - the need for dichotomous barracks has been apparent for some time. With generic heroes steadily approaching pointlessness in favor of named, the Officer Academy no longer made sense. Its models were cannibalized to create a new concept for Stormtrooper and Special Forces types, the Elite Barracks. The suddenly redundant Infiltrator Facility was discarded.

"Hutt Palace" felt too factional, so it was replaced with a functionally identical Guild House. The HVs-2 Hypervelocity Gun and m-68 Planetary Magnepulse Cannon are no longer buildable by the Empire; in their place is the w-165 Planetary Turbolaser. The term "Star Base" has been retired in favor of "Orbital Shipyard". Finally, space research and upgrades are now conducted from a Research Station, which opens up use of places like The Maw and its Research 3 advantage.

With structures settled, work on the AI could begin in earnest. For every strategic and tactical goal available to the AI, there is an underlying equation that resolves to a number representative of desire to perform said action. Goals are organized into likewise sets; the goal with the highest desire in a set is executed by a plan - provided that the cost of the plan fits into the AI's budget. This process is repeated after a time interval given by the goal for every applicable object or area in the game. In the case of infrastructure, it's always considering friendly planets.

The first step in a new equation is to establish a constant desire to be modified by factors in the game. For production facilities, we use a large number that scales down as the faction reaches an "ideal" galactic ratio of structures to planets. For something like a Mining Facility or Golan SpaceGun, we're more concerned about not exceeding a local ratio. Others require unique considerations.

In all cases, it's prudent to include some basic checks to eliminate choices that break the rules. For example, the AI should not try to build stations if there is no colony, or a Walker Factory if it is Rebel, or two Research Facilities. Decisions should also be weighted by the relative value of a target planet, whether it is connected to an enemy player or not, and possibly by what other structures are present.

The aforementioned logic could work for any FoC mod, but this is our AI. Remember the planetary advantage update I posted about last year? It understands them intrinsically. Clone worlds get Elite Barracks. Research Stations are built at places with Archives. And Mining Facilities become increasingly difficult to pass up the greater the bonus.

It all adds up to an opponent that can do everything a human player can do - including win. Sure, it may throw units at you like it always has in battle, but its bases will be laid out with master precision. And that is the foundation.

"He doesn't like you either"

Posted by Ghostrider at Phoenix Rising News on October 18, 2010

Part I looked at the more prevalent black market and illegal units, while part II looks at the illegal bombers, corvettes and some very nasty illegal frigates and cruisers.

Illegal Bombers

BTL Y-Wing (Illegal)
This self-escorting heavy bomber immolates large targets with proton bombs and shrugs off starfighter attack with a rear-gunner’s turreted triple laser cannon and a fixed forward firing slugthrower cannon in the nose.
Era: 18BBY Onwards

Rihkxyrk Attack Ship (Illegal)
This miniature gunship carries a heavy array of forward facing disruptor cannon, laser cannon, ion cannon and proton rockets to deliver huge damage on a single strafing run. Despite carrying a heavy bomber’s weapon loadout, this craft has the performance of an agile interceptor, and can dogfight with the best of them.
Era: 18BBY Onwards

TIE Bomber (Illegal)
This is an elite mobile artillery platform, with the double hull crammed full of magazines for the two nastiest missile systems on the illegal weapons market – proton bombs to punch through the heaviest starship armour plate and diamond boron missiles, which can shred entire squadrons in a single shot. Usually only seen escorting major warlords.
Era: 4ABY Onwards

Illegal Transports and Freighters

Murderously efficient illegal transports are available to the larger crime syndicates while the larger freighters are armed as illegal blocade runners.

Delta-class DX-9 Transport (Illegal)
All-round menace! 6 medium lasers and 6 medium disruptors make short work of most opponents. The advanced missile system is a superb counter-starfighter weapon platform.
Era: 18BBY onwards

Gamma-class ATR-6 Assault Transport (Illegal)
Frigate-killer. Turreted octuple laser cannons for the necessary starfighter defense, while 3 dual turbodisruptors and advanced proton torpedoes punch very large holes in nearby starships. An elite illegal platform for the very well connected!
Era: 18BBY onwards.

GAT-12 Skipray Blastboat (Illegal)
A slaver’s dream. The main armament is a shield busting combination of mag pulse and plasma torpedo warheads, backed up with a turboion cannon. Turreted dual disruptors ensure nearby fighters are pulverised.
Era: 18BBY onwards

CTF Container Transport (Illegal) & MCF Modular Conveyor (Illegal)
While the CTF hammers through blocade ships in force with Power to Engines and disruptor cannons, the MCF prefers to glide by unseen with Cloaking Device and special technology to even mask its weapon signatures. Both are seen in the rougher areas of space where pirate attacks are more common or where smuggling abounds.
Era: 18BBY Onwards

Corvettes

CR90 Corvette (Illegal)
Up-gunned to Turbodisruptors and slugthrower cannons, this is an illegal workhorse of many large pirate bands.
Era: 18BBY Onwards

Crusader-class Corvette (Illegal)
Illegal gun runner with banks of laser and disruptor cannon for a lethal defense screen and highly effective point defense system. Turbodisruptor long guns deter customs ships from inspecting highly suspect cargoes. A Zann Consortium staple.
Era: 18BBY Onwards

DP20 Gunship (Illegal)
A cluster trap with engines. Multiple dual turbodisruptors, banks of octuple slug throwers and heavy flechette missiles obliterate anything in range. At point blank range this is one of the most lethal weapon platforms in the galaxy.
Era: 7 ABY Onwards

IPV System Patrol Craft (Illegal)
Squadron killer. Pirate light cruiser / patrol ship with disruptor cannons and flechette missiles that also punch holes in larger shipping.
Era: 18BBY Onwards

Marauder Missile Cruiser (Illegal)
A pilot’s worst nightmare: 24 heavy diamond boron missiles, and Full Salvo unleashes this payload in 15 seconds flat. Cruisers beware!
Era: 18BBY Onwards

Pirate Command Ships

Carrack-class Light Missile Cruiser (Illegal)
Outlaw’s command ship, capable of challenging a Victory-class Star Destroyer. In a complete redesign, the standard turbolasers and ion cannons have been replaced with 10 heavy mass driver cannon, 20 triple slugthrowers and 10 advanced concussion missile launchers in veritable hailstorm of solid shot.
Era 18BBY Onwards

EF-76 Nebulon B (Illegal)
Disruptor-armed frigate. All-round menace and minor flagship.
Era: 18BBY

Acclamator-Class Star Frigate (Illegal)
This has to be the scariest pirate cruiser ever built. If ignored it puts battlecruisers in jeopardy. The main armament consists of dual turbodisruptors and dual mass drivers, with quad lasers for close contact. The point defense system was scrapped in favour of a complete missile jamming suite. Multiple proton bomb launchers round off the weapon systems. This can kill any capital-class warship single-handedly, although an Imperial IV-class Star Destroyer might prove a challenge.
Era: 10BBY Onwards

Dreadnaught-class Heavy Cruiser (Illegal)
Outlaw’s flagship. Multiple turbodisruptors and diamond boron missiles for long range destruction, with upgraded quad lasers and quad ion cannon for point blank defense. A light illegal snubfighter compliment rounds this ship off nicely.
Era 18BBY Onwards

Venator-class Star Destroyer (Illegal)
Self-escorting mobile deep-space fortress. Slugthrower guns and sensor jamming enable this assault carrier to shrug off endless waves of bombers, while the massive cargo of illegal snubfighters and dual turbodisruptors wreak havoc throughout the system. Only the richest organised crime syndicates will be able to build and maintain these pirate cities.
Era: 18BBY Onwards

End of Nations Preview on G4TV

Posted by KiwiWarrior at Petrolution News on October 4, 2010

A new preview for End of Nations by G4TV:

In an industry filled with fantasy MMO clones of World of WarCraft, it’s always refreshing to see a developer strive for something unique. In this case, Petroglyph’s attempt at an RTS/MMO mash-up, End of Nations seems poised to introduce fans of one genre to those of another by virtue of some explosive, tank-on-tank action.

The game takes place in a near future in which economies and governments have collapsed and the world has fallen into a state of perpetual conflict. As factions and agencies compete against one another, the wars continue to rage. There’s a large, persistent world here that’ll call gamers home from a long weekend only to find that the global conflict has escalated, or that their friends have successfully vanquished a particular foe.

You can read the full review here.

Here is another link featuring two videos:

http://www.rockpaper...Paper, Shotgun)

End of Nations Updates

Posted by Digz at Petrolution News on May 18, 2010

Here is the latest video on G4TV featuring Mike Legg going all out to explain the concepts of End of Nations and explaining the RTS and MMO sides of the gameplay whilst talking about general gameplay of the game online.

Mike Legg also says that the release date of sometime in 2011. You can watch the video over at G4TV.

Here some screenshots taken from the End of Nations facebook page which can be located here.

Petrolution: Remember we work for you!

Posted by Digz at Petrolution News on January 31, 2010

To all existing hostees and potential new ones that are browsing around, I'd just like to remind you that we, at Petrolution work for you!

I'd like to take a few minutes of your time to tell all of you and the fans of your mods, what we are doing to get more exposure for your mods. Firstly, it's all about PR, over at Petroglyph forums lies the main user base for all EaW/UaW players left, that's why in my new sig and all other sigs I make I will link every single mod that Petrolution hosts. I will of course make my sigs look cool as always to attract the most attention.

Arguably, you're all thinking, what's that going to do? Well, Berek, the Community Manager at Petroglyph wants to make sure the community of these games stick together, I have proposed that we most mod news and spotlights in their monthly community newsletter which thousands of fans read, to get your mods on there is my top priority and it will give you a massive boost not only in downloads but fans participating in discussion and wanting to know more about your mod!

I'm also going to be publishing weekly news updates here on Petrolution about all of the updates and news about your mods, as well as other interesting things that are happening over at Petroglyph.

It's a fantastic time to be a hostee here at Petrolution, a time where you are going to get a lot more exposure rather than in the attic of the Petrolution forums. I have found the key and opening up that attic door, letting your mods flow out, but at the same time attracting new mods and fans in.

If you have any suggestions, feel free to PM/Email me or comment here and we can see what we can do for you!

Digz

PR For Mod Of The Year 2009

Posted by Phoenix Rising at Phoenix Rising News on December 26, 2009

Hope you all are having a great holiday. It's that time of year again - time to vote for your favorite mods in the 2009 Mod of the Year Awards at Mod DB! This is just a quick reminder to cast your vote for Phoenix Rising in the event.



Although 2009 will be the first year without a major release for us, you can be assured that one will arrive early the new year. We're not rushing this one! Much effort has gone into making v1.2 the best, most playable version of PR yet and, as such, it should feel much more complete than the last release. Many surprises are still in store, so keep checking back here in the coming weeks!

Quick, very quick, updates!

Posted by Banshee at Petrolution News on October 25, 2009

Petrolution received few updates in this month. First, a very quick article on Panzer General: Allied Assault. You can also post articles about it as well. The second quick change is that Petrolution is the first Revora website to use Revora Account System (RAS) (thanks 2playgames). While the old way to login was a bit better (since you didn't get redirected to a special screen), this one is safer and can be used by any hostee in the future.

Finally, we are looking for a new leader for this place. If you wanna run this website, post in a reply below with a valid Revora account.

Phoenix Rising Reborn With v1.1!

Posted by Phoenix Rising at Phoenix Rising News on December 26, 2008

After a long wait and a false start, Version 1.1 is finally live! Grab it from one of the following mirrors:

• Mirror 1 - FileFront
• Mirror 2 - Mod DB

One campaign to rule them all

Posted by Ghostrider at Phoenix Rising News on December 21, 2008

I can start with some excellent news. The Lag is Dead. This means that the full version of Galaxy, Far, Far, Away will now be shipped with the release.

We soon realised in the development that the lag (where the map freezes and locks the game) was probably linked to the number of planets in the campaign. After a good bit of poking through various parts of the code we found a small item, forgotten by the deigners and left in the original FOC which caused excessive CPU and memory requirements as the number of planets increased. The offending item has been removed and the map now moves freely with every twitch of the mouse. While this has the greatest effect on the larger campaigns, you should also notice slight improvements in the small campaigns as well.

We do however, recommend the following minimum hardware requirements for both Galaxy Far, Far Away and Galaxy Far, Far Away (Lite): 3.0 GHz CPU and 2GB Ram in order to run the full mod. Anything less is not supported, but if you don’t meet these requirements, or you graphics card is particularly outdated, you probably need to scale back the settings. Please also note that these two large campaigns have lengthy load times.

The GFFA campaigns in detail:
In all cases, your starting forces will be a mix of clone-wars remnants and the emerging technology of your faction, and for added challenge, you will have to start at tech level Zero – with no destroyers or capitals in your armoury. Anything bigger than a basic cruiser will need to be researched before it can be built. In contrast, major worlds will have at destroyers at the very least in their defenses. I also recommend that you pay attention to your heroes in the GFFA and sub-campaign setting as a fully upgraded hero will have more impact here than in the Thrawn or Shadow Hands campaigns, simply because the gap between pirates and heroes will be that much greater.

Core Worlds: This is a tough little campaign of 37 worlds, and as a player, you only start with 3 of them. Alderaan, Dolomar and Ghorman for the Alliance; Byss, Coruscant, and Carida for the Empire. Undergunned and with a poor economy, you are surrounded by the galactic heavyweights – some of the most well defended planets in the galaxy. Taking even one planet will be a challenge. Playing as the Empire will probably be easier as you have the potential construction advantages of Coruscant and Byss, as well as the cheap Stormtroopers from Carida. To compensate, the Alliance starts with a trading fleet advantage, courtesy of Alderaan’s merchant houses. Each side starts with three heroes.

Inner Rim: From the Inner rim out to the Mid-Rim, this campaign takes in a good proportion of the galaxy, with about 48 worlds in total. Defenses are mixed, some light, some heavy, with the added challenge of some criminal hot-spots to consider.
Players start with 4 planets and 4 heroes each: Atzerri, Ithor, Dressel and Kashyyyk for the Alliance and Anteevy, Chazwa, Naboo and Ord Trasi for the Empire. If you are smart, you should still be able to take some planets fairly quickly.

Outer Rim: This large campaign takes in about half the galaxy, - with 73 planets in all, and you will find plenty of variation here. There is a generous distribution of weak systems scattered amongst the strong, but the Outer Rim also is the refuge for many powerful criminal organisations. This has perhaps the most interesting start of the sub campaigns. Only one of your 5 starting worlds has any decent manufacturing facilities (Mon Calamari / Eriadu)– the other 4 are very minor planets indeed, none can build anything bigger than a corvette!.

Galaxy, Far, Far Away – Lite:
This is a simplified version of the full galaxy, combining the best worlds of each of the 3 sub-campaigns to make a very large, varied, and lengthy campaign of about 120 worlds. You start with 8 locations, 4 strong, 4 weak scattered throughout all parts of the galaxy. Beware – your opponent will start with a range of military, research and construction advantages.

Galaxy Far, Far Away
This is the master campaign from which all others were made. 158 worlds in immense variety. Apart from the 40 additional planets, this is identical in starting forces to the Lite version. This will be a very lengthy campaign, so plan your battles carefully.

Enjoy and please post campaign comments on the Forums. I look forward to your feedback.

Release Nudged Back

Posted by Phoenix Rising at Phoenix Rising News on December 18, 2008

Now for the bad news. I just found out that jdk002's new computer isn't up yet as expected, which means he'll be unable to do the maps for the release. This means I'll have to do them, but I just can't make the time before the 20th - I'm still making last-minute corrections on my end. Unfortunately, this will force me to delay the release of version 1.1 until Tuesday, December 23rd.

I should explain why the map changes are so important. Without changes to the Galactic Conquest maps, the new, individual star bases will not work. You'll be able to build them, but they won't show up in a battle, so even after you defeat all of the space forces, the stations will remain in galactic, preventing that space from changing hands. Without changes to the Skirmish maps, there will be no secondary station to build starfighters at and the interface problems will persist.

The only responsible option is to delay the release and make sure these features work. Three more days will give us enough time to implement and test everything without dictating consecutive all-nighters. I'm just sorry it had to come to this, but we've literally worked for the past month straight, so this is the soonest possible it can reasonably be done. Thanks for your patience.

An Unfair Universe

Posted by Ghostrider at Phoenix Rising News on October 21, 2008

Greetings from Ghostrider. As you are now aware, I have joined the PR team as QA Lead, which fundamentally lets PR point me at problems and say 'go fix'. I look at fine details and niggling inconsistencies, while PR looks at the big picture. Over the summer this remit has included fine tuning some of my own development tools for the mod and other minor 'behind the scene details'. One interesting change that has come about is increasing the aggression of the AI in battle. This is especially noticeable in the behaviour of fighter and bomber jocks. All they see are a fat collection of targets and it’s quite unnerving seeing a gaggle of starfighters power up engines and swarm at you, gunning for your lead ships. Unescorted corvettes beware.

Galaxy Far, Far Away.
PR has given me a new task. To populate the entire Galaxy Far, Far Away campaign, to a high level of detail and realism. This has been a serious challenge. Let me warn you now. This campaign is going to be unlike any of the others and it will be quite challenging. Although it is not finished, I can give you some good insights into the campaign itself.

Before I could even think about starting, we had to determine a way to assess and compare planets to each other, so that we could consistently populate the campaign with ships and fighters that are a) relevant to the planet and its people and commercial contacts and b) that the planet/system could afford to buy and maintain.

This has taken a huge amount of work, and we now have a self-consistent galaxy to work with that accurately reflects the planet’s financial, military, commercial and demographic position in the galaxy. For example, living on a barren ice world with poor resources is going to have a significantly different defence force to say, a rich, urban world near a major trade route. This means that you need to evaluate a planet carefully before you invade. Where possible, we have tried to tangibly reflect these factors in the fleet population. One of the spin-offs of this work has been a re-evaluation of the galactic economy and I am sure you will learn more about this in due course.

But what could we populate these planets with?
It was obvious that just using the starting line-up of imperial and rebel forces was wholly inappropriate and completely inadequate. That got me thinking. Go back to 18BBY just after the end of the Clone Wars and you realise that both the Empire and the Rebel alliance have state-of the art military equipment. So was it better than the clone-wars era equipment? Well no, but it was an awful lot cheaper! Compare for example the brand new TIE Starfighter (60k) vs the Clone-Wars elite Eta-2 Actis-class light Interceptor at a staggering 295k. Now you see what a breakthrough the TIE series really is - 95% of the C.W. era performance at 20% of the cost.
This ably demonstrates the fantastic ability of the Empire to churn out new craft at a frightening rate.
We could not take that for granted in the post C.W. galaxy and that left us with a big problem. Only the pro-Imperial military planets will have access to the TIE series and only the biggest, richest planets in the galaxy will be able to buy the C.W. era ships, and that leaves a lot of planets unaccounted for. If you can’t get these first-rank military models, what else can you get hold of?

Over the last month, PR and I have filled this gap with a huge array of different space forces, comprising over 100 new encounters for this period alone, ranging in size from fighters to dreadnaughts! Some are rich, elite craft, while other cover old models, refurbished ships, less successful warship/starfighter lines, converted civilian equipment, liners and even outright salvaged ships. Pay attention to all the details, as you may not be able to tell the rich from the poor by visual inspection alone.
I can also now reveal 4 of the many new adversaries you will be facing:

CloakShape Fighter
Delta-7 Aethersprite-class Light Interceptor
T.I.E Starfighter
Vulture Droid Starfighter

The Units page has full details on these ships and their variants.

The CloakShape is a Pre-clone Wars heavy fighter made by Kuat Systems Engineering with two light lasers and a concussion missile launcher for added punch. While limited by relatively poor agility, they make up for this in high hull strength.
The Delta-7 was the last in the Delta Series produced by the KDY Yards. With twin dual lasers, excellent shielding, speed and manoeuvrability, this is a deadly ship to fly - if you can afford to buy one.
The T.I.E Starfighter is the original mass produced starfighter made by Republic Sienar Systems - with an horrendous 90k price tag. This is not to be confused with the Empire-era TIE Starfighter designed some 4 years later by Sienar Fleet Systems.
Vulture Droids are fast, light hulled droid fighters armed with 4 light blaster cannons and Energy torpedoes that batter down shields. These are normally encountered in large swarms due to their extremely low production costs.

What else will you find?
I will be breathing infinite variety into the galaxy, and there should be obvious differences between rich, powerful worlds on important trading routes, fortress worlds and military strongholds, smuggler havens, worlds ravaged by war, untouched beauty spots, humble farmers, isolated worlds, alien civilisations and so on. If you are really smart you may be able to spot flaws in the makeup of some of the poorly planned planetary defenses which you can take advantage of. In other systems you will not be so lucky.

You should also be very careful because on the fringes of the galaxy, you may encounter groups with blatant disregard for common law and decency: pirates, corrupt officials, renegade Moffs, slavers, drug lords, shipjackers and so on. These outlaws are highly dangerous and have modified their ships to match their trade. Pay close attention to the stats in combat, because appearances are always deceiving. These boys don’t play fair as the following sequence shows.



At the beginning of the campaign, choose your targets wisely, otherwise it could be a serious mistake. I expect most of the early campaign action to be in the outer rim, slowly moving corewards as time progresses. Your core worlds will be somewhat trapped and undergunned at the beginning so pay attention to building your economy. You will need it. Otherwise, take in and enjoy the variety of a living, breathing universe.

Petro-Gamers Roundtable Discussion

Posted by Banshee at Petrolution News on May 13, 2008

Petro-Gamers.com has launched a new feature at their site called Roundatble Discussion where they invite some people who contribute to the Petroglyph community and get their honest answers from a couple of questions.





In this edition, the following people participated:

* Sonic - Petro-Gamers Webmaster
* Saracen - Petro-Gamers Co-Webmaster
* Foshjedi2004 - UAW Files Webmaster
* Kelathin - Petrolution Staff
* Elegy - GameReplays.org
* Banshee - Petrolution Contributer
* Duke - Petrolution Leader
* Mastermind - Revora Network Leader


We have all shared our opinions on topics like Universe at War as a franchise, Adam Isgreen, Petroglyph's & True Games and the Petroglyph community. Click HERE to read it and post your thoughts in a reply (guest post allowed).

Petrolution Version II Official Launch!

Posted by Duke at Petrolution News on February 26, 2008

Greetings all.

Today is a proud day in the history of Petrolution. The old tattered, coffee stained page that was Petrolution has been carefully torn out and laid to rest under an Oak tree overlooking the sea. In it's place, a new page is being written. Brand New, ready to be filled with activity and content that is exciting, informative and useful. A new day has dawned my friends, and the horizon is looking gorgeous!

Just over two years ago Petrolution was launched originally. Over it's time it's been a steady rock in the community providing resources to the people it served. Today, we're ready to transform Petrolution into a Petroglyph Modding Resource Hub!!.

From this day forth we shall endeavour to bring to you the most up-to-date information about the modding of Petroglyph's Games. We aim to provide full coverage, modding guides and tutorials, resources and tools at your fingertips and a helpful community where you can ask for help with anything related to the modding of Petroglyph Games.

We have completed a brand new original website for Petrolution. It's jam-packed full of awesome features awaiting you. We've incorporated a very flash article system that was originally built by 2playgames that allows you to login with your Revora Username and password to begin sharing and commenting on articles, tutorials, mod pages and files. There are many features to take advantage off so check out the Help Page to find out more about them.

I'd like to take this time here to thank everybody that's played a part in both the development of the new Petrolution site - and in the development of the Petrolution in general. If I miss anyone out, I apologize. Remember, I'm only New too

• AdmiralGT - The original vision behind Petrolution. Founded and put together the original version of the site and set the standard for future Staff.
• Torn - Torn did the graphical design for the first Petrolution template, his work is greatly appreciated.
• Banshee - The Supreme Banshee, without Banshee Petrolution would have collapsed a long time ago. He has held it together and has spent a lot of time supporting the site. Banshee has also helped a lot with the development of the new template, we can't really thank him enough. Thanks brother
• Mastermind - MM has been a key influence of Petrolution, while he may not be the great frontman he's been around, updating news and keeping things running smoothly.
• Phoenix Rising - PR is the only member of the former Petrolution staffing team that is still here. A great modder and we look forward to working more closely in the future.
• Brad - Brad is probably relatively unknown to many of you - but he is a great friend of mine and has done the graphical work for Petrolution v II. He is also going to stay on and support the website as a community leader and moderator. Cheers Brad!
• Jeeves - A wealth of information regarding CSS & XHTML development. His support of me coding up this website has been highly valuable. Without his assistance this release date would be many many weeks into the future.
• Dark Lord of the Sith - DlotS has helped a lot with the development of the new look Petrolution. His assistance in many areas is greatly appreciated.

I'd also like to introduce the new staff members here at Petrolution.

• Bex - Bex, or swgbex is an acomplished and respected modder for the Empire at War series. Particularly notable with his work in the Imperial Assault 2 mod for FOC and documentation on Mike.nl's modding tools. Bex will continue modding with Universe at War and will provide help in the forums to anyone that asks to the best of his ability. He has also written and reproduced many modding tutorials for Petrolution.
• Kelathin - Kelathin is a well known member of the Petroglyph fan community and has joined us on Petrolution to help out wherever he can. He is a skilled modder and heads up the Judgement of The Jedi mod for Universe at War. Kelathin will be providing support on modding related issues in the forum as well as helping our community go forward into the future.

Brad has been introduced above

And so this about wraps it up. Welcome to the new Petrolution, stay tuned for much new content to come. Here's to a new Day