Tiberian Dawn - Extended Operations *SEPTEMBER UPDATE*

[Darkstar387]

THE EXTENDED OPERATIONS: Unofficial Expansion
50 professional custom missions and counting!
Hello everyone. To celebrate over 100 downloads, Version 4 of the Extended Operations pack is finally here! for those of you who've never played these missions before, thes custom maps have been created in homage to this classic. These levels have been created so they play in the same style and felt as close to the original game as possible. They're here for the undying and forever loyal C&C community to enjoy. If you play them and like them, I will keep them coming. Feedback is HIGHLY ENCOURAGED  

*UPDATE 09/18/2017*

• Increased enemy teams in in SCB203EA to spice the mission up.
• Modified teams pathfinding in SCG101EA.
• 6 new missions completed

*PENDING UPDATE*

• Fixed color of special house in "NES: Countdown". Team's color must have been reset during an edit.  
• Modified teams pathfinding in "NES: Behind Enemy Lines". Increased autocreate team variety.
• Reduced number of Obelisks from "NES: A Cold Wind Blows" to make it easier on the player.

GDI Missions:

1. SCG100EA - NES: Where Eagles Dare. A base assault mission. Medium
2. SCG101EA - NES: Behind Enemy Lines. An MCV rescue mission. Easy.
3. SCG102EA - NES: Airland Battle. A combined ground & air assault, no bases. Easy.
4. SCG103EA - NES: Badlands. A base assault mission. Hard.
5. SCG104EA - NES: Countdown. A ground / base assault mission. Medium.
6. SCG105EA - NES: Search & Destroy. A search and destroy mission, no bases. Medium.
7. SCG106EA - NES: Rock And a Hard Place. A base assault mission, no bases. Medium.
8. SCG107EA - NES: Peacekeepers. A beachhead / base assault mission. Medium.
9. SCG108EA - NES: Trail of Tears. A base assault mission, mid-level tech only. Hard.
10. SCG109EA - NES: Sabotage. A surgical strike mission, no bases. Medium.
11. SCG110EA - NES: Operation Anvil. A ground / base assault mission. Hard.
12. SCG111EA - NES: Genesis. A base reclamation / assault mission. No MCV. Medium.
13. SCG112EA - NES: The Scorpion's Sting. An MCV rescue mission. Medium.
14. SCG113EA - NES: Power Surge. A surgical strike mission. Medium.
15. SCG111EA - NES: Besieged. A base reclamation / assault mission. Hard.
16. SCG115EA - NES: Heartbreak Ridge. A fortress assault mission. Hard.
17. SCG116EA - NES: On Hostile Shores. A commando / base assault mission. Hard.
18. SCG117EA - NES: Burning Sands - Part 1. An armored assault / base mission.Medium
19. SCG118EA - NES: Burning Sands - Part 2. A base assault mission. Hard.
20. SCG119EA - NES: Questionable Ethics. A surgical strike mission. Medium.
21. SCG120EA - NES: Rapid Response. A base reclamation / assault mission. Hard.
22. SCG121EA - NES: The Siege of Macedona. A civil defense / base assault mission. Hard.
23. SCG122EA - NES: Market Crash. A search and destroy mission. Medium.
24. SCG123EA - NES: A Cold Wind Blows. A fortress assault mission. Hard-ish.
25. SCG124EA - NES: Canal Crisis. A base assault / base defense mission. Medium.
26. SCG125EA - NES: Divide & Conquer. A commando / base assault mission. No base. Easy.
27. *NEW* SCG126EA - NES: The Mobius Mandate. A search and destroy mission. Medium.
28. *NEW* SCG127EA - NES: Against The Clock. Search and destroy / base assault mission. Easy.
29. *NEW* SCG128EA - NES: Emancipation. A base reclamation / base assault mission. Medium

Nod Missions:

1. SCB200EA - NES: Phantom Strike. A base assault mission. Medium.
2. SCB201EA - NES: Uprising. A ground assault mission, no bases. Easy.
3. SCB202EA - NES: Freedom Fighters. A base assault mission. Medium.
4. SCB203EA - NES: Vengeance. A base reclamation / assault mission, no bases. Medium.
5. SCB204EA - NES: Snake Head. A base assault mission. Hard.
6. SCB205EA - NES: Public Enemy No.1. A stealth extraction mission, no bases. Medium.
7. SCB206EA - NES: Unscheduled Acquisition. A capture/ground assault mission, no bases. Medium.
8. SCB207EA - NES: All Along The Watch Tower. An extraction/base assault mission. Hard.
9. SCB208EA - NES: Overlooked. A base reclamation / assault mission, no MCV. Hard.
10. SCB209EA - NES: Plausible Deniability. A ground assault mission, no bases. Easy.
11. SCB210EA - NES: To Ashes. A civilian assault mission, no bases. Medium.
12. SCB211EA - NES: David & Golaith. A base reclamation / assault mission no MCV. Medium.
13. SCB212EA - NES: Serenity. A base assault mission. Medium.
14. SCB213EA - NES: Frozen Assets. A base reclamation/assault mission. Medium.
15. SCB214EA - NES: Evolution. A unique visceroid mission no bases. Hard.
16. SCB215EA - NES: Two If By Sea. A base assault mission, no MCV. Hard.
17. SCB216EA - NES: The Lone Rider. A base reclamation / assault mission. Hard.
18. SCB217EA - NES: Covert Extraction. A stealth mission. Easy.
19. SCB218EA - NES: Betrayal. An assassination mission. Easy.
20. SCB219EA - NES: The Highway at Gaudari. A base assault mission. Hard.
21. SCB220EA - NES: Savages. A base assault mission. Medium.
22. SCB221EA - NES: Powder Keg. A base assault mission. Hard.
23. SCB222EA - NES: Smoke screen. A search and destroy/base assault mission. Easy.
24. SCB223EA - NES: The Tun-Shou Pass. A stealth base assault mission. Medium.
25. SCB224EA - NES: Snowblind. An search and rescue mission. Easy.
26. SCB225EA - NES: Tank Busters. A search and destroy mission. No bases. Medium.
27. *NEW* SCB226EA - NES: The Lost Island. A commando mission. Medium.
28. *NEW* SCB227EA - NES: Sweeping Flames. A civilian / base assault mission. Easy
29. *NEW* SCB228EA - NES: The Talon of Ruin. A base assault mission. Hard-ish.

NES Mission Pack V5.zip

 

 

Edited March 29, 2018 by Darkstar387
Uploaded patch to mission pack. See Patch log.

[MattAttack]

Welcome to the forum and thanks for uploading some missions!  Might finally have some time to play them tonight.  I briefly played them both; being the excellent employee I am, I have a thumbdrive with c&c installed on it I plug into my work computer and screw around on lunch when nobody is looking...   Seem very puzzle-like.  Well, I'll give them a go and tell you what I think!

[Darkstar387]

Haha I'm the same way, I carry a copy of my game on a thumb drive and make missions when I'm on the road for work. 

[Darkstar387]

I'm currently going through the mission's I've made and fixing up the code, ensuring all the teams work and updating the older missions with new stuff i've learned. Now that I'm sharing these, I've got to make sure they're up to par.

[Jacko]

I tried these, they seem cool.

 

The GDI mission is very plain and simple, was the objective just to destroy the Hand of Nod?

 

The Nod mission I found a little frustrating. You had to get a bit lucky on Rocket Launcher damage RNG if you wanted to keep your 2 tanks alive, then we had tanks unloading from helicopters (cmon, you can do better than that), and then once I got into the 2nd segment of the GDI base the game crashed. Oh well. I liked the use of the repair bay though.

[Darkstar387]

Thanks for the feedback Jacko. The second mission is difficult but luck shouldn't be a factor. The two starting tanks can be kept alive through propper micro management, even when engaging  the advanced gaurd tower. I've tested this mission extensively and I've kept both tanks alive throughout the whole level.

 

As for the helicopter, ya... I'm guilty of doing that. I find it easier to reinforce large groups that way even though lt IS a cop out.

 

I'm surprised to hear your game crashed, I've never had anybody crash while playing that mission. I'll give it another run through with a fresh installation and see what I find.

[Jacko]

Thanks for the feedback Jacko. The second mission is difficult but luck shouldn't be a factor. The two starting tanks can be kept alive through propper micro management, even when engaging  the advanced gaurd tower. I've tested this mission extensively and I've kept both tanks alive throughout the whole level.

 

As for the helicopter, ya... I'm guilty of doing that. I find it easier to reinforce large groups that way even though lt IS a cop out.

 

I'm surprised to hear your game crashed, I've never had anybody crash while playing that mission. I'll give it another run through with a fresh installation and see what I find.

 

I found it hard to preserve the 2 tanks at the very start (which is obviously critical), once I got the first repair bay it was fairly easy from then on.

[Darkstar387]

I think I might add some additional teams to counter-attack the player when the main base comes under assault, I just don't want to make things too difficult considering how limited the player's resources are.

[MattAttack]

I nominate "the Scorpion's Sting" for best mission title, lol.  I can't believe none of us thought of that before, it's a pretty obvious and cool choice.  As for the map itself, I really liked it.  Although I beat it on the 1st try, I found it extremely fun.  The "Twist of Fate-ish" 1st half was well done, yet challenging.  And once I got my base established I love how I saw a ton of Nod reinforcement planes flying over, so I knew I was in for a hammering of attacks.  I thought it was a nice psychological taunting.  I liked the mix of units in the teamtypes that attacked and they were pretty relentless for a while.  The enemy base gets a little congested, although in my case it was almost a good thing because when I attacked there were a bunch of flame tanks chilling right in front of the base's obelisks.  I'm a sucker for desert maps and I thought the layout was creative and interesting.  I guess I need to bitch about something, but all there is to fault is an unfinished cliff in the north of the map.  There you go   This is a map I'll probably play again.

Unfortunately I ran out of time so that was the only one I fully completed thus far.  But briefly:

 

I just about made it all the way through "Airland Battle" and although it's a pretty simple map I liked the concept.  My only suggestions on that would be maybe have a patrol or 2 moving about the map to make it seem more "alive" and I felt the map could have been a little smaller as I was getting slightly impatient with my units getting to where they needed to go.

**update** just beat this one.  good tmes

 

I look forward to making it through all of them, they seem pretty well put together and the concepts appear well thought out.  I have to say I'm super stoked at how the quality of missions uploaded lately (and not just these ones) has really gone up a couple of notches.  Hooray for C&C!

 

[Jacko]

Scorpions Sting had a very nice idea, but I might've broken the mission with a highly exploitable AI when I played it

 

I left a minigunner lying around in the top left area of the Map and all the attacking Nod units got stuck.

Also did you check GDI had the right tech level? it almost looked as if you wanted us to use Chinooks but they couldn't be built.

[MattAttack]

I left a minigunner lying around in the top left area of the Map and all the attacking Nod units got stuck.

Ah yes.... this is why "attack units/base" sucks.  That is what they target.  To bypass this, I usually have enemy teams move through a series of waypoints in the intended player base area before eventually going to "attack base."  They will shoot at anything in their range as they "move" from waypoint to waypoint.  The only side-effect of this is that if the player, for whatever reason, builds their base somewhere else on the map.  Then the teams seem to insanely jog through a weird zig zag of points before heading off to the northern-most targets.  So, I always try to make it so it's either impossible to build anywhere else, or just silly. 

 

Oh and BTW, I beat "Airland Battle."  very cool for not really having any teams/triggers.  Again, my only critique would be a smaller map and maybe a couple of patrols.

[Jacko]

I left a minigunner lying around in the top left area of the Map and all the attacking Nod units got stuck.

Ah yes.... this is why "attack units/base" sucks.  That is what they target.  To bypass this, I usually have enemy teams move through a series of waypoints in the intended player base area before eventually going to "attack base."  They will shoot at anything in their range as they "move" from waypoint to waypoint.  The only side-effect of this is that if the player, for whatever reason, builds their base somewhere else on the map.  Then the teams seem to insanely jog through a weird zig zag of points before heading off to the northern-most targets.  So, I always try to make it so it's either impossible to build anywhere else, or just silly. 

 

Does the teamtype Order "Patrol to waypoint" exist in C&C95? In RA I can just order AI units to patrol to where your base should be so that they don't get stuck and they will actually attack things that get in the way.

[MattAttack]

naw, unfortunately that command doesn't exist.  Teams currently engaged in the "move" command will fire on units in range while moving to the waypoint, but wont really stop and engage unless they're fired upon.  And yet another reason the "Attack Base/Unit" commands suck is that if you don't fire upon a unit going to attack your northern-most target it'll just keep on its merry way to kill that 1 minigunner instead of firing upon all other juicy targets of opportunity that it may come across.

 

Also did you check GDI had the right tech level? it almost looked as if you wanted us to use Chinooks but they couldn't be built.

I'm kind of curious what you mean.  I never got that impression and figured it was on purpose that I couldn't build Mammys or Adv comm.

[Jacko]

Also did you check GDI had the right tech level? it almost looked as if you wanted us to use Chinooks but they couldn't be built.

I'm kind of curious what you mean.  I never got that impression and figured it was on purpose that I couldn't build Mammys or Adv comm.

 

I figured that the exposed back end of the Nod base was supposed to allow sneaky chopper tactics (thinking of Hostile Takeover)

Was fun when I discovered I wasted $1500 on a useless helipad but oh well.....

[Darkstar387]

That is correct, the build level was lowered to make the mission more difficult. I also felt it added a touch of realism In the Scorpions Sting, the mission has you rescuing a convoy that was ambushed enroute to another country, meaning that GDI was unprepared when Nod attacked and hadn't had time to move an entire satellite (Ion Cannon Satellite in this case) to the area of operation.

 

Anyway, regarding the "Minigunner in the northern corner" trick: I feel that the only way to solve the issue is to either create a team or airstrike dedicated to eradicating units in the corner, or force the player to build their base up there. I've always been aware that the AI selects it's targets like a human would read a book (top left to bottom right) but I've always refrained from exploiting that function as I felt it cheapened the experience. I've made a couple of missions that include AI airstrikes but on ones like this I kind of just trust the player to refrain from intentionally breaking the mission.

 

Matt, I completely agree with the you on the quality. I've played a lot of bad missions from the old days, missions that weren't complete, terrain errors, sloppy design, non-functional code,... its great to see the community taking pride in its work. Theres a lot of talent here, and I'm glad I can contribute.

[Chimas]

Hello everyone,

For a long time, I've stayed on the sidelines ...

 

Hi Darkstar387,

Your mission AirLand battle has a problem in the INI file. I've started the game and the map was poor. Later I realized it was missing the RIDGE layer.

Couldn't understand the problem on the BIN file, but after opening the INI file and deleting the empty lines at the end, the game started to show back the ridges.

Was there any special invisible character in the end of the file? Maybe it was just a problem on my end here, IDK.

 

\edit

there's a SPACE in the name of the BIN file. That might be it.

[Darkstar387]

there's a SPACE in the name of the BIN file. That might be it.

 

Fixed it, good catch. I re-uploaded the zip file with the fix. It should work now.

I also put up 2 new missions.

[MattAttack]

I kind of just trust the player to refrain from intentionally breaking the mission.

That is the fine line there....  I purposely refrain from exploiting the AI so I can best take in what the creator was trying to express.  Of course, if I found the mission annoyingly frustrating as shit and just wanted to beat it, I'd probably resort to those last ditch efforts.  HOWEVER-- when scripting a mission, I absolutely assume players are going to attempt these tactics and I do everything in my (limited) power to counter them.  Be it through map layout, smart airstrikes, teamtype commands, etc.

 

Oh shit, while writing this, you posted 2 new missions!  heh heh, I can't keep up, lol!

[Jacko]

I kind of just trust the player to refrain from intentionally breaking the mission.

That is the fine line there....  I purposely refrain from exploiting the AI so I can best take in what the creator was trying to express.  Of course, if I found the mission annoyingly frustrating as shit and just wanted to beat it, I'd probably resort to those last ditch efforts.  HOWEVER-- when scripting a mission, I absolutely assume players are going to attempt these tactics and I do everything in my (limited) power to counter them.  Be it through map layout, smart airstrikes, teamtype commands, etc.

 

Oh shit, while writing this, you posted 2 new missions!  heh heh, I can't keep up, lol!

 

Ultimately the challenge I think is writing a mission the way you intended for people to do it, and then trying to cover the OTHER ways that players will find to do it.

"Oh theres a cheeky avoiding tactic here, I'll just place this mammoth tank and boom! No problem!"

[MattAttack]

Ultimately the challenge I think is writing a mission the way you intended for people to do it, and then trying to cover the OTHER ways that players will find to do it.

"Oh theres a cheeky avoiding tactic here, I'll just place this mammoth tank and boom! No problem!"

Yeah, that's totally what I try to accomplish.  I loved it when RC1985 would test my missions because he is the king of being able to exploit those loopholes, and he was extremely helpful in doing my best to foolproof my missions....   Just in case nobody's seen his speedruns

[Chimas]

I've finished Scorpion Sting. I think the units got blocked somewhere, it wasn't rushed for me. I'll play it without the shroud for testing (you know how to take out the shroud for mapmaking activity, right?)

Btw, there's a typo, it's written "Scorpian".

The NE of the map could have had some usefullness, but the mission is cool, nothing to change.

[Darkstar387]

No, I don't know how to reveal the whole map but I'd sure like to know how. I will fix the typo with the next release.

 

It's possible the units got bunched up by the entrance, but it's never happened to me. I'll play it again this week and try to break it, if I see it happening I'll expand the opening to the AI base and re-upload it. I was thinking of adding some teams to clear the north of the player's units, so the AI doesn't get stuck hunting them.

[MattAttack]

No, I don't know how to reveal the whole map but I'd sure like to know how. I will fix the typo with the next release.

Go back and watch video 2 of my tutorials; I how to do it there. Or stumble upon it in some old ass post here on the forum like I did.  Lol, I can't believe I used to put stealths everywhere instead! 

 

It's possible the units got bunched up by the entrance, but it's never happened to me. I'll play it again this week and try to break it, if I see it happening I'll expand the opening to the AI base and re-upload it. I was thinking of adding some teams to clear the north of the player's units, so the AI doesn't get stuck hunting them.

 

Yeah, expanding the entrance would probably be a good idea to ease traffic.  As for the attacking teams, I'd recommend adding 1 or 2 more waypoints (deeper inside where the GDI base should be) to their orders before they "attack units" or whatever.  They'll likely get tied up there or at least cause some damage to the base.  Don't change it too much, though!

 

 

[Nyerguds]

Type "tactical" when ingame. Then scroll around a bit or open and close the main menu to get rid of the unrefreshed black area

[Chimas]

Don't forget to publish the rest of the missions, we are waiting ...