MAP THEATERS

Terrain Retexturing: The first major feature that was to be added into YR˛ was my Terrain Enhancement, or Terrain Retexturing project.  I first began doing this almost two years ago while I was also working with the Terrain Expansion, but at the time the project had no direction so I was working on it solely to boost my skills in Paint Shop Pro and terrain file knowledge.

Since then, I decided to make it a module of the YR˛ project which would help set the mod apart from others of its kind.  The mod now features an extensive redesign of all of the terrain theaters in the game in the hopes of giving it a new feel when people play it.  With many tilesets the new look is completely different from the original, while others have undergone changes only to make them fit in with that new look:

Terrain Expansion Support: YR˛ takes support of the Terrain Expansion (TX) to a new level.  While normally serving as an independent plug-in in which allows for incredible expansion of theater tileset options when designing maps, the TX is instead bundled within the YR˛ download.  This was done to serve multiple purposes by allowing the additional TX tilesets to be retextured in the same way as the standard ones as described above, as well as allowing me to fully enhance the official game maps to include some of these new tilesets where appropriate.

DEBRIS

Collectable Debris: Better keep an eye out on how much debris you let spread around your base now.  Debris now stays where it falls after flying out, littering the ground and preventing any further building on top of it until cleared (Infantry and vehicles can still move over it, but often with reduced speed.)  Miners are the ones charged with the removal of this debris from the ground, and this will become critical in long games when many of your buildings are destroyed and in other hotspots of destruction.

Fortunately they do serve a beneficial purpose on the battlefield: Often the debris gathered can be reused for new purposes, so by delivering hordes of metal and wood to your Refinery you receive the cash needed to put them into good use.  Their value is comparable to standard Ore on maps, but you will often have to mine more Debris than you would Ore to get a full load in your Miners.

Expanded Debris Types: The types and amounts of debris that is spawned from destroyed structures has been completely redone from scratch.  Frequently structures spawned too much or too little debris for their size in relation to other structures, and the spawned debris types that didn't quite suit the materials the building was constructed with.  YR˛ reorders things around to make the types and amounts of debris vary logically with textures used and the size of the foundation of the structure.  The three sides now sport some unique debris types as their structures are destroyed, as do civilian structures. As a bonus, you may spot some dead bodies flying from crewed structures when they are destroyed!

STRUCTURES

Building Survivors: Building survivor rates have been changed to allow more survivors to exit a destroyed structure relatively unharmed.  And in a possible glitch that has been fixed: the survivor rate for Initiates still took in the fact that they cost 300 credits (what they were originally going to cost in a beta version of the game), thus resulting in an unfair proportion of Initiates coming out of destroyed Yuri structures compared to the other two sides. 

Armor Increase: As mentioned in the structure briefing pages, all base structures excluding base defenses have been given a large armor boost.  You will now find them more difficult to destroy using conventional attacks, although superweapon assaults remain just as effective.

Side Prefix Removal: In a purely cosmetic change, YR˛ removes the side-specific prefixes on structures with a common name (e.g. 'Allied Construction Yard' is now simply displayed as a 'Construction Yard'.)

Civilian Structures: In many maps, scattered around civilian/rural areas are a number of new civilian structures serving pure-eye candy roles (although some can be garrisoned.)  Dog Kennels, Barrel Racks, Oleoduct Nodes, Zoo's and Helipad's are just some of these new additions, many of which can be seen in the mod screenshots pages.

CRATES

Free Units: With such a large number of army changes in place, there are now some new additions in the list of free units you can receive via Crates.  Also, the existing probabilities of free units did not take into account anything from Yuri's army force; severely limiting the variety of what you could possibly receive from free-unit crates.  Below is a list of the vehicles for all three sides, with ones in orange new free-unit crate additions in YR˛, and ones in grey are vehicles that remain unavailable:

Probabilities: The probabilities of receiving differing powerups from crates have been jumbled around to display some variety in accordance to their level of bonus they give to the player.  Previously, there were two categories of likelihood for various bonuses:

Now it has been split into four categories:

The main sufferers are Reveal Map and Money Boost as they appeared far too often for their level of bonus, and the benefited here is the Free Unit powerup taking advantage of all the new additions of free units as described previously.

MISCELLANEOUS

Points System: Each type of unit and structure in the game has a point amount which is added to your total score every time you destroy it in battle.  However, I often found a large number of inconsistencies where the point differences between certain units and structures did not necessarily even up with how important or how much of a threat that particular object was in-game.  Thus, YR˛ has reworked the points system to a fairer scale (in my opinion), so don't be surprised if end scores are slightly different from what you are used to.

Infantry Sight/Speed: In a similar manner to the above change, many existing infantry sight and speed ratings have also been altered to provide with a more consistent scale between them.  This was done primarily to work in my own consideration that I wanted vehicles to generally have better sight ratings than infantry due to in-built sensors, and Yuri's Army alternations where his infantry often boast superior sight ranges.  A few speed ratings were also altered where necessary to even things up.  Some changes may be obvious when playing a game, and others so subtle you may never notice.

Infiltration Credit Reduction: To compensate for the increase of starting credits that AI players begins with (done as part of the package to increase AI difficulty overall); Spies, Agents and Hackers receive a smaller proportion of money from enemy Refineries then before.  This will reduce their effectiveness against human players, but effort has been made to balance the two out as much as possible.

Speed & Elevation: In YR˛, elevation plays a more visible role in battle dynamics then it did in the original game.  All units will move noticeably slower when travelling  'uphill' on ramps and slopes, and the speed bonus given to wheeled units moving downhill is larger compared with the tracked unit bonus.  To fully exploit the latter change, vehicles using treads to move around the battlefield (i.e. tanks, as opposed to wheels) have been explicitly defined as such, thus making them move faster or slower over certain terrain types and elevation differently from wheeled vehicles (e.g. IFV's, Gattling Tanks etc.)  The most different is over ore and gems, in which tracked vehicles suffer less of a speed loss than wheeled vehicles.

Sidebar Cameo Ordering: The many inconsistencies in the ordering of unit and structure cameos appearing on the four tabs in the sidebar have long been documented by the community.  YR˛ seeks to iron-out the more obvious ordering issues especially with Yuri's side and when you capture enemy structure(s) enabling the construction of their own units and structures in combination with your own.  This, along with all the new additions to the three sides will shake things up a bit in the lists which will require some adjustment for those players used to the locations of cameos in the original game.

Miscellaneous Artwork: There are literally hundreds of graphical tweaks and fixes made to various aspects of the game; from modifying units/structure cameos to fixing incorrect or glitchy art coding.  The major changes have been listed alongside the affected game element in other information pages, but there have been a wide variety of miscellaneous changes that don't fit under any specific header.

Miscellaneous Sound work: Almost all of the new additions to the game YR˛ adds include unique voices coming almost exclusively from other Command & Conquer games.  Those that haven't have had their voice pitch significantly modified from existing sounds to provide some variety.  Complementing this are many sound tweaks and fixes that serve to increase the immersive feel of being in control of your base and environment.

That completes the briefing!  You can now download the mod and get ready to command and conquer!

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