YR Total Conversion - Dominance

[mt.]

Dominance – Enter the Battlefield

A Whim of Fate

The 1970’s, a time of liberty and fear, where the path of Dominance begins. Everything in history is as we know it; The Cold War rages as the two superpowers, the US and the USSR, compete in deadly silence. Little did the public know of the great reformation and the eventual collapse of the USSR, which Gorbachev would have caused within just two decades if he had lived. There was no end in sight at the time; the future was dark and the lingering threat of an all out Nuclear Apocalypse hung above the world like the legendary sword of Damocles.

1974, the cursed year, the most decisive year in the 20th century, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev falls victim to a major heart attack, killing him in mere hours. The cause of the heart attack was blamed upon political stress, and that destiny just so happens that Gorbachev was alone that fatal night. This fateful death marks the survival of the Soviet Union….and the continuation of the cold war.

The Sky’s Limit

Gorbachev’s death influenced the continuation of the space race. The competition becomes more tense and space travel technology was developing at a rate never before seen. In a mere 3 years, there was much progress, much more than 10 years could have made. As both sides get their systems refined for efficiency, funds boost immeasurably.

In 1985, technology is equivalent to that of 2020 because The Cold War had not ended. Permanent settlements are developed after breakthroughs in cheap recycling and conservation of essential materials, most notably water. It is in this year that the US and NATO collaborate to set up a lunar base for nuclear missile targeting and launching. The public hype for space advancement was a great cover-up, and for many years to come, the public was only aware of the innocent, non-war related research being conducted in the first major military push to space.

Healthy Competition

The competition of the cold war did not allow this move to slide by without an effect. The whole world was watching, and the USSR knew it. The Soviet leaders looked for some counter to the US’s space expansion, this perfectly coincides the Soviet Scientist’s research on space colonization. Mars was chosen for the new effort; it was the most convenient choice, as US forces are present on the Earth’s moon. The year is 1995, and the USSR launches a colonisation craft and a base is set up on Mars, although its size was nothing compared to the US’s now-large Moon base, the vast resources of Mars presented greater promise. However, there were hurdles to overcome yet, the atmosphere of mars had far less heat-retaining capacity than earth's and almost no oxygen. However, most rock being calcium carbonate, all that was needed was a way to release it. A reaction was found where solar energy could be used to break up the rock (CaCO3) into oxygen and Carbon dioxide, with waste calcium expelled onto the surface. These machines were set up by Kosmonauts on delivery and left to run for a decade, leaving mars with a breathable atmosphere and bearable heat levels.

Both bases expand exponentially for the next 20 years; The USSR’s base on mars was now ahead of the US base, despite being even harder to access from Earth. The Americans saw this clearly, they forged a plan to involve corporations to share the burden and help increase the moon base’s value, to surpass that of USSR’s. The moon base’s activities now include commercial industries such as the harvesting of minerals from Near Earth Objects and the Moon itself. The USSR now uses their advantage of resources on Mars, they utilize the poles for water, and build massive colonies with people immigrating from Russia. The new colonies are made with great efficiency, and the immigrants were only of medium-high ranking officials, the highest educated, and machinists for the future planned mining and resource extraction operations. The balance of power is unstable - tensions mount on earth, as the cold war predicted for over 50 years seems ready to kick off…

Colonization, Exploitation, Ionization

2020, in a surprise move the USSR began moving its entire population to mars, stunning NATO and the entire west. All of the USSR’s population is eventually evacuated; those who resisted were forced to flee for their lives, all possessions of such people were confiscated by the USSR. Finally in 2030 the migration reaches an end, leaving earth to the "victorious" democracies.

The exploitation of the moon's resources and the rebuilding of the USSR on Mars continued, and in mere months after leaving Earth, the soviet leaders looked back on their actions and realizes the folly of leaving their foothold on Earth. Despite the mineral riches of mars, the planet was not Earth; the cradle of life still holds much significance for the occupiers of the red planet. Using research and the discovery of a special mineral, with enormous amounts energy stored in them found on Mars, the USSR developed powerful, new, laser like weaponry, a true achievement for the USSR.

The great realization of their mistakes, the powerful new weaponry, sparked the Soviets to begin planning their return to Earth. It was discovered later that by projecting a stream of ionised particles using the laser, electricity can be made to follow a particular path, using this to their advantage; The Soviets could use terrifying bolts of man-made lightning that could be directed by their will, possibly a military trump card for the USSR. With this planned, the eventual return to Earth was code named “The Dominance Project”.

Rivalry Re-Emergence

The Soviets, having no use for their nuclear weapons any more, decide to launch their warheads at earth, beginning by a short but blistering exchange of nukes with thousands of nuclear weapons destroyed in space by the Russian orbital defences and Earth shielded by the American lunar facilities. Both sides denied the exchange of nukes, to prevent all the citizens from panicking, and the cold war soon started all over again and in the same way viewed by the public.

The western powers, having claimed much of Russia and being the nations who began lunar colonization began to unite the world into one democracy. They formed the Democratic Earth Alliance (DEA) as the central civil and military custodians of Earth and the Moon.

The Soviets form a similar, communist central government on Mars, called the Kautine Empire, taken from the colloquial name for the Mars colonists derived from Kosmonaut and shortened over the decades. The Kautine also formed the KERA, an extension of the original Mars guard force and the replacement for the Red Army, which in the early years it was mostly composed of. The name is an abbreviation for Kautine Empire Red Army. The KERA was set up to provide a planetary-surface deterrent to the Earth democracies' DEA forces and to counterattack in the event of an unsuccessful DEA assault.

The Kautine continued their research, watched by spy probes from earth, including the black ops "U3" reconnaissance satellites, which officially did not exist.
However, the red planet’s rocky structure means that most of the work could be carried out underground, leaving the Democratic Earth Alliance nearly clueless about the soviet’s plans.
The Kautine develop a ferocious array of energy-based weapons ranging from handheld laser personal weapons to full-sized AFV mounted armaments capable of tremendous damage.

The Dominance Project

The current year now is 2050. The Dominance Project has been launched, and the Kautine invasion forces are making their move. Everyone can tell that this is the climax of the Cold War, as the forces and deployments finally thaw the heat is beginning to show. All hell is about to break loose with mankind at the brink of impending doom. The DEA doesn’t have enough intelligence to justify an assault on Mars yet, so instead of making the first strike, major cities are fortified against orbital strikes, unimportant towns are evacuated, citizens are marshalled for their rapid evacuation to bunkers and defences are put in place. This is the present day; the awaiting terror of the first strike. The destiny of all humankind is now about to be decided. Every soldier, officer, commander, is to prepare for battle. Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.

The survival of mankind itself may ultimately hinge on you.


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Credit:
Albrecht - Raw Idea Draft for ideas, layout.
MT - Converting the raw ideas to the final story, with sections.
Inzane Krazy - Fixed grammatical errors and confusion.

That's it for the storyline so far.
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Dominance, a TC for YR led by me, MT, has been hosted at PPM.

Dominance features two sides: The Invader, Communist Kautine, with some otherwordly tech, and the Defending, Democratic DEA.

Comments Welcome! Be sure to check out the Full Storyline, As well as unit profiles, and image for each structure, etc, in the Forum on PPM..
(outdated screenshot attachment removed, scroll down to see newer ones).

[DCoder]

Administrative Notice:

Moved to Announcements.

[mt.]

Thanks for the move DCoder.

Well, I'm not sure anyone here even noticed (very... quite),
but the old picture had structures with a black outline, caused by leaving on Background AA.

Now its fixed for most buildings :


And here are the Buildups and other anims for the fixed buildings:

[Electro]

Nice work, but you need to brighten up the SHPs, methinks.

[Renegade]

Nice work, but actually putting a lamp (three, in fact) in there would help a lot.

[gordon-creAtive]

I like these detailed buildups!

[mt.]

Nice work, but actually putting a lamp (three, in fact) in there would help a lot.

Three Lamps? Could you please explain the positions of these lamps? I currently have two, one main and one "fix", but I would like this "three" if it is an improvement to make it more like stock ra2 buildings.

Main lamp. "sun" type just means that it has that it had one direction of light.


Another one. Without this, there is pure black on edges, so this is included in to fix those that get nothing from the first lamp. Or should I use ambient for that? :s

[Renegade]

Click here.

[Electro]

Hmm, I think you should scratch the moving floor bit on the refinery buildup. It looks a bit too unreal...

[mt.]

Update.

New Terrain made by me, MT. Logos/effects added by AltomareXD



These are by AltomareXD



New Tech Center, by MT


Concept by Inzane Krazy


Also, a concept for the Kautine Turret, not yet modelled. Concept by Inzane Krazy.

[Electro]

Great work! But the buildings still need to be lighter.

[Renegade]

Great work! But the buildings still need to be lighter.

What Electro said.

[Lt Albrecht]

Needs the new story I/Krazy/you wrote, the old one is (no offence) a bit gay.

[mt.]

Needs the new story I/Krazy/you wrote

Fixed.

But the buildings still need to be lighter.

I'm looking into the different ways to achieve this. Editing the SHPs are out of the question, although I may in future resort to re-renabling extra light, adding tags for more brightness in their art codes, or just adding a terrain type for bases, which give them a better look in comparison.

[Renegade]

Just add light sources.