Articles - Mod DB

Hey everyone! I’m David from DBolical and today we’ve got an article covering the top five active RTS mods on ModDB! ModDB is a community rich with fantastic mods and total conversions to experience, so stick around for more lists like this to get ideas on what mod to play next! If you enjoy it, remember to share and check out the YouTube video too for gameplay footage of the mods on this list!

There’s a common theme amongst the mods on this list - all of them transform the original game into a whole new experience. Warcraft: Total War is no exception! Built upon Medieval 2: Total War’s Kingdoms expansion, it features twenty playable campaign factions drawing upon all facets of Warcraft lore. Dozens of new units across all the factions are usable in new custom campaigns that take place in a new world map. The original RTS Warcraft games were hugely popular on release, and it’s awesome to see their legacy continued and the scale of battle expanded in Medieval 2’s engine. Great amounts of care have been taken to create factions that expand the gameplay loop of the original game whilst paying homage to the Warcraft 3-era of the franchise. With the possibility of another Warcraft RTS growing more distant every day, mods like Warcraft: Total War help keep the Warcraft RTS community bustling.

Command and Conquer is home to some of the best RTS games ever made, and Generals is amongst the top contenders. The End of Days mod manages to take the foundation created by the Zero Hour expansion and take it even further, creating a fourth faction to choose from with its own tech tree and set of unit choices. The base factions also received revamps, from a change to how hero units and superweapons work (allowing both more active participation in the gameplay) to subfaction support for on-the-fly strategy adaptation. The challenge mode they’ve been working on this year allows you to take these changes into the general-VS-general fights of Zero Hour, putting your skills to the test in a gauntlet of difficult yet rewarding combat scenarios. With new weapons like the SOCOM Ion Cannon or tactical options like the combat revival system for medics, you’re sure to get more out of Generals than you thought possible with this mod.

Star Wars: Empire at War and its Forces of Corruption expansion are fondly loved by the Star Wars community for the space battle fantasies they enable you to act out. Thrawn’s Revenge goes so many steps beyond in its overhaul of the game, breathing new life into an old experience. Following on from the events of Episode 6, the mod expands Empire at War’s campaign and faction roster immensely, tapping into the rich and varied material in the Legends lore. Eras ranging from mere months to decades after Episode 6 allow you to experience a growing and evolving galaxy. Play as the Imperial Remnant or any of its derivative factions as you try to survive the collapse of a galactic dictatorship, or play as the fledgling New Republic in their quest to put the galaxy right again. Numerous one-off scenarios allow you to expand your experience even further, trying out all manner of superweapons and starships from the Legends universe and even allowing you to play as the galaxy-ending Yuuzhan Vong. For a Star Wars fan, it’s hard to find a stronger visualisation of the potential of the franchise.

The Edain Mod for Battle for Middle Earth II: Rise of the Witch King brings so much to the table for long-time fans of the Lord of the Rings and RTS games. A greatly appreciated change is simply the inclusion of lots of content from the first entry in the series - multiplayer maps and gameplay geared towards restoring much of the loop from the first Battle for Middle-Earth, for example. This is only the start, though - with eight new factions, ten new subfactions, and dozens of new heroes, the moment-to-moment gameplay is freshened up with new options in combat and ways to wage war in Middle-Earth. The castle system, also restored from the first game, addresses a common complaint about strategies employed in the vanilla game, and unique Ring Heroes for each faction solidify the One Ring as crucial to the decisions made in gameplay. One of the features that looks most impressive is a custom hero creator - revamped and rebalanced, it allows you to either create those heroes from the canon that Edain has not already restored, or bring a new character forwards to represent your forces. With work still underway on improving the Misty Mountains faction, Edain Mod promises to offer more and more as development progresses.

Last but not least, we have the Unification mod for Dawn of War: Soulstorm. Carrying forward the collective work of many parts of the Dawn of War modding community, Unification is an ultimate collection of many race mods over the years, combined, balanced, and now continued in development by a dedicated team. With an incredible 26 factions, four new game modes, and dozens of new units, fully voiced and modelled, Unification is a personification of Warhammer 40k and the Dawn of War modding community’s hard work. The mod also includes numerous quality of life improvements, including bug fixes over the base game, an AI overhaul that plays more intelligently than ever before, a better tactical camera, and so much more. It also expands the scale of Dawn of War’s battles significantly with the addition of Titan units that overpower and outclass all other units on the battlefield. There’s simply too much to cover in one go, and the hard work of the Unification team is evident over the years they’ve been active. If you want to experience the grim darkness of the 41st Millennium, this is the way to do it.

Conclusion

That’s all for this count-down! A video edition of this article is available too for anyone who fancies watching some footage of the mods we’ve talked about today. If you enjoyed the article, please remember to share and leave a comment down below about what you think the best RTS mods on ModDB are. We’ll see you in the next article!

Halo: The Master Chief collection recently released Season 7 which, amongst other improvements like visual fixes to Halo: Combat Evolved and cosmetic updates to player-controlled Elites, also features the return of official modding tools for Halo games.

The Season 7 release comes with many new customisation options for Elites, backported from the cancelled Russian free-to-play Halo game, Halo: Online

Halo: Custom Edition is a port of Combat Evolved created by Gearbox in 2003 as part of their PC port for the main game. It came with numerous modding tools that allowed players to create their own maps, vehicles, and weapons. Barring the inclusion of Forge mode into later Halos, which is more of a built-in level editor than a full-on modding tool, this was the last time a Halo game had official modding support - until recently.

The new modding tools in Season 7 are, for the most part, very similar to the tools once used for modding Custom Edition. They allow numerous changes to be made to the Halo Combat Evolved sandbox, including entity placement, level layouts, and more. What’s more, they’re compatible with many older Custom Edition mods, meaning some of the simpler mods can actually be ported into The Master Chief Collection with minimal work.

One of the modding tools, Guerilla, allows players to modify data for enemies and friendly NPCs

That being said, many players had created third-party modding tools for The Master Chief Collection that allowed broader modding of the other games contained in the collection (a particularly popular option being Halo: Reach, which received mods like Halo Reach Evolved). As third party modding tools grew increasingly developed, so too did the community’s modding efforts, and it appears the sheer bulk of changes to the backend of MCC in their latest update broke a significant portion of the existing mods for the game.

Sapien allows modders to change level settings, triggers, and more that will affect the gameplay of a given map

Many fan-favourite mods are currently not playable on the newest version of Master Chief Collection and require patching. However, some mods - like Halo Reach: Covenant Campaign - would require total reworks to function again. There’s calls from the community for a conversion tool by 343 Industries that would rectify these issues, but as of yet, there’s been no response on the matter.

ModDB hosts a number of mods for both older Halo game ports that are a great experience in the meantime, like Halo: SPV3, or The Silent Cartographer: Evolved, and with any luck, 343 will rectify the issue soon and allow many long-standing mods to flourish once again.

If you are working on a mod using the new tools, share it on ModDB here.

Deep Rock Galactic To Receive Modding Support Powered By Mod.IO

Deep Rock Galactic is a popular objective-based mining game made by Ghost Ship Games and published by Coffee Stain. It’s a game with a lot of modularity contained in its mechanics. Every weapon has a dozen or so modifiers, every class has a good arsenal to pick from that fill a variety of roles, and an obscene amount of cosmetic customisation means every dwarf you play with or as stands out on their own.

Deep Rock Galactic features many options for weapons, armour, and tools that give each class multiple roles in missions

Some people might argue there’s no such thing as too much customisation, and for those people, it’s just as well Ghost Ship Games are working on bringing in official modding support, powered by mod.io, a cross-platform mod service for games founded by the same creators of ModDB and IndieDB.

From giant robot escorts to bug extermination to mining bot rescues, Deep Rock has significant variety in its objective-based gameplay.

Deep Rock Galactic already had a small mod community making gameplay changes, but this upcoming support would significantly open up how much people can modify the game. There’s three stages to modding Deep Rock in their new system - Sandbox, which would be for mods that unlock weapons, change mission payout, and gameplay shortcuts, effectively; Approved for Progression, which allows for challenges and rebalances that don’t affect the core progression loop too much; and Fully Approved, which are mods that don’t affect gameplay in any way and can be on all the time (quality of life mods, localisations, that sort of thing).

Many weapons have unique effects, like freezing, scaring, or brainwashing, on the critters you zap in levels

Deep Rock will be implementing all this using mod.io, a modding hub that benefits from direct implementation in the games it supports. It’s the newest business setup by DBolical’s founder, Scott Reismanis, and already enjoys a healthy amount of contributors and linked games on the platform.

The objectives can be spread across a variety of different biome types that greatly add to the game’s replay value

Right now, Ghost Ship doesn’t give an estimate for when the functionality will be available, but they’ve updated their FAQ with some added info in light of this news.

You can read Ghost Ship’s article on the subject on their Steam community page here

Hi all! My name’s David, and I’m the new Editor and Community Manager at DBolical, managing site content and the community for both ModDB.com and IndieDB.com.

If you’ve been using the site for some time like I have, you might already be familiar with some of my projects on ModDB. But today my role here changes, and I wanted to introduce myself and what I’m hoping to accomplish in my new role.

I’ve been working in the modding scene for around six years now. In that time I’ve worked on a few engines, primarily Source, and worked across modding communities from Steam Workshop to ModDB. My main project, Raising the Bar: Redux, has been kicking around on the site for a while now!

I’m very much an enthusiast and whilst I’ve not had as much experience working directly with indie games and developers, I’m thrilled to widen my knowledge and get involved across DBolical's diverse communities.

One of the first games I remember playing is Halo: Combat Evolved’s PC port. It’s been a real joy revisiting it in the Master Chief Collection and seeing all the awesome mods people have been making for it!

I'm a people person, even if I spend most of my time getting technical at my computer. I love interacting with talented individuals, learning about people’s experiences, and helping others see the value in themselves and their work. The modding and indie communities are remarkably talented groups of people that amaze me all the time! Now, being able to give back to both by helping their work flourish is an amazing opportunity I’m excited to take on.

I’m very familiar with Mod DB and the modding community as a whole, and look forward to learning how best to support great indie developers in their journey. I feel confident in stepping up to the mantle and galvanising this community into interacting with one another and always, always pursuing their passions. If you have ideas or suggestions on how to get the ball rolling, too, then please let me know at david@dbolical.com and/or message me! My DMs will always be open to talk, help out, and support you where I can.

Minecraft’s modding community captured magic in a bottle for me as a kid, and what the community manages to create still amazes me!

This role also includes me participating in the work undertaken by Modularity Games, a publishing label for games that looks to bring exposure to promising Indie games that have modding support. If you think you’ve got something awesome to show, get in touch, and maybe it’ll be something that fits the label well!

I’ve got so much planned to give back to the communities of both sites, and you’ll get to see these plans moving over the coming weeks and months. I’m a modder like all of you - someone who understands how difficult it can be to create the projects we create - and I’m here to support you in that journey, as I’ve been supported, too. I’m incredibly thankful to INtense! for the opportunity and Seamus.Editor for helping me out in these early days getting started, as I take over his responsibilities as he moves onto new opportunities away from DBolical.

You can get in touch with me over at my personal twitter Twitter.com, at my DBolical email david@dbolical.com, or on the sites at Kralich/David.

I’m so excited to get to know all of you, and get this community buzzing like never before. Thanks!

Mod Appreciation Week for 2021 has come around! Now in its 7th consecutive year running, it's time once again to share your favourite mods with your peers and show their creators how much you loved playing them!

Given how much volunteer time goes into every mod's creation, we know these hard-working modders would love nothing more than to hear how much you appreciated their work.

All you need to do is make the effort to shout out your favorite mods, whether they're hosted on ModDB or otherwise. Tweet them, blog about them or share them on Facebook, with the hashtag: #modlove2021 and a link to the mods profile!

All mod profiles will now show the Mod Appreciation Week banner. Just click any of the links provided, and tweet, post, or share the link to the mod's profile to show your appreciation for it. You can also follow these steps:

1. It doesn't matter where your favorite mod is hosted be it on Run Shoot Think Live, GameBanana, Curse, Steam Workshop, Nexus or ModDB.
2. Copy its URL then write a post explaining why you like that mod (you could write this post on your blog, in a forum, a tweet or Facebook post); the more we share, the better!
3. Tell us about your post by linking to it in the comments here. We want to share in your appreciation.
4. At the end of the week we shall be picking a few lucky members who left a comment following these rules at random, and give them a key to one of the games listed below as thanks for helping us celebrate mods!

We have partnered up with some friends of ModDB (want in?) - developers whose games have always been mod-friendly and deserve our love for supporting the mod scene, and will be giving them away to participants. We've got a handful of keys for the games listed below - just follow the steps above to be eligible to win!

Game developers, do you share our passion for mods and want to giveback? Get in touch and we will add your game to our #modlove collection. We promise to promote your game whenever we run an event like this, by giving away a handful of keys each time to the participants.

Win games

After you have linked to a mod in a tweet, blog, forum or Facebook post, let us know by leaving a comment with a link to your post. At the end of the week we shall be picking a few members at random who followed these rules, and will send them a key from one of the above games.