- Other Changes - Here's where you'll find details of other changes made by CannisRules that don't really belong anywhere else :)

Capture Pack I am proud to incorporate Mooman65's Capture Pack vehicles into the current release of CannisRules. What the Capture Pack does is provide for side-specific coloring for existing units. For example, if you play as Allies, and you find yourself owning a Soviet War Factory, any Rhino Tanks that you build will use the Allied color scheme rather than the Soviet one. These units also use custom icons for these tanks which match the rest of the icons of your side's vehicle build menu. Capture Pack support is limited to the basic tanks: Grizzly Tank, Rhino Tank, and Lasher Tank. These recolored units are not just eye-candy. Compared to the standard versions, Capture Pack tanks are stronger, their weapons do more damage, and they take less time to build. It is definitely worth building them, if you can. Pictures speak louder than words, so click on the buttons below to see what I'm talking about!

Base Defenses Costs. As described on the pages for Allied, Soviet, and Yuri armory buildings, base defense structures are only half price (with the exception of the French Grand Cannon, the Soviet Battle Bunker, the Yuri Tank Bunker, and Walls). Finally it is cost-effective and no longer time-consuming to build base defenses. Plus, this helps transform the early low-tech rush into a non-viable tactic. Range Indicators. Wise placement of new defense buildings requires that you know the area that your existing defense buildings already cover. CannisRules lets you display an "effective range" indicator by simply selecting the base defense structure you want to know about. No more guesswork. (Note: Range indicator of Yuri's Gattling Cannon displays its range against ground targets, not against air targets).

Crates While the conscious decision was made to not add any new crate types, several modifications were made. Area of Effect. When picking up a powerup crate (armor increase, veterancy, etc), the area affected is slightly larger. Units still have to be fairly close to the crate to be affected, but they no longer have to be on the next adjacent map cell. Distribution Probability. Probabilities now overwhelmingly favor picking up a free unit crate over all other crate types. This is to take advantage of the new numerous possibilities when getting a free unit, and also to help prevent the cheesy tactic of crate-hunting to simply collect free cash. Free Units. You now can get virtually any player-buildable land-based vehicle from free unit crates. The following is a complete list of all possible units that free unit crates can award in CannisRules. (Items in grey are units that the unmodified game awards, and items in blue are units that CannisRules adds to the list). Allied Units Soviet Units Yuri Units Chrono Miner IFV Mirage Tank Prism Tank Battle Fortress Tank Destroyer M1A1 Abrams Tank Crocodile Missile Tank Fireclaw King Tiger Tank Allied MCV War Miner Terror Drone Flak Track V3 Launcher Apocalypse Tank Tesla Tank Demo Truck Stalin's Fist Rad Artillery Ravager Troop Carrier Scorpion Raider Soviet MCV Slave Miner Gattling Tank Magnetron Mastermind Chaos Drone Mole Machine APC Yuri MCV

Civilian Units Vehicles as Transports. All cars, trucks, etc can be used as transports, assuming the player can mind-control them first. Passenger capacity varies logically. Experience Points. All civilian units now count toward veterancy experience, so if your unit goes around killing civilian units long enough, it will eventually get promoted. Experience points are proportional with logically perceived value, so a deadly animal counts more than a civilian with an annoying pop-gun, who in turn counts more than an unarmed civilian. The "Hollywood & Vain" heroes are worth the most of all. Destroying vehicles (both ground and naval) gives experience also. Except for the heroes, none of these experience point values are very great, but they're better than nothing. Grinding Values. No civilian unit has much value in the game, so the new grinding values reflect this. No more grinding Presidents for a quick $1000. Grinding values vary logically with perceived value, so a "Hollywood & Vain" hero yields the most and an unarmed civilian yields the least. Hollywood & Vain Heroes. If you played the missions before the patch, then you were entertained with the voices of Flint Westwood, Arnie Frankenfurter, and Sammy Stallion. Features like this are what gave the game its charm, but sadly, the 1.001 patch replaced their voices with that of the GI, and removed their names as well. CannisRules restores the voices and the tooltip names to pre-patch status. Menagerie. The animals in the game no longer have the exact same attacks with the only difference being the sounds they make. Some animals are more dangerous than others in exactly the way the player would expect. Animals may also wander about a little instead of just standing in one place throughout the entire game.

Miscellaneous Build Option Ordering. The order that build options appear on the 4 building tabs was always a bit inconsistent in RA2, and grew even more so with the addition of the YR expansion. CannisRules reorders build options logically by technology level. This may seem a little disorienting for long-time players who are very familiar with the game. But hey, just because you've gotten used to something doesn't mean it's right ;) Artwork and Art Code. New artwork has been added so as to update the game. You will see some updated build icons, and several infantry units now have snow uniforms. Many unit weapons use new animations exclusive to the mod. Additionally, missing or incorrect art code for some buildings is fixed. Work in these areas will continue as the opportunity arises and/or as problems come to my attention. There's simply too much new stuff to list everything, but here's some examples. For instance, these are the Mayan Ruins buildings which previously served as just eye-candy, but now can be used as garrisonable structures. This will be true for any map which has these buildings on it: Here is new Bridge Repair Hut artwork, altered from the original so that the huts no longer look like door-less shipping crates that no one could fit in. Also, an arctic version for snow maps is added. And just for fun, this fully animated billboard is customized for CannisRules too, courtesy of Sypher_5. Load any map with the (formerly) "Westwood" billboard to see it. And unlike the original game's billboard, this one has a damaged animation :)     Sounds and Sound Code. You'll clearly hear miner engines, Tesla Troopers charging coils, and the sound of fires from burning buildings. All sound modifications throughout make use of simply changing the properties of sounds that the user already has installed - CannisRules purposely does not add new sounds, to keep the file size of the mod small, to avoid possible tech issues, and to keep the running of the mod simple and trouble-free. Bugfixes. As I have pored over the game files looking for opportunities to tweak game balance, I have also come across many, many minor bugs, which I have fixed where possible. Most significantly, I have stumbled across a fix for the bug where the game lags and runs slower and slower until it is unplayable. When playing CannisRules, this should seldom if ever happen. Work in this area will continue as the opportunity arises and/or as problems come to my attention.

CannisRules also offers Plugin Support for major community projects.