The No-Frauds Club ยป Cosmonarchy Brood War

Cosmonarchy Brood War is a comprehensive overhaul of Starcraft: Brood War, for version 1.16.1.
Put simply, it is a prototype of our vision for the future of the RTS genre.




Races



The all-rounders, the everymen.
Armed to the teeth and prepared for war.
The children of gods.
Forever grieving for the wars they wage.
The uncontrollable beasts.
Evolved to claim the best and slay the rest.

Introduction


Welcome to Cosmonarchy BW - the most ambitious conversion for Starcraft: Brood War!

For more explicit information, you can click on the images above to access tech maps and navigate your new toolbox. You can also check out the in-game tip menu for updated information!

Harvesting Vespene straight
from the source.
A gruesome Terran vs Zerg engagement.
A battlefield worthy of box-art.

What IS Cosmonarchy Brood War?


Cosmonarchy Brood War (CMBW) totally reshapes the landscape of Starcraft. We at The No-Frauds Club created this project in an attempt to go beyond Brood War. We will be creating our own real-time strategy games in the future, and so we took this opportunity to build upon what we see as the greatest RTS released to date.

CMBW focuses primarily on increasing the maximum scale of Brood War without sacrificing the positional and tactical depth that sets it apart from other titles. We reject the approach of Total Annihilation and similar titles, which focused on scale to the detriment of unit individuality and minimized the potential for micromechanical outplays.

At the same time, CMBW introduces a myriad of quality-of-life features, ranging from improved movement for previously-clunky units, to selection extensions and multi-building select. These changes complement the many new and modified units of CMBW, which have been designed with a focus on positional gameplay that tests both how you prepare for combat and how you adjust during such battles.

We are still evaluating the ramifications of CMBW's approach with regular tournaments, and we aim to rigorously test our design philosophy as our playerbase increases in both number and skill!

Protoss combat Zerg
with potent abilities.
Zerg raid a Protoss outpost.
Yet another bloody battlefield.

Some key notes


Supply has been removed to make way for larger armies, and selection has been vastly extended to allow players to better control these vast legions. This includes multi-building select, but does not include smartcasting.

Minerals now deplete to offer diminished returns, while Vespene can never deplete, and can instead have its yields upgraded with refinery structures. Vespene is now harvested straight from the geyser, effectively eliminating gas steals, while preserving at least some of the value of mining bases in the late-game.

Time-to-kill has been nominally increased to reduce early volatility. This makes early game wins and losses more about a cascading series of successes or failures, and reduces the impact of randomized spawns and blind build order mismatches.

Damage types and unit sizes have been replaced with armor penetration. Units that fire multiple projectiles per attack are still disproportionately affected by armor. Units with minimal armor penetration often have inherent synergies with armor rending debuffs to vastly increase their DPS.

Randomness has been removed to support competitive integrity. Cliff advantage now grants +2 range for each level of height difference, and miss chances of all kinds have been removed. Random animation and order delays have also been removed, making units far more consistent and responsive.

The scale of the techtree has grown enormously, facilitating support for more varied playstyles within each race, and allowing players to make new unit acquisitions at virtually any game length.

Researches and upgrades have either been integrated with the base units, or removed entirely, making the player's understanding of unit strength consistent without denying the expression of power sourced from progressing through your techtree.

Allied interactions are now more standardized, allowing teammates to use each others' power fields and cagra (creep), transports and garrisons, healers, and so on.

Computer-controlled allies and opponents now use every component of the game state. Though they are still a work in progress, computer players are much better than they were in stock Starcraft!

The scale of Cosmonarchy BW, from its battlegrounds to its techtree changes, has not been seen before in Starcraft custom content (or even the RTS genre in general), and has proven to be one of the game's most memorable and defining traits. If you want in on the action with other players, join us on discord!

Roadmap


The team at The No-Frauds Club has the following goals for the end of 2023:
  • Continue to host regular tournaments on a monthly or biweekly basis
  • Grow the playerbase by reaching out to the foreign Brood War scene
  • Reach a "service state" for multiplayer, meaning that no meta-shifting patches will be done
  • Continue filling in missing and sub-par audiovisuals
  • Complete and release tutorials for all three races
  • Complete and release at least one proper campaign


Protoss Simulacra and infantry
raiding a Zerg expansion.
A shot of our comprehensive.
witness (observer) UI.
More utter chaos for the eyes.

Downloads & Docs


Download:
The following documentation is available:

New Features

Italicized changes are not yet implemented.

General
  • Supply, upgrades, and researches have been removed.
  • Structures can now be group-selected. Mixing structures and units in one selection is not allowed.
  • Unit and structure selection is now capped at 252, from 12.
  • Random animation and attack delays have been removed.
  • All game speeds other than "Fastest" (24 frames per second) have been disabled.
  • All tilesets have received pathing optimizations, and many previously-unbuildable tiles are now buildable.
  • Workers no longer provide collision to other units while mining or returning resources.
  • Construction attempts can begin even if the construction site is occupied by own or allied units.
  • Addons can now be immediately built by holding down the shift key before pressing the addon's hotkey, bypassing the placement check.
  • In-game saving is now disabled, and has been replaced with an autosave on map/game exit.

Melee starting conditions
  • Starting workers spawn on the side of their town center closest to Mineral Fields.
  • Starting workers now 6, up from 4.
  • Starting Larva now 1, down from 3.
  • Starting minerals now 100, up from 50.

Weapons and armor
  • 1/256 miss chance has been removed.
  • Damage and unit size types have been replaced with armor penetration.
    • Armor penetration ignores armor, e.g. an attack with 3 armor pen will ignore up to 3 armor.
    • Armor penetration in excess of target armor does not increase damage dealt.
  • Permanently-cloaked units now reveal themselves for 2 seconds when attacking or using an ability.
  • Some ground units are so large that they can be additionally targeted by air weapons.

Height advantage and cover
  • Miss chance while benefiting from height advantage or while behind cover has been removed.
  • Ranged ground units gain +2 weapon range for each level of height advantage they have over their target.
  • Ground units gain +2 sight range for each level of height advantage they have over lower-ground terrain.

Creep
  • Allied creep is now buildable for all races. All creep is buildable if there is no creep generator connected to it.
  • Creep now spreads beneath structures and resources.
  • Creep spread/recede speed now remains consistent across every creep generator.
  • Creep now correctly spreads to buildable tiles that are directly above unbuildable tiles.

Resources
  • Worker saturation info:
    • Harvest rate now 2 seconds, from 3.125 seconds.
    • Workers no longer accelerate or decelerate, and only wander when 1 worker is already waiting to harvest the node.
    • End result: maximum saturation of ~2.5 workers per patch, with the first two workers operating at 100% efficiency, and the third operating at 50% efficiency.
  • Minerals:
    • Mineral return rates are now 4, depleting to 2 when mined out.
    • Depleted mineral nodes have no collision.
  • Vespene:
    • Vespene Geysers can now be mined without being capped with a refinery structure.
    • A new vespene node, the Vespene Ridge, has been added.
    • Vespene nodes do not deplete.
    • Vespene returns at a rate of 4 (uncapped geyser), and 2 (ridge). Geysers can be upgraded by capping with a refinery structure.
    • Workers are no longer hidden while harvesting vespene from capped geysers.
    • Vespene harvest rate is now identical to mineral harvest rate.

Detection, energy, and abilities
  • Energy:
    • Units with energy, called "specialists", now have max energy when trained.
    • Specialists regenerate energy at a rate of 10 points per second. This is interrupted for 2 seconds every time energy is spent or damaged.
    • Specialists gain +5 energy for every enemy killed within their vision range.
  • Allied units now show their energy counts, cargo, and production queue when selected.
  • Enemy units now show their command card when selected. If an allied detector is within sight range, their energy counts, cargo, and production queue are also shown.
  • All vanilla abilities have received significant updates. See the techtree map for specifics.

Transports
  • Garrisons:
    • Ground units of all races are able to enter garrisons, as long as transport space allows for it.
    • Ranged units of all races are able to fire from garrisons.
  • All transports can now load allied units.
  • Some structures can now be loaded into transports.
  • Both the transport owner and the unit owner can issue load orders for allied units:
    • unit owner by right-clicking on the transport.
    • transport owner by right-clicking on the unit or issuing a load command targeting the unit.
  • Both the transport owner and the unit owner can issue unload orders to allied transports:
    • unit owner by clicking on the unit's name in the custom transport UI.
    • transport owner through the same method or by issuing an unload all order.
  • Names of units inside transports are now color-coded based on the owner.

User Interface
  • Your APM from the last ten seconds is now displayed in the upper-left-hand corner.
  • Unit tooltips are now extended with more details. Hold LEFT SHIFT while mousing over weapon and armor icons to toggle verbose tooltips.
  • Armor info is now visible on all structures.
  • Control-clicking a unit now selects the closest units of the same type.
  • Selections of mutual allies are shown via dashed selection circles. These are also shown when in replay or witness mode.
  • The options menu is now available on the title screen.

Lobbies
  • You can now start games without any other occupied human/computer slots.
  • Switching player slots or forces in a lobby is now twice as fast.
  • Map previews are now enabled in Use Map Settings mode, and can be disabled by the map author.
  • It is now possible to switch to and within forces with Computer slots.
  • You can now fill slots with Computers in UMS lobbies.

The following options are customizable via a client-side config:
  • Run the latest version of Cosmonarchy BW as administrator once to generate your config.yml file!
  • Quick-targeting for all orders and quick-targeting for build orders.
  • An in-game timer that displays hours, minutes, and seconds.
  • An APM tracker, in both standard and replay/witness modes.
  • Additional camera hotkeys using F1 (disables opening the help menu via F1), and F5 through F8.
  • Line rendering to indicate rally points, order targets, and more for selected units, in both standard and replay/witness modes.
  • Circle rendering to indicate approximate aura ranges.
  • Ability to always show extended tooltips and/or condensed selections.
  • Customizable grid hotkeys.
  • Ability to disable seasonal celebrations.

Audiovisuals
  • Global sound limit now 1 per sound (with up to 256 total duplicates), from 8 max sounds, effectively removing Brood War's "sound channel" limit.
  • Seasonal celebrations are automatically enabled for:
    • Christmas (1 December to 31 December)
  • There is a 1 in 256 chance to get an "easter egg" unit name for a selection of units!

Other game modes
  • Omnipresence:
    • Start with an Omnivale, a town center capable of training all basic workers
    • Start with 2 of each basic worker
    • AI are unaffected

Entity limits
  • In-game unit limit now 4095, from 1700
  • In-game bullet limit now 2048, from 100.
  • In-game sprite limit now 8875, from 2500.
  • In-game image limit now 16385, from 5000.
  • In-game order limit now 4080, from 2000.
  • In-game thingy limit now 2048, from 500.
  • In-game fog of war sprite limit now 2048, from 500.


Credits


Cosmonarchy BW is brought to you by the following project members:
  • Pr0nogo -- lead designer
  • Veeq7 -- programming, tool development, website development, and more
  • DarkenedFantasies -- 2D and 3D art (for units and terrain), tool development, programming, mapping, and more
  • Baelethal -- 3D art, mapping, and more
  • knightoftherealm -- Concept art, mapping, and more

The No-Frauds Club would like to acknowledge these current and former community members for their roles in the development of Cosmonarchy BW:
  • Material contributions:
    • jun3hong, IskatuMesk, lolrsk8s, Solstice, TheBeaver99, Voyager7456, fr3nzy
  • Content creation (maps):
    • TheBeaver99, Btyb88
  • Content creation (videos):
  • Playtesting and word of mouth:
    • lucifirius, Keyan, fagguto, TheShambler, Mystery Meat, Btyb88, Solstice, Folca, UEDCommander, Milestone, Alexhandr
  • Past contributions:
    • FaRTy1billion, iquare, X405, Neiv, ciox, Herooflemons, Dynamo, Ultralisks, Tidomann, Nekron, Jayborino
  • Legacy tool development:
    • SuicidalInsanity, poiuy_qwert, ShadowFlare, BSTRhino
  • ko-fi supporters:
    • lucifirius, Zergarthca, Btyb88, Myrion, DD, sherklastic, HelltRYKS, Alexhandr, The Shambler, TheBeaver99, Rob Castov, Mystery Meat, neblime

The following units have received custom models by developers and community members:
  • DarkenedFantasies -- Anchor, Diadem, Pythean, Vestry, Fulcrum, Palladium, Phalanx, Wyvern
  • Solstice245 -- Wraith, Sundog (remesh), Scribe, Legionnaire, Vassal, Aurora, Panoptus, Gladius, Epigraph (remesh)
  • Pr0nogo -- Shaman, Madrigal, Southpaw, Philoc, Vagrant (kitbash from Ecclesiast), Manifold
  • IskatuMesk -- Claymore, Epigraph (original)

Additionally, the following units were voice acted by these community members:
  • IskatuMesk -- Azazel, Ecclesiast, Magister
  • TheBeaver99 -- Blackjack
  • Keyan -- Matador

Lastly, Cosmonarchy BW makes use of assets from the following games, mods, and communities: