LightCone

LightCone is an ambitious mod for Command & Conquer: Yuri's Revenge by Chinese developers, whose story begins after the events of Red Alert 1 and spans nearly a century — from the end of the Second Superwar to interstellar conflicts. The balance of power on Earth has shifted dramatically, and threats from the depths of space are approaching, the nature of which humanity has yet to comprehend. Several factions seek their own path to the truth as the world pushes forward through wars and upheaval.

The project grew out of an earlier mod, Cylearun, but is not a continuation of it — all gameplay and artistic content was completely reimagined and rebuilt from scratch. Skirmish features eleven factions divided into two generations: six Old Era factions and five New Era factions. At the launch of the public beta, all six Old Era factions will be available; New Era factions will be added in subsequent updates.

Factions and Gameplay

Each of the eleven factions has a unique set of mechanics, architecture, and combat style. Some examples:

• The Russian Federation is built around a modular assembly system: at the War Factory, players can choose combinations of chassis and weapon modules, yielding dozens of different vehicle variants. Modular customization extends to infantry and defensive structures as well.

• Yuri has a dual tech tree: a standard development path and the Horn Tower branch. The latter unlocks three Cerberus corps — Resh, Vav, and Yod, specializing in psionics, cyborg technologies, and assault power respectively — and ultimately allows construction of the "All as One" engine.

• Echo divides its units into two classes — Elites and Drones — forming two tech directions: the Intelligence Line and the Elite Line. The former focuses on mass production of drones immune to mind control; the latter on expensive but exceptionally powerful special units whose potential is unlocked in battle.

• The Church of Isaiah stands out for its most distinctive gameplay, unique architecture, and an abundance of heroes.

Story Campaign

LightCone's storyline was written from scratch — the developers completely abandoned Cylearun's plot. The narrative is distinguished by rigorous internal logic and well-developed characters. The first round of public testing is planned to include around three chapters: one main story chapter and two side chapters, totaling 30-40 singleplayer missions and several cooperative ones.

Technical Side

Alongside faction content, the team is developing a completely new landscape texture pack, LC_Terrain (LCT), built on a modular cliff system that consolidates all terrain categories into a single class — replacing the original Red Alert 2 tilesets, modifying which had become too cumbersome.

Release

No release date for LightCone has been announced, but a beta test is already underway, so the wait likely won't be too long.