Even if the cult is well-funded, I would imagine that they still rely a lot on masses of fanatical volunteers with little training, so I was thinking to counter the UN's three basic infantry, the cult could have...
I think we're largely underestimating the Brotherhood. They may be brutal and willing to achieve this new world order by any means possible, but they have one considerable difference from current terrorist organizations: they are smart. They've learned from the mistakes of the past, realizing that throwing untrained followers with an automatic rifle simply will not work. Not when there is now hundreds of the world's most elite soldiers determined to destroy them, and they're massively outnumbered as well (there's a lot more good people in the world than bad). New recruits to their cause undergo a rapid fast and brutal three month training program before thrusting them into the war (think of it like wartime conscription, nobody wants to send in an office worker who doesn't even know how to reload a gun, but give him a few months of brutal training and he'll at least stand a chance of survival. He may not be as good as the better trained, experienced military officer, but at least he won't be spraying bullets everywhere doing nothing).
Thus, these limited numbers have to be used efficiently. The inspiration for the Brotherhood is not any past terrorist organization (they all lost, goes to show how well that works), but working almost like a country of its own. Were it a country, the Brotherhood would be a super power to rival Russia, but with several distinct advantages. Firstly, they have no set land nor civilians that can be harmed. This makes invasions harder and make nuclear weapons less effective. Next, they don't have to worry about the civilians at all, and can devote all their spending to their cause. They are also not to any agreements to limit power, and will happily use outlawed weaponry with chemicals or biological weapons.
Thus, unlike the suicidal terrorists of today, which always ultimately fail, the Brotherhood has evolved past those points. Like a soldier in Afghanistan who may be willing to die for his country, he certainly doesn't want to die. He's prepared to if he has to, but surviving is...better. Same for the Brotherhood, they may be willing to die for this new world order, but they'd rather live to see it themselves. With such small numbers, every death means one less person to fight for their cause. In the end, they are more like an army with no morals than a terrorist organization. Not to mention I'm pretty sure a hunter with a shotgun would get downed pretty fast if he was thrown against a SEAL. As shown by the results of past wars, training makes a massive difference.
Candidates and inspiration for the battle bus: http://defense-update.com/products/g/grizzly_bw.htm, http://defense-update.com/products/c/cougar.htm
For the battle bus, I think that BW Grizzly is the best looking, though our brotherhood would naturally have to tone theirs down a touch. Whereas the Grizzly claims to be capable of defending troops from IEDs and even .50 bullets, for balance, I think the Brotherhood's should not be immune to .50 bullets.
Add in some "windows" to shoot from, though, and it looks like a very good candidate.
No mutants? Darn, I was even coming up with a backstory about how the Brotherhood scientists were the spiritual successors of the Axis scientists in WW2, and have been conducting genetics experiments on human subjects for the past century or so.
Don't get your hopes up on no mutants, just not in the main game. Not to say that there won't be any outbreaks in scenarios, though...
Anyway, I think the cult's commando unit could be an anti-sniper -- invisible to the sniper's detection, and using a stealthy melee attack (e.g. machete) to take them out.
That sounds like a better use for their SHADE stealth unit. Rather than an assault rifle as per Zoy way above, a stealthy machete to slice snipers up, and make them detectors to snipers, while being stealthy themselves.
Regarding whether the cult is religious or secular, I had really just imagined them as dogmatic conspiracy theorists -- the kind who think the Illumaniti, Freemasons, Zionists, Opus Dei, or whoever are trying to put the world under some draconian one-world government. These guys are all over Youtube, and they really are as crazy as you can imagine. They have been working at this for a long time, and when the EU unites as a single nation and the UN starts picking up additional powers, the cult leaders see this as a definite sign that the New World Order is at hand unless they unleash all kinds of trouble to bring them down (i.e. the zombie plague, nukes, ebola, assassinations, crashing the stock market, whatever). Once the nations of the world have been destroyed, the Brethren can rebuild the world as a utopia.
Fitting.
- Speed boat -- Similar to the [wiki]USS Cole bombing[/wiki], the cult uses explosive-armed speed boats to launch suicide attacks against UN naval targets. The boat can also be loaded and used as a light transport. Maybe it should be an amphibious hovercraft to simplify things.
As mentioned above, the suicide idea doesn't fit the Brotherhood's ambitions well, but a speedboat with guns, perhaps even a napalm may be interesting, since most ships in the game are huge, and unable to navigate rivers, whereas a speedboat could take to the rivers and be more useful against land units (whereas other boats are largely used for the purpose of preventing enemies from transporting units with their transport ships (sink a transport ship: kill everyone on board)).
- IED -- A staple of asymmetrical warfare is the booby trap, and old Soviet munitions make excellent examples. This can come in anti-personnel, anti-vehicle, and dirty nuclear varieties.
IED's themselves are actually great ideas, at first thought, and have been considered since the beginning days of this faction (earlier versions included a mine), but ultimately were completely unused because the AI had incredible difficulty using them, it seemed impractical that you couldn't walk on top of them (if size 1, as size 0 made them impossible to destroy, even with a splash), that your own units could go "near" them safely while the foe's couldn't, etc.
- War dog -- No machine invented so far can match the detection ability of a dog's nose, so dogs are excellent at scouting and detecting hidden enemy soldiers and explosives. They are most useful for scouting, patrolling, and mine sweeping, but a dog can also tackle and maul a human opponent, causing damage over time while reducing the victim's attack and movement. This makes for a deadly combination with riflemen, who can finish off the pinned enemy.
We may need to make an attack dog as an anti-stealth unit. What building to produce from though? Leaning towards Operations Center.
If we're allowing cyborgs or power armor, this is where they come into play.
I think the primary issue with power armour is that we are only roughly 20 years in the future, and the technology being used by each side is largely already possible. As well, there's a slight issue with the fact that the Brotherhood has 34 units, about double that of a standard faction... Are we perhaps getting a bit over our heads? It'll be hard enough to learn these units even with tooltips on every unit and attack, a 5 part tutorial (per faction), and full documentation. Plus, the buildings alone already nearly overflow the base given on most maps, and some maps don't even give enough room to allow the full base to be built in one location.
Anybody want to create a Google Doc or something, where we can compile ideas, instead of scattering them around?
Be my guest.
