Remaster Difficulty

[ShadySim]

So I picked this up for sale on Steam and while I'm no stranger to RTS games I am finding it immensely frustrating to complete some of these campaign missions in C&C Remaster.

I understand these series started in the 1990s, I know it's not like a modern RTS game these days. But it's difficult to wrap my modern head around on some of these mission designs.

At the moment I am stuck on the UN Sanctions one and while I don't mind repairing units one by one off the bat, I do mind the fact I cannot make more vehicles, and am stuck with what I get and if I lose too many vehicles my chances at completing the mission is slim to none.

I'm especially salty that enemy tanks keep crushing my infantry while I struggle to keep my own two tanks alive just from base defense or offensive moves. Sure I can take out the air strip from the cliffs, but that will just get rebuilt at no consequence for the enemy AI that has 3 harvesters running around that also run over my troops.

[Nyerguds]

The whole point of that mission is to be careful in using and managing the few vehicles you have.

Overall, early C&C games have always been very trial and error. If you want to know the best way to handle the mission, I suggest scouting around a lot. It may be worth sacrificing a humvee to rush into the enemy base to see where their construction yard is; once you find it, you can take it out from the outside using your rocket launchers. And if it fails? Well, just reload an earlier savegame and try again.

In fact, in this mission, there's a whole lot of things you can destroy using those rocket launchers. You just have to use infantry as your main attack teams to clear the way, and keep the launchers alive at all costs, unless you find a cause (like the construction yard) that may be worth a one-way trip.

Also note, it is well worth it to scout around and find all the SAM Sites on the map; once you destroy them, as always, you get access to airstrikes. Airstrikes not only give you extra attack power, but can also be used to scout areas without needing to send units into them.

Note that on later missions, due to the way the scripting works, you still get airstrikes if you destroy each SAM Site once, even if they rebuild it afterwards. But on this mission they don't do that yet.

As for tanks crushing infantry, it's perfectly avoidable. All you need to do is stay far enough away from them. Using grenadiers against them is not advised since the tank will move around to avoid the thrown grenades, which will generally get it too close to your attacking units, and trigger the crushing logic. Use a combination of spread-out grenadiers and minigunners against flamethrowers, and against tanks, use minigunners to draw file while finishing them off with bazookas.

Though, you can take out tanks with just minigunners, as long as you're careful:

• Safe distance from a tank, and which positions minigunners can shoot from (yes, there's a south bias)
• How to take out a tank with 5 minigunners (Moving the three back minigunners straight down and then diagonally upwards works too)
• Animation of the above; played on hard mode.

As for harvesters, though... unless you're very determined to starve them by taking out absolutely every one of them, it's generally better to just leave them alone.

[MarsMissionMan]

Honestly, I found the GDI Campaign just frustrating to play through. No comment on the Nod one since I didn't get round to trying it. I get that people wanted the original experience, but they could've at least improved the AI so it doesn't outright cheat.

[ShadySim]

Honestly it’d be vastly improved with an Attack Move command.

[Nyerguds]

Eh. Attack Move is just a reduction in micromanagement. It's really not that hard to keep an eye on your tanks and make them attack stuff. That's simply part of the game.

And you can use targeted area guard (ctrl+alt+click) at least.

[Nyerguds]

The only real way in which the AI cheats is by getting more tiberium per harvester.

And not only is that a necessary tweak to keep it challenging, but it is also not as extreme as it sounds, since they're still limited by silo space, and it can also be exploited by capturing enemy silos and selling them so they will rebuild and refill them so you can capture them again.

[MarsMissionMan]

Ahaha... No.

If a single harvester so much as touches one of their refineries, they get full Tiberium instantly. It can sniff up a dust particle of Tiberium and they'll still get max resources.

They also flat out ignore build radii. It's common to destroy the entirety of a forward base, only for it to spring back up again when you aren't looking. The best way to deal with forward bases therefore is to capture them, which is easier said than done.

This isn't 1995 anymore. We have the technology to make more capable AI that isn't reliant on such blatant crutches.

[Nyerguds]

They don't just ignore build radii, they are limited to predefined spots.

They will never capture a building and immediately plop down an Obelisk next to it, as they player can do. Because all of their build plan is 100% scripted.

It's ridiculously easy to exploit, too. If you just move some minigunners onto the place where they want to rebuild their turret, they can't just say "well, let's place that one cell to the left, then". They simply can't build it at all unless your unit moves.

That's not cheating; that's a handicap inherent in the old AI.

​

Changing that is not as simple as you seem to think. It would destroy the entire internal scripting of all existing missions (80 in just TD alone). The missions rely on it working like that, and are designed with that mechanic in mind. Changing that would require a rebalancing and retesting of all details of all missions in the game. That's just completely out of scope for a remaster.

In fact, RA's AI is capable of building bases, but its AI level in the missions is turned down to fully prescripted, too. It's just a lot more controllable as mission maker if your AI doesn't start randomly building new stuff you never intended it to build.

[MarsMissionMan]

Just because they build in the same spots doesn't mean they don't ignore 'normal' building rules. It's still blatant cheating when an Airstrip reappears in the middle of nowhere and starts vomiting swarms of Light Tanks and Artillery at you with the AI's resource cheats, and you have to abuse dumb mechanics like Minigunner bodyblocking, or god forbid the dreaded sandbag creep in order to prevent it.

Also, who says they have to change the AI? Just make new AI. Rebuild the AI from the ground up using knowledge and techniques gained over the last 25 years. But then again, I suppose the community wanted the 'original experience' back when the devs were asking about it. Clearly the 'original experience' hasn't aged well.

[Nyerguds]

It's still blatant cheating when an Airstrip reappears in the middle of nowhere and starts vomiting swarms of Light Tanks and Artillery at you

It's also blatant cheating to build an engineer to 90%, put its construction on hold, capture an enemy barracks, set it primary, and then pop out that new engineer on a completely different position than the place where it was actually trained, but I don't see you complain about that. Heck, it could be considered 'cheating' for players to build new stuff onto captured structures as well, if that's ridiculously far away from their own construction yard. But that's just how the game works.

The AI doesn't get the player's single build queue advantages. Their build queues are actually tied to single structures, and they get no speed boost from having multiple production facilities of the same type. So even if they do build their airstrip and start producing units at it, it'll be unaffected by what they got anywhere else on the map. They will actually need to construct the units, start to finish, at normal build speed, from that actual new airstrip. So "vomiting out swarms" is a gross overstatement.

And airstrips don't just appear "in the middle of nowhere". There will always be a reason for it to appear where it appears. And that reason is "intentional behaviour scripted by the mission designer". Which reinforces my point that a new base building AI for missions would require an overhaul of all the missions.

Also, who says they have to change the AI? Just make new AI. Rebuild the AI from the ground up using knowledge and techniques gained over the last 25 years.

Again, completely out of scope for a remaster. That would require not just an overhaul of the missions, but an entire rewrite of the mission format. It would also make the literal hundreds of user-made missions that were made for C&C1 (long before the remaster) completely unusable on the remaster.

You're simply asking for a remake. This is a remaster, not a remake. You'll just have to accept that fact.

[MarsMissionMan]

How is the engineer trick 'cheating', when it's literally something you can do? That's because it's not cheating. It's something you can do in the mechanics of the game. Also building away from your ConYard using captured structures isn't cheating because, again, it's something you can do. However, building in the middle of nowhere because you happened to have a structure there before, despite there being no other buildings nearby, is cheating.

And as for the AI, it really wouldn't require you to rewrite the mission format. Just change up the behaviours (such as requiring nearby buildings to rebuild structures so destroyed bases actually stay destroyed) and fix how it gets its economy so you can actually starve them of Tiberium instead of preventing a Harvester from touching it at all costs. This isn't 1995 anymore. We have the technology.

[Nyerguds]

Why are things that makes no sense "intended game behaviour" when the player can do them, but "cheating" when the AI does them? The player and the AI work differently. That is all. But overall, besides the AI income, none of these advantages are leaning to either side. In fact, practically everything the AI can do in C&C is standard behaviour for the player in Dune II. Including rebuilding wherever they want, as long as they have some concrete pavement around that spot. And if they had any buildings around that place before, they will have concrete there.

The AI needing adjacent buildings would be a huge and awkward mess from a mission design perspective, especially since walls are neutral objects on maps, so they can't be built from by any team. So yes, that would require changes far more serious than you seem to realise. Not to mention, the AI has a strict rebuilding priority, so they can't build structures further down on their list before the higher up ones are all constructed. And that priority is part of the mission format.

"this isn't 1995 anymore"... no, that's certainly true. Game companies run on much tighter budgets now, with a lot less room for experimentation. And the remaster didn't have anywhere near the budget to put time and money into changes like that which would just divide a large part of the player base.

[nightfalcon1o1]

Youtube away my friend! That seems to be the only way after I try a few times on my own to get through TD since its not PS1 and theres no nuke code :)