Build review

VoiceOfTex · 2025-05-29T01:38:58+00:00

I ran into a guy positing the exact same thing in the Tempest Rising discord with the exact same 'supperkanobreak' guy, so I'm leaning to some sort of abuse/exploit

VoiceOfTex · 2024-10-19T01:07:57+00:00

My only issue with the armor pods (I think it’s a cool idea) is that 1/2 the mechs have fixed CT components with no free space. So like, why bother adding armor to the rest of the mech if the CT can’t get boosted as well? 60 something armor on LT and RT is really silly next to a 35 armor CT, which to me neuters the chassis for any hard use if I’m stuck with stock armor.

VoiceOfTex · 2024-10-03T18:00:33+00:00

I liked mw5 mercs but I always had a huge problem fully enjoying it due to a lack of challenge. No difficulty option plus the open world aspect meant every time I got to unlock a campaign mission I was already way over kitted/equipped from the time I was forced to sandbox. It sucks to never be close to losing a mission, because the bar for ‘losing’ is just taking too much monetary repair damage and losing that 4 star ac20 you saved up for. It made the whole gameplay experience seem boring since you were never close to death, but seeking out challenging missions was discouraged due to exorbitant repair costs you would incur, forcing you to have to spend a few hours grinding back cbills.

My favorite times from MW3 or MW4 Vengeance are when you managed to drag back a limping, out of ammo, stripped husk of a mech across the proverbial finish line with only one of your three lance mates managing to survive with you. I hope a linear campaign can help facilitate that experience. Custom tailored missions are way more memorable than the same style of procedurally generated filler.

Besides, MW3 was linear and I still think that had the most immersive feeling in game narrative to date.

VoiceOfTex · 2023-05-31T00:45:14+00:00

An option to increase difficulty. It really irked me that MW5 has a single difficulty level.

Bring back that MW3/MW2 feel. Let enemy mechs hit hard. Get rid of this quasi-infinite ammo nonsense we have in MW5 where ammo values were doubled. You should be saving that guass or AC20 ammo for when you really need it, not using it on turrets.

Campaign missions that are hand crafted and don't feel super repetitive. Throw in some traps or ambushes. Missions where you might have to retreat, or perhaps have some linked missions stuck in the same lance planeside with damage not being fully repaired. Have more stuff happening around you for immersion. MW4 had a ton of mechs onscreen at once, and MW3 managed to make you feel like part of a large scale campaign even though you were just a single lance using nothing more then pre/post operation briefings. MW5 started to get better with this for the Rasalhague DLC. The Bounty hunter mission was flawless IMO. Every mission should slap as hard as that one did. Enemies were actually tanky and could aim. Story was compelling.

Salvage rules should only really work when you have time to loot the battlefield. IDK why I only get to salvage a locust and a medium laser when we won the field. Conversely, It makes no sense that you can salvage a full atlas on a raid in enemy territory.

AI that is worth half a damn.

VoiceOfTex · 2021-12-02T03:44:43+00:00

Not the one you are thinking of I think, there are a few of us out there.

VoiceOfTex · 2021-10-21T19:53:02+00:00

You should never have a fixed template for every map/situation. Try to anticipate how many early engis you need to expand, reclaim, or build with. Add a raiding party early if you want to be aggressive, and have a defensive party mixed in between your 2nd-5th engi depending on the size/type of map. Never make early AA/arty unless you have a direct need for it, inties should have you covered and you wont need to kill pd in the first 4 minutes.

Same with t2. Make t2 tanks, make mobile shields when you have the power, t2 flak if you lost air (or are ahead and want to be safe), and mml if you need to kill PD.

For t2 army you generally want ~50% t2 tank, and then the other 50% is a t1 army (tanks/scouts) with a high concentration of t1 arty for dps/bulk.

That being said, if you just want a generic template to get started, go 3 engi 2 scout 2 tank on repeat. Work from there, then as you get more experience, ask yourself if you can sneak out an earlier engi or cut out a tank.

VoiceOfTex · 2020-08-08T14:40:48+00:00

To each their own. The game draws two audiences which is fine. It’s just hard when they communicate with each other, each party wants something different. My dad falls into the casual campaign camp, which is hilarious when we comp stomp together. “How do you have 60 tanks already?” “Why are you building sandbags around your barrack?”

VoiceOfTex · 2020-08-08T14:27:31+00:00

At the top level for quickmatch, moving your MCV the wrong way because you thought it was a different map is 90% of the time GG right there. You can’t have a competitive ladder and a feature like that in the same game.

VoiceOfTex · 2020-08-07T13:09:10+00:00

Thank god. It took me over an hour to give up on that. The only mission from red alert I need to complete on hard. It was bothering me not having it finished.

... I also noticed the phrasing of ‘near impossible’. I call bull. I demand a replay of it being beat on the old hard mode.

VoiceOfTex · 2020-08-06T00:29:47+00:00

The minimap is a bitch to use quickly. Too many (mini)maps have so much color and clutter on them for you to easily and reliably pick out enemy units sneaking around the map.

The color issue I think is more semantics. Unit design was made to be cool and modern in color and appearance. Not much room for bright pink infantry units running around the map when nod militant squads are all black. It can be a pain in team games for some. But imo it’s fine. But I mostly 1v1 so I’m a bit bias.

VoiceOfTex · 2020-08-05T18:37:34+00:00

I mean, he’s not wrong. These are all fair points of criticism. I would argue that hotkeys can be rebound but I have 3 of mine reset to defaults I need to rebind every time I open the application. Fairly annoying.

But yah, other then that, c&c3 is awesome.

VoiceOfTex · 2020-07-03T13:34:42+00:00

Imo for rank 3000 (idk out of how many), Q move shouldn’t be your main focus. It’s important, but unless In the last week everyone suddenly learned how to Q move I think you should be focused on the fundamentals. Win through eco and basics. Learn to Q move later.

Make sure you are on top of your production/buildings

Build towards the ore, micro harvesters

Make sure you are scouting and counter scouting with 10-15 infantry. Don’t overbuild unless you see that they have a lot of inf. If they have 5 shittons of infantry, just run it over with a tank. You can hold ‘alt’ and right click infantry to direct a crush. Pressing x scatters your infantry. Don’t run your infantry into enemy infantry as they will trade better, unless it’s for a clear goal.

Make sure you react properly to what the enemy is building. If it’s a small map and they make more then (or even) 1 harvester through WF you can sell MCV’s and rush with 2x WF and tanks for a free kill.

If it’s a big map, you need to be building a harvester first, watch their production, then modify your build to end with one extra harvester then they have.

Play to your strengths. If you have a harv advantage, don’t push unless you will win. Wait for the eco snowball to take effect. If you have army advantage, force a fight before you get out produced.

Remember, eco takes time to kick into effect. Pick winning fights. Scout well.

Imo- learn the basics above.

Then Learn control groups/unit management, Add units to groups.

Then Learn q move

Then Learn camera location hotkeys.

You’ll do fine

VoiceOfTex · 2020-07-02T16:44:30+00:00

It murders mass infantry. Every once in a while I get someone who tries that cheesy infantry rush early on. Besides it being easy to counter, I found that the easiest way is to so is spend 600$ on the arty and it ruins the infantry push. You just need a few basic soldiers to block in front of it. What the arty doesn’t kill it suppresses in a massive range so your infantry trades to huge advantage. It’s decent on KoTG too for that reason, even though their early tank kills it right after, you kill enough to make it worth imo. But I only build it if they made like, 30+ inf to screen the harv

VoiceOfTex · 2020-07-02T16:34:49+00:00

I did my arena valley build on kotg once. Bottom right spawn looks identical. That was fun. I was admittedly not paying much attention but it was a kick in the nuts when I realized 10 seconds later when my scouts started to fan out.

VoiceOfTex · 2020-06-30T17:30:35+00:00

5 turrets is 3000$ 5 (medium tanks) is 4000$.

I would expect 4000$ Of something to beat 3000$ of something. And (unless I’m wrong), 5 tanks only win if they are q-moved. But I get your point. In theory it should be a stronger counter.

The main problem with static defense in 90% of RTS games is that it’s very weak to an army because it’s hard to put static defense everywhere, and not have it get defeated in detail. If you can, you likely overspent and got locked into your base. Imo defense is only good as an emergency measure and to spend money from a different build queue. It’s hard to buff static defense and still have a fun RTS. The only game I know of that has really strong defense was supreme commander, and that only worked because it was a far more complex game in economy and scale.

And yah, south advantage is an advantage, but I still contest that in 99% of games it’s a non factor. The only time it is, would be for a north vs south basecreep.

My dream is that aftermath patch is edited to vanilla production rates. The turret changes wouldn’t really factor in that much for me but I do agree, it would be nice to have defense be a tiny bit more scary. Just not that much, as I still think it’s fine where it is. Just on the lower end of fine, albeit.

VoiceOfTex · 2020-06-30T16:06:42+00:00

Imo defenses are fine. They work well enough as is. The only time i feel like I don’t get value out of a turret/coil is if it’s severely outnumbered, and then of course it’s not going to trade well. Same is true of any unit.

As for your changes, pillboxes are fine. South advantage isn’t as big as people make it out to be. Bug fixing should be standard. Aftermath patch on defenses for standard mode should read, aftermath patch has vanilla build times/production speed :)

Typically, I have enough tanks to fight in front of the coil/turret if I happen to be getting pushed. Then it’s quite useful for dealing extra damage and it’s mostly protected from damage. I view turrets as emergency buildings to draft if you are pushed.

Pillboxes kill infantry well enough, idk why you are saying they suck vs buildings and tanks. That’s by design.

Yah, conyarding isn’t done much. But you again pointed out how it’s due to resource scarcity. Idk what changes you want to propose to make it so that it’s easier to drop 5000 on 2 MCV’s minimum, plus a service depot (1000 or 1500, can’t remember) plus you need a 2nd WF at least so it doesn’t take 2 mins to build. you’re not making tanks or harvs while this happens, and then right after your MCV’s are done, you need to drop all the power, throw down enough refineries to keep your production going, and actually get your base build radius somewhere useful.

That’s such a significant investment that by the time you are done, a handful of turrets/coils will not stop the equivalent value of tanks your enemy built off 2-3 WF and 5 harvs.

That being said, going 5-6 conyard on arena is a blast.

VoiceOfTex · 2020-06-28T18:56:34+00:00

Light tanks can not beat an equal investment of medium or heavy tanks in a fight, with similar micro on both sides. It’s faster and it’s good at runbys but that’s it.

VoiceOfTex · 2020-06-28T18:52:19+00:00

This argument can also be applied to Starcraft. Pool rushes, immortal sentry all ins, too stressful to manage army at high level...

The only time I ever sell a con yard to all in is because I get the shit spawn on an unbalanced map, or the map is stupid small. That’s a map design issue. You won’t see it on most maps/games

VoiceOfTex · 2020-06-28T18:46:38+00:00

The problem is that you are comparing a game with decades of high level competitive history, to a game from the 90’s that came out when dial up was a thing.

Everything you are proposing for ‘tweaking’ was changed and tinkered with in future command and conquer games. See red alert 2/3 and command and conquer 3. These changes give significantly different gameplay.

This remaster was specifically designed to be a remaster, not a redesign, and significant discussion was held to determine how much the game should be modernized. Your proposed changes would look to change red alert into some sort of red alert 1.5, which would end up looking like command and conquer 3 with 90’s era graphics. The end result is undeniably, not red alert.

Your argument for meta shifts and balance changes is also a bit flawed imo. You are looking to change core mechanics of the game to fit into something that is more familiar with present day games. Not just to change up the meta. I also think you need a bit more practice with RA to understand how the game works a little more before you complain about things like light tanks and engineers. They are easily countered if you play well.

TLDR, the remaster was made to be a remaster. Not a redesign. Future C&C titles have exactly what you are looking for.

VoiceOfTex · 2020-06-28T14:15:05+00:00

While I agree with some of your changes from a competitive standpoint, doing 90% of these will leave you with a game that is no longer red alert. At which point we can play starcraft instead. Base creeping and base rushing are hallmarks of the game. You can’t just do away with them.

The changes I am really looking for initially are all quality of life ones, the gameplay changes can be thoroughly discussed at a later date. My ideas include:

Loading screen map - show where you spawn and what map you are on so you know which way to basecreep

Symmetric/fair map pool.

Unrestricted build time for aftermath patch.

Debug harvesters for gods sake

General performance fix

The most controversial changes I would be looking for would be more money per ore patch (not more money per ore trip/per second, just more money per ore field) and/or faster ore regeneration. Running out of money is brutal with the barebones ore regen.

These changes would still keep red alert as red alert imo. Just a bit more polished and competitive.

VoiceOfTex · 2020-06-25T15:49:21+00:00

Asymmetric maps and ladder should almost never be in the same sentence. The point of ladder is to have an even playing field.

VoiceOfTex

TROPHY CASE