Command And Conquer series

They didn’t realize the pay to win microtransactions model of Battlefront 2 was going to be a disaster until it became one.

That Generals 2 was seen as a disaster in waiting must’ve been absurdly obvious because Battlefront 2 caused a number of states and countries to change their laws on the subject. Like it might’ve brought down the entire microtransaction business model kind of thing.

Either that or a hopelessly large monetary loss.

Tacitus, what difficulty level were you playing Tiberian Sun on? Hard is an absolute beast because of those artillery. Titans only barely avoid being two-shot, so anything less than full health means they will be. And considering it takes about a dozen shots to kill the artillery, their minimum range is your only friend but you still need to send them in huge packs to get anywhere.

The Hammerfest mission is thus arguably one of the hardest, for me, the terrain is really unforgiving and you don't have Disruptors yet (which are slow, awkward, can't fire through craters and cause friendly fire but are devastating even on Hard and can take a hit.)

It's actually possible to starve Nod out by shooting dead enough Harvesters with Jump Jet Infantry, but that's very slow. Otherwise you basically are forced to use like 40 Titans and just brute force it.

The Nod campaign on the other hand becomes stupidly easy once you get Artillery, even on Hard, as you can just use them as an Advancing Wall of Doom in most missions. Their hardest mission is the optional one to destroy the Radar Dome early on. It's timed, all you've got are Tick Tanks and you have two full GDI bases to push through to get to the targets. Even if you don't get unlucky and have Ion Storms smash your tanks for you, you have no efficient way of handling Disc Throwers (which can kill Buggies in about 3 hits) and you need a minimum 3 Tick Tanks for every Titan they have, and at that you'll probably still lose one. Realistically you do need to destroy the first base, which slows their attacks (12 or 15 Tick Tanks round the side can do it), then you rush through the second base to the Dome, but an hour and a half isn't a lot to make an offensive force of 30-40 tanks on top of what you need for defence and otherwise lose (especially as you don't have repair vehicles yet)/

In terms of the Air Force I actually did make good use of Orca Bombers on Hard as GDI, because they're Artillery killers, and clusters of them can hit missile silos in the later missions once you know where they are. It's expensive but so is everything else.

I really enjoy the TS campaigns, but they're brutal slugfests for sure.

Oh, Easy, absolutely. I'm after nostalgia, not a sweaty slugfest or a protracted siege. Missions take long enough already. Long enough for me to take a break from Tiberian Sun in favor of the faster-paced Generals gameplay.

Though the bloom's starting to come off that rose, I'll have to admit. First issue is my skill level - the Generals Challenge on Easy is too easy, because the superweapon timers are generous and the AI barely attacks, but Normal kicks my ass because the timers aren't generous and the AI is actually trying to kill me. I might have to see if there's some way to tweak the game config files to give me a "Normy" difficulty with some aggression but less superweapon spam.

Second issue is playing as the generals themselves, really experiencing their Crippling Overspecialization. If you've got an advantageous matchup like the Nuke General versus the Laser General, or Literally Anyone But The Infantry General versus Dr. Thrax, you're all set to steamroll with minimal difficulty. Then the later matchups come along and you're the Tank General having to play like the Nuke General because there's no way to get your armored columns over to the Superweapon General's island base. It's a challenge, yes, but it isn't a particularly compelling one.

Third issue is engine stuff. As the Tank General, I did a tank horde against the Nuke General, only to take 80% losses because my units couldn't pathfind successfully through the enemy base, allowing them to fight my horde two or three at a time with massed rockets and gatling guns. It was such a dismal result that the AI unlocked some general powers and started dropping artillery on me. And then there's some wonky line-of-sight issues with artillery and tanks, where I'm getting shot but can't shoot back. Nothing that completely derails the gameplay, but just enough to be noticeable and annoying.

I'd like to go back to Tiberium Wars at some point, see the distillation of the Generals gameplay in the classic C&C setting, except my understanding is that some multiplayer nerfs got applied to the base game to derail some campaign missions. Might have to finally do some Kane's Wrath stuff instead, get me some updated Titans and Wolverines.

The timers can be manipulated in one of the files. I set mine to 15 minutes apiece.

I know the higher difficulties of the Generals Challenge use default values for their superweapons on most levels.

Finally gotten around to trying out the Mental Omega mod...though "mod" is understating it at this point. It's getting closer to a total conversion, given that pretty much everything but the interface has been overhauled.

It's really very good, with a much more indepth plot, much deeper, better balanced factions and units, though having the benefit of 20 years of hindsight, significantly more time and no corporate pressure all help of course.

It's also Nintendo Hard, being utterly relentless right from the start, even on Easy. Some missions definitely feel like they'd benefit from Age of Empires style production buildings having their own queues, such is the need to crank out troops by the dozen near instantaneously and get them all over the battlefield. Good fun though!

Jelthid releases his plans for future videos: Red Alert coverage.

I did mention on his patron page about the (now defunct) database on Red Alert 3 whose unit articles were released gradually by the developers during the game's development (base game and Uprising). The wayback machine and I think the official wiki still has the text information preserved.

I think I found a name for my Generals mod. I shall call it The Terrible Balance Mod.

Why? Because I’ve done some tuning that is absolutely absurd yet amazingly fun.

Like setting the Nuke Cannon to 1000 damage up from 600 and increasing the blast radius by like 50 percent. And it’s the furthest shooting unit in the game at a whopping 600 range (greater than the size of the screen).

Bomb Trucks also when fully upgraded kill pretty much anything in one hit also with like a 50 percent blast radius increase. Like the only things that survive it are either Superweapons or the Command Center.

I’m still not done with such madness.

Curiously I am building the mod in such a way all the campaign missions are not only functional but winnable. Sure the cutscenes on a few have an element of broken to it but it’s still doable.

Out of curiosity, can you mod the GLA nuke truck in the first Chinese mission so that its blast hurts the player's starting base?

I think that one is mission triggers not actual weapon damage.

Yeah, the original game's nuke truck was just the typical Chinese nuke superweapon when detonated, which means it only just barely affected the entire screen. But the blast radius during the 1st Chinese mission extends far beyond that, almost to the point of being somewhat realistic for a small tactical nuke, meaning it's either a unit with modded stats or scripted like Major Tom said.

Edited by SgtRicko on Apr 30th 2024 at 12:40:11 AM

Now I remembered a certain mechanic in Yuri's Revenge, which always kind of bugged me.

When you use iron curtain on your vehicles, AI players units don't even try to attack them until the invincibility wears off. But your units do attack iron-curtained vehicles. Why is that?

This is a real bother if you play as France and use Grand Cannons. The invincible units just roll into your base, the cannon fires at them taking some of your buildings out. Probably the only way to counter this is to use the Force Shield so your power goes down and the guns stop working. But then you have to deal with a bunch of nasties wreaking havoc in your base.

I've got the Collection on Steam and it has been interesting.

RA 2 definitely feels better to play than TS, though I am still feels somewhat weird. But it at least has actual attack move. I've got to the Soviet defending tank lab mission for now.

Generals was annoying to get to even lauch and get a proper resolution. Then when I practically finished first China mission I Alt+Tabbed and it crashed -.- So I put off playing it for now.

Tiberium Wars was the one C&C game I played the most but I had only retail disc and my last two laptops had no DVD drive so it has been a while :/. I knew that newer version had some messed up things due to multiplayer patches but it didn't feel that bad. Mammoths felt kinda weak in Cairo mission.

At least until GDI Croatia and NOD Atantic Coast. I know I'm playing on hard (and I'll probably reduce difficulty if I keep being stuck) but these two missions are rough.

I know that for Croatia the best course of action is to sell walls for cash and rush north east base to capture it. But the combination of selling walls, attacking that base and making sure to not lose a defense structure for the secondary objective is a little much. Babysitting towers so the attack rocket squads and engineers so they don't get sniped by a random Venom is also annoying.

Atlantic Coast I honestly don't know what to do. My first attempt ended with me building additional Vertigos and then practically dying after I was rushed by some stupid big APC/Predator/infantry wave. Next attempt also didn't end up much better. Stealth Tanks feel useless or at least I'm using them wrong. I keep getting all of my army killed and end up out of money.

Also, for whatever reason TW is the only game that can handle being Alt+Tabbed. Geneerals crashed. RA 3 also I think was weird with that?

EDIT: Bruh, I've did a save during Chrono Defence mission, luckily before my Con Yard got destroyed, but for some reason RA 2 crashes while tring to load that save ;_;

Edited by SecondKaitenhammer on May 5th 2024 at 7:01:54 PM

The easier way to do Croatia is to steal the SW infantry base instead of north east. That let's you cut off Nod from the secondary objective, and you can turtle there with your new Nod base until you're ready to push out.