Command And Conquer series

Occam's Razor, Amita. You could assume Tesla Coils are electrolaser-based if you want, but the absence of supporting evidence makes that assumption no more likely than it being not electrolaser-based.

Besides, even if we assume that Tesla Coils used electrolasers, I'd like for you to explain to me why an RA1 Tesla Coil's discharge follows a noticeably erratic path in the air and sticks to a moving target in that one cutscene demonstrating its power against an Allied Tank. Or why there no other laser applications, implied or explicit, in either Allied or Soviet arsenals in RA1. Or how the Soviets could turn the Eiffel Tower into an improvised Tesla Coil.

Hell, were electrolasers a thing in real life when RA1 came out? The answer seems to be no, as all confirmed examples of electrolasers that I could find on Wikipedia or other sites date to the 21st century, with a single unconfirmed report in 1985 that is suspected to be actually referring to a chemical laser. So at most, making Tesla Coils based on electrolasers would be a Retcon, as common understanding back then was that directing bolts of electricity in such a way was pretty much scientifically impossible.

Let's face it, the available evidence strongly indicates that Soviet Tesla Coils do not obey the laws of physics as we understand them.

edited 29th May '16 9:06:44 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Which is exactly what I said.

As the laser ionizes the air it passes through, the electric arc initially follows the ionized air as the path of least resistance. However, that ionized air is heated up by the current passing through it and the temperature differential causes the heated air to start mixing with the non-heated air surrounding it through convection, with things being further complicated by the ionized air's movement being affected by the current's electromagnetic field. The ionized air thus being chaotically mixed with non-ionized air causes the path of least resistance to become distorted, with the electric arc going through wherever it can.

edited 29th May '16 4:01:42 PM by amitakartok

Plus dont electrolasers still have some eraticness to them?

I always thought it worked more as a "follow this general path" type deal, then the electricity itself now being laser like.

Tesla coil discharges do move around erratically.

Radar and laser tracking probably did exist in some form, otherwise the Soviet Mig fighter jet wouldn't be able to use it's missiles to lock onto targets, especially at the super-sonic speeds it was said to fly at.

Plus, not to be that guy, but you guys are arguing about a game that was based partially on old conspiracy theories and rumors of Cold War era super-science. You're gonna be scientifically disappointed no matter how you two argue.

Oh, I'm perfectly aware that the two of us are at an impasse.

I've achieved otherwise in mods. The key is amplifying the Glass Cannon nature of infantry. What they lost in survivability by giving tanks and vehicles anti-infantry machine guns and explosives they gain in raw damage and/or range. For example if the Medium Tank did 30 damage to another Medium Tank and the Medium Tank's machine gun did 15 damage to the Rocket Soldier, the Rocket Soldier's weapon would do at least 40-50 damage per shot to the Medium Tank in return. That way, even if the Medium Tank defeated a lone Rocket Soldier rather easily, a half dozen of them would chew through him with almost no losses or effort. A dozen of them would blast right through the Medium Tank without loss.

Another way could be to give them missiles capable of out-ranging the tanks, along with the damage increase you said. Works pretty well in the Wargame series; most players are typically too afraid to send their tanks alone without recon, due to the fear of hidden ATGM teams tearing their tanks apart in a single shot from an unknown location. But in exchange, they're exclusively designed to kill land vehicles now - they're incapable of shooting any infantry or airborne targets.

Which is still bullshit. Infantry always carry at least some anti-infantry weapons.

EndWar did it the best in my opinion: engineers do have anti-infantry weapons, but still suffer a penalty against riflemen because of their heavy equipment weighing them down.

I prefer the Company Of Heroes approach myself, particularly the one employed by COH1's Wehrmacht Grenadiers and Panzer Elite's Panzergrenadiers: A basic infantry squad can upgrade itself with either anti-infantry weapons, anti-armor weapons, or a balanced mix of both for versatility (in the case of the Grenadiers).

... And I'm still waiting for feedback on the "Kane manipulated Hitler during WW2 to ensure his downfall" question.

Yet you came across as saying that your interpretation was more likely than the "it's based on physics-defying pseudoscience" one.

... Then that could only mean that the Ion Cannon is not based on a standard electrolaser, since its beams show no deviation in the straightness of their paths. Sure, there is some "fuzz" around the edges, but the beam is otherwise completely straight. Then again, if the name is any indication, the weapon might be actually shooting a beam of ions through sheer kinetic force, and the ionization of a tunnel-like portion of the atmosphere is simply to decrease resistance to the ions being shot.

That aside, though, you are glossing over the most important part of my post: That electrolasers were apparently not a thing yet back when RA1 was made, and thus any claim of RA-verse Tesla Coils being electrolaser-based would be at best a Retcon.

Radar was born during real-life WW 2. It stands to reason that RA1-era radar is even more sophisticated. That said... I didn't know air-to-ground missiles were laser-guided. I thought the typical ones were heat seekers, since even modern tanks are glaringly bright objects in terms of thermal signature.

edited 30th May '16 5:43:14 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Not all of them. The F-117's missiles used laser guidance. As in, a laser designator in the plane's nose painted the target instead of having a spotter on the ground do that.

The F-117 is a pure ground-attacker, and IINM it's pretty much (over)specialized for hitting stationary ground targets rather than mobile ones.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

A target doesn't have to be on the move to have a thermal signature either.

Yeah, but most stationary targets that I'd expect an F-117 to be used against are buildings and man-made apparatuses (e.g. radar arrays), which usually don't differ in overall temperature from their surroundings to have a detectable thermal signature for a heat-seeker to lock on. A modern tank, by comparison, may as well have a giant bull's eye painted on it with neon lights for good measure, unless it's been turned off for long enough that its engine has cooled down to near ambient temperature.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Well, NATO's (and presumably the Allies in the RA universe) Cold War anti-tank missile of choice was the AGM-65 Maverick, which started out with a TV seeker head. The AH-64 that is used by the Allies in Red Alert is equipped with the laser-guided AGM-114 Hellfire, which is perfectly capable of tracking moving targets.

Heat-seeking ground attack munitions never really caught on until quite recently in real life due to IR imaging technology only maturing in the 1990s.

I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot

And it being a rather recent (as in, eighties) development to pack a gas turbine into a tank instead of a diesel engine. A gas turbine that runs so hot that puny burning ethanol from a Molotov cocktail won't even make it cough.

edited 31st May '16 11:02:00 AM by amitakartok

Right. Going back to the Tesla Coils thing, though... If we assume that the Ion Cannon is indeed based on Tesla technology (which, as Amita had more or less successfully argued for, is likely to have been electrolaser-based), then why the heck do we not see any other trace of said tech? You'd think 50 years later it would be more than feasible to create modernized (and thus even more powerful/efficient) Tesla Coils if they had managed to salvage enough of the original tech to create a functioning weaponized electrolaser for shooting a WMD-grade ion beam from orbital altitude.

... And perhaps I should just assume that my Piggybacking on Hitler suggestion was utterly stupid or something, to explain the complete lack of any comment on it since I first posted it.

edited 31st May '16 5:39:19 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

To be fair, with all these time-travel shenanigans, it's kinda hard to ascertain tech development for everything. RA 2 is already confusing enough as it is, then RA 3 came along and suddenly Japanese become something like Romulan.

Kane's history is way too foggy to ascertain, aside from him being involved in WWII somehow. It's just that we don't know whose side he was on in the Tiberian timeline, whereas the Red Alert timeline he's clearly supporting the Soviets in hopes of birthing Nod after an insurrection.

That, and Hitler was generally doomed from the start thanks to how overly aggressive and impractical many of his plans were. Having ambitious goals and aiming for the sky is one thing, but much of his plans hinged upon his opponents being pushovers while everybody else stays neutral as he picked them off, one-by-one, which obviously didn't happen.

Except that Word of God is that the Tiberium Universe traces itself to the Allied victory. My take on it is that the Red Alert version of WW 2 was a Xanatos Gambit on Kane's part: He needs the war to happen, but to him it doesn't matter whether the Soviets win or not, what matters is that whichever faction wins, it has to be in a way that would benefit the future rise of the Brotherhood.

My point was that I think it would be in-character for Kane to work towards turning "generally doomed" into "absolutely doomed" if he determines that the consequences of someone actually succeeding in getting Hitler to start acting smart are too deterimental for his plans to risk leaving the madman to his devices. Hence why I suggested Kane acting as an "advisor" who actually made sure the Fuhrer kept undermining himself to the very end, mostly by ensuring none of Hitler's underlings succeeded in either worming his way into his favor or offing him (i.e. Kane may or may not have been a major reason why every assassination attempt on Hitler failed).

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

A simpler answer may be that Kane himself was learning from past mistakes. He might've legitimately been backing one side and expected them to win, only for the opposite to happen due to a misconception on his part. Hell, that's how he lost to GDI in the first place in Tib Dawn. And because of that loss, thus comes his inspiration of using rebel groups and terror tactics with a fanatical ideology after seeing both the "Godless" Nazi and Soviet regimes collapse.

I like that interpretation better.

IMHO it fits more and makes him more baddass when he is able to just roll with his failures, and re-adjust plans, then it is when he just manipulates it all from the start.

One has to wonder if GDI's funding-cut ploy in their campaign really caught Kane off-guard, though. I've read an entry somewhere on this wiki recently that mentioned the cutscene in which Kane makes an unexpected call to the GDI player character in the middle of the funding cut crisis to mock him, and it uses it as evidence that Kane may have been actually aware that GDI was playing possum. If so, he apparently took the bait on purpose... which, combined with his nonchalant reaction to the destruction of his temple in the final cutscene and especially his calm "embracing" of the Ion Cannon blast that was aiming to kill him, implies that it doesn't matter to his plan if GDI defeats him in this war (and the defeat may in fact have been part of his plan anyway), because he'll still gain what he wants. As for what he wanted, perhaps it ties in to thsi one subentry of his Villain with Good Publicity entry:

I personally disagree. I like Kane better when his failures are kept to a bare minimum, if at all. There's a reason why I considered Sousuke Aizen a refreshing Big Bad in spite of all the Villain Sue accusations that people liked to throw at him.

edited 31st May '16 7:34:05 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

That's what I think too: he wasn't trying to defeat GDI, he was merely provoking the creation and rise of something that can beat back the Scrin harvesting fleet while Kane gets his hand on a Threshold tower. If GDI isn't strong enough to oppose the Scrin, Kane won't have the opportunity to nab the tower.

Actually, I was thinking of it as this: If GDI "wins", then he has a decent Meat Shield to bleed out (and maybe even stalemate) the Scrin while he and the "true believers" of the Brotherhood go for the Threshold Tower. If GDI totally capitulates, then the Brotherhood will be able to become even more powerful than it already was, and may be able to do what GDI proved itself unable to do (namely, provide the manpower and firepower necessary to hold off the Scrin invasion). It's win-win for Kane, in the end.

edited 1st Jun '16 7:41:54 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.