The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Range is included in scale AFAIU, and the screen issue that you speak of apparently wasn't much of a big problem for SupCom fans (probably because you could zoom out so much that the entire map is visible all at once). The transition would be non-trivial, yes, but I don't think it's that big of a hurdle.
Now, melee units... how many of those were there in C&C?
Edited by MarqFJA on Nov 20th 2019 at 8:08:07 PM
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Every single Nod flamethrower unit, for one.
Of which only the Devil's Tongue had any inherent means of avoiding being picked off at long-range.
Edited by amitakartok on Nov 21st 2019 at 4:53:51 PM
Playing mods, in Rot R you have attack dogs and... red guard can use bayonet. Burton always was able to covertly stab enemies with his knife.
Then you have GLA Runners, who are Scary Black Man mercenaries armed with machetes. When they hold it, they gain lots of HP and can soak up lot of damage before dying while bunch of them go past your defenses to hack your infantry, They also run really fast in that mode. I love Comrade Crimson's voice lol When switching to shotgun, they gain similar HP and movement speed values as everyone else and become somewhat more effective against vehicles with AP Bullets upgrade
One thing about Generals and SAGE in general, small maps feel really small. Everything feels cramped and I feel like there's no space to breathe in seeing as you'd build your defenses very closely to your opponents's defenses in a 1vs1 map. I have to play on Twilight Flame to get that "big map" feel.
In Red Alert 2 and YR, even smallest map gives you breathing room and you can engage enemy in middle without it feeling like... you're literally at their or your base's doorstep or inside or whatever.
Edited by Dhiruxide on Nov 21st 2019 at 4:13:30 PM
Streamer
The Rising Sun Oni and basic infantry had a melee of sorts as their secondary attack. Spies also practically have to be in melee range for Bribe. Yuri's Revenge had those grinder tanks. Doggos/equivalent in all Red Alerts are also pure melee. Tanya's C-4 against non-infantry is essentially melee.
FE: Genealogy Story Run 7PM PT Sun, Mon, Fri; Expert Unicorn Overlord 7PM PT Wed, Thurs: http://www.twitch.tv/kuroitsubasatenshi
YR never had grinder tanks unless you mean grinder structures. Lasher tanks have grinders in front but...
Well, one way looking at it, every big vehicle has melee in form of Car Fu, it's always been a staple of C&C to have your MBT crush infantry. To have capacity to crush infantry if you choose to do so I mean. YR introduced the idea of bigger vehicles not only being capable of crushing infantry but other vehicles. I always loved the Allied Battle Fortress because of that
Overlord Tanks in Generals can crush everything that's not another Overlord and in Tiberium Wars you have MC Vs capable of crushing everything if it's a desperate situation!
Edited by Dhiruxide on Nov 21st 2019 at 5:35:41 PM
Streamer
Oh, right, I think I got the Lashers confused with the Red Alert 3 grinders. I just remember the one mission in the expansion where the enemy was spamming those things and they came across a big lake in the middle of the map.
FE: Genealogy Story Run 7PM PT Sun, Mon, Fri; Expert Unicorn Overlord 7PM PT Wed, Thurs: http://www.twitch.tv/kuroitsubasatenshi
MINE!
Red Alert had a couple of melee units:
- Attack Dogs/Bears
- Brutes
- Terror Drones
- That Squid from RA 2 was a melee naval unit even
- Grinder from Red Alert 3
- Desolator Troopers
- Shinobi
- Steel Ronin
Tiberium Wars had
- Buzzers being melee snipers
- Corruptors
Most infantry in Tiberian Dawn were effectively melee. Minigunners could only attack the cell next to them unless it was a (larger than 1x1) building. The only infantry that weren't this short ranged were Rocket Soldiers, Commandoes and just barely in the form of Grenadiers.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
That's a lot more than a "couple" of units.
On a different note, I've been thinking of ideas for a remake of Generals.
Guiding principles:
- Avoid the Unfortunate Implications created by how the game's setting and story were basically a near-future extension of the War on Terror, which was at the time of the game's release in 2003 was on track to encompass Iraq as the next target (which actually happened just one month after Generals was released).
- Avoid both the Fridge Logic created by the original game presenting a complete lack of any military representation of the following entities:
- The member states of the European Union. Germany is the primary battleground for most of the last third of the Zero Hour campaign storyline.
- Russia. It borders several of the Central Asian battlegrounds, and IRL it even rent and administer Baikonur, where the eponymous cosmodrome
that is the centerpiece of a couple of crucial missions is located. Also, the GLA general Dr. Thrax had a stronghold within Russia near the border with Georgia in the mission Snow Fall... and the USA somehow had permission to assault it, when simple logic dictates that Russia would never permit such a thing unless the military has literally collapsed and chaos is devastating the nation (no indication of such a thing exists in the game).
- The countries of the Middle East. Several missions take place all over the region, namely the countries of Turkey, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Iran, a classified location somewhere in the region, and Egypt. This, combined with the whole "near-future extension of the War on Terror" angle and the obvious nature of the GLA as an ersatz for Al-Qaeda and the Taliban that had been overthrown in Afghanistan just a couple of years before the game's release, gives the unfortunate impression of All Muslims/Arabs/Middle Easterners Are Terrorists.
- Israel. You'd think that the GLA, as a stand-in for Al-Qaeda and Taliban, would naturally attack Israel at some point during the storyline. But noooooo, apparently the GLA has a much bigger beef with Germany instead!
- Try to give as much significance to rising regional powers as possible, rather than limit the faction makeup to the world's actual superpowers.
- Move the setting even further into the future to make the more fanciful technologies more plausible.
Some ideas that I came up with, partly based on the above guidelines:
- The game would be set in the latter half of this century. Mid-2060s sounds good as a provisional time frame.
- The geopolitical map is defined by the presidency of POTUS No.45, Delroy Teufelnote , which is widely reviled both at home and abroad. Beyond the rapid rise in hate crimes and white nationalism, mismanagement of the domestic economy and waging completely unjustified trade wars with both China and Europe had backfired by causing a deep recession the likes of which had never been seen since the Great Depression of the past century, undoing the gains that President Obama had worked hard to make after the 2008-2009 global crisis. Meanwhile, Teufel's foreign policies had all but ruined the formerly tight relations between it and its European partners, which led to the collapse of NATO soon after 2020, and had further tarnished similar relationships with various countries around the world. The situation became even worse after the blatantly rigged election of 2020 in Teufel's favor despite his wide unpopularity in the wake of his attempted impeachment (which, despite failing in the Senate due to Teufel's party controlling it, had managed to convict him in the court of public opinion by airing out his dirty laundry); fears of a second American civil war were ultimately put to rest when he was forced out of power before the end of 2020 after his entire cabinet was crippled by a constant slew of resignations and arrests, along with several leading figures of Teufel's party in the Congress.
- I'll post more detailed descriptions tomorrow, but in brief, my conception of the faction makeup is as follows:
- The Global Revolution Army, a reworking of the GLA that is inspired by the more multinational version that was intended to be featured in the cancelled Generals 2.
- A USA-led alliance that includes Israel.
- China, which has been thriving economically and militarily ever since the communist old guard were ousted and replaced by younger blood in the 2030s. Its now a true superpower on par with the USA, and exerts considerable influence on many client states in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.
- Russia, which has similarly resurged from its previous decline after a Rise of the Reds-style revolution.
- A United Europe.
- An alliance led by Japan (which threw off Article 9's restrictions after a series of terrible GRA-perpetrated terrorist attacks despite extensive attempts to stay out of the Second War on Terror) and including South Korea and Taiwan, who decided to put aside their differences in the face of China's growing threat and the USA having proved itself to be unreliable as an ally (there are still US bases on Okinawa and South Korea, for the record).
- A Middle Eastern Coalition that formed in the wake of a second, more successful Arab Spring. This is the faction with the most hatred for the GRA, specifically targeting the significant radical Islamic element within it; where the other factions might grudgingly settle for kicking the GRA out of their territory, this one pursues a zero-tolerance, No Survivors policy towards any GRA terror groups that it clashes with, refusing to give any quarter even in the face of genuine offers of surrender.
Edited by MarqFJA on Nov 26th 2019 at 6:06:39 PM
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Tho I'm curious: would you incorporate some ideas from concept art? The Russians who never came to be had the Tzar Land Ship. In fact, it'd be a suitable one-build limit epic unit for your setting and timeline. For campaign, an experimental prototype Russians are developing.
And do you think the Khans, who were like a proto-China, would have place in your setting as well? Information on them is unfortunately bare, you'd have to interpret and add to it.
Edited by Dhiruxide on Nov 26th 2019 at 4:11:30 PM
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
... No, for the simple fact that one of the few saving graces of Generalsverse in my eyes is that it tries it damndest to stay maintain plausibility with respect to real life, compared to the unambiguous scifi-ness of the Tiberiumverse and Red Alertverse. Much of the cut content, including what you just mentioned, is anathema to such plausibility.
That being said, you can bet your ass that Russia would live to the expectations set by its counterpart in the Red Alert universe by fielding the biggest and most badass father of all tanks in the setting, such that China's vaunted Overlord would feel rather inadequate. Like, imagine a Mammoth tank on steroids that's as big if not even bigger than the P. 1000 Ratte.
Edited by MarqFJA on Nov 26th 2019 at 6:33:04 PM
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The Teufel storyline sound similar to a Turn based strategy game that was released a long time ago on the ps2 and Xbox. I forgot it's name but the storyline begins with an unpopular President was able to bribe the Supreme Court to allow him to run for a third term and somehow won the election much to everyones anger possibly because of voter fraud. Then during the President's third term swearing in, a nuclear bomb is detonated in DC, killing all of the top officials in the government. As a result of this power vacuum, many states form their own factions which includes Texas, Southern States, Midwest States, West Coast, East Coast and European Peacekeepers helping whatever remains of the original government in power, which leads to the 2nd American Civil War.
I'm gonna have to stop you right there. Between the blatantly obvious political motive of such a story that reeks of Box Office Bomb written all over it (seriously, It's Been Done and it failed every time), it sounds like an even cheaper than the cheapest dystopia novels.
I'd just leave the politics of the US getting involved either being directly plot relevant (say the US comes under attack by one of the other factions) or just leave it nebulous and prone to Wild Mass Guessing.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
You are referring to Shattered Union, and I admit it was partly on my mind while I was writing that.
You're going to need a more elaborate argument than that to convince me why this supposedly a bad idea.
There are a multitude of problems with Europe as a single faction.
- Although the US is constantly whining that Europe are not sufficiently pulling their weight in NATO in terms of financial contribution, they don't actually want Europe to not be reliant on US protection either due to the loss of political influence that would mean. Every single president since Eisenhower has been trying to extort Europe to pay more for the continued protection instead. Hell, Trump brought the topic up just last week and didn't limit it to Europe either (he wants South Korea and Japan to pay more as well, despite SK already paying billions on top of paying for the continued operation of US bases in their territory and 99% of JSDF hardware being imported from the US).
- There's also the fact that the US' military allies buy/lease most of their serious stuff from US defense companies, meaning that the US military-industrial complex is making a killing off the current status quo and has no economic incentive to change it. Just look at the pending export of F-35s.
- Then there's also the fact that there's no majority support behind a unified military within the EU's member states either. Right now, the French are in favor of a unified European armed force but the Germans are stiffly against it on the basis that Europe doesn't need one.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
Did you miss the part where I said that the setting of the remake takes place around 40 years from now?
Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.
You're making out the US to be this Donald Trump dictator and painting everybody as some white nationalist or racist or bigot or otherwise deplorables.
In shortest terms, you're running a blatant left wing political propaganda. An Author Tract if you will.
There was a movie that should've already come out doing the same thing. It was called The Hunt, and got pulled by Universal Studios for very obvious reasons. People don't like being made into caricatures, especially not what could be your widest audience.
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
Yeah, most people in the US hate Trump's guts. Especially in the military leadership.
Despite his dictatorial ambitions they're not going to go anywhere.
Edited by LeGarcon on Nov 27th 2019 at 1:28:01 PM
Oh really when?
Merkel is against a unified Euroforce, though some elements of the German Defense Ministry or whatever it's called have expressed support or at least entertained the idea.
To be fair to Marq's proposal, a lot can change in 40 years. A lot changed in less than the last 20. Twenty years ago, NATO was being used as Germany's bludgeon in the Balkans, then after 9/11 it became very America-centric and by now has largely withered away on the vine. Who's to say 20 years from now there WON'T be a Euroforce of some kind?
The thing about political predictions based on today, they never last. History moves too quick, changes too suddenly. What was unthinkable one year becomes reality not much later.
Which means in the context of a Generals remake, an EU army would actually be just fine.
...yeah, this kind of discussion I won't partake in, partly because of ignorance and partly I don't want this to turn ugly.
Edited by Dhiruxide on Nov 27th 2019 at 7:20:21 PM
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
Honestly I'd have more fun with it than trying to make it more grounded or super political.
Generals was already a little silly with geopolitics
Oh really when?
I always imagined if that Generals made a comeback, it would stick to the three existing factions. However, there would be changes to their style.
- The USA would be changed into the Western Alliance, merging with the EU.
- The Chinese would be less a blatant copy of the Red Army. Red Guards would be Manchu Infantry, for example.
- The GLA would actually be a global terrorist group, not just a Qurac based insurgency. Influences would come from Western Terrorists as well. Maybe have a primitive air force for the sake of balance.
The Cosmopolitan Fictioneer
I honestly would prefer the GLA replacement to be more like Act of War's Consortium or Act of Aggression's Cartel, i.e. a combination of a "quantity over quality" horde of insurgents and other deniable assets armed with low-tech, inexpensive weapons systems on the one hand, and an Elite Army of high-tech Private Military Contractors on the other hand. It would make them being an actual threat to military superpowers like the USA or China more believable if there was a cabal of wealthy backers that is propping up the decentralized network of terror groups around the world and has a small private army of elite troops for when they need to take a more direct hand.
Despite his dictatorial ambitions they're not going to go anywhere.
Edited by MarqFJA on Nov 28th 2019 at 5:41:22 PM
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Hmmm, isn't it better to play to GLA's strengths and exaggerate them? They're supposed to use every possible dirty tactic imaginable to win. They're the Stealth Experts with cloaking, like to set up booby traps everywhere and rely on Confusion Fu while being utterly atrocious in direct combat. They would have stolen high tech to help them and make things...believable if not plausible.
They should instill Paranoia Fuel in anyone and anywhere. And trying to fight them on their terms with stealth jets would be risky but rewarding if pulled off right, I suppose.
I'd actually de-fang any means of direct combat which means no marauder tanks or battle buses. Scorpion Tanks are all they'd have when it comes to heavy armor and they'd have tricks up their sleeves, full of nasty surprises. If they rely on overwhelming numbers, it is purely for distraction, as baits.
Edited by Dhiruxide on Nov 28th 2019 at 6:53:41 PM
Not just increasing the scale, but increasing the range. I've modded every Command and Conquer game from Red Alert 1 to Generals Zero Hour and the common thread to all of them is I increase the range of all units' weapons (outside those with a Suicide Attack). Suddenly everything opens up when you do that. You can fit more units firing on a target, differentiate tanks from aircraft from artillery from what have you, you can suddenly make yes naval units viable (and very dangerous to face) and it makes bases seem a lot smaller than the veritable metropolitan cities you'd think they are based on the (short) firing ranges of default CNC.
The main drawbacks of increasing the ranges is melee/suicide units become a lot less useful and you have the issue of weapons' ranges easily meeting or exceeding the size of your screen.