Command And Conquer series

It includes Tiberian Dawn and the first Red Alert, along with their expansion packs. Oh, and a ton of "behind the scenes" content - unused cutscenes, outtakes, etc.

The older games usually allowed you to adjust the game speed. It'll probably look better if you increase it a bit.

Edited by SgtRicko on Mar 11th 2020 at 4:10:52 AM

And this time they hopefully don't bind game speed to the CPU clock.

So is the limited edition worth it? Are the goodies high enough quality to justify the price?

After the controversy of Fallout 76's awful schwag-quality duffel bag and helmet, it's honestly impossible to say until the product has been released... which, given this is a limited-time release, you'll have no way of knowing until it's too late. The Artbook is a surefire bet though.

Edited by SgtRicko on Mar 11th 2020 at 4:45:33 AM

Jim said the collection will be flat-priced at US$19.99, but the price tag I'm seeing on Steam in Saudi riyals converts to a little over US$29.

Mine is $22.55, at current EUR-USD exchange rate.

Steam does regional pricing, you know.

Right, and the exchange ratio is changing rapidly at the moment.

Ah yes, the whole virus and oil thing.

Wow, nice. Considering splurging on the Collector's Ed. because I'm a nostalgic sap for C&C. Getting the games regardless, because I've kind of wanted to stream the older titles, but the hassle of finagling all my old installs with a modern setup had me waiting to see if this turned out.

If only my uncle was here to see this... I'd love them to remaster Tib. Sun and Red Alert 2 as well someday. And if this good will continues, imagine it for Generals eventually (might have to wait till 2028-2030 for that but it's okay).

Nice. Hopefully the game will be out on gog.com

Unlikely.

And someone on SV noticed that the Steam version still requires registration of an EA account to link with the Steam account for verification/refund purposes.

If that's true, kinda sucks for the average person, but I guess I can use it as an excuse to recover my account and find out if I still have access to my Uprising install.

E3 has been cancelled.

If there was going to be an announcement for C&C there, that ship has sailed now.

Say, has anything official been said about whether the Remasters' AI had its glaring flaws addressed (e.g. incapabable of using navies, very suboptimal base layouts, and boringly single-minded obsession with the same kind of Zerg Rush)?

Edited by MarqFJA on Mar 11th 2020 at 11:25:58 AM

The TD AI wasn't even programmed to build structures outside pre-determined positions, which made skirmish impossible (since the AI wouldn't even deploy their MCV). Yet we've seen in the trailer that skirmish play is an option with GDI and Nod, which pretty much guarantees that the devs did make a proper AI for the remaster.

I just hope they found a way to keep the AI competent without insta-refilling all of its siloes every single time a Harvester gets back. And for that matter, keep the AI from single-mindedly mass-retaliating against the first unit that scratches its Harvester, including making Harvesters no longer single-mindedly chasing down an Attack Bike that hit them once then ran away behind a gauntlet of Obelisks.

Edited by amitakartok on Mar 11th 2020 at 1:10:38 PM

Oh god, Silos. I don't look forward to that shit again. If it wasn't attempting to make it as close to the initial product as possible, I would have hoped they would have made silos bigger at least. Always hated having to build those things just to not lose profits.

Then hope they followed TS' and TW's examples where Harvesters only unload as much as your current silo capacity has room for, then stop and idle at the refinery until enough capacity is freed up that they can unload completely and resume harvesting.

Wouldn't work with RA Harvesters, though, as those unload instantly.

I'd say multiplayer and skirmish matches should have a toggle of whether silos are required or all refineries have infinite storage capacity, but that would mean every single match toggling silos off forever.

Edited by amitakartok on Mar 11th 2020 at 2:46:21 PM

Good. Silos were a mistake.

Depends on the game. Have you played Supreme Commander?

^^ Yes and no. Yes it was a mistake because "Silos needed" qualifies a Most Annoying Sound and the limit on cash makes you waste valuable space so you can have more. No it wasn't a mistake because it limited the AI every bit as much as you and with how the AI rampantly spends money and produces much faster than you ever will, having no cash limits is a recipe for unnecessary pain without adjusting the AI. Of course that said, sometimes an enemy AI with unlimited cash is quite desirable whether for the challenge or the consistency.

Edited by MajorTom on Mar 11th 2020 at 7:28:38 AM

Think they can ape Starcraft's AI for this? Or something, if they have the source code that means they can implement a truly brutal and clever AI.

Starcraft actually has a rather simple AI; I read a scripting tutorial for it last year. All it's programmed to do is to follow a pre-determined build order, then enter a loop of building a fixed-composition attack force and send it out. You can specify the composition of said attack force and rotate between multiple compositions, but there's no way to see what army build the enemy is using and tailor your force against it.

What the community-made AI scripts actually do is set the AI to build bigger attack groups, along with periodically giving the AI free resources (which the stock AI scripts already do in the campaign missions, the custom scripts just add this to skirmish play too).

TS and RA2 have a similar AI with fixed task force compositions declared in one of the .ini files for each faction.

Only later RTS games like Empire Earth and Dawn of War have adaptive AI that deliberately counters your current force composition. DoW in particular looks at what the enemy player currently has, builds up to counter that, then attack once its cumulative army cost is bigger than the enemy's. That is, it only attacks if it has the upper hand and comes in force, rather than wasting money on small piecemeal pushes like the AI of C&C games; if you're used to the latter, you're in for a rude awakening. Company of Heroes, using the same engine, further ups the ante by having the AI continually probe your defenses and harass your resources to keep you on your toes while it's building up to attack, in addition to cheating with resources at higher levels. It's so good at keeping you off-balance that it can get even experienced ladder players on the ropes at the highest difficulty level.

Edited by amitakartok on Mar 12th 2020 at 1:34:28 PM

Have I mentioned how much I love Company of Heroes and believe it should be looked to for inspiration on how to make a good RTS game?

Been eyeing Command and Conquer collection primarily for Generals. Does the game run well in W10?