Command And Conquer series

I mean if you just stick only to games that exist I feel the continuity would work just fine.

Plus there is always Generals 2, or making another CNC universe.

Continuity's a mess in both the Tiberian series and Red Alert.

Turns out when pitting groups of flamethrowers versus grenadiers in Red Alert - both of which are known for their explosive deaths - the results are surprisingly hard to predict. A horde on both sides literally died instantaneously thanks to a chain reaction of said explosive deaths.

While thinking up ideas for my hypothetical revision of the Red Alert franchise, I started wondering... It would be plausible if the Soviet Union's widespread atrocities across occupied Europe would breed and enflame pre-existing Slavophobia and anticommunism (which, yes, did exist around this time frame, in at least those countries that bordered ethnically Slavic ones, e.g. Greece) to such heights that an Allied counteroffensive into the Soviet motherland would quickly be marred by many Allied soldiers and officers committing war crimes upon the Soviet populace in revenge, thus giving the USSR vengeance as a motivation for instigating a second global war with the Allies later on, right? IRL the Allie forces did commit their own war crimes against the Axis powers in retaliation to Axis war crimes after all, so it's not unrealistic.

Edited by MarqFJA on Feb 5th 2021 at 12:16:09 PM

Totally plausible and already supported by canon as far back as RA1. Refer to Stavros reacting to finding an injured and defenseless Stalin by gagging and smothering him so that he won't be able to call for help after Stavros buries him alive under the debris and leaves him there to die slowly.

The Allied soldiers do not like the Soviets. Genocide Backfire does that to an antagonist faction.

Yeah. I'm even thinking of having the WW 2-era Allies suffer a schism over this: The USA and other non-European countries that joined the Allies late into the conflict were naturally spared the traumatic horrors of Soviet occupation, and although witnessing the aftermath of Soviet atrocities and experiencing first-hand the vicious cruelty of Soviet forces in battle would naturally cause those countries' troops to be prone to committing war crimes in the course of vengeful reprisal, they would be largely shocked by the sheer pervasiveness and extremity of the European troops' retaliatory atrocities upon both captured/surrendering Soviet troops and (once the Allies invade the USSR) civilians but also captured collaborators (or even those merely suspected of having collaborated with the Soviets).

After the war ended with the Allies being pushed back to something close to OTL Cold War borders, the Europeans were lambasted by the non-Europeans for the unnecessary excess of anti-Soviet war crimes on their end, in no small part because they had been successfully spun by the surviving Soviet political and military leadership to justify their war of aggression and reignite the Soviet population's support, and also because the non-European Allies' citizens were rapidly losing enthusiasm for continuing support of the European Alliance as more and more of their war crimes are exposed, and the largely USA-led Siberian offensive's catastrophic failure had especially sapped US-American support for continued involvement in the conflict. With the USA — their only major ally — more or less threatening to call off the still-ongoing negotiations for crucial financial aid to rebuild their war-torn countries, the European Alliance was left with no choice but to accept an armistice with the USSR, which established the demarcation line along where the frontlines had finally stagnated to by the time the last major (counter)offensive had ended.

This would also justify something else that I had in mind: Rather than the Allies being a single faction with largely identical arsenals and only relatively limited difference between its subfactions in the post-RA1 period, they'd be broken up into multiple independent factions that just happen to have broad similarities in aesthetics and technology and sharing a common enemy in the Communist bloc, albeit differing significantly in their foreign policy and military strategy in tackling the threat. Among the "Democratic Bloc", for example, Europe and Japan have the more weird technologies like Europe's signature chronotech and Japan's walking mechs, while the USA and Britain prefer more "tried and true" technologies (not that they don't have cutting-edge technologies).

The description of "hybrid armed actors" in this article sounds a lot like what the Brotherhood of Nod and the GLA are. What do you guys think?

That description easily fits the GLA, but Nod's the weird one.

Tiberian Wars clearly mentions that a great deal of the Brotherhood's resources come from corporations, mercenaries, local militias and a few governments, but where things get foggy is the religion. The lore's never been clear as to what exactly happens when the brotherhood takes over a culture that's particularly religious. Does the Brotherhood supplant the local beliefs? Do they allow a sort of co-existence? Or is it some kind of weird situation where you have radical Islamic fighters claiming allegiance to Kane and espousing the Brotherhood's beliefs, yet still technically claiming to be Muslim?

Nod ideology is only quasi-religious; as far as canon statements go, it's not known to make any actual statements about the existence of God, specify forms of worship, or several other things that you'd expect a religion to have, and yet it's clear that the ideology reveres both Kane and Tiberium in a way that is very similar to religious worship, especially since Kane is outright described as a "Messiah". It's all too possible that the ideology adapts itself to co-opt the local religion for its purposes whenever possible, in a similar way to how the Imperial Cult in Warhammer 40,000 does to native religions when the Imperium re-assimilates a lost human colony ("They worship your sun as a god? We'll just tell them that the Emperor is the god of said sun!").

On a different note, does anyone recognize the gun that Tanya takes from the Allied soldier at the end of this video?

Is there a better video available? It's a bit too blurry to make out the details. My guess is that it's an American M60 LMG with a few attachments, because that's what the other cutscenes and concept art showed the Allied GI's carrying.

Not really. Keep in mind it not only comes from a game released in 2000, but the video in question was supposed to only play within the tiny mini-map window; the only way to get a better video is if you could get your hands on the master tape, and who knows if it survived after all these years (so much RA1 master tapes were lost forever, after all).

I did ask in the Gun Thread, and apparently it's clear enough that it's an M60, with a lesser probability of it being an M240.

You know, I've been thinking about how Mental Omega's Tanya had her dual handguns swapped out for a laser rifle to give her significantly better anti-ground vehicle capability (planting C4 charges is suboptimal against any vehicle with anti-infantry weapons or escorted by others with such armaments) because apparently they couldn't add another weapon to her due to hard engine constraints. Now I'm all up for buffing Tanya's anti-vehicle effectiveness, but I also don't like doing away with her signature dual-wielding of handguns. What would you guys suggest?

Edited by MarqFJA on Mar 1st 2021 at 8:18:24 PM

In the context of mental omega, or your own thing?

Well, one thing I was considering a few years ago is that Tanya still has anti-vehicle C4, but throws it at range as a Sticky Bomb instead of walking up to the tank for Insert Grenade Here.

My own thing, general use, pick whichever you want.

What about making all hero units stealth by default, the same way they are in Generals? Then she'd be able to approach a vehicle without alerting it, and only be exposed while planting the charge (which takes a few seconds). Combine that with a cooldown for her charges, and it would make Tanya a hit-and-run type of hero unit when it comes to non-infantry targets.

Except for the Mirage tank and the submarines, there aren't any true stealth units in RA 2. So if Tanya had the ability to become invisible, then you'd have to include stealth detection, which is a whole new can of worms.

Edited by SgtRicko on Mar 4th 2021 at 6:56:26 AM

That's why there are total conversion mods that recreate older games through newer ones, you know.

Doesn't RA2 still have the TS logic for infantry detecting invisible units on adjacent cells?

it also has dogs.

My idea would be giving Tanya a means to dash to tanks to close the distance on planting her chargers, which has a cooldown.

That seems similar to some unit abilities in RA3. The Imperial Warrior had their Banzai Charge where they dashed forward and automatically performed melee attacks on any infantry in their way, and the Shogun battleship had their Ramming Speed where they engage a forward-mounted shield and rushed at full speed to literally ram whichever unfortunate unit is in their path.

If combined with Generals-style stealth, then it could be balanced by having Tanya be revealed when she activates this dash-move ability.

If this video is correct, apparently GDI didn't master anti-grav technology until C&C4. Which if that's the case, how the heck do we explain the Kodiak being aero-dynamic and capable of VTOL?

I thought it was obvious that the Kodiak had scaled-up versions of the conventional jet-based thrusters that are the hallmark of the Orca family of aircraft. Presumably it had an alternative set of thrusters for flight in the higher reaches of Earth's atmosphere in order to reach the GDSS Philadelphia.

Edited by MarqFJA on Mar 12th 2021 at 3:32:39 PM

Well, this video went into some interesting crack-fic / crossover territory...

Holy crap, I didn't even know the manual for Tib Sun: Firestorm went into so much detail regarding the Tiberium wildlife.

This video also convinced me further that Kane might've manipulated the tiberium initially used to infect Earth into more of a terraforming mutagen instead of a means of harvesting planets and their minerals. GDI's supposed solution using the Tacticus to slow the infection at the end of Firestorm probably removed that trait and caused it to revert, instead of the sudden mass death of tiberian wildlife being a new evolutionary stage.

Still, doesn't explain why Kane's motivations and stance towards using Tiberium changed so much between Tib Sun and Tib Wars. He basically went from wanting humanity to "ascend," either via mutating everyone into the Forgotten or becoming cyborg slaves under Cabal into wanting to capture an active Scrin Threshold tower.

I'm thinking that the Threshold was always his primary mission objective. To make it happen, he needed Tiberium to run amok so that the Scrin will come, but he also needed humanity to not be extinct by the time that happens (since if they're extinct, who will take that tower from the Scrin?). Thus Project Re-Genesis, the whole ascension shebang and Cabal's cyborgs were Kane going out of his way to ensure that humans will be able to survive in the coming world in one form or another after he's gone; he just didn't ask our opinion or consent.

Once he had the Threshold, Kane no longer needed the Scrin, thus the TCN opened up as an option since if he doesn't need Tiberium to run amok anymore, just getting rid of it altogether is a much easier long-term solution for ensuring humanity's survival than to keep trying to force a clearly unwilling and uncooperative humanity to change themselves instead.