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Mon, 2014-01-20 11:08
I was going to post on moddb but I had a lot to say so I decided to post here. First off just wanted to let you know that me and my friends really enjoy this mod! Loved it when I found it a year or two ago but this just breathes new life into it :]. This is really the best of old cnc games without any of the hangups from balance or lack of diversity, you guys have really done some great work here.
The new factions mostly have a good selection of units, and it was fun to discover the playstyles that go with each one. GDI stands out even more as a macro powerhouse, its kind of hurt by a lack of unique units compared to other factions and they come out seeming a bit bland but theyre still an overall solid faction. Didnt get a chance to play them much but I was hoping something was done to make jet infantry actually useful. NOD has a good selection of specialized units compared to the other factions and so far the ballancing seems to be solid, and staying with the sort of guerrilla playstyle of matching your strengths to the enemy's weaknesses. The transport slot to the light tank is one of my all time favorite features, genius man xD. My only complaint is that stealth tanks still dont really have much of a use, they die fast and the money spent building up a force strong enough to do a significant sneak attack is better spent elsewhere.
The Allies work very well as a faction, almost too well I think haha. Many of the games I've played in the new version have been either as or against the allies, and I've noticed they have a significant early-game advantage over the other factions. The rangers are a really powerful vehicle for harassment and their cheap cost means they can be mass produced early on, the flak hovers are also cheap and serve as good damage soakers for those rangers and also infantry, and light tanks are also very mobile. I actually really like this combination but in the early game I got the feeling that it is a bit overpowered. The threat of a ranger raid puts the other player on the defensive early on and the cheapness and buildspeed of flaks and rangers gives the allied player a means to quickly make a defensive force, basically closing out any options for an early offense for the other player. NOD has less problems with this as they can counter with their own light units long enough to get flame tanks but there are still relatively more resources needing to be spent on defense from the outset. With soviets this is really egregious as really the only good option I found against this is walls (hey, finally a good reason to make walls!) and if the cards are played right your harvester would easily die. That said I really like the allies unit composition, and longbows and chrono tanks make for excellent late game units. One thing I noticed is that medium tanks cost the same as light. Is this intentional? I don't think an extra 100 credits would hurt there.
So that leaves the soviets, which I've only seriously played against the allies but I found that the balance with those two factions at least works really well, a really nice contrast to the days of just making 20 heavy tanks in vanilla ra. The heavy APC is great and I like how there is more focus on infantry especially in the early game due to lack of a cheap gunner unit and no anti air. I like the unit variety and the way that the weaknesses of the faction are made in such a way as to encourage a more diverse army, although I have done a simple tank spam build to compare it to (I generally disprove of tank spamming anyway, a varied army composition is just so much more fun to play and play against). I miss the dogs but theyre really not that necessary. One more thing I really want to ask: is it possible for air units to attack other air units? If so I feel like this would be a good role for the soviet Yak as they are lacking aa, and perhaps some other air units too.
Sorry for the rambling wall of text, it is late and I am sleepy ^_^
The new factions mostly have a good selection of units, and it was fun to discover the playstyles that go with each one. GDI stands out even more as a macro powerhouse, its kind of hurt by a lack of unique units compared to other factions and they come out seeming a bit bland but theyre still an overall solid faction. Didnt get a chance to play them much but I was hoping something was done to make jet infantry actually useful. NOD has a good selection of specialized units compared to the other factions and so far the ballancing seems to be solid, and staying with the sort of guerrilla playstyle of matching your strengths to the enemy's weaknesses. The transport slot to the light tank is one of my all time favorite features, genius man xD. My only complaint is that stealth tanks still dont really have much of a use, they die fast and the money spent building up a force strong enough to do a significant sneak attack is better spent elsewhere.
The Allies work very well as a faction, almost too well I think haha. Many of the games I've played in the new version have been either as or against the allies, and I've noticed they have a significant early-game advantage over the other factions. The rangers are a really powerful vehicle for harassment and their cheap cost means they can be mass produced early on, the flak hovers are also cheap and serve as good damage soakers for those rangers and also infantry, and light tanks are also very mobile. I actually really like this combination but in the early game I got the feeling that it is a bit overpowered. The threat of a ranger raid puts the other player on the defensive early on and the cheapness and buildspeed of flaks and rangers gives the allied player a means to quickly make a defensive force, basically closing out any options for an early offense for the other player. NOD has less problems with this as they can counter with their own light units long enough to get flame tanks but there are still relatively more resources needing to be spent on defense from the outset. With soviets this is really egregious as really the only good option I found against this is walls (hey, finally a good reason to make walls!) and if the cards are played right your harvester would easily die. That said I really like the allies unit composition, and longbows and chrono tanks make for excellent late game units. One thing I noticed is that medium tanks cost the same as light. Is this intentional? I don't think an extra 100 credits would hurt there.
So that leaves the soviets, which I've only seriously played against the allies but I found that the balance with those two factions at least works really well, a really nice contrast to the days of just making 20 heavy tanks in vanilla ra. The heavy APC is great and I like how there is more focus on infantry especially in the early game due to lack of a cheap gunner unit and no anti air. I like the unit variety and the way that the weaknesses of the faction are made in such a way as to encourage a more diverse army, although I have done a simple tank spam build to compare it to (I generally disprove of tank spamming anyway, a varied army composition is just so much more fun to play and play against). I miss the dogs but theyre really not that necessary. One more thing I really want to ask: is it possible for air units to attack other air units? If so I feel like this would be a good role for the soviet Yak as they are lacking aa, and perhaps some other air units too.
Sorry for the rambling wall of text, it is late and I am sleepy ^_^
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You've got Lin Kuei Ominae to thank for that feature
Once they've been detected, they indeed die very quick, but if you manage to sneak them into an enemy base without being detected, they can destroy important structures quite quick. With 6 of them they all need to fire just 4 times to destroy a Construction Yard for instance and they're also quite effective at destroying unprotected harvesters.
Admittedly they do become rather useless once your opponent starts deploying a lot of Mobile Sensor Arrays, so I might increase their hitpoints to match that of the Stealth Tanks in TS.
(Edit: I'll leave the hitpoints as they are after all, considering the Stealth Tank's fast speed is more than enough compensation)
I just went over the code and it seems you're right; Rangers are indeed rather overpowered for their price, so I'll definitely fix this in the next update. Currently rangers actually do more damage than Humm-vees even though they cost far less and because of an error in the weapon's code, they also do far too much damage against buildings. For the next update I'll make the damage similar to the damage inflicted by the Humm-vee/Nod Buggy and I'll raise its price to 380 credits.
In the case of flak hovercrafts and light tanks you get exactly what you pay for however and although the cheap flak hovercrafts do make good cannon fodder, they don't have a whole lot of armor and their weapons don't deal an incredible amount of damage either (their shots deal slightly less damage damage than the Light Tank's shots).
This is indeed intentional, which is why the Medium Tank requires a tech center first. This is basically a compensation for the Allies' lack of very powerful late-game units such as the Mammoth Tank, V2, SSM, XO and Tesla Tank; instead the Allies get extra cheap main battle units which have a chance to counter these powerful units with high numbers because they're more cost-effective than the main battle units of other factions (they're almost exactly the same as GDI's Medium Tanks, but they cost 100 credits less).
I would've liked to include the dogs, but unfortunately the TS has no logic to allow the dog to leap towards its target or to even move to the same cell as the infantry that it's attacking, so including it would've done more damage than good since there'd be no way around having its attack just look plain awful.
Unfortunately this is another feature the TS engine lacks; aside from jumping jet infantry, no air units can attack other air units at all.
For mobile AA, Soviet can actually use the Mammoth Tank (and the Bazooka infantry of course, although I personally wouldn't since infantry don't live long
You brought up some good points, so thanks a lot for your feedback. Don't hesitate to post again if something else comes to mind (but preferably at PPM so that more people will be able to read and respond to your post).