Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3

[K. A. Pital]

Cheesy remake of RA 2 with crappy (for this age) graphics. Yeah, and scantily clad women. Go USSR

[Vanas]

First impressions, after a few skirmishes:

Just as silly and cheesy as we like it. The Empire has some nifty stuff, I was island hopping with Strikers and Tengu, switching them as appropriate when over the sea. Also, those Shogun Battleships are so very, very lethal. Took out a Soviet base with two of them.

The Allies seem to get shafted in a few circumstances, especially navally. The Dreadnought and Shogun can't be intercepted, but a few flak troopers prevents any of my Aircraft Carriers from doing damage. The Destroyer's kinda pathetic, too, but I'm fond of the Jamaican(?) Hydrofoils, who prove very useful at 'Scramblin' dere eggs'.

As for the Soviets, the Magnet satellite seems to be a 'win' button. I had all my resourcers snaffled, and my navy sent skywards. Still, Cryo-copters and Peacekeepers did the job, eventually.

[Hawkwings]

I think the hydrofoil is supposed to be the counter for the soviet and imperial long-range bombardment ships. But yeah, the allied navy does feel shafted. They have no real anti-naval hard hitter.

On land though, mirage tanks, guardian tanks (and the target painter) and IFVs with javelins inside are pretty fun to see in action. Just watch out for that magnetic satellite.

[Laughing Mechanicus]

I think the hydrofoil is supposed to be the counter for the soviet and imperial long-range bombardment ships. But yeah, the allied navy does feel shafted. They have no real anti-naval hard hitter.

The saving grace of the Allied Navy is their special abilities.

Combine the Hydrofoils Weapons Scrambler, the Assault Destroyers Blackhole Armour, the Cryocopters freeze beam and the (massively unappreciated) Blackout Missiles from Aircraft Carriers and you can really screw up an enemy force. The enemy can usually deal with each of those abilities on its own, but when you use them in combination it simply become too difficult for the enemy to manage.

A good trick with Blackout Missiles when attacking a base is to use them to disable the enemies power plants directly rather than targeting individual anti-air defences. Doing so will take the defences offline anyway which allows you to quickly destroy the power plants before they come back online. If you are targeting a Soviet Super Reactor this has the added bonus of blowing up a chunk of their base, and denying them an important tech structure.

[Covenant]

The allied Navy is without question worthless as an entire group, and laughably bad individually as well. The amount of micro-management required to keep it functional is incredibly absurd, and the fact that the aircraft carrier has the Blackout Missile to turn off air defenses doesn't change the sad reality that interception concerns aren't present for the Japanese and Soviet bombardment vessels anyway, which are more than capable of dismantling a base themselves. The one advantage to the carrier is the ease at which it strikes fast-moving ground units and murders things like Apocolypse Tanks, but overall it's the worst of the three big boats and the only actual strike vessel the allies have. The lack of a sea-to-sea combat unit or available amphibious attacker leaves the allied airforce as the main killer, but at that point you wonder why to even build boats.

This could have all been solved if the Japanese and Allied vessels swapped Cruisers and Destroyers, which is a clear mistake and something that should have been caught 10 seconds after the unit spread was proposed. The allies need a dedicated anti-naval force capable of handling submarines and do not need amphibious bullshit tanks, while the Japanese do. The allies already have tactical deployment supremacy, with summonable air-squads, the ability to airdrop infantry transports, and to use the chronosphere to teleport units anywhere instantly. Water really is no barrier to them, so the most fair way to handle their navy is as a sea-superiority force combined with long-range support artillery to soften up a base for air assault. The Blackout missile does that perfectly, so the only problem is their lack of a sea-to-sea assault unit. Clearly, the Naginata would have been better off as an Allied unit, helping them to fight off subs and keep their force alive in the water. The destroyer adds little to a navy battle as compared to the Akula and the Naginata, and the land-traverse ability is pathetic. On land it is far outpunched by the Apocolypse Tank and King Oni, which are faster anyway, and the backup force of Guardian tanks can't travel with the Assault Destroyer anyway, so it's on it's lonesome or with infantry only. Clearly, the Assault Destroyer is not a beach-breaker unit, so it's only useful in a support role along with tanks that can only travel traditionally anyway, so what use as a naval vessel has it? None, and those support powers of it are pretty weak as well for the cost.

The Japanese, by comparison, are a high-mobile force with the King Oni as the notable departure from this, leaving them with no option for heavy tank if they need to strike across the sea. Their bombardment ship is also capable of striking the sea already, making it redundant and unfair to give them such an incredibly good sea-to-sea combat ship like the Naginata. The Japanese could benefit from an Assault Destroyer vessel using some kind of nano-shield power to protect its' allies weak Tsunami tanks and Tengu as they came ashore, and a slightly weaker sea mid-game would allow other navies a chance to fight the Japanese with a little less reliance on air spam to abuse the Japanese poor naval air supremacy options (an entirely different problem). Plus, without easy access to air transport like the Soviets or Chronospheres like the Allies, the Japanese have problems transporting heavy vehicles across broken terrain, let alone across water, and that could be aided by having a heavy-tsunami in the style of an Assault Destroyer, where the destroyer's relatively stupid support power would be of huge use to the Japanese to defend their frail Tsunamis during a beach-breaker attack. Worst of all, the Japanese battleship has a built-in sea superiority special power, so even without the Naginata it is capable of sea-to-sea firing and special powered sea dominance on it's own.

Those are some good reasons to have wanted to 'flip' those two units, but the most simple reason is that the bombardment units of the soviets and japanese are massively superior, and to compete with them the US needs a variety of ship-killer that isn't reliant on air power. Using Hydrofoils and Chronocopters to shut down entire fleets before engagement is simply not a fair thing to ask of allied players due to the high micro-management requirement of these units. Plus, the Japanese Rocket Angel can do shut down units faster than the Chronocopter, costs less, and retains land AND air combat ability. Soviets lack a lockdown unit they can use against sea targets to forestall bombardment, but their navy is the one balanced force so I won't criticize them for not being as unbalanced as Japan's navy. If an Allied player is hitting your Soviet base with aircraft carriers, all you need to do is make flak troopers (non-powered AA) and build some Akulas.

[Covenant]

One minor aside, at this point I'm not even sure what to further make of the red alert series. RA1 was fun, and featured Stalin himself, which was a bit of interesting alternative history. RA2 featured a bumbling Soviet leader but explained it away with Yuri's mind control program, who then went on to be a big force for the expansion, and fit the theme as a bit of a Rasputin evil mesmerist sort. Now we have, in RA3, a storyline which leaves most of the world in ruins no matter which way you win it and they've already played the time-travel card many times. I would have liked for this to be a true reset button operation, back to the WWII theme but with a Japanese force, but instead we get some sort of neo-modern thing with Soviet Plasma Screen TV's everywhere and orbiting Allied space defense networks that would make even GDI envious.

The storyline was always a bit silly, but now it's just in tatters, and no way to move forwards from this will make any sense. I suppose this could be the last Red Alert game, but what a poor note to go out on.

[Uraniun235]

One last time travel operation leaves the player in command of an army in WW1, where victory is achieved by scoring the highest proportion of useless deaths for every inch your drinks cabinet is moved towards the enemy capital.

[Bedlam]

I've just completed it as Soviets and its fallen a bit flat for me, nothing really happens in the Cut Scenes. Theres a bit of rivalry with the General (done before) the 'assasination' attempt and the 'my secret volcano Bunker' bit are ok but the ending is just you win congrats. Or am I missing something, does anything unlock if you complete all on Hard?

[Covenant]

I've just completed it as Soviets and its fallen a bit flat for me, nothing really happens in the Cut Scenes. Theres a bit of rivalry with the General (done before) the 'assasination' attempt and the 'my secret volcano Bunker' bit are ok but the ending is just you win congrats. Or am I missing something, does anything unlock if you complete all on Hard?

Not that I can see. I banged my way through on all Hard for the Japanese campaign, which is a real murderfest, and didn't get anything. I was expecting, you know, more resolution than just some babe-shots and back to main menu. I understand them wanting to keep costs down by not overdoing the CG if they can, but even just another 5 minutes of exposition would have been sweet, and unlocking something else... I don't know. I know that the Tesla Tanks were written as being only for the most elite commanders, and I assumed that maybe that meant if you beat singleplayer on hard, you unlocked them (not sure what for, but that you did). Or something. But alas, no.

It'd be nice if they could treat these things like Achievements, and unlock some crappy-but-useful units (like Tesla tanks) for those who manage to do certain tasks.

[Vendetta]

At least the fucked up unit balance is a good mirror of the first game, where the allies had fuck all land or air strike capability, and wimpy land defences, but monster sea vessels, whereas the soviets had monster land strike and defence, and monster air strike and defence.

[Darth Wong]

Urgh. I'm not sure the game offers better gameplay than Tiberian Sun, never mind newer games. The clips are amusing and the silly Japanese mecha are hilarious, but I'm tired of C&C units with absurdly short weapons range and terrible initiative, I don't like the fact that you are permanently zoomed in so far that you feel like you can barely see any of the map, and I hate the way they give you so few customization options for skirmish or multiplayer games.

I'm not asking for some grand technical innovation here; just apply some of the things we've seen in previous RTS games, or even some previous C&C games! This actually feels like a major step backwards from, say, Generals. In fact, the Generals engine matched with the silly ideas of this game would have been superior.

[Stark]

I've even got some wierd 'sticky UI' problem, where I get stuck in something-mode (like move mode, rally-point set mode, or whatever) and can't get out, give orders, etc. It's really annoying, and compounds the other issues with the game. I get that it's intentionally retro, but it's retro FUNCTIONALLY instead of stylistically, which is a BIG mistake.

[Covenant]

Generals offered several things that I wish I could do in RA3, and there's nothing stopping them from keeping those things in there. The one that springs to mind is the "area of patrol" function that was so useful for setting up air-intercept squads. I also miss the fact that planes take off and land like planes, rather than hover endlessly in the air and let Kirovs sail leisurely past them. They did add a few things, like tank facing, but it's unreasonably hard to use. You have to click and not move the right mouse button, then click the left mouse button and drag to face the direction. It works well when you use it, but it should be as easy as CoH's right-click drag. It's really inexplicable.

The sticky UI is probably when you select the movement mode from the little pull-out bar, which has seemed to be a bit 'sticky' to prevent you falling out of it too fast. Now, it's not all bad, since you can use it to control your unit move orders without needing to hold down keys, but it is a somewhat unnecessary addition that can inadvertantly mess things up. Safest option is to click the << thing back closed and leave it off. I only pull that tab out to change their aggressiveness stances. I also believe that it uses the now-ancient innovation of changing the stance on your building to make all units from that structure start off in that stance, so that's a reason to use it too.

I'm so incredibly disappointed by the game, and it's a shame. By now I'm so hesitant about basic game design quality that I won't buy anything unless I can play it at someone's place first, or borrow copy. I'm really hoping that Starcraft 2 is good though, despite it being an arcade RTS like RA3. I suppose SC2 could have some kind of great tactical depth, but I doubt it, I bet it'll boil down to migrane-inducing micromanagement zillions-of-clicks gameplay that made it's predecessor so popular. However, it might still be good enough to be fun despite that. I don't really know what else to say, I wish people could just make a good game. I suppose I can wait for Dawn of War 2, which may use the CoH-style engine that I find so fun, or pick up a copy of WiC sometime... though I don't know anyone who has that, I suppose I could take it on reputation. I shudder to do that though.

[Laughing Mechanicus]

After your post I went and tried the Aircraft Carriers in skirmish, as it occurred to me that I hadn't actually used them properly since the beta. It seems they really have nerfed them massively - in the beta the drones used to be bloody hard to shoot down, plus they did buckets more damage. The way they are now really is pretty poor.

I still think the rest of the Allied Navy works pretty well - you just basically need to turn on Destroyers Blackhole Armour then keep them near your forces (order your units to move in formation and they will all assume the same speed, which is extremely useful) and I'm pretty sure Hydrofoils automatically spread their weapon jamming amongst as many enemy units as possible (rather than all targetting the closest unit).

I'm not sure how you are having a problem with the air-to-air fighters? If you leave them hovering in a location they will automatically move to attack any aircraft that comes near - they most certainly don't ignore them.

I'm pretty sure they went with hovering aircraft because of complaints about the "randomness" of the Generals air combat system (and they probably had one eye on StarCraft). In Generals if your jets were on air-patrol, but happened to be facing the wrong way when enemy aircraft attacked they would be shot down before they could turn to face the enemy - there's nothing the player could do to stop this and hence it was frustrating. Interestingly there was a feature planned where aircraft would go into a special "dog fighting" mode when they engaged in air-to-air combat, and I think the idea of this was probably to eliminate the randomness - unfortunately it did not make it into the final game. Maybe we will see this in the next Generals.

It does seems fairly certain to me that the next game (probably already in development) will be a sequel to Generals. When I've seen the dev's asked about it they've always given the "Tee hee! wait and see!" response, plus they just did a massive redesign of the C&C website and it features a section devoted to the Tiberian, Red Alert and Generals franchises - there's no way they would have bothered with a brand new section for a 3 year old game they have no intention to bring back.

This actually feels like a major step backwards from, say, Generals.

If you are referring to the camera zoom level in Generals, then you are not remembering it right. I am working on a mod for Generals, and the default camera height is atrociously closely zoomed - vastly worse than RA3's. You can mod it to be zoomed further out, and this is included in some mods by default - but it's buggy, and I'm pretty sure the same will be done for RA3 soon too.

Something like the Supreme Commander ability to simply zoom out and see the entire map would obviously be better, but let's be honest - the RTS community is so insanely conservative about any removal of even the most trivial, tedious limitations on the gameplay (like a closely zoomed camera or units that are retards) that developers are simply forced to pander to them. If you want to see something hilarious, go to GameFAQs Red Alert 3 forum and check some of the threads - there was one recently where someone said "Devs must remove all audio warnings, even the ones when a players units are attacked" and the general consensus from the other "pro" players was "Yeah, awesome! Adds so much skill".

In point of fact, in the Generals mod I'm working on I am trying to minimise the number of micromanagement tasks the player has to do - like special abilities that require constant manual targetting, that sort of thing - and all the pro players always give such suggestions the eye roll and say "Why not just make the game play itself then?".

Anyway, I don't want to turn this into a hijack about micro-management in RTS, as the topic has been beaten to death before.

I also found a (seemingly) undocumented feature in RA3, which is quite random. If you hold down the control key while you click and drag to select units, you can draw a freehand "selection shape" instead of the usual box. It's nifty, but I'm entirely sure how useful it is.

[charlemagne]

I don't like the fact that you are permanently zoomed in so far that you feel like you can barely see any of the map

That's one of my biggest complaints, too, been checking this game out at my brother's, and when I first saw the map I double-checked the resolution because it felt like being set to 800*600 or something. Then I tried the mouse-wheel to zoom out. This is a stupid limitation and I don't get why anyone (devs) would think it's a good idea. The enormous clunky UI isn't exactly great either.

The movies are silly cheese-fun, but somehow this whole game feels like it just came out after Dune 2.

[Covenant]

I still think the rest of the Allied Navy works pretty well - you just basically need to turn on Destroyers Blackhole Armour then keep them near your forces (order your units to move in formation and they will all assume the same speed, which is extremely useful) and I'm pretty sure Hydrofoils automatically spread their weapon jamming amongst as many enemy units as possible (rather than all targetting the closest unit).

You would be incorrect. They fire at the nearest targets nearly always in my experience, though this may be a result of attack-moving them in formation with other units. I have yet to see any of my units, Rocket Angels or Cryocopters or Hydrofoils, target discriminate to spread the jamming around. Plus, even if they can fire at a relatively long range, they never choose to do so intentionally. It's also fairly ridiculous to depend so heavily on hydrofoil weapon jammers.

I'm not sure how you are having a problem with the air-to-air fighters? If you leave them hovering in a location they will automatically move to attack any aircraft that comes near - they most certainly don't ignore them.

Their engagement range is fairly short. Even if they wake up and go after something, it'll still be a bit before they track it down and shoot at it--this is an issue when it comes to chasing things that are fast and headed somewhere--such as enemy bombers... which is generally why I have fighters in the first place. The question isn't if they'll attack, but if they'll actually intercept the enemy far enough away that they can stop the enemy from delivering their payload. Considering how short visual radius and engagement distance, this isn't that likely.

I'm pretty sure they went with hovering aircraft because of complaints about the "randomness" of the Generals air combat system (and they probably had one eye on StarCraft). In Generals if your jets were on air-patrol, but happened to be facing the wrong way when enemy aircraft attacked they would be shot down before they could turn to face the enemy - there's nothing the player could do to stop this and hence it was frustrating. Interestingly there was a feature planned where aircraft would go into a special "dog fighting" mode when they engaged in air-to-air combat, and I think the idea of this was probably to eliminate the randomness - unfortunately it did not make it into the final game. Maybe we will see this in the next Generals.

Fixing a slightly imperfect system by removing it entirely is very bad game design. All they would have had to do is either increase the engagement radius (which I would strongly endorse, to cover around 1.5x to 2x the build area of an MCV) or allow the units to do a quick wing-over to get into combat. Viola! Worse yet, this leaves the units without any kind of patrol dynamic at all, which is absurd and objectionable to the extreme. Sure, some people may have whined about it, but what they've got is worse, so I've got contempt for those silly whiners. This is especially problematic for units that hit air and land, like the Rocket Angels. I simply feel that RA3 consistantly made the wrong decisions with regards to it, and it leaves the game feeling sloppy and easy to exploit. And enforcing a "Build one of everything" strategy just to fill in holes is false balance. But, like you said, the debate about micromanagement has been done to death.

It wouldn't be an issue if bombers and such weren't so hard to knock down as they're incoming. But a four-unit squadron of bombers can do pretty horrific damage to my base structures, and I'm lucky if I can do anything other than pick them off after they've already bombed something into dust. This a big problem when they choose to suicide themselves into something strategically important. They should be more than floating turrets anyway.

[open_sketchbook]

Personally, I have no problem with the short weapon ranges. To me, C&C (especially Red Alert) isn't a modern warfare game so much as it's a fluid puzzle game with tanks, and Red Alert 3s "Rock Paper Sickle" gameplay is, well, a dream come true to me. Having played C&C since the first one came out (keeping in mind that I was five at the time!) I really, really like RA3, and consider it a return to form after the foul Tiberium Wars. I sat down behind it and felt like ten years old again, beating off my brother's tank rushes with carefully calculated defensive lines. It's a move in the right direction, because the recognized and expanded upon the thing that made the game what it was. If only they had done the same for the Tiberium Series...

[Laughing Mechanicus]

Fixing a slightly imperfect system by removing it entirely is very bad game design. All they would have had to do is either increase the engagement radius (which I would strongly endorse, to cover around 1.5x to 2x the build area of an MCV) or allow the units to do a quick wing-over to get into combat. Viola!

Interestingly, in the RA3 beta one of the later patches gave air-to-air units huge attack ranges - comparable to some of the long range bombardment units. It looked totally goofy (especially the Apollo Fighters machine guns), but it did vastly improve the range they could cover. This change evidently did not make it into the final game though.

It wouldn't be an issue if bombers and such weren't so hard to knock down as they're incoming. But a four-unit squadron of bombers can do pretty horrific damage to my base structures, and I'm lucky if I can do anything other than pick them off after they've already bombed something into dust. This a big problem when they choose to suicide themselves into something strategically important. They should be more than floating turrets anyway.

I get the impression Century Bombers are meant to be the "great compensator" for Allied weakness in other areas, as neither side really has anything comparable. The Soviet Kirovs unfortunately don't seem to have much utility - especially as the enemy actually receives an audio warning when they are spotted! You have to wonder who's bright idea it was to warn the player that the enemy is building Kirovs, but not Century Bombers, Dreadnoughts, Shoguns or Carriers.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Allied defences in this game were heck a lot better. However, they can be defeated with the right tools. The Soviet helicopters are bloody devastating when used in groups. Some of the Allied tech is cute but simply not enough when you deal with superior numbers and firepower. The Soviet dreadnoughts are now at least useful for anti-ship ops, and their bombardment ability is now more devastating than before. And yeah, the Soviet satellite drop from hell is pretty damn nifty and a game winner when used well.

The Japanese have some useful stuff, and quite a fair bit of firepower on their own. Though I dislike the mecha units and just blast them with helicopters.

[Covenant]

...isn't a modern warfare game so much as it's a fluid puzzle game with tanks.

This is a unique perspective, and the first time I've heard this expressed. I couldn't disagree more with how I feel the game should play, but when viewed as a puzzle game and not as a war game, I see how it makes more sense. I can respect that. I would still argue, however, that many of the puzzle pieces do not fit.

Interestingly, in the RA3 beta one of the later patches gave air-to-air units huge attack ranges - comparable to some of the long range bombardment units. It looked totally goofy (especially the Apollo Fighters machine guns), but it did vastly improve the range they could cover. This change evidently did not make it into the final game though.

Yeah, well, also, even normally the ground-to-air attack ranges are much much longer than the ground-to-ground ones. What I really would like though is a longer AI engagement range, not longer weapon range. I'd like the air superiority units to percieve an airborne threat from farther away, fly over, and intercept it. Air units move so quickly and their damage is so front-loaded that you must intercept them or suffer grave consequences. The soviet MiG has good intercept capability, but they already have the really potent flak trooper squads, so they have much less of a problem than the other two sides. Allied Anti-Air turreting is pretty good, but it's pricey at 800+300, and their anti-air units are pretty cruddy. The soviet Bullfrog has the really awesome flak damage type (not sure why that's so favored in the math) but can also go in the water, which is great. Offers a lovely companion cover type for early intercept coverage that goes with base-defense flak men and MiG bomber-intercept groups.

This isn't gamebreaking--nothing about the game is broken. It just feels less tactically 'deep' than CNC3 of all things, and more crammed full of gizmos. Instead of actually being able to play the game like I would a war game, with commanding territory and attempting to localize threats, bring in forces at different angles, etc... I actually do need to play it like Sketch's puzzle game, where I counter battleships with cryocopters and bring in amphibious transports to take them out. It all seems very backwards, at least for the Allies. Soviets are pretty straightforwards. Ideally the Allies would be more powerful, but require this "deck of cards" style gameplay to excel, but what we see is that the Allies are generally far weaker than the other sides. They get the cruddiest big boat, the weakest naval attack vessel, no submarines, dolphins with a useless power, but at least their hydrofoils are great. Too bad they're not multipurpose like the Bullfrog, which is a great air-escort unit that doubles as a beach-breaker mancannon express vessel.

Allied land is also poor. Peacekeepers are pretty good, but micro intensive, and not as potent as the cheap Japanese infantry. Conscripts suck, but Tesla Troopers are amazing, as are terror drones, flak troopers, and their armed engineers. Armed engineers! So good. No infiltrators, but who cares. Spies are amazing, but less useful in multiplayer, which is sad. Spies really need a Chronowatch like Tanya so they can teleport into an enemy squad. They also need the ability to be ordered around like a soldier of the enemy's side... that would be so sweet. Anyway. Tanya is also ass. She can blow up tanks but she nearly always dies to a sickle first. Hilariously, I always go for the Satellite Drop, so that gives me the radiation suicide power first, and the first thing I do when I see tanya is throw a sacrifical lamb at her. If she goes for the unit, I hit it with the suicide power and the radiation will kill her. Lame, huh? Mirage tanks are great but honestly, they're easy to spot unless you spread them out. And if you do that then they'll get fucked up by anything once they attack. They're too expensive to slowly creep in Hold Fire mode. Allied rocketmen are alright but just not good enough, that refire delay makes them die to infantry hordes real easy, and a single bullfrog full of drop bears will ruin their day.

Where the allies win hand-over-fist is air, as we see below.

I get the impression Century Bombers are meant to be the "great compensator" for Allied weakness in other areas, as neither side really has anything comparable. The Soviet Kirovs unfortunately don't seem to have much utility - especially as the enemy actually receives an audio warning when they are spotted! You have to wonder who's bright idea it was to warn the player that the enemy is building Kirovs, but not Century Bombers, Dreadnoughts, Shoguns or Carriers.

I definately agree with you there. The Kirov is nice to know about, but I'd love if they said "Strategic Bomber Detected" or "Enemy Battleship Detected" like Supreme Commander did. These are game-ender threats. I don't feel the Century is all that unbalanced overall, as I've seen far, far worse units in other games, and it is rather pricey at 2000, the same as a Battleship or Dreadnaught, neither of which are interceptable. However, the first bomber they get is pretty wack, if you ask me. It gets 3 bombs after the totally necessary upgrade, moves fast, and is pretty durable. Four of them will take out a large building, and they're not expensive. A little bit more than four, like four and a Secret Protocol strike, will take out big things like MCV's and basically win the game. The Century is a big bad mother, but if you can get a lot of those you can get twice as many of the shit bombers, and much faster. Allies also get bombers at the same time that I get infantry, so I can expect to be greeted by bombs early on. That hurts when the target is a harvester or a refinery, and those targets are very easy to find, and hard to defend early.

If microbomber were replaced by another unit instead... we'd be better. They have 3 units that use those bays, and no other faction has that problem. The Soviets make MiGs, Kirovs and Twinblades, so they only need airpads for the MiGs. None of the Japanese air units ever need to resupply, and can repair at the vehicle bay. The Allies need bays for Apollos, Centuries, and Microbombers, so you end up with a lot of airpad spam to keep your squads happy. Seems a bit unnecessary.

But the Century is really not the issue. It's fairly slow, it's firepower is only useful on clustered buildings (and I never cluster), and it's rather expensive to keep maintained. The Soviets can swarm them with MiGs to bring them down, and Flak is very effective. The Japanese are mostly fucked because they have such poor air superiority, but laughably the Century can be yanked out of the air by Yuriko the Psychic Schoolgirl. This makes it pretty painful to strike a base with a commando, as you can count on a few of your bombers being plucked from the sky even before they get in range of their bombs. And when they drop the bombs they tend to scatter them. One bomber usually isn't enough to do the job, so you need several. That means for the same price as some slow Centuries you could get the fast, precision-strike Microbombers. I'm more afraid of 3 pads full of those level 1 bombers than I am about any hypothetical amount of centuries. If I have enough money to field 4 apocolypse tanks and some escorts, he has enough cash to build at least two bays full of bombers, more than enough to destroy my MCV and Super Power Plant. Game over!

[Uraniun235]

Nitpick: The only announcement I'm aware of in Supreme Commander is "Strategic Launch Detected" - which is, basically, "Hope you got your missile defense up in time!"

(Or, alternately, "hope you don't have a Fatboy rumbling through a nearby mountain pass" *titters*)


That said... is the game fun? I'm getting the impression from this thread that it's not really worth the money.

[Covenant]

Nitpick: The only announcement I'm aware of in Supreme Commander is "Strategic Launch Detected" - which is, basically, "Hope you got your missile defense up in time!"

(Or, alternately, "hope you don't have a Fatboy rumbling through a nearby mountain pass" *titters*)


That said... is the game fun? I'm getting the impression from this thread that it's not really worth the money.

I coulda' sworn they also told you when you spotted other strategic units, but I could very well be wrong.

At the moment I would argue against RA3 being worth the money. It can be fun, but it's also just as often frustrating, and I'm constantly fighting back my gag reflex when I look at the unit spread. If you're well-off and buying 6 games per season is an easy entertainment expense for you, I can think up 6 actually good games I'd like you to buy and support the developers of. It boils down to the type of experience you want, and if the candyland acid-trip units don't bother you. Only buy it if you're a real fan of the oldskool Warcraft II arcade-style RTS gameplay style, because that's what it is, but not very good.

When I say arcade-style, I mean the really fast, colorful, anti-epic style of game. Aside from superweapons, most guns just make little pops where they land, there's no big strategic maneuvers or giant-sized Fatboy units, dirt doesn't fly everywhere when your rockets rain down, there aren't burnt out cities to wage war through, etc. I also can't get the Bloom to turn on properly, so it doesn't look nearly as nice as it does in the screenshots, which is odd, since bloom works in other games I play.

If the units were balanced and fun, and the gameplay more rugged and strategic, I'd be fully for this game, even with the kindergarden color and art design. I don't mind campy. I mind poor unit balance and swiss-cheese gameplay mechanics, so that killed it for me. I am looking forwards to Starcraft 2, but I hope it isn't a bizarre as this one. The 'rock paper scissors' style gameplay is old and pretty lame, there have always been more nuanced ways of creating a game, and it seems like Westwood and their inheritors have been the last to catch onto that. RA3 could have been a great bridge between the old dynamism and gooey unit flavorings that make the games so fun to look at and the modern, high-finesse wargame simulations that make complicated and heroic, and even cinematic maneuvers easy. But it was not meant to be. I doubt they'll find a large demographic for this either.

[Stark]

WRT to the hardcore crowd, it's pretty sad that nobody considers a simple 'APM mode' to solve the problem. This is likely that even if a game implemented a 'maximum micro' 'no player assist' mode, the hardcore crowd would still hate it because given the choice, NO MOTHERFUCKER WOULD USE IT. It'd clearly show how tiny the APM crowd is, by giving everyone the choice of playing it with or without modern mechanics and player aids.

[Covenant]

Very true. It seems like it's a sort of artificial limitation they impose on everyone else in order to stay good at the game. There's no legitimate reason to desire more micromanagement tasks from a pure gameplay perspective, unless those elements of micro are fun, or they are things the computer scripts handle very poorly. I would happily keep things high micro (CoH has a lot of micro-intensive things like facing angles, clicky powers, and monitoring the enemy as he flits about your territory) so long as they made the micro tasks easier to index and accomplish. Air intercepts, for example, are many layers of hard. First I need to be paying attention to my radar, and not microing a troop at the moment. Then I need to be able to see the blips moving fast enough to figure out that they're planes and not, like, boats. Then I need to be able to call up my forces (hotkey) then zoom to that area and issue some commands. If I do an attack move the enemy may juke around them so I'll need to keep an eye on them, and if I issue a specific attack command the enemy may fall back a unit, or who knows what. For specific commands, like telling my guys to attack the Century Bombers and not the Apollo Airfighters, I actually have to click on the enemy as it's moving, which can be very hard. Picking out a specific unit is not exactly simple, given how fast the units move and how small my viewing radius is.

And after all this, I'm still in charge of every other function of my base and troop movements. You basically have no time for anything, and this necessitates the game be simplistic. So in order to accomidate the stupidity of micromanagement, we need to dumb down the game. Great trade!

[Chris OFarrell]

I've never really ever wanted to take a game back for a refund. I've had games I didn't really like so much, but I still kept them and gave them a decent shot...this game on the other hand...

The intro sequence was classic Red Alert. The in game cut scenes and cheese was fun...

But the COLORS just make my eyes bleed, the graphics just do nothing more me and the units just are TOO silly. Red alert was always a little Silly -if not so much RA1- but RA2 was fun, as was Yuri's, even if that got a tad too campy at times.

This version is just...yuch.

And after playing through Forged Alliance again over the last couple of months, I'm finding myself frantically trying to scroll out to SEE THE MAP, I'm seriously finding it hard to get any kind of strategic depth on how close up the thing forces you to look.
Not to mention replacing the minimap with videos are the most critical times...

I used to dismiss people screaming for a return to RA1's 'gritty' sort of C&C 1 feel as perhaps not getting the camp...but by the same token, there IS such a thing as going way too far the other way.