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ok, detect stealth from attack bike, flame thrower for infantry from flame tank, stealth field from stealth tank, and ssecond laser beam from the Beam cannon. yeah, those last two hurt.

yeah since mine don't go anywhere without an escourt, and usually I have spammed enough stealth tanks, and beam cannons.

Vympel wrote:The Avatar scavenge ability is a nice gimmick, but just hopelessly impractical. There's no reason for it at all, you should be able to just click an upgrade button and give it all the relevant capabilities. It already costs $3000 Tiberium- once you tack on the price of the Beam Cannon, Flame Tank, Attack Bike and Stealth Tank, you're getting an extremely expensive unit that is still no match for a Mammoth (AFAIK). Sure, it's got stealth, has a flamethrower, and two lasers, and can detect stealth units but ... meh. Cool in singleplayer when you can build up hordes and crush the enemy, but for multiplayer I can't imagine it being successful.

Save money and scavenge the enemies. You can do that in single player so i'm guessing you can do it in multiplayer.
That, or just upgrade a few to give you a bit of an edge.

Really, the Avatar should've gotten anti-air defence from the attack bike, not stealth detection.

Given that stealthed commadoes are instant death for walkers i'll stick with stealth detection. Giving it anti-air would mean it pretty much has no weaknesses.

ummm, this is killing my free time that's for sure.

2000AD wrote:Given that stealthed commadoes are instant death for walkers i'll stick with stealth detection. Giving it anti-air would mean it pretty much has no weaknesses.

Doesn't that kinda describe mammoth tanks though?

no three sabotures is the weakness for mammoth tanks. especially when those three sabatures have tiberium infusion.

I probably missed this in the manual, but how does one detect stealth units?

certain units detect stealthed units. Bulldong/sniper/orca with upgrade -GDI, Carrier/Seeker -Scrin, Viper/Attack Bike/Upgraded avatar -Nod, also most ground defenses detect stealthed units automatically.

Vympel wrote:The Avatar scavenge ability is a nice gimmick, but just hopelessly impractical. There's no reason for it at all, you should be able to just click an upgrade button and give it all the relevant capabilities. It already costs $3000 Tiberium- once you tack on the price of the Beam Cannon, Flame Tank, Attack Bike and Stealth Tank, you're getting an extremely expensive unit that is still no match for a Mammoth (AFAIK). Sure, it's got stealth, has a flamethrower, and two lasers, and can detect stealth units but ... meh. Cool in singleplayer when you can build up hordes and crush the enemy, but for multiplayer I can't imagine it being successful.

Really, the Avatar should've gotten anti-air defence from the attack bike, not stealth detection.

From a balance perspective, I've also got to wonder at the logic of making the useless Juggernaut the recoverable unit for GDI. It should be the Mammoth. As the Nod or Scrin player, there's no incentive to capture a Juggernaut. It's just not that useful, in my view.

The use of Scavenge is that in the field, if you have a flame tank with red health, you can rip it up to give the same utility to your perfectly healthy Avatar.

Hrm. A few things. I noticed in the Demo that Shadows could snipe from the air, while orbitting on passes 'towards' the target. That seems to be removed now.

The Grenadiers are utterly worthless on troops that move towards them. The bombs will land past them and do zero damage. Only when the enemy holds still will they die. Looks like flamers are still way better.

Stealth tanks are brutal raiders. So much volley damage... seems like they aren't wastes of money any more. Same with flame tanks, now that they eat buildings alive.

A pity Nod's Beam Tank's artillery bounce is so useless. It's impossible to set one up that gives you any appreciable range. Not like how easy GDI's massed Juggernaut Volley can be, with an air-transported sniper squad.

Firehawks are evil. With the stratofighter upgrade, they can wipe out pretty much any building, anywhere, at the cost of their lives. Sorta like how Auroras worked in Generals, but instantaneous. They utterly dominate the skies in air-air mode too, not bad.

Orcas with the little radar pods are broken. Those things are free and reload instantly for crying out loud! Attatch one to every tank of yours, and nothing stealth will ever get close.

Nod's 'Tanya' Commando bites. Her gun can't kill infantry well, her gun can't kill tanks, and the stealth-while-standing-still is useless. GDI's 'Master Chief' commando is great. Divebombing buildings is hideously effective.

Suicide Bombers are evil against Mammoth tanks. The only defense against them seems to be zone troopers inside APCs, since they'd insta-kill a squad at good range. APCs with riflemen still get overwhelmed, with that mandatory tiberium infusion upgrade the bombers get.

GDI's Zone Trooper strike is brutal. If I hit an enemy base with an Ion Cannon, sending one of those in at ground zero finishes the game.

The Rig is the most awesome thing ever. <3 Invincible Tank Garrison.

Haven't played/seen Scrin yet, so I can't comment.

Nod's 'Tanya' Commando bites. Her gun can't kill infantry well,

Hmm? She slaughters infantry in seconds!

The Yosemite Bear wrote:no three sabotures is the weakness for mammoth tanks.

You forget the cardinal rule of all C&C games: build more Mammoth tanks . Been romping through the GDI campaign and have still to figure out what all these other units are there for .

Enjoying skirmish mode so far; the Scrin units are pretty interesting and make a wide variety of zoo noises, and scrapping with AIs who have excellent porn names like "Hard Steamroller" is good fun.

Plot discussion, spoilers for Scrin campaign: One of the Scrin Overseers (I assume that's what the jellyfish alien was) mentioned that Kane was of "unknown genetic derivation", which was odd. I wonder if the alien military units presumably appearing in the expansion pack will be more formidable than the harvester security forces, or if they'll just be more of the same in greater numbers.

The Yosemite Bear wrote:no three sabotures is the weakness for mammoth tanks. especially when those three sabatures have tiberium infusion.

??? What do u mean?

The Yosemite Bear wrote:certain units detect stealthed units. Bulldong/sniper/orca with upgrade -GDI, Carrier/Seeker -Scrin, Viper/Attack Bike/Upgraded avatar -Nod, also most ground defenses detect stealthed units automatically.

You forgot zonetrooper with upgrade.

The Grenadiers are utterly worthless on troops that move towards them. The bombs will land past them and do zero damage. Only when the enemy holds still will they die. Looks like flamers are still way better.

I always mount them on APCs. That way, they adequately suppress the enemy so the grenades will slaughter them.

Not to mention giving them a chance to take out garrisoned buildings.

In fact, other than commando/zone troopers/snipers, there isn't a reason not to expose any GDI infantry. I find that APCs with snipers/rocket soldiers are actually more than sufficient in skirmish mode. Placing zonetroopers is just overkill.

Orcas with the little radar pods are broken. Those things are free and reload instantly for crying out loud! Attatch one to every tank of yours, and nothing stealth will ever get close.

Oh..... you can do that? :D:D Finally, a reason to build Orcas.

Suicide Bombers are evil against Mammoth tanks. The only defense against them seems to be zone troopers inside APCs, since they'd insta-kill a squad at good range. APCs with riflemen still get overwhelmed, with that mandatory tiberium infusion upgrade the bombers get.

APCs with snipers also do the trick. Its just so sad though. The only effective unit against a Mammoth Tank horde is a fanatics horde.

yes, which is exactly why I kill APCs with any hidden assets I have, and then swarm the tanks, also embarrasssed that I got fanatics and sabatures confused again.

The second Scrin mission is absolutely fucking impossible. I mean, the first one was an utter bitch, but I can't get past the first goddamn turrets in this one.

Ah, the retail fixed the insanely broken Orca sensor network. Since those had an unlimited rate of fire and were free in the demo, I put one on every single area on every map, so I had permanent stealth detection. Now they cost 200 per sensor buoy.

One thing I found is fun. Zone troopers in APCs gives them enough mobility to hit and run really well, since the APC outruns anything that the Zone's cant destroy in one volley. If you use air-pickup, they even fire from the air! They make fun gunships that way, since the range seems farther than AA rocket range. just get three zone filled APCs and airlift them, then start devastating enemy ground formations. Unlimited ammo too.

Against a human, they'd of course start shooting mine down with Venoms or Firehawks, but it seems nasty. Grenade Troops look more attractive to me now, as they make excellent all purpose attack units when in APCs. Suicide bombers also seem killable with light infantry squads inside of APCs...

Against Mammoths, it seems that some tricks will need to be employed. Aside from fanatics, what else is useful versus them? Vertigos seem to work, as those guys are nearly invincible to anything except an air-defense in depth. Avatars don't really do that bad against them, since the avatar's small size and increased speed lets a group of three or four concentrate fire, while a mammoth horde needs several seconds to get each tank into firing range, in a formation that tends to disperse as the group moves. To beat Mammoths in a shooting fight, you need to micro it seems.

Okay, has anyone else had crashes because of cnc3game.dat? I made it to the GDI Alexandria mission with minimal fuss, and now I can't play now for more than 10 minutes without it crashing to desktop, on either campaign. I've checked my system specs repeatedly, and while I'm a little above the minimum requirements, it should in theory be working.

Thag wrote:Okay, has anyone else had crashes because of cnc3game.dat? I made it to the GDI Alexandria mission with minimal fuss, and now I can't play now for more than 10 minutes without it crashing to desktop, on either campaign. I've checked my system specs repeatedly, and while I'm a little above the minimum requirements, it should in theory be working.

Get the next update, it helps fix this error.

I'm a little sad there's no IP network game option. I really have no love of Gamespy for the purposes of setting up hassle-free matches, especially when I want to open it up only to a few people, and don't want to deal with gamespy's port routing nonsense.

I tried that. I've uninstalled and re-installed, and both the initial and the re-try were patched to 1.3.

God I love the GDI Zone Troopers, I guess partly because they somehow in my eyes resemble the ACS from Posleenverse so much. In large numbers and with some proper air cover they are pure murder, and so nice to watch running and blasting with those railguns.

Finished the GDI campaign, and so far I love this newest incarnation of C&C. It doesnt reinvent the wheel, or add anything really new to the RTS genre but the atmosphere and the delivery of the game has been enough to suck me in for hours upon endless hours.

Starting the Nod campaign today, long live Kane and such

Covenant wrote:I'm a little sad there's no IP network game option. I really have no love of Gamespy for the purposes of setting up hassle-free matches, especially when I want to open it up only to a few people, and don't want to deal with gamespy's port routing nonsense.

I haven't even tried multi yet - is this true? I fucking HATE Gamespy and their retarded 'open a dozen ports that are 100% necessary lol heartbeat' bullshit, and I've become used to using IP games to get around the vast number of games that use Lamespy. It still has a LAN option, right, so I can still use a VPN to fake out a LAN?

Stark wrote:

Covenant wrote:I'm a little sad there's no IP network game option. I really have no love of Gamespy for the purposes of setting up hassle-free matches, especially when I want to open it up only to a few people, and don't want to deal with gamespy's port routing nonsense.

I haven't even tried multi yet - is this true? I fucking HATE Gamespy and their retarded 'open a dozen ports that are 100% necessary lol heartbeat' bullshit, and I've become used to using IP games to get around the vast number of games that use Lamespy. It still has a LAN option, right, so I can still use a VPN to fake out a LAN?

I certainly hope so. It does have a LAN option, so there's hope. IP games are much more stable, if you ask me, and Gamespy is indeed garbage. It's useful garbage, but when given the choice between that and a board like this to find opponents, I'm much more likely to go for the IP's. If I love the game so much I want to compete online against 14 year old 'Pr0' gamers who say you need 'dedication' to get good, I'll use it, but if I just want to play some fun games I'd rather avoid the ass behavior of these kids. I only have 4 hours of free time per day, I want to spend them in a friendly way!

BTW, can anyone recommend some good VPN software?

IE, so I don't need to make it over and over in XP every time I want to add one.

I use this for my WC3 DotA games: http://www.hamachi.cc/

But i'm not sure about the speed and whether it is sufficient for C&C3.0 It does get laggy sometimes especially when I'm playing with a friend who is studying across the Atlantic in London.

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:I use this for my WC3 DotA games: http://www.hamachi.cc/

But i'm not sure about the speed and whether it is sufficient for C&C3.0 It does get laggy sometimes especially when I'm playing with a friend who is studying across the Atlantic in London.

Hamachi is being a whiney little jackass for me. Complaining about not being able to access the network adapter. What the hell? I'm running it on an account with Administrator powarz, so what the fuck does it want? I can't even get into it's settings to change stuff. I have no idea how they expect me to configure it the way they tell me to. I can't get into the damn program at ALL!

Covenant wrote:Hamachi is being a whiney little jackass for me. Complaining about not being able to access the network adapter. What the hell? I'm running it on an account with Administrator powarz, so what the fuck does it want? I can't even get into it's settings to change stuff. I have no idea how they expect me to configure it the way they tell me to. I can't get into the damn program at ALL!

I had problems with the installation initially.. and I forgot how I resolved it. There might be issues between your firewall and the software or some anti-virus scanner.