[Nix]

keep in mind back in the day that westwood's publisher was Virgin Interactive, back then they had the freedom to put the heart and soul into the games they made.  EA is a heartless and soulless company ran by MBA's and bean counters, not actual decent people who understand gamers wants and needs.   Everything they touch just turns to crap.  TFD  is the perfect example. I'm hoping that this title will save some face with EA,  but i'm afraid I'll just be saying "told ya so" when it does come out. If Klepacki does the music though, I'd buy it for that alone. (kinda like why I bought Red Faction, for Dan's music)

[Killfrenzy]

[C&C Fanboy Mode]

One thing you lot are forgetting about how C&C fits in is that it's a FUN RTS. It always was, always will be. If they tried to do what Total Annihilation/Homeworld/every other great RTS did (in other words, get down and dirty with tactics and micro-managed strategy) then it wouldn't be C&C anymore. That's the whole point.

Yes, Tiberian Sun sucked - especially in the Units arena. The Nod units were steaming piles of excrement. It had some great bits, and the inclusion of Darth Vader....I mean, James Earl Jones as a 'is he really a good guy' GDI general was a stroke of genius.

Red Alert 2, which landed on us out of the blue was absolutely brilliant! Yes, it was incredibly cheesy, but all of the quatro fromage was poured over the game with a big cheshire-cat grin behind it. They KNEW it was cheesy, and they made the game as such.

At the end of the day, after a heavy session in Homeworld 2 or similar 'deep' RTS games, to fire up Command and Conquer Whatever and play through a fun set of missions rolling over a bad guy with a wave of rather big tanks, that to me is what C&C is all about.

It's not big, it's not clever, it makes no pretence at being a 'serious' strategy game - just listen to the unit chatter - it's designed from the assembler up as a bit of a laugh. Sure, it's gratifying when a multiple pronged well planned assualt comes off, but it's also a hell of a lot of fun just steam-rollering an enemy base with 352 tanks.

So I probably will be getting Tiberian Twilight. I've been waiting too damned long for it to go all elitist and try and hold it up for comparison against what Supreme Commander's looking like. They're two seperate styles of game within the genre. It's like saying that X3: Reunion is trash compared to FreeSpace 2 because you can't go around blasting things left right and centre, or vice versa for roughly the same reasons. X3 is very time consuming and you have to think about what you're doing, FreeSpace 2 - let's be fair - isn't and you don't.

C&C is to RTS games what FreeSpace has been to Space Combat sims. Fun, fast-paced, interesting storyline (mostly) and not requiring a huge amount of the grey matter to appreciate.

[/C&C Fanboy Mode]

Phew, that's now out of my system. I can now go back to more important things like why the Empire would kick the Federation's butt.......

Incidentally, I met a guy at a gaming fair who once worked for Virgin Interactive in their acquisitions department. He was responsible for signing up Westwood and C&C. A few weeks later he was approached by another company, who were doing a similar type of game. In other words, an RTS, but were taking a different approach. He turned them down as he'd just signed Westwood and knew that C&C was going to be huge. He didn't want to saturate the market with yet another RTS released at about the same time. So, they went and made a deal elsewhere.

The company in question was Blizzard, and the game was WarCraft. 

[StratComm]

The thing that bugged me about TS was that, particularly for GDI, you were left almost forced to tankrush and to do so with the medium tank equivalent.  You couldn't center an operating force around a few of the more powerful units, because those units were terrible about friendly fire.  I don't know how many of my own titans I took out with disruptor beams trying to inject some intelligent unit management into that game.  Then there were the "superunits" which, while having a reasonable cool factor (Mammoth Mk II) were not uber enough to justify being single-build and yet couldn't be used in formation because of the aforementioned friendly fire problem (heaven forbid you leave a Mk. II unattended in your base.  'Look, a minigunner on the other side of the construction yard!  Lets shoot him with my building-wrecking railguns-o-doom!').  Of course the lone single-build Nod unit was actually uber enough to justify building, and then you could cram him in a subterranian APC (another thing I never liked) and pop him up right in the middle of your opponent's base.  Pre-firestorm was especially bad given the rediculously overpowered Nod artillery, but certain things never got properly balanced.  In fact, I don't think anything ever got properly balanced.  Nothing has a proper counter, except for greater numbers.

[Unknown Target]

I don't see how anyone can differentiate between the different C&Cs; to me they're all the same basic game with only different units and missions.

[StratComm]

Only the original CnC had the ultimate anti-infantry weapon.  APC + force move/"crush target" and that oh-so-satisfying squishing sound.  You wouldn't believe how dissapointed I was when TS didn't have a similar "feature"

EDIT: Otherwise, aside from the *****y things (balance related) mentioned earlier, they are the same basic game with different units.  Heck, CnC and RA and then TS and RA2 used common engines.

[Flipside]

Yeah, that was the ultimate defence against infantry in Dune, even a Harvester could squish a unit of Harkonen infantry pretty quick

[Dave2040]

Press Release:

http://www.ea.com/official/cc/cc3/us/release.jsp

[TrashMan]

OMG....What the hell did they do with the Mammoth tank!?

The ruined hte good old C&C desing! That's not a turret! that's 2 barrels glued to a pair of track! It lacks the powerfull and compact feeling of the original Mammoth tank...


and yes, units in TS sucked. Especially untis with miniguns..you'd think they would be powerfull and mow down hte opossition..meh...
somehow, I think I'll stick wiht Act of War...

[CP5670]

I thought TS was actually very well balanced, at least in multiplayer. There were lots of effective of rush tactics for both sides and no exceptionally powerful units. RA's unit/side balance, in contrast, was terrible.

At the end of the day, after a heavy session in Homeworld 2 or similar 'deep' RTS games, to fire up Command and Conquer Whatever and play through a fun set of missions rolling over a bad guy with a wave of rather big tanks, that to me is what C&C is all about.

I agree. I still play skirmishes with my RA mod every now and then. The fast paced goofiness and sheer fun factor of the whole thing is hard to beat.

[IceFire]

I thought TS was actually very well balanced, at least in multiplayer. There were lots of effective of rush tactics for both sides and no exceptionally powerful units. RA's unit/side balance, in contrast, was terrible.

At the end of the day, after a heavy session in Homeworld 2 or similar 'deep' RTS games, to fire up Command and Conquer Whatever and play through a fun set of missions rolling over a bad guy with a wave of rather big tanks, that to me is what C&C is all about.

I agree. I still play skirmishes with my RA mod every now and then. The fast paced goofiness and sheer fun factor of the whole thing is hard to beat.

RA I thought was better balanced than TS.  TS seemed to be all about the unstopable weapon of doom that the enemy would get and unleash and that was it.  Some sort of drone thing or some such.  TS was fun in single player but the multiplayer I couldn't get into.  RA was more fun in multiplayer I thought...

I prefered the Allies in MP...but I played as the Soviets as well.  Soviets and Migs were great for taking out the construction yard.  The Heavy tank was great as a rusher...but I had more fun with the subs and breaking through the  Allied navy.  I saw one guy use Allied light tanks in a large number to defeat me....the best counter seemed to be heavy tanks and rocket infantry.

It was good for its day.  WarCraft III or StarCraft is the epitomy of game balance these days.

[StratComm]

And yet, the latter of those is older than Freespace

[CP5670]

I thought TS was actually very well balanced, at least in multiplayer. There were lots of effective of rush tactics for both sides and no exceptionally powerful units. RA's unit/side balance, in contrast, was terrible.

At the end of the day, after a heavy session in Homeworld 2 or similar 'deep' RTS games, to fire up Command and Conquer Whatever and play through a fun set of missions rolling over a bad guy with a wave of rather big tanks, that to me is what C&C is all about.

I agree. I still play skirmishes with my RA mod every now and then. The fast paced goofiness and sheer fun factor of the whole thing is hard to beat.

RA I thought was better balanced than TS. TS seemed to be all about the unstopable weapon of doom that the enemy would get and unleash and that was it. Some sort of drone thing or some such. TS was fun in single player but the multiplayer I couldn't get into. RA was more fun in multiplayer I thought...

I prefered the Allies in MP...but I played as the Soviets as well. Soviets and Migs were great for taking out the construction yard. The Heavy tank was great as a rusher...but I had more fun with the subs and breaking through the Allied navy. I saw one guy use Allied light tanks in a large number to defeat me....the best counter seemed to be heavy tanks and rocket infantry.

It was good for its day. WarCraft III or StarCraft is the epitomy of game balance these days.

I played RA online for several months during the 3.03 beta period and basically, anyone who knew what they were doing played as Soviets for their heavy tanks. A group of seven or eight heavy tanks combined with the Q maneuver usually resulted in a fast win against an Allied player on most maps, as the Allies had nothing that could counter those effectively during the first few minutes of the game. The Allies didn't have the same rush capability with their light tanks (that weren't cheap enough compared to the heavy tanks) and the Q maneuver didn't work well against tesla coils. The aftermath expansion generally made things even worse, with the missile subs being overall superior to the cruisers, which were one of the Allies' main assets if the game lasted beyond the five minute rush stage. The turrets were fortunately made more powerful, but they were also quite a bit more expensive.

I also played C&C and especially TS a lot online and both games had far better side balance IMO.

Of course, when you factor in the mods for RA, the picture changes considerably:



All this talk about RA is making me feel like firing up another 8 player skirmirsh with the mod.

[neo_hermes]

  how many mods are in that game and where can i download it.

[NGTM-1R]

My god...is that the SNES Mechwarrior Madcat I see?

[Ulala]

Why are there tie bombers on the airstrips?

[Zuljin]

Only the original CnC had the ultimate anti-infantry weapon.  APC + force move/"crush target" and that oh-so-satisfying squishing sound.  You wouldn't believe how dissapointed I was when TS didn't have a similar "feature"

Actually, I played some Tiberian Sun the other day here, and I distinctly remember running over infantry with my harvester and getting the good ol' squishy sound.

[StratComm]

Actually, I played some Tiberian Sun the other day here, and I distinctly remember running over infantry with my harvester and getting the good ol' squishy sound.

Yeah some vehicles would still do it (massed Titans worked well) but it just wasn't nearly the same.  The different grid made it harder to catch infantrymen on a tile when moving and, more importantly, the APC wasn't capable of crushing anymore.  Plus, the squishing sound wasn't as satisfying.

[CP5670]

  how many mods are in that game and where can i download it.

Well, you can't really get that specific mod anywhere, since I made it. I could upload it somewhere if you want though. It basically incorporates a bunch of stuff from various other mods that are probably still available somewhere, along with some of my own things.

Search around for the Red Alert Soul Survivor mod (yes, it's soul, not sole). That one is hilarious.

My god...is that the SNES Mechwarrior Madcat I see?

Possibly. I can't remember where I got some of those graphics.

Why are there tie bombers on the airstrips?

Because that's one of the new units.

[Zuljin]

Actually, I played some Tiberian Sun the other day here, and I distinctly remember running over infantry with my harvester and getting the good ol' squishy sound.

Yeah some vehicles would still do it (massed Titans worked well) but it just wasn't nearly the same.  The different grid made it harder to catch infantrymen on a tile when moving and, more importantly, the APC wasn't capable of crushing anymore.  Plus, the squishing sound wasn't as satisfying.

Thats true. None of the vehicles with enough speed to do it efficiently were uncapable of running them over. Ofcourse.. thats what the good old rules.ini file is for
There you can change what you don't like to your hearts content.

[StratComm]

Oh I know, I was an avid TS modder for a while.  Made a number of new units actually.