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LoL3!
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Apr 8, 2020 17:26
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Kibayasu posted:I don't know long it took to convince and/or cast Barry Corbin as Carville way back in the Red Alert expansion but it was time well spent. Really was. Best casting choice they made since Joe Kucan decided to cast himself 
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Apr 8, 2020 17:52
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Allied 03: Hail to the Chief https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjh1-52joGE Hail to the Chief  The Soviets have taken control of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and North Carolina! On top of that, they've managed to sneak in a Psychic Beacon on to Capitol Hill! Report to high command and get this sorted out, pronto!   Fighting in the heart of the capital!  Location: Washington D.C., USA Objective: Destroy the Psychic Beacon at all costs! Briefing: The Soviets have invaded Washington, D.C. and have used their evil psychic technology to mind control our leaders. You must rescue them by destroying the Psychic Beacon near the White House. Author's note: Yet another good mission with a solid intro for a new unit (IFV) while also showing off the Harrier jets.   Name: President Dugan Aliases: None Affiliation: Allies [Soviet Sympathizer] Occupation: President of the United States of America Voiced/Played by: Ray Wise President of the United States of America. Helped install Premier Romanov in Soviet Russia. Defected to the Reds.  Name: Ben Carville Aliases: General Thorn Affiliation: Allies [Soviet Sympathizer] Occupation: Leading General of the US Forces. Voiced/Played by: Barry Corbin Top military official for the United States of America's armed forces. Reports directly to the president. Enjoys antagonizing Tanya. Defected to the Reds.  Name: Lt. Eva Aliases: None Affiliation: Allies Occupation: Tactical and Communications officer for the Commander Voiced/Played by: Athena Massey Lt. Eva is the Commander's tactics and communications officer, providing a vital supporting role in the Commander's control of his forces, and the battlefield.   IFV RANGE: Short-Medium ARMOR: Light WEAPON: Missiles COST: 600 An incredibly versatile vehicle, this transport alters its weapon depending on what type of infantry unit is placed inside it. For instance, putting an Engineer into this craft turns it into a mobile repair vehicle, able to repair your damaged vehicles without the necessity of bringing your units back to your base, while GIs enhance the vehicle’s ability to gun down infantry, etc. Explore the many unique abilities the IFV has to offer. Author's Note: A rather interesting vehicle with plenty of variety to it. While I never make the most of it, it certainly shows off a rather fun aspect to a unit transport.  Harrier RANGE: Short ARMOR: Light WEAPON: Maverick Missiles COST: 1200 This fast jet-aircraft is used for ground attacks against enemy positions. Useful for strafing enemy structures or incoming columns of enemy units, the Harrier is vulnerable to Soviet anti-aircraft fire. Author's Note: A basic air unit, nothing too fancy. Has a high cost for relatively good striking power but light defense makes it risky to use most times.  Airforce Command ARMOR: Steel COST: 1000 POWER USAGE: 50 PURPOSE: Builds Aircraft The Allied Air Force Command Headquarters has two critical functions. Firstly, it provides radar, activating your Radar display, and allowing you to see the areas of the shroud you have removed on your Radar map. Secondly, this structure allows for the creation of aircraft. Each Air Force Command Headquarters can control up to four Harriers. Additional aircraft will require the production of a new Air Force Command Headquarters. Author's Note: Required to build and maintain Harrier jets. Unlocks aircraft. Aftermath: Faster than Par Time: "The President was rescued long before the Soviets could discover any important military secrets." Slower than Par Time: "The President was rescued, though many military secrets were compromised."
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Apr 11, 2020 01:57
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IMO the more interesting IFV modes are the ones you get from putting Soviet infantry in it. Interesting in both good and bad ways.
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Apr 11, 2020 02:18
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It's plain cool that they even made variations for the Soviet units really. I wish we'd seen more variations on the "APC units can fire out of" unit style in RTS in general but it's tricky to balance out since a lot of infantry tend to be glass cannons
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Apr 11, 2020 02:30
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So... you just massacred a whole bunch of mind controlled civilians and no one comments on it. Okay then.
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Apr 11, 2020 02:32
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Better dead than red, right?
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Apr 11, 2020 02:37
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hey, they shot us first! also if nothing else IFVs are crazy fast, great for scouting if you have some lying around and an area that needs checking. In multiplayer people tend to use dogs for their early scouting since they're the fastest thing that comes out of a barracks. Dabir fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Apr 11, 2020 |
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Apr 11, 2020 02:41
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Cythereal posted:So... you just massacred a whole bunch of mind controlled civilians and no one comments on it. Some traditions die hard.
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Apr 11, 2020 02:51
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If you're still wondering, select all matching on screen is a hotkey (t, I believe), and on the little toolbar on the bottom, the bracket symbol. Double click was always deploy.
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Apr 11, 2020 03:15
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One thing to point out is that the default IFV missiles also do anti air, which in RA2 includes intercepting large Soviet missiles. IFVs are quite expensive for how squishy they are, though.
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Apr 11, 2020 03:52
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Jobbo Fett posted:Some traditions die hard. Gold. Also, while I'm ambivalent towards this game in general, I really like the opening cutscene of this mission - esp. how Eva is more surprised that Gen. Carville is now pro-Soviet than the President. And the IFV is just excellent.
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Apr 11, 2020 05:20
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Mokinokaro posted:It's plain cool that they even made variations for the Soviet units really. If I remember right, some of the expansion infantry you get do fantastic things in an IFV.
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Apr 11, 2020 05:53
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You're being a little harsh on the Flak Track. It's a decent, mobile anti-air unit that's great at taking out Rocketeers when it's not outnumbered 30 to 1 and it's good at getting infantry across the map quickly.
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Apr 11, 2020 06:32
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Love the small detail of mind controlled Carville having a Soviet flag coffee stirrer. Anyway, yeah, another great mission with some pretty heavy urban combat. With the massive lack of Soviet anti-air, Rocketeers and the Harrier jet just dominate the map, and make clearing the Soviet held buildings a breeze. Also, while it is a tad fragile, the IFV is another fantastic unit with crazy amounts of versatility that allows you to adapt to whatever you are facing quickly. Plus, as stated, its' crazy fast speed and good sight make it a fine ground-based scout. As for the Harrier, its pretty much an ORCA+, only since it has just a pair of missiles, there is no weird curly shuffle between shots, and it definitely can deal some major damage in a full squad of four, although anti-air wipes them out way quicker then you would expect. The Soviet Flak Truck, while not exactly too impressive, does at least have the standard 5 infantry capacity vs the IFVs' one, so it really should be thought of as an APC+ with some modest anti-air capability vs the jack of all trades IFV. Also, there is one more difference between the Allied and Soviet miners that I don't think is ever really explained, but the Soviet one can hold twice as much ore as its Allied counterpart, although the Allied miner being able to warp back makes up for this mostly. Still, Allied miners are definitely a lot more fragile then one might be used to when it comes to miners/harvester units, but if you manually click an Allied miner back to a Ore Refinery, it will warp there, so that is a way to save them from an attack.
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Apr 11, 2020 08:25
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The sad part of the IFV is that (almost) all of its best interactions are with either Soviet or multiplayer-only units.
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Apr 11, 2020 09:05
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The Harrier's main strength is being a one-shot nuke when massed, and cheesing campaign levels for faster par times. I don't think I've ever used them in a non-decisive manner, especially not against individual units. Oh, and they're capable of revealing the map, unlike earlier games' flying units.
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Apr 11, 2020 09:22
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So when I played the game years ago, the IFV was how I cheesed it when I made a discovery that I'm sure loads of other people made. Basically the Promotion system in the game worked off the Unit destroying other units that are a multiplier of its cost. I think it was like times 5 and times 10. So if a unit cost 200 credits (like the GI's) it had to destroy 1000 credits worth of units to rank up. The same was true of the IFV. What's more, if a Uni was inside the IFV and it got promoted, the Infinity inside would get promoted. But the Promotion worked off the IFV's low cost of 600 credits, not the Infantry inside it. So if you put GI's inside a IFV they had to kill 3000 credits worth of units to get promoted instead of 1000 credits if outside. But if you had an infantry unit that cost more than 600 credits and put them inside a IFV, they would get promoted up far faster. I'm sure people are seeing where this is going and why it got so good.
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Apr 11, 2020 11:05
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Unreal_One posted:If you're still wondering, select all matching on screen is a hotkey (t, I believe), and on the little toolbar on the bottom, the bracket symbol. Double click was always deploy.
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Apr 11, 2020 12:59
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Fangz posted:One thing to point out is that the default IFV missiles also do anti air, which in RA2 includes intercepting large Soviet missiles. I wanted to jump on this point as well, IFV are most useful as your G2A unit outside of water maps. They are expensive but they beat the pants off of the standard anti-air structure, being both cheaper and not requiring base power to operate. Plus being mobile they can respond to air threats far more effectively than a static defense, a cluster of IFVs can cover a base better than a handful of turrets at a cheaper price and they can keep the pressure on slower moving air units that might avoid a turret. Maybe someone who knows the game better than I could chip in: Allies use AA missiles, soviets use flak, I always felt that flak did less damage but had AOE while missiles were higher single target damage however I have no evidence to support this.
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Apr 11, 2020 16:01
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CheeseThief posted:I wanted to jump on this point as well, IFV are most useful as your G2A unit outside of water maps. They are expensive but they beat the pants off of the standard anti-air structure, being both cheaper and not requiring base power to operate. Plus being mobile they can respond to air threats far more effectively than a static defense, a cluster of IFVs can cover a base better than a handful of turrets at a cheaper price and they can keep the pressure on slower moving air units that might avoid a turret. You are correct that flack has an AOE. It actually makes flak tracks pretty good at fighting blobs of infantry.
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Apr 11, 2020 17:07
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Anecdotally, I noticed the same thing with missiles having better single-target damage. This mission too is a real stand-out for me, classic RA2. You're in Washington DC, the mind controlled civilians think you're there to tread on them (you are), you get bonus points for repairing the American monuments, and there's a psychic thingy set up on the White House's lawn. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president?
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Apr 11, 2020 18:10
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we also got to hear the best track from the ost in this update https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xJBxaaU5fE yeah that's right edit: whoops, let's use one with a neutral background Aces High fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Apr 12, 2020 |
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Apr 11, 2020 19:15
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You can't really go wrong.
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Apr 11, 2020 19:20
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Big ole spoiler thumbnail right there...
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Apr 11, 2020 19:33
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Aces High posted:we also got to hear the best track from the ost in this update Use this one instead, spoiler free thumbnail. https://youtu.be/5xJBxaaU5fE Also, the best RA2 track is every track. There's no bad ones, they're all fantastic.
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Apr 11, 2020 20:57
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Best track? That's not Grinder
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Apr 11, 2020 21:10
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We don't get the actual best track until Yuri's Revenge  .
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Apr 12, 2020 01:46
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I think RA2 is still my favorite sound track of any game, ever. TibDawn might be a better album to listen to on it's own, but for background music during the game itself, it can't be beat. But yeah, Grinder is the best.
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Apr 12, 2020 01:47
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The problem with the Harrier is that it's tied to the RA2 control scheme, which itself is a hangover from the methods used to control ORCAs/Apaches all the way back to C&C1. The short version is that if you bind two of them to a hotkey you can reliably kill two Rhinos in a pass, and good MP players could reliably attack and defend that way (the Harrier missile has limited homing once launched but a Rhino can move fast enough to evade it when micromanaged by a human player). Yes the best way to use Harriers is in groups of eight or more for decapitation strikes, until better ways come along to use that style of anti-tank air unit in later years.
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Apr 12, 2020 02:32
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All these urban maps really make me wish for a Tiberian Sun re-done in the style of RA2, with its denser maps, larger and more visually distinct units, a decent amount of units with special abilities, all that good stuff. Like, atmospherically and to an extent narratively TibSun is the best of the series, but RA2 is overall a better game. Imagine if your jumpjet infantry worked like rocketeers, if your orcas were much less finicky like the harriers, if you could queue up 30 Light Infantry instead of five at a time. Imagine if TibSun's ruined and abandoned settlements actually had the scope and scale of RA2's cities rather than being a loose handful of buildings each the size of a Titan.
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Apr 12, 2020 04:00
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Radio Free Kobold posted:All these urban maps really make me wish for a Tiberian Sun re-done in the style of RA2, with its denser maps, larger and more visually distinct units, a decent amount of units with special abilities, all that good stuff. Like, atmospherically and to an extent narratively TibSun is the best of the series, but RA2 is overall a better game. Imagine if your jumpjet infantry worked like rocketeers, if your orcas were much less finicky like the harriers, if you could queue up 30 Light Infantry instead of five at a time. Imagine if TibSun's ruined and abandoned settlements actually had the scope and scale of RA2's cities rather than being a loose handful of buildings each the size of a Titan. Perhaps someday with an Enhanced "This is what we actually wanted to do" Edition... 
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Apr 12, 2020 07:43
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CheeseThief posted:Maybe someone who knows the game better than I could chip in: Allies use AA missiles, soviets use flak, I always felt that flak did less damage but had AOE while missiles were higher single target damage however I have no evidence to support this.
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Apr 12, 2020 13:42
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It's odd how Allies and Soviet swapped AA strategy since RA1, where Allies used flak cannons and Soviet used SAM sites.
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Apr 12, 2020 14:05
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The Allies won the war, so the Soviets adopted their superior technology. Meanwhile in America, they invented the Patriot missile system, and you're a Patriot, aren't you? Comrade?
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Apr 12, 2020 14:06
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Dabir posted:The Allies won the war, so the Soviets adopted their superior technology. Meanwhile in America, they invented the Patriot missile system, and you're a Patriot, aren't you? Comrade?
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Apr 12, 2020 15:22
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nielsm posted:It's odd how Allies and Soviet swapped AA strategy since RA1, where Allies used flak cannons and Soviet used SAM sites. All part of the 70s/80s tone. Allied AA batteries are explicitly Patriot missile systems, whereas the Soviets have moved from WW2 Stalinist walls of iron to the Cold War "Asiatic hordes" tropes - gas-masked conscript soldiers being the most obvious example we've seen so far. EDIT: Later, when we've seen more of both sides' air units, the specific reasons their AA weapons work that way will become more apparent.
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Apr 12, 2020 15:39
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Early screenshots had AA guns protecting the Statue of Liberty etc But all the allied vehicles for AA went in on missiles, as we'll see as things continue
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Apr 12, 2020 18:27
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It's because missiles are cool and good
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Apr 12, 2020 19:38
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Garrisoning buildings is oddly used by the AI. All I remember is the frustration of trying to level a city block full of walled in troops. Edit: Edited for quasi-spoiler thiswayliesmadness fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Apr 12, 2020 |
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Apr 12, 2020 22:25
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