The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Yes! And this time it is no prank!

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/commandconquer3/index.html

I will be very disappointed if the "third race" is not the aliens.


So many great sequels on the horizon. This, a new Star Control, BF 2142 (is it just me does this look like an action version of the C&C sequels?), Halo 3. Throw in Spore and you've bought your way into the poor house.

Tsk Tsk Tsk. Lest you forget about the wonder known as Bioshock (http://www.sshock2.com/bioshock/)

Keep in mind that Westwood is no more (except as a logo EA Games can stamp on their game boxes if they want to), and that EA has a VERY bad reputation (deservedly so). You'd be lucky if you don't get mission briefings in this game where the briefing officer is drinking Pepsi and eating Burger King burgers.

Well, there was no pepsi or burgers at the end of Starflight.

I'm hoping that Westwood was able to get enough done on the design and plot fronts on this project, before they were dismantled.

I wouldn't put much hopes in Westwood either.

They had a few good ideas at the beginning.
Dune 2 was quite revolutionary, and the first C&C game was nice. But after that they didn't make anything new. Every new game was the same old C&C with slightly updated graphics.
I admit I don't know if it's true for every C&C game as I gave up on the series somewhere around Tiberian Sun (or Emperor: Battlle for Dune if you count the Dune games).

I guess the biggest problem I have with those games is that the AI was so bloody stupid. The strategy  for every single one of those games was:
1) Build defences strong enough to hold off a few attacks
2) Find a way to exploit AI's stupidity, that  will allow you to win in every mission.
3) Repeat in every single mission

It gets boring after a while...

Generals had improved balance and AI. The problem is it is the bastard of the series, so most fans probably didn't give it a chance (I almost didn't.) It is quite a slap in the face, when you're coming from fighting a dark, cryptic, evil force that is bringing about world destruction, with perhaps an even darker and more powerful. . .something beyond them. Now, all that is chuked and you're fighting a handful of retarded people wearing garbage cans and sporting the pinnacle of WWI technology (what can two world superpowers possibly do against such a menace!?)

But, from a gameplay standpoint, Generals seemed a nice step up, even if some don't like how you can build magic resource structures inside your base and be fully funded by those.

So, I'm not too worried about the gameplay, just the plot side of things.

C&C was pretty good - all of them - if you went for the storyline. Kane, the tiberium, GDI et cetera. It could have been done a lot better though if they'd used a different game style instead of RTS. RPG might've worked better, or FPS. Ho hum.

the red alert series and generals both didn't quite do it for me - particularly generals - but that could just be personal taste.
And as for the dunes - played 'em all, read the books and watched the movies. Frank Herbert nut here, forgive me.

Well there are already plenty of fully RPG games out there, and there are FPS C&C games, like Renegade or Battlefield 2142. :)

But what would be quite excellent, is a C&C game that was an Action/RTS combo like Battlezone 2. You command from god view, but whenever you like, you can select a unit and then take it over in a FPS/TPS style action mode. You can even lead your troops into battle this way (just have them follow you) and if your unit that you are directly controlling gets killed, you just go back to god mode and command from there or take control of another unit.

Ooow, driving a Mammoth into battle, if the very thought doesn't give you shivers, you might want to check your pulse. :D

C&C Renegade is fun- I love running around as a NOD Flame Trooper on multiplayer and incinerating the guys that try to sneak into our base!

I like Generals/Zero Hour too...the GLA bikes are the sweetest thing, putting any infantry unit on the bike. Play as Rodall Juhziz and they start with Terrorists on them. High speed bombs! I also like the fact you can put a worker on one to get to a forward base position and set up in relatively short order.

Nice graphics.  If only I had a faster computer and more money...  ::)

I have generals, but not zero hour. The weapons in zero hour seemed too weird to me- unarmed dirt bikes that infantry ride in temporarily (what happens to the bike when they dismount?) and helicopter bunkers.

Generals itself is a good game from a gameplay standpoint, but I missed the storyline and general feel of the original series.

I second that sentiment. I've had a copy of Generals sitting around for several years now (but just recently got my hands on a graphics card powerful enough to run it). Having played through most of the game's single player, I'm not really all that impressed; Red Alert 2 seemed like a much more fulfilling experience, and a better fleshed out game. Generals is rather plotless, it seems like the 3 campaigns are only marginally related at best, and the fact that the most effective fighing force (IMO, anyway) is a bunch of guys running around in 30+ year-old Soviet tech is sort of rediculous.

I've found a few really annoying gameplay quirks (selecting enemy targets that are hiding behind buildings, for example, or the fact that your troops don't defend themselves if something is shooting at them from beyond their weapons range), but the game seems mostly solid... It's just that it also feels like a step back from its predecessor.

I look forward to a return to one of the older plotlines.

Agreed. Two superpowers against an iron age rebel band, does not an interesting conflict make. At least in Starcraft, the rednecks get spaceships. :)



To stop this, you must use the guard area command, then they'll attack anybody who enters that range. I think this was put into place to prevent "leading" where someone takes a few shots at your troops and then has them retreat through a mine field or such. Your troops follow and get blown apart. So basically, the designers of Generals made it so that your troops would hold position as default, and not chase nearby enemies unless ordered to (instead of you having to remember to tell them to stay put like in Starcraft 64, which inevitable ends up with you watching helplessly, as a dozen of your rogue mutas get psistormed into vapors, after chasing a few zealots into a protoss stronghold.)


Hopefully Generals was just so they could get their sea legs, with respect to 3D RTS (which was still somewhat new at the time, and hadn't really had a major success yet, if I recall correctly.)

Now, they've had Generals and BFME I+II to perfect the SAGE engine on, so they should be able to concentrate on the other things that make a C&C game what it should be. As I understand it, one of the two or so main developers of the series is working for EA on this, so we'll all just have to hope that he is the real talent behind the series, and can pull something off that feels authentic with Tiberium Wars.

Saddest thing is, in each of the superpower campaigns, once I start capturing the facilities that produce these "iron age" weapons (which is another gripe I have with the game; it's way to easy to capture facilities. At least you had to figure out a way to get those unarmed engineers inside the enemy buildings in the older games, now you can just use any old generic trooper and don't even need to sacrifice him.), I'll often end up using them more often than the default type I can normally build. Now, I'm all for allowances made to keep gameplay balanced, but this is just stupid. There should be no reason that a commander of a modern army would want to use cold war tech.


I can definitely understand where they're coming from with this, since I had that problem of having my defensive forces drawn off a bit at a time constantly in the other games. However, it really seems like units that are not  on active attack orders are sometimes completely oblivious to the enemy, despite being shot at; I frequently find that, when I notice this happening, my units don't need to move at all in order to attack that random foe that's harassing them. They're just simply actively ignoring it for whatever reason, almost as if they're trying to apply the "if I can't see you, you don't exist" brand of logic to the situation. I've had groups of tanks wiped out by a single technical before because I had my attention wrapped up elsewhere, and there's no excuse for something like that happening.


One can only hope. However, I will wait and see. I seem to always get excited about EA's initial release in a series that they take over, and always seem to wind up disappointed by them, no matter how long I decide to pursue that series. The James Bond games are a case in point. Hopefully they do better with this one, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

So....anyone else think the Blizzard and Westwood RTSs aren't all that and are just waiting for Supreme Commander?

Unless said commander was a diehard Red Alert 2 fan. ;)



Sadly, in every RTS I've played, unattended units never last very long at all. Sometimes I wish more games would take a page from Battlezone 2's multiplayer design doc, and allow multiple commanders on one side, with the core commander delegating forces to his sub-commanders, so that they could babysit and conduct raids, while he defended the base and built some nice high-end toys for the enemy to play with.



Big developers can be good at making large scale games that have solid gameplay and cutting edge graphics. However, they often lack ingenuity, originallity and feeling, so their games are not quite as emersive as some of the things smaller studios can come up with.



Silence Blasphemer! Took quickly has the light of the Khala dimmed in your mind.

But yes, I'm watching Supreme Commander, too.

Hmm, maybe that DOES explain it. ;D

There's a game that actually does this? That was always a dream of mine when playing these things online (although I've admittedly never played a lot online). It's hard enough to keep your daft units alive against the computer, aginst another person it becomes nigh-on impossible. That possibility should be utilized in pretty much every RTS game they make nowadays.

The reason it is not more widespread is because there are so few true Action/RTS games out there. No one will want to be a sub commander unless there is an action element to keep them busy (even if their leader is not being very generous with the non-player unit assignments and weapon/vehicle upgrades.) Having more than one commander who all have full control of everything is a recipe for chaos.

I always imgained having one comamnder who dealth with the overall strategy, building the base and producing units, and then having several sub-commanders with small strike forces, sometimes actign together against greater threats, sometimes holding theiroown positions whilst others advance. Playing like this in a group, against another group, would appeal to me much more than just wading in agianst a ton of other players, and losing half my forces due to incapable AI.

Or you could try the opposite approach: RTS by committee. Each army has 3+ commanders who have the ability to take any action they see fit, however, before they are able to do so, it has to be approved by a majority of their peers.

Sort of like real life, really. ;)

But again, with this you are still reliant on the primary commander to dispense units down to you, and if this is a full-blooded RTS, that can be boring while you wait for the big cheese to fork over some more tanks. Battlezone II got away with this by 1) giving other play modes, including one where you were the only human on your team and 2) providing a cool FPS/vehicular action combat element to the various commanders, so even if you didn't get reinforcements, you could still go out on your own and attack.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/windows/battlezone-ii-combat-commander



Instead you would be losing half your forces due to incapable [aSa]BiG_asiN_uS, the special 13 year old.



And if there is an even number of players, split decisions must be resolved with a vote from a commander on the opposing team. :)

Better yet, you could simply mandate a unanimous decision before taking action is permitted. That way absolutely NOTHING would get done. ;D

Maybe I'm an atypical gamer then, cause i wouldn't mind. Even if my job was to defend the base from unexpected incursions while the other commanders are out fighting, by jove I'd do my duty proudly. I shall have to look into this Battlezone thingy though. Sounds promising.


Well, that is kind of a realistic scenario though. In my version, the main commander would be able to take troops away as well as give them to you, so any dangerously incompetent subcommander could be replaced easily.

BZ2 is not without flaws, if they had given maybe another six months or whatever, they could have done wonders for AI pathfinding and aiming, but it is still one of my top 5 favorite games of all time, and was very far ahead of its time (and since it game out in '99 I'm sure it is not that pricy, taxes included ;) .) So far ahead in fact, that while 3D RTS is now the norm, I have not seen the whole idea of combining FPS, Vehicular Action, and RTS into one game again, not to mention the idea of having a few commanders on one side during multiplayer. I remember some site hinting that BF2142 might have some sort of RTS augmentation though, if that were to be the case, they might pick up the torch that BZ1-BZ2 carried. It has been infinitely frustrating to see perhaps the first 3D RTS series combine itself with the action genre (which also gives the AI units a physics engine, so that they do not move like chess pieces as in later 3D RTS games) and yet everyone I've seen who went for 3D RTS afterwards has not allowed you to play as a unit.




In both cases you assume that you would be the top commander, and not a sub commander yourself. If [aSa]BiG_asiN_uS is the leader of your army, he might not give you enough/any resources, even if you could wipe the enemies off the map with just a handfull of units. I think any game that uses this approach must give the sub commanders something to do regardless of what the lead commander does. BZ2 gave you a hovercraft, sniper rifle (that could take out pilots of other craft, so you could take their vehicles) and the action oriented focus to use these personally, without having to worry about incompetent AI. Perhaps sub commanders could be allowed to "steal" a unit from the main commander, every X minutes, so they aren't left to do nothing, if the alpha commander never learned how to share.

Ever since playing SC3 I'm very tolerant of flaws.


No, I assumed that the main commander would only be responsible for buildings and infrastructure. He could produce units and assign them, but not actually comamnd any of them. Thus his job would be the overall strategy and development of the base. Any troops guarding the base and its perimeters would be entrusted to a subcommander. I'm sorry if this was unclear.


I suppose this has much to do with my lack of experience in the intenret gaming worlds. most of my multiplayer experiences have been at LAN gatherings, where everyone knows eachother and very few asses are allowed. i suppose it would be harder to arrange on the net, but my idea was to paly a few games with dfifferent people unti lyou form a team which works, and then continue playing mostly in this team. After all, if every game has random temamates, there is very little point in designing the game for teams.

If a subcommander has nothing else to do, he could be assigned soem troops from another subcommander, and they could make whatever that person was handlign a joint venture. After all, the idea is that using several humans will be more to your advantage than having just one with lots of troops. perhaps the AI could grow weaker the more troops a commander had?