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OpenRA: Red Alert, Command and Conquer, Dune 2000, Rebuilt for the Modern Era

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Re: OpenRA: Red Alert, Command and Conquer, Dune 2000, Rebuilt for the Modern Era

#11

Post by teawrecks »

Arrath wrote: post #7
systemvoltage wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s a “death ball”?

A massive, monoculture blob of either the cheapest and fastest to produce, or a reasonably effective as far as cost/time/damage output unit, used to just roll over the opponent's base. So, a few hundred riflemen or dozens and dozens of tanks. The death part of it comes from the numerical advantage, if an enemy unit walks into range of many times its number it'll get blown to hell before it can inflict meaningful dama…

Not always monoculture. The most effective deathballs have a balanced composition of units which complement each other.

Re: OpenRA: Red Alert, Command and Conquer, Dune 2000, Rebuilt for the Modern Era

#12

Post by Aachen »

systemvoltage wrote: post #6
dragontamer wrote: post #4

Something to note about the 90s-era is that the "death ball" of cheap units was *aggressively* mitigated in almost all strategy games. * Civilization 1, 2, and 3 had "stacks", but if you kill one unit in the stack, you kill ALL units in the stack. As such, "death balls" were incredibly fragile, one well placed attack kills the whole stack. * Command and Conquer has infantry, which get rolled over and instant-killed b…

What’s a “death ball”?

It's kind of clear from context, but still this is the first I hear the term (as someone who played those games) and DDG also doesn't come up with anything useful (top result, for example, is about some item in Dragon Ball). So I was also wondering if I got it right, especially when there's a hundred non-jargon and equally concise ways to say that, e.g. 'large group'. To me this seems like a valid question.

Re: OpenRA: Red Alert, Command and Conquer, Dune 2000, Rebuilt for the Modern Era

#13

Post by dragontamer »

Aachen wrote: post #12
systemvoltage wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s a “death ball”?

It's kind of clear from context, but still this is the first I hear the term (as someone who played those games) and DDG also doesn't come up with anything useful (top result, for example, is about some item in Dragon Ball). So I was also wondering if I got it right, especially when there's a hundred non-jargon and equally concise ways to say that, e.g. 'large group'. To me this seems like a valid question.

My use of the term originates from the Starcraft 2 culture. Search on "Protoss Deathball", which is a well known, highly effective "tactic"... if a bit obvious.

I'm sure the other games have their own terminology for the evolution of this "tactic".

Re: OpenRA: Red Alert, Command and Conquer, Dune 2000, Rebuilt for the Modern Era

#14

Post by Arrath »

teawrecks wrote: post #11
Arrath wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A massive, monoculture blob of either the cheapest and fastest to produce, or a reasonably effective as far as cost/time/damage output unit, used to just roll over the opponent's base. So, a few hundred riflemen or dozens and dozens of tanks. The death part of it comes from the numerical advantage, if an enemy unit walks into range of many times its number it'll get blown to hell before it can inflict meaningful dama…

Not always monoculture. The most effective deathballs have a balanced composition of units which complement each other.

Absolutely, this can vary. IME at least in the old days, it did tend to be a single unit type (eg Red Alert Medium/Heavy tank rushes, or a well timed Zerg Rush) but it is by no means a hard and fast rule.

Re: OpenRA: Red Alert, Command and Conquer, Dune 2000, Rebuilt for the Modern Era

#16

Post by zeven7 »

Aachen wrote: post #12
systemvoltage wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s a “death ball”?

It's kind of clear from context, but still this is the first I hear the term (as someone who played those games) and DDG also doesn't come up with anything useful (top result, for example, is about some item in Dragon Ball). So I was also wondering if I got it right, especially when there's a hundred non-jargon and equally concise ways to say that, e.g. 'large group'. To me this seems like a valid question.

It's a common term in modern RTS, and it's got more meaning attached to it than simply "a large group". For example, in StarCraft 2, a full army of zerglings wouldn't be considered a "death ball" because it'd be so easily defeated with a few Colossus and high templars (units that deal a lot of splash damage, which zerglings are particularly susceptible to). A death ball is an army so powerful it's virtually unstoppable once it's formed. Players can try to achieve a death ball to gain a victory, but it's often expensive and leaves you vulnerable while you're building one. Also death balls are usually slow, and the opponent can use faster units to attack vulnerable parts of their base while the player building a death ball is out of position.

Re: OpenRA: Red Alert, Command and Conquer, Dune 2000, Rebuilt for the Modern Era

#17

Post by dragontamer »

teawrecks wrote: post #11
Arrath wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A massive, monoculture blob of either the cheapest and fastest to produce, or a reasonably effective as far as cost/time/damage output unit, used to just roll over the opponent's base. So, a few hundred riflemen or dozens and dozens of tanks. The death part of it comes from the numerical advantage, if an enemy unit walks into range of many times its number it'll get blown to hell before it can inflict meaningful dama…

Not always monoculture. The most effective deathballs have a balanced composition of units which complement each other.

AoE2 is usually a monoculture, due to the nature of its upgrade systems.

If your knights are +2 armor and +2 damage, you'll probably want a mono-culture of knights. Futhermore, a singular upgrade (aka: Cavalier research) immediately applies to all knights.

Your +2 armor / +2 damage Cavaliers are probably superior to your +0 / +0 archers from the Feudal age, even if those archers are theoretically useful against some units.

Strictly speaking: its not a monoculture: Scouts + Knights is the common combination for cavalry civs, because Knights lose vs Monks/Archers, while Scouts win vs Monks/Archers. Furthermore, Scouts share the +2 armor / +2 damage upgrade with Knights. But still, the upgrade system almost "forces" a monoculture (or close to a monoculture): its far more efficient to only research one or two units, rather than researching many, many different kinds of units.

Re: OpenRA: Red Alert, Command and Conquer, Dune 2000, Rebuilt for the Modern Era

#18

Post by hjek »

dragontamer wrote: post #4

Something to note about the 90s-era is that the "death ball" of cheap units was *aggressively* mitigated in almost all strategy games. * Civilization 1, 2, and 3 had "stacks", but if you kill one unit in the stack, you kill ALL units in the stack. As such, "death balls" were incredibly fragile, one well placed attack kills the whole stack. * Command and Conquer has infantry, which get rolled over and instant-killed b…

In OpenRA infantry has a chance when a tank tries to run them over; especially thieves are good at this.

Re: OpenRA: Red Alert, Command and Conquer, Dune 2000, Rebuilt for the Modern Era

#19

Post by dragontamer »

teawrecks wrote: post #9
systemvoltage wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s a “death ball”?

Large ball of units that you move into your enemy territory to cause death. They can be a lot of fun, but 20 years ago they presented a significant challenge to pathfinding algorithms on slow CPUs. As noted above, different games used different strategies to address them.

C&C is a clear counterexample however: all units can be selected as a group.

That is to say: pathfinding was fast enough that it clearly wasn't a problem in C&C. But they clearly wanted to nerf infantry-based death balls. And boy oh boy, are infantry-death balls nerfed.

An occasional infantry unit still finds its uses in C&C. They're incredibly cheap after all, and tanks have a difficult job killing infantry with their tank-cannons. So as long as you have a wall of tanks in front of your infantry, their rockets can contribute heavily in combat.

Re: OpenRA: Red Alert, Command and Conquer, Dune 2000, Rebuilt for the Modern Era

#20

Post by traspler »

41209 wrote: post #3

I actually own the remasters, did anyone else notice these games are absurdly hard. When I come to think about it, I've never been able to beat the original Red alert. The sequels are pretty easy though

I‘ve tried the C&C 1 campaign when the remasters got released. Wow, the difficulty is brutal. To the point where it just doesn’t feel very fun anymore. I‘ve mostly been playing Tiberian Sun and RA2 as a kid and can‘t remember them being this hard.
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