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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

#21

Post by stickfigure »

dragontamer wrote: post #8
systemvoltage wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s a “death ball”?

A situation that arises rather often in Axis and Allies, Civ4, Starcraft 2. It results because of math. To defeat 100 units of equal strength requires *more* than 100 units (!!!). Take for example 100 Zealots (Starcraft / Starcraft 2 melee unit). If you send 1-Zealot vs the 100 Zealots, it will die before it deals much damage. In fact, even if you send 10 Zealots vs 100 Zealots, the 10-Zealots will almost certainly d…

It's been a long time, but IIRC you could still group units in SC1 and bind them to number keys. So maybe only 12 at a time, but you could still navigate multiple groups of 12 with just a few keypresses.

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

#22

Post by orhmeh09 »

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’m terrible at real-time strategy games, yet the campaigns in CnC1 and RA1 were among the few (possibly only) I was able to complete. I really enjoyed the theme and wanted to see all the cutscenes, which might have helped with motivation.

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

#23

Post by hjek »

OpenRA is currently my favourite free/libre computer game. They've done a fabulous job at keeping the feeling of the original game while updating things like cross-platform support, screen resolution and network play and added build queues (and waypoints, I believe) that was present in later C&C games. They've also tweaked the game play, making thieves able to hijack vehicles and cloak (They are probably the most fun unit to micro around) and radar jammers able to deflect / confuse missiles, and added per-country special units like in RA2 (The French invisible phase transport is wild), and changed the tech tree so medium / heavy tanks require service depot.

I remember in the original Red Alert, if you ordered an airplane to fly into the shroud, it'd just disappear into the darkness, but in OpenRA you can actually use them for scouting (which totally makes sense). OpenRA also has fog-of-war which suddenly makes planes and helicopters key units for ground support.

I don't like war. The arms trade should be abolished. We should help refugees get safe passage and eliminate borders rather than build walls or drop bombs on them. Anyone working with defense in any capacity, like militarizing borders with drones or whatever, should immediately quit or turn whistle blower. Still, I find this war game incredibly enjoyable. Applause to the hackers.

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

#25

Post by dragontamer »

stickfigure wrote: post #21
dragontamer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A situation that arises rather often in Axis and Allies, Civ4, Starcraft 2. It results because of math. To defeat 100 units of equal strength requires *more* than 100 units (!!!). Take for example 100 Zealots (Starcraft / Starcraft 2 melee unit). If you send 1-Zealot vs the 100 Zealots, it will die before it deals much damage. In fact, even if you send 10 Zealots vs 100 Zealots, the 10-Zealots will almost certainly d…

It's been a long time, but IIRC you could still group units in SC1 and bind them to number keys. So maybe only 12 at a time, but you could still navigate multiple groups of 12 with just a few keypresses.

Yes, you can.

But it still means attack-moving 108 units (aka: 9 groups, all labeled 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) requires 18-actions.

That is: 1 (select group 1), then a, then left click on the attack-area. Then 2 (select group 2), a, left click on attack area. Etc. etc.

That's a difference of 18-apm (Starcraft Brood War) vs 2-apm (Starcraft 2). Furthermore, that "Group 1" in SC2 could have 150-units or 200-units (or 400-zerglings, lol) in it. They pretty much made death-balls have 10% of the APM requirement in SC2 compared to SC:Brood War.

I'm all for making the game easier and more accessible: but the death-ball tactic was a little bit "too obvious" and kind of unfun to watch, compared to the tightly coordinated groups of 12 that SC: Brood War was famous for. The groups were too big, numerical advantage was the biggest advantage in SC 2 IMO.

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

#26

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#29

Post by jbay808 »

dragontamer wrote: post #8
systemvoltage wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s a “death ball”?

A situation that arises rather often in Axis and Allies, Civ4, Starcraft 2. It results because of math. To defeat 100 units of equal strength requires *more* than 100 units (!!!). Take for example 100 Zealots (Starcraft / Starcraft 2 melee unit). If you send 1-Zealot vs the 100 Zealots, it will die before it deals much damage. In fact, even if you send 10 Zealots vs 100 Zealots, the 10-Zealots will almost certainly d…

The formalization of this is "Lanchester's Laws", equations that estimate the strength of unit numbers. Here is an excellent video explaining these laws in the context of Age of Empires 2:

https://youtu.be/wpjxWBwLkIE

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