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Did you beat them solo or with assistance, and with which crawlers?
Just curious.
Solo, using whichever crawler was appropriate (you can delete your crawler and redeploy if you want). I think for the first "real" GDI mission I used defense and just spammed turrets.
Sooooo, been playing C&C since the first. Loved most of the games (the one exception being renegade) and have bought every release. Even the ones I took certain issues with always made it up somehow in another department. The one thing that I loved about this series the most: Kane. That bald headed spout of machismo who just WOULD NOT DIE.
So I played, and I played, and I played loving every second that revealed more about the character. Then came the ending of 3 and its expansion plus the announcements surrounding the 4th game in the tiberian saga.
"Tiberian Twilight will complete Kane's story, revealing his identity and motives. The Tiberium Universe may continue beyond Command and Conquer 4, though this installment will end the Kane story arc."
I thought to myself... FUCK YES. I'm willing to forget the changes, the story twists, and actor choices that pissed me off over the years if they would just tell me how this shit ends and explain what the hell was up with Kane.
I have played 4... and now for the spoiler:
To the makers of C&C4:
Why the fuck do I always buy the hype? Is it cause I grew up with this series and just haven't been able to grow out of it? Maybe I'm thick, maybe that's it. Maybe you shining examples of all things gaming that are the PA forums can share with me what I missed that explained DICK ALL about Kane.
*phew* Felt good to rage dump that. *wheeze* Ugh, I think I'm going to go lie down.
The tiberium crystals are exp, and give "upgrade" points which you can spend on the second panel on the lower right. Upgrades include level 2 units, faster firing rate, specific unit upgrades, etc.
The red crystals give upgrade points.
The green tiberium (looks more like a ball than a crystal) ranks your units up.
The blue have different effects per unit, and they can be seen by hovering over the unit's picture (says Blue Tiberium: *insert effect here*). Most of the time it's increased damage.
The green crystals do something when you take them back to your base, but I haven't figured it out yet. Most likely because I'm only a couple missions past the tutorial missions.
Right, in the skirmishes I've been playing, returning green crystals give you 1 upgrade point. I haven't seen red crystals yet (outside of the campaign). Blues also seem to give upgrade points as well as the listed benefits. I think what you are referring to for the Green Tiberium are the upgrade crates which certain units will drop and can be found sprinkled around the map.
As a side note, I cleared through the GDI campaign on Monday. Once you get past the GST down mission things get easier. It's also definately easier to play through as a high level Support.
The tiberium crystals are exp, and give "upgrade" points which you can spend on the second panel on the lower right. Upgrades include level 2 units, faster firing rate, specific unit upgrades, etc.
The red crystals give upgrade points.
The green tiberium (looks more like a ball than a crystal) ranks your units up.
The blue have different effects per unit, and they can be seen by hovering over the unit's picture (says Blue Tiberium: *insert effect here*). Most of the time it's increased damage.
The green crystals do something when you take them back to your base, but I haven't figured it out yet. Most likely because I'm only a couple missions past the tutorial missions.
Red crystals are instant upgrade tier points.
Green CRATES are for unit ranks
Blue CRATES are only visible as offense class and give an additional weapon to your unit
Green crystals and blue crystals are for taking back to a "landing/drill" zone for upgrade points. Green is 1, blue is 2.
specialmias on
0
surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited March 2010
K dudes, I've been busting the single player.
At first I thought it was SUPER badly balanced (because I died a fair bit), then I realised that actually it was the most enjoyable single player rts I've played in a while - but you sort of have to cheese it if not doing it coop.
Few tips:
Offense units are, on balance, better to have around. Blue tiberium upgrades can sometimes turn them into monsters (mantises go from crap to brilliant, avatars sprout bonus arms and start railing everybody, strikers go from being total crap to being only slightly crap)
So, if you have the opportunity to, spawn an offense crawler, get the units you want, then switch to another type.
Now, on missions without time limits there is a way to cheese it:
Spawn as offense, get your units, stay in spawn, then press delete to scupper your mcv (really useful button) and summon a defense MCV.
Spam bunkers, and press c to sell them. You will get 1 green tiberium box for every one you sell. If you are patient, just upgrade your entire army to elite. Makes everything a lot easier.
Your mcv repairs units around it when deployed, and if it's tech level 2 or 3 you want to deploy it SUPER aggressively. It repairs itself when deployed too, and it can take a kicking - it can be used to tank for your fragile units.
Keep around at least 3-4 engineers. This is for several reasons:
a) they repair shit. This is nies. This includes infantry, bizarrely. Sadly, they can't repair aircraft
b) You kill an avatar/mammoth tank/mastodon? Hey look, you have some engineers to grab the husk! Oh, and bonus; so long as you have more than one engineer, you can go way over pop cap, and still have engineers left over to capture more husks
c) They have cliffjumping and are incredibly fast. You can use a couple at the beginning of each mission to grab all the red tiberium for your upgrades.
In general, infantry strategies are total shit. The amount of damage they do in comparison to things like mastodons just makes them not really worthwhile. This might not be as true for GDI as for NOD.
Rockets are mostly not that great. In fact, very few units actually feel like they can kill shit. The exceptions would be things like the mastodon and the aforementioned mammoth tanks.
Also, I didn't do this but the game would be significantly easier if you played a few skirmishes before trying the single player - you get shared XP I believe.
surrealitycheck on
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surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited March 2010
Also, Hammerheads are absolutely nuts if you need to kill crawlers. You can pop their berserker engine with the "shoot faster" support power and just lay WASTE to everything. They are very much the anti-everything planes, delicious.
My general discovery with the GDI side is that playing Support will win most of the missions. 3 Hammerheads and 4 Paladins will help carry you forward across just about any objective you need to take.
The only mission where I felt it was absolutely necessary to break this formula was the one with the downed GST, and I swapped to Defense for the last leg of it. Personally I hate playing Defense as it feels incomplete (you HAVE to have a good teammate to play it, whereas I can solo with Support and Offense pretty well).
So you're doing random AI matches that have no ties to the single player campaign.. in order to unlock units to be able to use in the single player campaign because it is otherwise too difficult or unpleasant to play?
Is that the right of it?
JAEF on
0
surrealitychecklonely, but not unloveddreaming of faulty keys and latchesRegistered Userregular
edited April 2010
So you're doing random AI matches that have no ties to the single player campaign.. in order to unlock units to be able to use in the single player campaign because it is otherwise too difficult or unpleasant to play?
Not too difficult - it's just that completing the campaign doesn't give you access to all the game's units. I would have thought they'd have made sure, but...
Zxerolfor the smaller pieces, my shovel wouldn't doso i took off my boot and used my shoeRegistered Userregular
edited April 2010
The idea, at least according to the lead designer, was to prevent new players from being overwhelmed from a large list of units. Instead, they would be drip-fed new units and it's supposed to ease the learning curve. Sam Bass had stated on interviews that RTS genre had become too hardcore and wanted to "save the genre from itself," and this is just one facet of that philosophy.
Personally opinion is that I dislike equipment unlocks in multiplayer games (I just unlocked the last bullshit in Bad Company 2, and good fucking riddance), and it's triple worse in this game because it was used as justification for the constant-connection requirement and complete removal of LAN play. Blah.
The idea, at least according to the lead designer, was to prevent new players from being overwhelmed from a large list of units. Instead, they would be drip-fed new units and it's supposed to ease the learning curve. Sam Bass had stated on interviews that RTS genre had become too hardcore and wanted to "save the genre from itself," and this is just one facet of that philosophy.
Personally opinion is that I dislike equipment unlocks in multiplayer games (I just unlocked the last bullshit in Bad Company 2, and good fucking riddance), and it's triple worse in this game because it was used as justification for the constant-connection requirement and complete removal of LAN play. Blah.
RTS's with tutorials have been drip-feeding units for awhile now. They just do it 5 units at a time through steps of a tutorial, rather than hours apart separated by grinding pointless skirmishes.
Isn't that what the single player campaign of every RTS since Dune motherfucking 2 been? Letting you learn the game by dripfeeding you new units and structures?
And how is this situation better? Instead of being confused and overwhelmed by all the different tiers of units and things, a new player instead is confused when someone stomps them into the ground with units that they aren't even allowed to use.
I still haven't hit level 20 with GDI (I just hit 18). IIRC I finished the GDI missions at level...14 or 16 and that was due to doing a lot of skirmishes (which I've always enjoyed in RTS, so that didn't piss me off as much).
My Nod is still sub level 10, and I'm not sure I have the attention span to level them as far.
Isn't that what the single player campaign of every RTS since Dune motherfucking 2 been? Letting you learn the game by dripfeeding you new units and structures?
And how is this situation better? Instead of being confused and overwhelmed by all the different tiers of units and things, a new player instead is confused when someone stomps them into the ground with units that they aren't even allowed to use.
The unlocking of units also applies to multiplayer? In a RTS? Bwahahahahaha!
They really made some really awful decisions with this game.
DOW2 already does the squad based RPG-RTS really fucking well. And then they tried to go in the same direction, but did all the wrong things.
They should really have stuck with the classic gameplay. That's C&C's thing. Relic has been perfecting the Squad RPG style for years. Take Company of Heroes, for instance.
Yeah, especially since it's the conclusion of the Tiberium Storyline. If anything it should have been as much of a throwback as possible, to give the series a good send off.
Isn't that what the single player campaign of every RTS since Dune motherfucking 2 been? Letting you learn the game by dripfeeding you new units and structures?
And how is this situation better? Instead of being confused and overwhelmed by all the different tiers of units and things, a new player instead is confused when someone stomps them into the ground with units that they aren't even allowed to use.
If you ask me, the older way is better! Red Alert 3 was great about it, "Oh no, they're using unit X! You are now authorized to use unity Y! Go blow shit up and get a feel for them."
Isn't that what the single player campaign of every RTS since Dune motherfucking 2 been? Letting you learn the game by dripfeeding you new units and structures?
And how is this situation better? Instead of being confused and overwhelmed by all the different tiers of units and things, a new player instead is confused when someone stomps them into the ground with units that they aren't even allowed to use.
If you ask me, the older way is better! Red Alert 3 was great about it, "Oh no, they're using unit X! You are now authorized to use unity Y! Go blow shit up and get a feel for them."
Man, I loved the original style of "surprise, this unit's available!"
In C&C 1, that one GDI mission near the end (you had to stop a Nod convoy) where you had a bunch of units roll in off the bottom of the screen, and it included a Mammoth fucking tank* was awesome.
*Italics because really, I saw the Mammoth in the manual and guides, and the idea of a huge tank with two cannons and a missile launcher was awesome at the time.
Pretty much my entire C&C3 single player strategy was: build factory, build tech centre, research railguns, build mammoth tanks until they cover the entire screen, roll over my enemies in a great tsunami of metal.
So you're doing random AI matches that have no ties to the single player campaign.. in order to unlock units to be able to use in the single player campaign because it is otherwise too difficult or unpleasant to play?
Is that the right of it?
Yes. I tried the first (actual) campaign mission for awhile and was getting nowhere due to the swarms of Nod units (they get three crawlers and apparently a higher unit cap) and so after dealing with that for awhile I said fuck it and started grinding out AI skirmishes.
The idea, at least according to the lead designer, was to prevent new players from being overwhelmed from a large list of units. Instead, they would be drip-fed new units and it's supposed to ease the learning curve. Sam Bass had stated on interviews that RTS genre had become too hardcore and wanted to "save the genre from itself," and this is just one facet of that philosophy.
Personally opinion is that I dislike equipment unlocks in multiplayer games (I just unlocked the last bullshit in Bad Company 2, and good fucking riddance), and it's triple worse in this game because it was used as justification for the constant-connection requirement and complete removal of LAN play. Blah.
And If that's their reason? Not wanting to overwhelm new players with units? That's assanine. C&C 3 did a perfectly acceptable job of introducing units throughout the campaign. Sure jumping right into multiplayer might leave people a little dumbfounded at first but that's how being new to the multiplayer in an RTS is. Making people unlock units doesn't fix that, it just fucks up the single player campaign.
Pretty much my entire C&C3 single player strategy was: build factory, build tech centre, research railguns, build mammoth tanks until they cover the entire screen, roll over my enemies in a great tsunami of metal.
Which is exactly what I want from a C&C game and one of the reasons I loved the shit out of C&C3. Deciding they need to drastically change things up in the final installment of a series? God-damnit EA.
I wish I had a friend who had picked this up. I'd absolutely be all for getting a game going and then just setting our rally points in the center and letting our units destroy one another for exp. Grinding AI skirmishes is too slow :P
Blue mapHello darkness, my old friend.Registered Userregular
edited April 2010
So can someone explain how the unlocking works? Do the units you unlock replace one another, (in mw2 you can have cold blooded or stopping power, not both) or is it more traditional (get to level 4 so you can use planes)?
So can someone explain how the unlocking works? Do the units you unlock replace one another, (in mw2 you can have cold blooded or stopping power, or is it more traditional (get to level 4 so you can use planes)?
The later.
When you start out as GDI offense, you have access to:
Engineers
Hunters (medium unit, anti-medium)
Talons (light unit, anti-medium aircraft)
Wolfs (medium unit, anti-light)
Titans (medium unit, anti-heavy)
As you progress you gain new units. For example: at higher levels you gain the ability to build Mammoth Tanks and the Mastodon (the new version of the Mammoth Mk.2). You still retain the ability to build Hunters/Talons/Wolfs/Titans, but now you have these available for later in the game. The majority of these units require you getting upgrade points so you can upgrade a new tech tier (tier 2 requires 5 upgrade points, I think tier 3 requires 9 more).
There are also specific unit upgrades you can research (one upgrade allows the husks of Mammoth Tanks and Mastodons to slowly self repair and stand up). These are also unlocked through the leveling process.
The thing with the leveling is that in some levels, you don't get anything, and in others you may only gain a unit for Offense, and a new power for Support.
Posts
Don't know what to tell you, I beat both campaigns straight through on a fresh profile.
Just curious.
Solo, using whichever crawler was appropriate (you can delete your crawler and redeploy if you want). I think for the first "real" GDI mission I used defense and just spammed turrets.
So I played, and I played, and I played loving every second that revealed more about the character. Then came the ending of 3 and its expansion plus the announcements surrounding the 4th game in the tiberian saga.
"Tiberian Twilight will complete Kane's story, revealing his identity and motives. The Tiberium Universe may continue beyond Command and Conquer 4, though this installment will end the Kane story arc."
I thought to myself... FUCK YES. I'm willing to forget the changes, the story twists, and actor choices that pissed me off over the years if they would just tell me how this shit ends and explain what the hell was up with Kane.
I have played 4... and now for the spoiler:
Why the fuck do I always buy the hype? Is it cause I grew up with this series and just haven't been able to grow out of it? Maybe I'm thick, maybe that's it. Maybe you shining examples of all things gaming that are the PA forums can share with me what I missed that explained DICK ALL about Kane.
*phew* Felt good to rage dump that. *wheeze* Ugh, I think I'm going to go lie down.
Twitter Youtube Xbox
Is the earth fucked? Is Kane a Cybran?
https://medium.com/@alascii
i've tried in vain, its not there. yet
Endings:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBjd7_IblQY
You can find the entire plot videos linked from these. You're not missing much if you either A: don't play this game or B: watch the cutscenes.
Twitter Youtube Xbox
The red crystals give upgrade points.
The green tiberium (looks more like a ball than a crystal) ranks your units up.
The blue have different effects per unit, and they can be seen by hovering over the unit's picture (says Blue Tiberium: *insert effect here*). Most of the time it's increased damage.
The green crystals do something when you take them back to your base, but I haven't figured it out yet. Most likely because I'm only a couple missions past the tutorial missions.
As a side note, I cleared through the GDI campaign on Monday. Once you get past the GST down mission things get easier. It's also definately easier to play through as a high level Support.
Red crystals are instant upgrade tier points.
Green CRATES are for unit ranks
Blue CRATES are only visible as offense class and give an additional weapon to your unit
Green crystals and blue crystals are for taking back to a "landing/drill" zone for upgrade points. Green is 1, blue is 2.
At first I thought it was SUPER badly balanced (because I died a fair bit), then I realised that actually it was the most enjoyable single player rts I've played in a while - but you sort of have to cheese it if not doing it coop.
Few tips:
Offense units are, on balance, better to have around. Blue tiberium upgrades can sometimes turn them into monsters (mantises go from crap to brilliant, avatars sprout bonus arms and start railing everybody, strikers go from being total crap to being only slightly crap)
So, if you have the opportunity to, spawn an offense crawler, get the units you want, then switch to another type.
Now, on missions without time limits there is a way to cheese it:
Spawn as offense, get your units, stay in spawn, then press delete to scupper your mcv (really useful button) and summon a defense MCV.
Spam bunkers, and press c to sell them. You will get 1 green tiberium box for every one you sell. If you are patient, just upgrade your entire army to elite. Makes everything a lot easier.
Your mcv repairs units around it when deployed, and if it's tech level 2 or 3 you want to deploy it SUPER aggressively. It repairs itself when deployed too, and it can take a kicking - it can be used to tank for your fragile units.
Keep around at least 3-4 engineers. This is for several reasons:
a) they repair shit. This is nies. This includes infantry, bizarrely. Sadly, they can't repair aircraft
b) You kill an avatar/mammoth tank/mastodon? Hey look, you have some engineers to grab the husk! Oh, and bonus; so long as you have more than one engineer, you can go way over pop cap, and still have engineers left over to capture more husks
c) They have cliffjumping and are incredibly fast. You can use a couple at the beginning of each mission to grab all the red tiberium for your upgrades.
In general, infantry strategies are total shit. The amount of damage they do in comparison to things like mastodons just makes them not really worthwhile. This might not be as true for GDI as for NOD.
Rockets are mostly not that great. In fact, very few units actually feel like they can kill shit. The exceptions would be things like the mastodon and the aforementioned mammoth tanks.
Also, I didn't do this but the game would be significantly easier if you played a few skirmishes before trying the single player - you get shared XP I believe.
The only mission where I felt it was absolutely necessary to break this formula was the one with the downed GST, and I swapped to Defense for the last leg of it. Personally I hate playing Defense as it feels incomplete (you HAVE to have a good teammate to play it, whereas I can solo with Support and Offense pretty well).
I'm shocked at how stupid this is.
I mean I knew it was bullshit at first but decided my love for C&C was worth it.
Now? After this much skirmish to hit level 6 which is far less than needed to unlock all the units? Who the fuck thought this was a good idea?
If I wanted to grind an alternative version of Dawn of War? I'd do that. That's not what I want from a god damned Command and Conquer game.
Dear EA: Go fuck thineselves.
Is that the right of it?
Not too difficult - it's just that completing the campaign doesn't give you access to all the game's units. I would have thought they'd have made sure, but...
Personally opinion is that I dislike equipment unlocks in multiplayer games (I just unlocked the last bullshit in Bad Company 2, and good fucking riddance), and it's triple worse in this game because it was used as justification for the constant-connection requirement and complete removal of LAN play. Blah.
RTS's with tutorials have been drip-feeding units for awhile now. They just do it 5 units at a time through steps of a tutorial, rather than hours apart separated by grinding pointless skirmishes.
And how is this situation better? Instead of being confused and overwhelmed by all the different tiers of units and things, a new player instead is confused when someone stomps them into the ground with units that they aren't even allowed to use.
My Nod is still sub level 10, and I'm not sure I have the attention span to level them as far.
The unlocking of units also applies to multiplayer? In a RTS? Bwahahahahaha!
Battle.net: Fireflash#1425
Steam Friend code: 45386507
DOW2 already does the squad based RPG-RTS really fucking well. And then they tried to go in the same direction, but did all the wrong things.
They should really have stuck with the classic gameplay. That's C&C's thing. Relic has been perfecting the Squad RPG style for years. Take Company of Heroes, for instance.
If you ask me, the older way is better! Red Alert 3 was great about it, "Oh no, they're using unit X! You are now authorized to use unity Y! Go blow shit up and get a feel for them."
Man, I loved the original style of "surprise, this unit's available!"
In C&C 1, that one GDI mission near the end (you had to stop a Nod convoy) where you had a bunch of units roll in off the bottom of the screen, and it included a Mammoth fucking tank* was awesome.
*Italics because really, I saw the Mammoth in the manual and guides, and the idea of a huge tank with two cannons and a missile launcher was awesome at the time.
(I even modded the TS files so I could build Mammoth Mk I's. The AT-AT isn't nearly as cool.
Yes. I tried the first (actual) campaign mission for awhile and was getting nowhere due to the swarms of Nod units (they get three crawlers and apparently a higher unit cap) and so after dealing with that for awhile I said fuck it and started grinding out AI skirmishes.
And If that's their reason? Not wanting to overwhelm new players with units? That's assanine. C&C 3 did a perfectly acceptable job of introducing units throughout the campaign. Sure jumping right into multiplayer might leave people a little dumbfounded at first but that's how being new to the multiplayer in an RTS is. Making people unlock units doesn't fix that, it just fucks up the single player campaign.
Which is exactly what I want from a C&C game and one of the reasons I loved the shit out of C&C3. Deciding they need to drastically change things up in the final installment of a series? God-damnit EA.
I wish I had a friend who had picked this up. I'd absolutely be all for getting a game going and then just setting our rally points in the center and letting our units destroy one another for exp. Grinding AI skirmishes is too slow :P
The later.
When you start out as GDI offense, you have access to:
Engineers
Hunters (medium unit, anti-medium)
Talons (light unit, anti-medium aircraft)
Wolfs (medium unit, anti-light)
Titans (medium unit, anti-heavy)
As you progress you gain new units. For example: at higher levels you gain the ability to build Mammoth Tanks and the Mastodon (the new version of the Mammoth Mk.2). You still retain the ability to build Hunters/Talons/Wolfs/Titans, but now you have these available for later in the game. The majority of these units require you getting upgrade points so you can upgrade a new tech tier (tier 2 requires 5 upgrade points, I think tier 3 requires 9 more).
There are also specific unit upgrades you can research (one upgrade allows the husks of Mammoth Tanks and Mastodons to slowly self repair and stand up). These are also unlocked through the leveling process.
The thing with the leveling is that in some levels, you don't get anything, and in others you may only gain a unit for Offense, and a new power for Support.