Pushwall

Ore Trucks do the same thing. Adding the MCV as an actual purchasable vehicle will give people the idea that it serves a purpose that isn't already covered by something else. I'd rather not confuse newbies like that.

We still have the MCV as a drivable vehicle ingame (not just a CY basement prop), it's just not used because it serves no purpose - it can't deploy because we can't cut holes in terrain in real-time to make room for new Construction Yards midgame. It actually used to be present on Stormy Valley, in the abandoned depot (the place that's shown on the loading screen), but I wound up removing it for some reason that I don't remember. But now that I've fixed my W3D importer problems I can probably take a look at re-rigging the MCV and put it back in that map for fun, and when I get around to finishing up the SDK, anyone can put it in their maps.

Um, what? So far artilleries have killed 1116 infantry, 1007 vehicles and 571 buildings, and 1496 artilleries have been destroyed. Meanwhile, V2s have killed 708 infantry, 975 vehicles and 460 buildings, and 1539 V2s have been destroyed. Looks to me like artilleries are doing a lot better than V2s... Unless you're referring to the original Red Alert's total joke of an artillery which was basically a Grenadier with a vehicle-sized hitbox, no resistance to anti-tank weapons, and 4 times the price. The RA cruiser had to exploit a bug in order to target submarines. If you're conveniently overlooking that, why aren't you demanding for grenadiers to be able to fling grenades all the way across the map? Have you ever... you know... actually bought a mobile radar jammer in this game? Getting in one prints a big unmissable message about how you can deploy it when near the enemy radar, get out, and have it do its job by itself. As for the MGG I can see where you're coming from but the MGG here is, unlike RA's, actually powerful enough that it might be worth using in some circumstances. Making it deployable as well would be overpowered... and run contrary to your "make everything exactly like RA because that's more important than fun or balance" mission. If you're asking for Allies to get more players than the Soviets? Not possible. And not needed, considering they already have a decent win ratio. Harriers are VTOLs. Yaks and MiGs are not. We do not have fixed-wing aircraft physics. Also implementing them at this stage would require a grand rebalancing. Not happening. And going back to the Cruiser. This has already been brought up before and there are many many reasons why we won't do it: We don't have a model for it. There would be no counter for it if the Submarine Pen was down. It would have to have only one turret because the game does not support multiple turrets unless the additional ones are AI-controlled (and the AI doesn't shoot buildings, which is what the Cruiser's main job is, so that would be pretty damn pointless). It would be too big to navigate Hostile Waters. Having to overhaul naval combat AGAIN.

Why? Just because RA did it? I'd rather go with the option that won't leave 95% of the player base asking "why am I not able to hurt this helicopter that I am clearly able to hit?" and continuing to ineffectually shoot helicopters expecting it to work like it logically should ESPECIALLY with non-bullet weapons. Making defenses only target them when they're on the ground is not possible. They can either be able to aim at VTOLs all the time or they can't. And even if it was, adding it would have practically no effect on the gameplay because in what situations are people actually going to bring an air unit that low to shoot at a defense, except against Tesla Coils, which need to be unable to shoot Longbows for them to be balanced? How is it "needed"? Just because rifle soldiers are able to do more than 0 damage to air units does not mean they are a good counter to them. First of all, "RA balanced". Pfft. The most you ever had to do was build a power plant, refinery, war factory, and then build refineries and war factories ad nauseum. The situations that actually encouraged you to build any further than that (getting barracks, helipads, radar domes, tech centres, or superweapons) were far too scarce to be considered "balanced". Second, the Gamma version of this game (2011-2015) had a tiering system where the tech levels gradually unlocked over time (i.e. in the first 3 minutes you could only build infantry, then for 4 minutes afterwards the only vehicles were rangers and light/heavy tanks, etc) which was somewhat close to that. It was such a horribly unfun design choice that it drove almost all the players away. I will not bring back a feature that nobody (who knows what they're talking about) wants and has been proven to be a bad feature.

This is why captains still outrange the weakest defenses, sergeants still have almost unmatched MCT damage, and Supply Trucks are cheap enough to buy right away. You can still rush with those if you please, and it can work. I've seen captain and sergeant rushes work on KOTG and if it can happen there it can happen anywhere.

Looking back at that list there's an awful lot of "X kills Y instantly/almost instantly". So basically Red Alert is a rocket tag RTS. And even in its current state APB's gameplay is much more fast-paced than Reborn's and I've heard enough criticism about that, it really doesn't need to be any faster than it currently is

This is news to me. It's pretty obvious on the Dark Horseman mission where you have to capture a forward command which is surrounded by AP mines, and due to the timer you're naturally inclined to use an APC to get your engineers there anyway.

Okay I'm just going to stop you right there and list some of the problems with balancing everything the way it works in the original game: Soviet Tanyas that the Allies have little defense against due to not having AP mines. Even the Soviets have little defense against Tanyas anyway, because APCs can trigger AP mines harmlessly by either firing one bullet at their vehicle-sized hitbox or even driving over them. Tanyas that, in addition to massacring all infantry in one shot, outrange all other infantry. Tanyas/Engineers that just have to tag the wall of a building from the outside once to instantly damage/capture/fully repair it (engineer) or give it a godly one second grace period before it dies (tanya). Volkov with several thousand HP and concrete armour. Fair! Technicians that might as well not even be armed because it took what, 50 hits against a non-prone soldier to kill them? Aircraft being invulnerable to all but a very small number of units, despite the fact that all infantry and most vehicles are very capable of looking up and firing up (which we can't prevent on infantry) That "small number of units" doesn't even include other aircraft. Dogfighting certainly works out nicely in this game, why remove it just because it wasn't in RA? Ore Silos that don't actually do anything because a credit limit is not a thing that exists here. V2s killing buildings in 2-3 hits. Way too fast to actually deal with them. MAD Tanks that take about 10 seconds to detonate. Again, way too fast to actually deal with them. Missile Subs that can kill some buildings in one salvo. DEFINITELY way too fast to deal with them even if you could see them coming. Artillery that barely even has enough range to safely hit flame towers. Tesla Tanks that outrange Artillery AND kill them in one shot. Because RA Artillery apparently weren't useless enough just lacking the ability to outrange Tesla Coils. APCs that move faster than Rangers. What's even the point of Rangers then? Especially since being ~true to C&C~ also means giving every vehicle the same sized hitbox rather than hitboxes that make sense? Phase Tanks either not existing, or having passenger slots. Destroyers that do everything that Gunboats do but better. What's even the point of Gunboats then? Mine Layers that are OCD and must face exactly north and be temporarily locked in place every time they place a mine. No sergeants/captains = little variety in infantry. And no snipers = no way to fight them at range... not that that would matter with RA balance because... Infantry that exist only to die, because they're all useless except engies/tanyas/volkov, and even then they need a transport to not suck because they're all too slow to avoid being crushed by anything. Except Volkov who is practically unkillable by design. No barracks = no infantry units at all. Which would probably mean having to make it so you don't even respawn when you die. Fun! Vehicles can't be driven by anyone other than rifle soldiers. Which, to be fair, is probably one of the less unreasonable changes that could be made... except it'd be a big step backwards with regards to making infantry useful, and would be a MASSIVE nerf to the Allies due to mechanics. A nerf which they really don't need considering it is very possible for Soviets to win games in the face of LOLOPMECHS. In the end there's only a very small number of ground units per team that matter: medium tanks and Tanya APCs for Allies, and heavy tanks and V2s for Soviets. Or just Volkovs and nothing but if we're going with the "Volkov is mary sue" interpretation. Everything else is fluff. Red Alert is not a balanced game. Trying to mimic its balance will make APB unfun. There's a reason OpenRA changed things. And there are ways of maintaining the feel that don't involve breaking the balance.

Keep in mind that was the same game where I managed to get a Soviet Gunboat as well, which sank many a destroyer and one of the stolen missile subs as you can see in one of the screen's killfeeds, and managed to keep it intact despite several daring trips to the frontlines and not being a submarine. Probably my favourite part of the match was spending a good 5 minutes running laps/hitching rides around the frontlines as a rifle soldier and still being able to make meaningful contributions to the siege. Regular guy supremacy! Wish I'd remember to take screenshots of the hijinks I get into though.

I haven't had much opportunity to play it either, but the stats since the release and using the 6-player rule are 5 allied victories and 4 soviet victories, so it's not clearly imbalanced right now judging from that... though there's only been one base destruction victory.

You don't like cutting the enemy's income by a third on a map where they supposedly love to spam super-expensive MADs/demos? And all without having to worry about mines?

Personal experience is a funny thing. This patch it's 9 allies 2 soviets. Allies can still shoot the ore silo from inside the tunnel, no need to even step out and run into mines. And an arty can easily hit both the WF and barracks from the east side of the bridge, no need to even be on it. Also, despite someone's alarmist outcry about Allied bias on Under, that map is 2 allies 8 soviets this patch. People really need to stop making wild assumptions about map balance based on one match.

I said it was going up, didn't I? Even the Grenadier's current awful damage is still better than missing 2/3 of your Volktillery shots.

Yeah that's what he's getting, among some other things - his range is becoming more clear (the "targeting range" of 100m isn't entirely accurate, especially if you're on a hill) and his DPS to building exteriors is going up from the pitiful state it's currently in to about equal to Volktillery.

How about if we went full RAtard and gave the tesla tank zero degrees of aiming? Phase tanks would need quite the rebalance if TTs could just instantly fire behind themselves and annihilate them.

As we've already mentioned in this thread, the first idea cannot work because letting it fire underwater means letting its torpedoes attack the NY from underwater which is broken, the second idea wouldn't help on naval maps that lack aircraft, and I'm already doing the third. The rest of those are terrible.

That doesn't work anymore since subs just can't fire underwater at all and, with a few exceptions, explosions do not hurt vehicles because server side damage is not fun.

I was actually hoping for something like that but it may not happen. Instead, assuming that the logic for it's been fixed, I can add a keybinding that provides help in the chat box about your current unit, and then just add "press this button to get helpful information about your current unit!" to the autoannounce.

There is way too much must-know stuff for newbies to fit in one server entry popup.

Pop up windows are also annoying and disruptive. Remember the Gamma hint system which, not only did you have to manually enable using an option nestled deep in a tree of option menus, but caused popups to appear randomly 1-10 seconds after purchasing something, which you had to manually click your way out of and prevented you from moving/firing/anything until they were gone? Need to quickly golden wrench a building or switch to a combat unit to fight off an intruder? Well you're pretty fucked then aren't ya?

However, since changes to grenade logic may require the grenade to have a new unique warhead, I suppose that can be given a boost against submerged subs I already have a bunch of newbie hints on the autoannounce, stuff like how to sprint and how to view the new team/structure info boards. I guess it couldn't hurt to add a few more.

They can attack naval factories from out of RPG range. And they need that much range to have any edge over gunboats. Also, >making a new RPG-specific warhead to tackle an almost nonexistent problem

That wouldn't help on Under or Coastal Influence though.

And I'm not the person who originally made those decisions so you'll be left in the dark.

Read. If we do that now then we'll just end up with another thread about how unfair it is that submerged submarines can hurt the naval yard while being immune or super-resistant to most weapons. The situations where a submerged submarine can target a naval yard are FAR more common than situations where a missile sub gets stolen, and I'd rather keep the bigger issue squashed. If we get the ability to have submerged subs swap to another weapon that doesn't hurt buildings, then we'll bring sub vs sub back