Mole40k

Great topic! Here are some of the ones I can remember... This one is an old one. For those of you long enough to have played back in the FS days (back when I was good ), you may remember my old pal Pinball2k. He ran a number of different forums and websites TS-related and CS-related over the years that me and others from the TS community joined. Check out this one from 2003, and see if you can spot a few familiar posters. There's even an appearance from TRZ! (He likes to pretend he wasn't about back then, but some of us know the truth! After a further 12+ solid years of TS gaming to his name, he can at least now claim he's a good player, though given that none of the original pros play any more, he's king of an increasingly small pond ) https://web.archive.org/web/20031028182358/http://www.ggaming.co.uk/forums/ So I didn't know about this one: apparently pinball hosted a mini-site for the clan n1ke. Old players will remember that this was perhaps one of the n00best clans on FS back in the day, but had so many members it spawned sub clans n2ke, and n3ke. If Sadoo still plays he will remember n1ke :-) https://web.archive.org/web/20030621120133/http://www.n1ke.ggaming.co.uk/index.htm CnCWarzone ~2006. Alas Warzone Trooper (WT) was a confirmed cheater Turned out he even hosted a cheat site in his time. https://web.archive.org/web/20060814185603/http://www.cncwarzone.com/ CnCWarzone forum ~2008. The forum existed for many years but there are only so many snapshots I could find on the internet way back machine. Here's a snapshot from ~2008, with some familiar names inc me, Seb, Frzflame https://web.archive.org/web/20080228033432/http://cncwarzone.com/forum/index.php Gamerwarzone ~2008. For some reason the site's owner Petter Ruud decided that a change from 'CnC' to 'gamer' was a good idea to expand the audience. Great in theory, but not so in practice, when you consider he was AWOL pretty much 95% of the time! Anyway, this screenshot here is from around the time two of TS's finest ever admins (finecigar and myself!) took charge. See posts there from Larry, spooky and Rek https://web.archive.org/web/20080501191630/http://www.gamerwarzone.com/forum/

Thank you for your nice comments :-) You may be interested to know I did turn that pdf guide into a blog, which you can find here: https://cnctiberiansun.wordpress.com/ It's essentially the same content but divided out into web pages etc. There are also a few extra bits and pieces in there, including a guide to Forest Fires, and some discussion of attack efficiency. If you have any questions at all, post them below :-)

Have to back Sean (Tahj) up here: DCASEAL is a well-known troll in the TS community, and a massive cheater. You can't trust anything he says. I was also an admin on XWIS and can confirm DCASEAL started his grudge with Sean on account of the fact we banned him for using and distributing cheats.

Hmmm, lots of questions here... 1) When you talk about resources, are you saying you *build* 3 more harvesters, or you have 3 harvesters in total? (including the 2 from your refs). 2 refs with 3 extra harvesters (5 harvs total) sounds reasonable to me -- this of course depends on the map, and situation. The issue then might be quite simply 'what you're spending your money on'. If you're buying cyborgs, buggies and excessive amounts of defensive structures then yes, your resources will suffer greatly. 2) You're probably using the wrong vehicles! There are only really a small number of vehicles that are effective for rushes in TS: titans being the best. Are you playing nod or gdi? Your mistake here may be to treat TS like RA2 where the game is all about making tanks. In TS, it's all about precise application of force. Yes we have rushes (e.g. titans), but not in the same way as you get in RA2. Spamming tanks generally won't win you games of TS. 3) You're likely using the wrong sorts of defenses / not reacting in the appropriate way. Do you have any screenshots of a typical base that you make? An online version of my ts guide btw can be found at www.cnctiberiansun.wordpress.com -- it's basically a blog version of my guide with some extra articles that I wrote a couple of years back that didn't make it into the guide at the time.

https://cnctiberiansun.wordpress.com/2012/11/01/gdi-tactics-1-shot-disruptor/

Yeah sorry Trz, I needed a header at a rush. I will change the header if you like (or can use a better one if you want to make one!) I would consider making a link to your forum, but no one uses it! Everyone is here, and most players know each other so well there's no need to post. :-( At least the blog is still working to drive people to play cncnet.

Hi just to let you know, the links are broken / old under your TS section. My TS guide can be downloaded here: http://mjryder.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Tiberian-Sun-guide-v4-c-Mole40k-2013.pdf Other general TS guide related material is on www.cnctiberiansun.wordpress.com , though the link you gave to my TS FF guide does still seem to work. Thanks :-)

I think someone needs to draw a line somewhere between 'changes that improve performance / fix bugs', and changes that fundamentally alter the gameplay experience of 'how the game was made'. Some would argue that the above is not a bug. Either everything can be alted into shroud or nothing. You can't have half one and half the other.

Instead of 'participation points', how about 'losing bonus points' instead? Lots of sports have that -- would be quite simple to implement say for example, for games that last over 15/20 minutes, or for games that end where both players have a similar number of key structures. Just a thought. Either way, I am not necessarily against the idea of 'participation points' -- just the way you've sold it, or should I say 'the way Trz has sold it'.

Trz, if you took the time to actually READ what Sean has written, you will see that this is an ongoing work in progress with the idea being that they will get a simple system 'up and running' first, and then add experience-based filters after that.

He's not the real Stefor It's Chris Frietag (dscaseal) ^.

I don't understand this decision. It's a pretty much standard interface design to have progress running from left to right (i.e. with 'cancel' or 'back' on the left). Why it's the opposite way round here I don't know. I think I mentioned it being the wrong way round somewhere else as well...

I guess it depends what you mean by 'stagnate'. If you mean the fact that there is not much new content in the TS section, then has it occurred to you that a) most of the core TS community have known each other for years b) most things to be said about TS have already been said 10x over already down the years and c) most TS players don't want to engage in a forum populated exclusively by one of TS's most notorious trolls!

Yes, and it was a breeding ground for cheaters and trolls.

It's interesting that we are talking about balance now, almost 15 years after WW stopped patching TS. I was actually around playing the game back when WW did patch the game, and there would be updates every so often making railguns more / less powerful etc. So it's perhaps wrong to say that TS today is 'as the developers intended it' (whatever that means), as we not left with the game 'as they intended', but rather 'as they left it' (i.e. when they stopped making updates). Another thing the think about in this discussion is the nature of gaming. Put simply, computer games have evolved massively since the launch of the original CnC games -- as has the nature of online competition. E-sports simply didn't exist back in the late 90s when some of us here discovered CnC (in my case TS and Ra2) for the first time. What I'm trying to say here is that the way we think about balance has changed dramatically over the years; as has the nature of games development. As some of you have suggested above, it's not good enough to think about 'what wins if I put my $1000 vs your $1000 of units' -- we need to look at the bigger picture and the way players actually interact with the maps and the units the designers have created. Unfortunately TS is riddled with imbalances, and despite what Mechacaseal says (he is not a 'top player' by the way), there is a lot of spamming on TS, even at the very highest level where close-fought games descend into grind fests of titans / bombers / refs / sams with the odd disruptor or mk thrown in. The winner here isn't necessarily the one with the best tactics, but the one who manages economy, and unit preservation best: the one who builds consistently to set patterns. This is a skill in itself yes, but I don't quite think this is how the developers might have imagined the game. Oh, and don't get me started on the imbalance between Titans (GDI) and Tik Tanks (Nod), cos there's clearly an awful lot wrong there that needs amending. So anyway, my point is this: games are imbalanced, and will always be imbalanced in a sense that, the more complicated they become, the more variables there are. Add in the human ingenuity factor, and the limited resources of the original CnC developers, and you see exactly why all the CnC games are imbalanced, and were always destined to be imbalanced. Unless you're playing Chess or something similar where the 'map' and 'units' are completely fixed, you will never achieve true game balance.

You have just admitted that you have a problem with the people who play mod maps; you then said that restricting people playing mod maps on the ladder is the solution. Your entire logic is flawed and based on prejudice over sound reasoning. QED.

Thought for the day: is it the maps that are the problem, or the people who play them?

Seriously, what is the problem with you people? How about leaving off the personal attacks, taking a deep breath and looking at things reasonably. ElmerFudd, your are creating what's known as a 'straw man' argument (Google it). You claim that the problem with XWIS is mods -- but that's clearly not the case. Has it ever occurred to you that one of the main reasons people leave TS over the years is not the mods, or the ww maps, but the people who play them? This whole thread reminds me of why I don't play TS any more, as there is too much unnecessary bs and arguments over trivial things. You know you're really not giving a good reflection of the TS community to the nice people at CNCnet. Every thread like this just makes people less likely to help you, and less likely to support the game you love so much.

I think what we can agree on here is that there is certainly some need for 'standardisation' when it comes to the use of mods on ladders. Perhaps a working group of well known and respected players to discuss 5 or so maps that are balanced, and contain little if any core modification to core gameplay. This group could meet again after a few months to assess how the mods have been received and suggest alterations to the maps / lists to ensure balance, while also including the views of respected members of the mod community. @Sol - I think you have let yourself down here slightly. I did have a certain amount of respect for your arguments, but to suggest that the aim of not including mods on the ladder is to promote people to lean WW is absolutely ludicrous. If anything that will only drive a wedge between the two communities, as it has done in the past, and will be bad for ladder activity. There is nothing worse for a new player than getting completely owned in short time by someone so far out of their league that it's a waste of time for all involved. Such experiences only encourage players to play with other players of their own level, or simply not play at all. The question here is about INCLUSION, and not about imposing one dominant ideology upon the whole community.

^ Interestingly enough, my work with the TS community over the years contributed to me getting a job at a games company after I graduated. See, TS can be good for your sometimes :-)

I have to say I agree with Reid (Phenomena) and Amokk here. Reading some of the posts above makes me think that after all these years, some of you have learnt absolutely nothing. Modders are an important part of the TS community, and should not be marginalized just so the same half a dozen people can fight it out for bragging rights at the end of each month. As it goes, these same people will *always* be at the top anyway, so whether mods are in or not makes very little difference on a practical level, but makes a massive difference to everyone else. Of course the ideal solution here would be to have an option to 'include mods' or not in your search terms, and to ensure that mods that are included are vetted as 'official' with no obvious imbalances. The other key point I think would be to make sure that ladders can be divided to display: ww only, mod only, and combined. This means that modders get their own competition, and the elitist terrace community get to feel good about being #1-20 at the end of each month (after all, isn't this what the 'no mods' argument is really all about...) -------------- <aside> While I am here, there is a related point I would like to raise, that I think needs addressing -- a spectre if you will, that is haunting this conversation: -- Some WW players are not very good at mod maps -- While I sympathise with the argument that playing bunking modders can be frustrating, and extremely time consuming if it comes down to a grind-fest, I would argue that you essentially do exactly the same thing when playing long games of Terrace, just to a lesser degree. While I see some of the less experienced, or deliberately biased people on here are saying that there is no such thing as map control and expanding on mods, I would suggest to you that if you want to beat a stubborn bunked player on a mod map, this is exactly what you need to be doing. </aside> --------------- So anyway, in short I say this: don't make the same mistake xwis made all those years ago when Olaf listened to the TS trolls instead of the reasonable, balanced views in the community. Let modders have their place, and let's stop with this ridiculous superiority complex of ww vs mod. TS has been around longer than some of our players have been alive. Think about it. Get over yourselves. At the end of the day it's just a game. But more than that, it's not just your game; it's EVERYBODY'S game.

Forest fires is quite a different proposition to many other ts maps. It requires good team play, and an awareness of the whole battlefield situation. One particular mistake many people make is to think of it as four 1v1s, when really, sometimes it's not always the best thing to attack your direct opponent. https://cnctiberiansun.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/forest-fires-a-brief-guide/ https://cnctiberiansun.wordpress.com/2014/10/08/tiberian-sun-forest-fires-common-mistakes/

Point 2 would be acceptable if discmen weren't effective against inf AND vehicles / buildings, and if rockets were slightly better at their job -- either cheaper or better armour. Plus, rocket men die way too easily to air in my opinion. Just because 'it's like that in other cnc games' doesn't make it right. Neither does just repeating your point until I agree with you!

I think you've just completely misunderstood most of my points. 2. Your point makes no sense. Are you and I talking about the same game? Rocket infantry in TS are pretty much useless against infantry. My point is that really they shouldn't be, and for their cost, they need to be a bit less 'squishy'. 3. I said Flame tanks are VULNERABLE to infantry. 4. They are, but equally, tik tanks are arguably a bit underpowered when deployed. Tits have the advantage of move and fire, tiks have the advantage of deploy, but this isn't much of an advantage. 5. Your response doesn't address my point, and makes no sense. Please explain. The point here I think is that different people have different views of what it means to 'balance' a game. It doesn't mean to make every army the same, but to make every unit viable, and reduce the amount of exploits in game. Personally I would question if 1 shot diss was even an intention of the developers.

Why would anyone want to go to cncgamer? What is the purpose? Everyone is here, and guess what, there are more active people here in the TS forums than there are in any other forum out there. Not only that, but as a community, TS has access to a massive group of players from other games within the CNC 'family' supported by the same people. Just a quick browse through recent threads shows me loads of non-TS players posting in here asking about the game and talking about the game in a way that we haven't seen in YEARS. Personally I suggest you stop living in the past and focus your efforts on making the experience here as positive as possible. I also suggest you stop name hiding, as it only makes you look silly, and shows the community in a bad light.