cn2mc

Compared to turrets, AGTs are 50% stronger, their armour is less prone to anti-armour (tank and AA rocket) attacks, they can be walled in, off-centre targetting generally makes them more durable, AND the AGT is multi-purpose and better suited for it's role than the turret - a single AGT can create a kill zone for Nod men and LVs, while a single turret is easy picking for almost anything on either side. So turrets work best in groups or as forward attacking positions - near the enemy base or tib field, etc. That's when the extra range really comes in very handy. I don't agree about the Nod fighting GDI head-on thing completely, though. If GDI commits to and executes a good tank rush without losing harvs or a WF in the process, Nod has no mobile forces to effectively stop the push. The way Nod can win this is by crippling economy and production in a base trade, and then hoping that their forces AND the turrets, can actualy stop the tank push (still not a sure bet on most maps).

The best part about turrets is that you sell them for $300 and get 3 men. So they basically cost only what you paid for the repairs. Building turrets does limit Nod expansion though, you may only gain one cell for $600 (build time is actually more important than cash here) as opposed to 6-8 squares if you use power/HoN/silos to expand for the same cash/time. That can screw you over on maps where you can and need to expand. Also, note that the mammoth, even with lower range and worse ROF, deals more DPS than the turret, because of the twin cannons.

Score! I'm never gonna finish it but it's nice to have. Any modders out there, feel free to use any assets you might like. Looking at it now, I'm proudest of my prison toilet art...

Solution: make an archive.org for archive.org... Snapping itself. Selfies, right?

Rather looks more like time took it's toll and these spambot posts are on just because they're recent. The rest looks like it was swiped clean off the server. The westwoodi domain was dead for years, I don't even know why/how it is up again. Some member accounts appear active and list details, number of posts, etc. (as is my admin account), but the posts just aren't there. This was so long ago I forget how that BB worked, but they're possibly in .txt's somewhere out there. Maybe if I have the time I can try and access any existing archive through an ftp client or something. I forget how that worked also, I just remember that setting the right chmods for that damn forum made me utter more curses than I've utterd throughout the rest of my life. Turned out a peach in the end though.

Yes, I am TDL. I think I've dropped some hints about that around here before. -lw

I never got to finish that though, and it was on a long lost HD. I wonder if Nyer still has scraps of it somewhere, he helped me with some .shp stuff back then.

Not even sure how this is still alive: http://cncmill.westwoodi.net/ I tried to find it on archive.org, it came out as a proper URL, which it had not since several years. Nyer may have some fond memories of it. Too bad the forum content hasn't survived, that was great stuff (I logged in as admin, no luck). That was my site, when I was young and restless... or maybe just bored. Just a piece of history to share.

When? When nobody expects it. Why? Nobody knows. Jokes aside, in my experience it happens when both the crusher-unit and the bike try to enter the same cell at the same time, but the direction the crusher-unit moves in also seems to factor in somehow. Diagonal movement appears to be more succesful. Why bikes don't get crushed all the time, as it supposedly should be? Maybe it also has something to do with pathfinding and unit AI, in the sense that units will usually try to fight an enemy standing in their way. Moving your crusher-units with the 'alt' command (force move) also seems to increase your chances of accidentally crushing a bike, as absurd as that sounds. Alt-move makes units less prone to stopping and returning fire at enemies that engage them. F.ex., an APC sent to the enemy's base with alt-move, so as not to stop when engaged, will probably crush any bikes that try to physically block it. That's all I know and it might not be really true, so take it for what it is.

Doesn't sound too cost effective. I'd rather use the APCs to soak/dodge the first SSM shots and then engage the bikes up close. That way even if my men get toasted on the second shot, the bikes also take additional damage from the SSM's friendly fire, or are forced to retreat. Still, when Nod are siege-capable with SSMs, mass med. tanks might be what's best for GDI. They usually are, the trick is getting that far.

I totally agree about APC's and indeed try (and often manage) to put them to good use vs. bike/buggying Nod players, but there still are issues here. The worst is that an APC being fired at will not unload and will instead try to return fire. The second-worst is the micro-intensive manual loading of men one by one. The third issue is that on tib-soaked maps a la HJK infantry will still fight at a disadvantage once they start spreading out. A good thing about APCs is that they will usually instantly become the main targets for your enemy's light units, so you can more easily divert his attention and you can do a fair bit of damage to his army before he realizes his bikes are up against fighting men and not engineers.

It's not.

Actually... Yep. Let's look at how most FFA games go. First, you have players sitting around, waiting for the game to fill up. No playing done here for a while. Then you have some guys getting wiped out in horrendous ways in the first few minutes of the game. No more playing for them, especially if they share the host's mentality and stick around and/or wait for the others to finish before starting a new game. More players also very often means more lag and connection troubles. Even less playing for everybody now. And this is just the 'time' aspect of things. Not even getting deeper into the 'skill' and 'frustration' aspects yet. My 'ideas' might seem backwards to you, but my observations and my reasoning are pretty straightforward and easy to agree with, no? Realize, I'm not forcing anybody to play like "I want them to play". I'm exposing what I believe to be a community issue in a thread that serves this very purpose. And I believe it's a community issue not just because I get less games because of it. I believe it's an issue since it generally slows down player development and it can also be really, really frustrating to people who just want to play a game in their spare 20 minutes. Not everyone can afford to lounge in chat the whole day, and from my point of view, not getting a game when you want one is much more frustrating than getting one and possibly getting beaten. I also believe anyone who thinks the opposite needs to find some nice singleplayer games and stick to them.

Umm, no offence, but strawman much? I blame noone. I do create both maps and tutorial content, quite a lot of it. I will always gladly help anybody who asks for tips and tactics, I was even the one who first linked this forum to the best strategy resource there is for TD, MacMark's old page, which covers 99% of all builds, tactics, exploits, etc. (so it's also not true that there are no guides for TD). Maybe when I finally have more time and manage to get some software to properly record in the res I play in, I'll make videos of some of the finer points of unit control, etc. Yes, people bunching up for FFA is not really a huge problem, but it kind of limits play-time for everybody involved and that's my real issue. Many people, few games.

That's my point though. Playing several 1v1 games against someone good will maybe hurt your ego, but it will increase your skills much more than a clusterfuck FFA that you might just win on a stroke of turtle's luck.

This topic again? Come on, guys! The balance is fine and has been for 20 years, so I won't go into detail (furthermore, I've done that, at length, in the other dozen or so topics about this). Like White said, it's the current popular maps that are really Nod-happy. And I think it's not so much about their openness, but more about the fact that tib is all over and Nod doesn't have to really expand to get it. GDI has many ways to cripple Nod or at least defend against them early on, even on classic open maps like GA, Nowhere to hide, etc. But that's because tib there is in patches and to get it you have to constantly spider from one to the other. That way Nod stretches while GDI's expand towards them basically limits the range of their light units forcing them to engage defensively. This counter can't be done on most of the maps that are played now, because of too much tiberium and silly layouts. Looking at this from a distence, I'd like to be able to target air units, or at least put them on guard. That way Nod'll think twice beore sending in apachesif you have an orca or two in your base. The real balance issues besides maps, I believe, are South advantage and different resolutions. The latter being mostly irrelevant, unless we're playing tourney/ladder. But still, when I play at 640x400, I can actually gauge if my opponent is playing hi-res by the speed of his reactions to my surprize attacks, etc. It is quite a huge advantage. Another big issue, not to do with balance but with the community, is player mentality. Not in the sense that some people will act too cocky like chem or whatnot (who, I sincerely hope, soon finds something to boost his confidence IRL), but there are many players, a lot of them good too, who will dodge games or pretend to be AFK when a better player joins. Or they'll wait around for half an hour for their game to fill up, so they don't have to go head to head with a pro. So then, instead of 4-5 players having a dozen short and to-the-point 1v1 games in that half-hour, you have 4-5 guys waiting around for ages for a FFA and then half of them get raped right at the start... This possibly irks me the most about TD. Many players are actually afraid of competition.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O33vpC6Xfs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qChOnZk7es Rock on, Lemmy!

Maybe the winner could be the guy who kills a thousand units first or something? IDK if that'll work, but kill count seems like a reasonable tie-breaker.

Anyone can change the speed from within the game. If you change to slower it will become the default speed for the games you host after that. Slower speeds, contrary to popular belief, will not give newbies a better chance, if anything, they'll benefit the faster players more and will just prolong the noobs' agony. But some people do like it slower.

Some amount of symmetry is always needed and even WW maps had that. The most important aspects of this symmetry, as I've said before, are expansion vectors, amount of resources and harv paths. About infantry, I too hate those Tib-infested maps. It's a very cheap way to skew the balance in favour of Nod, even though GDI does have some feasible tactics on some of them (HJK, f.ex. is not that imba, still fugly though). On that note, White, I played a few games on Pinwheel and it seems to me the central field's shape and small/blocked entrances make it easier to control with Nod and also a true bitch for harvs.

I'm of the opinion that CnCNet is currently not capable of hosting a true (read 'as fair as possible') competition, because it lacks the control mechanisms for it. Even with anti-cheat features, it seems to me that there is no real control over the maps being played, no criteria by which they can be divided into 'competitive' and 'fun/imba' maps, this directly referencing Myg's other recent topic. No real authority exists to settle disputes. Also, the hacked games offer huge advantages to players via the hi-res patches. I, f.ex., play TD in 640x400, not because I can't go higher, but because I like the game that way, it's more intense and I'm used to seeing it that way. But it certainly makes it much harder for me to play against people running TD in 1366x768 or something, who see more than 4X the map I see. Even though these issues can easily be resolved through the client, the resolution still needs that actual authority, a body of top players/mapmakers/etc. to define strict rules, practices and mapsets. As for toxic players, who invest too much, I hold the belief that people eventually do grow up and move on. Ignoring and muting them (we called those speechless guys fish in Wchat) is probably a better approach than outright banning and similar public executions, even though the mistreated might not feel vindicated that way.

Good spam topic. Now, suffer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ukf6p3zDZto

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpU5cClHM6w

Possibly a big reason for WW going for two square wide bridges and fords after TD. That, and also harv pathfinding. They can only judge distance in a straight line and will go on unimaginable detours around cliffs and rivers.