Ford (retired)

Yes, I agree this should not have been removed as the key bindings worked this way since 1996, so nerfing and changing the game is offensive to the traditional players imo.

Wow nobody has replied to your message yet? I think RA players are missing out on their opportunities to grow the game as they so hypocritically proclaim, by not interacting with their community. (mini rant directed at the RA "pro" scene) Anyways to answer your question: There are two types of builds, that are either "tanking" or "building" strategies Tanking is simple, you just need to build war factories until you reach the maximum speed for your tank. Building can be done at any time, either at the start of the game, at max wars or anywhere in between. Usually when you are not confident that you can properly attack the enemy, or the enemy is playing too passive and you think that extra CYs will give you a tempo advantage. For tanking, you will build up to 6 or 7 War Factories depending on whether you are Allied or Soviet, respectively. When you make your 3rd War Factory, you will also build another truck and a silo to maintain production without going broke. You can place two silos in the corners of your Refinery to stop your trucks from looping around the Refinery for the most part. - If you are switching from tanking to building, making 9 MCVs right away will leave you vulnerable since you arent making tanks. Try to limit the MCVs you make at any one time to be 3-4 - Do not waste all your tanks before making MCVs, as you will literally be paralyzed and leave your teammate to 1vs2 For building: To build at the start of the match, you will create a War Factory, Depot then a 2nd War Factory, then some advanced powers and Tesla Coils to defend against tank rushes. Obviously you will make MCVs. If there is no risk of a tank rush, you can make an extra War Factory to create MCVs even faster.

Assuming that you are playing Skirmish via the CnCNet client, you can also enable the "short game" setting to change the win condition to "Destroy ALL buildings" instead of "all units AND buildings"

GQ works for me still. Make sure you reconfigure ALL your settings and make sure those hotkeys are set to different keys It will take some time to adjust, but i am confident that you will be able to adapt. RA is in a deep decline though and I think it is in need of change but not neccesarily by changing the control-schemes. ie. RA needs more new players in order for it to continue, or else since players are getting older RA will just slowly get worse and worse until players out-grow the game. I think RA could use features such as right-click to move as an option so the RAR members can join without too much relearning. These changes could happen really quickly if funky so chooses but the playerbase does not show him gratitude and players ONLY SEEM TO COMPLAIN to him or incite drama. Kinda went off topic, but ranting is good for your health Don't want the #1 Q to quit, cheers!

sounds like nostalgia and bias to me xD C&C is a casual and dying franchise and successful RTS nowadays stray away from this formula lol. EA games actually got their fans to rebuy games that they made freeware for 20$ including me. It's quite obvious that the fans have a status quo bias towards this classic game which is actually a hindrance to the potential growth and competitive culture of the game.

In Red Alert 1 since there are so few players already, there is a big issue of players camping the top 3 spots and then not playing at all which effectively causes the ladder to be unplayable on certain days. I think a decay system should be an option for each ladder to be enabled and mitigate this issue. Decay settings would be a signifcant improvement, but the grace period and amount of decay should be customizable like the other settings. - add ability to set grace period - ability to set the % of total points lost per day after grace period is up - ability to set the lowest rank to be affected and/or make it so points cannot decay lower than (ie. 5th rank's points) - display to players if they are going to decay and how long until they do Thank you for creating the quickmatch ladder. I hope the devs all enjoyed doing so. Cheers

wrong game sir, you are looking for the Red Alert 2, Yuri's Revenge forum i believe

It would be interesting if someone played only Germany or any other weaker country and managed to use these bad units to max potential. TDs have a hidden strength which is that in YR they have a 1x buildtime, while rhinos have 1.3 and grizzlies have 1.5x. I think buildtime multipliers are a lazy way to balance units on WWs behalf because usability buffs are more effective, feel better and improve the fun of the gameplay using said units. I think TDs could be decent on maps where there isnt much room to maneuver.

https://c9andrewford.blogspot.com/2019/06/teamtypes.html I wrote a guide on my blog about teamtypes. I wonder if it helps with anything. It includes creating a team. Do note that using the create a team trigger is a bit buggy, so it is more effective to make a reinforcements team that moves around instead.

You have more than just apocs to utilize. If i were to attack a base with a 3x3 of IC rhinos or 3x3 of IC Apocs id choose the apocs. Just make rhinos as per normal soviet gameplay, then when u wanna IC make some apocs. It really is a simple concept. Your logic is you want apocs to outrange MMs, you said nothing about BFs. Why are you basing balance on the apocs interaction with MMs in the first place? That's like saying conscripts should have +1 range over navy seals. Apocs seem the closest to usable in SvS matchups in critical mass since sovs dont really have other ways to deal with them than driving rhinos around them. 7 range apocs would mean only apocs would be used late game in SvS and having a unit uncounterable in a match up is not any form of balance. May i reiterate, units that do good damage vs everything are HARD TO BALANCE, especially in RA2 where damage types usually deal a lot or very little damage to certain armor types.

It's not stupidity, I gave u a smart analogy using TDs and Rhinos to show how difference 1 range makes I don't think you understand what I'm saying. If you buff apocs to 7 range (+1 range over MMs), then that would make apocs good vs MANY THINGS. Apocs that are in range to do damage will kill that target quickly, correct?. Units that can do good damage vs everything are VERY HARD TO BALANCE and Apocs would either be useless or OP. BFs are hard to balance for this same reason. I don't think you understand that concept. As far as the Iron Curtain; if you use an IC on them, you can attack whatever you want. Buildings don't move, why would mobility be an issue for IC+Apocs?

I'm confident masterminds & mind control are designed to counter expensive units. TDs have less range than Rhinos which is part of why TDs are bad....so why would giving apocs longer range than their counter unit be a good idea? I think a few issues with apocs is they are good against many things which can make them hard to balance. If apocs can't get outranged, then they will just beat everything as an example and there would be no reason to make anything but apocs. Also Iron Curtain has little counterplay and is required in order to make things like Demo Trucks and Apocs usable. (also SW off is dumb imo and is like playing with lower tech level, the game should be balanced around one setting)

the file name CNCNet uses is spawn.xdp or spawnam.xdp for aftermath, it doesnt use rules.ini anymore. If you want to add rules.ini changes to a map (which i highly recommend since other players will be able to play the map without having to download anything) just open the map file in notepad and copy & paste the changes to the bottom of the map file. Do note if you open ra95-spawn.exe it will launch RA just like if you had the CD in 1996 and will read rules.ini like you'd expect. I assume the CNCNet client uses a different file name for rules.ini so you can play mods offline while maintaining online compatability.

did excess money get stored into the silos?

CnCNET is great, and since RA source code has been released this is a huge step in improving the game and adding nice juicy features that allow us to enjoy the game we love. Add a replay system, maybe as an option as saving a replay could add more lag to games. Fix bug where you can ally someone who is trying to Engi your building which prevents it from being captured New .ini keywords, this would allow for more control over making maps of all types from nurple to Defense maps I'll list a few keyword suggestions Ability to remove darkness crate as random chance Chrono (superweapon) Crate Size of Nukes/Demo Trucks explosions Force Ore Regrowth on (ignores lobby setting "Ore Regenerates") Crusher Flag for vehicles Helicopter Firing Delay Auto Attack Flag (Tanya for example) Build Speed Multiplier (per unit/building) New Triggers New blank units if modders want to add them to maps. (Like Ferrets Tiberian Alert mod)

https://ladder.cncnet.org/ladder/4-2020/ra/games/133625 Dear ladder moderators, I am reporting on behalf of Crushyboo. The game disconnected 43 minutes in on V3. The time on the scoresheet is the same as the game time on the ladder link. I think based on the results Crush should be victorious based on the vehicles/buildings and air units left. Also, when games disconnect, the unit stats should remain on the page so it is easier to debate these types of situations in the future. This is not the first time this has happened in long games.

on the CncNet5 (RA, TS, TD version) there is usually a flashing green button that says "streaming" whenever someone is live on twitch but it doesn't show anymore. When shall this be fixed.

Open up the map file in Raed.exe. Press Ctrl+T, a text box similar to notepad should appear. Map files are really just notepad files. On a new line at the bottom of the text add this [AutoAllyWaypoints], and assign each waypoint to team A or B. As an example:

"All That Glitters..." "Treasure Isle"

open up your map file in a text editor (example: notepad) and add the following [Recharge] Nuke=13 ; nuclear missile Adjust to a lower value to make nukes prepare faster. Every 4 in-game minutes is around 1 minute in real time.

The RA community is the majority, so it seems they are the loudest. TD players are weird but harmless, and TS players seem to banter a lot (at least towards me) and have elitism. RA2 is the whiniest xD. Overall since I am the king of toxicity and troll; I can agree that Red Alert is very toxic. But Ford only keeps the other toxic players in check. As long as you play at a decent level, you wont get flamed. (this shouldnt be hard since RA is all about tanks :D)

If im not mistaken the slow unit build option slows tank buildspeed by 3x. And Aftermath Game enabled limits the amount of factories to 2. Those should be more than enough if you don't want to play against tank spam. Most players on here enjoy the tank rush though.

Originally it is in a mix file called 'redalert.mix/local.mix/rules.ini'. The one that cncnet uses is called spawn.xdp. It's inside the main directory. You can open spawn.xdp with notepad and its functionally identical to rules.ini. I strongly recommend put rules.ini changes within a map file if you want to make changes that you can play with other players online.

Ok, let's say I am making a medium tank. So I would calculate 800/108 = 7. So the time interval is 7. The game adds +1 per frame, per factory that exists, to this time interval until the build progress value reaches 7 and then the clock image animates. It is possible to have the clock image animate twice if you have enough factories. This is measured in Integers not floating points, so decimals cannot be used meaning there are certain breakpoints for lowering the time interval by 1. Also, sorry for the slightly off-topic posts, but I do think the build speed can come into account with balance where any unit that benefits from the faster build time should naturally be less cost-effective (buggys vs humvees for example) All vehicles that benefit from fast build time Buggy, Bike, Light Tank, Flame Tank, Stealth Tank, Artillery, MLRS. (Dinosaurs too xD)

I've found the code in the executable itself that alters the build time formula if a unit has a certain bit-flag is NOT enabled. 25% of the cost is reduced when calculating the build times with these units. This is used for ALL units/structures that are built. TL:DR, Cost/108 = frames per interval. Although not shown, multiple factories simply loops the amount of time to add with seemingly NO cap.