ChristosOwen

Christos

Why not just let other people play the game how they want to? If you don't want a ladder then don't use it... people will still FFG even if a ladder is implemented. Likewise people who prefer to QM can do just that. I don't see why you have such a problem with the idea? Just because there is a 'competitive system' in place doesn't necessarily mean there will be more flame/cheats or whatever. Especially if it's implemented and supported in a decent manner. It's pure speculation to say "Oh no, all the horrible XWIS players will come here and start ruining our gaming experience" before anything has even happened. Maybe you will turn out to be right, but there are positives to having a ladder in place too. The majority of FFG's I've played so far have been against players far below my skill level, which is a shame and gets stale. If I offer advice people get defensive, or tell me to put crates on, or tell me to change the map to ToE, or tell me no rush, etc. Which is fine if that is how they want to play the game. However I want to play fast paced matches of higher skill. So a ladder will allow me to do that by pairing me with people of a similar ability. It will also (hopefully) allow people to learn and improve. Saying that, the RA2/YR community is one of the most aggressive/immature gaming communities I've been a part of, for whatever reason. So who knows. Still, I'd like the option to play both QM and FFG, personally.

ie not aka lol It should be e.g. and not aka or i.e.

That's a fine looking high horse you have there.

The rank is important of course, but in my experience from XWIS people liked to have the best w/l ratio as possible (or keep 0 losses) to make a statement or something. I honestly think it would help to hide wins and losses. If points are awarded/lost based on the difference in the player points/ranks when the game starts, then if you lose and -14 points for example, it's no biggie. I think if anything it would drive people to just play more games if they lose to make up for a loss? Maybe not though, who knows!

I think ladder can be a good thing. Don't show wins/losses, just show a total points count. Then nobody will know how many games you have won or lost. But you still have points and are thus ranked. So nothing changes except hopefully people have less of a reason to cheat/DC if it's their "stats" they care about... as nobody will know if you lose anyway!

Also if you build an Airforce if you press with 1-3 rockies, you force them to halt tanks and build flak, or a flak cannon, or flak troopers... it all costs money for them. So you can annoy, run away, damage some tanks, etc. If they build flak traks you can plane them, go back in with rockies... or paradrop to kill them. Or use a couple ifvs to kill them/take power offline if they built a cannon. And another point - once you've teched, spy is really underrated. If you get a spy into warf and you pump out veteran mirage/prism you have such an advantage. Or reset their radar/take money. I wouldn't usually go for a battle lab although that's what most people do! Barracks is good as well but if they build a lot of flak your rockies will become redundant (ish) so I'd concentrate on the warf personally.

What's your usual build? Unless you're on a small map I would always build 2 miners from my warf, and build 3 refineries (can sell 1) over 2 ore patches. If it's a very large map I would go 3, slightly smaller go 1 (but then build/sell another refinery at a later point). Also micro your miners, make sure they're mining close to your refinery. Make sure they teleport to the closest refinery and don't then walk across your base back to the ore patch. Don't build across so many tabs until you have a decent cashflow (i.e. don't build tanks and men and defence and more buildings - you want to avoid hitting 0 at all times). Also if there are oils then that obviously helps too. And gems - send a miner or two to gems, even if far away, as you can teleport back. Place refineries by ore that is "below" as your miners work better from above, if possible. That would generally be before I build an Airforce, then pump out some rocketeers/planes, and then press with rockies, paradrop, and tank split (maybe 2-3 ifvs with gi in as well). Hit and run, make Sov build sentry, distract them, take out a power, kill a miner, run back, plane a tank, etc etc. Don't let them get into your base, so you have time to build cash and then tech. Obviously you have to react to what your opponent is doing - if you see they go straight tanks and build no miners, I would just build 1 miner then ready a pillbox, maybe airforce early and build a few gi's/dogs for fodder to help defend. Hope that helps a bit

Everything in the opening post is incorrect in my experience. I've played for years, since WOL, and reached HOF on XWIS when it was highly active. I played as Allied but was one of the few to do so - the truth is 90% of people play as soviets and this is because generally they're "easier to be better with". You have to really know the game inside out to play well as Allied, especially if you're against a decent Sov player, whereas Soviet are a lot easier to work with, especially early on when you have huge advantages over Allied. BF's shouldn't really be an issue as hardman says - they require tech + power plant (£2.8k), cost £2k and then you need £2k to fill it or £2.6k if adding a seal for desolators. That's £7.4k for your first BF, plus a shit load of time, as you're building infantry and tanks (and buildings) simultaneously so your resources will be drained rapidly (i.e. expect to hit 0 cash whilst this is happening). Not to mention how slow BF's are and how much micro they needed to be used well... throw in some fodder and tank split and you'll kill it easily. Use a Kirov to protect your tanks, making it shoot the Kirov as you rush it. BF's are also pretty useless in isolation and need to be backed up by mirage/prism to be truly effective, which costs a hell of a lot to do. If you multi warf with Sov you will just out tank a teching Allied so easily. But yeah you really should be pressing and playing aggressive if you're soviet so you don't give them a chance to tech up, or give them a proper hard time if they do. As hardman says, there's a reason so many of the pros used Soviet... rhinos+desos are very hard to beat if you know what you're doing. Allied generally have to have all their units in one place to defend/attack well whereas Soviet you can split a lot easier. If SW are on then iron curtain is a huge advantage too. Also siege choppers are amazing - the own tanks, infantry and buildings if you know what you're doing, can kill rockies and harriers too. Hit and run with siege gives Soviet their own "rocketeers" effectively which is why Allied are so great in the first place., i.e. simultaneous attacks from air and land (2 or 3 tank splits, 1-2 rockie splits, paradrop, planes all at once... it's v hard to beat when you know what you're doing and how to defend Sov, which is why I love Allied!) I won't disagree that some maps can force turtling - just try to avoid those maps would be my advice. I also agree - watch some top tier games of AvA and AvS and you'll probably learn a lot.

Just to be clear I wasn't trying to call anyone out there... just thought if there are legitimate free downloads available then more people should know about it... as I see a lot of people on the forums talking about finding a copy/serial of the game.

Cool - I'll give it a go when I get some time this week/weekend and post links when I've got some decent stuff

RA2 and YR

Yeah - the cursor is stuck in the top left corner no matter what you do, so you need to quit the game. Yeah I've experienced it over the years on WOL and XWIS so it's not unique to CnCNet, just maybe they know how to fix it!

I use OBS and/or XSplit to live stream to twitch and record - both have worked for RA2/YR for me so I know it's possible!

Hi guys, I've had a few bugs since I've been playing. I didn't take any screenshots etc at the time but here's a description: - Mouse pointer stuck in top left corner when game starts. Think this happens if you alt/tab during loading? - After game finishes, on the screen you see your points, kills etc and normally click continue to go back to game lobby, the game minimises if I try to click continue. Only solution is to ctrl+alt+del and close the game, then relaunch client. - Sometimes takes multiple attempts for me to login, no idea why. Is there a thread anywhere which has optimal settings for Windows 7/Windows 8 and how to configure settings/ports etc for minimal lag? - Also for my step brother who plays on Windows 8.1, his client freezes quite regularly, and he needs to relaunch client and then login with a new nickname as it says "currently still in use" or similar when he tries.

Also I played a game recently where someone camped on cliffs and had 20+ bunkers with gat tanks in, then just camped on hill with mags and other units. How would you tackle such a situation effectively? I ended up base walking and using prisms/pills/partiots supported with ggi ifvs and prism tanks, but it took forever...

My biggest problem against Yuri is how to deal with automagging effectively. If I'm pressing early game and they automag I don't really know how to win... I use gi/ggi ifvs, harriers, split tanks but still take considerable losses against a mag/gatling/lasher mix. Late game it's not so much of an issue with mirage/prism/bf's I guess.

I could be wrong, but I swear there were free downloads for RA2 and YR made available a while back, on striketeam.net and/or xwis.net? Maybe you still need to own a copy of the game in order to provide a serial code to install, though?

Hi, Would there be any interest if I were to make some YT tutorial videos aimed at beginners? Most likely how to play as Allied, some basic builds, controlling units, tactic differences when playing vs sov/allied/yuri/different maps, etc. Cheers

Hi all, I've been streaming on Twitch since 2011 and have a relatively strong fanbase (although somewhat inactive as of late). My content revolves around speedrunning and racing older retro games, particularly A Link to the Past on the SNES (see SpeedRunsLive.com). I would definitely be open to streaming some RA2/YR on my channel and/or streaming on the CnCNet channel at some point. My twitch is twitch.tv/ChristosOwen if you're interested in taking a look. I have also made YT tutorials for speedruns, and have been thinking about making some YT tutorials for RA2/YR. This would focus on how to play Allied probably (aimed at beginners), what some basic builds are on a variety of maps, how to control certain units, some different tactics you can use, how to alter your play vs allied/sov/what they're doing etc etc etc... Would there be any interest in such videos? Cheers

Hello all, I go by the nick Christos and will usually be playing YR or sometimes RA2. Love to play Allied. Used to play on WOL/XWIS years ago and co-created clan PWNS with my brother Carl (nick is usually Carl or Brother). Look forward to some fun games! Thanks to everyone involved with CnCNet!

Hello all, Firstly thanks to everyone involved with this project. I love RA2/YR and have had a lot of fun playing YR again the past few weeks after years of absence! One thing I think needs to be a priority to improve the overall experience: Allow allying in-game. Not being able to have random positions and then ally in game really detracts from the experience. My feedback on the initial questions below: Do you want a game option when hosting a match to prevent players from picking Yuri? I think this is a very good idea to have a check box allowing/preventing Yuri. Personally I would also love it if you could choose 'Random' but Yuri was excluded, for example by having a 'Random - Allied', 'Random - Soviet', 'Random - All but Yuri' and 'Random - All' selection. This would be great for FFA (I think). Do you want a game option to prevent dogs from eating engineers? This already seems to be in place... seems like this is off most of the time based on the games I've played. Not hugely fussed about it. Do you want a game mode which implements the balance changes from the RA2 1.007 fan 'patch' by Piscinex? (see http://www.blackassassins.org/pisc/readme.htm) I think it's best to keep the games "as they were" but if you can have a check box to put this on/off then I don't see the harm. As someone else said it's been available for years but doesn't get used often - but maybe that is due to a lack of awareness/laziness opposed to not liking the changes themselves. How important are quick match and ladder? I would like to see a quick match/ladder, but wary of the people/behaviour it could bring. I know I had to deal with so many DC back in the day, along with the occasional cheater. I think this is mainly driven by wanting to keep a clean win/loss ratio (i.e. zero losses). I've always thought that instead of showing your wins/losses if you just had this hidden and had a points system in place, along with the rank in the leaderboard, people would be less likely to cheat/DC, as there would be no way of knowing whether you had lost any games. Just an idea. EDIT: Or just have the wins/losses viewable to the player. As in you can only ever see you own wins/losses. Do you guys want a game mode which makes the game play like Red Alert 2? With the same tech trees, units etc? Keep RA2 separate, to be honest. Do you guys want a game mode which enables all country bonuses for every side when picking a country of that side? Not fussed by this personally, but if it's just a check box, then sure. In the loading screen for a match the game shows the spawn locations of all the players by drawing a rectangle with the player's color on the preview map. Do you want a game option to disable this logic? This appears to be in place already. I think this is fun for FFA/team battles, so you don't know who starts where. Obviously you can work out your position instantly, but not knowing if you're adjacent to an Allied or Sov etc makes scouting and anti-scouting all the more important. Other small points, most of which have been mentioned already: - Allow sounds/volume controls for in lobby - Being able to 'force random' on teams/positions/colours etc seems like a good idea - If you login initially and click the 'auto-connect' option but then later want to edit your name, the only way I know of doing that now is to edit the settings file in the RA2 directory. Either change your 'handle' or change the auto-login to 'no' and then save. If this could be made easier that would be cool. - Clan functionality/clan tags? Maybe this already exists, I haven't really looked into it. - Being able to page people who are in a game, from the lobby. Before you could do this with the /page nickname message function, and in game you could just do /r to reply quickly. This was a good function. - Having a buddy list is a good idea. - Perhaps having an "optimal settings for Windows 7/8" displayed somewhere... i.e. how to setup your game settings to reduce lag as much as possible (video back buffer?) - Also in options, maybe explaining what things mean if you hover over them? For instance, the "use graphics patch" thing... what does this actually do/mean? - Having the chat windows separate per person instead of stacked, like frequenzy suggested. Or perhaps having the option for stacked/separate. - Allowing game settings to be 'remembered', again as mentioned by frequenzy. I fully agree that it's annoying to play a few games, join another game/leave, come back to hosting a game, and having everything revert to default. That's all I can think of for now. I'm really enjoying playing this again though so thanks for your hard work. Hopefully some of this feedback is useful EDIT: Also I've had a bit of a glitch with my Malibu Cliffs map. When on Battle, on my screen all 6 positions are in the top left corner as if it's Land Rush. For everyone else it seems to look normal. Maybe something to do with playing maps on different types (e.g. landrush, ffa, battle, etc)?