Smootherized

Yes, that was my point. But if increaing Tesla Troopers' range means they will be played in let's say 5/10 games instead of 1/10 (and not 10/10), then go for it, that would be a great result. The second part is true, but there is another way of looking at it: For me, Soviets = Iraq. No matter how many times Tesla Tank gets reasonably buffed, Iraq will be picked over Russia anytime, because of the utility of Desolators. Even if you nerf Mags, Deso is still good in so many situations. So while for Allies the national units are mostly just a supporting act for the player's induvidual playstyle (I don't mean they are weak), the Desolator is a defining feature for Soviets. Fixing this would require a major rework of Soviet national units, which I guess is a story for another time. But I admit it would be refreshing. In my eyes not necessary, but refreshing.

Giggles was the point. I was just referring to some other people claiming to have vast experience with the game. I wasn't even born in 1984, to be honest. And yes, increasing the range of Tesla Troopers seems like a fine way to make them appear more often as a defensive tool, but I have one question for more experienced players in this case: Wouldn't it make defending using only barracks units a bit too easy, so Soviets could just go for 2 miners from War Factory every time without any fear? I am not saying it would surely cause that, it is more of a question than a suggestion.

ddraw.dll was the name and it was indeed here on these forums: https://forums.cncnet.org/topic/2790-help-my-yuris-revenge-has-laggy-connection-speed-when-playing-on-cncnet-server/

Thank you very much, every bit of help is much appreciated. I searched the forums as well, of course. Most router issues were about people not being able to connect at all, which is not my case. One person seemed to have exactly the same problem as me, some guy gave him a .dll file to download and it fixed the problem for him, but it was a very old post, the download link didn't work and it was on some other (possibly competing) forum, iirc.

As I said, I have the same problem even when playing against a friend who is in the same room as me, connected to the same switch. Both computers can handle skirmish games with 7 AI and tons of units on map without even sweating, but when we try to play multiplayer (be it LAN or CnCNet), the delay gets horrible. It got me thinking - could it be something with my router settings? I tried a ranked match, but I couldn't find one. I was in queue alone for like 30 minutes. Am I doing something wrong, or are there just no players at this time of day? I used the Ranked Match button in the main menu.

I will try a ranked match first thing in the morning and will let you know. Thank you for the suggestion.

20-100ms is regular delay in most games, I have no problem with that. I would say even 200ms is fine in my level of play of RA2. I am talking about 500-1500ms here. I can really say "one Mississippi" between pressing the "D" key and my Desolator deploying, I tried it.

Hello guys, I am new to this forum as you can see, but I really like the discussion going on here and I really like this game. Even though I can also claim I have played this game since 1984, I have to admit: I have never played it at the top level, I have never won any tournaments and while I think I understand the fundamentals, I am in no way a RA2 guru. My knowledge of the high-level play comes mainly from watching replays and videos. But! "Pro" players are just a tip of the iceberg and you have to pay attention to us, the noobs, if you want to have a game that is played by more than a few people. Now that I introduced myself, here are my points, meant purely as food for thought, as I don't have any experience with balancing RA2 or YR. 1) When 2 or more units compete for the same slot in players' arsenal, the only way to make them balanced (in terms of being used in a similar % of the games) is to make them exactly the same. If you make units with different stats, one will inevitably be better than the other in most of the games. You should be OK with one of the units being used only as a niche in a small amount of games (certain maps, certain enemies, as counters to certain units etc). That said: 2) Tesla Trooper. You say this unit is used in 1/10 of all games? Maybe 1/15? Good! Honestly, you rarely get better balance than that. Incremental improvements to the unit probably won't have a visible effect, until you cross a certain threshold and it becomes so good that it replaces some other unit as a backbone of an army. I think Tesla Trooper has its comfortable niche right now, even though the "cool factor" of the unit makes us want to see it more. 3) Tesla Tank. Balancing Tesla Tank around Rhino doesn't really make much sense to me (ofc I might be wrong), because it doesn't compete for its slot with the tank. Or with some other war factory units. It competes with the Desolator as they are mutually exclusive (unless you are making a mod where all unique units are available to all nations). So ask yourselves: How strong would Tesla Tank need to be to outweigh Desolator's utility? Pretty OP, I guess. So balancing Tesla Tank would need some deeper changes to many more units and/or game mechanics. You can replace every instance of "Tesla Tank" in this section by any other Soviet unique unit's name, I guess. We talk about Tesla Tank more only because it is a cool unit, as opposed to Terrorist and the Libyan Family Frost truck. 4) Apocalypse Tank. Basically the same as 2). Making it shoot while moving would make it much better, of course, which wouldn't be a bad thing - high tech units should be obviously better than low tech, given the investment. But: It still has its uses and changing it could create other problems. I would love to see it buffed a slight tiny little bit, so I don't see Soviets spamming Rhino tanks for 40 minutes, but that could be just my personal bias. At least it has the cool image of a slow-moving fortress which has to stop to unload those shots. Which reminds me, I don't like the actual Battle Fortress. It does too many things too well. But this seems to be only my personal problem, it doesn't seem to be unbalanced, I guess. 5) Chronosphere and Iron Curtain. Given the tools Allies already have at their disposal for late game, would it really help if Chronosphere would be on a 5-minute timer? If you argue that Chronosphere doesn't have much use in 1v1, it is a problem of utility, not the timer. Putting it to a 5-minute timer wouldn't fix that, it would just make the Chronosphere OP for matches where it matters. Iron Curtain is strong, yes. Would I mind seeing it nerfed to 6-7 minutes? I wouldn't mind, many other players probably wouldn't either, but it is true it might affect the high-level Soviet vs Yuri game in a bad way. So I wouldn't pick it as my biggest issue. What is the thing I would pick then? Something about Yuri. I understand it should have a unique play style and I understand it should be rewarding when played properly. Every nation does things well when in good hands, but I feel like Yuri is doing a bit too much even if you learn only the simplest tricks. Having arguably the strongest superweapon might be solved simply by turning superweapons off, but (as many players here pointed out) superweapons are often the only counter for Yuri. Having the most punishing "cheese" tactics, especially with Magnetron, doesn't help either, not mentioning the navy. I am not saying Yuri cannot be defeated or that everything he does is OP. I, as an average player, just find him too annoying and yes, that is a factor, when you make a game. So one single change I would love to see is a button in game lobby, which can be used by the host to disallow picking Yuri. Please, save comments like "Go and play regular RA2 if you don't like Yuri" for some other time. I like the new units and changes to Soviets and Allies that YR brought, I just think that Yuri, in its current state (not much effort went into designing and balancing him) should have stayed as a campaign villain only, maybe with some modded maps allowing him. Adding a button to disable him in lobby would save at least some effort of kicking people, because balancing him is probably beyond "one unanimous change". But i guess this is more of a suggestion to CnCNet client creators, not to guys modding maps for fun, right? Edit: Red Alert 2 button in lobby doesn't do what I mean, unfortunately. TL;DR: Nerf Yuri. Not much, just nerf/remove some of the most annoying things he does. Or delete him. That would enable you to nerf IC and that in turn would allow you to slightly buff Apocalypse tanks.

I understand that, but is there a way to fix that, so we can play without such lag at least on LAN? As I said, my internet connection is very good and stable and i don't have such problems in other games, or even when streaming. I know I cannot help it, if the other player has a bad connection. But in this case, I have something wrong obviously, as it lags on LAN too. Or does every player experience 0.5-1 sec delays on every command in every multiplayer game? This is most visible when placing buildings, placing/cancelling build orders and deploying units (Desolators, GIs etc).

Hello, I have this problem when playing RA2:YR using CNCNET: My game runs completely smoothly with no lag or any issues what so ever as long as I play Skirmish or CNCNET game with AI only. As soon as there is another live player in the game, the game gets laggy - any command is executed with around half a second (sometimes up to 1 second) delay and the game runs visibly slower. I have a decent-ish computer (Win10, 8gb ram, 8-core AMD processor, R9 290 graphics card) and I don't experience any issues even in newer games (Battlefront 2 runs smoothly, for example, and I don't mean the 2005 Battlefront 2 game). Also, I have a very decent internet connection - 250/150 fiber, ping when playing CSGO is around 20ms, for example. I have 2 computers at home (the second one a bit slower, but should still be enough for this game) and tried playing 1v1 on those 2 computers too, but it was the same, whether playing via LAN or CNCNET. So I reckon it must have something to do with some settings of some kind. And yes, I tried with Back Buffer on and off, it makes no difference on the slower computer and it makes the game unplayable on the faster computer, when I switch it on. And I tried different tunnel servers, still very little or no difference. Can anyone help me with the issue, please? Thank you in advance for your time and effort, I appreciate it very much.