Random TS QUESTIONS & COMMENTS...

[fir3w0rx]

1. What does 'Graphics Patch' do in settings?

2. When you get an internal error, does the game still produce an except.txt file? Where?

3. I read that tiberium on slopes create internal errors; can slopes created by cluster/multi-missles also cause internals?

4. What is the difference between 'Abort' and 'Surrender'?

5. Rendering: They all work for me (default, ts-ddraw, ie-ddraw, ddwrapper) - does it matter which one I choose? Is one better than the others?

6. What is 'No Video Memory' for?

7. What is 'Fake VSync' for?

[chill]

what is this a test or something...y dont u go get a pseudo internet degree or something be fore you start adminestering quizes and shit

[fir3w0rx]

what is this a test or something...y dont u go get a pseudo internet degree or something be fore you start adminestering quizes and shit

:D You FAIL!

 

I really can't tell if you're joking though, but incase you're not, then NO, this is not a test... wtf  O_o ... these are serious questions that I really don't know the answers to. I wanna get decent at TS, but I'm not gonna get anywhere if I can't even get my settings right. I'm also more than likely gonna be asking gameplay questions as I progress.

[dkeeton]

1. What does 'Graphics Patch' do in settings?

2. When you get an internal error, does the game still produce an except.txt file? Where?

3. I read that tiberium on slopes create internal errors; can slopes created by cluster/multi-missles also cause internals?

4. What is the difference between 'Abort' and 'Surrender'?

5. Rendering: They all work for me (default, ts-ddraw, ie-ddraw, ddwrapper) - does it matter which one I choose? Is one better than the others?

6. What is 'No Video Memory' for?

7. What is 'Fake VSync' for?

 

1. Graphic patch options tells the TS exe file to not use any video card memory. If the game performs at a high FPS without this option then don't use it.

2. except.txt is in the TS install folder.

3. If tiberium appears on a slope from a multi-missle I think it would cause an internal error (I think). But it won't happen because the crater destroys the tiberium and the multi-missile warhead destroys tiberium. If you are getting Internal Errors than it's probably because of the laser waveclass bug and you should set visual details to medium in the in-game menu.

4. Abort simply leaves the game without any finish. When you surrender you lose the game.

5. Use whichever options works the best for you. Play with various options online and check the FPS result mpstats.txt file that is located in your TS install folder. When I play in 2v2 I get 45 fps against non-laggers. shoot for 55 fps in 1 player game. (experiment and find the best ddraw that works for you)

6. Similar to 1. up above, except that this options is for ddwrapper and not for the TS exe.

7. VSync can sometimes hurt fps by causing a pause while your graphics card confirms the full frame was delivered to your monitor. Fake VSync will prevent the pause and allow the game to start writing the next frame even if the previous frame wasn't completely displayed by your monitor yet. The downside is screen tearing, but it might not even be noticeable in TS. Again do just like step 5 and experiment to find the best solution for yourself.

 

[fir3w0rx]

Anyone know a link to, or HAVE an image of the TS tech tree? I know I can just play skirmish and learn it from there, but I'd prefer to be able to see the big picture, plus I'm lazy. And no It's not in the manual.

[chill]

i was recently thinking about this but in a comprehensiabble picture form for both factions and what can be sold/when to keep what etc. im not going to make it due to lack of hours playing but if someone doesnt i will

[fir3w0rx]

i was recently thinking about this but in a comprehensiabble picture form for both factions and what can be sold/when to keep what etc. im not going to make it due to lack of hours playing but if someone doesnt i will

Teching up in TS is weird, like for example (as GDI):

• you can't sell your radar if you don't have a component tower yet, otherwise you don't get a sam upgrade.
  
• if you sell your tech center before making an upgrade center, you can't make an ion cannon or seeker.
  

 

It keeps the tech even after you sell the structure, but only for the buildings you currently have. It does make sense, but it's weird.

[fir3w0rx]

Oh another thing I wanna know:

 

Why don't people make pavements to stop subterranean vehicles filled with engineers from popping up right next to their construction yards or warfactories or whatever?

[*]Is it a waste of money?

[*]Won't it buy you more time to kill the engineers because they have to deploy further?

[*]I know you can make mobile sensor arrays, but just for that extra safety measure for a few hundred bucks.

[*]What are some better alternatives to countering subs filled with engineers?

[fir3w0rx]

@XmeXyou - Sorry I didn't even realised someone answered my questions above, thanks

[fir3w0rx]

It's really annoying how your harvesters would rather travel to an available refinery the other end of the frickin map than just wait a few seconds for the nearest refinery to be available. Besides micro managing them, is there a better way to keep them from doing this?

[dkeeton]

Oh another thing I wanna know:

 

Why don't people make pavements to stop subterranean vehicles filled with engineers from popping up right next to their construction yards or warfactories or whatever?

[*]Is it a waste of money?

[*]Won't it buy you more time to kill the engineers because they have to deploy further?

[*]I know you can make mobile sensor arrays, but just for that extra safety measure for a few hundred bucks.

[*]What are some better alternatives to countering subs filled with engineers?

1. Lots of good players will use some a small amount of well placed pavement.

 

2. usually you will place the pavement around your RPG (gdi) and under a Ghost Stalker to prevent the sub from surfacing and squishing the GS. Pavement around the RPG will prevent the sub from surfacing in the RPG's blind spot.

 

3.  The biggest problem with engineers in sub is that your units will target the sub until it's completely destroyed then they will move on to targeting the engineers, but by that time the engineers will be too close to stealing your building. If you want to handle the engineers in touch-free way you need enough high power tanks/rpgs/rockets to kill the sub very quickly and then have some disc throwers or light infantry to kill the engineers. For nod use lasers && light infantry && (rocket infantry || bikes || tick tanks) and walls to deal with engineers. That's the safe way, that's how Colin Powell would kill an engineer attack.. The fun way is...

 

a. Use a Ghost Stalker on a patrol loop, make a 2 points of a waypoint and then instead of dropping a third point hold shift and click on point 0 of the waypoint to create a loop. Tell the Ghost Stalker to guard the waypoint by holding ctrl+alt and clicking on the waypoint. (make the waypoints very close together and close to the building).

 

b. Use a bomber on a patrol loop. Same as above but make the loop 3 points that stretch outside of the buildings you are trying to protect.

 

c. Use another engineer to steal the building back if it's been stolen or to repair the building if your timing is right. Your engineer will not go into a building to repair it if it has full health, so damage your building with a single shot from a light infantry. Then when the engineers come to steal your building, you send your engineer to repair it at the same time they send their engineers to steal it. In multi-engineer a building can only be stolen if it's in Red health, the first 2 engineers will damage a bit of health from the building and the third will take it. If you repair the building while those first 2 engineers are damaging then the 3rd won't be able to steal it.

 

Always play with multi-engineer enabled or you will be ridiculed as a newb and you deserve to have your buildings stolen.

 

Some players just ban engineers as house rules. (it's called no HEAT on TS and it means no harvester(bombs) no engineer(attacks) no alt scout). It's lame but a relatively common thing among the mod map players.

 

 

It's really annoying how your harvesters would rather travel to an available refinery the other end of the frickin map than just wait a few seconds for the nearest refinery to be available. Besides micro managing them, is there a better way to keep them from doing this?

 

This is the classic gripe of all the CNC games. Harvesters are stupid.

Harvester Micro is one point that really differentiates good players from great ones.

 

The one trick I try to do is create a non-blocking harvester loop. The most commonly accepted ratio is 4:2, harvesters to refineries. The goal is to get 2 harvesters dumping while 2 harvesters are harvesting. The way to do that is whenever you see that you have no harvesters dumping send the 2 fullest harvesters back to dump. If you have 1 harvester that just started dumping and 1 open refinery send the fullest harvester back to dump. After a few manual dumps like this you will create a pretty good loop and you won't have to manage any harvestering for a while. (But, eventually, the loop will breakdown again and you'll have to resync them)

[chill]

this topic should b at the top

[dkeeton]

 

a. Use a Ghost Stalker on a patrol loop, make a 2 points of a waypoint and then instead of dropping a third point hold shift and click on point 0 of the waypoint to create a loop. Tell the Ghost Stalker to guard the waypoint by holding alt+shift and clicking on the waypoint. (make the waypoints very close together and close to the building).

 

 

This should be ctrl+alt = Patrol mode.

[fir3w0rx]

Some things that don't make sense (and also annoying)...

• If you click a unit with your carryall, that unit (except for harvesters) stops what it's doing, including attacking. If you want it to keep attacking, you have to command that unit to attack again (but make sure you don't move it) while the carryall is coming to get it. Imo, that unit should keep firing until it gets picked up.
  
• On Dune 2, carryalls are always on patrol mode when flying around and automatically picks up full harvesters and drops them off at a refinery. Westwood should have done the same with TS when you put a carryall on a looping way point.
  
• If you hover your mouse cursor over a MCV, your cursor turns into a deploy icon and you can deploy it by pressing D. You see this same icon appear when your carryall is about to pick up a unit, except that you can't press D, you have to click it. It's inconsistent, pressing D should also work.
  

 

Questions...

[*]My Scroll Rate is already set to 'Slowest', but it still scrolls really fast. Is there a way to slow it down without also slowing down the game? I've already manually turned vertical refresh / vsync on.

[*]Are Medics useless units in online matches? What else are useless units in online TS?

[*]Does anyone else's CPU temperature noticeably rise while playing TS? Mine goes from idle (about 40 degrees celsius) to high 60s. With other games, the temp either rises to mid 50s max, or doesn't rise at all. This only happens with TS.

[chill]

cant beat this as nod(because thats all i know how to play as at this time) when a good player does it like here...HELP!

"http://www.youtube.com/embed/bqP8XjtGLsY"       

[dkeeton]

Some things that don't make sense (and also annoying)...

• If you click a unit with your carryall, that unit (except for harvesters) stops what it's doing, including attacking. If you want it to keep attacking, you have to command that unit to attack again (but make sure you don't move it) while the carryall is coming to get it. Imo, that unit should keep firing until it gets picked up.
  
• On Dune 2, carryalls are always on patrol mode when flying around and automatically picks up full harvesters and drops them off at a refinery. Westwood should have done the same with TS when you put a carryall on a looping way point.
  
• If you hover your mouse cursor over a MCV, your cursor turns into a deploy icon and you can deploy it by pressing D. You see this same icon appear when your carryall is about to pick up a unit, except that you can't press D, you have to click it. It's inconsistent, pressing D should also work.
  

 

Questions...

[*]My Scroll Rate is already set to 'Slowest', but it still scrolls really fast. Is there a way to slow it down without also slowing down the game? I've already manually turned vertical refresh / vsync on.

[*]Are Medics useless units in online matches? What else are useless units in online TS?

[*]Does anyone else's CPU temperature noticeably rise while playing TS? Mine goes from idle (about 40 degrees celsius) to high 60s. With other games, the temp either rises to mid 50s max, or doesn't rise at all. This only happens with TS.

 

1. You may want to try a bigger screen resolution. (Are you using right-click scrolling?)

2. Medics are useful when used with a ghost stalker and APC. Medics aren't effective during an infantry rush.

3. All these old WW games try to use as much CPU as they can, I don't think TS tries to limit frame rate in game speed 7(fastest) and no video card acceleration is used, so ya.

 

[dkeeton]

cant beat this as nod(because thats all i know how to play as at this time) when a good player does it like here...HELP!

"http://www.youtube.com/embed/bqP8XjtGLsY"       

 

You want a critique?

• You aren't using hotkeys. You should make a comittment to not using the sidebar buttons for fix/sell/power. Go cold turkey on that.
  
• You should have sold your refinery before it got destroyed which would be easier if you had hotkeys set up and used them exclusively. You should set "sell" to the u key.
  
• Use h to go home instead of scrolling back home.
  
• Scout better. Send 1 light infantry to each corner. Hold q down and direct and infantry to go to multiple locations and that infantry will follow your sequence of clicks just like a waypoint. Use this technique to quickly scout around your base.
  
• You built a sam and rocket infantry too soon. If you are going to bunk, you need to use that starting 10k to get your economy going. that means getting 4 harvesters and 2 refineries in the first 3 minutes of the game. After that, you will be able to build non-stop units from any single factory. For example you will be able to build non-stop banshees or non-stop tick tanks (but not both).
  
• I don't think you understand the timing of the game. In the worst case, a 1 ref disruptor attack will be in your base in 2.5 minutes. If you've scouted well, you will have seen the disruptor/mk rush commng at the 2 min mark and then you have 30 seconds to build defense (rocket infantry, sams bikes,tick tanks etc).
  
• Your base isn't laid out to take advantage of the top right position. TR has the advantage against disrutpors because of how close it is to the right edge. You should put your war factory on the right side near the edge of the screen. That way there is less space that a disruptor can land to attack your war factory. Your second refinery should be over there for the same reason.
  
• Use engineers to save buildings.
  

[chill]

^^TY!

[fir3w0rx]

1. You may want to try a bigger screen resolution. (Are you using right-click scrolling?)

2. Medics are useful when used with a ghost stalker and APC. Medics aren't effective during an infantry rush.

3. All these old WW games try to use as much CPU as they can, I don't think TS tries to limit frame rate in game speed 7(fastest) and no video card acceleration is used, so ya.

1. I don't really wanna go any higher than 1280x720 coz I find it hard to select specific units. Yes I use right-click to scroll.

2. Oh ok. Would have been good if you could mix the correct ratio of soldiers:medics and be able to beat a much larger group of infantry that has no medics.

3. I can lower the fps through my gpu settings to slow down the scroll rate, but it would also lower the entire game's fps. I guess I'll just have to get used to the scroll rate.

 

 

Btw, how come there's only ONE TS player answering these questions? Where are the rest of you??? SHARE YOUR KNOWLEDGE YOU GREEDY BASTARDS!!!

[Milkey Wilkey]

Just found that if you destroy a church in the TS campaign you will be granted with a crate just like in the original game! that was an amazing moment    is there any other non-obvious homages to classic like this one? I know about units & buildings from TD, but they are not really hidden

[1337timmay]

Why do i lose matches when i am the best ?!?!?!