tactic: demolition truck vs. big army balls

GeneralFrost · Post by **GeneralFrost** » Sat Apr 05, 2014 11:23 pm

one of these cost 2500.. and it seems like it explodes also when enemies kill it.

so it might be effective to move these into big groups of enemy vehicles / infanry.. ?

Speedy · Post by **Speedy** » Sat Apr 05, 2014 11:42 pm

It.. MIGHT.. but that's a rather.. overestimation of it's possibilities, if you ask me.

They seem to have little armor, and if you drive it up to enemies, chances are it's shot down before it does proper damage- or worse, before it's out of range for damaging YOUR base.

Demolition trucks seem more useful to set traps with than to assault groups of units with.

GeneralFrost · Post by **GeneralFrost** » Sat Apr 05, 2014 11:44 pm

btw can you chrono them ? might be a very nice tactic for 2 vs. 2... chrono them into the enemy base.. could be insta GG if you chrono 4 of them into the base

Speedy · Post by **Speedy** » Sat Apr 05, 2014 11:51 pm

If you chrono 'em, they explode RIGHT AWAY.

Learned that the hard way when I tried.. precisely what you just thought of.

And with hard way I meant I had 5 of them in position in my own base to get chrono'd only to have them go BOOM on me... again, in the middle of my own base. XD

Hiro · Post by **Hiro** » Sun Apr 06, 2014 9:22 pm

Really? Why would the explode before being chono'd? I mean, I guess that kills this potentially game breaking tactic, but if you can chrono iron curtained mammoth tanks (2v2) into the enemy base for massive damage and 0 repercussions then why can't you do this?

Speedy · Post by **Speedy** » Mon Apr 07, 2014 12:14 am

It was like this in the original Red Alert expansion, too...

The reason was.. Something about the 'nuclear energy' getting disturbed by the 'chrono energy'...

So.. Boom happens.

Hmm, now I wonder, did it happen in RA2 with Libya's Demo Trucks..

BaronOfStuff · Post by **BaronOfStuff** » Mon Apr 07, 2014 12:44 am

Hiro wrote: ↑Really? Why would the explode before being chono'd? I mean, I guess that kills this potentially game breaking tactic, but if you can chrono iron curtained mammoth tanks (2v2) into the enemy base for massive damage and 0 repercussions then why can't you do this?

The 'in-universe' explanation for RA95 was something along the lines of the volatile materials on the Demo Truck reacting with the Chronosphere's time-bending effects. In reality though, the reason was just how broken and unfair such a thing would be. Even considering how puny the nuclear weapons in RA95 Skirmishes/Multiplayer are, a 'shifted Demo Truck combined with a regular ol' Atom Bomb would cripple most bases on regular maps. OpenRA's nukes? Far more powerful and capable of destroying ConYards... so it's easy to see why the Demo Truck's 'self-destruct' behaviour seen in RA95 wasn't changed at all for this project. Now, regarding your 'why can we do it with x but not y?' question...

First, you'd need:
a) Lots of money
and
b) Both tech trees
in order to 'ChronoCurtain' a bunch of Mammoths. If you and an ally can manage to hold off your enemies long enough to achieve that sort of thing, then quite frankly you deserve the ability to send them around the map and raze some serious shit.

Second, the potential damage output of Mammoths during a 'shift is nothing compared to the instant destruction that the same amount of Demo Trucks would cause; Mammoths can only attack one thing at a time (whether it's separate targets each or concentrated firepower on one object), whereas Demo Trucks just flatten all the surroundings in one burst. The prospect of shifting Demo Trucks is just laughably gamebreaking. At least with the Mammoth Tanks, the poor bastard on the receiving end gets half a chance to react and/or stall for time while his stuff gets smashed up (not to mention an ally could potentially shift all/some the units again to some other place as a desperate counterstrike). Demo Trucks on the other hand would turn his base into a greasy little smudge on the map before anyone would even have the chance to say "well fuck, that's actually not at all balanced".

Third(!), the Chronosphere charges faster than Missile Silos can prepare Atom Bombs. 'nuff said.

Hiro · Post by **Hiro** » Mon Apr 07, 2014 11:42 am

Hmm that's true. I hadn't thought of the research and money costs (neither were much of an issue in the island 2v2 I saw the strategy used in so that may have been a factor). Also, demo trucks are way more powerful than I thought haha. Well, no matter

Pwn Call · Post by **Pwn Call** » Wed Apr 16, 2014 3:28 pm

Can you iron curtain a demo truck?

scorp · Post by **scorp** » Wed Apr 16, 2014 8:17 pm

does anybody ever use the MAD Tank? it has a cool effect but beyond that...

Hiro · Post by **Hiro** » Wed Apr 16, 2014 9:55 pm

Pwn Call wrote: ↑Can you iron curtain a demo truck?

I am going to try this next time I play and come back to you. Sounds like it would be the only way to make them really useful; they could get in range of something without being shot first

BaronOfStuff · Post by **BaronOfStuff** » Wed Apr 16, 2014 10:38 pm

inb4 RA95 behaviour is copied.

(Enjoy your two seconds of invulnerability..?)

Edit:
Not even that, it's entirely ineffective!

Pwn Call · Post by **Pwn Call** » Wed Apr 23, 2014 12:08 pm

I tried it out yesterday you cannot iron curtain a demo truck. Would be way OP

Unit158 · Post by **Unit158** » Mon Apr 28, 2014 4:37 am

They are pretty mean machines if you keep them away from your stuff, which is usually easy enough to do. I had one game where I stalled for minutes vs quem because I was traiding 2500 credits worth of demotruck for tens of thousand of credits worth of tanks, infantry and aircraft.

This was in 1v1.

In team multiplayer, the situation is a lot different. I have tried to do similar things, but it usually ends your allies or you losing something along with the truck.

All in all, it is wonderful offense, punching through just about any defense. It is not so useful in defense, where you might save your hind, but at the price of pieces of your base.

Oh, try not to use it in chokepoints either.

EDIT: while I'm at it, try using chrono on three MAD tanks, put them beside enemy conyard and deploy. he, he, hehe, hehehe. The things are pretty fierce in terms of punching a hole in their infrastructure.

Hiro · Post by **Hiro** » Mon Apr 28, 2014 10:58 am

Unit158 wrote: ↑while I'm at it, try using chrono on three MAD tanks, put them beside enemy conyard and deploy. he, he, hehe, hehehe. The things are pretty fierce in terms of punching a hole in their infrastructure.

I thought we established that you can't chrono demo trucks because they explode instantly...?

I like your idea of using them in open fields away from your base. I can imagine using them as like a back door defence for when you suspect your enemy might counter from one direction when you move out in another. Because fog of war view is so small for most things if you had one or two demo trucks along a route your enemy could take, they might just blunder right into them in their haste to sneak around your army and do some damage in your base while your forces are all tied up with their base defences. Doing that could ruin someone's day