Thanks for your posts guys, here comes a blob of replies.
That's a lot, I can understand how my thread might feel like a nuisance with that many ideas already around. Bear with me though, I just want a place to plop down my thoughts. (If anybody feels like it feel free to add some of them to that place as well, if anything makes sense.)
noobmapmaker wrote: ↑Wow many nice ideas. Some have been posted before and been refuted but I'd think there are some original ideas there too.
Currently on vacation so can't respond elaborately.
Thanks for taking the time to read some of them!
zinc wrote: ↑Grenadiers do get used quite a bit -- mostly for early game rushes. They can also help defend if someone moves an mcv up at the start of the game I.e. power and barracks can be taken out quite fast by them. You don't see them much later in the game but they could still be used effectively if you had 2 or 3 apc of them. Of course they aren't as good as flame but they are cheaper and can sometimes work.
I don't think any change is really needed with this unit. Slight reduction in price is maybe a good thing.
Yeah I've noticed they have been used sometimes after all, mostly just once as an APC rush in the start. But their use is still being "ridiculed" a bit by FiveAces/SoScared, mainly due to the fact they explode on death. Since so much has changed in OpenRA I don't think it's unreasonable to tone down the death explosion to make them usable. Hasn't the flamethrower unit death been toned down too? Or was it just in Tiberian Dawn they were almost unusable?
Dropping the price from 160 to 150 and the build time from 4 sec to 3 sec (same as rifle men) would do a lot for Grenadier. Sadly though, as long as they explode and take out all friendly units around them they will probably still never be seen late game. I still stand by my previous suggestion to make the death-on-explosion only happen if they die from an explosion and make it deal no damage - only put units around them into prone position.
zinc wrote: ↑I think the capacity of the silos should be doubled. Maybe they could also help defend against spies stealing? So make it so they can't be attacked by spies and if you have enough then spies get little out of attacking an ore refinery.
That's true, I mean if a spy infiltrates a silo what is he going to do? There's no credits there, just ore. Maybe he can let out a bit of the ore, causing the player to lose some money, but the owner of the spy wouldn't get any credits. So it could be:
Spy+OreRefinery = -X credits for Refinery owner, +X credits for Spy owner
Spy+OreSilo = -X*2 credits for Silo owner, no stolen credits for Spy owner
Might buff fence/sandbags as well since you'd want to put them around silos if you play against England that has cheaper spies?
zinc wrote: ↑Mammoths... I have suggested before having different versions buildable. There is a flame mammoth in one of the expansion pack missions. That could be a good anti-infrantry or base destruction weapon. Or you could have a troop transport mammoth that can take 10 or 12 troops. (Make them even better for naval transport invasions and sneak attacks.) Or you could have a type with its own individual iron curtain kind of like the chrono tank. Maybe lasting half the time of the normal iron curtain.
Or, if you wanted, you could just give a boost to its shields maybe 25% stronger.
I prefer having just one type of classic Mammoth Tank myself. Seems to get built more often since the new release that came out just recently, maybe it's in a good place right now?
Check out this clip (FiveAces vs Abcdefg30):
https://youtu.be/o1d70I9Qh9g?t=1911
Loved that match, very entertaining! Mammoth anti-air is so awesome, I love long distance missiles.
As for using the Mammoth as troop transport, the thought have crossed my mind as well. Would probably make it overpowered. At first I thought maybe they could ride on the tank, being able to attack and get damaged as the tank was shot at. But it wouldn't really serve much purpose that way since the tank moves so slow.
scorp wrote: ↑good ideas in this thread
another rarely used unit is the Hijacker. Maybe (even when the bugs with its pathing are fixed) the Hijacker could also capture husks like the mechanic?
also there's been discussions about the MAD tank. I liked the ideas to make it a support unit or to give additional effects to its thumping.
Cool ideas about mammoths. Right now, they take long to build and are expensisve. Let's see if the speed buff works or not.
The Grenadier should somehow become a more frequently used unit. I think the main problem is that it explodes too often. The secondary problem is that it is not effective in combat.
supply truck could maybe double as a cheap, slow, weak troop transport.
@Hijacker: I don't think Hijacker should be able to repair husks because it would make the two factions more similar, I celebrate the "uniqueness" between two teams where it can be found. As I figure the Hijacker<->Mechanic balance is that Mechanic can Repair+GetVehicle while Hijacker can Disable+GetVehicle. Both can help out during battle, in different ways. Both can obtain a vehicle, in different ways. Both are exposed in battle.
However, both cost 500 credits right now, I think Hijacker should be 400 since he has to rush towards the enemy attack during battle while Mechanic can stay behind his own team and help out in safety. Also, the Mechanic use his "GetVehicle" once the battle is over, which is much safer than during the battle. Hijacker mustn't be too cheap though since they can be used to raid enemy Ore Trucks on their own, something Mechanic can't do. As for why Hijacker is rarely used, I think it's just because of the pathing issues where they can't actually capture the vehicle.
@MAD tank: I've never once seen the MAD tank being used, I hopped into a skirmish just now to check it out and it seems completely worthless (no offense to its creator). I'll make a suggestion in another post about how to maybe make it more useful. Haven't read about giving it additional effects, do you remember what those were?
@supply truck: Troop transport would be nice. Right now: APC costs 850 credits with 5 transport slots, 300 HP/Heavy Armor, 142 speed. Supply Truck costs 500 credits with 0 transport slots, 110 HP/Light Armor, 128 speed. Both have the same turn speed (5).
How about instead, Supply Truck:
+ 10 transport slots.
+ Halved health, only 55 HP (still Light Armor).
+ Minus 4 speed for every unit transported. So if fully loaded the speed would be 128-40 = 88. 5 transported = 108 speed.
This would make the Supply Truck into a cheaper transport able to carry more troops, though requiring safe roads since it is extremely vulnerable - if destroyed all transported units dies.
For speed comparison, Artillery has 85 move speed and most soldiers run at 71 speed. I don't know if the engine actually supports slowing a unit depending on number of troops transported.
MustaphaTR wrote: ↑Grenadiers can actually be used as suicide unit to put inside enemy infantry group if you can manage that damage can be worth it, maybe their explosion should be better against vehicles/structures too so they can be unitialised for that purpose. Other stuff of grenadiers are mostly done better by Flamethrower.
Maybe as disgussed long ago but rejected they should be moved to allies as a counterpart of Flamethrowers. In my modmaps it is actually like that.
For hijackers the problem is that Capturing logic doesn't work well with moving actors, if they could enter fine and not do enter-exit stuff they could be way better.
I support the idea of moving Grenadiers to Allies. Coming from Tiberian Dawn I always found it very strange that Grenadiers wasn't with the so called "good guys", was with GDI in Tiberian Dawn so why not with Allies in Red Alert? Always bothered me how Mammoth Tank moved over from the "good guys" as well, but it's not as important in my book (since Soviet has double-barrelled Heavy Tanks). Soviet has dogs as well so they have plenty of non-vehicles even without Grenadiers. Flamethrowers really do overshadow Grenadier on Soviet.
@hijackers problem: Wouldn't a simple solution be to make sure hijackers always move last every "game tick" and if they are set to move into a tile where an enemy vehicle is set to move there's a 50% chance to issue a "stop movement"-order on that vehicle? Maybe make it impossible to run over Hijackers as well, then they just capture the vehicle instead?
Mo wrote: ↑I quite like your solution to the silo problem and how to implement it!
Glad you liked it
zinc wrote: ↑Fortnight wrote: ↑(unit idea) Dogs are used early game somewhat often but almost never late game. Perhaps they would be a more viable option to destroy infantry if they could be trained in 25% of the current train time? They still cost 200 credits per dog so it's an expensive but fast way to desperately defend against infantry pushes.
This is one unit that I think is maybe underestimated by players in the later stages of the game. A few dogs can kill a lot of troops if those troops are focused on something else. I'm not 100% on this issue but I'm going to start playing more with them to experiment to see how useful they are against tank/troop attacks.
Also in the early game they extend vision so giving an advantage to your infantry.
Seems to be a problem with building dogs next to enemy riflemen, they seem to always get killed as soon as they exit the pen. At least when I tried. Perhaps they should always exit aggressively, with a possible jump out of the pen? Or get a 50% dodge chance the first second they exit or something?
zinc wrote: ↑Fortnight wrote: ↑
What would maybe make it more worth building them for pros?
+ Self-repair up to 100% instead of current 50%.
I thought it was already 100%??
Nope, they have "HealIfBelow: 50" so they can only heal up to 50% health.
zinc wrote: ↑Left click orders have already been done.
Almost, but unfortunately it's not really done as I'd like it to be (how I remember it being in the original game).
You should be able to not have your Mobile Construction Vehicle or Construction Yard selected and then simply double-click it to deploy. Currently double-clicking only selects the unit, then you have to wait 0.5 sec or so, then left-click once again to finally deploy.
Same if you have the Mobile Construction Vehicle or Construction Yard already selected. If you then left-click just once it will deploy. It should only happen on a double-click. A single left-click on an already-selected unit did nothing in the original Red Alert, if I recall correctly...? I'm a little uncertain on that though. Or was it just like that in Tiberian Dawn?
If you have "Left Click Orders" unchecked you can deploy an unselected Mobile Construction Vehicle instantly by left-clicking it and then immidiately right-clicking. That 0.5 sec delay doesn't feel good with "Left Click Orders" checked.
You also can't have both these at once, which is what I really want. I like using right-click to deploy. But, having played the original game my brain sometimes switch over and I try to double-click... I can't help it, I just want to be able to use both. I can't think of a reason why supporting both at the same time would be a bad thing (imagine two checkboxes in the settings, if both are checked then both left and right mouse buttons can be used to deploy).
Edit: Whoops, just realized that "Left Click Orders" makes you move your units with the left mouse button instead of the right mouse button. This isn't what I was talking about, I was just referring to the need to right-click in order to for example deploy the MCV or unload units from an APC. In short I want to keep it like it is now (with "Left Click Orders" unchecked) but also be able to deploy my MCV using a double left-click.