Caltrops - Rants

Forum Overview :: Rants

by FABIO 05/31/2003, 3:37am PDT

C&C: Generals is great (balanced) fun. Do NOT lump into the same category as retarded cheese-tactic fest Red Alert 2. Although, from the sound of your perfect game description I'm not sure if you'd be crazy for it. There can be quite a bit of micromanagement invovled depending on how you want to play. You have loading particular infantry into humvees, manuvering a hero unit around to sneak into and fuck up a base,etc. Not the highest amount of micromanagement in the world, but not the least. You say you had fun with Age of Empires. To me that was the biggest amount of uber-gay economical micro-management shit around: ten billion workers harvesting ten billion types of resources coupled with mindless flinging rock/paper/scissors shit at each other, the exact opposite of what I look for in an RTS. Generals is the opposite: streamlined resource gathering (less of a hassle than even Warcraft III) to leave you free for manuvering your little men around. Gameplay is slow enough so it doesn't disentigrate into anarchy like RA2 or WC3.

That small scale WW2 turn based game you mentioned is probably the Combat Mission series, available (and at (and ONLY at) www.battlefront.com. It's setup like Laser Squad:Nemises, you plot out your turn then it plays for 60 seconds of realtime. It's realistic and very easy to pick up, but I put it down after a few issues bugged me too much. You mentioned you hate retarded AI, well that's a problem here. It's only a problem kind of infrequently, but when it does crop up it's keyboard slamming frustration. Your tank crew AI is simply retarded; they change targets when you dont want them to, and continue firing at the same guy when you want them to change targets. I had a russian T-34 firing at my opponent's PanzerIII half a kilometer away. The PzIII cannot kill a T-34's front armor except at point blank range. Well, furing that turn a PzIII rolled right into view up the hill my T-34 was on, he popped up 20 meters in front of me. My T-34 had a full 30 seconds to react but kept firing at the far off tank. He died. Another time a tank platoon of reinforcements came in on the map edge directly behind my oppoent's tank platoon. You'd think that if four tanks were 20 meters directly behind four evenly matched tanks with their turrets turned the other way, that the group with their backs turn would get slaughtered. Nope, I ended up losing 3 tanks to his 4 because mine kept firing away at two of his long after they dead while his other two rotated their turrets and fired. Good job guys! Tank AI also seems very unaware of the fact that their side armor is weaker than their front; they will not rotate their front towards an opponent unless ordered to do so. I'd also send Tigers (with their unbeatable frontal armor) over a hill and before they'd reach the top they'd rotate their turret 90 degrees to fire machine guns at an abandoned vehicle crew. Oops there was an enemy tank over that hill that got a close range shot to my side turret! C'mon, you're about to clear a hill that you can clearly hear the sounds of battle on the other side of, and you present you weak side to it right before you clear it? Ugh.

Re: Laser Squad, my subscription just ran out a few days ago so I cant challenge you. I subscribed so I could play at school; now that I'm home I have all the hotseat opponents I'd need.