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 The Game C&C Tiberian Sun was the fourth installment in the Command & Conquer series and a direct sequel to the original C&C. It was released in 1999 to great anticipation and managed to sell over a million units in the first month which was a lot back in 1999. It featured classic C&C gameplay, live-action cutscenes, a wonderful atmosphere and everyone's favorite bald supervillain Kane. Unfortunately it also had a number of issues. The developer Westwood Studios caught a terrible disease called "getting bought out by EA" so naturally the game was rushed for release unfinished as a buggy and unbalanced mess with many features cut to meet the deadline. The graphics were based on a mixture of the old sprites and Voxel graphics which looked like poo poo compared to other RTS releases of the time such as homeworld and a lot of people disliked the fact that the campaign replaced the faceless commander with an actual protagonist and the many Sci-Fi elements in the setting. It has since been declared freeware by EA along with its expansion Firestorm and can be acquired freely on the Internet. The Story Tiberian Sun is set in 2030, about 35 years after the events of Tiberian Dawn. In the first game, meteor struck the Earth near the Tiber river in Italy in 1993, introducing a strange alien compound titled Tiberium after the location of its first appearance. Tiberium sucks minerals out of the ground and forms them up into easily collected green or blue crystals, making it extremely valuable. It is also highly toxic and will kill, or in rare cases mutate, any lifeforms that come into contact with it. Shortly after the discovery of Tiberium a secretive organization called the Brotherhood of Nod appeared and, led by the self-proclaimed Messiah Kane, moved to control Tiberium deposits worldwide, claiming that it would lead to humanity's enlightenment. To combat Nod and stop the spread of Tiberium the developed nations formed the Global Defense Initiative, GDI, which managed to stop Nod and kill Kane in his Temple of Nod in Sarajevo, throwing the Brotherhood in disarray. The Tiberium however, continued to spread all across the globe, rendering many regions uninhabitable. If you want the full story, there is an ongoing LP of Tiberian Dawn here although it isn't necessary to understand this game's story and I'll point out callbacks as they come up. The Soundtrack The soundtrack for this game is awesome and you can listen to it at the composers website here The LP I'll be playing through both campaigns on normal difficulty. I'll try to show off as much as I can and complete all the optional missions. After that I'll probably do Firestorm as well. The Missions GDI Mission 1: Reinforce Phoenix Base Mission 2: Secure the Region Mission 3a: Capture Train Station Mission 3b: Secure Crash Site Mission 4: Defend Crash Site Mission 5a: Destroy Radar Array Mission 5b: Rescue Tratos - Cut Content Mission 6a: Destroy Vega's Dam - Cut Content Mission 6b: Destroy Vega's Base Mission 7: Capture Hammerfest Base Mission 8: Retrieve Disruptor Crystals & Mission 9a: Rescue Prisoners Mission 9b: Destroy Chemical Supply Mission 9c: Mine Power Grid & Mission 9d: Destroy Chemical Missile Plant Mission 10a: Destroy Prototype Facility Mission 11: Weather the Storm Mission 12: Final Conflict Nod Mission 1: Secure the Area & Mission 2: Retaliation Mission 3a: Free the Rebel Commander & Mission 3b: Destroy Hassan's Temple Mission 4a: Blackout - Cut Content Mission 4b: Eviction Notice & Mission 5: Salvage Operation Mission 6a: Capture Umagon (New Detroit) & Mission 6b: Capture Umagon (Provo) Mission 7: Sheep's Clothing Mission 8a: Escort The Bio-toxin Trucks & Mission 8b: Destroy The GDI Research Facility Mission 9: Villainess in Distress & Mission 10a: Establish NOD Presence Mission 10b: Protect Waste Convoys Mission 11: Destroy Mammoth Mk. II Prototype & Mission 12: Capture Jake McNeil Mission 13a: Illegal Data Transfer & Mission 13b: A New Beginning Bonus Tiberian Sun Installation (Thanks Jobbo_Fett!) GDI Loss - the cutscene that plays when you loose a mission Jobbo_Fett points out stuff I didn't cover SovietPotatoe fucked around with this message at 16:03 on Apr 28, 2015 |
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The Factions GDI  The Global Defense Initiative was founded by the developed nations of the world to combat the Brotherhood of Nod and stop the spread of Tiberium and has since grown into a de facto world government. As the generic good guys they are mainly concerned with stopping Nod's dastardly schemes and saving civilians. Their units generally sacrifice speed for heavy armor and lots of firepower and they also make heavy use of air units and space based weaponry.  Michael McNeal is the protagonist for the GDI campaign. Action hero and ace commander, he flies around the world in his command ship, the Kodiak. He is also played by Michael Biehn (Kyle Reese from Terminator).  James Solomon is the commander of GDI. The general is a decorated veteran of the First Tiberium War and leads GDI from the space station Philadelphia. He is played by James Earl Jones aka the voice of Darth Vader.  Umagon is a mutant commando and obligatory love interest for the GDI campaign. She helps McNeil out at various points throughout the campaign in exchange for the rescue of Tratos. Portrayed by Christine Steel in the original game and Veronica Becerra in the expansion Firestorm.  Tratos is the charismatic and passionate leader of the mutants. An expert on Tiberium and frequent recipient of supernatural visions, he is working with GDI to find a cure for the Tiberium induced mutation of his people. Portrayed by Christopher Winfield in the original and Patrick Bauchau in Firestorm. Nod  The Brotherhood of Nod is a secretive cult said to exist for over 3000 years based around worshipping their leader Kane as Messiah and Tiberium as the salvation of mankind. Their main goal is to see the world covered in Tiberium and humans transformed into a new form of Tiberium-based life. They also took more than a few pointers from Cobra Commander and usually shoot civilians on sight. Their units are focused around speed, stealth and various gimmicks but can't hold against GDI units in a straight up fight.  Kane is the leader and self-proclaimed Messiah of the Brotherhood of Nod. He was presumed dead when his temple in Sarajevo was blown up by GDI's Ion Cannon over 30 years ago but he's gotten better since. He is hinted to be the biblical Kain, who murdered his brother Able and was banished by God to the Land of Nod. Played by Joseph D. Kucan, one of the Westwood devs they stuck in front of a camera for the original C&C. The mascot of a pretty good curry brand.  Anton Slavik is our protagonist for the Nod campaign. Characterized by his fanatical loyalty to Kane and hatred of GDI, the Bosnian Serb leads Nod's Black Hand elite unit from his subterranean command vehicle, the Montauk. Played by Frank Zagarino.  Oxanna Kristos is a Black Hand operative and propagandist. She busts Slavik out of jail and acts as his right hand woman. Played by Monika Schnarre.  CABAL (Computer Assisted Biologically Augmented Lifeform) is an advanced AI Kane developed using data from the Tacitus and based on his own brain patterns. He is Nod's equivalent to GDI's EVA but unlike his counterpart has an actual personality and qualifies as a character in his own right.  Hassan is the Brotherhood leader in the time of Kane's absence, as well as a GDI collaborator. Acting on Solomon's orders he had Slavik arrested on trumped charges and sentenced him to death. Played by Adoni Maropis.  Vega is a Brotherhood general and South American drug lord dealing in 'eye candy'. Portrayed by Francesco Quinn. SovietPotatoe fucked around with this message at 18:19 on Dec 1, 2014 |
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The Mechanics This game's combat mechanics aren't too complex but since I've been asked here is a little explanation: basically, units have an armor type and up to two weapons, which aside from damage, range, etc have a projectile and a warhead assigned to them. The projectile is essentially how the weapon delivers its damage and the warhead determines how effective it is against any given armor type. For example GDI's Titan has heavy armor and the 120mm weapon, which does 70 damage, the Invisible projectile, which basically means it strikes its target instantly with no physics calculations or anything and the AP warhead, which deals quarter damage to None armor, which is what most infantry have, reduced damage against Wood, Concrete and Light armor and full damage against heavy. So a Titan striking another Titan would deal the full 70 damage but only 45 if it were to attack a structure with the Wood armor type (most regular base structures have wood armor, despite being made from metal/concrete). The exact percentages aren't really important but what it all boils down to is a rock-paper-scissors where small arms are effective only against infantry, tank guns are effective against heavy and to a lesser degree light vehicles and explosives are a bit of a jack-of-all-trades with excellent damage against infantry and base structures and slightly less effective against vehicles. The Units ---GDI--- --Infantry--  $120 Light Infantry: our most basic infantry unit. Essentially just a grunt with an assault rifle, these guys are decently effective against other infantry and can do some moderate damage in large numbers. Not bad but there are usually better things to spend your money on. Selling/destroying buildings will spawn these guys as will destroying vehicles occasionally.  $200 Disc Thrower: pretty much the grenadiers from the first game but with a fancier name. They are fairly tough and have a grenade attack that does equally well against all ground targets. It also has the tendency to bounce all over the place leading to forest fires or the unintentional destruction of things you'd rather not have destroyed. They also explode on death which can lead to a chain reaction which wipes out your entire force in the blink of an eye. Nevertheless these guys are GDI's best infantry by far and we will see a lot of use out of them.  $500 Engineer: slow, weak and unarmed. However, they do have a number of very useful abilities that make them indispensible: they can repair our own buildings to full health instantly, repair bridges and most importantly capture enemy buildings. Doing any of these things requires the engineer to enter the building and will consume him. Very powerful if you can sneak them into an enemy base.  $600 Medic: expensive and unarmed but come with an ability to heal friendly infantry on the battlefield. Having a few of these guys follow your army around on a guard marker extends the lifetime of your infantry immensely and I will make extensive use of these.  $600 Jumpjet Infantry: airborne infantry. They have an auto cannon that is decently effective against most targets. They are the only air units with sight range or the ability to attack other air units. Their light vehicle type armor makes them resistant to anti-infantry weaponry but vulnerable to anti-air and anti-tank. Unfortunately they're not permanently airborne but only take off if given a command that either has them move a sufficient distance or while they're already flying so they require constant micromanagement to prevent them from landing and getting obliterated by ground units since they're very fragile. They also perform poorly whenever any sort of air defense is present. Overall only useful for a few niche applications.  $1750 Ghost Stalker: GDI's commando unit, with only one being allowed to be active at any one time. He wields a railgun which is powerful enough to destroy most targets in one or two shots, as well as anything in between. Rather than standard infantry armor he actually has the light vehicle armor type, making him resistant to small arms on one hand but also more vulnerable to heavy weaponry on the other. He is also a mutant and can thus heal in Tiberium.  not buildable Umagon: another mutant commando like Ghost Stalker, but only available in certain campaign missions. She has a long range sniper rifle that can kill infantry in one shot, but does next to no damage to vehicles. Like Ghost Stalker she has the light armor type and can heal in Tiberium. --Vehicles--  $1400 Harvester: unarmed but decently fast with a lot of health. They collect Tiberium from the ground and bring it to the refinery for processing, making them vital to our economy. They also have a pretty oblivious AI that will make them plough straight through a dozen enemy infantry and into the enemy base if that is the path to the next visible patch of Tiberium so you should always keep an eye on them.  $500 Wolverine: our basic vehicle unit. Essentially a guy in a heavy mech suit which is somehow faster than regular infantry and so makes for a pretty good early scout. Comes with dual chainguns that can easily mow down infantry although it's not that though itself.  $800 Titan: essentially GDI's 'tank'. It is tough and has a long range cannon that does good damage against vehicles and buildings but is ineffective against infantry. It can't attack air units either. These guys are really good and a mix of Titans, disc throwers and medics will steamroll almost anything.  $800 Amphibious APC: an unarmed transport for up to five infantry. It has heavy armor but not a lot of health as well as high speed and the ability to move through water. Can be used to either make an amphibious landing where the enemy isn't expecting it or be packed full of engineers and driven straight into the enemy base for maximum disruption. No use outside those two applications.  $950 Mobile Sensor Array: unarmed and slow, but has the ability to detect cloaked or subterranean units. After deploying it will reveal them in a 25 cell radius. It will also show any enemy buildings through the fog of war on the minimap, although this isn't nearly as useful as its primary function. Once detected cloaked units can be engaged normally by any other units whereas subterranean ones can't be attacked until they surface except through EMP.  $900 Hover MLRS: the other part of GDI's amphibious arsenal. They are very fast and agile, their hovering movement not only giving them the ability to move over water but also to sidestrafe to a small degree, making them good candidates for micromanaging. They come with building (wood) type armor and low health, making them very fragile. Their missiles have a long range and do very good damage against vehicles, aircraft and buildings, but are nearly useless against infantry and while technically able to fire up cliff walls it requires careful positioning to get the finicky projectile logic to cooperate. Despite their damage output there are better options for ground attacks so like the APC they are mostly useful for amphibious rather than frontal assaults.  $1300 Disruptor: essentially sonic tanks. They emit a beam of sonic energy which damages anything in its path except for other Disruptors, so its usually best to have them operate in a homogeneous group or with long range support behind them otherwise expect a lot of friendly fire. Despite heavy armor and a decent amount of health they tend to be on the fragile side because their slow speed and below average range mean the enemy has a lot of time to take potshots while they close the range. Once they do get to fire though their extremely high damage and rate of fire make short work of even the toughest units and structures.  $3000 Mammoth Mk.II: the successor to GDI's Mammoth tank from the first game. It is just about the toughest unit in the game with heavy armor, twice the health of a Titan and the ability to self-repair below 50% health. Its armaments include an extremely powerful railgun and rather underwhelming anti-air missiles which still leave it open to attacks from above. The other downside is of course its abysmal speed. Furthermore, like Ghost Stalker you can only have one at any given time and for all its might it will still fall to a concentrated assault, so it still has to rely on other units for support. And considering the railgun has friendly fire and will tear a whole through your forces as much as the enemy's it makes the Mammoth rather micro-intensive. Nevertheless if it is utilized well, it can be one of the best units in the game through its sheer power alone.  $2500 Mobile Construction Vehicle (MCV): very slow, very tough and unarmed. It deploys into a construction yard which allows you to build your base, making them one of the most crucial units in the game. We don't actually get to build any in the campaign until the very last mission and only get the one we start with before that. --Aircraft--  $1000 Orca Fighter: GDI's basic air unit. Just like their predecessor they come equipped with missiles, fired in 5 salvos of 2, which unfortunately lack proper target tracking and have lackluster damage at best. This combined with excessively high reload times and the Fighter's low survivability make it unsuitable for engaging enemy armor or buildings. Nevertheless, they are very effective against Nod artillery so they are not completely useless.  $1600 Orca Bomber: the Orca Fighter's big brother, although you wouldn't know the family relationship from their performance. Where the Fighter is fragile, weak and takes forever to reload the Bomber is tough, annihilates ground units and buildings and only has two ammo pips to reload. Its 'shot' consists of a bombing run wherein the Bomber approaches its target and drops a series of bombs. Depending on the size of the target it will get hit by one or multiple bombs, each doing a lot of damage in a large area. However, this also means that you can't use it in proximity to friendly units and structures without risking friendly fire, however this is only a small drawback as the Bomber's main role isn't close air support but complete destruction of key enemy structures. Just a few of these are enough to take out any building including construction yards and this sheer destructive power makes them one of GDI's best units well worth the price tag.  $750 Carryall: fast, weak and unarmed. It has the unique ability to pick up any vehicle and transport it through the air, making it useful to shuffle slow units like Disruptors between your base and the front. You better make sure there is no air defense though, otherwise it is easy to loose the Carryall and its cargo to an enemy SAM. It can also be turned into an improvised Orca Transport by making it carry an APC filled with infantry. --Buildings--  not buildable Construction Yard: the heart of our base as it allows us to build more buildings. Extremely tough, it can only be obtained by deploying an MCV. Destroying one will always spawn an engineer along the usual light infantry which the AI always sends straight for your construction yard. Take great care not to loose this.  $300 GDI power plant: the most basic building, prerequisite for all other buildings and provides energy to our base. Should our energy consumption ever rise over capacity we will lose our minimap, production speed will be halved and certain buildings will stop to function. We can turn power of to individual buildings to prevent that though. The GDI plant produces 100 power and can also be upgraded with up to two additional turbines bringing output up to 200.  $100 Power Turbine: an add-on for the power plant. Each plant can accept two of these increasing power output by 50 each.  $2000 Tiberium Refinery: the second most important building in our base after the Construction Yard. It comes with a free harvester and is the place the harvester will unload once it's full. It also serves as a Tiberium storage with a capacity of up to 2000 credits. That also means if one is destroyed or captured, you will lose all the money stored inside. Consumes 30 power.  $150 Tiberium silo: stores up to 1500 credits for you. That's money you could be using on units instead of hoarding it so never build this ever. Just like the refinery, losing this means losing the money stored within. Consumes 10 power.  $300 Barracks: where GDI builds its infantry units. Building multiple of these has no effect other than allowing for multiple locations to produce units from. Consumes 20 power.  $2000 GDI war factory: where all GDI vehicles are built. Unlike the barracks, multiple of these will increase vehicle production speed. Consumes 30 power.  $1000 Radar: gives us our minimap and is also a prerequisite for certain higher tier units. Requires power to function. Consumes 40 power.  $500 Helipad: allows for the construction and maintenance of air units. After using up their ammunition air units automatically return to the nearest helipad where they are rearmed and while it is technically possible to have more air units than helipads it would mean you have to shuffle them around manually so its generally best to have one pad per unit. Consumes 10 power.  $1200 Service Depot: allows GDI to repair vehicles. It works essentially like the building repair with credits being slowly deducted as a unit is repaired, the cost being a fraction of the unit's production price. It can also reload aircraft. Consumes 30 power.  $1500 GDI Tech Center: a gateway building. It serves no function other than allowing you access to the highest tier of buildings and units. Consumes 200 power.  $1000 GDI Upgrade Center: aka Communication Center offers upgrade slots for the Ion Cannon Uplink and the Seeker Control. It serves no other function. Consumes 150 power.   $1500 Ion Cannon Uplink: enables the Ion Cannon Strike ability, GDI's super weapon. Basically a giant space laser that does a lot of damage in a small radius. Can one-shot any building up to a construction yard, although for the latter the positioning has to be precise. Consumes 100 power.   $1000 Seeker Control: a multiplayer only upgrade, it does not appear in the campaign. It enables the Hunter-Seeker Release ability, which releases a Hunter-Seeker drone (who would've guessed?) which homes in on an enemy target and blows up dealing massive damage. Originally there was supposed to be a mechanic for choosing a target but it was cut and so the selection is random. The Seeker might snipe a Mammoth Mk. II or it might hit a rifleman in the middle of nowhere. Consumes 50 power. --Defenses--  $200 Component tower: the first component of GDI's base defenses. They don't do anything by themselves and need an add-on to function. Can be placed on a wall. Consumes 10 power.  $150 Vulcan Cannon: an add-on for the component tower. It is a short range gun that is effective against infantry and light vehicles. Consumes 20 power.  $600 RPG Upgrade: the anti-tank upgrade. It fires an extremely damaging RPG which is very effective against vehicles and can fend of smaller groups of infantry well enough. Unfortunately the projectile has a weird arc leading to a minimum range and the inability to fire up or down cliffs. Consumes 20 power.  $300 SAM Upgrade: turns the component tower into an anti-air defense. It is pretty effective against air units with good range and good firepower but is defenseless against ground units. Requires power to function. Consumes 30 power.  $250 Concrete Wall: pretty much what you'd expect them to be. They are tough, immune to small arms damage, prevent low arcing weapons from firing across and keep ground units out of your base, which is not as useful as it sounds considering most units worth building deal HE damage, fly, bury underground and/or fire in a high arc. The most obvious application is to put them around your base to   $250 Gate: allow units to pass through walls unhindered. They will automatically open and close to let friendly units through, however they're susceptible to all weapons and so make for natural weak spots in any walled fortifications. Comes in two orientations. Can be placed on a wall.  $75 Pavement: serves two functions: first off it prevents terrain deformation. This can be handy since certain high tier units and superweapons have a tendency to blow up a building and create a crater where it used to be, preventing you from rebuilding it in the same spot. Second, it is impenetrable to subterranean units so by placing a few of these around your important structures you can prevent Devil's tongues or engineers from popping up in the middle of your base. However, this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that you can't pave slopes or certain terrain features like dirt paths. One piece of pavement covers a 3x3 area.   $1000 EMP Cannon: fires an EMP blast over a moderate range after a period of charging, the idea being that you fire it at any vehicle columns approaching your base to temporarily disable them. It is the only thing that can force an underground unit to surface. Consumes 150 power.   $2000 Fire Storm Generator:(sic) allows for the construction of Firestorm walls and provides the Firestorm defense ability. Consumes 200 power.  $250 Firestorm Wall Section: placed the same way as regular walls but they don't offer the advantages of normal walls. Instead when activated through the Firestorm defense ability they create an impenetrable energy shield not only preventing both ground and air units from crossing it, but also vaporizing any projectiles passing overhead. This includes Nod's missile superweapons, which is extremely useful. Consumes 2 power per section. ---Nod--- --Infantry--  $120 Light Infantry: the same for Nod as for GDI, although it is marginally more useful since the Brotherhood doesn't have a Disc Thrower equivalent to outshine it.  $250 Rocket Infantry: Nod's most basic anti-vehicle unit. It comes with a rocket launcher (big surprise) which is effective against buildings as well as ground and air vehicles, which makes them a potent air defense when in large numbers. However, that advantage is compensated for by their low health and they also lack the Disc Throwers effectiveness against infantry.  $500 Engineer: another palette swap. Works exactly the same as the GDI unit but has a cooler icon.  $750 Cyborg: a heavy infantry unit equipped with a Vulcan cannon effective against other infantry. Featuring light vehicle armor class, a whooping 300 hit points (for comparison, a Wolverine has light armor and 175 health) as well as the ability to regenerate in Tiberium these guys are walking tanks. Furthermore, reducing their hitpoints to 0 doesn't even kill them, it just blows their legs off reducing their speed so even units like Ghost Stalker will always need at least two shots to kill them. Speaking of speed, one of their main downside is their extremely low speed and with the hefty price tag it keeps them from being overpowered. It is also noteworthy that they leave Tiberium on death, so even in defeat you can still slightly irritate your enemy by blocking of his building spots.  $2000 Cyborg Commando: essentially the Nod counterpart to Ghost Stalker but oh so much better. In fact he kicks so much rear end that it might be better to compare him to the Mammoth rather than Ghost Stalker. The Commando carries an arm-mounted plasma cannon that has a decent rate of fire and does huge amounts of damage to all ground targets. A Titan at full health can barely survive two hits while any lesser units get one- or two-shot. On the defensive side he has the same armor class as a Titan but with more health and he regenerates in Tiberium. Literally the only downside is that like all super units you can only build one at a time.  $1850 Mutant Hijacker: is unarmed and unarmored but comes with the ability to hijack any enemy vehicle. Whenever his current vehicle is destroyed he gets out with half health. Theoretically he could jack an enemy vehicle and, once destroyed hop into the next and take out entire armies this way. In practice he is more likely to take over one vehicle and get shot down before being able to jack another. Considering the price tag not worth it at all. As the name implies he is also a mutant and can heal in Tiberium, for all the good it does him. --Vehicles--  $1400 Harvester: another palette swap. Still really important to our economy.  $500 Attack Buggy: Nods equivalent to GDI's wolverine. Both perform roughly the same function of recon and anti-infantry vehicle although the buggy is considerably better possessing higher speed and higher health at the cost of slightly lower rate of fire and range.  $600 Attack Cycle: a really odd unit. It is to Rocket Infantry what the Attack Buggy is to Light Infantry except it is also just about the only missile unit in C&C history that cannot attack air units (at least not until Elite veterancy). It is also a light vehicle yet it has the building armor class wood. Being the single fastest unit in the game it is useful as a recon unit although it also has rather low sight range and has to compete for that niche with the Attack Buggy.  $800 Tick Tank: Nod's answer to GDI's Titans. Their gun does about half the damage of a Titan's but has a considerably higher fire rate to compensate somewhat. A Tick Tank is also more fragile than a Titan with slightly less health and light instead of heavy armor. However it also has an ability to dig into the ground and essentially become a turret, exchanging mobility for the extremely resilient concrete armour type. So while they might loose against a Titan one on one, their special ability grants them a number of offensive and defensive applications which more than make up for it.  $975 Artillery: by far the single best (regular) unit the Brotherhood has to offer. As the name would imply these lob explosive shells over large distances. Amazing against infantry and building and does decent against heavy vehicles. That being said it does not come without drawbacks: the unit itself is fairly slow and fragile and has to deploy before firing. Unlike the cheating AI units it also won't engage targets in the fog of war, making base assaults tricky if you don't recon the area beforehand. On the defensive they are extremely powerful and make for better base defenses than most turrets. Its projectiles are also bugged in that if a target moves away the graphics will show the projectile impacting the target's original location but the explosion effect is applied at its current location, meaning they will infallibly hit their target.  $1000 Mobile Repair Vehicle: fast, fragile and unarmed, it is essentially a medic but for vehicles. It can repair any damaged vehicle in the field and at no cost at that. Needless to say these are extremely handy.  $800 Subterranean APC: much like GDI's amphibious APC, except better because as the name implies, it is subterranean, meaning it does not only traverse water, but also cliffs, walls, base defenses or anything that isn't concrete pavement. If the enemy isn't paving his base you could have one of these pop out right next to his construction yard and drop 4 engineers and a Cyborg Commando and wreak havoc on his base.  $750 Devil's Tongue: the successor to the flame tank of yore, these things are up there with silos and harpies in terms of things you should never spend money on. Their flamethrowers kill unarmored targets instantly and do decent damage against buildings but are useless against vehicles, have short range and the usual problems with slopes and cliffs. They are subterranean which is nice, except they suffer from the same problem as the Jumpjet Infantry in that sending them short distances will have them drive there instead of burrowing, meaning they can still get shot on the way. This is especially important because to top it all of, they have durability on par with buggies and cycles. All in all a terrible unit with few redeeming qualities. I mean, you could theoretically catch an enemy unaware by getting a bunch of them and have them pop out in the middle of the enemy base, or you could just build artillery.  $1100 Stealth Tank: a cloaked tank. Except its not much of a tank because it is literally weaker than a buggy. It doesn't cloak very well either, since getting too close to infantry, turrets, explosions, fire, any other form of damage will immediately drop the cloak. As will actually attacking with its weak missile launcher. Also if it gets low on health it starts randomly uncloaking. And sometimes it will uncloak for no apparent reason at all. What I'm getting at is, Stealth tanks are a terrible overpriced piece of crap. Their only real application is scouting because if you micromanage them carefully, you can maneuver them straight through the enemy base, except they'll probably die halfway through anyway because the pilot had to sneeze and got two-shot by an RPG tower.  $1400 Weed Eater: necessary to harvest veins for chemical missiles. Works pretty much exactly like a regular harvester.  $2500 MCV: works the same as its GDI counterpart and like the GDI campaign we'll only get the one. --Aircraft--  $1000 Harpy: discounting unbuildable units like the technician, this is the single worst unit in the game by far. It has similar stats as the Orca Fighter except instead of the semi-useful missiles it comes with an extremely weak machine gun. It takes a grand total of four(!) shots to kill a single Disc Thrower. And yet it is somehow more expensive than artillery. Ranks right below the silo on the list of things to never build. --Buildings-- not buildable Construction Yard: works pretty much the same as the GDI one, except it builds Nod buildings. (It doesn't have a proper icon so just imagine the GDI yard but in red)  $300 Power Plant: produces 100 power, much like its GDI equivalent although it lacks its counterpart's upgrade functionality.  $500 Advanced Power Plant: like a regular power plant but better. Produces 200 power, twice the output of regular one, with less than twice the cost and size. After you get these there really is no reason to build the regular ones anymore.  $2000 Tiberium Refinery: works the same for Nod, except the red finish makes it look cooler. Consumes 30 power.  $150 Tiberium Silo: still terrible. Consumes 10 power.  $300 Hand of Nod: essentially just a fancy barracks. It produces Nod infantry units. Consumes 20 power.  $2000 Nod War Factory: much like its GDI equivalent, produces Brotherhood vehicles. Consumes 30 power.  $1000 Radar Station: has the same functionality as the GDI radar, it enables the minimap as well as higher tech units and buildings. Consumes 40 power.  $500 Helipad: just like the GDI pad, required for building and rearming air units. Consumes 10 power.  $1500 NOD Tech Center:(sic) you didn't really think we were done with the palette swaps? Just like with GDI, the only function is to allow production of advanced units and buildings. Consumes 100 power.  $2500 Stealth Generator: cloaks all units and buildings in a certain radius. This opens up the possibility of things like stealthed outposts that a human player might not know exist, except it suffers from a large variety of issues. For one, the AI is a dirty cheat and knows where all your buildings are anyway. Pavement and Nod walls aren't cloaked so those are a dead giveaway too. And of course, if a human sees a unit uncloaking because it left the radius that's a pretty good way to give away your position too. Even so, it still prevents the enemy from directly targeting or even just observing the layout of your base structures without bringing in a sensor unit. Oh, and its also a power hog, requiring a whole 1 1/2 advanced power plants worth of energy. Consumes a whopping 350 power.   $1300 Missile Silo: Nod's super weapon, enables the Multi-Missile ability which fires a missile at the target which in turn explodes above it and spreads a number of highly damaging bomblets. Like the Ion Cannon Strike it can one-shot a construction yard when placed carefully. Consumes 50 power.   $1600 Tiberium Waste Facility: needed along with a missile silo to enable chemical missiles. It works much the same as a refinery, except instead of harvesters dropping off Tiberium its Weed Eaters dropping off Tiberium veins. Once the facility is filled up it immediately enables the chemical missile with no real cooldown. This could make it very powerful with a sufficient supply of veins and a fleet of Weed Eaters allowing for rapid fire of missiles, except you can only ever build one facility, so you are quickly bottlenecked by your Eaters' ability to actually dock and unload. The chemical missile itself is fairly weak in terms of direct power, it will oneshot weaker buildings like barracks and power plants but doesn't do much against larger structures. The gas clouds it spawns do moderate damage against buildings and vehicles, but its true purpose is to kill infantry. Any unprotected infantry unit that comes into contact with the gas will die instantly with a high chance of producing Visceroids. If you hit a large concentration of infantry you could effectively "infect" the enemy base with Visceroids that would go around and tear things apart. However, the chances of this happening are really low not to mention that the same Visceroids will attack your own forces as well so overall its kind of lackluster. --Defenses--  $300 Laser: aka Laser Turret is Nod's basic base defense. It is surprisingly powerful thanks to its rather strong laser beam which like all laser weapons in this game completely ignores armor. As a bonus their attacks also leave fire which will slowly damage infantry. Unfortunately it is outranged by just about anything more advanced than a Wolverine and so its utility is mostly limited to fending of light vehicles and infantry while a smart player can just pick them off from range. Consumes 40 power.  $500 Sam:(sic) the Brotherhood's dedicated anti-air turret. Just like the GDI one these are very effective at shooting down aircraft but not much else. Consumes 30 power.  $1500 Obelisk of Light: Nod's advanced base defense, these things are laser turrets on steroids. They have long range and do a ton of damage per shot, enough to take out most units in one ore two shots. The slow rate of fire makes it vulnerable to swarming tactics but nevertheless, it is a formidable defensive structure although somewhat limited in quantity since it requires a lot of energy to function. Just like its little brother, the laser beam does full damage to any type of armor. Consumes 150 power.  $250 Nod Wall: functionally identical to GDI's concrete walls, but the sinister look gives your base that extra touch of cartoon villainy.   $250 Gate: same as GDI gates, but looks more sinister.  $200 Laser Fence Post: essentially an "advanced" wall, except worse in every respect. While the laser fences they generate are invulnerable, the posts themselves lack concrete walls' damage immunities and taking out a post takes out all the fence sections attached to it. They also draw power and if it drops the fence goes out too (although standing on one when it reactivates is instant death). Their only advantage is that they are cloaked by the stealth generator. Consumes 25 power. SovietPotatoe fucked around with this message at 11:22 on Feb 21, 2015 |
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Mar 8, 2014 18:11
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Peace through power! Considering how you're playing on normal, are you going to be using varied combat groups? GDI is especially easy if you can spam Titans. Looking forward to seeing the rest of this.
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Mar 8, 2014 18:57
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Oh man, I had forgotten how campy those FMVs are! Unlike most people I actually really liked this game, I loved the art style the vortex engine (I like to see how deep of a hole I can make on the ground) and the big mechs/tanks.  Wasn't this also the one that had icy lakes that units can sink through? I loved that for some reason...
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Mar 8, 2014 19:07
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lethial posted:
Yup! I believe it's I've avoided fandom for this game since I first played it, I think the game is incredibly fun. Tick tanks, Cyborg Commando, the Mammoth Mark II, the disk throwers (With those lovely bouncing grenades) and many more fun units in a, at times, colourful world. And the mutant levels were cool. I wish they had gotten more levels Jobbo_Fett fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Mar 8, 2014 |
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Mar 8, 2014 19:20
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SovietPotatoe posted:
Not only that, but he's implied to be the player character from the original C&C.
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Mar 8, 2014 21:02
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Does the game still take place on Earth? If so, what's with the space helmets? Cause of the Tiberium?
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Mar 8, 2014 21:20
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I think Tiberian Sun embodies the CAC spirit more than any other game in the series, even if it may not be the best one in terms of gameplay. Thanks for lping it!
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Mar 8, 2014 21:24
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I'll be watching this. Kane lives in death!
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Mar 8, 2014 21:31
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SSNeoman posted:Does the game still take place on Earth? If so, what's with the space helmets? Cause of the Tiberium? Yes it does. I always figured the space helmets was because it was future times. Doing it because of tiberium makes more sense, actually.
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Mar 8, 2014 23:07
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SSNeoman posted:Does the game still take place on Earth? If so, what's with the space helmets? Cause of the Tiberium? Yeah, it'll be mentioned soon enough, but Tiberium has always been highly toxic, and it's been spreading and infecting poo poo faster than most people can cope with. Let's just say there are few, if any proper civilians left.
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Mar 8, 2014 23:11
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SSNeoman posted:Does the game still take place on Earth? If so, what's with the space helmets? Cause of the Tiberium? It would make sense if they were because of Tiberium but infantry still takes damage from it so they'd be doing a pretty poor job. More likely they were just to look futuristic along with the other sci-fi tech. JamieTheD posted:Yeah, it'll be mentioned soon enough, but Tiberium has always been highly toxic, and it's been spreading and infecting poo poo faster than most people can cope with. Let's just say there are few, if any proper civilians left. Once we get to the later missions this will come out really well but one of my favorite things about this game has always been just how well it conveys this sense of Tiberium loving things up and making the planet completely hostile to humans.
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Mar 8, 2014 23:31
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Huh, I never knew about the forest fires being able to damage infantry. That's a cool little detail!
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Mar 8, 2014 23:46
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Was this the one where they had terrain you could crater downwards? I very vaguely recall using artillery on force-bomb command to create these huge trenches that the AI would take forever to climb out of while being blasted to shreds by said artillery.
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Mar 9, 2014 00:30
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This was one of the first computer games I've ever played (I'm 24, just a late starter). I was pretty hyped to get ready for nostalgia fever when I saw it on disc in a gaming magazine recently - which was of course a rip-off, it had already been freeware at that point! Then I played it, got to this mission, realized how incredibly slow everything was...waiting for the money to tick up, buildings to come into being, moving poo poo around the map and with the best tactic always being MORE TANKS. I don't think the game has aged well. But I must have played through it like three times at the very least back in the day, and that counts for something. It WAS a lot of fun, and I'll be happy to follow you along!
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Mar 9, 2014 02:02
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Junior G-man posted:Was this the one where they had terrain you could crater downwards? Yeah, although I can't remember how low you could go with it. Also, pre-firestorm Artillery is OP.
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Mar 9, 2014 02:19
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Junior G-man posted:Was this the one where they had terrain you could crater downwards? SovietPotatoe neglected to mention that not only were the vehicles voxel-based, so was the terrain. I think Westwood had high hopes for voxels, but they clearly didn't pan out because I don't think there were any voxels at all in RA2. Jobbo_Fett posted:Yeah, although I can't remember how low you could go with it. Also, pre-firestorm Artillery is OP. Unpatched, they were absolutely amazing because of a bug, on top of their OP damage and range. They won me the Nod campaign.
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Mar 9, 2014 03:01
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Spam Forest posted:
100% hit rate is the best bug I've ever heard of, but I could go on about this game for ages.
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Mar 9, 2014 03:13
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The original c&c was pretty much one of my first rts games and I remember how hopeful I was for this game and how so disappointed I was when it came out, much like war 3. At least I still have a bunch of successors of doom2 to play! gently caress.
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Mar 9, 2014 03:53
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dtkozl posted:The original c&c was pretty much one of my first rts games and I remember how hopeful I was for this game and how so disappointed I was when it came out, much like war 3. At least I still have a bunch of successors of doom2 to play! gently caress. Mind if I ask why this game disappointed you?
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Mar 9, 2014 04:10
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Jobbo_Fett posted:Mind if I ask why this game disappointed you? It was all flash and no content. I played a lot of multiplayer at the time and as much fun as throwing some engineers in an apc to rush they other guys base to sell it off or to build a line of advanced guard towers all the way across the map was the first time, they gave no real thought to the multiplayer scene, and as far as single player, well rts single was always the bottom of the barrel and this game did nothing to challenge that.
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Mar 9, 2014 04:30
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dtkozl posted:It was all flash and no content. I played a lot of multiplayer at the time and as much fun as throwing some engineers in an apc to rush they other guys base to sell it off or to build a line of advanced guard towers all the way across the map was the first time, they gave no real thought to the multiplayer scene, and as far as single player, well rts single was always the bottom of the barrel and this game did nothing to challenge that. Fair enough, the multiplayer was horrible against AI since the alliance feature never worked. Ever. So you ended up always being in a free for all. I thought the single player for this game was great, with the missions being varied and a lot of them being quite memorable. When compared to Starcraft though, you can easily see that their map builder was lightyears behind them.
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Mar 9, 2014 04:43
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Personally, I enjoyed the hell out of this game when I had it. Probably one of my most-played games between '99 and the release of RA2. Never had the chance to see the cutscenes and everything in English though (unlike literally every other C&C), so I'm certainly looking forward to the next videos.
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Mar 9, 2014 04:52
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My first C&C experience  I remember a lot of people used to say that the music for this game was kind of lackluster compared to the soundtracks for Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert but I always thought that the subdued nature and the more nu-metal feel felt more appropriate for a game set in 2030.Also are you able to show the installation cutscenes and dialogues? You mention that the first mission throws you right into the action without any real knowledge of what is going on but much like with Red Alert 2 all of the exposition you need is found while you are waiting for the game to install
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Mar 9, 2014 04:54
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I'm a big C&C fan, and I did like Tiberian Sun, but it is my least favourite C&C game. The main reason was that everything was so brown and bleak. I didn't mind the fact that the game was set decades after C&C1 and that there was lots of sci-fi stuff, but in both Command & Conquer and Red Alert most of the maps were nice green grass and forest environments (with a few maps that were bright yellow/orange desert, or bright white snow). While in Tiberian Sun it was a post-apocalptic wasteland. Also tanks were a big part of Command & Conquer, but in Tiberian Sun there is just one tank - the Nod tick tank - and everything else is mechs or other types of vehicle. So while I'm cool with there being lots of sci-fi, Tiberian Sun felt like it was an entirely different setting. A bunch of mechs stomping across a wasteland just doesn't feel the same as a bunch of tanks rolling across a field. On the other hand, they did do a really good job of creating that post-apocalyptic wasteland, with loads of great details. The graphics didn't seem dated to me at the time, and indeed I think they still hold up well today compared to other games with crude 3D models. And if they had gone with polygons, it wouldn't have LOOKED like Command & Conquer, because 3D models just weren't detailed enough. I thought the story was decent and I really liked what they did with the Tiberium, and all the mutants, and the areas that had been transformed by Tiberium into alien jungles. When EA did C&C 3: Tiberium Wars, I think they did a great job of nailing the setting, it felt like what Tiberian Sun should have been. There was a mixture of tanks and mechs, and the world was divided into blue, yellow and red zones; the blue zones were wealthy first-world countries that were able to keep the Tiberium at bay, so you still had green environments and cities and so on, the blue zones felt like the world of C&C1. The yellow zones were third world countries that were mostly under Nod control and which had big problems with tiberium infestation. The red zones were areas where the Tiberium had completely taken over and were wastelands inhospitable to human life. It worked really well, and I wish that Westwood had come up with that zones idea when doing Tiberian Sun. It's just a shame that EA messed up the storyline of C&C3 by changing the Tiberium. It used to be an alien lifeform that leeched minerals out of the ground (making it a useful resource) but was actually terraforming the planet and mutating plants and animals into alien creatures; instead EA changed it to some self-replicating radioactive crystal that could be used as nuclear fuel. And so there weren't any alien jungles, just big crystal formations. Take the gameplay and varied environments of C&C3, and combine them with the plotline of Tiberian Sun, and you'd have the perfect sequel to C&C1. your evil twin fucked around with this message at 05:19 on Mar 9, 2014 |
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Mar 9, 2014 05:16
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I loved the soundtrack to this game. I got it bundled with Firestorm and a soundtrack CD, and I still listen to it every couple of weeks. Also, my brother and I used to race through the campaigns for each C&C game - he would take the 'heroes' and I would take the villains. Edit: wouldn't it make more sense to start with the Nod campaign, since it's first missions are chronologically ahead? Speleothing fucked around with this message at 06:33 on Mar 9, 2014 |
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Mar 9, 2014 06:31
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Aces High posted:Also are you able to show the installation cutscenes and dialogues? You mention that the first mission throws you right into the action without any real knowledge of what is going on but much like with Red Alert 2 all of the exposition you need is found while you are waiting for the game to install My original disc got lost years ago and I'm using the TFD version. I'm not sure if the freeware version has the installation but if someone still has the original CD and can record the installation I'll definitely put it in the OP. your evil twin posted:It worked really well, and I wish that Westwood had come up with that zones idea when doing Tiberian Sun. Some of the Ex-Westwood devs at Petroglyph actually talked about what they had originally planned for C&C3 and it was actually fairly similar to the zones. GDI would have build atmospheric stabilizers that stop Tiberium growth and create livable areas while other places were so overgrown with Tiberium that neither Nod nor GDI would go there and that were written off as a lost cause, only they were supposed to be more like the TibSun jungles than the desolate wasteland of Wars. Speleothing posted:Edit: wouldn't it make more sense to start with the Nod campaign, since it's first missions are chronologically ahead? The Nod campaign kinda assumes that you know some of the plot stuff that is introduced in the GDI campaign so for the sake of those who never played this game I figured it would make more sense to do the GDI campaign first.
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Mar 9, 2014 08:46
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Are there any decent LPs of C&C1 out there? I tried playing it a while back and it didn't handle well at all.
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Mar 9, 2014 08:53
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SovietPotatoe posted:My original disc got lost years ago and I'm using the TFD version. I'm not sure if the freeware version has the installation but if someone still has the original CD and can record the installation I'll definitely put it in the OP. I might have them lying around somewhere, I'll have to take a look. I know I still have the original manual and, if its not lost to the moving gods, the official Prima Guide. Also, wish you'd shown some disc thrower forced attack bouncy goodness to show how great they can be  .
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Mar 9, 2014 08:56
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Tithin Melias posted:Are there any decent LPs of C&C1 out there? I tried playing it a while back and it didn't handle well at all.
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Mar 9, 2014 09:00
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SovietPotatoe: I found it! Ok, so if you want to rip the videos yourself, download XCC from: http://xhp.xwis.net/ They've got a program called XCC Mixer that allows you to open the .mix files in a dedicated program and let's you watch or listen to anything. It'll allow you to record the videos yourself. I also have a save file for the start and end of every level I can .rar/.zip up and post (I had a lot of time on my hands at one point). GDI movies are located in movies01.mix NOD movies are located in movies02.mix Firestorm movies are located in movies03.mix Vanilla music is in scores.mix (Mutants and Scout are pro-tier) Friestorm music is in scores01.mix You can extract literally everything from those mix files. Makes it easy to create a whole windows theme with audio from the game. Jobbo_Fett fucked around with this message at 09:15 on Mar 9, 2014 |
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Mar 9, 2014 09:12
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Jobbo_Fett posted:XCC stuff I already know about XCC Mixer but the question was for the installation. The game had a custom installer that would display a bunch of newspaper articles with some background information. So if you could record that I'd definitely include it. Regarding saves, thanks but I already made my own saves for this. Also the next two updates will be uploaded later today.
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Mar 9, 2014 10:56
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SovietPotatoe posted:The game had a custom installer that would display a bunch of newspaper articles with some background information. So if you could record that I'd definitely include it. Will see what I can do!
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Mar 9, 2014 10:58
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Just a quick question to you guys, would you like to see a writeup of all the units we've seen so far added to the OP or do you already know/not care about them?
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Mar 9, 2014 12:24
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SovietPotatoe posted:Just a quick question to you guys, would you like to see a writeup of all the units we've seen so far added to the OP or do you already know/not care about them? If it doesn't add too much time to the updates, I think they'd be nice for anyone who hasn't seen or played this game before.
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Mar 9, 2014 12:33
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Related, is Tiberium Twilight as bad as people say it is? I really love this series because of the potential of a decent sci-fi plot under there, and the soundtrack.
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Mar 9, 2014 13:16
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Yes. If there was ever a final nail in the coffin for a game series, Twilight would be it.
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Mar 9, 2014 14:07
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 UpdateMission 3a: Capture Train Station
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Mar 9, 2014 18:47
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feel free to post the stuff about the units Another thing I liked about this game's aesthetic is the portraits for each unit, most especially the infantry portraits
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Mar 9, 2014 19:41
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