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 C&C Generals was a game built on the ruins of the World Trade Center by a development studio built on the ruins of Westwood Studios. It is generally accepted to have been made mainly with the intent of cashing in on post-9/11 hysteria and that the C&C title was only slapped on to boost sales through brand recognition as the game has virtually nothing in common with the classic C&C games. It is set in a near-future setting where the USA and China fight a global war against the resident Al Qaida stand-in called the GLA. That said, it is still a solid game in its own right and the expansion in particular fixed many of the gripes people had with the game. --The LP-- Joining me as a co-commentator will be gkirby. The videos will have us talking over most of the ingame cutscenes since most of it is just a bunch of generic military jargon and you could probably replace it with the audio from Black Hawk Down and not notice a difference. If you really want to hear them anyway I'll be uploading a cut version in which the commentary will be muted for the more important cutscenes. Regarding spoilers, feel free to discuss anything related to this game or the expansion. The plot is virtually non-existent so as far as I'm concerned there are no spoilers for this game. --List of Videos-- Training Mission: uncut - cut China 1 & 2: uncut - cut China 3: uncut - cut China 4: uncut - cut China 5: uncut - cut China 6: uncut - cut China 7: uncut - cut GLA 1: uncut - cut GLA 2: uncut - cut GLA 3: uncut - cut GLA 4: uncut - cut GLA 5: uncut - cut GLA 6: uncut - cut GLA 7: uncut - cut USA 1: uncut - cut USA 2: uncut - cut USA 3: uncut - cut USA 4: uncut - cut USA 5: uncut - cut USA 6: uncut - cut USA 7: uncut - cut --Bonus stuff-- Loxbourne tells us about the development process for the game, long read but still interesting: Loxbourne posted:Funnily enough, the launch and pitching process for C&C Generals was actually well-documented. Geoff Keighley, the same journalist who wrote the Final Hours series and did an agonisingly accurate takedown of Daikatana's development history (Knee Deep in the Dead) wrote a lengthy feature at the time dubbed "The First Hours of C&C Generals". GKirby posted:I know this isn't technically a Westwood game but I don't care. SovietPotatoe fucked around with this message at 13:53 on Dec 24, 2015 |
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---List of units, buildings and abilities--- People's Republic of China The PRC is mostly focused on land units and quantity, with many of their units being mediocre in stats but receiving a special horde bonus. They also have the heaviest land units and very little in the way of light vehicles. Similarly, their abilities are mostly focused on raw power and destruction rather than utility. --Units--  Red Guard: Basic Chinese infantry unit, they have a semi-automatic rifle that is effective against enemy infantry. Building one will actually produce two at once and getting 5 or more together grants a horde bonus. These guys make decent infantry defense when garrisoned in buildings and can be upgraded with the ability to capture buildings but otherwise not that useful.  Tank Hunter: Chinese anti-tank infantry, uses missile launcher against ground and air targets. Extremely effective against heavy vehicles when garrisoned and still pack a punch in the open. They have a TNT ability which plants a charge on a building or vehicle which will detonate after 10 seconds doing minor damage. Considering how long it takes to use this ability you usually could have done more damage with just the regular rocket launcher, making this one of the most useless abilities in the game. Like the Red Guard getting together a group of 5 Tank Hunters will provide a horde bonus.  Hacker Slow and pricey, they have low health and no offensive capabilities. Instead they have the ability to deploy their laptop and generate money by stealing people's bank account details. When starting out they generate $5 a second but as they keep at it they level up and at the highest level of veterancy they generate twice that amount. Oh, and I guess they also have an ability to temporarily disable enemy buildings which I don't think has ever been used by anyone ever.  Black Lotus: The Chinese commando unit. She has no direct offensive capabilities, instead she carries a laptop which allows her to either hack enemy supply centers to steal money from them (only of limited use against the AI, seeing as it cheats in money), temporarily disable enemy vehicles or capture buildings faster than regular infantry and from a distance. Like all commando units she has stealth. Overall probably my least favorite commando as her abilities just aren't that useful compared to the other factions'.  Construction Dozer: Chinese worker unit, builds and repairs structures and clears minefields. Slow, unarmed and squishy but nevertheless vital.  Supply Truck: Pick up supplies and drive them to the nearest supply depot. Very squishy, so they need good protection to avoid disruption of your economy.  Battlemaster Tank: Basic Chinese tank. They're middle of the road in terms of damage and health but they do get horde bonus. Effective against heavy vehicles, moderately effective against light vehicles and buildings, useless against infantry.  Dragon Tank: Tank equipped with a flamethrower. Somewhat sturdy but suffers from low range and low damage until you get the black napalm upgrade. Their main purpose is clearing out occupied buildings, one shot is all it takes to instantly kill all the occupants. It also has a special ability to create a flame wall at the target location which isn't really that different from its regular attack, so not very useful.  Gatling Tank: Tank equipped with a Gatling cannon. Takes a few seconds to spool up but does huge amounts of damage, these things annihilate light vehicles and infantry and make for good anti-air defense too. They have surprisingly good range and speed as well, so their only downside is very low damage against heavy vehicles and buildings.  Troop Crawler: Unarmed troop transport. Carries up to 8 passengers and can detect cloaked units but otherwise unarmed and fairly fragile. Somewhat handy to ferry troops between buildings but mostly only useful for the detection ability. Factory model comes with 8 Red Guards already inside.  Overlord The heaviest and by far one of the best units in the game. Requires a propaganda center to unlock, these guys have a ton of health and give as good as they get with their twin cannons. They are so big that they can run over lesser vehicles for an instant kill and mount a defensive structure on top of their turret. The available addons include a gattling cannon, bunker and speaker tower. These do everything their regular building counterparts do but also cost the same amount so building a decent army of Overlords with mounts can get pretty expensive quickly. They're not without weaknesses, as their slow speed limits their effectiveness and without a gattling cannon they are vulnerable against massed rocket infantry and aircraft. Nevertheless, a force of 4-6 Overlords with gattling cannons and speaker towers will easily clear out most campaign maps by itself.  Nuke cannon China's advanced artillery unit. Requires an ability point to unlock. As the name implies, it fires low-yield nuclear warheads over large distances causing extreme damage in a large area. However, they are also very bulky, move at a speed that would embarrass a glacier and have all the durability of wet cardboard. Should an enemy so much as look menacingly in their general direction they will explode and likely take out the nuke cannon next to them. While their destructive potential might certainly seem impressive their drawbacks including the need to unlock them with an ability point makes them not worth the effort most of the time.  Inferno Cannon China's basic artillery unit. Faster, more maneuverable and less fragile than the nuke cannon but the incendiary warhead leaves something to be desired damage-wise, especially before the black napalm upgrade. Still better than the nuke cannon though and if you get a couple of these firing in sync they will create a firestorm to somewhat compensate for the lackluster damage output.  MiG: The only Chinese air unit. Like all planes it is fairly fast but also fragile. They can fire missiles with incendiary warheads against both air and ground targets, doing good damage against all target types and if they are upgraded with Black Napalm 4 missiles hitting the same location will create a firestorm for additional damage. After firing their payload they have to go back to the airfield to reload however. Like all the air units in this game they are good at covering lots of ground as they can reach any location quickly and hit high value targets where needed but the ammo requirement means they have no staying power. You also don't want them on flight paths leading over enemy air defense, otherwise you will take losses. --Structures--  Command Center: The heart of your base, it constructs construction dozers and can be upgraded with a radar to unlock the minimap. It is also necessary to use abilities like the artillery strike. It is one of the few buildings which can survive a direct hit from a super weapon.  Barracks: Produces infantry units. Also allows purchasing the Capture Building upgrade which allows Red Guards to take over structures. Additionally, wounded infantry units can be sent here to get healed.  War Factory: Produces land vehicles and repairs any damaged vehicle sent there. It also allows access to the Black Napalm upgrade, which increases the damage of all flame weapons, as well as the Chainguns upgrade which increases the damage of all Gatling weapons by 25%.  Airfield: Constructs and services air units. One airfield can hold up to 4 aircraft, which will return here to reload. Additionally it will repair any landed aircraft. Can also build the MiG armor upgrade, increasing MiG health by 25%  Nuclear Power Plant: Produces the energy required to power other base structures. Creates a small nuclear explosion when destroyed.  Supply Center: Supply trucks offload gathered supplies here. Building one provides one free truck and allows for the construction of additional trucks. Ideally you want to plop these down right next to a supply depot so trucks can just stand in place and load supplies non-stop, though only one truck can offload at a depot at a time.  Gatling Cannon: Chinese defensive structure, takes a while to spool up but does very good damage against light vehicles, infantry and aircraft. Requires power to work.  Bunker: Garrisonable structure. Very sturdy and can't be cleared out like regular buildings, but only holds 5 units. Garrison these with tank hunters and put up some Gatling cannons to hold of infantry/air units and you have a very solid defensive line.  Propaganda Center Tech building. All it does is allow construction of advanced units like Overlords and artillery. It also unlocks the Nationalism upgrade which improves the horde bonus and as well as an upgrade for speaker towers.  Speaker Tower Broadcasts inspirational propaganda which makes all units in the area of effect heal themselves and fire faster. Very handy when mounted on Overlords, the stationary version not so much, since Chinese defenses usually are garrisoned infantry and gattling cannons, neither of which benefit from the tower's effects.  Nuclear Missile Chinese superweapon, fires a nuclear missile, doing huge amounts of damage in a large radius and leaving behind lethal radiation. Has a 6 minute cooldown. Also unlocks the depleted uranium and nuclear tanks upgrades which increase all tanks' damage and speed respectively. The latter especially pushes the Overlord from a mere "very good" to "will plow straight through anything you could possibly throw at them" and is therefore the best thing to come out of this otherwise rather unremarkable superweapon.  Global Liberation Army The GLA is this game's stand-in for Al Quaida and focused around irregular warfare. Their units tend to trade durability for speed and they have the fastest ground units in the game. None of their structures consume power nor do they have an airforce. They compensate through various gimmicks and tricks which make them a very dynamic faction with a lot of utility. --Units--  Worker GLA construction unit. Also pulls double duty as resource collector, which means capturing a GLA supply depot effectively gives you access to all GLA structures. Keeps complaining about having no shoes.  Rebel The descriptively named basic infantry unit, cheaper than the other factions' but slightly worse in terms of stats. Just like the others it is decent against infantry and captures buildings.  RPG Trooper Anti-tank infantry. Unlike the other factions this one doesn't get any fancy abilities but otherwise identical: good range, good damage against air and ground vehicles, ineffective against infantry.  Angry Mob Unique infantry unit made up of multiple individuals. Basically a horde of weak individuals armed with pistols and molotovs forming together for devastating effect. Will tear through buildings like nobody's business and do excellent damage against ground units, especially after the AK47 upgrade. Furthermore they are unable to garrison structures or vehicles and if individuals perish the hive will automatically regenerate them in time. Their one big weakness are anti-infantry weapons like dragon tanks and flashbangs with area of effect as they will obliterate the mobs within seconds.  Terrorist Another example of descriptive naming, these guys are suicide bombers. They run into things and blow up for moderate damage. Unless the enemy shoots them from a billion miles away because these guys aren't particularly fast nor sturdy. To make up for these shortcomings they can occupy civilian vehicles and turn them into car bombs, which makes them at least fast enough to have a reasonable chance of hitting stuff. Even so, civilian vehicles aren't exactly plentiful and they unit itself is pretty pricey so unless you go after soft, expensive targets like humvees full of infantry (and assuming you actually manage to hit them by some miracle) these guys are a great way to waste a lot of money quickly.  Jarmen Kell GLA hero unit. Like all hero units, Jarmen Kell is cloaked and comes equipped with a sniper rifle which does not actually reveal him on firing, making detection mandatory to fight him (unless a dragon tank force-fires on a building garrisoned by him or puts up a flamewall or something). The rifle will kill any regular infantry unit in one shot but does nothing against vehicles. His only special ability is to snipe the driver from a vehicle, making it possible to occupy the vehicle with any infantry unit. One of the most popular uses for this ability is to snipe a US or Chinese bulldozer, thereby gaining access to those factions' tech, but it can also be used to not only take out high-value targets like say, an Overlord tank mid-battle but you actually keep them afterwards too, making this a very handy ability to have. The only downside is the rather lengthy cooldown timer, making this more of a once-per-battle thing.  Hijacker A gimmick unit unlocked by spending an ability point. These guys have no offensive capabilities whatsoever and are relatively squishy and expensive. Their gimmick is that they are cloaked and they can take over a vehicle if they can get to one. This can actually be pretty useful if the enemy doesn't have detection, otherwise these guys will generally meet the same fate as their suicide-bombing cousins: gunned down long before making it to the target because they are a high priority target and the enemy will focus fire on them. Considering that detection is not only fairly easy to get on vehicles but also comes packaged with significant anti-infantry firepower more often than not it makes these guys kind of a poor choice for an ability point.  Radar Van Enables the minimap. Can also detect invisible units. Otherwise unarmed and unremarkable.  Technical A pickup truck with a machine gun on the back. Very fast but fragile and carries up to 5 infantry units. Handy for scouting, running over infantry and as a troop transport. Starting weapon is very lackluster but can be upgraded with scrap to be highly effective against all ground targets.  Scorpion Basic GLA tank. Trades survivability for speed but nevertheless very effective in numbers, especially when upgraded with Scorpion rockets.  Marauder Tank Alternative to the Scorpion, requires an ability point to unlock. Somewhat similar stat-wise to the Scorpion but can be upgraded with scrap for a significant increase in power. Considering that this a) requires winning some battles first, b) requires significant amounts of micromanagement, c) means the scrap won't be available for upgrading quad cannons and d) the base version looses out against Scorpions with rocket upgrade makes these guys kind of a bad pick, never mind the ability point requirement.  Quad Cannon Mobile anti-air defense. Hilariously effective against air units and infantry considering it is just some old AAA on a flatbed. Will knock planes out of the sky in no time, especially once you upgrade them with scrap. Has decent speed and relatively sturdy, making it an all-around excellent unit.  Toxin Truck The GLA's equivalent to the dragon tank. Sprays a stream of green goo that does good damage to infantry and light vehicles and stays around as a puddle for a few seconds afterwards. One shot will clear a building and it also has an ability to turn on a sprinkler to contaminate the area around the truck with toxin. Much like the dragon tank it suffers from the fact it doesn't actually kill infantry any faster than other dedicated anti-infantry units. Unlike the dragon tank it suffers from a significant weakness to small arms fire, making it liable to be destroyed by just a few Red Guards concentrating fire on it. Needless to say, for a dedicated infantry-killer this is a significant blow to effectiveness. Furthermore, while the flamewall of a dragon tank is conical and has a long range, making it very effective at blocking enemies from an area, the toxin truck's contaminate ability suffers from low range and since it is omni-directional friendly fire is a big issue. Overall these guys are still useful for clearing garrisoned buildings, but not much else.  Rocket Buggy Basic GLA artillery, fires a barrage of rockets from long range. While artillery in this game tends towards being slow and fragile, these guys are the fastest unit in the game (but still pretty fragile) allowing them to kite most units indefinitely. Their damage output is nothing to write home about though and there is a rather lengthy delay between barrages.  Scud Launcher GLA's advanced artillery unit, requires an ability point to unlock. Fires Scud missiles over a long range and unlike the real thing these can actually hit a target smaller than a city block. They can switch between high-explosive and anthrax payloads, the former doing decent damage in a large area while the latter leaves behind a toxic cloud for additional damage to anything moving through the area, thus giving the Scud launcher some versatility when firing at structures or units. The usual downsides of artillery apply regarding being slow and fragile, as well as a minimum range. Additionally, the missiles themselves are liable to get shot down by air defence, so if you're firing at an area with good anti-air coverage you want to make sure your Scuds are all firing simultaneously.  Bomb Truck Basically a car bomb on steroids. Will ram into the enemy and explode for massive damage. Can also be upgraded to carry either high-explosive (more damage) or anthrax (leaves toxic cloud on detonation) payloads and has a special ability to camouflage as an enemy vehicle, allowing it to sneak past defenders. Usually a poor tradeoff in terms of money spent for the damage done. --Structures--  Command Center Same as other factions, produces workers and calls in General's abilities.  Supply Stash Produces workers and acts as a drop-off for collected supplies.  Barracks Builds and heals infantry units, unlocks building capture upgrade.  Arms Dealer A war factory with a fancy name. Builds all GLA vehicles and also unlocks the Scorpion rocket upgrade, granting all Scorpion tanks a top-mounted rocket launcher which improves their combat performance dramatically for very low cost.  Stinger Site Main defense structure of the GLA, it is occupied by three guys with Stinger missiles which do decent damage against vehicles and aircraft and mediocre damage against infantry, provided they can hit. It is somewhat unique in that anti-infantry infantry units as well as ambient effects like fire and toxin will not only damage the structure itself, but also the people manning it, thus making it possible to send up a few Red Guards or something to quickly neuter a Stinger site, then following up with tanks. The guys do respawn but it does take them a good while to do so. It also takes up much more space than other factions' equivalents, making it harder to concentrate a lot of defences on one choke point. Its only saving grace is the fact that like all GLA buildings it requires no power and that it can fire more quickly than the Patriot or Gatling cannon with their significant windup times, giving it an edge against air units.  Tunnel Network GLA anti-infantry defense structure armed with a machine gun. Comes with two free RPG troopers when built. Its main function however, is you can garrison up to ten ground units inside and this garrison is shared between all tunnel networks. This means you can send troops into a tunnel on the lower left corner of the map and instantly exit them on the upper right corner. Needless to say, this de-facto teleporter is great at enhancing the mobility of your forces.  Palace GLA tech building. Unlocks a variety of useful upgrades, such as cloaking for rebels, toxin shells which make all tank shots leave little clouds of toxin, drastically improving anti-infantry effectiveness, the AK-47 upgrade for the angry mobs, significantly boosting their damage output and the Anthrax Beta upgrade which gives a big boost to all toxin damage (it also changes the color from green to blue goo). Furthermore it doubles as a bunker in that it can be garrisoned by up to five infantry units and cannot be cleared out, which combined with the palace's decent health can actually make it a nice defensive option when placed on the flank of your base or so.  Black Market The GLA method of generating infinite money. Each black market deposits $20 per second straight into your account and also offers a variety of very useful upgrades. Between AP bullets and rockets giving +25% damage to units, larger rocket buggy salvos, radar scan allowing radar vans to reveal areas through the fog of war and most importantly the Junk Repair upgrade making every vehicle constantly regenerate health automatically this thing is worth building for the upgrades alone. It is also the most convenient way of generating money as it suffers from neither the hacker's vulnerability inherent to being an infantry unit, nor from the downsides of the USA's supply pad. Requires a palace to build  Demo Trap Suicide unit in building form. Whenever an enemy unit gets close it will detonate for massive damage in a large radius, oneshotting just about anything that isn't an Overlord. Since it can't move it relies on its cloak to get enemies into range. Can be very devastating if the enemy isn't expecting it but only really works once or twice, since any intelligent player will wise up and start bringing detection, thus throwing the demo trap into the ranks of suicide units that just aren't cost-effective enough to be useful.  Scud Storm GLA super weapon. Fires 9 Scud missiles in a large area doing massive damage and contaminating the area with toxin on a 5 minute cooldown. Combines the AoE and damage of the nuclear missile with a slightly lower cooldown, the ability to destroy GLA holes and no power requirement, making this technically the best super weapon in the game, although its not a particularly big difference. It is also the only super weapon that can be upgraded as it benefits from the Anthrax Beta upgrade.  GLA Hole Any time a GLA structure is destroyed it spawns one of these. After some time a worker will pop out and rebuild the structure free of charge. This is actually a pretty big deal because it completely neuters super weapons like the nuclear missile or fuel-air explosive which deal a ton of damage in one go since they don't do anything to the hole underneath, meaning you would need to fire two nukes to permanently take out a GLA structure.  United States of America The US is the most "high-tech" of the factions with a focus on futuristic technology, precision weapons and air power. It has the most diverse air force and several General's abilities based around airstrikes, satellites and general reconnaissance with units that are all-around solid with no particular weaknesses. Their vehicles have the unique ability to build and control one of a choice of drones, providing various bonuses. Also, their buildings spawn Rangers whenever they are destroyed in a way that is reminiscent of traditional C&C games. --Units--  Ranger Standard US infantry. Comes equipped with an assault rifle with decent damage against infantry and light vehicles. Can be upgraded to capture buildings or use flashbang grenades. The flashbang upgrade lets you switch between assault rifle and flashbang mode, the latter fires a grenade with more range and devastating damage against infantry in a small area of effect. It is also how the US clears out garrisoned buildings, one grenade is all it takes and since it has longer range than rebels and the like and Rangers don't care about rocket fire it is the single best method for clearing out garrisoned buildings. Its only downside is the grenades do nothing against vehicles but when up against infantry they're absolutely great.  Missile Defender US anti-tank infantry. Standard fare, fires missiles that are good against tanks and buildings, not so good against infantry. Has a laser lock ability where after a short chargeup it will fire at a dramatically increased rate. Because that's how laser guidance works apparently.  Pathfinder Sniper unit, unlocked by spending a General's point. Has excellent range, good rate of fire and kills any regular infantry unit in one shot. Furthermore it is cloaked when standing still and firing and only visible while moving. It also has pretty good vision ranges and detects cloaked units. Put one or two of these at the entrance to your base and you'll never have to worry about infantry again. And all this in a relatively inexpensive package. Its only weakness is its complete inability to harm anything other than infantry but nevertheless it is an excellent unit and well worth spending the point to unlock it.  Colonel Burton US hero unit. Like all hero units he is cloaked. He is armed with a machine gun that does excellent damage against light vehicles and infantry though firing will uncloak him. His special abilities include a knife attack that kills any infantry unit instantly without revealing Burton and planting C4 on either a 20 second timer or a remote detonator. The charges do enough damage to kill most buildings in one hit and have a fair bit of AoE to them but Burton is revealed while placing them so you need to be very careful when to use it. He is also unique in that he is the only unit in the game with the ability to scale otherwise impassable cliffs, giving him a nice way of sneaking into enemy bases to wreak havoc using C4. Overall he is probably the most powerful hero unit when used properly, but to use him properly you need to pay a lot of attention and micromanage him pretty heavily.  Pilot Whenever a US vehicle with veterancy levels is destroyed one of these will eject. Pilots are unarmed and pretty squishy but you can put them in another vehicle to instantly add the pilot's veterancy to the vehicle's. This effect stacks, so you could send in multiple veteran pilots into the same tank to bring it all the way up to elite for example. Pretty handy to have, just make sure they don't get killed by whatever destroyed their vehicle in the first place.  Construction Dozer US construction unit. Builds all US units, otherwise unarmed and fairly fragile. Like all construction units it can be used to clear mines from an area.  Humvee Light anti-infantry vehicle. Comes equipped with a machine gun effective against infantry and other light vehicles and can be upgraded with an additional TOW missile launcher providing extra punch against vehicles and buildings. Their good speed makes them decent early scouting units and troop transports, their main use comes from their unique ability however. Like the technical it can carry up to 5 infantry units, but unlike the technical the occupants can actually shoot from inside the Humvee, meaning you can load it up with 4 missile defenders and a pathfinder to produce an extremely mobile combat platform which can put out a lot of firepower against all target types, though the low health remains an issue.  Ambulance Unarmed offshoot of the Humvee, the ambulance can, as the name implies, heal infantry units in a radius around it as well as carry up to three passengers. Its other ability is removing toxin and radiation from an area, which is kinda useful if your base gets hit by a super weapon or something. Overall though infantry usually doesn't have the health to make healing them particularly viable as they tend to be either unharmed or dead and getting these things to stay in formation with advancing infantry is an exercise in frustration. There are better ways to spend your money.  Crusader Tank Standard US tank. Has decent, armor, decent firepower and decent speed, making this an all-around solid, if unremarkable unit.  Paladin Tank Advanced US tank, unlocked by spending an ability point. It trades in some of the armor of the crusader for a laser-based active protection system. Any rocket fired at the tank will be zapped and destroyed, although the laser is limited by its refire rate so more than one rocket infantry will generally overwhelm it. Considering you can group them together to have additional Paladins covering each other and seeing as missiles are often the biggest threat for your tanks these things are actually not too bad of a pick. Additionally, the laser will zap any infantry units in its range, though this happens rarely and does minor damage at best and it can also shoot down incoming Scud missiles, though its low damage means unless you have a lot of Paladins or some other air defense around it won't have any effect.  Tomahawk Launcher US artillery. Fires a Tomahawk cruise missile over large distances dealing excellent damage against all ground targets in a decent area of effect. For an artillery unit it is fast, agile and sturdy while carrying a considerable amount of firepower. It might not have the rocket buggy's speed, the nuke cannon's damage or the Scud launcher's ability to leave toxic clouds behind but neither does it suffer from any of their weaknesses, making the Tomahawk an all-around solid unit. Its only downside is that like the Scud launcher, the missiles are liable to be shot down by air defenses, so you'll need multiple launchers firing in sync to overwhelm them.  Battle Drone Vehicle drone upgrade. Has a fairly weak machine gun that does moderate damage against infantry, though its main use is its ability to automatically repair its mother vehicle. Out of all the ways to put auto-repair on vehicles this one is probably the weakest, simply because the drones cost $300 for each vehicle you purchase them for and frequently get shot down by air defense, meaning you have to throw out even more money. It is still the better drone option most of the time though.  Scout Drone The other vehicle drone upgrade. Unarmed and can't repair vehicles like its cousin the battle drone but it also costs only a third and provides vision in a large area and detects cloaked units. Handy to have at least one of on artillery or frontline units when facing cloaked enemies, otherwise not so much.  Chinook Transport helicopter. Its most important function is collecting supplies to keep the American economy going but it can also airlift up to 8 units. This includes vehicles, though they take up several slots. Its high speed means it performs very well at either function, however it is unarmed and very fragile so keep it away from anti-air if you don't want to loose all your passengers. Additionally, loading it up with Rangers allows it to perform a fast-rope maneuver where it flies over a garrisoned building, Rangers grapple down onto the roof, clearing out any hostiles inside and occupying the building in the process. This can actually be pretty handy to quickly deploy troops into structures, even when they're not garrisoned. Overall a very versatile and handy unit.  Comanche Attack helicopter. Carries a machine gun effective against infantry and light vehicles as well as up to four missiles which do a fair amount of damage to ground vehicles and structures. Unlike other air units depleting its missile supply does not require it to return to the airfield for resupply, instead it regenerates a full charge of missiles after a certain time. Additionally it can be upgraded with the rocket pod ability which sprays a large amount of rockets into an area for devastating effect against clustered ground targets of all types, though it does have a lengthy cooldown. Overall the Comanche combines the excellent speed and firepower of air units with the staying power of ground units, being able to loiter indefinitely without requiring resupply. It excels at providing support to ground troops, being able to quickly swoop in and take out artillery or other high value targets or quickly destroy clusters of enemies with rocket pods. Its only downside is its low durability making it very vulnerable to anti-air, so you need to make sure you clear those out before sending in the Comanches.  Stealth Fighter Advanced fighter plane, requires General's point to unlock. Carries two air-to-ground missiles which do decent damage against buildings and ground units. Its gimmick is that it is cloaked, which sounds useful until you realize that all the static air defenses you'd want to hide your plane from have detection. And they uncloak to fire and since they are extremely fragile even just a few anti-air units in the area will be enough to bring this thing down before it can cloak again. Overall very lackluster and hardly worth the General's point nor the airfield slots that could be taken up by more useful units.  Raptor Standard US airplane. Carries 4 missiles it can use against ground and air targets. Does enough damage to take out many ground units or buildings in one or two salvos and also does a decent job against other air units. It is extremely fragile however, diminishing its usefulness.  Aurora Bomber Advanced US bomber. Carries a single bomb dealing very large damage in a decent area of effect. Its main gimmick is that once it is given an attack order it will go super-sonic. What that means is it will go faster than normal and any air defense trying to shoot it will target a point somewhere behind the bomber instead of the actual plane, making it essentially immune to enemy fire until it drops off its payload. Now it is possible to carefully micromanage them so they don't get shot down on the way back assuming the enemy AD is laid out in a way that allows this but if not they're basically glorified suicide units, although the fact they're guaranteed to hit their target for high damage does mean they can be useful for kamikaze runs against enemy super weapons and the like. --Structures--  Command Center US command center. Builds constructors, allows calling in General's abilities and provides radar. Unlike the Chinese one it does not actually require an upgrade for that though. Furthermore, each US command center provides the Spy Satellite ability, revealing a large area of the map and any cloaked units inside on a 90 second cooldown right from the start. Needless to say, this is a very handy ability to have, though having to manually select the command center to use it makes it something of a pain to use regularly.  Barracks Produces and heals US infantry units. Also unlocks the Capture Building and Flashbang upgrades for Rangers.  Cold Fusion Reactor US power plant. Produces only half the output of the Chinese nuclear reactor and requires you to spend an additional $500 on the Control Rod upgrade to achieve parity. Its upside is that it doesn't explode when damaged, which is kind of a bad trade-off considering the explosion from a nuclear reactor isn't that big of a deal to begin with and when it happens you usually have bigger problems anyways.  Supply Center Produces Chinooks and acts as a drop-off point for supplies. Not much more to say, really.  War Factory Produces and repairs US ground vehicles. Also unlocks the TOW missile upgrade for Humvees.  Airfield Produces and services US air units. Can hold up to four airplanes which will come back here to repair and refuel. It also includes a helipad which will provide repair for helicopters. Unlocks the laser-guided missiles upgrade for increased damage for Raptors and stealth fighters and the Rocket Pod upgrade for Comanches.  Strategy Center US tech building. Aside from allowing construction of advanced units and buildings it can enact one of three strategies which will give boosts to all units as well as physically change the strategy center itself. The strategies are bombardment (+20% damage, deploys a long-range howitzer), Search and Destroy (+20% weapon range, deploys sensor to detect cloaked units) and Hold the Line (+10% health, deploys sandbags to increase durability). Upgrade-wise it allows purchase of Advanced Training (units gain experience twice as fast), Composite Armor (Crusaders/Paladins gain +40%/+20% armor) and Drone Armor (boosts drone armor by 25%).  Detention Camp Holdover from the cut POW mechanic, the only function of this building is the Intelligence ability. When enabled prisoners will be  Supply Drop Zone US money generator. Every 2 minutes a cargo plane comes in from off-map and drops a large amount of money via UN-crates onto the pad. Not only is it possible to shoot the plane down halfway if the drop zone is somewhere in the middle of the map and the flight path leads over enemy air defense, but it is also buggy and will often drop some of the crates off-target, making it necessary to collect them manually with a unit.  Particle Cannon US super weapon. Fires a giant beam that does huge amounts of damage and leaves behind a trail of fire doing additional damage over a short duration. It is unique in that instead of targeting an area you can lead the beam around: clicking on the ground will make the beam slowly move there, double-clicking will make it move there faster. Seeing as even brief contact with the beam is enough to destroy any ground units and lesser buildings there is rarely a reason not to double-click your destination. By far the weakest super weapon because the beam lasts for such a short time that whatever you could destroy a nuke or Scud storm would have easily covered within their blast radius and then some. It also doesn't leave behind any residue like radiation or toxin, preventing the enemy from rebuilding destroyed structures and denying the area for a decent amount of time. Its only saving grace is the fact that it has the shortest cooldown at 4 minutes.  Patriot Missile System US base defense. Fires missiles in salvos of four which are effective against ground and air vehicles, not so much against infantry. Its special ability is that several batteries in close proximity can link together, allowing other batteries to engage targets beyond their normal range so long as another battery is in range and targeting them. Like all base defenses it can detect cloaked units. SovietPotatoe fucked around with this message at 13:53 on Dec 24, 2015 |
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Nov 12, 2015 01:15
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This game gets simultaneously more hilarious and more uncomfortably close to reality every year.
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Nov 12, 2015 01:18
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I love how this game predicted ISIS/Daesh though clearly it was meant to be Al-quida from the time it was released.
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Nov 12, 2015 03:01
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NewMars posted:This game gets simultaneously more hilarious and more uncomfortably close to reality every year. If in 5-10 years ISIS gets a guy named Dr. Thrax, we're doomed to die a hilarious mail order college inspired death. But yes C&C Generals was my first real exposure to RTS games growing up and while it wasn't without its faults, I still think it holds up fairly well all things considered, as the commentators mentioned, the strength of vehicles in this game was always something really interesting, between the need for infantry to either hold up in buildings or catch rides in vehicles I always felt like it really helped give a good RTS style translation for mechanized warfare which is sometimes hard to see when so many RTS's still use tactical rock paper scissors with infantry and vehicles.
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Nov 12, 2015 07:47
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Ugh. I really dislike this game; one reason is the politics behind its release that you mentioned (The World According To Tom Clancy), another is how incredibly loving lazy the whole thing is - look no further than mission briefings. Tanks blow up terrorists, boom boom boom, there's your story. Add all the uncomfortable stereotypes in there and you one hell of a weird experience. Zero Hour at least fixed most of the gameplay issues but there's virtually no redeeming the vanilla version.
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Nov 12, 2015 07:59
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You say iy's a bit of a black sheep, but at least it's not C&C 4 :p or the other, worse, modern warfare RTS that came out about the same time. World in Conflict.
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Nov 12, 2015 08:02
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Hey, World In Conflict was great. Definitely had a much better single player.
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Nov 12, 2015 08:08
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Maybe he's thinking of Act of War? I've always wondered how much EA/Westwood was pushing to get Generals released before Iraq got invaded.
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Nov 12, 2015 08:19
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Oh. yeah. World in Conflict is the one with Bannon etc. oops. The one I'm thinking of had oil companies v anti-fossil fuel people. And is not Anno 2070.
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Nov 12, 2015 09:09
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My uncle introduced me to this game and I thoroughly enjoyed playing it, especially the Generals maps in ZH. I did consider LPing it myself but never got around to it, so I guess you'll be doing it for me. Make me proud OP.
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Nov 12, 2015 09:57
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You mentioned this game has nothing to do with the classic C&C games. I don't understand what you mean? The only difference I noticed between this, Tiberian Sun, and Red Alert 2, is that it uses near-future technology instead of scifi-tech. I remember mostly ignoring the single player campaigns of these games, and playing skirmishes instead because the single-player campaigns were too difficult for me. However, it's been over 10 years since I've played any C&C games, so I don't have a fresh recollection of anything.
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Nov 12, 2015 10:39
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CnC games had long campaigns with live (hammy) acted cutscenes, and an overarching plot. Nothing like that here. There was also some thought put into the unit design as opposed to randomly assigned special abilities showed here (car bomb is one I'm not going to forget anytime soon - why the gently caress is there a skill that completely depends on the terrain of the map you're playing). There's also a bunch of incredibly stupid decisions not present in the previous games - the alternate income methods, superweapon stacking (now that is full pants-on-head retarded and even EA realized that), the experience bar that lets you have access to like five superpowers (that one sadly stayed) that made a lot of strategic options irrelevant and so on... So no, this has absolutely nothing to do with CnC apart from being an RTS as well.
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Nov 12, 2015 10:52
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Faith For Two posted:You mentioned this game has nothing to do with the classic C&C games. I don't understand what you mean? The only difference I noticed between this, Tiberian Sun, and Red Alert 2, is that it uses near-future technology instead of scifi-tech. Red Alert and Tiberium Dawn/Sun/Ect are set in their own timelines and worlds that generals has no relevance to.
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Nov 12, 2015 10:53
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Not to mention needing worker units to build buildings, as opposed to the classic magic sidebar.
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Nov 12, 2015 10:56
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habituallyred posted:Not to mention needing worker units to build buildings, as opposed to the classic magic sidebar. Hey now, it wasn't the sidebar that did it. It was the construction yard. 
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Nov 12, 2015 11:16
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Ah yes, the 9/11 cash grab that's fun in a mediocre way but has one redeeming quality: cheesy unit quotes. C&C has always had good unit quotes, and somehow they kept most of that spirit in Generals despite a lot of other stuff being worse.
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Nov 12, 2015 11:37
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I don't know, given the whole discourse around this game it feels like they were serious with the American ones. There's only so many times you can hear a tank respond with "keeping the peace" before you either burst out in laughing or close the game in disgust. The Chinese and GLA are appropriately cartoonish, though.
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Nov 12, 2015 11:53
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This game isn't Command & Conquer in any way, has no connections to it and should not ever be called with C&C in front!  There were loads of fully 3d rts before this game. Some even released before 1999. Oh, and are you going to show of the awkward intro marketed towards 12-year olds? This game is basically  . It is fun to play despite all that though.
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Nov 12, 2015 12:04
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While it's got problems, I loved this game for 8 player LAN co-op battles when I was at university. Especially with Generals added, with it's game-changing modifications to units but no way of knowing what they did until they started spraying green goo on your base, or worse, you stumbled across an entirely stealthed outpost mere meters from your own defences. Great fun. Swingy and frustrating as hell, and the super-soldiers rewarded a silly base-automation-and-extreme-micromanagement gameplay style, but still fun. Looking forward to the videos!
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Nov 12, 2015 12:19
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C.M. Kruger posted:Maybe he's thinking of Act of War? Veloxyll posted:The one I'm thinking of had oil companies v anti-fossil fuel people. And is not Anno 2070. I doubt it's the one you mean, but it's the only one I remember that somewhat fits.
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Nov 12, 2015 12:24
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I actually REALLY enjoyed Generals and was disappointed they scraped the squeal.
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Nov 12, 2015 13:19
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Veloxyll posted:The one I'm thinking of had oil companies v anti-fossil fuel people. And is not Anno 2070. Gridlocked posted:I actually REALLY enjoyed Generals and was disappointed they scraped the squeal.
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Nov 12, 2015 13:37
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Generals was loving amazing, but I was 13 years old when it came out. Scud's all day every day, motherfuckers.
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Nov 12, 2015 13:53
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Veloxyll posted:The one I'm thinking of had oil companies v anti-fossil fuel people. And is not Anno 2070. I very dimly remember this, but not the title. The resource generation mechanic was film crews? A truly dreadful rip-the-speakers-out UHUH NYUK-NYUK set of briefing animations? I think the terrorist faction was called GHOST?
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Nov 12, 2015 14:06
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Vanilla generals was kinda meh but Zero Hour added a lot. Was fun to try and figure out how to crack some of the later General's bases. (The answer was nukes. Always nukes)
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Nov 12, 2015 14:10
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Manic_Misanthrope posted:Vanilla generals was kinda meh but Zero Hour added a lot. Was fun to try and figure out how to crack some of the later General's bases. (The answer was nukes. Always nukes) The answer was actually "AK FORTY SEVENS FOR EVERYONE" *cheer* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZQdaEFa_60
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Nov 12, 2015 14:18
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Or Colonel Burton, because if you really really managed him he could cross absolutely every terrain in the game and walk through the pixel-sized gap between overlapping defensive fields of fire
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Nov 12, 2015 14:24
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I thought they added terrainclimbing to commandos in ZH? Where they can't hold a candle to the loving King Raptors - because yeah, let's give planes a counter to the only thing that harms them effectively, why the gently caress not.
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Nov 12, 2015 14:26
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Loxbourne posted:I very dimly remember this, but not the title. The resource generation mechanic was film crews? A truly dreadful rip-the-speakers-out UHUH NYUK-NYUK set of briefing animations? I think the terrorist faction was called GHOST? It was also designed with "AI Commanders" assisting you a la Red Alert 3.
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Nov 12, 2015 14:31
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Y'all are forgetting War on Terror, a tiny Monte Cristo release. It's an RTS, alright. Generals lacked charm in the campaigns. Sure, they could do in-engine cutscenes well, but I never felt invested. And I guess it's also the death knell of infantry in vidja. Zero Hour added videos to campaigns, but the units it added mostly looked like lovely mod remix unit. Yeah, it's X, but now it does Z (see: laser tanks). Generals 2... had to be killed. I was in beta and it was so bland. The best 9/11 RTS is the MidEast Crisis 2 mod on CnC3. Production values through the roof, and the unit quotes are even better. Pushing lovely CnC3 engine to the limit, too. Pity Isotix abandoned it to make... other games. CnC kind of died to me when Red Alert 3 went "it's cuh-ray-zee game, look at the quirky units" while also adding a special ability to every Goddamn unit. Then again, Company of Heroes raised the bar astronomically high for me. For no apparent reason, because no RTS wanted to follow it: no cover systems, no suppression, no squad building with special weapons, no highly detailed levels... Man, Endgame was an extreme disappointment. The only "modern warfare" game that ever came close to the standard was Modern Warfare mod for Company of Heroes. I'm probably one of three guys who'd prefer a Red Alert 4 that was Company of Heroes but in RA universe. The neatest things about Act of War were the PoW mechanic and air support call in (instead of being actual discrete planes). Eugen liked it so much, they make the sequel almost a carbon copy. It also had a Hind with a transport capacity and garrisoned ATGM guys would kill friends with backblast. ACTUALLY! There was this pre-3D war on terror game called Real War. It pioneered alternative resource gathering that wasn't about on stockpiles, and not much else. I played World in Conflict this week. A standing tank is dead tank. tl;dr:  about tiny War On Pixel Terror
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Nov 12, 2015 16:51
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 UpdateChina 1 & 2: uncut - cut New units: Red Guard: Basic Chinese infantry unit, they have a semi-automatic rifle that is effective against enemy infantry. Building one will actually produce two at once and getting 5 or more together grants a horde bonus. These guys make decent infantry defense when garrisoned in buildings and can be upgraded with the ability to capture buildings but otherwise not that useful. Tank Hunter: Chinese anti-tank infantry, uses missile launcher against ground and air targets. Extremely effective against heavy vehicles when garrisoned and still pack a punch in the open. They have a TNT ability which plants a charge on a building or vehicle which will detonate after 10 seconds doing minor damage. Considering how long it takes to use this ability you usually could have done more damage with just the regular rocket launcher, making this one of the most useless abilities in the game. Like the Red Guard getting together a group of 5 Tank Hunters will provide a horde bonus. Construction Dozer: Chinese worker unit, builds and repairs structures and clears minefields. Slow, unarmed and squishy but nevertheless vital. Supply Truck: Pick up supplies and drive them to the nearest supply depot. Very squishy, so they need good protection to avoid disruption of your economy. Battlemaster Tank: Basic Chinese tank. They're middle of the road in terms of damage and health but they do get horde bonus. Effective against heavy vehicles, moderately effective against light vehicles and buildings, useless against infantry. Dragon Tank: Tank equipped with a flamethrower. Somewhat sturdy but suffers from low range and low damage until you get the black napalm upgrade. Their main purpose is clearing out occupied buildings, one shot is all it takes to instantly kill all the occupants. It also has a special ability to create a flame wall at the target location which isn't really that different from its regular attack, so not very useful. Gatling Tank: Tank equipped with a Gatling cannon. Takes a few seconds to spool up but does huge amounts of damage, these things annihilate light vehicles and infantry and make for good anti-air defense too. They have surprisingly good range and speed as well, so their only downside is very low damage against heavy vehicles and buildings. New structures: Command Center: The heart of your base, it constructs construction dozers and can be upgraded with a radar to unlock the minimap. It is also necessary to use abilities like the artillery strike. It is one of the few buildings which can survive a direct hit from a super weapon. Barracks: Produces infantry units. Also allows purchasing the Capture Building upgrade which allows Red Guards to take over structures. Additionally, wounded infantry units can be sent here to get healed. War Factory: Produces land vehicles and repairs any damaged vehicle sent there. It also allows access to the Black Napalm upgrade, which increases the damage of all flame weapons, as well as the Chainguns upgrade which increases the damage of all Gatling weapons by 25%. Nuclear Power Plant: Produces the energy required to power other base structures. Creates a small nuclear explosion when destroyed. Supply Center: Supply trucks offload gathered supplies here. Building one provides one free truck and allows for the construction of additional trucks. Ideally you want to plop these down right next to a supply depot so trucks can just stand in place and load supplies non-stop, though only one truck can offload at a depot at a time. Gatling Cannon: Chinese defensive structure, takes a while to spool up but does very good damage against light vehicles, infantry and aircraft. Requires power to work. New abilities  Red Guard Training: All newly trained Red Guard units start as veterans. This also applies to Red Guards received through non-conventional means such as those that come with troop crawlers or from scripted paradrops. Probably one of the least useful abilities to have.  Artillery Barrage: Calls in an off-map artillery barrage doing large amounts of damage. The barrage takes a while to arrive at the target so it is only really useful against static emplacements rather than units on the move. It has three levels, each one costing an additional ability point to unlock, with each one firing more shells per barrage.  Emergency Repairs: Provides a small immediate health boost to all vehicles in a small area as well as a short heal-over-time effect. Can be handy in a pinch but usually there are better things to spend your points on.
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Nov 12, 2015 18:31
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I forgot about Real War. IIRC that was one they advertised as being REAL MILITARY TRAINING SOFTWARE! and released right after 9/11.
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Nov 12, 2015 18:39
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I like RA3 a lot. Sure, it's got an ability on every unit but there's some thought put into them (unlike, say, this game) and they're very intuitive to use. Even the quirky universe was a pretty plausible followup to RA2. The execution left a lot to be desired (mostly in the department of cleavage because what the gently caress EA) but it was a step in the right direction after horrid Generals ultimately bland and disappointing CnC3. Speaking of the "lovely CnC3 engine": it's this one. Name of SAGE, used in every 3D CnC game. Including Renegade.
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Nov 12, 2015 18:59
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When I first played this I always played as the GLA because it was so over the top, with your Workers asking for shoes, the Mobs, other stupid poo poo. Actually the one thing with Generals that I remember laughing and thinking was "cool" in that way only 12-13 year olds can remember was the intro for the game. The whole "great leaders resolve their conflicts with words (words like): SCUD Launcher. Tomahawk Missiles" was just so silly and we ate that poo poo up. Of course these days I look at it going "huh, so we weren't allowed to show the Twin Towers in movies or media but going up to 11 in the "gently caress those towel heads" department was A-okay" but hey, that's just how the world works.
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Nov 12, 2015 19:07
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anilEhilated posted:Where they can't hold a candle to the loving King Raptors - because yeah, let's give planes a counter to the only thing that harms them effectively, why the gently caress not. You can still gatling or quad-cannon them down, since they can't block bullets. USA doesn't have as much of a cost-effective non-missile-based counter, but they still can use the Avenger to shoot them down. I still had way too much fun in Zero Hour comp-stomping, filling up humvees with 4 missile guys and a sniper en masse, then running around shooting everything full of missiles and bullets in-between King Raptor spam, or building entirely way too many lasers/nukes/scud storms and throwing them all at some poor sap. Too bad it didn't run very well on the computer I played it on.
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Nov 12, 2015 19:12
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This game has held up over time, still some good poo poo. nuke everything, EVERYTHING
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Nov 12, 2015 19:34
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Aces High posted:When I first played this I always played as the GLA because it was so over the top, with your Workers asking for shoes, the Mobs, other stupid poo poo. Actually the one thing with Generals that I remember laughing and thinking was "cool" in that way only 12-13 year olds can remember was the intro for the game. The whole "great leaders resolve their conflicts with words (words like): SCUD Launcher. Tomahawk Missiles" was just so silly and we ate that poo poo up. Oh, I'll be sure to show of the intro in all its cheesiness. Nowadays when I look at Generals the biggest change for me is that back then I was just some 14 year old with an interest in military stuff and since then I have grown into a full-fledged armchair general, so half the time I play I can't help but shake my fist in anger about some of the sillier GLA tech. Stingers don't work that way!
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Nov 12, 2015 19:53
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My favorite Chinese unit is the Hacker. No attack power, super squishy, his only job is to just set up a laptop and start leeching resources from the other team. My friend used to play as PRC and would just fill every inch of unused space in his base with those guys. "Nobody will notice their money is missing!"
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Nov 12, 2015 19:53
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SovietPotatoe posted:Stingers don't work that way!
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Nov 12, 2015 19:59
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