Aircraftkiller

Renegade isn't realistic. Say that with me again. Renegade isn't real life. Let's try one more time, with larger text for emphasis: Renegade isn't real life and any comparisons to "realism" are pointless as gameplay mechanics take precedent over realism.

Jamming it into a lamp post was one of the stupidest things I ever ran across in the game - it showed how little into the future the players could see. Oh, yeah. It'll help for a bit - but if you break the siege and can't get the Harvester to stop ramming the post? It's a stupid move, not being able to get loads of credits. It's also an indictment of how terrible the map design was in Renegade.

I'm redoing my old Metro map, but I'm waiting on the tools to come out (assuming they ever do) before I really put any serious effort into it.

Remember, it's Nod, not NOD.

I'll play your game, you rogue. We'll have a civilized discussion about why I think your ideas are absolutely terrible - but not all of them. I'd like to see the Recon Bike and the SSM. Both were intended to be in Renegade, and like many things they were cut out because WS was incompetent. Adding Hum-vee variations is borderline "lol realism". You don't even want to know how many Hum-vee variants there really are. Anywhere from grenade launchers, TOW launchers, hospital trucks, mortar launchers, SAM launchers, etc. The model library at my office has no less than 15 different versions of the truck. Would any of that make sense in Renegade? No, not really. Here's why: Nothing but the basic machine gun mounted HMMWV were in Renegade and Tiberian Dawn. It doesn't belong in this game. If you want it, add it in yourself. The Flamethrower shouldn't be all that great unless it becomes a purchasable unit - like it was in TD. Otherwise I don't see a reason to make it much better, if at all, than it currently is. Weapon drops are absolutely stupid. They should be a server-side mutator or whatever, not core Renegade gameplay in C&C mode. They make perfect sense for deathmatches, but not for C&C mode. The class system exists because each unit is assigned a specific role and a weapon suited for that role. Once you can run around and carry every weapon in the game, you become all roles simultaneously - which destroys the point of the class system. Islands and Walls are non-defense maps. They're too small with limited-access chokepoints. Adding defenses would turn both maps into a slog in the center. Yeah, I totally love playing maps with a tank traffic jam. Recommendations are stupid. They always have been. There are better ways that make sense with the game's themes (medals, ribbons, awards, et al.) instead. In short, "how about no, does no work for you?" was an easier way of dismissing most of what you wrote. It was really for brevity's sake.

Yeah, we covered all of that in the topic already... But thanks for restating everything we've already said.

A better solution is to make the Grenadier and Flamethrower purchasable for 160 credits / 300 credits, adjust their stats (slower flamethrower running speed, greater mid-to-short range damage, fast grenadier running speed, innate inaccuracy due to unpredictable targets, requires using speed to your advantage), and get people used to the idea of having fewer free-but-mediocre units.

Does no work for you?

Calling C&C3 Tiberian Sun (TS) is trolling No ifs, ands or buts

Stop trolling, Hate, lol

BF4 isn't UDK. CoD isn't UDK. WoT isn't UDK. You have 8GB of RAM. What're you worried about?

My logic isn't inconsistent lol. You came out of nowhere with "but realism!" and if you've ever seen me argue this point before, and I'm sure you have, I'm one of the first people who argues against realism in Renegade. I do however argue for realism to C&C. I'm okay with rifles damaging tanks. I'm okay with gigantic laser beam towers only doing a fraction of the damage they'd really do. I don't care because it's focused more on gameplay, not on realism. Besides, BF4 isn't realistic at all. It's just another modern-war gritty shooter with vehicles. I mentioned BF4 because it has a similar gameplay style to Renegade in that it uses vehicles and helicopters alongside infantry. Obviously there's significant differences in that rifles don't damage tanks, etc. That's a given. I didn't realize I needed to outline these things for people. Also, lol: You meant to say C&C3 and said TS instead. TS != C&C3. There's no "zone troopers" in TS. Regarding Mobius, sure, he's better than he was. I still don't see why the game needs even more dedicated anti-vehicle infantry. Once "snipers" are reduced to actually being snipers, rocket soldiers, Gunner, LCG, SBH, Mobiusdoza, PIC/Railgun will be utilized more as people won't be able to snipe a good half of the vehicles in the game anymore. Hey look at that, I just made Renegade fun again! Renegade was never designed with 3v3 in mind. The original game design was meant for 24 players. Also, the reason aircraft are OP in Renegade when their armor is buffed has nothing to do with the units being intrinsically OP by their nature of being able to fly. It was, and always has been that they have unlimited chain-gun ammunition, unlimited missiles, and that their missiles were garbage against vehicles compared to the chain-gun. There's also the point I keep bringing up that people seem to ignore: The balance as it exists now is flawed. Had the game been successful (and had WS pulled their head out of their ass 12 years ago), there would've been tons of balance tweaks over the years and there'd be flying maps with full bases that had aerial defenses. The game as it exists now is about 25% of what it was supposed to be. 15% if you include all of the terribad bugs we just grew accustomed to. RenX doesn't have to be that way. There's a whole generation of potential players out there who aren't used to this boxed-in thought process older players have, where "ramjets r teh aa countar!!1" because reasons and furthermore comma.

I'm not comparing it based on realism or BF4, FFS, read the rest of what I've written and it's obvious that I'm not doing that in any way whatsoever. I'm mentioning that other FPS games have counters for helicopters that happen to be exactly what RenX's are: anti-aircraft missiles and heavy weaponry. Sniper rifles don't fall into that category. That isn't their role. We don't need another AV unit. We already have Raveshaw/Sydney for that purpose. TS didn't have special AA infantry. They had rocket soldiers, useful against air and ground. There was no magic sniper rifle that destroyed aircraft from across a map. SFJake: Artillery and MRLS are weak as hell if hit by rifle infantry, tanks, rocket launchers, PIC/Railgun, et al. There's absolutely no need to keep this ridiculous level of damage versus seven different vehicles. For what the Artillery and MRLS do, they ought to be more expensive anyhow (TD prices, probably, or something similar - at least 600 for the artillery and 800 for the MRLS) due to how much field control they can project. "dealing with them from afar" is also terrible logic. MRLS/Artillery are *designed* to strike from afar. They're not designed to be up in anyone's face. Making their counter a hard-to-hit infantry unit with massive damage completely negates their purpose in the game. If MRLS/Artillery need to be rebalanced to have a lower damage potential, I'm fine with that too.

So add another ramjet in there, or two more - now you have concentrated fire on airborne units, making them useless yet again. They can't leave their base. They can't help. They become 900 credit coffins that do nothing but take damage. That's awesome fun right there! Okay, your logic is terrible. Let's get that out of the way. Popularity doesn't mean that the unit should be given free-reign over light vehicles and air units and all classes of infantry. That's what your point is. You actually said that. Here's the effect of that logic: "snipers" destroy all infantry classes. They also destroy Hum-vees, Buggies, MRLS, Artillery, Apaches, Orcas, and Transport Helicopters. That's seven vehicles they utterly dominate and every infantry class they can completely shit on from a distance. You're giving one unit the ability to do so many things in comparison to any other unit that they then become the go-to unit for most people to use, assuming they don't want to get picked off at long range. This is a self-reinforcing cycle. The better you make "snipers", the more people will use them. The more they use them, the more the game becomes about "sniping" and less about team play with a variety of classes. All it takes is game-play balancing to fix most of these glaring problems with Renegade/X. Nobody wants to do it because "sniping" was the way it was always done, and people don't want to lose their crutch and learn how to play. You can argue otherwise, but it's pretty obvious that it's the case. There's a plethora of other units in the game, but they're ineffective compared to "snipers" who just wreck everything they come across that isn't a tank. If they're going to be snipers, then make them be snipers. Stop allowing them to dominate the field. Put them into a niche role that they fill in every other farking game in existence. If I go play BF4, I don't get sniped out of the sky by some kid 5,000 meters away who keeps pegging my chopper in the wheels. There's other counters in the game, just like there are in RenX, but the development team has to put in the effort to make them viable. Part of that includes forcing snipers into a role where they actually, you know, focus on infantry instead of focusing on everything.

This is a problem? Shit, my copy of Opera (web browser) is using 1.5 GB of my 16 GBs of RAM right now - mostly because I have 62 tabs open.

Comparisons to TD aren't moot because you say so. A lack of building construction and having fewer structures doesn't mean the core gameplay should be abandoned. I'm surprised you're even attempting to argue that point because the obvious counterpoint is that repair guns more than make up for the difference in repair speed from TD to Renegade. In TD, repair speed is dependent entirely upon automated repairs once you assign a repair team to a structure. IIRC, Engineers would fix them completely by assigning the Engineer to the building. You couldn't tell five Engineers to repair one building and keep it intact against a siege of eight Light Tanks. The core gameplay is there, it's just adjusted somewhat - and that doesn't mean that more aspects of TD can't be incorporated. Renegade itself would've been a pretty close replica of a TD FPS had Westwood not been completely incompetent when they developed the game, after wasting four years with the initial version of Renegade only to abandon the small amount of work they did when EA pressured them to release something. Everything I've mentioned prior in the thread jives with the core gameplay of C&C, where Flame Tanks deal more damage to buildings and infantry and are therefore countered primarily by vehicles - which makes them a priority threat, even more than now - but they're hampered by close combat requirements. I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to do this. I've made a custom map where Flame Tanks had no turret, did tons of damage to buildings and infantry, but weren't as amazing against vehicles due to the lack of turret - as in TD. It was one of the highest rated maps in Renegade and I've had many people ask me to recreate it in RenX, and I plan to keep every change I added and push it farther.

Define "some", because when I see "I think they should damage them" I immediately hearken back to the days of Renegade where people were happy with the damage that the 500 credit sniper rifle did - which was still insanely strong versus helicopters. If they hit for you two points of damage, sure. I can live with that. If they hit me for 10 points when I have 150 points of health, that's still far too much and it encourages them to stop attacking infantry and focus on destroying helicopters. And it looks like I'm right, because by the time I finished reading your reply you already fell back into the tired old thought process of "snipers are the ONLY counter!" They're not. Did you miss the part where I mentioned that helicopters are weak versus: Rockets, automatic gunfire, SAM Sites, AGT rockets, Mammoth rockets, MRLS, PIC/Railgun, et al. If people actually have to learn how to play again by not simply fielding tons of snipers and engineers, and instead actually bother with putting out a mixed team that has rocket soldiers and other AT/AA units, it will only improve the game. Diversity is great. You should try it sometime. Sometimes it has to be forced by gameplay design, such as preventing helicopters from being damaged by sniper rifles. Otherwise people will continue to fall back into the same thought process and will never change how they play.

Basically, that - unless you're skilled enough to live long and prosper. Most people weren't. I knew the maps inside and out and I could compete against almost anyone with my Orca. The Apache was definitely worse due to its awkward gun position and the fact that it only had a 50m range, half of what the Orca could shoot to. SFJake: I don't see why they wouldn't change it. The objective was to improve Renegade, not just recreate it with all of its shitty bugs intact. They already have SAM Sites on some maps, which is something no Renegade map (Outside fan-made ones, or the properly working ones I put on my Fjord map) had at all. All they'd need to do is make it so that the Obelisk doesn't attack airborne units, and that SAM Sites do. Then make it so that the AGT has no guns, and scatter Guard Towers across the GDI base to add in the additional firepower from the AGT. Once that's done, remove "sniper" damage to light units or severely minimize it. Viola. The game plays tons better and marginally useful units (Buggy, Hum-vee) become much more effective and aren't completely useless by mid-game. Shit, add Helipads in too - that ties in more with the balancing aspect, because if you hate aircraft so much you can simply destroy the pad and remove the ability to purchase the damn things. Which also coincidentally makes a hell of a lot more sense (C&C wise, and just common sense) than seeing a Weapons Factory spit out a helicopter or a C-130 shit out an Apache. Reisrazor: Why should "snipers" damage vehicles at all? Their focus should be taking out infantry. That should be all they do. Every other class has specific roles. "Snipers" don't. All they'd need is a repair device and they'd be the best unit in the game, instead of second best. I don't disagree that helicopters should be easily destroyed, but not by sniper rifles. Rockets, automatic gunfire, SAM Sites, AGT rockets, Mammoth rockets, MRLS, PIC/Railgun, et al. Those should be the primary threat to airborne units. If we go back to C&C, though, airborne units weren't particularly amazing. Apaches were arguably terrible against anything but buildings and infantry, and Orcas missed their target if it was moving. I don't think they should do absurd damage, but they should be able to fly to a Helipad and rearm a limited amount of ammunition that does good damage.

Of course it didn't, because the n00b cannoneers didn't want to give up their "I win" button. I'm not saying this as someone who simply flies Orcas when they're available - I primarily use a sniper in the game when I'm not flying, and I can easily destroy any flying thing that comes across my path. Why bother using a rocket soldier to do it? The "snipers" are so ridiculously effective that they make everything else pale in comparison.

The only good thing that came of having grossly overpowered sniper rif... I'm not even going to finish that sentence. It's making it sound like being able to damage air units with sniper rifles makes sense at all. Let's rephrase: The only good thing that came out of Westwood's sloppy air unit implementation was that there was a steep learning curve to flying anything in Renegade. I quickly learned how to destroy many 1k snipers at a time by flying alongside the wall next to the road and praying there wasn't anyone watching from the opposite side of the map with another 1k character. I'd then hide under the bridge above the Tiberium field and repair any damage that I took while standing in the field to see if SBH were approaching, then I'd push the Orca/Apache into the roof of the bridge to have the camera clip into it so I could see exactly where the 1k snipers were standing. I'd fly through the gap in front of the field, come up behind them, and either gun them down or land on top of them before they could react. It didn't always work, but when it did, I'd rack up many kills in the game and never want for credits. The fact that I had to avoid actually *playing* the fucking game, and instead focus on the bridge campers so I could live for more than a half second is a testament to how broken Renegade's game mechanics were - and I find it obnoxious that we're seeing the same gameplay mistakes perpetuated here in the successor.

The primary purpose of any sniper is to destroy infantry. It was never intended to be an anti-armor unit, much less an anti-air unit. As I've stated many times prior, the only reason "snipers" are used against aircraft is because Westwood didn't have enough time to finish the game properly. So all we're doing is continuing broken game mechanics by allowing "snipers" to attack air units. It makes literally no sense in context of C&C gameplay, on top of what I've mentioned. Can you actually defend "sniper" damage versus vehicles? I mean, I've had this argument for years. Not once has anyone actually explained why (outside of LOL REALISM IN AN UNREALISTIC GAME) snipers should be anti-vehicle and anti-aircraft. No other unit is that versatile in terms of damage-dealing. I can be out in the field and single-handedly perform the task of three different units with ease. And your cost argument falls flat when you look at units like Mammoth Tanks, which cost 500 credits more than any top-end character yet "snipers" can't damage them well enough to bother shooting at them. Is your argument really "My unit costs 100 credits more, therefore my unit trumps yours"? If so, that's a really bad talking point and has nothing to do with game theory. Air units should be far more useful and versatile than they currently are. As more people become versed in how easy it is to destroy them, you'll see groups of 1k characters running around "sniping" aircraft out of the sky before they can leave their base, from the relative safety of maximum view distance - where they can't be retaliated against and have plenty of time to find cover before the aircraft can approach them. That isn't balanced. It hasn't been balanced for 12 years.

Remember, it's Nod, not NOD.

Define "old times", because some of us have played Renegade since 2001.

That would be utterly ridiculous unless you applied it to every vehicle with visible windows, and then you'd have to have a physical version of the driver that you could actually shoot at. It might be interesting, but it'll more likely lead to people being shot out of their vehicles and having them stolen constantly. Why would you need two different weapons to do what one weapon already does? Rocket infantry can already lock-on to anything IIRC. There's no need to add anything else in terms of infantry. Just remove sniper damage versus aircraft. Add in SAM Sites. Add Guard Towers with automated guns on every map that use machine guns, and take the guns off the AGT and have it be the only AA defense that GDI has. This adds another layer of balance (and keeps consistent with C&C95) by having GDI's main defense be both anti-air and anti-ground, while Nod maintains anti-ground capability but loses AA capability if they lose their SAM Sites.