OfficerMeatbeef

This. Also, even a Ramjet will take multiple shots to down an aircraft, whereas that Ramjet character will be instantly killed by a single counter-snipe from a teammate following the very clear trail of those Ramjet bullets that are completely distracted by trying to take down the aircraft.

I don't see the problem here at all. A Flame Tank will get destroyed vs a single Mammoth long before it can do any substantial damage if it has to close any reasonable distance. If there's anything else supporting the Mammoth, it will probably not get more than a few feet. Even if it does get up to the Mammoth, if the Mammoth is properly supported it will probably still win out. That "rather short flamethrower range" isn't just some minor detail you can handwave away; a Flame Tank is a relatively large target with moderate speed that is completely outranged by every single other vehicle on either side. If it manages to close the distance against all that fire, it should decimate whatever was foolish enough to allow it to, end of story.

A single Ramjet-carrying character, or two 500-credit standard snipers, cost more than a single Orca/Apache, though. A standard sniper is basically all a good sniper needs to decimate infantry, so the Ramjets need to be able to do their job of long-range destruction of light armour to be worth the cost. Rockets work well against flyers, sure, but at long range they are easily avoided by a competent pilot, as there's both the travel time and the audible warning of the launch. They can't do the job of effectively actually killing a pilot at range, and they shouldn't because they're so cheap. That's the Ramjet's (or multiple sniper's) job.

Yeah, still not sure why this isn't happening. The capability is almost surely there for the server list to not show Beta 1 at all anymore (as it worked fine for the maxplayers limit) and to display a notice about Beta 2 being available, and even several days later there are clearly still many people unaware the new version is out, as your own example indicates. They are likely occasionally trying to join a server, getting dumped to the menu without knowing why, and moving on until they find one that happens to still be Beta 1. You might be misunderstanding here. The auto-patcher won't make it so you don't have to download everything over again. The reason you have to download everything over again is because many of the changes were core parts of the game that changed it entirely. Some updates will require you to download a lot of stuff again, some won't. The auto-patcher won't change that, it will patch what needs to be patched just like the manual one. Also, yes, people are still getting crashes. That's why this is a test, and people need to be downloading and playing it anyway to get enough data for devs to discover why. This is the entire purpose of an open beta. There's no reason to be supporting people playing the first version at all I can see.

ok bye How do you do that though? More selection process for more people for more closed betas? Closed betas work fine for highly anticipated games from big known companies where there are hundreds of thousands of people looking to play it early, they're not stupendously effective for something that nobody knows about. Eventually you need to get a decent number of people playing a thing to actually test things, like the crash bugs which they've been quite clear never showed up in their closed, smaller-scale testing. And this is a test. It's an open beta. That means what it says it means, it's a work in progress that's more or less feature complete but needs to be tested for bugs. Do people really expect an entirely free passion project being worked on by a team in their spare time to have some kind of extensive QA team or something?

Hmmm, ok. Yeah, I've checked the uninstall for Beta 2 out and it also UAC-elevates, though I haven't had a chance to download the installer again so I haven't let the uninstaller complete. So it seems the most obvious difference here is that my account's admin and yours isn't, so that's something to start with at least. Hmmm, sounds like you did due diligence, certainly. To be clear, I'm not trying to accuse anyone here of incompetence or anything, just theorizing and trying to help figure out what went on. After all, all I know is we both ran what should have been the same uninstaller and clearly got vastly different outcomes. Do you recall if you altered the default paths for any part of the original install? Yeah, that is crazy. It really doesn't make any sense; even if the installer was set up to restart you automatically at the end (which, from some research, appears to be possible with the installer Ren X uses but it's not how it functioned for me, for sure) it would just do that, it wouldn't prompt you and I certainly can't see it closing other things while it waits to prompt you. Just bizarre all-around.

It doesn't, or at least shouldn't. It might prompt for that (I can't recall, and I don't have the installer available at the moment unfortunately) but I didn't restart after install and had no problems. Prompting for restart is a simple flag feature of Inno Setup, nothing more. I don't think it can even force a restart like you describe (shutting down other programs etc), though I could be wrong. But it certainly didn't for me. Where did you get this installer exactly? I'm starting to worry there may be a rogue version of the installer out there that's causing all these problems.

I literally don't even see that loading screen anymore, such that I forgot it even existed. Haven't seen it since like the first time I ran the game, it never appears at all. Does make me wonder if it could somehow be related to the crashes.

This is a very troubling thing! In fairness to the devs though, uninstalling the first beta doesn't seem to have affected my Start Menu at all. So they very well could have tested it and had no trouble. It seems to use a fairly standard uninstaller application. Not saying it doesn't suck though. But, ummmm, yeah... beta. We need to find out why this happened with you and not me, who's also running Win7 64-bit. Make sure to post about this in the bug report forum. Edit: Having dug deeper into my own situation, here's what I can provide: as the only account on the system, I'm admin. All my start menu stuff (including where RenX defaulted to) just goes in C:/ProgramData/Microsoft/Windows/Start Menu, my Users (Documents & Settings for XP) Start Menu stuff is pretty much dry. I haven't ever changed anything related to this in Win7, so it would seem to be the default? So I'd hazard a guess that this happens if you're on a system with multiple accounts, but then we run into the question of why it would happen, since from looking at the unins.dat for Ren X I see no indication it would delete anything but what it originally placed, like any other standard installer/uninstaller. As it didn't, in my case.

Yeah, I find it hard to believe that there's more or less exactly 40 people that want to play at most times but have to go for the one or two full servers. It's not helping that there are still many formerly usually well-populated North American servers that have yet to update, but it's mostly the eternal quandary of how to get an empty server to that critical mass where most people see it as a viable choice and start to join. I'm surprised the Beta One servers are still on the list at all, honestly. I guess I can't speak for the dev team, but I can't imagine they want anyone to be using it anymore; kinda defeats the whole purpose of a beta release if people aren't even playing the most recent revision.

When you say "can't rejoin any server" do you mean the joining fails and you get dumped to the main menu, or do you mean it just crashes every time? If it's the latter, yeah I definitely had it before Beta 2, though it's seemed to be more rare now though it's hard to say if that's just because I haven't gotten to play B2 as much. And the fact you have to wait a certain amount of time before it works again could very well suggest something to do with authentication causing a problem. Something else I just realized that I hadn't even noticed until I installed Beta 2: the loading screens? Like the ones that show Havoc running etc? I have never seen them again since the first time I loaded up Beta 2, and before that, likely the first time I loaded Beta One. I had completely forgotten they even existed! Are they literally supposed to only show up the first time you ever load a map in the game? If not, could be something else related to these mysterious crashes I suppose.

Sounds good. Did just have a crash where there were only 4 of us on server, never was more than that there, this one was immediately before new map loaded, ie. voting was done and audio/etc. stopped as if map was going to change but never did, when I alt-tabbed found it was crashed. I will try to be streaming more often and I'll make highlights when I run into a crash, hopefully that will help you all out some. These seems like an excellent observation! This would also very much coincide with how these crashes tend to happen immediately on start or immediately during map change. Mid-match crashes are much more rare for me. I will try to be more observant on this, but my feeling is I see this happen more often when I've already joined or tried to join another server. Also, I'm pretty sure I never get crashes loading a Skirmish, and in fact with Beta One I was finding that loading a Skirmish first sometimes seemed to help with getting on a server that was crashing immediately before. Maybe that was placebo, but it might be a helpful clue.

Are you dev folks still having problems reproducing these crashes? I'm finding it seems to be more frequent when joining servers that are at a high capacity, which would perhaps be tricky for you to replicate in testing. It seems to happen immediately prior to spawning; I'll see a bit of a building, the minimap will show me at the very top corner with no actual map terrain displayed. Maybe it's related to something to do with where people "spawn" before they are put on a team, or just how a new player is initialized? Just throwing out theories here since the crash logs aren't helpful for you.

In honour of Beta Two's release (and my first vid apparently getting to 1000 views when I wasn't looking) I'm finally posting my unit overview vids here in the Tactics 'n Strats section. These are meant to be a basic, informative & entertaining look at each of the units, so I don't get too crazy deep into too many advanced strategies or anything, but I still tried to work in some fundamentals where possible. The GDI Unit guide: zafA1uNZrKA The Nod Unit Guide: BAPbEh7oAH0 Vehicle vid will hopefully still come together sometime in the future, things have gotten a bit crazy around here lately.

Quake is great! Tactical FPS games can be great too! One is not necessarily better than the other, they each are trying to do different things and designed to make the player make different choices in given situations. Quake is about balls to the wall, always moving, straight up pure point-n-click skill. That's rad! Tactical FPSs are about more realistic, deliberate movement, where you're choosing how to balance your more effective movement options with still being able to deliver accurate enough effective fire. That's rad too! Man, it's weird nowadays to see tactical FPSs be the "noob games" or "casual" games or whatever pejoratives people like to use nowadays when it was kind of the opposite back when games like Quake etc. ruled the scene, but I guess that partially speaks to how a lot of the big things people call "tactical FPS" nowadays.... aren't very tactical. They took the parts that were specific to tactical FPS design, sorta smashed them together with some Quake stuff, added XP progressions and called it a day. But I digress... I like the gunplay style of Renegade X. It's an interesting mix of arcadey and tactical, which is totally appropriate for something recreated from an FPS adaption of a classic RTS. I think there's a bit of room for something like iron sights to add a little bit of extra utility and choice to weapons that otherwise wouldn't otherwise have anything but "aim and hold down the trigger", like the carbine or assault rifle, without getting away from the core gunplay that makes this game (and its predecessor) so unique. I think the way they are in now is mostly ok, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for refinement. Here's an idea off the top of my head: another of the unique things about this game (and was very unique even back then) is how it doesn't bother to simulate bullet drop, which wouldn't really suit it I don't think, but still makes range an essential consideration by simply making each weapon's projectile travel on a certain difference before it ceases to exist. In the game, the shotgun isn't just poor at range because it spreads too much to do damage; its shots literally won't exist beyond its effective range! So what if we use the iron sights to play around with that a bit more here. Maybe firing from sights could make the shotgun spread more focused? What if aiming down sights for the Automatic Rifle/Carbine didn't effect spread so much as it gave the weapons a bit more range? The game is already arcadey and ridiculous enough that I don't think it matters if these are given fictional justifications, but I dunno maybe say something like "it's required to use the more precise aiming mode to allow the gun's advanced stabilization mechanism blah blah" whatever it's for gameplay purposes anyway. It would further emphasis that ADS in this game isn't meant to be the go-to way of dealing with most engagements, just an option when you want to be more effective at an opponent a bit further out than normal. Like I said, this is just an idea off the top of my head, it's not meant to be particularly well-thought-out or nothing, but it seems like a decent way to balance out the severe disadvantage aiming down sights gives you in movement penalty.

Sorry, got into answering that last one and forgot about this. Yep, absolutely. Totally workable. Seems like a good idea! As I said though, if you do this, it's essentially substituting "time" for "points". It's a nice option, it'd make for a good compromise between the two modes, it's more intuitive, but it still has the potential to last longer than a regular timed game and, thus, a timed game remains a valid play option for people with rigidly defined recreational schedules. Options are always good, though!

Of course they didn't, because they are not real entities and it is not a real war? We did, because we are players who have a limited time to commit to playing a game, so we have set an arbitrary time limit in which the results of the match will be determined. Yes, that is "ridiculous" in the context of what we're doing here, but it's a game and it's practical to do it so people with limited time can still enjoy it. And again, if they are truly "pounding the enemy into oblivion" as you say, they will win on points, so I don't understand what the problem is here. You're speaking like the enemy is literally getting points for losing. They're not, the system is designed so a more effective attacker still gets more points than an equally effective defender, so that even if they don't completely reach a decisive victory in the allotted time, they still win. If they don't, they lose. Defenders only have a chance to win against an effective attack by somehow managing to repel the enemy despite their substantial deficit in options. All other things being equal, a team primarily defending cannot get more points than a team attacking. As I alluded to, the points work as an abstraction to represent attrition. My fixed reinforcement example (and one I see you already thought through some) was primarily a way to illustrate that, by essentially making the limiting factor "points" instead of "time". This results in a situation where one team can run out of reinforcements/resources, instead of time, but otherwise it performs the exact same function: provides a fixed endpoint that will often occur long before a total victory is achieved, to make the game practical for people with lives to play. My hope was it would also be less abstract, so that one could understand "oh, right, this represents that the enemy may have destroyed a bunch of buildings, but they still ran out of people before they could destroy them all, so they did not complete the objective". Quite obviously, if they are out of people, as long as the enemy has even a single building left they still would win because there is nobody left to defend the other base. In the end, they were proven to be more effective. A time/point system is simply a different, more convenient way to represent that for many people. A competent, even superior team can still make a mistake that loses them a building. Maybe they believe they have the upper hand, weigh the risks and push their attack a bit harder, commit a few more defenders to the attack and a single SBH with a nuke beacon who was hiding in the base for the last 15 minutes makes his move, manages to find a key spot a defender didn't realize (or hadn't had a chance to get back to yet) was short a mine, defend the beacon before the team with the upper hand has a chance to pull back, and scores a building kill. Should that team really lose the match when time runs out because they are down a building, even if they were absolutely dominating the enemy beforehand, because a single member of the enemy team was able to capitalize on a good situation? If you answer to that is yes, I'm afraid we'll simply have to agree to disagree, because I don't see a way to reach a compromise that will satisfy us both. Well, except that the compromise is "play marathon". Again, if you enjoy marathon and it's how you think the game should be played, that's cool. But are you trying to argue that the game outright shouldn't be playable with a time limit? That's simply not practical or even desirable for many people.

Again, the enemy already gets substantial amounts of points for damaging a building to the point of destruction. The enemy gets a penalty of not being able to make a portion of those points back in repairs, on top of the substantial deficits that come with the loss of the building itself. Is it really necessary to FURTHER penalize them by losing even MORE points at the end of the round? Which is what this would functionally do, even if it is supposedly a "bonus for extra buildings left over"; obviously both teams start with the same number of buildings and thus will receive the same number of points at the end if they have the same number of buildings, they can only LOSE these points by losing a building. I'm not saying you can't argue that yes, they COULD be further penalized, but I personally don't see it as being wise. Well, no. The players kind of did. Again, the time limit is for the sake of playability, because it's still a game. But it you want, you can see it instead as an abstraction of what was mentioned before: the point of attrition at which one team no longer was willing to or capable of continuing the battle, and so it ended. Again, instead of a time limit and points, the game could start with a fixed number of reinforcements and resources for each team, and go from there. Higher tier units could cost more reinforcement points when lost, just like how they award the enemy more points in the current system. Or more intuitively, they could cost more reinforcement points when spawned, instead of losing points when lost. Damaging buildings could reduce reinforcements and resources, while repairing them could refund a portion of them (but NOT ever more than they started with) and destruction could immediately cut some percentage from your reinforcement/resource pool, but a smart team would then still be able to win by using their remaining resources and reinforcements than the enemy, even if they are down several buildings, just like in the current time/point system. After all, even if the enemy has left you hanging on to a single building and theirs are pristine, if you're the only ones left alive, surely you're the victor? It would be more or less functionally the same though obviously a completely different design and experience for the player. Essentially, it would act as a middle ground between the existing gametypes, not providing the concise convenience of a timed game but not sharing the potential weakness of a marathon game dragging on indefinitely, since eventually resources have to run out. This would be a valid way to play if designed properly, just like marathon and timed games are both valid ways to play depending on your preference and simple realities of what you can budget for time-wise.

Dang, some real detailed work on this, good show. Yeah. These numbers are obviously helpful, but they aren't everything, and they don't include very important factors such as max range or stability. Patch might do more theoretical SUSTAINED damage to armor over time, but you have to keep in mind that his rifle has a substantial amount of kick, so you aren't going to hit with every shot at full auto at anything but very dangerously close range. Similarly, you could expect the Volt Rifle to be more effective than even the PIC/Rail because you have to get so much closer to make use of it. Hah, I don't know. It's still CnC, if we can have a rifle that shoots explosive rounds, a flak cannon, a guy with a tank full of radioactive fictional mineral goo he sprays on people, and people with sniper rifles that shoot bullets with jet engines in them, I think there's room for a credit-purchasable explosive pistol. Have you actually given that Heavy Pistol a spin yet? It's pretty fun, and you can immediately tell it's shooting explosive rounds very similar to the Tactical Rifle's. Edit- Oh, question for the OP, don't see it in the chart: during your tests, did you notice if the flamethrower and chem trooper take less damage from explosives than in the original? Relatedly, does the chem trooper take less damage from Tiberium-based weaponry?

I won't speak to the general design, it's not a forté of mine and I just haven't had enough time on the map in proper competition anyway. But I think it looks really nice! The dusky sunset thing is cool! One of my favorite things about this game is how every single map currently in the game looks so completely different from the other in nearly every way, not just textures but lighting, skyline, time of day, even weather effects. It's fantastic, and props to the mappers on that.

Preeeeecisely. It can become a war of attrition, but part of the design is the enemy can never completely run out of reinforcements (units) because you can always respawn with a base kit, and a time limit game won't generally last long enough for morale to completely sap such that one team gives in completely. Hence, points. I mean, like you say, these are big, important parts of the game design. We kinda need to discuss them in long, detailed ways, because they're more complex than "Team A should always win if they have more buildings than Team B", and not doing so is precisely what leads to unconstructive arguments and generalizations like "I think points are fine, play marathon you jerk" vs. "you just want points, you are a pointwhore, marathon is a real mode for real players".

I am not sure of the exact points myself in RX at this moment, but barring some kind of massive scoring bug or oversight (which could very well exist, of course), I see no possible way it could be the case that performing defensive actions against a smartly attacking opponent could give the defenders any kind of point lead. If that is indeed the case, that's absolutely a tremendous failing and needs to be fixed asap. But we definitely need solid, undeniable numerical evidence, not just "my team had all the advantage but we lost whyyyyyy it's broken" even though, when you look at actual play, they actually squandered all that advantage. To be clear, I'm not saying anyone in the thread is saying something like that, just that is something I've heard in the past and it's something we need to keep in mind. Well-reasoned, but not entirely sure I entirely agree here at the moment. Airstrikes are pretty expensive (between a tier-2 and tier-3 character) for a one-time use. Coupled with the fact that it's not like they're some unavoidable superweapon; an enemy is given warning when one is coming in, and it's very possible for the entire thing to whiff if the attacking target is properly aware. I virtually never die to airstrikes unless I allow myself to get tunnel vision in a siege, for example, in which case absolutely I think the defenders deserves the full points. As they are now? Yeah, they're probably a little strong. But as the devs have said they're a priority as far as making them more visible and more reasonable to defend against (cover in the strike zone providing some reasonable protection, for example) I wouldn't necessarily want to make a claim they're too strong yet. Maaaaybe make it so a single strike can't quite completely destroy the heaviest (and thus slowest) enemy armor, but still too early to say I believe.

Alright, cool, now we're getting somewhere! We can have a real, reasonable discussion now, so let me get into why I disagree more deeply. Alright, so in your example, if you are damaging the enemy base but the enemy is able to mitigate that damage, you may not be directly able to destroy it. This is absolutely true. If this is a 1v1 match, this is a straight stalemate; the other person can't make headway, and neither can you. But the mitigating factor is that it's a team game. You pounding the enemy base is ensuring that the only thing at least one other member of the team can do is focus on repairing that structure. This means it is impossible for them to otherwise actively defend the structure, and certainly impossible for them to go out and mount an effective attack! Hence, why you will be getting more points for damaging than they will for repairing it: you are more effectively allowing the rest of your team to continue to press the advantage in attacking and decisively finishing them off! To put it another way: if you are able to continually pound the enemy base with arty with impunity but not make a permanent dent because everyone is repairing, this opens it up for the rest of your team to move in (smartly) and overwhelm the enemy with firepower, because they are now facing a team that is less able to actively defend by however many people are committed to repairing your damage. That's the very definition of tactical teamplay! Now the problem, of course, is that many times, random, bad public teams will not be able to do that. But part of the appeal of this game is precisely that it doesn't make such allowances for bad random play, like many other more "modern" games do, because any such changes or adjustments automatically lower the depth and skill inherent in the design. A bad attacking team who manages to (by brief flash of genius or more likely a very risky maneuver that happens to get lucky and pay off) pull off a building destruction or two, and still gets soundly thrashed in overall material losses by a better defending team, will, and should, still lose. Alright, that's totally cool. If points don't work for you, if you won't be satisfied with anything less than total decisive victory, then absolutely that's your right, and Marathon is the choice for you. I think most people would not be satisfied with the majority of timed matches ending in straight ties, of course. So let me try to explain why more buildings left than the enemy when time runs out is a less than optimal solution, and points work better, and maybe you'll be better able to enjoy a non-Marathon game if you just think about things a little differently. First of all, I honestly believe the trouble is you're thinking of a timed match the wrong way. For point of argument: a given 30-minute timed match that ends with time-out and a point win is not an equivalent to a Marathon match that goes, say, goes exactly the same for 30 minutes as the timed match (again, just for argument's sake) and ends precisely 30 minutes later with a team reaching final destruction. It is equivalent to grading each team for the given slice of time (that first 30 minutes) that proceeds the final destruction. Obviously, you don't think a match needs to end when a single building is destroyed in Marathon, right? A competent team who loses a building still has a chance to fight back. But the consequences of losing even a single building are so catastrophic and nearly instant (beyond the time it takes for the team to lose whatever units it had already pulled before they became no longer available) that their offensive capability is immediately weakened such that in almost all cases, it only makes tactical sense to bring the fight back to their turf where they can regroup and try to find a way to even the score. The thing is, for all but the absolute best shit-in-order clan, reaching the point where they can realistically mount that comeback is going to take time. Very possibly, more time than they have in a timed match. That's how devastating a building loss is! This is what the point system allows. It compensates for the fact that, if a team does fail in a defense and lose a building, they aren't necessarily out because there's insufficient time left. It provides the reasonable estimation that, 9 times out of 10, a team that performs better all around during the time period of the match, but lost a building partway through somehow, will likely, given enough time, be able to turn things around and win. Since we cannot predict a final outcome that will never happen because of the time limit, we can instead grade each time for their performance in the time allotted. This is, I argue, the only fair and reasonable way to handle this situation. Making it so that a team just loses if they have less buildings than the other team when time runs out only makes sense if losing a building had no other impact on the team than that they were down a potential victory point when the round ends. But buildings AREN'T just "+1 Destroyed=+1 for Enemy team", they're more complex than that, and we have to treat them accordingly. Losing a building means the team has already lost a huge portion of their offensive options, given the enemy a large advantage in points, and perhaps most importantly lost the most important resource of all: time. I'd suggest that's more than punishment enough, we don't need to punish them further and make it so they're guaranteed to be unable to win nearly every match at this point, because they just won't have the time to correct their error. And it's important to note: at no point does losing a building ever give a team any sort of advantage. It is ALWAYS a tremendous setback in every respect. A team who is actually attacking smartly and effectively and using their substantial unit advantage, not just taking their advantage and stupidly squandering it by tossing wave after wave of their superior units into the meatgrinder, will STILL win on points no matter how effectively the enemy defends, even if they are not given sufficient time to finally overwhelm them. Ok! I can't make you like Timed over Marathon, and I wouldn't try. But I hope maybe my arguments can at least give you a bit more appreciation for the system and why I believe it works.

Agreed fully. Bump up the radius of effect of the flame, maybe make it so that radius persists for just a liiiiiiittle longer at point of impact (to create the "wall of flame" effect) so that it is simplest to consistently hit with (again, only at close range) and I bet the flamer will be fine. The shottie will still beat it at the same range, as long as you are able to aim more accurately than the person firing the flame.

The flamethrower should probably be more effective than any of the free weapons (except the shotgun) at killing infantry at close range. But it should definitely be more effective at killing vehicles/buildings in its range than any of the other free Nod weapons. I think it's kinda close to where it should be, but a small buff does feel in order. I don't know if more damage is necessary, just some more area of effect might be right so it plays a role as a weapon where you don't do as much damage at close range as a shotgun per shot, but makes up for that in you not having to be as accurate. Basically, a shottie should always outplay a flamethrower given sufficient aiming skill, but otherwise a flamer will win out in consistent damage output and ease of keeping effectively on target/denying advance. This sounds about right to me. I pretty much agree with you, but we can't forget that the flamethrower is still a freebie weapon, while the Chem Thrower is the cheapest possible credit-costing unit. They can't be too amazing. If you want to see a fantastic flamethrower, you should check out Rising Storm: the Marines get the best-realized flamethrower I've ever seen in a game. It's spectacular and terrifying, but balanced by the fact that there can only be one or two per team, which obviously doesn't work in this case. It's Unreal Engine, also! Well, the chem thrower does turn people ...