Mystic~

I've not looked much at the new kill-cam yet, but I do appreciating knowing who, where and what killed me as it's all information I can use to improve or comment on enemy game play.

I like the new minimal clean look and feel and I like the armour type description, but both gauges look very similar to each other. Based on the colour system created for building armour, maybe the bottom armour gauge should be the same light blue colour? If you were to add an icon, something like a more modern shield icon would look clean and more simple than the ambiguously shaped armour vest. The cross is just so easily recognisable as a medical/health symbol and helps scan process information quicker. If I asked for one Renegade Christmas change, it would be to move the (credits, cp, mines and vehicle stats) from above the compass and onto the bottom row again, either centre-bottom above the team logos, or either space either side at bottom centre left or bottom centre right. My eyes will do less darting around and it's easier to see missing mines, when you can apply a buff, and so on. I take your point about the logo bar and upper screen cluttering, maybe I'll get used to this here. Overall I think I like many of the changes, so please take my first post as constructive feedback and not see it as a negative I dislike everything post.

So here's my first feedback. What I like: Hiding the score table Replacing text labels with icons (credits, cp, vehicles, mines) The separation of chat messages from event status updates I think I like the kill feed positioned top right I like the additional needles and direction markers on the new compass What I don't like: The previous interface looked big and friendly, easy to decipher information Too many elements are becoming vertically stacked (compass with stats, veternacy pts and stamina above health and armour & the gun icons above the ammo gauge) The expected or natural feeling placement of certain default items has been lost (chat messages, player and team inventory stats and kill feed) I still prefer the round circular compass shape more I still prefer the old circular Stamina gauge (circle bars, just looks more visually interesting) I still prefer the weapon icon showing side by side with the ammo gauge My recommendations: I think the chat messages need to go higher and just underneath the event updates The GDI versus Nod bar with the time and points I feel should be moved from bottom middle to top middle of the screen (global game settings) The team and player stats (credits, cp, vehicles, mines) - this was all quick and useful information to see bottom centre, per previous HUD. Can they fit on a single line, or go where the team logos are, but with the new icon format? The icons I think need to be all aligned on the same side for consistency as it makes processing the information much easier. Keeping the Plus and Vest icons next to the Health and Armour metres - it just makes this very obvious without having to read a label. White team chat text for the commander is not obvious enough - almost needs to be neon blue. I still think the compass needs an outline to separate mini-map from underlying terrain background. The Vote text doesn't need to all be in UPPERCASE and placing lots of items in [square parenthesis] I think is creating information/screen clutter. I rarely use the square centre tiles - if they are buildings remaining, I'd rather see this information on the (M) information screen. Maybe this is clutter that could go? There's a lot of stuff I've probably not commented on yet, but I'm presently comparing two youtube videos with current and prior HUDs.

Thanks for posting a comparison, I need to play and use it more before giving feedback. Are you really based in Nottingham Fffreak? We should go for a beer or something if so.

Does anybody have a screenshot with the old HUD placed side by side that can be compared with the new one? Thanks.

Well the sad thing is, if they had waited a little longer and I had got my attention away from typing I'd have eventually given the move out order and I'd have been able to apply a buff power alongside them, even without this it almost worked, but I wasn't able to follow it other than on the mini-map and I ended up out of position killing people in the long tunnel instead anyway when I did leave. They clearly expected me to be following them, but the fatal mistake was someone else attempting to wrestle control of issuing orders, whilst I was typing, whilst facing a wall console or something and still questioning what cp we needed. This seemed to piss them off and I suddenly became the commander who lead the attack on destroying the Nod Refinery to a great inconvenience for them. After this ungrateful attitude, I switched sides and we won. I've had loses where people have said as open feedback, "If you had listened to the commander xyz rush would have worked", I don't mind this as much when I'm commanding. I enjoy winning and I can't stand people who complain or engage in power plays, especially when they're not prepared to communicate their problems or they wouldn't have taken the role themselves in the first place, basically it's a lot of back seat passive commanding believing they can do better in the moment. It's also usually the angry screaming people whom initiate the vote out option, or elect themselves (same thing). I might buy the audio book for that recommendation, gives me something to listen to at the gym.

Thanks for the tips, I'm finding I do most of these things now anyway. I'm probably least habitually aware of missing mines (as commander) or harvesters and I think others in the team should be able to have some sort of neutral command-controls for these things. Islands is basically, do we vehicle rush or do we infantry rush, and if so, what infantry... Before I was winning/losing almost 50:50 percent of the time, I find if I vote in late because nobody else wants to take it, we often lose as the early game can be so important. But as I say, I was putting a lot of effort into that game and I considered winning still a possibility, and to be voted out under those conditions was really silly and irritating. I'd like to suggest being able to have some sort of 'fixed term' during a game for the commander role so someone can't be so easily removed based on a handful of people's opinions. I didn't see anybody else do a single thing better after I was gone. With 32 people all in the team, I think there were at least 2 other planners attempting to organise things and using vote rather than letting me use the commander prompter. I like the previously discussed Captain's or Sub-Commander idea, but no idea if this is really being implemented or not. My own tip: I use /R to state the central goal - Rush meeting @ Bar and the I place /C for adding additional information like "The target will be Hon" / "Bring Gunners" or whatever and the messages will appear under each other. And then I use the arrow keys to keep cycling through and re-showing them so there's always a long R message on screen and a few quick C messages repeating. With this I think it's hard for people to go wrong. I don't do the "Rush gathering at hon!! 3 of 10" anymore, this always seemed to be ignored. @Silent I don't agree with much of what you said, it was challenging and I was having fun up until the douche called a vote. Your attitude towards the type of situation I described is very dismissive and seems to bypass basic human emotion, maybe you can just ignore all of this, but then why even bother putting in any effort if you don't care any longer? I can do this when I'm new to a game and learning so I don't get angry for either my own mistakes or being killed over and over or attacking people personally when they kill me. But there are things I don't want to just accept or tolerate. This part will sound a bit odd, but I'm aware the mind constantly projects a holographic/psychic reality we all inwardly live and experience. Even though we all live in different physical locations and countries, in this mental space we're effectively grouping together without constraints of time/space. We get our thoughts, energy and emotions from here, but equally I don't want to hang around certain people and become drained and take on physical stress I have to meditate out.

Is there some sort of solution to make doing public commanding less toxic? I want the experience so I can get good enough thinking on my feet so maybe I'll feel competent enough to command a weekend PUG game without fearing I'm going to ruin everybody's fun by not being fit for the position. I had a good game of Islands going on this evening, I was commanding against another player (I don't remember his name or usually recognise him), and it felt like it was equally matched for a while until we took the Nod refinery down by a GDI tank wave with a cp offensive power. Later Quincy joined the game on the opposite team and he took command of Nod, which I thought made things somewhat unmatched in commander skills, but okay, I'll stick with it. I tried a mid-game infantry mobi rush through tunnels but we were spotted by a single flame thrower and it was rather futile at the other end as they were very prepared; should have waited or redirected to field. Quincy managed to get our weapons factory down to almost half health with an SBH infiltration with a few other team members. By the time our cp was saved up again for another plan, I was accepting ideas from the team. I rejected some zany plan of APCs filled with rockets by Kira who seemed to be insisting we must lose the field in order to free capacity to use the tunnels, but I know what happens as soon GDI gets base locked on this map. I agreed on someone's idea contribution to hit the Airstrip and we were prepping mobius again. I was waiting for 1400 cp thinking at first this was what we needed and even said "wait for cp" and realised late that defensive power was the idea which was only 1200 cp and followed up with a "nvm" in the chat after remembering. Whilst I'm still typing into chat boxes communicating somebody else takes it upon them self to prematurely lead the rush off and everybody else follows like sheep even though their commander is not with them. By the time I've realised what they've done, they're on their own at this point, I'm so far behind still at base and out of position. They did some good damage anyway, but failed to destroy the building. After re-spawning, someone else exasperatingly types "commander..." and then someone calls an out vote to get me out. Too Sexy For... I presume this was you. However many votes, maybe 10 out of 32, I was gone. Maybe I should have been the one to call a vote-kick to remove the person that started the rush early without their commander, unfortunately I didn't think to do this at the time. Now who's fault is this? I didn't issue any radio command that said "move out", you certainly didn't see me or a person with the "commander" label in your group and you didn't see /C Go! on your screen, but everyone went anyway. It's reasonable to assume that unless stated otherwise the commander is going to lead the attack, and if there's some intelligent players around you, they'll move in front so the commander doesn't get killed en route. Vote out behaviour like this makes me so angry I want to hurt somebody, in the past it's usually somebody who calls a commander vote because they want to use all the CP thinking they can magically make everything alright and in a pub game it doesn't take much for people to F1. People have no appreciation for how much energy goes into game strategy and keeping tabs on what's happening all over the battlefield. I felt like my whole contribution to that particular game at that point was invalidated and the people voting were all late joiners. There were no prior complaints or nobody took any effort to communicate anything clearly. I stuck around for the next rush, all that cp still available, and they did EXACTLY the same thing I had done previously as a failed Mobi rush to the Hon, so that wound me up even more. After this I was so angry I switched teams, despite already basically taking out our own refinery earlier in the game. GDI did more of the same and their rushes were all countered relatively easily despite what seemed like some heavy tank pressure at times. I noticed the GDI commander seemed to switch again between different players, possibly several times, for whatever reason. At the late game, a successful Dozer rush lead by Quincy finished off the Barracks and Weapons Factory in one rush and the refinery finally fell to artillery from the field. If somebody is 'THAT' awful, then sure, I agree, there needs to be some way of changing the commander, but I'm tired of getting a mid game vote out for really-fucking-stupid-reasons. I almost feel it should be down to a commander to pass on the role and say if they are tired, overwhelmed or lack of creative play etc.

I'm sorry to see any player leave the game, especially if it's due to an unresolved grievance. I don't know you particularly well, but I recognise the infamous name and often seeing you play alongside a pairing with player JPJ which had become common sight and something I've complained about a few times due to leveraged frustration of being killed over and over by highly skilled players and I don't consider myself a noob in this game, but I have average infantry skills. I don't typically like high frag snipers in a resources game like this, and my issue certainly it isn't anything personal. Certain other players also play a side by side style which also gets on my nerves, racking up kills. I agree with Agent that you are an easy player to pick out due to your frequent high kill numbers and the frequency in which you play at the same time as the other mentioned player. I do also complain about stacked teams in general when I see many PUG quality players and names all grouped onto one side that will inevitably lead to a quick-stomp game, and whilst the !requestmod function exits, I've rarely ever yet witnessed a team shuffle occur due to this reason. I agree with some other things you've said, maybe the stats should also display number of tanks destroyed in a given game to make it reflect that the game mechanics call for this being more than just an infantry character team death match. It's hard for me to notice what I should expect to change with the CQC mod, but I wonder if some sort of noob-friendly training-mode setting could instead be activated by way of an optional tick box using the existing menu that boosts their stats (and lists it so players can see it is being used) using some sort of honest honour system that then becomes automatically disabled after xx hours of play.

What were your in-game names, favourite servers or clans? I used to play a Firestorm on Euro Arena and American CTF, my highest accomplishment was probably playing for Daze before my account was hacked and compromised. A Spanish dude just had a go at recreating the basics and put it on Steam under the name Drain Live, released next month, it's not Nox, but similar, good for a fast inspired indie remake. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1092150/DrainLive/ Perhaps EA will get into more partnerships once they realise that the Westwood crew or Petroglyph had a winning formula and they will work together on more well funded and to become popular reboots ala Renegade.

Earth-breakers, haha, sounds like fracking... I hope what Majestic said about it just being a proof of concept is true. I saw they've already recycled C&C Universe into their 8-bit army games. I'd rather they recreate and remaster Renegade/Renegade-X if they get the necessary attention and approval, perhaps similar to how they got their hands back on their original IP for a remastering of Tiberian Dawn. I really dislike the cartoon feel of recent games, especially those explosions and neon guns. I've got a great idea for their next game, C&C Nox *cough*, real-time fantasy action RPG.

I have to admit this trend of curving MRLS rockets looks really cool, I still have no idea how people do it, and I agree it's quite annoying... it looks almost like dumb firing into the wind, a nice tactic perhaps, the artillery have a natural arc fire also which also makes them quite deadly. It's not exactly the same as base to base firing, artillery shells could be fired over rocks and land on buildings traditionally on maps like X Mountain and probably a number of others. Both Nod and GDI are guilty of entrance splashing on Field, it's just that GDI can now do a better job at blind targeting a building from the field. If Nod could control the power and range of their shots, maybe with a low-power secondary fire option, they could achieve something a little similar to this by having their shells fall shorter and at steeper angles, raining down. The football example, it's just like the game, shooting round something in order to score and win. Wait till you watch the artillery lobs.

Meanwhile:

I really like the terminal hacking idea, maybe an extra terminal in that corner everyone likes to hide behind in the refinery, if you captured a refinery or enemy silo in the RTS with engineers you also stole the credits equal to the amount of tiberium the building held, so maybe you steal half of everybody's credits. A new infiltrator unit based sounds both fun and useful to play.

It's sort of like buying a coffee in advance and saying someone homeless can take it later. Some people stock pile tanks during the game also, although depending on the map I find this a bit annoying if they are easily stolen. In this case, I'd perhaps rather see the person who picked up the weapon transform into said character. Not sure what limit you might add to prevent abuse, it is a bit of a strange suggestion, I think more people would support when destroyed, no high tier infantry in order to progress. I made another suggestion somewhere that for every character purchase made the player should get an extra re-spawn as the same character before having to re-purchase it to give people better value for money and play longevity. What about being able to revive fallen comrades or repair tank husks back to life?

Most of those sound far too frustrating to me, but I do like the idea of a short period multiplier increase for something like credits, damage, CP or VP earned (positive). Molotov cocktails would be funny if you could actually throw them at the enemy and they catch fire like a Patch grenade. Drunken aim filter (crate of beer), farm animal like a sheep/penguin (booby crate), gold cache (everyone on your team gets 1000$), cannon? (your character gets shot up into the air and you can parachute down again), stuck in a barrel (high altitude crate that rolls)... some feel a bit too cheesy.

I wouldn't support the common one's suggested, free rep tool, slow-down or smg - too many wasted crate opportunities when considering all the others that already exist. I like the idea of a free rare beacon and uncommon airstrike being added. I really hate the scrin abduction, timed self-c4 is funny but also irritating and the nuke seems really unfair and over the top, I'd ditch these entirely from the game. I'd not mind so much being victim to an airstrike or a fiend, because as someone said at least you have a chance with these.

If a neutral spy character cloned a tech or hot-wire I don't think it should come with all the C4 - maybe a default repair gun that looks real, but is counterfeit fake. I think the unit should be geared towards enemy spying, stealing a dropped/built vehicle, sabotage, assassination and maybe beacon placement. Maybe other units also have their character guns deal less damage. If the enemy team lost their hon/bar then it would make more sense under the new way a spy crate worked to only pick low tier infantry else stand out as obviously an enemy infiltrator/intruder. Vehicle crate unpredictability is interesting, but not giving Nod a mammoth tank within 5 minutes of the game. I don't think SBH should disappear from the game, but I've spoken about the idea of a stealth detection cp ability before to prevent the irritating need for people to constantly base scan and randomly fire everywhere, which spoils being able to use sbh in my opinion for the opposing side.

I agree with most of what Roweboat's and Ffffeak's ideas are if it were to become real. I really don't like the model used in the top screenshot, it's not rounded enough yet or not close enough to the original game, but it's really nice you're creating a map with one. I think passive repair would work just like a silo, ticking away at building armour repairs so that you don't have people running around the base just to repair 5% worth of splash damage or have someone like a rocket solider solo destroy a building given the time. We might hear less spammed or unnecessary "building needs repairs messages". If no power plant you get a long slow repair rather than a quicker repair, but not meant to replace a team of hotwires. Not sure if Harrison was suggesting that it heals small amounts of permanent damage i.e. back to full health or not. The building shield sounds quite desirable for both sides, whether only on one structure or the whole base might be a discussion point. The ability to slowly rebuild base defences would be useful, GTs, Sam sites and turrets that don't auto-re-spawn anyway re-grow in stages, something like old Warcraft building models. As it's the construction yard, I don't think it should influence anything outside of either building/re-building or repairs or base defence, the idea I liked from Svett was the idea of temporary barriers breaking away or base walls being destroyed and revealing new breach points. It would be cool to see the tech centre incorporated, becomes more important in choosing what your team perhaps upgrades tactically and could change the game play somewhat to become more interesting.

If you know Photoshop, re-create your favourite / or worst C&C maps from real life photos.

If I remember the spy in Red Alert correctly, it started off neutral but could take on the character form of anybody it came across by targeting it and changing Uniform like a Chameleon; this sounds a bit more tactically useful than just getting a random grenadier or something. We don't seem to get spy hot wires or techs anymore? I wouldn't change the SBH much, I'm not sure about their silenced uzi-pistol, but some sort of melee ninja take down might be more appropriate for anyone really being idle or typing too much.

Rather than actually play Field I made this.

I think this is something that affects the integrity of the game rather than it being a server side setting to mess about with.

Thanks for your input, is that down to something individual server owners would need to agree to change or is it something that can be developed enforced? I would still probably be annoyed at GDI getting a stealth tank or Nod getting a mammoth tank mid-game, which is why I suggest limiting a vehicle crate to either neutral or your own faction's vehicle choices only as it feels wrong to give the enemy team the advantage of your own factions unique strengths, even if it's random.

Apparently if you are rammed and the opposing tank has traction... read Gliven's response below for how to do this. I don't think anything other than another mammoth tank should be able to push a mammoth tank imo. It sounds like good player co-operation, I don't think what you're describing is a cheap tactic or something for someone to overly complain about, although I would be annoyed or frustrated at feeling 'shepherded', so maybe understand from his point of view if you were in the same position. The police use this tactic by the way to block cars from escaping. My biggest head-to-head tank dual gripe is when a medium tank manages to get jammed under the front of my flame tank and my barrels end up facing upwards into the sky rather than into their tank. I'd like to see the Devil's Tongue flame tank in this game, and perhaps those mincing rotas can do melee crush damage to tanks as well as flame damage so you literally have to move out of their way or face the consequences. My favourite guilty pleasure is getting a flame tank behind enemy front lines and then melting 3-4 MRLs all with light armour.