pi_neutrino

I have never used used the official CDs for Generals. I don't even know what they look like. I never use No-CD cracks. I use CD images instead. For those of you who don't know what they are, they're basically a file composed of everything on one CD. Programs like CloneCD make them from CDs, and programs like Daemon Tools make the CD images think they're still CDs and in the CD drive. The file is kept on your hard drive. Daemon Tools makes a new drive letter on which the CD image is placed. Then you can just run the game normally. These aren't for those low on disk space. But they're incredibly useful.

I've had more ideas for fuel production - have small, slightly discoloured patches of ground signifying the presence of oil underneath. In this way, you can only build one oil derrick per source of oil. There'd be several scattered around the map. When you start the game, the rate at which you extract oil from the ground would be fairly high, and slowly run down over time - a bit similar to the behaviour of vespene geysers in Starcraft, but the running down would be a smooth inverse exponential curve, as opposed to a sharp cutoff, like what happens for the geysers. There would, in theory, be an infinite amount of oil from each well, but after long periods of time (several hours, game time) the output would be almost nothing. In this way, after this time, the game would basically come to a natural end, thus avoiding the huge standoffs you can get in Generals. Various game types could be based on just how long it'd take for the oil wells to deplete (from around half an hour for short, quick games to over a day for huge, epic games). There would be various assorted upgrades to boost output, like you said, Cygnus, and these would be things like boosts to the oil derrick pumping efficiency, fuel refinery construction, better vehicle construction so that they run on less fuel, etc. These would multiply the productivity of the oil derricks, but the output would continue downwards. I'm not sure whether the output should tend towards zero, or to some low value, not enough for vast stockpiles of oil to be collected, but enough for at least some elements of gameplay to still continue. And we need silos. Oil silos. Well, oil tanks. If they're attacked, there should be a chance they'd explode, showering burning oil everywhere. If an oil tank is fairly empty, there'd be a high chance of it exploding (it's oil vapour the does the exploding, not the liquid), but the explosion force would be moderate. If the tank is full, the chance of any one shot making it explode would be fairly small, but the explosion force would be huge. What's wrong with making ammunition? I realise it'd complicate the gameplay a bit, adding a fair bit of micromanagement, and it'd probably be hell to balance, but worth a try at least, is it not? Besides, ammunition explodes. A fully loaded tank would explode with the force of a nuke cannon shell. Adds a nice twist. And we need some means of putting vehicles in formations. It's annoying as hell selecting a blob of tanks to go somewhere, over featureless open terrain, and they, for some reason known only to themselves, decide it's just super to go in single file. Ugh. Good point about it being more difficult to perform missions when there's little or no base. Maybe missions of those types would be done using infantry. Or you'd be given a large stockpile of oil at the start, or something.

That's a pretty cool idea about an Evil American Empire. One characteristic of really good storylines of not just C&C games, but storylines of any type, is that their themes are usually hugely wide-ranging, involving most aspects of how people think. This'd touch on human nature, how we think, what our values are, why we have them, and maybe why others have the values they do. In a good storyline involving this empire attempting to take over the world, the story could also focus on the nature of evil and how it works. Plus there'd be lots and lots of damn great explosions and tank battles and things blowing up. Top stuff. I've been doing a bit of thinking of my own about how a future C&C game could work. Last week a friend of mine confided in me that he thinks all RTS games suck. After I picked up my jaw off the floor, I asked how he could sleep at night after making such a heinous and despicable accusation. His reasoning was that in RTS games, it's just too easy to make lots and lots of one unit, and do damn great charges to win games. There's no real skill involved. After thinking for a bit, I realised he acutally made a point. In Generals, who hasn't make thousands of, say, Technicals, to overrun bases by sheer numbers and blow the crap out of enemies? It can be delicious fun sometimes, but it just doesn't make for elegant games of skill and intelligence. Modifications can be made to an RTS to try to counteract this. Warcraft III does this, with varying success, by introducing a population limit. (Yes, I know Age of Empires, among other games, has done this years before, but Warcraft III is slightly more current). Personally, I find population limits to be a pain in the arse. They get in the way of a good game. Yes, I can see that they're necessary, in some senses, but they're still annoying. So I came up with a means of not having a population limit, but still retaining the essential aspects of actually having one. Give all vehicles fuel tanks. Allow me to explain. For quite a few RTSs, the resource types usually reflect what's required to construct the units in the game. So what could be done for a possible future C&C game is to have crude oil as the basic resource type. You'd pump it and sell it. As you ascend through the tech tree, you'd build refineries to purify it and raise the prices of oil. The money would be used to fund the construction of structures, and to fuel vehicles. In this way, it'd be one thing to build tens of thousands of tanks, but it'd be quite another thing to actually send tens of thousands of tanks into battle. Instead of just staying in one place, and not using any fuel, they'd be charging into battle, together using hideous amounts of fuel, and would deplete your stockpiles of it almost instantly. Only moderately sized attack forces would be able to be fueled continuously. If you saved up extremely large amounts of fuel, you'd be able to send in huge armies, but they'd run out of fuel quickly, grind to a halt, and be picked off by enemy forces. So basically, your continuous, operational army can only be as big as your fuel supply. I've had other ideas, involving producing ammunition as well, but that'll do for now.