Hi, there
This is my first post so bear with me.
I been playing the C&C Generals for 15 years on and off and its expansion, Zero Hour and the Mods Rise of The Reds (ROTR), 1.8 and 1.85 with patch 1.86. Recently, my Origin game provider got automatically updated and I could not start the either of the two ROTR's or the Zero hour anymore.
I tried reinstalling but it did not work. The only thing left to play, was good, old, Generals so I decided to play that a little. I remember first time I played Generals I did not like the way planes seem to be too vulnerable. I wanted to make them as awesome as they are on the battlefield.
So I finally discovered the Finalbig Program and was able to change the settings. I gave the planes twice the hit points, twice the speed and twice the range of their weapons and for bombers (Aurora and Stealth Fighter) twice the damage (done by their weapons).
I also increased the prices of all the planes (Raptor-5200, MIG-5000 and Stealth Fighter and Aurora 7000 dollars). I also changed the acquisition ranges (for planes and artillery) and ranges of Infernal Cannon, Nuke Cannon and Tomahawk Launcher. The last thing I changed was range and acquisition range of Patriot base defence, missiles.
I also decreased the damage of Anti Aircraft (AA) guns to half and decreased their armor to half of what it use to be. It always seemed silly to me that a Raptor can take out an armored tank in a single pass and can not take out, basically, a thinly armored truck with AA on it.
I disabled all the mass destruction General Powers, like Chinese artillery and Thunderbolts and so on (including rebels, basically everything that can magically hurt the mass of units, there are not that many units in C&C Generals anyway and you need some targets for those planes!).
Finally, I found the patch that disables all the SuperWeapons, which I wanted to do for 15 years, in basically all C&C games! (Let me play the game like a turtle if I want to!).
I gave myself a 100 000 dollars, in order to do what I had in mind including buying most of the defences I wanted to make and to make the game more about playing and less about waiting for the resources.
All this particular modding, was done in mind in order to make it more realistic and to play a large map (like Whiteout), with Chinese fraction and USA as an ally (against 6 individual GLA). I would also make one of my (enemy) neighbours, USA, and defeat them early, so I can capture their Command Center. Then I could build line of Patriots base defence missiles, Gatling guns base defence and bunkers with missile soldiers, supported by Nuke cannons and Inferno cannons.
I would, initially, build only two airports with 4 MIGs and 4 Raptors (due to cost), to be able to project the power over the most important objectives (for example quickly killing the rebels trying to capture an oil rig), aid my ally (if necessary) and deal with AA guns and missile infantry on the move.
I left the helicopters at price of 1500 dollars, so I could have group of 6, ready to help out where is the most critical (when attacked), or destroy some of the supply dumps and oil rigs of AI (so-called Artificial Intelligence).
Then I can sit back and wait to purchase enough Aurora's to wipeout the bases in support of my allies ground assault, or simply do it myself (with Air bombing).
I would place 1 Raptor and one MIG, together, under control one, and so on until control 4, and use control 5-9 for two Aurora's per number. That way I had a multi purpose Air-Force, for all types of targets. (Otherwise under normal settings there was no room to build enough airports for the planes that you needed to end the game.) This way, room for two bases is just enough, for what you need to dominate the map.
On average, I would lose 4-6 units a game, while defeating 6 separate enemies. Now when computer attacks, on mass, he gets devastated by the powerful defensive line and artillery strikes (all firing now due to improved ranges and acquisition ranges), and then finally finishing them off with the Air-Force. These changes made it an awesome game, in my opinion.
There is only, two more things, I would like to improve on, in this particular setup and that would be to add an American Command Center in editor as my own (even though I am Chinese fraction), so I do not have to fight that first neighbour straight away, (without trying to really destroy him), but instead I can build a defensive line, where necessary, (it's too stressful trying to do all of this, while rest of the AI's is building up and suddenly attacks, while you are looking elsewhere - I hate losing units!).
Problem with this plan is, that I never used an editor before. I checked this site (labs and forum) and manual but the problem that I am having, does not seem to be listed in those places (I tried, could not find it, really
).
I did place the American Command Center, next to the area where my base should be and I saved it under MyWhiteout.map, but when I open the game, it is not listed under an official or unofficial maps.
I had the same problem with one of the maps I downloaded from the internet, but when I placed it in:
This PC\Documents\Command and Conquer\Generals Data\Maps (its Windows 10, there is no Mydocuments folder) and in the main directory of the game, it came out, under unofficial maps, just fine and I was able to play it.
There are two possible issues (that I know of), why, my new map, is not showing:
One is that I did not assign a proper team to the building making the map invalid (according to one unrelated post from C&C Labs) or I noticed that the file (unofficial map mentioned, that I downloaded from the internet), had actually 4 files with it, (.map, .tga, .ini, .str), while my map had only .map and .tga, files. It seems that building your own map is far more complicated than I thought.
Any help would be appreciated. (It is only adding one building to the existing map not actually building a map!).
Second thing, that I would like to do, is add a Spy-drone to Chinese fraction (instead of say: Red-Guard training). I tried to follow instructions from C&C Labs in regards to giving GLA, Chinese artillery (only applied to Spy-drone, of course), but it did not work. One of the steps listed, (as I remember it), is not present in the INI.big file (for Generals). So if someone knows, how to do this, it would be great to get the actual tutorial done.
Thirdly and lastly, does anyone know, how to get ROTR 1.8 and 1.85, working again, with the new Origin update? It use to be that you had to download a launcher-modifier-file, that made it possible to play ROTR's with Origin's Ultimate Version of C&C, but that does not seem to work anymore. Again, any help would be appreciated (specially one that works
).
Anyway, thanks for listening and I hope you can enjoy your Modding.
