Hey everyone,

In case you don't check the front page very often, you'll want to know that last week I had the chance to visit EA LA for the March C&C Community Summit.

What did we do? Saw a few presentations, and played a heck of a lot of C&C 3!

The impressions of the first night have already been posted, but the only C&C 3 meat for the first night was a few discussions we had about the lack of buildable walls and the right-click mouse interface.

Day two impressions will be posted later this week, which will include information about the singleplayer campaigns and skirmish. Multiplayer impressions will follow.

But right now, I'd like to give everyone here the opportunity to pick my brain about the trip and what I've learned. If you've got any C&C 3 questions, ask 'em here.


An overview of what I did:
- Played the first few singleplayer missions for both GDI and Nod
- Played on a bunch of different skirmish maps as all 3 factions (Scrin included)
- Saw a sweet Scrin video...
- Saw a demonstration of the XBOX 360 version of C&C 3 - a few neat features there
- Met Joe Kucan ("Kane")
- Met Dragon Dronet of the Renegade Effects Group - the guy who made all the props for C&C 3
- Held Kane's gun, which will be seen in singleplayer FMVs
- Learned about how they shot and made the FMVs, including video editing and sound mastering
- Participated in a big 1v1 multiplayer tournament - saw some pretty interesting strategies come out of that
- Watched a live demonstration of the "RTS as a sport" telestrator and observer system. Actually, I used the telestrator myself.
- Discussed EA's plans in terms of patching support
- Talked to C&C King of CNCNZ about the state of the community
- Discussed C&C 3 balance with AGMLauncher of GameReplays and noted a couple bugs that the game will ship with
- Enjoyed a proper 1v1 thrashing by Paul, winner of the TFD Biggest Command & Conquer Contest
- Spoke with Steppo, Chronojam, and Executive Producer Mike Verdu about what we can expect in the future in terms of patch support. We gave Verdu some pretty darn good feedback about the game.
- Got some info out of Aaron about what we can expect in terms of the World Builder and modding SDK support.


So ask away - this way you won't have to wait until later in the week to get your answers! I'll answer anything and everything that I can - hopefully my overview above gave you some ideas.

That will be revealed later in the singleplayer campaign, I imagine

I believe that counts as 5 questions

1. How was the Scrin, did you like the team?
I was afraid at first that the Scrin wouldn't fit in, but having played them they seem to fit in well enough. I mean, some of the GDI and Nod technologies are awfully futuristic as well, so the Scrin technology doesn't seem entirely outrageous for an Alien civilization. Although they do have the Wormhole and the Rift powers...

Playing the Scrin is pretty intuitive if you've played the other factions: their structures line up pretty similarly to their GDI and Nod counterparts, just with naturally alien names (Barracks becomes a Portal, etc.). Having said that, they definitely stand out as a faction. For instance, they have Buzzers that are almost like a swarm of bees. The Buzzers can come out of this particular defensive structure and pretty much shred enemy infantry to bits -- apparently rifles aren't very effective against "bees" =). In my testing, it took about 3 standard GDI infantry squads to kill one group of buzzers before letting them cause any harm.

I could also talk about the Scrin Mastermind infantry unit, which the GDI Commando's Scrin counterpart, if you'd like.

2. How is the Mothership like? is it true it can wipe out a whole base with one shot?
The Mothership is indeed pretty darn devastating. I actually didn't really get much of a chance to use it, but here's what I saw. It is incredibly slow-moving, taking up to 3 minutes to move across the map. This means you have to protect the Mothership if you want to get it into an enemy base. Once it is in the enemy base, however, it does pretty much wreak havoc - not all in one shot, from what I saw, but I may be wrong here.

One more thing about the Scrin - if you've ever asked the question: "How the heck does GDI and Nod stand a chance against an alien civilization?" then don't worry, you'll get this answer in the single-player campaign. That's all I'll say about that.

3. About the patching, will they patch the game alot?
They specifically sat us down and asked the representatives our opinion about this: whether to release a lot of smaller patches more frequently, or whether to release fewer, larger patches. Everyone agreed that more frequent, smaller patches was the way to go - both because it allows for better informed balancing and quicker fixes to serious issues. They hope to have the first patch out for release date, and then have a patch ready every 5-6 weeks after that (this information is tentative, however).

Things you might see changed in the first patch:
- Some multiplayer synchronization issues that they ran into too late last week.
- By accident, it seems that the GDI Surveyor is 1/2 the speed of its Nod and Scrin counterparts. They didn't realize this until last Tuesday, heh. We didn't seem to think it was a major issue, although it could be if you were to use certain rushing tactics. They'll probably fix it.
- The late-game Scrin may be tuned down a bit, as they might be a bit too over-powered then. It is definitely true that they're relatively weak in the early-game, and stronger in the late-game.

4. Did you guys talk about the "lasers" and "rail guns"? I mean NOD has more then 7 units/buildings that shoot lasers... are there a lack of technologies or weapon ideas?
This didn't really come up at all, as far as I could tell. I didn't hear of anyone being bothered by it, anyway.

PS: Did you say "Hi" to Kane from Incia?
Of course...


Oh, and C&C 3 has indeed already gone gold, in case any of you were wondering.

The Mastermind is indeed a mind-controlling unit. You can only build one; it is somewhat like Yuri Prime from Yuri's Revenge. It can take control of a single enemy unit or structure, but it has a short recharge time between different controls. It can also teleport small groups of units small distances: I teleported a couple Annihilator Tripods to the back of an unsuspecting AI opponent's base.

The Rift is I suppose the Scrin's super-power. The Scrin can open some kind of dimensional rift that destroys a target area.

The Mothership is essentially the Scrin's super-unit. I'm not sure how much it costs, but 5000 sounds right.

Super weapons are indeed meant to be this strong -- it is intended that more often than not, a C&C 3 match will end before super weapons get a chance to be used, unless the players are of a very close skill level.

The only skirmish options I saw were options for turning crates off and changing the amount of starting cash. It doesn't seem like those other options will be available, at least not when the game is first released.

If you have found bugs in the demo, you can feel free to create a thread here and post them. Many bugs have been fixed since the demo was released, so they may no longer exist, however. But if some are particularly bad, I can compile the information and send it off to the appropriate developers at EA so that they can look at it.

Also, I'm not sure why you can't access the official homepage - it works fine for me.


I was invited to the summit by the C&C Community Manager. Staff members from a few major C&C fansites were present, along with some prominent members of the broader RTS gaming community. All in all about 25 representatives were there.

Incia, I had the "units stuck inside eachother" bug with 3 juggernauts. Its crazy.

Hit by hallucination grenade would be my best guess for that, since I did amounts of Zone Troopers before but never had that problem...

Not in the same way. I'm fairly sure they've worked to balance this, though. Perhaps that is why the Ion Cannon is so strong?
The GDI and Nod Commando do seem a bit similar. The Scrin Mastermind is quite different, however -- it has the mind control and teleportation abilities I mentioned earlier, for one. Come to think of it, it might not even be able to shoot... but don't take this as fact - I just don't remember. I didn't have a chance to play around with the Commando units all that much.

In some singleplayer missions, I know the GDI Commando has a few abilities it doesn't have in multiplayer, such as the ability to call in a bombardment from offshore battleships. I assume the Nod Commando has similarly unique singleplayer capabilities.


Well, to be honest this is the one area that I'm a bit wary about. World Builder will not be shipping on the game's DVD, but it will *supposedly* be ready within the first week of the game's release, as a download available from the official website. If so, then that's not really a problem.

In terms of modding support, however, that's where things get a little fuzzy. As anyone here who has tried to tear apart the demo is aware, many of the underlying ways in which the game is programmed have changed in C&C 3 (in comparison to Generals or BFME2, etc.). A lot of the unit data appears to be stores in compiled .manifest files, the secret to which - as far as I know - has yet to be unlocked by anyone in the community.

To make it possible to mod C&C 3, EA thus intends to release a modding SDK, which will be much more extensive than the one released for the Sage engine a year ago. However, this will take some time. They're currently shooting to have it ready for a month or two after C&C 3's release.

Does this mean that modding for C&C3 is in limbo for 1-2 months? Maybe.

To be honest I'm sick of the mind-controlling units, after palying Red Alert they just seem so lame. And AI can't properly use them, so Skirmish missions will be really boring against these units.
So hopefully the AI is more intelligent in C&C 3.

March 28th 2007 in the US, I think.

The GDI have Orcas and Firehawks. Nod has Venoms and Vertigo bombers.

The Orcas are pretty much helicopters that have to go back to the airfield to reload. They fire a barrage of missiles that are very effective v.s vehicles and structures.

Firehawks are fast-moving bombers that are powerful against everything on the ground. In addition they can switch to air-to-air missiles.

I haven't played as Nod much but if I remember right Venoms are helicopters that don't have to go back to reload that fire a machine gun. They can also have lasers bounced off of them from the beam cannons that make them very good for hitting things far away.

Vertigos are powerful bombers that move somewhat slow, cost alot, and are also stealth.

As for the Scrin, I have no idea what they have as air units aside from the mothership which is their superweapon.

Anyways, you should download the demo: http://www.commandandcon...ault.aspx?id=25#NewsMain
And of course use this bug to try out more things : http://www.cncgeneralswo.../topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=7369

Edited by user Tuesday, March 13, 2007 3:29:59 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Correct, that was one of the images from the C&C 3 theatrical trailer.

However:

• The beam was not in that image, that was photoshopped in.
  
• This is right before the camera gets shakey. The explosion actually gets much larger than what you see in the sig.
  

Edited by user Tuesday, March 13, 2007 5:36:39 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified