Hi, I'm new here, just got Red Alert 3 and TRA after my brother told me about the mod being released. So I'm new to RA3 in general, though I've played probably hundreds if not thousands of hours of Red Alert 95 on PC and Playstation.
Following the cue of others who are posting their thoughts, I thought I'd do the same. But instead of making one long single thread of bullets of specific points I think should be changed, I'm just going to keep notes here based on my playthroughs and hopefully there will be some discussable points to be found, and hopefully it'll help the game.
- Personally, for me, I like how the original RA played, and I very-much enjoy that the team is committed to recreating the experience and mechanics and not just some of the units. They're doing 'the right thing' in doing so.
So on one hand, a person could play this game, and play RA95, and note the areas where it doesn't match exactly and simply change TRA until it works. And that's all they do.
We all know that certain things are buggy now, or don't work. And could assume most of them will be rectified. The inability for units to use the repair depot is probably one of them.
But in the end, there's always going to be differences between this game and the old; so-long as those differences are positive and seamless, the mod will be a success. And so-far, so-good!
The paramount directive I'd hold forward is that someone who is very good at the original Red Alert should be able to jump into this game and know each unit, know exactly what they will do, and have no situations where they go "What? That diddn't used to happen!" An example would be rocket soldiers not able to out-range flame-towers; in RA95, flame-towers were pretty sweet, but the enemy could still pound away your defenses from afar with rockets if you diddn't pay attention. This kind of thing is pretty standard in C&C games as a mechanic, and people would calibrate whole strategies around those balances. I havn't had time in the new game to test whether that balance still holds true, but I assume it's close.
- The modern mechanic of multiple buildings each producing their own tanks is a significant departure from the original game. I think it's a mixed bag, but I don't think it's the end of the world, and it makes the battles much bigger and funner overall with the ability to rapidly deploy forces. I would like to see, however, a 'classic' mode option that limits to one build que per unit type and the return of the Primary building, for those who want to really go retro.
- The option for tech-levels is one that I really miss from RA1. Most people probably don't really think it's a big deal, but I think there's a great opportunity here.
Tech level 1 games were always fun, they were inevitably massive meat-grinders of blood and gore as hundreds of infantry stormed against walls of pillboxes, and I'd like to see how TRA operates on Tech Level, with the modern build-que mechanic in place to allow for truly obscene levels of infantry creation. If I could have 8 Barracks' pumping out riflemen non-stop for a few minutes I'd have the ability to make massive divisions to send into the breach time and time again. (Anyone who played China Infantry Gen on C&C Generals will know what that's like.)
Tech levels might be hard to implement or easy to implement, but by-and-large the one that was most significant to me was 1. It would be enough perhaps to even just have 'infantry mode' which retained some of the building technology of the full tech levels, but severely limited the war factory only to extra Ore Trucks, or maybe Jeeps, and eliminated air and only allowed transports for seaborne operations. Something like that would be in keeping with the RA95 experience I feel.
- The retention of Oil Dereks and other special buildings is great, I like the game with those. For the most part they turn into small objectives to fight for but it adds some depth to regular Skirmish.
- Overall, yeah, this mod really does it right. They diddn't screw it up with crazy units or bizarre changes. Everything works just about like the original, enough to where I could jump in and beat hards the first time.
- I would love to try multiplayer with the game. I havn't tried RA3 Online at all, I'm not even sure if it works with the mod yet, but I definitely know I will be trying to get my friend who used to battle me in RA95 to download TRA. It will probably replace Generals for us.
