Command & Conquer

Subject:
Build your own army from scratch.

Description:
There are two different levels of this idea. The first is a lot more simple: Allow players to pick and choose from a wide variety of units and structures to build a custom army, and then play the game with their own army. This is what I was hoping for with Tiberian Twilight, to be honest. Limit each player's choices so they have to go into battle with a decent variety of units, but let them be the judge of what they want to use.

The second is a lot more complex, and would definitely have to be the root of a whole game: Allow players to build each unit meticulously. Each individual unit would have options like which weapons they can use, including the firepower, firing rate, accuracy, and ammunition (if applicable) of each weapon, amount of defense to each type of weapon for each front armor, side armor, back armor, top armor, and bottom armor, what kind of movement it has (wheels, treads, legs), how fast it moves forward/backward, how fast it turns, what kind of abilities it has (can carry units, can fly, etc), its overall looks, and so on. The more you give each unit, obviously the more money it would cost to build, and would require a higher technology tier to build.

Structures would work on a similar level. Players could choose the armor of the structure, what it produces (if anything), what kind of weapons it has (if anything), how much power it consumes or produces, and abilities (eg: can move, can pack up, can garrison soldiers, etc), how large the structure is, what units pop out when destroyed, and so on. And again, the more effective the structure, the more it costs.

You could customize your army's looks, colours, and voices, and pick a symbol and a name for it (possibly allow players to do whatever they want with this for offline use, but require pre-selected options for online use).

Positive Effect:
- Every game would be different, especially against other players online.
- Would add whole new elements of strategy and fun to a game.
- I could be wrong, but I don't think I've ever seen another game do it.
- Depending on how in-depth customization is for Option B (eg: picking how your team can tech-up, how it builds structures, etc) it could draw an audience from any RTS, not just C&C fans.

Negative Effect:
- Would be REALLY hard to balance, and if balance wasn't at least really close to perfect you would see a lot of players min-maxing as well as a lot of similar armies online (thus defeating the purpose).
- Option B would require a whole game dedicated to its mechanics and adding careful detail to everything, probably being expensive to do and possibly taking away resources from other areas of the game.

Who is your favourite co-commander in vanilla Red Alert 3?

Faithful companion Oleg, rowdy Moskvin, patriotic Zhana, spunky Lisette, sophisticated Giles, all-American Warren, formidable Naomi, wise Shinzo, or confident Kenji?

You can vote for as many as you want. If you liked them all, vote for them all!

Out of all of them, I personally liked teaming up with Oleg, Moskvin, Lisette, Giles, or Shinzo.

After playing online, winning some matches, losing some matches, and watching hundreds of replays, I've noticed a pattern for how resource-allocation and overall strategy tends to work. And I'd just like to ask the opinions of anyone on these forums if there's any truth to this...

The basics are as follows:
Harassing > Expanding > Defending > Harassing (and so on)

The amount of resources (including time, effort, money, support points, attention, units, structures, etc.) you put towards each of these will help affect how things go in a match. For example, if one playeris focussing on expanding, and his opponent is focussing on harassing, the harassing player will be at an advantage for a while.

By Harassing, I mean building offensive units, sending strike teams or large groups to attack positions, building base defenses inside your opponent's base, etc.
By Expanding, I mean making expansion units, moving your MCV, improving your tech-tier, building Refineries, and overall improving your future investments.
By Defending, I mean building base defenses around your own structures, keeping your own units near your own structures, etc.

I don't mean that you can only ever be doing one at a time, though. I mean how much in a percentage of your resources that you're putting towards each. Like, the match that made me realize this was when I was focussing on Harassing and Expanding, while my opponent was focussing on Defending and Expanding. He ended up hurting my economy by destroying a unit here and a unit there, and eventually he emerged victorious.

My theory is that the entire game is centered around this, and is actually a part of the hard-counter system, whether intentional or not. And that if players could recognize how their opponents are allocating their resources, countering overall strategy would be even better than countering their units directly. Like, if I had recognized that my opponent was defending, I could have allocated virtually all of my resources towards expanding, and I would have had a much better chance.

Thoughts?

EDIT: I figured it out. The problem is gone. Please delete this thread, and thank you!

So I was playing a 3-vs-3 level with a bunch of AI's and I accidentally let one of my enemies get a fully-charged Proton Collider. My Nanoswarm was charged, and I remembered that the Nanoswarm could stop powers, and was pretty sure it could stop Ultimate Weapons as well.

Maybe that is true, but in this case it kinda did the opposite. The Nanoswarm somehow managed to trap the "Proton Collider Effect" inside the bubble, and for 30 continuous seconds, the effect detonated maliciously. I mean, we're talking this thing levelled my whole base into nothing. It even one-shot killed my Construction Yard, Nanoswarm, Psyonic Decimator, Nanotech Mainframe, fully-upgraded Dojo, fully-upgraded Mecha Bay, three ore refineries, and like a dozen Instant Generators.

lol if I can recreate this situation I'm going to try to take a video of it. It was pretty awful XD