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Thoughts of the GDI Campaign
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Vulture
AA Infantry


Joined: 08 Jan 2011

PostPosted: Mon Sep 22, 2014 8:35 pm    Post subject:  Thoughts of the GDI Campaign Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

So... well, I am finally bothering. First on Easy, so I know what to be aware of when I do it on a higher difficulty. That, and I suck anyway. Laughing

Thoughts:

All maps are beautiful and well made, so props for that. Also, all missions are fairly challenging especially in the beginning, but once you pick up the flow, it gets much easier.

Map 1: A pretty straightforward escorting mission and quite short compared to later missions. Effective though and gives a feeling for the story. There are 2 routes that lead to the outpost.

Map 2: Same as map 1. The missions are actually strikingly similar, even with the entire two route thing (albeit this one being more obvious).

Map 3: Well... a search & rescue mission, basically, including the escorting part. It's a great mission, requires careful play with Snipers and Grenadiers as they are vital. Luckily you have Medics, which are crucial.
The Ambulances are in reserve in case you mess up with your medics somewhere which is great.

At this point I really hoped that there wouldn't be an escort mission anytime soon, three escort missions in a row is kinda awkward even if the missions are all well-made and good.

Map 4: A search & destroy mission. Quite easy but be wary of the firebreathing tanks. A nice change of pace from the first three missions.

Remained somewhat challenging due to the fact that the reinforcements are JUST enough for me to beat it. I imagine it being much harder to do on higher difficulties which is great.

Map 5: Defend and gather Tiberium. A really great mission, but some of the Nod vehicles can get stuck in the Tiberium field if the mission drags on - which it has a tendency to do so in the hands of a less skilled player. Later on just everything gets stuck and then you have to puppysit everything because of pathfinder issues.

Defending is easy and straightforward here; top entrance with Grenadiers, a pair of Medics (Guard mode) and the Vulcan Tower, East entrance with a bunch of Goliaths and 4 Vulcan Towers. Make sure to build a few new Goliaths every now and then though. Destroy the bridge. A bit too straightforward possibly (though I expect it to be much harder at higher difficulty settings), but the 40k Tiberium trigger is awesome. Slightly unexpected (even if I knew it existed from all those years ago, I DID the mission before back in an earlier Beta, 2 or 3) but manageable.

Due to pathfinding issues if the mission drags on (usually because of taken damage that is crippling but not lethal on the 40k Tiberium trigger), you get the Tiberium field filled to the brim with Nod vehicles, even moreso with the bridge destroyed.
In the end, I had to smoke over a hundred tanks on the Tiberium Field with a bunch of Elite-ranked Goliaths. Was quite funny but should not have to be done. On the other hand, I doubt it is fixable. Maybe relocate the waypoints of the Nod vehicles on the Tib field, so it is closer to the slopes?

Mission 6:
Little to no comments. A repair vehicle would've been nice though for the first half since my vehicles ended up in red but not killed way too often.

Also, Grenadiers are invaluable for destroying the outpost.

After that, the mission is a snorefest involving a ton of Goliaths and a pair of Scatterpacks. It is even more boring than SKirmish against an Easy AI, because the AI uses tons of mines which cost a lot of time.


Mission 7:
The initial half of the mission is great once more, but the second half was just the same as mission 6... Get somewhere, MCV arrives, destroy Nod.

MRLS walkers were absolutely useless after being announced as a lifesaving boon - it's just Goliaths basically which do multiple hit&runs on the AI. How many depends on if the AI rebuilds or not - it didn't rebuild on the first try but it did on the second.

The mission also fails upon capturing the Prototype with a Machinist which is funny.

But the second half is kinda a snorefest of the Goliath spam kind anyway, though unlike Mission 6 as well as 8, in order to do it somewhat fast I needed to use them efficiently, unlike Mission 6 and 8 in which the missions contain a lot of annoying crap that isn't difficult to beat but just eats a ton of time. I imagine it eating even more time on harder difficulty settings (without being more difficult) but I did not try that yet.

Mission 8: Rinse & repeat: A great mission which requires careful play because you have to destroy a few things with a small force - I can imagine it being more challenging on a higher difficulty as on easy it was... well... easy - MCV arrives, then destroy Nod. We could've done without another Goliath spamfest, though this time with added Mortars. Still a boring spamfast like Mission 6, but with added repair vehicles and less mines to make it a whole lot easier.

Mission 9:
And repeat once more.  A great mission and it was really awesome - but I literally facepalmed when the MCV arrived. The campaign is fairly challenging - especially on a first run - but please, it's getting a chore here. So much of a chore that I saved and shut the game down before establishing the base. I even destroyed the Mole artillery that is bombarding the Tiberium Field once you are going to build that base.

Even moreso, triggers are based around the MCV, so delaying its deploying until your defence is sufficient is always an option, making it even more of a snorefest.

Also, the AI makes no serious attempts at attacking your outpost /w the helipads, with infantry/vehicles, which kinda sucks too. Maybe it does after deploying the MCV, but still...

I do not  think I would need said MCV - but I can't send my Rocket Troopers through those tunnels. I think it is intended - but it still sucks.
I think the MCV reinforcements are entirely unnecessary in this mission - provided the AI does not rebuild any of the anti air bunkers, that is, as then you can just send the Rocket Troopers over with a few Snipers and tear everything apart (even Cyborgs). Orca bombers can be used to support against Mole Artilleries and Inferno tanks.

Edit: Note that I wrote the above before I saw the huge fortress that I had to break into.

Also - I had so many Rocket Troopers and stuff on the left side of the map that the AI's mole artilleries and cyborgs didn't destroy either my outpost or my airbase. I only lost a single Vulcan Turret... make of that what you will.

The Base was troublesome to break in but well designed - it does indeed require so many forces an MCV is needed.
After four failed attempts I decided to send just a hundred of Goliath Tanks over accompanied by about 50 mortar dudes and a repair squad of 2 Medics and 2 Repair tanks. No refinement on my behalf, but a sledgehammer you can get.

Outside of the continuing MCV reinforcements, the Campaign is great until now though, it has a lot of things to account for and it requires a lot of careful play, but the MCV turns things into a spamfest of unit X after defending against the initial wave (which could just as well have been done without MCV, just use a different trigger)...

Mission 10:
Ah, finally something different. Great base design - it is very open and wide - making it more difficult to defend and without a clue of where the attacks are coming from, it looks to be a trial and error kind of thing, and failing at the most unfortunate moments because attacks can come from literally everywhere. I am one of those players that loves to guard every opening from the beginning, so you can only imagine what I think of this.

Nod looks to be coming from the south which is kinda obvious, and the tiberium creatures come from the east, but I do not know yet. Let's see.

It also took me way too long to find my war factory - so I guess I have to restart it.

- Take 2 -
Those mines piss me off.

Got attacked from the North instead of the South.

- Take 3 -

Went smooth. Mission and Nod attacks were really great - I also had a much better idea of how to proceed through the map, taking only 70 minutes or so now - and the plot thickens.

Nods attack, was however not what I had in mind when the game announced "full-scale attack" but it is more than sufficient for Easy difficulty as I lost the twenty Goliaths I had set up for defence by the time the assault ended.
Elite Orca Bombers also saved my rear more than once.

Mission 11:
Looks to be interesting. I'm curious how this goes. All missions are great individually, and I'm fully expecting this one to live up to the expectations.

Edit: Scratch that, it's going to be another few hours of Goliath spam. That is basically the only reason I did not finish this mission yet. I'm bored, but not bored enough to spam more Goliaths.

Also, I completely lost the storyline here. Unless GloboTech is completely incompetent, they wouldn't fall for some kind of mind control plot or whatever. The more I think about it, the less logical it becomes. I'm getting a bit disappointed in the GDI campaign (and the neverending Goliath spam doesn't help either).

I'll edit the post as I continue - as you see, I'm beginning with mission 11 now.

I will likely replay the missions on a higher difficulty value as well - but I'm not really liking the suspect of playing through the MCV-part of mission 6, 7, 8 and 9 again.

Last edited by Vulture on Fri Oct 03, 2014 9:00 pm; edited 3 times in total

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Varbo
Vehicle Driver


Joined: 18 Sep 2014

PostPosted: Mon Sep 29, 2014 3:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I'm not done with the GDI campaign (stuck on mission 13 due to what I swear is a game breaking bug), but I had roughly similar experiences to you even playing on normal. I'll just comment on mission 5, 7 and 9.

On mission 5, I can easily say it might be the most challenging I've played, and I might not have beaten it at all if not for what I think is an exploit bug. At one point, I decided to just abandon and sell my outpost in the city, and after a point following a nod train, nod just stops attacking from there. They just park some units around where my base used to be and never send anything from the south again. And this even happened with enemies from the north I think, or atleast sometime after that- they just stopped coming, unless I directly confronted them. It made the mission far more easy and might have been the only way I could have completed it.

I have to agree with you on mission 7, and I think I can honestly say it was my absolute least favorite, and overall played remarkably similar to that one original GDI mission where you first get air units. It also underscored how I feel MLRS walkers are a terrible unit, and I swear I never used them again (though they can be quite challenging in the nod campaign.) They're slow, cumbersome, too lightly armored, and the spread of their attack is simply too wide, not to mention their range is feeble, and you really need quite a few to do any damage. Their propensity for causing splash damage is also a headache (but I feel this is a problem for many other units in TI), and even using them in large numbers, there's the risk of one blowing up and their missiles damaging the others. To that end, mortar troops are much better and I ended up using them in just about every mission after they became available.

But anyway, in this mission, their range proved to be their greatest downfall- I simply couldn't make much use of them in really doing much damage to the Nod defenses, and they'd always get overwhelmed by incoming nod units, and I just didn't bother, say, defending them with goliaths. I ended up solving this mission by building a bunch of orcas and using them to swarm the construction yard and war factory.

With mission 9, even though you played on easy, I'm confused on how you explain your playthrough. You at first say you didn't really see a need for an MCV at all, but then you say the Nod base was so well defended it did require extra forces. Before getting to that part however, early on in the mission, when you run across a squad of cyborgs and need to disable them with an Immobilizer, not all of the cyborgs were disabled, and I always ended up losing a hovercraft killing the one or two active cyborgs. I swear this has to be a bug because the game not only makes it clear the orca will disable them all, but in all my other experiences with Immobilizers, they are very effective at disabling large numbers of units, but this one couldn't even disable a full half dozen cyborgs.

You said nod never made any attempt to destroy your bases, but on normal, they do- at one point, APC's will appear at both bases with full cyborg contingents, and it's virtually impossible to save them. I ended up going back and loading before this happened, and sold everything as soon it happened, and got my aircraft to the site of the new base (this also led to an entertaining situation where I managed to airlift a bunch of infantry to the new base right before they were overwhelmed without any losses.)

And this is where the mission gets really challenging. The venture to get into the nod base proved to be the most grueling, demanding parts of TI I've played yet- I had a sizable force of tanks, scatterpacks, repair vehicles and mortars constantly fighting wave after wave of nod units and tiberium mutants, while dealing with constantly exploding tiberium and nod sending tanks to attack my base from other angles. I had to quite carefully time and plan how I used my mortars to take out nod base defenses, and even after getting in, the reinforcements could be tough to deal with. On one hand, this mission was seriously challenging and inventive, but I can't help but feel was a bit too chaotic and in ways cheap with what it threw at you (various paths with your early squad being death sentences, APC's coming out of nowhere and destroying your old bases, establishing a brand new base that gets hammered by nod within minutes from an incredibly well defended stronghold, the ceaseless attacks from Nod on the battlefield), and I feel this is also kind of an issue with TI in general.

And I do agree GDI missions are a bit repetitive and prone to some of the same solutions- Goliath spam more than anything, with to a lesser extent scatterpacks and later always with mortar teams (and railgun platforms).

Last edited by Varbo on Mon Sep 29, 2014 4:22 pm; edited 1 time in total

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Vulture
AA Infantry


Joined: 08 Jan 2011

PostPosted: Mon Sep 29, 2014 12:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I edited my post halfway Mission 9.

In Mission 9, I had lost all Hovercraft after a while. So, realizing that I was without scouts, I captured the Nod barracks. And Rocket Troop spam started. I spammed literally hundreds of them before the MCV arrived.

That allowed me to spam Rocket Troops all over the place, hopefully enough to march to the other side. If the Tunnels had worked, I would've done so.

Now, the tunnels did NOT work, forcing me to use the MCV (this was something I had figured out at the point of the edit, but I was looking for a roundabout so I wouldn't need the MCV at all). I sent these rocket Troops - backed by a group of Mortars - back to my outpost as I now had nothing better to do.

Cyborgs and Mole artilleries sent to destroy the outposts - they came on Easy too - failed horribly. I had saved shortly before sending my MCV over, so I even attempted to capture a Mole Artillery with a Machinist once for the sake of it - I expected vehicle attack waves on my outpost and wanted to capture some of Nod's stuff, but outside of an Inferno lured away from a Missile site, I failed with that.

I had to retry several times because of I lost my Conyard too ^.

I even built a War Factory next to the Nod Barracks in case I would lose my MCV again - in case it happened now I could still send forces over with help of EMP vehicles and Carry-alls, essentially subverting the difficult part of the mission since it's possible to send vehicles safely to the Tiberium Field. I had enough of the continuous retries, if needed I would do it the safe (but long) way.

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Vulture
AA Infantry


Joined: 08 Jan 2011

PostPosted: Fri Oct 03, 2014 9:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Goliaths, oh Goliaths... *sings*

Reason I really can't be bothered with the campaign anymore and progress is kinda slow. It is simply too boring to progress at this point.

GDI spams Goliaths in every mission atm... what's the point of campaign here, if I want to spam Goliaths I can do Skirmish..
.

Also, TW1 MRLS is much more useful than the MRLS walker.


Edit: So I did Challenge 3, which I hadn't done yet either. The answer was spam of a different kind - Vulcan Towers.

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TheLostSabre
Medic


Joined: 17 Jul 2012
Location: By the Great Lakes

PostPosted: Mon Oct 06, 2014 7:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Vulture wrote:
Also, TW1 MRLS is much more useful than the MRLS walker.

This has always bothered me; I've always used TWI MLRS whenever possible during campaign because it does very well against both vehicles and infantries while MRLS Walker pretty much does only okay against other vehicle and doesn't do all that well against infantries. The fact that the MRLS Walker's own missile barrages tends to hit your own units as well left me a little more then a tad miffed. It doesn't help that whenever I had the Walker force-fire on anything, the missiles tends to go haywire, even damaging the Walker itself!

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Vulture
AA Infantry


Joined: 08 Jan 2011

PostPosted: Sun Nov 02, 2014 12:13 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

With the new update, I'm doing the other missions as well now.
And really, just don't give MCV's for fairies' sake. Find different solutions to "oh, this mission is a little difficult now, let's give the player an MCV!" That is really the shortest way to summarize the feeling I have with the GDI campaign (even though Mission 5 and 12 are great as they are).

Also, in Mission 15, why are those soldiers stupid enough to talk? "Elite"? Elite soldiers keep their mouth shut!
Aro, are you assuming soldiers are incompetent or something?

No update for the original post because I didn't finish any other mission yet. Time issues and the boredom that Goliath spam is didn't make me feel like continuing.

Last edited by Vulture on Sun Nov 02, 2014 12:36 pm; edited 1 time in total

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^Rampastein
Rampastring


Joined: 11 Oct 2008
Location: Gensokyo

PostPosted: Sun Nov 02, 2014 12:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Vulture wrote:
And really, just don't give MCV's for fairies' sake. Find different solutions to "oh, this mission is a little difficult now, let's give the player an MCV!"

That surely is more of a design choice than one relating to difficulty. Base building is a core part of C&C gameplay after all.

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Henskelion
Cyborg Firebomber


Joined: 29 Dec 2011

PostPosted: Sun Nov 02, 2014 7:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Quote:

Also, in Mission 15, why are those soldiers stupid enough to talk? "Elite"? Elite soldiers keep their mouth shut!
Aro, are you assuming soldiers are incompetent or something?


Most of the dialogue and text in TI is a placeholder, since there are more important things to focus on in terms of mod development at the moment than the writing.

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Crimsonum
Seth


Joined: 14 Jul 2005
Location: Fineland

PostPosted: Mon Nov 03, 2014 12:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Vulture wrote:
Also, in Mission 15, why are those soldiers stupid enough to talk? "Elite"? Elite soldiers keep their mouth shut!
Aro, are you assuming soldiers are incompetent or something?


I bet Nod has such highly developed interrogation techniques that crack even the toughest of soldiers. Also, walking next to a huge Tiberium field and inhaling all those fine Tiberium particles (those ordinary infantry suits aren't exactly Tiberium-proof) probably weakened their self-control.

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Vulture
AA Infantry


Joined: 08 Jan 2011

PostPosted: Mon Nov 03, 2014 4:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

^Rampastein wrote:
Vulture wrote:
And really, just don't give MCV's for fairies' sake. Find different solutions to "oh, this mission is a little difficult now, let's give the player an MCV!"

That surely is more of a design choice than one relating to difficulty. Base building is a core part of C&C gameplay after all.

It's obviously a core part of the game, no denying that, but outside of Mission 5 and 12 (didn't check 13/14 yet so no comments there), in other missions they only result in Goliath spam (with the added Mortars when available).
Note: I think that MCV's (and possibly construction options in general) are a better option when defending in the campaign. When having to attack, it's better if they are avoided ^ .
I mean, I loved Mission 6-9, until the MCV's came. I immidiately knew how that would play out.

About the dialogue: It's still something that completely broke my suspense of belief. I'd rather had Nod just sending a few Banshee scouts all over the map after noticing GDI's presence (killing the soldiers immidiately instead).

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^Rampastein
Rampastring


Joined: 11 Oct 2008
Location: Gensokyo

PostPosted: Mon Nov 03, 2014 6:34 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Then the problem is the spammy nature of the missions instead of the base-building #Tongue

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Vulture
AA Infantry


Joined: 08 Jan 2011

PostPosted: Tue Nov 04, 2014 1:24 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Yes, but they often go hand-in-hand.

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^Rampastein
Rampastring


Joined: 11 Oct 2008
Location: Gensokyo

PostPosted: Tue Nov 04, 2014 1:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Vulture wrote:
Yes, but they often go hand-in-hand.

It is possible to make base-building missions that aren't a case of flooding the enemy with units made with endless resources one wave after another however. Even WW had many (at least in TD/RA).

Although I personally think that the base-building missions in TI are alright, some of them did suffer from this issue. I didn't mind that much though, after it was clear I'm going to win the mission by spamming units I just put gamespeed to the fastest and hit the Goliath button on the sidebar until I had enough of them to win the mission.

I think the missions could be more interesting if the enemy was more aggressive and less defensive (and/or access to resources would be harder, forcing you to micro your units instead of just building a million of them), but I don't think they're that bad even in their current state. It didn't take me that long to beat the "spammy" missions.

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Vulture
AA Infantry


Joined: 08 Jan 2011

PostPosted: Wed Nov 05, 2014 6:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

For me the game freezes if I set gamespeed higher which is an annoyance, even if I recently figured out how to recover from it without losing my progress.
Happens after saving/resuming too but luckil not with loading a mission.

So it always took me a fair while.


Also, I did GDI Mission 13 today, which was the first mission with an MCV I built little other vehicles than Harvesters.

Getting Exosuits in multiple groups of ten to halt the GT attacks. Then I got a single squad of Mortars and another squad of Marauders (ffor those Thors), and a pair of Medics to heal all the damaged infantry.

When most of the production facilities on the archipelago were destroyed, repair the bridge to the GT main base and sent most of the Exosuits in front (kept 10 behind just in case, until all my soldiers crossed the bridge.


Also, the only way to really limit resources is to have no tiberium spawners.

And indeed, making the AI more offensive and less defensive would certainly help.

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