Percieved design flaws of Strategic and Light Artillery. Thread - Red Alert 3 Paradox mod for C&C: Red Alert 3

In Vanilla Red Alert 3, the only option available for artillery is what Paradox classifies as Heavy Artillery, known as the Athena, WFA, and the V-4.

They were all designed to stop turtling by attacking bases outside the range of defenses, and were designed with balancing play/ counter-play patterns that Strategic and Light Artillery violate.

Specifically, Heavy Artillery forced an army vs army fight without possessing self-sufficiency against a charging enemy, while Light and Strategic Artillery often invalidate traditional ground army to army fights rather than force them.

I view this as a problem because it reduces the number of viable counter-play options to Light and Strategic Artillery.

The violated patterns I speak of are as follows:

1. Very slow movement speed.

This built-in trait exists to prevent Artillery from kiting, forcing players to protect them and giving even slow units the ability to eventually catch up with them and fight them.

Light Artillery violates this pattern, and as a result tactics involving slow non-artillery ground units are weak in Alpha because they never catch up with Light Artillery. Players use kiting to ensure most ground units can never catch up rather than create a balanced army with Artillery mostly filling a utility role.

Infantry in particular are hurt by this violation.

2. Limited range.

Considering that I speak of artillery, this must sound strange at first.

Keep in mind, though, that Strategic Artillery has far more range than Heavy Artillery, enough to deny expansions and even seige an opponent's base without ever needing to leave one's own base.

(Map dependent, of course.)

I was told once that this is meant to counter turtling, but I hold that it forces enemies to successfully attack the user's base or lose the game.

Thus, this is the greatest turtling enabler I have ever seen in an RTS.

Heavy Artillery, on the other hand, needs to position relatively close to the enemy base, forcing the enemy to send their army to destroy the Artillery and forcing a fight.

So this is the core difference between Strategic and Heavy Artillery's impact on the game: Strategic Artillery forces players to successfully attack a Turtler's base or lose while Heavy Artillery forces players to attack a besieging army, near their own base, in order to counter.

Because they destroy important counter-play patterns for no benefit of note, I advise removing or reimagining Light and Strategic Artillery for the good of tactical diversity.

I only post sugggestions such as this because I enjoy Paradox and its many positive designs: I do not intend to sound demanding or entitled.

Consider my ideas as mere suggestions.

Edited by: Galgus