Talon Revamp: Should we start brainstorming? Thread - Red Alert 3 Paradox mod for C&C: Red Alert 3

This thread title might be inappropriate for the plan, but I think some revamp was mentioned for the Talon to make them less binary against enemies with counters to heavy, expensive units.

(Terror Drones, Cryocopters, Rocket Angels, stuns and weapon jammers in general, ect.)

Anyway, what extent of change is planned for the Talon- and would a Paradox community brainstorm for ideas to be picked apart by the devs be welcome?

I think some brainstorming could reveal a few neat ideas to make the Talon a less binary faction.

If codeable, make those abilities have only half effectiveness vs Talon units, like the rocket angles paralsis whip only slow them down and weapon jammers half their firing rate. That is, if the admins want those to be weaknesses for the Talon. Or not effect them at all, using the handwave that Talon Steel resists change and is fixed in the state it is in. That would also make it impossible to MASS a talon unit.

*sorry, unless instead of if.

A few other ideas:

1. Give the Talon a way to cure or remove those kinds of debuffs in the field.

2. Add at least one Talon support unit that can render friendly units immune to those kinds of effects.

3. Give the Talon their own shutdown abilities - say, a Talon Steel chaff cloud that fouls the targeting of all air units inside the cloud.

4. I have no idea if this is possible, but add a unit or power that lets Talon units mirror the effects of abilities used on them - a cryocopter freezes a Talon tank, but is itself frozen (and because it's an aircraft, will crash). Or a hydrofoil jams a Talon warship, but other friendlies near the hydrofoil are jammed in turn. That kind of thing.

Support units for healing/repair, unfreezing, adding immunities, hardening armour and even ressurection are all definately on the table.

Rather than many new active support units, why not add passive abilities to combat units which provide those powers as veterancy upgrades.

Maybe some protocols to help alleviate some of these problems, as enemies may focus on taking out your support units before going back to the tactics being discussed here. That said, they shouldn't just be boring invalidators, they should probably have some situational use or drawbacks to prevent overuse.

Another idea is to make Talon vehicles take longer to freeze or wepons jam and faster to recover, to give you a chance to counteract the problem. A lore explaination may be that Talon units are so archaic, that it takes time for units to work out HOW to jam the weapons because they no longer recognise them, and their boilers melt off the ice as they are being frozen.

Edited by: crj400

I'd say the more archaic the weapon, the easier it is to fix. Seriously, a crossbow? I can make a crossbow without any blueprints right now, however, I don't think I would be able to put back a modern fire arm after I dissembled it because of the complexity.

Jamming modern fire arm: fill barrel with goop.

Yeah, but jamming it from a distance with an electronic jammer? That would take some guesswork...

Well, I heard that they were thinking of having Offense, Defense, and Support Crawlers. I don't know if they aren't or no, but if they are, I hope they reconsider. If someone wants to play with those, they can buy CNC4. My suggestion would be instead to have them themed after the co-commanders. I don't know which ones they want, or indeed if they're going to make thier own, but even so they follow a common theme; Varitan and Lalande are all about knight-hood, Canavan and Moore are about modern tactics, while Martella is all about burning things.

So let's apply that to basic unit concepts. The former could be slow moving, armoured things, with high heroic upgrades. the middle could be quick moving, versatile units, with an eye towards combined arms. The last could be glass cannons, and fire of course. Similar to the old way, but different enough to be interesting.

Also, if you do go for this, I'd keep the ability to switch Crawlers, but don't have them exlode. That was silly in CNC4, and even more so with the Talon.

Edited by: PsychoticLoner

If there are offense/defence/support crawler splits, I'd suggest having it as an upgrade in the mid- to late- tier, with no difference in crawler beforehand, so you have some time to adjust. And I agree with PsychoticLoner: give people an ability to change crawler focus, either by making a new crawler and giving that a different focus, letting them change the previously mentioned upgrade (with a cost, cooldown or both, to prevent people constantly changing focus), or have the focus be in protocol form (ie, activate "Offense Focus" protocol, your crawlers have offense focus for a while, but stops after a while with a cooldown, forcing people to cycle between different focuses).

Another idea might be to have the Crusader Crawler as your main crawler, and give the Crusader Crawler the ability to produce smaller offense/defence/support crawlers to support it and make specialised units. This would keep the Crusader Crawler as the absolute center of Talon forces, and allow the ability to make offense/defence/support possible without diminishing the 'Crawlers are in SHORT SUPPLY!' lore.

I remember hearing about an idea to make smaller crawlers to collect resources and construct smaller units but thats all I've heard.

As what Crj and Loner have both said, I agree that a focus should be able to be switched quickly. That would drasticly decrease strategic options for a late game Talon player, even if they have divine units.

What if Talon players could have one Refinery for each Crawler

It could encourage Talon players to be expanding/setting up defenses with one Crawler while using their main one to siege the enemy.

Upgrading Crawlers could increase their health and give them weapons- so the more money you invest in a Crawler, the more intimidating it is.

Edited by: Galgus

The current idea I'm running with is that Crawlers ARE refineries of a sort.

open_sketchbook wrote: The current idea I'm running with is that Crawlers ARE refineries of a sort.

So basically the Crawler spawns a harvester type thing that can only give you funds if the Crawler is deployed, making players stop trying to rush with the Crawler?

Sort of. There would be a little automated harvester or two (or more, depending on upgrades) that pop out of crawlers upgraded for that task and collects for you when you deploy, so you could shoot a crawler with economic upgrades over to a group of nodes and collects teh phat moneys while a more offensively-stanced crawler wouldn't get the collectors in favour of more unit production or shooty bits.

I honestly feel that a Talon player shouldn't need to pick between playing offensive, defensive or being supportive of other players. No other faction has to make that choice - picking one route while sacrificing the others.

Here's my proposal: The Crawler starts on the battliefield It provides power, radar and high-tier (III & IV) unit production, as well as defense structures production. It retains all of its current upgrades, including the weaponry upgrades. It can also produce auxiliary mini-Crawlers, available from the start, that allow production of low-tier (I & II) units after the appropriate upgrades are researched on the main Crawler. For example, you can build an auxiliary Crawler right away, but it can't build Footmen until after you research the Training Quarters upgrade at your main Crawler, etc. High-tier units that require the Reliquary are produced from the main Crawler. The auxiliary Crawlers also deploy to harvest ore nodes and act as ground control for allied structure deployment.

The benefits of this plan:
* No need to keep the main Crawler deployed all the time.
* Multiple unit queues.
* Able to spread out much more effectively.
* Solves the problem of having a central high-value target that could be locked down too easily.
* Makes sense lore-wise.

How does this sound, people?

Edited by: Joshh

I kind of like the idea of being able to command multiple Crawlers but upgrading one as your main one.

It could lead to using a Crawler gathering rescources in an all-out attack being a high risk, high reward tactic: as well giving your main Crawler something to retreat to if it gets in trouble.

I'm okay with the idea of having to choose one final upgrade out of a few, so long as they are well thought through. To me, how you upgrade your Crawlers would be all about what you want your Crawler to do.

Edited by: Galgus

Actually, the way we're setting it up, most factions have to make some kind of choice of a reasonable degree of exclusivity... Allied Tiers vs Experimental, Soviet Tier/Industry/Science/Defense structure paths, Confederate upgrade sets, or Rush vs Expansion deployment of the original OCV for China. My experience and research into game design generally hold that the most interesting decisions are the ones that you can't take back, and I generally think that's a good idea.

There seems to be the idea, however, that any sort of specialization in Crusaders for the Talon would be as cut-and-dry as the ones in C&C4. This would simply not work, for obvious reasons, in a game like RA3 where you don't necessarily have a team backing you up. Any movement we made in that direction would have to be more along the lines of flavoring the upgrades and unit choices available to you while retaining similar gameplay mechanics.

OK, for reference, what problems do the Talon, right now, in their unrevised state, have? I'm trying to run off of what I remember from a podcast where this was discussed - and my memory of it is spotty at best.

What are we trying to accomplish with the revamp? How far from the current design do we want to go? What stays and what is fair game for a revamp?

The most important thing is to get them moving and eliminate any sort of "base area", and to get them more easily amphibious.

Wasn't the main problem how easily counters for heavy, expensive units will invalidate their small armies?

(Cryocopters, mostly.)

Maybe make units near the crawler immune to being cryofrozen or weapons jammed?

Maybe make it so the Talon extract ore from mines really slowly, so you have to have several to get an appreciable cash flow.

Galgus wrote: Wasn't the main problem how easily counters for heavy, expensive units will invalidate their small armies?

(Cryocopters, mostly.)

cryocopters are outright imba to begin with

Also, PL, I thought the whole idea was that they extracted ore really fast and had to move up once they depleted it?