Weekly Discussion Thread 2: Faction Characters/Personalities! Thread - Red Alert 3 Paradox mod for C&C: Red Alert 3

Sorry it has taken so long for the last week to pass. It was almost like it was more than a week. Funny that.

The coming weeks should be the proper length, seriously.

Anyway, another topic! We haven't gotten on the subject of AI coding yet - we haven't found anybody who has the faintest idea how - but we can probably still think of some memorable faces to suit the roles. Remember Moskvin, the crazy mofo with the sickle spam? Or maybe Giles, the air abuser who talks for just a little longer than he should? We need people like that. And we need help with ideas!

We aren't sure how AI will be implemented in Paradox but it's entirely possible that there will be more than 3 behaviours per faction (hey, we like to add more stuff everywhere) and even if not, we need new characters for story mode.

Throw ANY ideas you have for ANY character in ANY faction at us here!

Some rough ideas we've got so far:

-An Allied commander who is Canadian. I dunno, one of our voice actors/team members is super patriotic (also Canadian) so he threw that vague idea out there. Don't know any more about it.

-An Allied commander who is Irish! My concept is that he wears a fedora and pinstripe suit, just because he's fancy like that (and it fits with his "party" feeling). His AI should tech up to experimental units quickly - experimental stuff is quirky and unpredictable, but it should serve him well if the Luck o' the Irish pulls through. His dialogue should include plenty of drinking references.

-A mad scientist! It doesn't matter where he goes. He simply must go somewhere.

...Keep in mind that none of these are final. It's just a discussion topic. But that said, go nuts with your ideas!

Edited by: Kerensky287

Some other general concepts.

- Allied Commander, a German lady with a riding crop and a slightly creepy obsession with discipline among the troops! Who says the Allies need to be boring?

- Confederate commander, a noble be-sideburned man in white gloves and a bulltie espousing the moral superiority of his cause and challanging the player directly. "A duel, sir! A duel!"

Oh, I just thought of an idea for an Order commander. Basically a guy who seems nice and friendly no matter who you are... but he talks to his little bobble-head dashboard hula dancer, and if you're against him, he'll be like "Hello! You seem like an okay person... wait... they're heretics? You want them to die? *crazed look, head tilt*"

And one of the Protectorate commanders should communicate purely through eyebrow movements and colour shifts in its eyes/headlights.

Edited by: Kerensky287

Maybe a chinese commander that is really crazy so when you verses him he'll do crazy things to attack you then he starts to get serious

For the Order, it should be a knight/paladin/Aragorn-looking zealot. Talks like someone preaching or something. Their AI should take advantage of the Lance vehicles and focus on flame units/defensive structures (basically a flaming steamroller...)

Well, these discussion threads sure have been successful. /sarcasm

I'm not sure if I'll continue with them. In the two threads we've had a combined total of three responses from people who aren't on the team.

I'd say keep going with these discussion topics. I like them, but I think you've just picked categories that are a little dry. (no offense).

As for my ideas for commanders, MINOR RA3 SPOILERS. There was one Japanese mission where you fought agent Tanya as the enemy commander. Perhaps you could fight her. Her style would be based on trying to get Tanya into your base in a variety of tactics. These include shrunken riptides, Century bombers, mirage tanks, ifv's, shrunken ifv's, and the chrono swap support power.

Also I think that you should make a ninja Japanese commander who is dedicated to the use of the shinobi, zatochi, the holotree sniper, and that hikack mecha. You could have them use infiltration tactics to great effect. They would be constantly trying to shut you down and then will crush you with wave force artillery and the like.

Also I like your idea for the Irish commander alot.

For a confederate commander, have you considered a man obsessed with explosives. His style of play would generally involve heavy use of demo trucks, land mines, artillery, Dixie, or pretty much anything with detonators on their army. He could have plenty of explosive puns and quotes from crazy ivan.

Also for the Mediterranean Syndicate, what if you fought the corporate head, who insists on being called Caesar. Not sure exactly what his playstyle would be though.

Another idea to consider for commanders is instead of having them just talk at the beginning and in the end of a battle, perhaps you could have them throw in some quotes in the middle of combat, without having to interrupt your radar, kind of like the generals challenge from C&C Zero Hour

Edited by: Skydragon222

For China you could bring back something similar to C&C Generals Zero Hour China Generals, so one spams Tanks, One Spams Infantry and one that uses mainly/only nuke units.

If possible maybe you could make each of their tech trees different, so tank general get verteran tanks, infantry general get vertaeran infantry and Nuke general get lots of nuke things, like "20% increase to all nuke damage" or something of the like ???

spursdude92 wrote: For China you could bring back something similar to C&C Generals Zero Hour China Generals, so one spams Tanks, One Spams Infantry and one that uses mainly/only nuke units.

If possible maybe you could make each of their tech trees different, so tank general get verteran tanks, infantry general get vertaeran infantry and Nuke general get lots of nuke things, like "20% increase to all nuke damage" or something of the like ???

Or perhaps instead of giving powers to the different generals, perhaps you could give different skins to their units. It would make be a cool way to differentiate between the commanders without having to give any of them an unfair advantage.

And how about for a soviet commander,you bring back a conscript spammer, who insists that we "behold the might of the soviet Union" his tactics could be based on simply overwhelming a foe with large numbers of conscripts and flak troopers.

Edited by: Skydragon222

Gah, sorry for my earlier comment. I've been really busy recently...

But yeah, I love a lot of these ideas. The conscript spammer would totally work too thanks to the new Soviet Dump Truck transport, which actually came into being from the mental image of conscripts falling into a big heap of uselessness.

Regarding the China generals idea - unfortunately, there isn't a way we could make that work in this game. For one, it's exactly the same as Zero Hour. For another, these are only AI behaviours. You can't tell the computer to automatically get veteran units - that wouldn't make sense. Different commanders are only different playing styles that the AI uses... so sadly, there's no way to change textures, unit stats, or anything like that.

I'll try to make more interesting discussion topics in the future. Maybe something about the campaign? Or unit voices? Or... I dunno. We'll try to think of something.

Here's an idea for a couple of Confederate Commanders, have you considered making some of them direct descendants of actual Civil War commanders, you could even try to have their strategies be similar to those of their ancestors (Not entirely sure if that will work but it's worth a shot)

You mean, march in a line and fire in volleys? Might not work too well.

However, the idea of descendants is very interesting.

Maybe a robotic Ep commander who tries to get technics in the enemy base by all possible means? (this is based on a strategy of mine to get engineers into the enemy base). When you begin fighting against it, it says "All your tech-no-lo-gy wil be ours". If it wins the battle it'll say "the Ep sh-ows no merc"(commander coughs up vocal cube). If lost "is someone on repair duty? you? Oh, sor-ry, i tho-ught you were still working,(mutters:"oh, sho-ot". If he's your co-commander he'll say at the beginning "we'll eli-mi-na-te all oppo-sit-ion. Their base is our base, bo-ss"

I suggest for China, some old guy, with a crispy voice that uses lots of chinese proverbs and seems very wise... I myself could find lots of lines he can use for different situations. As for the fights I think he should be very balanced at what type of units he uses(because his philosophy should be based on balance), and probably he should be a steamroller because patience is the key to victory :p Should be sort of a chinese monk... Sun Tzu kind of guy, since the royalists won, it wouldn`t be so spectcular. I could even do some voice acting for this guy.
As for the Talon, something like a great inquisitor, a bit obsessed by destroying stuff, but a clerical face otherwise, sort of a double-edged sword of justice kinda guy... should focus on anti-infantry.
I have an idea or two for the confederates, since they`ll be the first and since they`re my faves but I`ll have to refine them a bit.

Edited by: darkus13

How about for China... General Tso. (yes like the chicken, I'm hungry )

He believes that precision timing is the key to victory. If your power goes down you suddenly have 4 different attack forces on your base.
He'll kill your expansions before their even done building, and he'll always have a trick up his sleeve.

Advantages- Excellent tactician, will kick you when your down, He Will frighten you!

Disadvantages- he will sometimes do very little at all except build more forces, he could have a whole attack group waiting in the center of the map. His late game isn't as scary as his early game.

The man himself in your upper right, will want to make you surrender. He is cold and ruthless, and in one mission he'll start the conversation in standard RA3 fashion, but his dark side is soon revealed as you watch a group of civilians and your troops desolated by an atom bomb strike, one last cry heard through your radio.

I know its hard to incorporate an evil character in such a light hearted game, but I think some evilness is required, you need some seriousness after fighting Giles or Kenji. War isn't supposed to be cheery. His tactics are unbelievably efficient, and that's what will scare you.

Say your power goes down because you built a war factory. That's when he'll strike dropping a group of tanks, some infantry, and serious base killing ability
and your army will have been somewhere else. This guy makes you unsure of every move you make, every troop you buy, every building you place. General Tso the Unpredictable General

You don't have to make him evil I guess, but an unpredictable general that makes you unsure of your own tactics sounds like a war winning general

For the Confederates: A cowboy guy who prefers gurilla tatics and old-fashined technology.For the Talons: A Aragorn-knight like guy who acts chivalrious or however you spell it, admits defeat with honor, doesn't gloat that much, and is all in all really anoying.

how about a cyborg EP commander. that is all just metal and body but his tactics are simple and he is very prodictable but had to counter due to just massive,massive infantry strikes and if you win, he justs falls apart and makes a farting sound! and if he wins he just farts

I kinda forgot this was open. Sorry, but the discussion thread thing doesn't seem to have worked out too well. I'm gonna close the threads. If we have any other things we need opinions on, we'll do forum posts again, but for now this isn't really generating anything constructive.