New Armament news

Flame Tower Remodeling

Kane000's working on the redone Flame Tower. I am not sure if this will make it in for Gamma or if other priorities will push it back, but it would be nice to have it in there along with the other updated defenses. Also in progress are the two Pillboxes, although work has kinda stopped on them while we figure out some rather major details about how they'll function. They might gain the ability to engage multiple targets at once via multiple guns, while the Flame Tower just relies on large splash damage effects to handle multiple attackers.

The RPG & Early Game

A lot of games that feature a Russian influence often have the RPG-7 launcher as a weapon you can get, but we've avoided the temptation so far in order to try to stick closer to Red Alert. And, well, we never saw a real need for it. Honestly though, we've been considering it for a year or two (at least I have), because the Soviets have always lacked a strong early-game deterrant to Allied armor. This was okay back when vehicles were slower, but even on Shallow Grave some Light Tanks can get to your Ore Truck before its second dump.

In RA1, Rocket Soldiers were indeed "double owned" to give Soviets a viable anti-armor and anti-air infantry, otherwise they wouldn't have one. So, naturally, an idea came up to give the Soviets something similar. The RPG soldier has similar speed and health to a Rocket Soldier, but fires unguided, unscoped. The RPG projectiles have a slight drop to them, meaning you have to arc your shots a bit. Think of it as some kind of infantry counterpart to a V2.

To also help the early game, Grenadiers now run faster than most infantry and throw harder, which helps them not only stage their own early cheap rush but assists in countering Allied light rushes. R34ch has modeled out both the new RPG and hand grenade.

Arming the Soldiers

Tada, a new set of arms ready to go for each side. Which, again, is what we had to wait on to do animations for the weapons basically: they look better and function better than the two-jointed chunky fingers from before. You will notice the gloved Thief, Flamethrower, Shocktrooper, and Volkov hands are missing, as we're still looking at them and deciding how to do them. Apocalypse Rising also has a stake in those, so we're going to try to be a bit efficient by finding a mesh design that will work well for both projects.

If you are wondering what they look like without the clothing or want a more detailed view, here is an earlier progress shot that Beerinator took: