Dawn of the Tiberium Age (DTA) is a stand-alone mod that combines Tiberian Dawn (C&C 95) and Red Alert. While classic mode gets as close to the original game-play and balance as possible, Enhanced mode provides improved game balance and a lot of fun new stuff. DTA features many customization options for Skirmish and multiplayer (where you can play as GDI, Nod, Allies and Soviet on over 200 maps), challenging original singleplayer missions, as well as co-op missions. Since this is a stand-alone mod, you don't require anything but the mod itself to be able to play: the original game is not required.
While tanks are the most resistant against the Behemoth's napalm mortars tanks to their heavy armor, the Behemoth still packs quite a punch against even them.
So a juggernaut finally made it into your mod... Not sure yet whether I it like seeing it in DTA but it surely looks cool.. Balance wise we will see how it does..
Either way great work - new units are always welcomed.
I can't provide much feedback on this because I am not totally aware of the tech trees in DTA. Considering it's still suppose to hit very hard against even tanks, it's clearly a mass counter. If Soviets vs Allieds is even remotely similar to actual RA1, I can see this being a very important unit to shake the matchup up as generally Soviets were very bad against the super easy to mass and well-rounded Medium Tanks, making them almost obsolete in competitive RA1. With a unit like this, they can turn those tides more in their favor by doing heavy damage to tank spam which will diversify the matchup more by forcing Allieds to use something other than Medium Tanks in the mid to late-game (Depending on whenever this is available and can be gotten at a reasonable number). But the problem with that is, do Allieds have the options to do just that? I have no idea. And what about other mathups? Vs GDI it will do largely the same thing, no? So we're left with Nod and Allieds that I'm not sure what their tech trees are like. Will they have the options necessary to handle this and diversity their compositions? Or are they going to not have any real answer to this? I guess we'll have to see. :D
As an Epic unit, the Behemoth has a build limit of 1 and all other factions have different epic units of their own.
That... Seems overly careful. There is no way this thing would be at all overpowered if it was a late-game tech unit. It's slow, which means it can't force engagements or push out on the map easily without being caught off guard, and would still undeniably have a vulnerability to air even though it can attack air (Just due to the nature of its slowness and aircraft being relatively cheap and effective in open field fights), as well as obviously being expensive and possibly having other weaknesses I'm unaware of, like maybe a minimum range or a noticeably shallow health pool for the cost, and would be terrible at defending constant counter attacks without stretching them across the map which divides up their strength and makes them more vulnerable because you'd also have to divide up defense for them. Even if it one-shot everything in its AoE, most of these backdraws still don't make it a clear-cut overpowered unit especially since some things may even be faster than its projectiles are and thus can dodge the attack.
The build limit isn't really because we'd be "careful", but it's because the Behemoth is Soviet's 2nd epic unit. Each faction in DTA has 2 build-limited epic units that tend to be more effective for the price than standard units.
The Behemoth will form a very strong force that will be very difficult to beat when paired with some Soviet Mammoth tanks. However, it'll also be as slow as the Mammoth tanks. So, the best way to counter it will be taking advantage of its slowness.
If the Behemoth is guarding one route, use another route to attack, if the Behemoth is coming to attack your base you can split your forces and make a quick counter-attack against the Soviet base, you should actively look for opportunities to harass the Soviet harvesters etc. Both Nod and Allies have enough fast units that they can mostly avoid fighting the Behemoth in direct combat, or they can force the Soviets to split their slower forces (to defend harvesters / base entrances) when they can then take on the Behemoth since it has fewer tanks defending it.
The Behemoth also has a minimum range which means that destroying it is going to be easy if you get close enough and the Behemoth doesn't have anything defending it.
Well, that isn't my point. It's that, when assuming this thing doesn't have a build limit, players need to have potential tech options to go against it. Flanks are just not quite going to cut it. You still have to engage this army at some point more than likely.
So, let me give an example of Protoss vs Terran in StarCraft:
In PvT, Protoss has Dragoons. This is their bread and butter, not unlike Medium Tanks. They are fairly mobile in comparison to Terran Siege Tanks and Spider Mines, and this makes it very easy for them to deny bases by catching Tanks that are repositioning off guard. The Tanks and Mines on the flip side have a lot of stopping power, but due to massive immobility they can't really push out much. So it becomes a balancing act of the Protoss trying to deny bases and starve out their opponent and collect more resources so they can ultimate throw wave after wave of Dragoons at Tanks until they slowly whittle the tank force down. While for the Terran, their job is to find oppertunity to take bases and find timings to do damage to stop the Protoss from snowballing. Siege Tanks in this case are not unlike the Behemoth, when assuming there isn't a build limit on them. This is the kind of thing I am worried about, because in this case Medium Tanks may not actually have the capability to deny bases like Dragoons can just do to the way TS's, and by extension DTA's, economy works, how expansions work in it TS/DTA, the usual asymmetrical design of maps, and a few other factors. I am not totally certain, though. Maybe Medium Tanks could do this. I am not very familiar with DTA's Meta. But if not, then Allied would need something that could accomplish this, otherwise there is an inherent imbalance.
But now that you tell me there is a build limit, none of this would at all be a problem. There would not be anywhere near as much power and ability to hold positions like Siege Tanks could, and may even be underpowered. This is my problem with Build Limits. They are a cheap and non-elegant way of throwing an extra balance layer into the mix that ultimately makes things far too underpowered or far too overpowered in trying to compensate for high stats vs trying to make the unit useful despite having a build limit and it's very very difficult to get an inbetween. So that kind of upsets me about this unit, because it has real potential to be a cool positional unit that you have to whittle down through wave after wave of forces while starving your opponent out while you try to take opportunity and timings to deal damage with said Behemoths which would be a really interesting way to spice up normal C&C playstyles.
Honestly why would you argue balance in the hypothetical? If you haven't played a game with the unit or even know the factions tech trees then really there can be no constructive discussion on it.
I dont think this thing can be compared to a siege tank when it is available much later in the game and supposed to be a special unit. You could draw analogies between dragoon/siege tank dynamics and some WF/radar unit pairing maybe, but this is more like the SC nuke or something than part of the common faction interactions.
That's... Entirely what my second paragraph is about...
It does not read clearly that way at all. I don't think SC nukes are really what you described there. They're spice to the arsenal that can come to define moments in a match, but aren't part of the regular swarmed composition - which IMO is a good thing to have. You want special moments and tools to use that aren't commonplace, and this is that, just like the SC nuke.
And of course great players can win with skillful use of the core army, and will find the most efficient ways to play, but most games aren't played by those people and more casual matches will see nukes, cattle bruisers or massed queens used. And that's OK. It's not interesting if there aren't those 'oh ****' game turning moments.
Why would my point be what you were talking about??? My point that I was making in the second paragraph is that it *isn't* like what I was describing at all and that the balance argument was indeed entirely pointless, I was agreeing with you on that. The current Behemoth is not like Siege Tanks or Dragoons in the slightest, though I wouldn't say it is like a Nuke (I'd argue it's more like a ground BC that shoots AoE Yamato Cannons, I guess).
That however also wasn't the entire point of my first paragraph in that post. My point with that whole first paragraph was addressing concern for an issue in the game that may or may not exist. Is there really problems with Soviets taking on Allied Medium Tanks??? No one has really addressed that to me. I show concern because as it stands DTA tends to try and be true to the spirit of the originals, and that entails that Allied/GDI Medium Tanks are objectively broken and overpowered compared to Soviet Heavy and Mammoth Tanks which was the exact-same problem that existed in Tiberian Dawn. So I am inclined to believe that same-exact problem does probably exist in DTA as well and nobody has really countered that belief of mine yet.
Looks like a unit that'd be helpful in the awaking the nightmare DLC.
This would be great in OpenRA.
I bet this is an original unit in DTA
Since i never seen this beast before
It indeed is original and unique to DTA only :)
Did you plan to add another epic unit for all faction?
We're not planning on adding more epic units.
Previously (in DTA 1.15 and earlier) we had 2 epic units for GDI and Nod, but only 1 for the Soviets. The Allies had either 1 or 2, depending on whether you count the Phase tank an "epic unit".
With the addition of the Behemoth and Tank Destroyer, each faction now has 2 clearly epic units. So we added the Behemoth and Tank Destroyer to actually put the factions in line with each other when it comes to epic units, and we aren't planning on adding even more epic units for now.
Artillery + SSM launcher + Mammoth tank?