Remaster Update and July Balance

Fellow Command & Conquer fans,

Over the past several days we've been actively discussing some of the top balance issues and exploits the community has been highlighting. I've been trying to gather as much information as possible from the greater community here on Reddit, and then also discussing those items in more detail with the Community Council and Petroglyph. I wanted to outline a few approaches the team is considering in response to these items, with a goal of both honing in on certain solutions and then gathering specific details about balance numbers. First, three key caveats:

1) Our objective here is not to "rebalance" the entire game. We are only selecting targeted items which the community has raised and appear to be significantly impacting the online experience.

2) We are still information gathering and cannot guarantee these items will make it into the game, as they will need further evaluation for implementation feasibility.

3) All these changes would be for Skirmish / Multiplayer only, and would likely be a toggle in the game rules with a new "Modern Balance" button. We would set this rule to ON for Quickmatch.

With that in mind, here are the items we're discussing:

1) In Tiberian Dawn, we want to normalize the time it takes for the Cargo Plane to deliver Nod vehicles. In our tests, on Normal speed this can take anywhere from 1 sec to 19 sec depending on your exact Airstrip location(s) and map size. This is of course heavily impacted by your spawn location which is never ideal. We are seeking feedback on what the normalized time should be, with the team's proposal currently at 6 sec on Normal speed. (For reference, this is about how long it takes for the plane to get halfway across a 62 cell width map)

2) In Tiberian Dawn, we want to increase the health of the GDI Weapons Factory. We also considered changing the Armor Type, but would like to keep the current combat chain intact. We are thus seeking feedback on how much the health should be increased.  For transparency, the team’s opinion is it should have less survivability than the Nod Airstrip.  For reference, the Weapons Factory can take about half as many tank shells / rockets as the Airstrip, but can only take less than 20% the number of bullet shots due to the Aluminum Armor type (50 Buggy shots for Weapons Factory versus more than 250 Buggy shots for Airstrip)

3)  In Red Alert, we want to remove Naval Yards and Sub Pens from the “Destroy all Structures” victory condition.  This is to prevent stalemates and griefing from players who attempt to prolong a game by having Naval structures far away from the shore.  This should also nullify an issue of players hiding an MCV in a Naval Transport to unnecessarily prolong a game.

4)  In Tiberian Dawn, the issue of Force Firing into the shroud with air units should have been fixed and already working in the Beta patch.

5)  Finally, this brings us to the conversation around the Engineer + APC item in Tiberian Dawn.  Honestly we have been torn about addressing this issue, but feel that enough feedback has come in that we’d like to make an adjustment.  However, we want the community’s feedback on what direction to take.

First, there are two directions we respect but would not like to pursue right now:

• Add a capture delay:  While we like this mechanic from later C&C games, it would require new UI feedback, greater animation support, and be too distant from the legacy behavior for our spirit of this Remaster.

• Restrict Engineers from entering APCs:  While we feel this could help the issue, it would be odd / difficult to explain this restriction to players, and removes this classic tactic from the late game which is not our desire.

So with that in mind, we are interested in one of three options:

●       Pursue the Red Alert multi-Engineer capture mechanic.

○       We feel this option would fit in the spirit of the Remastered Collection era, and as some community members have explained should help add depth to this tactic.  Our main concern is it takes away from the legacy functionality of instant capture, which is a classic Tiberian Dawn moment (and may nullify the concept of Engineer capturing altogether).  It would also be more expensive to implement and harder to turn around for the next patch.

●       Require the Communications Center as a pre-requisite for building Engineers

○       This has been suggested by some community members and should help alleviate the combo in the early game.  However, this would also stamp out the entire concept of an early Engineer rush before scouting has occurred.  The good news is this would be easier to implement and more likely to make it for a next patch.

●       Require the Communications Center or Repair Facility (preferred) as a pre-requisite for building APCs

○       This has also been suggested by some community members and should help alleviate the early combo.  The extra benefit here is that the tactic of running an Engineer to your opponent’s base in the early game would still be a potential strategy (albeit a more unlikely gambit).  However, this may impact other early game combos with various infantry as a result.  The good news is this would be easier to implement and more likely to make it for a next patch.

So with these options on the table, we are looking for feedback on which direction to take as a first attempt to address this Engineer + APC issue.  While we understand it will be difficult to satisfy every perspective, we’ll aim to make the most collaborative decision possible given all the factors.

Overall for this thread, please keep your feedback focused on the topics above, so we can quickly decipher as much information as possible.  For a quick summary, here’s what we’re looking for:

• Feedback on normalized Cargo Plane delivery time
• Feedback on Weapons Factory health increase
• Feedback on Naval structures removed from Victory Condition (Good or bad)
• Feedback on Engineer + APC solution from the three proposed options

Thanks for your ongoing support, and looking forward to hearing your feedback on these items.

Cheers

Jim

Jimtern