If you play the original and then OpenRA you will be amazed how well OpenRA is balanced.

As an example, while in the original game using allied artillery against soviet tesla coils was a dead sentence in OpenRA is great to be able to fire well beyond its range forcing you to come out of the base to defend it.

They also added a ton of features which make the game truly enjoyable and fun to play.

Well done OpenRA team!

Weird. I find the balance for player vs AI to be actually pretty horrible. AI can outrange artillery sight so you have no choice but to push forward always or micro manage units. I have a fork of OpenRA on my GitHub where I try to address this, along with pathfinding bugs, enabling Tiberian Sun and fixing bugs with that. I also updated it to cross platform .NET 10 and bumped the performance up about 6-10x fixing minor bugs. Debating if I'll roll any of the code over as pulls to the main project ever after I tried to fix a random bug before and they were not welcoming to me but that was like a decade ago.

Link to your GitHub? I'd love to play the version with your improvements!

The comparison was against the original game. I haven't played on the computer since ages, but that was my impression the times I played it. I'm not deep into all the nuances of the game just that it was considerably better that the 1995 release.

1995 was the original "Command and Conquer" not "Red Alert". In the original C&C the computer wouldn't attack sandbox walls which was basically godmode since you could just fence them off heh.

The load/save is what kills me. It's a great project, but having to wait 2 hours for a game to load, fans blaring on my laptop, makes it less playable.

For context, I love huge, massive maps with loads of players. OpenRA replays the entire game to restore, it doesn't have a save-current-state routine.

So 20 hours of massive map + 8 players means 2 hours of pegged CPU to reload the save.

Heartbreaking.

> So 20 hours of massive map + 8 players means 2 hours of pegged CPU to reload the save.

It's super impressive this works at all.

Perhaps because their focus is on multiplayer, where saving and loading isn't as in demand as SP

Now, that is what I call taking the "Command Design Pattern" to heart!

I actually loved the imbalance of OG RA, I live for vaporizing my foes with tesla coils!

Tangential, but I got introduced to Red Alert C&C through various 'Hell March' videos by random fans of various militaries on YouTube. It's funny how it vibes with nearly every military you throw it over.

I love using the RA OST for coding. The songs are fun and fast paced with low lyrics.

It helps that this is a childhood favorite game of mine.

Frank Klepacki is a legend of a musician.

Try the Doom ones.

Total annihilation had an amazing score.. it was a young media giving talent a way to shine without first having to do a pilgrimage through some elder legends sweatshop.

I'll have to give them a shot, but admittedly the nostalgia is almost certainly a big reason I love the RA OST (and starcraft as well).

I didn't play enough doom to really love it in the same way.

Right, it's less about the nostalgia, and more about the tempo that I find really enjoying.

Man the Terran tracks are so incredible

It's the same backend, so it's a bit like a fun theme difference. I played Dune2 first, and like RA too.

They're talking about Doom, not Dune.

Heh, yes, right you are.

APC + flamethrowers was the new WTF in OpenRA, if I remember correctly.

If you play online and have a low rating of course buddy is gonna try this