China is to RoTR as Soviets is to YR Options

[Inst]

I'm wondering if anyone has the same feeling, but China is quite similar to the Soviets of Yuri's Revenge. In Yuri's Revenge, the cool parts of the Soviets (Cloning Vats, Yuri) was moved off to its own faction, making it relatively boring compared to its RA2 incarnation. The Soviets did get the Siege Chopper, which functions as an interesting Rocketeer variant, but otherwise the Soviets became boring, although I hear that in the modern pro play, Soviets are the strongest side.

With the removal of Neutron Shells, China is a rather straightforward faction that specializes in brute force operations. If you say, look at the Zerg of Starcraft, they weren't simply an outnumbering force, but emphasized mobility (zerglings, hydralisks were reasonably fast with upgrades, nydus canals gave incredible mobility) and expansion capability.

I understand the need of game designers to emphasize the difference between the Chinese and Russian factions; the Russians are supposed to be more high-tech than the Chinese, but the RoTR Chinese are almost lower tech in feel than the GLA. I mean, you gave them a MiG-21 / J-7 as a bomber, and the MiG-21 costs more than a MiG 1.44.

How about some newer kit? If, as the storyline goes, the Chinese are a major superpower, their technology should have improved as well, so why not, as in real life, remote-controlled drones? The Chinese dominate the military drone market because the US is loathe to export drone technology. Or how about a J-20 as a limit 1 unit that specializes in late-game reconnaissance and interception? Or we can go the same route as in Yuri's Revenge, and give the Chinese cheap, spammable helicopters (WZ-19)?

[Zeke]

I don't really care for all the other points, just like to clarify one thing.

Neutron shells were removed for China, not because China "can't have hightech stuff", but because ZH has an unfixable bug where neutron weapons will one hit kill units that use bike logic. A lot of stuff in ROTR use bike logic, which would make the nuke cannon able to one hit kill most of the things in the game. You could argue that neutron shells have always been able to one hit kill vehicles anyway, but that's not technically true, as you can still get them back by recrewing them, so they don't actually die, their veterancy just gets reset.

ECA has neutron weapons, because their neutron bombs are big enough to one hit kill most things in the game anyway, so that bug doesn't matter.