Greetings Options

[liquidv2]

I've been playing this mod for more than a decade I guess, and I just wanted to pop in and say thank you for all the work that went into making and balancing it. The branching out of each team, along with restoring and filling in the planned Generals who didn't make it into Zero Hour, is absolutely staggering. With the countless changes and improvements, you've managed to balance it out to a point where each team is unique and viable (mostly). I still think Stealth GLA is garbage, but that's because I'm a Skirmish guy and haven't run into a nerdy human who's mastered the little nuances of stealth everything.

I play World of Tanks as well, and recognized quite a few things that made it into the game. The Laser Paladin actually resembles a Maus / E 100, but with laser accessories. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the original inspiration for the current design, and only recently noticed the similarity. The Tiger Shark is a cool Tiger II / King Tiger model that you used as the Infantry China MBT, and it's cool seeing them trying to tee off against modern vehicles. I think the Scorpion tank looks like a M2 Medium USA tank, but it may be coincidence. The Sheridan for Airforce USA is a real-life vehicle as well, and makes sense for balance purposes. I like the Stealth GLA tank being the French Panhard, a fast but squishy tank. Vanilla GLA in Shockwave gets the Chameleon, aka the E 25 German tank destroyer. Those are quite fun to play, but the Basilisk (T95) absolutely takes the cake. Watching a Battlemaster get trashed in a single shot, violently tossed up into the air as a pile of smoking scrap will never get old. The long reload makes the thing more balanced, but the helicopters with rocket pods are able to get too many rockets off with too short of a reload in my opinion. If you want to go completely ham and throw all 36 rockets at something, you should have a longer reload time than the comparatively short 2 rockets every 2 seconds ratio that standard fire gives you. The benefit must come with a price, in my opinion.

I like the GLA Salvage upgrade, where you can upgrade the vehicles once for $300, but think it would be cool if you could fully upgrade the tank that way, either for $300 each time or maybe more per rising tier. You can buy piles at Scrap Yards for 300 a piece and do it that way, but it's massively time consuming and annoying to get there. GLA units seem to take longer to build as it is, so it all adds up as the battles draw on. I wonder if the Temple of Gaia superweapon is a bit OP, but it's just so amazing and fun that it really doesn't matter. I don't like that GLA balloons stack on each other, but if it were easy to get them to disperse on their own I'm sure you guys would have managed it by now. Just grab them all and hit the X key a few times to spread them out and call it a day. The Demo GLA Angry Mobs can't lock onto targets, so they only hit targets that aren't moving unless you force fire in front of them (which I do). The Inferno Cannons getting the AP shells that use the old AGT sounds and follow targets are so cool, even if they make no sense. The addition of ranged infantry changed the game for the better as well, and I'm glad Stealth GLA got the rocket sniper dudes. I also appreciate the Recoilless rifle guys instead of the mobile tank guns, but I don't know if their damage justifies the cost. The range is awesome and their shots do follow the vehicles, but they are awkward and slow and can't get in buildings to hide, so they're not a good value much of the time (unless I'm just doing it wrong).

I love the superweapons and Generals upgrades, like the tungsten rods that blow up half the base when they finally land. The Combat Chinooks playing Flight of the Valkyrie is one of the coolest things I've seen in a video game - thanks for that as well. Watching Marines pour down the fire out of APCs and Combat Chinooks is always great. USA getting the customizable suits is another unique feature, and Colonel Burton's almost looks like the prototype GDI unit they had prior to Tiberian Sun (in the C&C 1 Tiberian Sun teaser trailer). I'm just rambling off ideas in no coherent order - don't mind me.

Here's a video I uploaded over 10 years ago in horrible, freezing quality and lowest graphics setting to YouTube featuring Shockwave superweapons and Generals powers, to show how long I've been around: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qvA-BbPaUQ
Near the end of it, I somehow dropped an airfuel bomb on the enemy in the exact place my AI companion dropped his, and the planes crossed each other in mid-air as the bombs parachuted down together simultaneously and completely wrecked the buildings. I played Hell March 3 in the video because it goes well with anything.

I once did me and an AI vs. 4 Hard Tank Generals on Stomp Arena and managed to win with only his Command Center and a powerplant intact, amassing over 3,000 unit kills after 5 or 6 hours or something (literally all of those were tanks destroyed). Unsure how that's relevant, but I was proud of the fact that I survived, eating maybe a dozen nukes in the process.

Again, a sincere thank you to everyone who ever worked on this mod or helped test / balance everything in it, as I'm sure it took countless hours of work. Just know that lots of people appreciate all the time you put into it, as I likely spent more hours playing skirmishes and infrequent LAN / Hamachi games with friends than I'd like to admit (something like 800+ battles logged in Zero Hour / Shockwave's combined Skirmish modes, with the average being at least an hour because of the number of AI and my tendency to turtle early and build up forces - yikes). You guys are heroes for this game's legacy, keeping it fresh and exciting decades after its release. (Thank you for the New Shoes!!!)