The real problem with the Blasticade is that it is a different superweapon that has lost its purpose. The Firestorm Wall Generator in Tiberian Sun was, at a glance, the same weapon. You build a generator, you lay down tiles, and when it's charged up, you create an instant-death wall that nothing can cross. It was tricky to implement for the same reasons as the Blasticade, primarily in that wall-building in this engine is finnicky at best and frustrating at... usually. You might recall that terrain deformation was a thing in TS, and for having lack of it in RA2, assume that this makes it all the better. But at the end of the day, the Blasticade can't do what the Firestorm Generator's primary gimmick was:
It would stop other superweapons. No, not artillery. No, not airstrikes. The NOD Cluster Missile was their not-Nuke. If you could reach your control panel in time after hearing the missile launch, you could possibly save yourself from taking a hit. That it happened to stop units from crossing was a bonus, not the premier. Without this functionality, its existence is left as a lingering "why...?" . This is made doubly so by how easy it is to destroy the blasticade piping itself, a feat that can be done with just about anything that explodes and even has a hard counter against it in the form of China's barrier-busting missile. It ends up being a massive waste of time and effort. Not to mention money and power. I like the idea of the Blasticade, but it took an already situational and hard to apply superweapon and pulled its teeth out. Maybe if it worked differently, like instead of walls you had nodes that projected the Blasticade effect over an area, so you didn't get your wall to a gentle slope and have to suddenly abandon your plan. But it'd still need
something else going for it to make up for the inability to tell ICBMs to sit down and be quiet. Perhaps cause the already superweapon-blocking jammers to temporarily project Megarena-style killshields? It could be seen as a counter to spy, engineer, or paradrop rushes.
People do keep mentioning the Harbinger being OP, and even as a Foehn fan, I'm inclined to agree. The M.A.D.M.A.N. seems to be the ideal balance point of all the 3 subfactions' heavy support weapons. It's devastating, but if you let it get close enough to your base, you deserve it. (Unless your Foehn enemy is teamed with an Allied faction that lends use of their Chronosphere, in which case hahahahaha.) The Harbinger and the Boidmachine seem to trail off in opposite directions from here. The Harbinger does more damage on its initial run than I've managed to get out of a shot of the Boidmachine. And then it comes back 7 more times. In fact it comes back so many times that, when fighting AI, you're likely to not only kill everything they had at the target zone, but to kill its replacement when the AI redeploys the same structure 4 or so runs into the Harbinger's 8 run rampage. The Boidmachine, by contrast, even when fully leveled up, manages to kill almost nothing. Going by cost effectiveness, the biggest punch I've ever been able to deliver out of it was to wipe out the contents of an airfield. And it didn't even take out the airfield itself, just the planes. ( I did catch that its charging sound effect was the audio cue for Final Fantasy VII's Ultima, another endgame weapon that fires a massive green energy explosion. I thought it was a cute touch. ) As much as the Harbinger seems to need a nerf, I think Boid needs a buff.
Shrike nests leave a lot to be desired. I could even deal with their cooldown between volleys, but the SODAR buff requires the drone itself to remain in the radius, so you have to keep your SODAR out forward and exposed for them to synergize. Often the drone will launch and lose the buff halfway to its target. The Plasmerizer also seems to have some application problems. I'm not sure, but it seems like it resets its chargeup timer every time it acquires a new target. This means that without significant micro or just giving up and telling to force fire in the general direction of the enemy, it almost never actually engages anything, and especially not infantry blobs where each target dies in a few seconds from other defenses. Some kind of independent charge tracking that diminishes when nothing's in range rather than resetting per target would help a lot. All the other defensive structures are 10/10 and I love them, especially the Neutralizer.
I'm not sure if Urugan is OP or if people just don't think to counter him quickly enough. He outputs so much damage over such an area that his collateral makes him difficult to use on your defensive lines. Eureka is stylish and powerful, but somewhat awkward to apply. I might narrow but extend her cone of effect.
The only thing I'm actually disappointed about is that for a faction based entirely on wind and stylistically similar phenomenon (sonic, plasma, etc), going so far as to have a subfaction dedicated entirely to it, Foehn has absolutely no airborne fast-movers at all. Unless you count their scout power. I wish we could get something similar to a fixed-wing fighter for them. Heck, even a Wings-exclusive variant of the Rocketeer. Seems up their alley.
I've been playing a lot of Skirmish matches, and I'm curious to know. Do AI allied with a Human player lose the bonus to production that enemy AI normally get? I've been dabbling with this to try and figure out what's up, but I can't see what's going on behind the scenes. Two AI of the same level matched against eachother will draw out into a long fight. But myself and one AI versus an AI of the same level, even if I do nothing but turtle, will see the AI on my team steamrolled 100% of the time. I've even had Easy AIs beat Hard AIs allied with me.
While I'm on the topic of bonuses the AI gets, how is that production bonus actually conveyed? Do they sometimes get additional units, Cloning Vat style? Last night an AI somehow got TWO Irkalla at the same time.
I had a lot more to say, but the coffee is wearing off and I'm crashing. I'll probably post again when I'm riled from an evening of MO. Don't let my nitpicking fool you, devs. I love the mod, and thank you for making it.
Last thought: Y'know what I always really liked in Tiberian Sun and would look really good with Foehn's energy-based weapons? An option to make them your team color. Cyan Obelisk of Light beams were objectively superior to any other color. It's the truth. Look it up or something.
- Jargalhurts, XoGamer and Damfoos like this