NOD campaign

[Knight who says Ni]

Is every mission from 8 onwards on the NOD campaign designed to be an annoying pile of ♥♥♥♥♥? So far, 8 and 9 have involved extremely unfun microing of units who consistently enter range of enemies when they don't need to in order to fire, as well as simply walking upto units and not firing; random air strikes which you are near enough defenceless to stop (Iv'e tried using rocket soldiers who appear ineffective, and you don't have access to SAMs and bikes); and giving you a scarcity of units which appear to be designed to be hard countered by the enemies.

I like a challenge, but this just is not fun. I always considered the strength of these games to be the base and army building, the pathfinding and unit behaviour is just too awful to lend itself to these types of mission where you have a small limited force.

TLDR - do all the NOD missions from 8 onwards follow the same routine?

[TaxOwlbear]

Are you playing on hard? The original TD didn't have casual and hard difficulty, and the missions are not designed around them.

As for the airstrikes: in the original, the airstrikes always target your northwesternmost structure or unit, and can easily be baited. That was fixed, but without giving the player anything in return e.g. fixing the SAM Sites and having them stay popped up and not go down after firing once. However, SAM Sites can still be used to bait planes. A group of three or four is enough to become the priority target for airstrikes without actually dying.

[Knight who says Ni]

Thanks for the reply.

No, default difficulty.

Unless I'm missing something, you don't have access to SAM sites on mission 8. You have to sell your CY to fund the GDI base you take over, so no option to build SAMs.

I completed that mission, but then groaned when I start mission 9 and find that I have a commando I have to get over to the 4 rockets soldiers, and continually try and get them to shoot the towers, tanks and humvees without them repeatedly running up nearly point blank and getting shot to bits, as well as having no control over telling them to get their asses down to limit damage and shoot from the max range they can.

Just not fun. I can do it, but I play for the base building and armies, hence my question about whether the remaining missions are like this. If they are, I'll just youtube the cinematics and move on to RA which is the one I played as a kid and bought this for anyway :D

[Purpleganja]

I think that in the mission you talk about with the commando, you need to get the rocketers and backtrack to get the engineers and go capture a base to the south. You might have trouble if you are trying to attack the base to the northeast with only the starting units.

Ps about the original topic, Tiberian Dawn is more about knowing the maps and doing the most out of the little bits that you have rather than just building a base and a huge army to charge into the ennemy.
Theres a lot of little tricks and timings to learn in each maps. There's also a lot of cheese and exploits to make it easy, but that might not be what you are looking for.
I have not played RA remastered yet, but I remember it being much more about big armies and never feeling the need to cheese my way through missions back then.

[Knight who says Ni]

Looks like I'm right, got to mission 11 and the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ factor just went up a few more points.

Like I said, I can do it if I keep at it but I get no sense of satisfaction for doing so. Its fake difficulty - taking the poor unit behaviour and pathfinding and building missions around them that are just an exercise in sheer frustration. It's like the guys who created most of the GDI campaign and the NOD missions 1-7 suddenly quit and someone else took over.

I hope RA is not as bad - my childhood, rose tinted glasses seem to recall the number of these ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ missions being far fewer!

[sac]

RA is much, much better. TD campaign is really bad imo, with some missions borderline impossible on hard, only passable with engineer cheese

[Phalanx1337 [gD]]

c&c was a lot harder then it is on here in easy mode like for like

[Snufflegrunt]

There's a reason I consider beating C&C 1 plus Covert Ops to be one of my top gaming achievements.

The NOD campaign requires crazy micro, especially when you don't have a base of your own. The Covert Ops are even worse/better.

[ryo_oki]

covert ops missions are best played on casual mode unless you want to throw your PC through the window.

[HE1NZ]

Missions 9, 10 and 12 are super easy. 8 and 11 can be difficult. Nod campaign is designed to be more puzzle like. There's a simple way to beat them, but it's not always apparent. Why would you think game wants you to destroy enemy base with a command and a bunch of rocket launchers? The same thing is mission in GDI campaign where people assume they have to destroy 3 turrets with a few grenadiers and get filtered. Just stop and think what you might be doing wrong.

By the way, the difficulty of The Covert Operations scenarios is varied. Some are very easy, some are brutal. But they are very fun to play.

[steri]

you do realise its a strategy game right?

[Drain]

Set it to easy if you're struggling with a map.

[Caleidian]

The real nightmare is the NOD 11A on Hard difficulty.. Make sure to save after each wave

[Hat8]

The NOD campaign is all about micro so it's a pain. Savescumming is a good idea. Having to restart every part would just be annoying.

[DarkFenix]

Originally posted by Caleidian:

The real nightmare is the NOD 11A on Hard difficulty.. Make sure to save after each wave

I raise you 13C. 11A is pretty easy once you get the base, courtesy of the derpy AI being easy to lure into trying to attack your artillery on the south bank (I made them force fire at points on the road to just splash anything approaching, thus aggroing it).

13C is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ nightmare.

[Knight who says Ni]

Originally posted by steri:

you do realise its a strategy game right?

Yes, a strategy game. Those missions are actually based around tactics, which are this games weakest element. You do know the difference right?

Anyhow, I've moved onto RA now. Thanks all for taking the time to reply!