OpenRA is an open-source remake of the classic Command & Conquer franchise, including Tiberian Dawn (C&C), Red Alert and Dune 2000. Future mods will include Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2.
The game client has been in development since 2009 by a small group of developers, code contributors and a community of players helping to tweak and balance the mods. The main focus has been on delivering a cross-platform multiplayer to allow players to quickly host and join games as well as playing skirmish matches against the A.I.
All the mods has been altered as to having more of the original game's infrastructure in use for skirmish and online play. It also features some of the original campaign missions and will eventually have the full original campaign available in the single player mode.
Since July 2015 the Red Alert mod's multiplayer has evolved to the point of having a friendly but highly competetive 1v1 scene as the game's core gameplay has pretty much settled. There's also been surge in hosted tournaments, e.g. an ongoing Tiberian Dawn League and a planned Cross-mod tournament next month with a price pool! For anyone looking for a new RTS platform to practice and honoring their strategy skills or just want to compete on the classic C&C franchise, I highly recommend checking out OpenRA.
When I played it, competitive Red Alert (and by that I just mean getting rank 1 on Westwood's official ladder -- IDK what people on other ladders or tournaments were doing) mostly consisted of both players getting tanks and harassing harvesters or fighting head on, using the waypoint command (Q key) to move and shoot at the same time, trying to dodge your opponent's fire while trying to time your shots to land when your target briefly stops moving. Skimming through some youtube videos, that's obviously not what competitive players are doing now. Why isn't that strategy good now?
Yea would like to know that also, i too got rank 1 a few times on the Official ladder when Westwood was running things although i was mainly a 2v2 clan player, will never forget Red Alert 2, had so many memories from that game, shame i lost contact with all the friends i made.
On February 07 2016 02:59 NonY wrote: When I played it, competitive Red Alert (and by that I just mean getting rank 1 on Westwood's official ladder -- IDK what people on other ladders or tournaments were doing) mostly consisted of both players getting tanks and harassing harvesters or fighting head on, using the waypoint command (Q key) to move and shoot at the same time, trying to dodge your opponent's fire while trying to time your shots to land when your target briefly stops moving. Skimming through some youtube videos, that's obviously not what competitive players are doing now. Why isn't that strategy good now?
Unit stats in OpenRA are different than the original Red Alert to balance the game.
Edit: and ofc the explanation from SoScared below me.
On February 07 2016 02:59 NonY wrote:Why isn't that strategy good now?
The biggest change from the old game mechanics is production. Building more production facilities in the original cut your production by something like 50% per structure and eventually you built a tank in 4-5 seconds, resulting in competetive games boiling down to massive tank spamming. There was little incentive to go any other route. In OpenRA the production bonus is nerfed significantly, making you look for options - infantry, aircraft and navy.
OpenRA is lots of fun, I exclusively played the CnC mod, balancing some maps ("Manufacturing Consent v2.36") and making some others ("Towers Cross" and "Towers Plus"). I'm bound to come back once Tiberian Sun's out.
It was fun to play a competitive RTS with a small player-pool and an undeveloped meta, because your own intuitions and abilities count for more, proportionally, than sheer mechanics. Now that I'm not bothered or passionate about practicing mechanics, I fall behind in any competitive RTS.
As you get older, the value/cost of your time goes way up, so the cost:benefit ratio from training RTS mechanics goes way down. Without mechanics, you can't execute strategy no matter how good your brain is. So (as with playing BW) it gets really disappointing to lose for simple reasons, which you understand and can predict, but haven't bothered to grind the motions to execute the commands fast enough (because that portion of leisure-time spent on that grind isn't worth the social cost).
If people on TL are interested to play I'll play with them. The easiest way to check availability of a quick game, is to check this page: www.openra.net/games/ And click on one of the IP links, which will launch the game and join that server (pretty nifty!)
The game still has some bugs (glitching flying units out the top of the map, flying units can't accept queued commands) but it's quite fun, especially for nostalgia's sake, if Westwood RTS's were your first games.
I can provide CnC builds if people want a head-start.
Warning: the standards for map balance and symmetry in the OpenRA community are WAY lower than for StarCraft. Be prepared to face the most bullshit maps, and even more bullshit justifications as to why unfair maps are fine ("oh, only skill matters", "a good commander can turn a disadvantage into an advantage", "pretty maps are better than fair maps").
Yeah unfortunately the map pool (Red Alert mod) have been under par for a RTS game. For small team games /1v1's the official map pool is lacking. There are a lot of great maps there but they haven't found their way into the official map pool yet. The past 6 months there's been a lot of new great maps making some ground that eventually will replace some of the old ones but currently these are to be found in OpenRA's resource center and the custom map tab in-game.
On February 11 2016 11:58 ChunderBoy wrote: does expanding give any advantage other than gaining more ground?
MCV's slightly lower production time for structures up to a 50% discount with 7 MCV's (same formula with all production fascilities). Expansions are mainly used to secure more income (ore patches/mines) and occasionally used to attempt to lock down or base-push a strategic location.
On February 11 2016 16:36 c3rberUs wrote: Since I only played RA2 and RA2: Yuri's Revenge for fun, I have a question. How balanced were the Soviets and the Allies?
I might give this a try when I get the motivation.
On OpenRA skirmish/multiplayer, Soviet and Allies are balanced pretty darned well, especially concerning the Allies/Soviets are quite specialized, including sub-factions. For some newcomers it can take some time before transitioning from Allies to Soviet because of Allies' tech advantage, easier options for turtling and playing safe. The Allied artillery for example is a different beast than that of the original, now able to out-range any other unit in the game. For the mediocre to the most experienced players it's a pretty even distribution between the factions, with macro players leaning towards Soviet and micro players towards Allies.
The RA mod's balancing for the last couple of releases has almost exclusively been about the sub faction's traits and late-game high-tier units to make them a viable option for the late game.
If you need someone to explore the game with, you should join us playing with a live-stream every Monday from 1900 GMT. We're a loose alliance of NA and European players, guests, developers, spectating and playing 1v1 matches for a few hours. Mumble: 64h.mine.nu port: 64738 Stream: http://www.twitch.tv/soscared
Our tournament officials has been hard at work organizing another OpenRA Tag Team Tournament! It will run March 5&6 and March 12&13. Thanks to the featured casters and the Gamereplays.com crew, there is a $200 pool to be split 80%-20% for first and second place respectively! Each team will fight sets of 1v1s and 2v2s for each bracket match. Brackets will be arranged randomly.
Entries close on March 2nd, 0:00 UTC so be sure to register now! You may register and find more information here.
OpenRA is starting up it's own continuous Red Alert league in witch players can compete, new players can learn and good players can rise to the top. Red Alert Global League is open for everyone. If you're looking to try out a new RTS game, enjoy competition and you're a fast learner, this might be for you.
"Development for this release started about six months ago, and in this time 50 developers contributed a total of 1,232 commits that added more than 14,000 lines of code."
Feel like brawling through a crowd of recruits? Some players are in for the fun, some are in for the win.
So far, 27 new players has signed up for some action, looking to fight their way up the divisions. The RA Global League is growing and so is the League's prizepool. This season has been blessed with no less than $800 that will be split among players looking to fight for the top positions in the Masters' and Minions' Division.
There's no telling where it all will stop but I can tell you where it all begins: Go register to gain access to the most prestigious event OpenRA's Red Alert has to offer. Get to know and play with some of OpenRA's top profiles and try to win some matches along the way;)
A worthy bump, OpenRA's RA mod has taken further steps in the direction of competetive play, demonstrated here by a very entertaining match cast by OpenRA's greatest commentator, FiveAces:
Also, in relation to the discussion above about the RA mod's map pool, the map pool has been completetly overhauled over the past 12 months, now offering 68 new and rebalanced official maps (and 1000's of custom maps with OpenRA's resource center: http://resource.openra.net/).
Just a bump/update on how OpenRA is doing: there was an official Red Alert / Tiberian Dawn / Dune 2000 remaster released by EA in 2020, who's beautified assets are slowly making their way towards being supported in OpenRA. Tiberian Sun is coming along slowly but surely. And there's a Tiberian Dawn tournament currently running (which yours truly is participating in) called TDGL Tiberian Dawn Global League, check it out here: https://discord.com/invite/UcUztfr
It's a really fun and comparatively simple free RTS (only 1 resource, no upgrades), so I very much invite and encourage any StarCraft fans to pop over and try it out. Enjoy!
P.S. Another fun indie RTS game I play and invite you to play too is The Fertile Crescent: https://lincread.itch.io/the-fertile-crescent set in the Bronze Age, it's 4 years in development but still early days, but quite a lot of 8-bit fun.
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