An absolutely fantastic, well-presented and well-reasoned video! However, I wanted to weigh in a little on the ending. While I don't disagree with the notion of people not liking change, and that people disliked the way RA3 defied resource conventions is entirely true, I think there may be more to it than that. I understand your points that from a competitive perspective the ore nodes allow for the exacerbation in scale of small differences in skill, but from every other perspective than competitive the ore nodes are just significantly less interesting a tool to play with. An ore node has an optimal location to place the ref, and an optimal number of harvesters required for harvesting; 1. You can't do any better than that for that node. A resource field (I'm talking about all C&C games of this type and not solely RA2 BTW) feels far more organic, more 'analogue' and less 'digital'. The size of the field changes as it is harvested. This forces the distance between the field and the ref to change, making longer-distance harvesting an ongoing decision you have to weigh. As a field is depleted, you then shift your harvesters to another field you have expanded to, or in dire straights long-distance mine. You can rush in all your harvesters to steal a small field of gems or vinifera. You can use harvesters as 'goalies' to soak up damage from oncoming attacks. There's also just something viscerally, indefinably satisfying about sending your harvs to 'mow the lawn', giving a very definite visual indicator for how much value is in the field (in size and colour) and how much is remaining, while ore nodes are just oil derricks with more steps. With a resource field, you can pretty much always do better; have more harvesters and be closer to where the field, at first, starts. You also constantly have to weigh whether to use your build queues on improving your forces, or improving the efficiency of your economy. As the field depletes, move your harvesters. You could have too many harvesters for the size of the field, you could buy loads of harvesters to take a field quickly but have to weigh in the cost of the additional harvesters and if they were actually needed, but the way this flows is organic. With an ore node on the other hand, you instead start at optimal efficiency and can only do worse, which feels more aggravating and far less rewarding. You can't improve the efficiency of your economy, all you can do is expand to predetermined locations. Resource fields have a much larger area of intrinsic value around them, while with the ore nodes you know exactly where the ref will be placed. Dune's Spice is perhaps the most elegant piece of resource design in all of RTS, as the value in gameplay to the player goes hand-in-hand with the story value. Tiberium works almost as well, mixing in the danger to infantry as a gameplay mechanic rather than just a story thing. Red Alert's ore is just Tiberium from a gameplay perspective without the damage to units, and doesn't play into the story. That's fair, the gameplay needed a resource, but it's somewhat less inelegant for it. Still, I think it works well, and I reckon OpenRA's Red Alert presents a competitive-friendly variant of the classic resource field-centric C&C gameplay. Ore nodes are good as a tool for Red Alert 3's competitive sandbox for all the reasons you presented so well in this video, but for those of us who didn't play competitively it always felt like a downgrade to something less engaging, where there is only one right option. Besides which, I think there's a case to be made for the allowance of upsets and comebacks in a competitive setting. Not in the sense of the Blue Shell as raised here, but more so in the sense that the death of the early-game engineer, while yes being a setback, not being the factor that decides the entire game. Take fighting games; if you start a combo, you have the opportunity to deal a massive amount of damage if you can pull it off correctly. However, the game isn't over until your opponent's health bar is depleted, or all your stocks are taken. If they're good enough, a player on the back foot still has the chance to take the game, and so a losing player can keep fighting. I'm under the impression that classic C&C allows for this more so than other RTSs, and I've seen matches (OpenRA, shoutout again to FiveAces) where a player had an early advantage but then slipped back and lost traction. This allows massive armies to clash in an actual simulation of a war between two bases, rather than the smaller MOBA-like micro-intensive engagements between only a few units. To continue the fighting game analogy, I think of ore nodes as like traditional fighting games; I get why they work, but the combos are pre-made by the developers. If you don't play the way the developer wanted the character to be played, you're doing it wrong. Resource fields on the other hand are like Melee; combos are freeform and more inventive; they weren't laid out by the developer, they emerge from the interplay of game mechanics and allow for a greater freedom of expression and creativity in your tactics. A curated experience might make for a stronger competitive sandbox, but allowing gameplay to arise from the interplay of mechanics in the sandbox feels more organic, and I think more interesting.

11:26 Completely true. I hated the unorthodoxy and changes in RA3 when I first transitioned from RA2. But as I learned and opened up more my mind to it I realized RA3 is such great a game.

I never knew there was so much strategy in refs thanks helped alot

12:50 legend has it they're still circling the trees till this day

Ah, if only the balance between factions was also this intricately thought of 😔

i liked the Generals resource collection more than RA2 or RA3, it is a mix of both and easy to manage.

Ore mine is the only reason why you can build ore refinary and gether resource in water.

Great video as usual. I wonder though - How much of RA3's bad rep comes from the already at the time growing discontent with EA? I mean, they did meddle as usual, and basically EA was EA even back then, and I am no friend of theirs (Westwood lives in death!) but I personally always liked RA3, despite being into the series since Tib. Dawn days. (The Ore node thing never much bothered me, as I was always more into the base construction and combat aspect, than looking after the harvester armada) So I wonder if RA3's bad rep is just partially, as a game, a kind of an unfortunate victim due to the growing dislike/hate for EA?

That actually makes a lot sense that the economy design of RA3 is for competitive purposes while RA2 is for efficient but slow economy design

Honestly this video needs a continuation, not just in RA Universe, but also for Tiberium series, & Generals series, including CNC4. Because I never understood why EALA remove the economy system in CNC4, why Generals & Generals 2 had similar economy system like Starcraft (although certain factions doesn't use workers like USA and APA). Plus, there should be more KZfaqrs do topics like this. We rarely see people talk about RTS designs, or deep dive/behind the game design of C&C other then GeneralsGentlemen. This is worth for future developers to take note, if they're planning to revive the C&C style or Starcraft style of RTS.

It would be cool if there was like a gem node or something that offered 500 per load in the center of the map. It would make players choose between expanding to the farther and riskier but more valuable gems, or expanding to the safer but less valuable ore.

I think there are 3 categories you can put the c and c games in, just casual, competitive, or a near perfect blend of the 2, the casual games are red alert 1 and 2, tiberium dawn and Tiberian sun, the competitive games are red alert 3 and Tiberian twilight, and the near perfect blend being generals and it's dlc zero hour, and tiberium wars and Kane's wrath. Each of the casual c and c games follow the design of using what are called "cheese" strategies to win a battle, that is what makes the casual games fun for many, the competitive, like red alert 3 and Tiberian sun, use the design that every move you make is like a game of chess, one move can make or break the game, and the near perfect balance between the 2 styles, generals and tiberium war and their dlc, are their so that both competitive and casual players can play like they like to but can grow more efficient and even compete with other players while at the same time they can use a "cheese" strategy like hording avatars or black hand or quad cannons, Humvees with missile defenders or battle master tanks, or at least, these are my opinions of what the command and conquer games are divided into these 3 separate yet fun for their groups, and in my opinion, the perfect command and conquers are generals and Tiberium wars with their respective dlc's though many will not agree with me on the generals side of things, these two command and conquers appeal to both sides of the fan base, the competitive, and the casual more so then any other, they blend the 2 together almost perfectly besides some balancing issues that mod makers have since fixed with many unofficial patches. Though these thoughts are just my opinions. Anyone.can disagree if they want to, it's just what I interpreted from these games and from the gameplay I've watched from multiple channels on all these games over 5 years. And from others opinions as well

I always refer C&C Kane's Wrath for RA2 successor. The war is epic and massive. Rather than single artilery athena or wave tank.

Imagine spending months thinking your brains out about the economy system and coming up with a bulletproof idea/system and that gets absolutely rejected just because the players are not as open minded as the devs expected

While yes RA 3 economy design by no means being bad, it force you to spread your base while punish you for being turtling, you gain less money if you didn't start spreading. It is a turn off for some people (myself included), especially if they love turtling, since it changes the way they play the game since they love playing C&C game with turtling since begining. Altough i prefer base spreading gameplay now, the change of RA3 when i was first playing it was bittersweet.

Great video, thanks for the insights! :)

Funny enough, RA3's ore node design didn't really bother me, and my first C&C was Generals lol.

As per usual, great video ! I hope you get to have 10k subscribers soon man, and beyond that more ! High quality video as always

I don't think that replacing ore fileds with nodes was so far a bad idea. As also a long-time fan of C&C Franchise but espiacally a fan of Generals and Red Alert series I have to say that i even preffer mining methods in RA3 than RA2, it does as it was said in video it really makes the game more strategic and fast. I understand that people don't liked the changes in RA3 but I don't think they totally ruined the RA3. I have to admit that I hate when I see someone saying "Kane's Wrath was last good c&c from EA", In my opinion it was Uprising :) BTW some things did not cahnged that much - Tank Spam is now Tegnu spam... And holy cow thats a lot of Tengus

Nice intiate design! Keep up the good work!

Red Alert 2 : ore fields Red Alert 3 : ore nodes Me who plays an RTS with no resource harvesting : hmmmm.....I guess it's a good thing I don't hve to deal with this?

Also, after thinking about it for a while, I've realized that you haven't mentioned oil derricks. How do those fit into this picture? Also, refinery depletion, low health collectors?

Very insightful video! I really liked the old resource collection method, having grown up with RA2 and CnC Generals, but I can see why the RA3 collection nodes are actually a step forward in design (with CnC Generals feeling almost like an in-between of the classic CnC style and the RA3 style) I also remember being super confused when I first picked up RA3 with how little an extra harvester actually helped my economy. Otherwise, I was incredibly impressed with how RA3 was able to get the endgame away from simply smashing your gigantic tank army onto the enemy's tank army and buildings. Honestly it started to feel more like Age of Empires, where you couldn't just spam knights forever, because they'd get overwhelmed by spear infantry and etc

Great video! liked and subscribed. Man i miss ra3

Actually RA3 was the first C&C game I came in contact with, and the manner of its gameplay never bothered me. The the most annoying thing was hoveringly the blatant fanservice in it, no wonder literally every female commander got replaced in the Uprising DLC, because they were interchangeable...

Insanely great analysis! Red Alert 3's game design is severely underrated, both in terms of the resource overhaul and the multitude of roles any single unit can perform. Really de-emphasized the unit spams in favour of more tactical, less choring gameplay. However, in 13:30 I strongly disagree. Having newer Command and Conquer games revert the old system would not make a lot of people happy. In fact, I'd see it as a downgrade, and so much so is true for other players that either started CnC with Red Alert 3 - a surprising amount of people - or just saw the benefits of it in general. This former category is one some veteran CnC fans casually forget: that while they didn't like the game for how cheesy it is, the new ore system, the new emphasis on small unit combats or just out of throwing a tantrum, a huge amount of people did. It was well reviewed, well aclaimed and is, 12 years later, a big reference for RTS games. Just to emphasize, as someone that played a lot of Generals, Tib Wars and RA3 I've never managed to squeeze out as much enjoyment out of the former that I did from the latter. Not saying one is necessarily better than another, but the traditional fanbase opinion that RA3 is out of context and just bad, as shown in the Reddit screenshot (10:58), is very out of touch with reality both in general and for a lot of people that really liked RA3. Honestly, after playing RA3, I will hardly ever get myself into playing any CnC future games where units don't have special abilities. Divulgences over, If EA has to compromise, I hope they opt for a system similar to Generals, including alternative sources of income. The basic "have your glorified forklifts heap rocks from the ground" doesn't motivate the player to think tactically and artificially overvalues micro, and having this in mind is important considering the franchise is a good 30 years old and needs to incorporate more dynamic elements if it wants not to become a relic.

The harvester mechanic even goes back to Dune 2 where it was a well worked out part of the lore by Westwood. C&C just followed through on that by replacing spice with Tiberium and cutting the murderous sandworms. :) Your video is on point and a good design explanation. It does place a lot of emphasis on the competitive play while seemingly "casually" dismissing the "casuals". Those 12 or 14 harvesters in RA2 or that RA3 tank battle you explained for example is way above the attention level of most RTS players. It's cool to have such intricate play available of course but in my opinion it isn't a must. Hell, most RTS players don't even play online matches and for very, very good reasons. Skirmish play (with longer game sessions) and campaigns are the gist of RTS gaming and that's not what the pro players want to hear. You might say it's one of the bigger taboos in this genre and also one of the reasons many players have given up on (online) RTSs in general. :( The loudest voices want a competitive e-sports scene in every RTS while I think that should just be a bonus (that doesn't exclude an RTS being varied, balanced or fun to play at the same time). Most people don't play RTS games in order to grow a second brain, they just want to relax which is counterintuitive to what the competitive online scene thinks. See the comments here where players dare to admit they don't play with many harvesters in RA2. Madness, online pro players would say. Relax, any playing style is valid I'd say. C&C: Generals got away with the backlash because it was a new offspring of the C&C series though it certainly never felt like a real C&C game but it did its own thing and that gained it a lot of respect. RA3 went for the StarCraft throne while not realising that most C&C players don't care about StarCraft and rightfully so. The awful changes to the lore (yes, fans care about that too) and EA's reputation didn't help either. EA has forgotten how to support older games until the recent excellent C&C Remastered. Again, online play can liven up an RTS but no game has ever truly managed to convert the majority of skirmish/campaign players. StarCraft II tried really hard to get people of all skill levels in their different leagues but the game itself (like the original) just isn't casual-friendly and it never has been. Ranking boards don't interest those skirmish players, unique mods might though (full props to StarCraft II for that one) or a good online meta-campaign filled with lore or the equivalent of an MMORTS. Getting those people involved online is the real holy grail of the genre but too many loud voices just want to emulate a 1998 game that got big in South-Korea. MOBA's provided an alternative by simplifying the gameplay and removing the daunting 1-on-1 aspect. No-one can deny that they had a lot of success with it. Now for regular RTS gaming to find an online formula that can appeal to all crowds...

7:05 Me vs AI: MORE TANK, MORE AIR! We have to kill them all before they spamming us with archer and Robot!

I love this game but I wish red alert 3 and Tib 3 had a secondary economy like generals did. It stalls late game for casual and competitive

When is the next analysis of RA3 mechanics? If I may suggest, can you discuss special abilities units have and discuss their impact on gameplay. I heard many RA1/2 gamers say those abilities are rarely useful, and even useless

Your best video tbh

3:22 sad i loved turtling

Good analysis

Personally, I do like the ore node system and how it streamlines resource collection, because it lets you focus more on building your base and forces. That said, I think it would have been a good idea to include maps that have ore fields and RA2/CC3 style unique miners for each faction.

I think it's kinda? a problem in RA3 that you only have 2 to 3 big harvesting units per game. In Starcraft 2, you need 18 workers to fully saturate all 6 mineral fields at your base. They are cheap to produce and don't have many hit points. Kinda like ants. But ore miners in CnC are slow, heavy-armored and expensive units. If you lose one, it's kinda a big deal (unless you already have spammed out 5 or more). It can even happen that you can't afford to build another harvester since they are so expensive. Then you have to sell buildings (or if you cant, you are screwed). The CnC wiki says that in RA2, a Soviet war miner can carry 1000$ worth of ore (2000$ if only gems). It takes about 15 seconds at game speed 6 for a war miner to fill up. Add another 10 seonds for driving and unloading, and you get 1000$/25sec or 40$/sec. A war miner costs 1400$ at the war factory, so you need 1400$ / 40$/sec = 35sec of "miner time" to afford a new harvester. Now let's compare it to SC2: Every worker costs 50$ (minerals). Liquipedia says, a single worker mines 1$/s. So you need 50sec of "worker time" to afford a new worker. The difference is that SC2 gives you 12 workers at the start of a match. So you effectively have to mine for 4.2 seconds to afford a new worker. In RA2, you start out with a single harvester, so to get the second miner, you need to invest 35sec of miner time. **tl;dr:** it's a big deal to lose a miner in CnC because they cost a lot of money + time to produce. But you brought up an interesting point: In RA2 you have to spend war factory production time on harvesters. Or you build refineries and sell them. Thats kinda interesing, because you either build up micro or you build up macro. Compare it to RA3 or Generals, where the harvesters are built at the refinery. Idk what that means. I guess it's just pretty hard to get your economy going in RA2.

Very interesting analysis

great research

In retrospect, RA3 and Warcraft 3 employ a similar economy system. The name of the game is to make small yet effective fighting forces, rather than fortifying bases.

Excellent analysis! I agree with you. Would like to add that the fans not liking the game should also be attributed to the different art style and the micro vs normally in C&C more macro oriented gameplay. Every unit has a special ability, that is not normal in C&C. While economy is more simple, combat is more tactical and complex. Generals was a little bit simpler regarding special abilities in combat and there was secondary economy to manage.

I love ur vids

12:01 (Shocked Pikachu face) (AZERTY is even a default keyboard on some European countries.) If you have 3 refs in RA3, you'll get 750 (instead of 500 with 2) at one collection, and one collection in every 5 seconds. So simple. Easier to calculate the game's economic advantages. If you have increase of 4 harvesters from 8, the only thing different is the percentage of the ores you're getting at one go, and not at a certain amount of time. You can have long range mining, at the cost of longer time to get back. Which is more complicated to calculate. People who plays RA3 already know their enemies' economical advantages, but RA2 players can't or hardly know the advantage that can change all in a second. Maybe the RA3 also can change depends on harvester destruction/ore node creation. Heck, hat's why we're scouting. And, the terrain on RA2 is not visible at the start, so you can't get some early references if you don't know the map.

I disagree with regards to catch-up mechanics. They are good for preventing situations which are mostly just prolonged matches with a foregone conclusion, and it seems unfair to talk about them as 'rewarding people for losing' when they are available to everybody (as in, in the case 'losing' is advantageous it's not really 'losing', it's just another tool that can be employed).

Most casuals don't even interact with their ore fields/mines. They just build a few harvesters/refineries, maybe they expand and then they call it a day. So the complaints are something I feel is completely unwarranted against RA3. Even if it breaks the norms, its core isn't changed one bit by it changing the harvesting system slightly. It is a bit agitating to see people dunk on the game for i "Ah yes, when I play C&C I don't think of cool modern/sci fi militaries and factions battling out with crazy units. I think of how my harvester gathers their resources, that's a dealbreaker for me!" Anyway this is a great video.

Ah. Hearing Red Alert 4 so amazing. I think Uprising leads the Allies villain. But soviets are soviets how they will not be villains huh. Just interesting civil war? future tech(ft) not bad guys? or as usual time machine doing his job? additional protocols as new things? time merges, researches find yuri like ft was doing something strangely in Romania? And Allied, Empire campaigns just messed up not to be main campaign as RA1, 2. Idk just wondering

To be honest, I've only played Red Alert 3 in the entirety of the C&C games. I grew up with RA3 unlike many others here who have played the previous C&C games. So I was introduced with this system of economy and to me, it made the most sense. Similar to the AZERTY keyboard argument, I am accustomed to the RA3 economy system and if somehow Red Alert 4 is announced and they revert back to the old economy system, I would be super turned off by it because simply, I'm not accustomed to it.

I think it would also fair to throw into this dicussion CnC 3 Tyb wars. It has Tyb fields like old games but more contained like ore nodes in Ra3

I'm glad for the subtitles but with that voice filter it is difficult to listen to.

In a sense there's an intensive amount of micro involved in both RA2 and 3 to be successful. Its just the previous focuses on economic micro and the latter on the combat micro. I have to challenge though that economic micro is to be considered "busy work", there is satisfaction to be had with being able to become more efficient with building up your resources.

I kinda disagree with the ressources collection thing being boring. Age of Empire games ( by example ) needs intensive micro on your economy at least early on and that makes the game really cool ( imo, although i don't think that someone can tell that AoE are bad games ). I personnaly feel like it's rewarding to set his economy properly and get it rolling so you can then launch your army into combat. Just personnal feeling. For the story I started C&C with Red Alert 3 and Generals, i discovered the older games ( and basically the whole tiberium saga ) way after.

For me, one advantage of RA3's system is that it's more tidy. Large resource fields are fun, but can also lead to harvesters going off in all sorts of directions and becoming hard to keep track of. And then they can become easy prey to roaming enemy units. With RA3's system at least you always know exactly where your harvesters are. Economy aside, I've always had much fun with this game. I suspect a lot of people hate it just because of the EA logo, and for no other reason.

as a newer player that has never played red alert 1 and 2 i like the ore system in red alert 3 i think it is more new player friendly i don’t play competitive so don’t take my opinion as the truth

c&c generals is kinda in between you can spam tons of harvester and there are resource nodes

This explains why I get crashed my medium ai whenever I play skirmish... I take things so slowly

As an additional comment - Generals did not have open ore fields - they had deposits that were used similarly to RA3's - the only addendum is they sometimes also had small caches around the map. Except for most factions, you still needed to optimize the amount of harvesters required, different factions had access to different resource collection techniques - easy mention is USA could long distance mine somewhat efficiently. China could place their depo allowing one truck to be static between the depot and the deposit and constantly cycle funds. Then GLA were, well GLA. Funds were spread out. There were also alternative resource gathering methods that could perpetuate an eternal end game, which wasn't necessarily good game design. Though that game also established itself as *not* Red Alert/Tiberium Wars. Which meant it was reviewed more for what it was, than what people wanted it to be.

Better example than the qwerty/azerty keyboards: the imperial/SI unit of measurement system :)

I grew up with the mobile version of RA2 You build a refinery on top of a neutral refinery. BEST MECHCANIC 10/10

this defying of classic CnC Convention is a brilliant dissections of why Red Alert 3 and CNC 4 failed to atteact their rather large fanbase. They tried to copy Starcraft too much, and shoved down the theoretically superior mining system and fast paced gameplay in exchange for stupidly long but fun games of trolling and carefully harassing your opponent base, all while the players themselves turtle up and shit nukes several times. Red Alert games was simulation of a rather large, strategic War theatre. it was supposed to be long and ended up in attrition warfare. StarCraft Games were the simulation of smaller squads, and skirmishes with limited numbers of units. not believe me? there's a unit cap on StarCraft but there's not on all CNC except CNC4.

I think the ore nodes might be acceptable if they put on the water while the ore field either finite or infinite capacity should be place on the land I guess. And also, I kinda don't like the ore nodes because they're depletable, unlike the previous CnC titles (except Generals) most of their resource field (tiberium or ore fields) have their own variation like the bonus income resource fields (blue tiberium or gem fields) and slow but replenishable resource fields.

Got yourself a sub with a bell

I like RA3 way, I mostly watch pro versus on Sybert, and those harrassment moment is high light of the those vid. Without that, Ra3 would not be RA3.

I always see this economy like the one in generals but restricted in one direction.

I wish you'd speak in your unit guides 😭your commentary feels more enlightening that way

A Generals game wouldn't be a Generals game to me if it switched from nodes to fields. and a RedAlert/Tiberian game wouldn't be a RedAlert/Tiberian game to me if it switched from fields to nodes. or just imagine a Cnc game that altogether removed things like resource collecting, basebuilding, and running over infantry, I'd just pretend it doesn't exist at that point

Catch-up mechanics don't reward you for losing, they reward you for looting an enemy who has grown fat from victory. CnC rewards you for _capturing_ a full silo, which is a catch-up mechanic in some contexts. League of Legends gives shut down bonuses for _killing_ the player that snowballs. Blue shells are handicaps more similar to starting with more resources at the begin, because they don't activate based on your actions eg. aiming or getting a revenge kill. If anything, using a catch-up mechanic requires more skill because you only get the reward after winning an uphill battle.

I wasn't surprised at all that CnC took this direction with Red Alert 3, it seemed like it was gradually trying to curb tank spam at least since Yuri's Revenge with the nerf to main battle tank build time and the new powerful tier 1 anti-tank infantry. I think even base game Red Alert 2's Yuri clone and Chrono Legionniare were intended for anti-armor rushes with their mutual ability to instantly neutralize a single enemy unit, although that only solved the problem late game. All of the changes in Red Alert 3 from even a layman's perspective I think are an obvious natural extension of this creeping anti-spam philosophy alone, though as your video states it's more faceted than that.

Very informative video. But is the voice filter necessary? It kinda doesn't sound pleasant in my case

heres the thing i like red alert 3s designs and kinda like the story but the decision to focus and force an esports economy ruins it for me i prefer the ore field and i think that if they wanted node then they should have did what the did in generals.

That's the core problem with the game, ****** EA tried to turn the game into Starcraft, and if I wanted to play that I'd just play Starcraft, severing resource collection?, forcing you to play with tiny groups of units and being unable to turtle even on single player games?, that's a big F U for about anyone who's been playing the franchise since the 90s. What's even worse is that while Starcraft is focused on competitive multiplayer, every single SC2 campaign was a masterpiece, what did WE get?, a repetitive plot and all of the previous lore going down the toilet, all of these flashy water effects and explosions don't make up for that. I played the game for months because many good games may land poor first impressions, this one wasn't the case, the game is trash, and the economy is just the crystalization of why.

Thanks for the video, it is truely something I was looking forward to But the only point in favour of the ra2 economy system is "people are used to it". I do not think it is the way to go, ra3 is still a CnC game, and a pretty cool game. I take this like the switch to ooen world for zelda, it is new, and people Loved it. But perhaps rts are too much a niche genra of games, thus making the community more biased ?

I prefer ore fields for how open the made a map feel. I think a solution of mixing in both could have been cooler. Instead of nodes, you just make patches with very limited amount that can have deposited, though very quickly regenerate - so if you were to place a refinery right next to one, you'd have the most efficient gathering process, though around areas that would otherwise not be as strategically important, you make larger fields - so the short route to your enemy is only valuable for getting to their base, while the long windy paths have resources. I love the idea of long distance mining, so maybe the terrian has lots of indentations that make it hard to place a close refinery, so we get plenty of harvesters as each side tried to max out their refineries. The small fields should obviously give a faster return on investment, at least until their store runs out like in RA3, and then they might become long distance patches. Maybe players can make really cheap nodes to remove the FoW for one harvester to track when the refineries to track, or set up zones that you can assign harversters to so they can secure these patches when they regen without deviating to a contested field, maybe even just place the faster regening fields away from the large patches so harvesters don't create harvester logic to get to them. Makes for an easier to read game-state and incentivises fighting the corners of the maps. Tank meta IMO is also preferable to air meta with this sort of development - while it's probably just me, I loved seeing two enemy harvesters collect ore next to each other - like " Hey jim hows the ki" before being obliterated by the enemy - Air dominance makes that very likely not cost effective, thugh Air'd probably always have a place for harvester harrassment, just if you focus too much on killing harvesters, you get base rushed.

While RA3's economy is interesting I do prefer CnC3's economy just a slight bit since it gives more urgency and risk-reward when there is only one massive Tiberium field and they contest for it

It might be appropriate to say that both resource collection systems try to generate interest in map control and expansion, but they go about it (and encounter shortcomings) different ways? in the older resource-field system, the resources are literally out there on the map, and greater cash supplies take more literal space. You can't accurately predict where the enemy chooses to expand resourcing operations to and the vector they take to secure them, making scouting valuable, and the resource fields become points of interest that wax and wane in importance as the battle progresses. The disadvantages of this... this video already covers in good detail. In a resource node system, expansion is a very binary thing. The video gives excellent advantages, and no Strings Prd gives excellent disadvantages, so there's not much point repeating their respective points. On balance... I think i prefer the resource field method? It incentivises field armies and quick-reaction forces better, and promotes a more organic approach to creating areas of control and base defence that force players to consider the map's layout and terrain features. Nodes risk turning the battlefield into a series of arbitrary paths between fixed points to fortify, bringing the skill ceiling away from strategic decisions and towards strictly unit and power micro.

These videos are great, but I gotta be honest, that voice filter really grates after a few minutes. 🙉

RA3's economy system makes me wanna retrospect on CNC Generals. You see, Generals basically took from RA2/Tiberium and RA3. If you're China or America in Generals, your economy system is basically the same as that for RA3. Only one supply truck or transport chopper is allowed to gather supplies from a Supply Pile at a time. That said, you can probably build multiple supply centers and resource gatherers to siphon resources from the same Supply Pile. If you're GLA though, your economy system is basically identical to, say, that of Kane's Wrath or RA2.

I was looking for the answer to: "how the hell do you get your harvesters in and out when the ore node is surrounded by walls ?" I have seen it on replays quite a lot but never made it happen...

I can see why numbers of people who played RA3 (and C&C4, if i'm allowed to say lol) stated that while the game alone is quite good RTS on its own, it just didn't deserve to be in the same franchise of its prequels. I means, if they decided to revolutionalize those game mechanics and release as a new franchise, they might get less initial awareness due to the title is new, but perhaps more recognition as the players get to experience the game's unique design.

Unless you are Yuri, my God, that infinite income from the Brutes Mutation+infantries and Slave Traders was toxic because if you left Yuri and not rushing them immediately? The combo won because of how much economic lead Yuri has and that Yuri Clone, Prime Yuri+UFO.....Good Luck.

It reminds me of the whole loss aversion problem with _The Sims 4_ where long-time fans balked at the regressions in it like the lack of pools, toddlers and most especially an open world, making Sims more or less locked down to their homes as if the pandemic hit their locale. I agree that people tend to stick to what they've gone accustomed to and would not sit well with any drastic change, and it accounts for why we've been driving cars more or less the same way for a century already. And yet companies like Ubisoft had to resort to drastic changes such as in _Splinter Cell: Conviction_ with its John Wick-esque gameplay which translated to more sales than the slow but tense stealth mechanics the oldschool SC games are known for. As far as the ore harvesting mechanic is concerned, I guess streamlining resource collection for players to get straight into actual gameplay is, if done correctly, better than have players go "Heigh-Ho" on an ore/gem field or two then use those funds to build and send an army. Imagine if chess had a more elaborate setup phase than actually going straight up, no BS required, and I'm sure that accounts for a rather disinteresting game. Though honestly I have no problem with either approach even if by my admission I'm only a casual RTS player.

I have mixed feelings on this topic. The first time I ever played RA3 it was so weird to see a miner do 10m back and forth between the ore mine and the refinery. I did like that we have base expansions now, like in Starcraft - I was no longer trying to B-line towards other ore fields with some power plants or more refineries. What I didn't like is that there's usually not enough of them on maps and as a result it's a very low economy RTS. Like you said, getting just a single expansion takes massive effort. Having more than 1 factory or barracks in RA3 is basically unheard of. If you manage to get just 1 tier 3 unit out of the factory, you feel like you've won the game. Meanwhile in SC you always get a "natural expansion" that's almost right next to yours, so you always expand to it very easily and that makes sure you have enough money to get your economy up and running. Very few maps have that in RA3. I get that in C&C you'd have way too many units running around this way, which is why SC has a unit cap, but I do think that could be solved with more upgrade branching.

Managing our harvesters just to harvest the nearest patch of ore is still an issue, but I received word that the devs is attempting to fix this decades-long problem in C&C Remastered so they'll be smart enough to harvest like real humans would harvest.

The sad thing is they have the perfect title to expand on using this type of economy system with Generals but they chose to apply it to Red Alert instead, breaking tradition and expectation. Yes it's not e-sports worthy but I had tons of fun with RA2 being unbalanced and spectator-unfriendly as it was. It kind of takes the fun out of it to think of games as something purely made for spectatorship with every aspect designed to maximize action and excitement instead of just having a few basic concepts and let the meta emerge organically. I love a lot of games because of the immersion they provide and things like flaws and imperfections like "slow and boring early game" or having to tend to some chores is sort of the thing you expect to come naturally. When every part is optimized towards a certain outcome it's jarring and you can notice what sort of things the game want to steer you towards doing like how every single units have impactful abilities requiring you to micromanage them, limited economy growth further reinforcing the idea of small manageable groups. It's pretty obvious that the game's trying to be Starcraft in which case why not just play the real thing? You can't expect to be better than Starcraft at being Starcraft. Let Red Alert stays Red Alert and Tiberium stays Tiberium (looking at you, 4). Generals are there for things like this but now it's just a wasted potential.

There is a mod that recreates the RA2 game using the RA3 engine, called The Red Alert. The units and mining are from the old game with new graphics, its not bad.

I played other RTS games like Rise of Nations and AOE2 before trying out Red Alert 3, so the conventional way of getting resources did not trouble me, as I did not know how RA2 and previous titles function. And I gotta say, I enjoy the unit models much more than the low-poly models that RA2 had. I don't care about changes. Let's be real here, we all gonna rot on 1-2 games till the end of time nowadays and rarely play like 10-15 games like how the public think of what "gamers" do.

12:50 - This hurts to watch

I think the ore's storage should have been keep for Urban Area because since Ore is supposed to be dangerous for health civilians shouldn't have access to this place. Maps in the wild or Military base like could have field of ore.

How do you feel about Tib Wars competitive?

I'm fine with either, I adapted quickly to Red Alert 3's changes thanks to another game: Generals. As someone who mains US I literally put my Supply Depots right beside the resource node because of one thing: US resource collectors are flying units and doesn't need to land. Whereas China and GLA Resourse Collectors have to travel by land. Twice painful for GLA where an Early Sniper Build will murder your economy if someone goes to rush even just one Sniper. Because they are Infantry instead of Trucks(China) or Helicopters (USA). Fucking finally I can put walls between my Refinery (Supply Depot in Generals) and the Resource Node Heck in the bottom line resource collection will devolve from fields to nodes in both Tiberium Wars and Red Alert 2 as it depletes leaving a tiny square of regenerating Ore/Tiberium in the Middle that you can safely wall, specially if you're a Yuri player.

I wish RA3 would have 2 switchable eco systems like competitive and casual like RA2

thank you for this great analysis. it opened my mind a little to RA3. Although, i just don't like the overall game design, especially the units. That aside, it might be that i've grown accustomed to the old "collecting ore/tiberium" type. i was always convinced, that the reason they put this type of mining system in RA3 is because it would spare them a lot of time programming the pathfinding of the miners, which is a very complicated thing to do. i considered it a lazy by RA3 to simply put refineries into a fix spot. I've watched a whole video about how tiberiun sun revolutionized the pathfinding and i was just sure that RA3 didn't want to invest that time. So thanks for this perspective. In the end, i like tiberiun sun, RA2, and tiberium Wars most. All for different reasons. i think, in RA3, it's not the minding system that completely made me dislike it. It's giant floating heads and ships that can grow legs that pushed me away. Needless to say, Tiberium Essence was just the neck breaker. I'm still hoping for a new Game to come soon. Cheers.

I just find it so much funner to turtle build up a giant army and attack. I like 3 and beat the expansion missions, but I always liked being able to sit back and build an army of Allied shitty tanks or 1000 conscripts more. It is too bad we can't get a sequel of both styles. I am not good enough and I am too old at 34 to play this competitively or online though.

A lot in RA3 changes to the point it becomes not the best, micromanaging is best left to Starcraft, we always create masses of tanks just to steamroll. True, just like your Star Wars example. RA3 is just another "The Last Jedi" but Generals pulled it off first, dividing the fanbase completely. C&C4 did "Rise of the Skywalker" instead.

Imagine when he didn't add the subtile...

I do not mind the change, but really there is a lot I like about RA3 that feel different, but I didn't mind the method of resource harvesting however I feel like its too easy to defense to a degree, like I never fully use the harvester's special ability aside from delaying the end. The ally harvester maybe the only one that comes to my mind but I think that that for method of resources, I feel like these mines and a field of resources can coexist. Maybe one is small but easy to defend while the ore fields are harder to defend but far more plentiful and can replenish, but part of me already miss the gem fields. However as of RA3, there is no reason to build a harvester out of the war factory, no reason to build an additional harvester unless your the allies. However this maybe my bias towards Starcraft 2 where the resources are more spread in, but I won't bash Red alert 3's merit as much like Starcraft 2, I feel like these games are great for a quick match. Some RTS multiplayer is usually catered in certain ways, is it made for short yet high octane action, or long term planning and resource hoarding? Though my point is, I liked the idea of a harvester having a sort of "personality", specifically, in RA2, allies can teleport and Russians can shoot things, in CnC3, GDI can shoot, Nod Stealths, and scrinn heals (yea its not that fascinating when I say it but trust me it makes a huge difference, sure it took some damage and blemishes but that means It cna continue harvesting and repair.)

how about general's supply nod?

Your video definitely shifted my thoughts about RA3 eco system, but there's more than just eco that players find less enjoyable than CnC 3 (I even heard some people saying things like:"Kane's Wrath was the last good RTS game from EA"). I, personally, don't get it why they didn't implemented some features from previous games like structures power control, so you can just turn the building down and build power plant at normal speed instead of just waiting additional seconds with disabled radar and defensive structures. Also I prefer CnC 3 upgrades because they do more noticeable changes and they are visible on units and tech structures. And promotion in CnC 3 has more impact because units gain veterancy slightly slower and have more distinctive boost therefore promoted units have more value. But that's just my personal opinion based on my experience as a new player :P

I got so used to RA3 system that I dislike the economy system of RA2, thus confirming your view in a opposite way.

It cannot be competitive if one single faction are so much more advantageous than the others.

I can never decide if I like RA2 or RA3 better, the only thing I'm certain on is RA1 is the original and still the best. It opens with Stalin discussing gassing children, so right away you know it goes hard.

I like RA3 way , its more clear and comfortable, but the whole game is way too compettive for average player to have fun. micro are too important, air meta, op infantry and op allies units,,,economy are too tiny and fragile, we need 3 ore and 1 oil in order to make the factory fully in production, thats way too unromantic . units are few and fragile , being take down so quickly , makes the whole game too fraustrating to play with .

It wasn't as big of an issue in generals because you could have a ton of harvesters harvesting from one slot at once where RA3 basically took that ability away and locked you down with one unit at a time zZzZz.