Small Red Alert 3 tips

Here are a few small Red Alert 3 tips that might be of use:

Allies:

1. To get a prospector somewhere faster, shrink it using a Cryocopter then it moves a lot faster. This can also be used to move the construction yard out of danger due to the greatly increased speed.

2. Set the rocket troops to laser guided, then put them into the defense turrets and the multi-gunner vehicles.

3. For the high areas, get your dolphins to jump for visibility so that your carriers can see and shoot.

4. Spies in defense turrets and multi-gunner vehicles become snipers.


Empire:

1. Mecha Tengu are good scouting units and base defense against ground troops and air.

2. Use Shinobi in buildings like snipers against group troops.

3. If you can, get those heavy ships up and running to clean out. Have defense for them ready.

4. The balloons can be targeted a bit while falling, but only individually. This can cause great damage.


Soviets:

1. The vehicles with the big slow rockets are very good at removing base defense and buildings. If well defended, they can eat through a base.

2. Keep Natasha in a building where enemy troops move past. She also does wonders to vehicles and buildings. Make sure she is veteran up before going near the enemy base.

3. Build lots of air defense.

New gorilla suit finally

For years I wanted to get a gorilla suit, now I am finally getting a local made suit this coming Friday (28 November 2008). Another costume will be in production after that. Eye masks also need to be made due to the sudden influx of requests and someone lost one of my eye masks of a Mr. Incredible costume.

Common reasons why Red Alert 3 crashes

The new Red Alert 3 game crashed several times at either startup or when trying to exit. At the time my PC was still set to a resolution of 1280 x 960. A friend of mine with my much older graphics card had too much additional effects enabled because he wants games to look nice, but sacrifices frame rate and ultimately gameplay.

According to my reading on the forum of the Command and Conquer website, most crashes seem to be graphics related as well a high resolution. To test this, I set my resolution down to 1024x768 and for several weeks now I had no more crashing, which used to be several times normally. My friend set his settings a bit down to what the game recommends and suddenly it is working again without crashing.

Gaming Sunday afternoon with Company of Heroes

This last Sunday afternoon, I met with two friends to play some LAN games. In this case we finally wanted to get Company of Heroes - Opposing Fronts up and running. The last attempt several weeks ago was a failure.

Since we started quite late in the afternoon, we only managed to get in two games and then it was already past midnight. On normal difficulty the computer already gave us a hard time. I was virtually a beginner on this, but I was not doing too badly and had some fairly good stats at the end. My friends sometimes play the game on insane difficulty.

In the second game at least six vehicle overran my base and nearly forced me out of the game. Not having all builds together helps and having engineers spread out helps as well. One friend came to help me out with his rangers while the other one was trying to eliminate one of the three enemy bases. It took a while, but we turned the mess around and gained ground. I managed to get anti-tank cannons up and running which later on actually gained veterancy.

In single player I would not play this game, but multiplayer is another matter. It is nowhere near as bad as Dawn of War.

Costume laundry after a Halloween weekend

During the Halloween weekend I rented out about thirty costumes. The Sunday when the first costumes started coming back, I had three loads of washing machine done. Last night I finally did the second last load. One or two days during the week I had no chance to do laundry, due to a dog between me and the washing machine that loves to bite me and has done so a few times already.

The Halloween Friday was a lot of fun. I was invited to a party and had a French Maid costume on. To the costume I added some extra gloves, a mask from Greyland and an extra wig. The mask allowed me to eat smaller bits of food like sweets and chips. Some people took a long time to realise that I was wearing a mask. Fortunately with the Greyland masks there is no real sweatign involved because they are made out of foam latex. In the end I got a prize for best costume and people were apparently still talking about that one days later.