More exciting Red Alert 3 tips and tricks

During the last few weeks a friend of mine and myself have discovered various new techniques of counters in Red Alert 3 (RA3).

Playing as any side (Soviet/Allies/Empire):

1. Build walls around your generators and resource places.

2. Spread your base to prevent massive damage when something big hits.

3. Always have air defense.

4. Set defense turrets to aggressive, this makes them attack enemy buildings.


Playing as Allies:

1. Countering a Soviet Bullfrog: Use a Shrink Ray from the Cryocopter at a safe distance (it has a wider range than the freeze ray) and then freeze the Bullfrog. A shrunken Bullfrog is useless with anti-air.

2. When someone is about to blast your base with a superweapon: Check the target marker, use Chronic Fissure to temporarily remove your own buildings and units, which should be back after the blast and hopefully be gone before it starts.

3. Use a Chronosphere to teleport an enemy bomb in your base out where it can blow up safely. The bigger the bomb, the more time you have.

4. A bomb can be put on ice with a Cryocopter. If my information is correct, this will disable the bomb skill for the player who planted the bomb.

5. MCVs can be repaired for free in vehicle mode by factories, engineer in a defense turret and an engineer in an IFV.


Playing as the Empire Of The Rising Sun:

1. Multiple of your own Shinobis with Tankbusters and some anti-air unit in an enemy base is bad news for the enemy. The Shinobi can shut down the power generator and take out bears, dogs and other ground troops, while the Tankbusters take out vehicles and buildings. Having Yuriko along with Emperor's Rage does wonders to the landscape.

2. Use Nano swarm to protect your own base during an attack.

3. Use Nano Swarm in the enemy base when you plant the five Tankbusters to give them time to take out a building. This protects them from bears and dogs.

4. Use Nano Swarm in the enemy base to protect your own units when you blast a Decimator Core attack in the enemy base.

5. Use a Burst Drone to slow down the pesky bombers of the Allies to give your anti-air plenty of time to shoot them down.


Playing as the Soviets:

1. If the enemy base is raised and there is no ground defense near an edge, try to shoot at least five bears into the base to clear out dogs/bears and then send in ground troops. Computer enemies are quick to respond during the landing procedure, so aim them well.

2. Use the Twinblade to transport various vehicles. This includes Sputnik, Hammer Tank, Apocalypse Tank and the V4 Rocket Launcher.

3. Use Iron Curtain if you want to deploy yoru MCV in the enemy base. Apply the Iron curtain as late as possible to buy time to deply defense turrets. Do note that you have to set defense turrets to aggressive to attack buildings.

4. Iron curtain can also be used against those bombs that someone plants in your base. The area of effect is limited but it will protect what you target.

The tenants are owing me money

Today I found out that my tenants are owing me quite a bit of money for rent which they were supposed to pay into a account while my father's will and testament is being finalised. Now that that is completed, they will get new bank account details. The next shock will be if they have paid the municipality.

Windows/Live/MSN Messenger issues

I have tried various versions rebrandings and incarnations over the years (since 1998) and always found mostly severe login problems as well as installation issues. To top it all off, logging into Hotmail/Windows Live Mail also had and still has issues.

The latest Live Messenger has got major login problems after upgrading to the latest version. To make things even more exciting, the apparent solution is to clear out its cache in two locations which did not help me at all. An uninstall is not possible either because it is not listed in Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel.

Weird nightmare with zombies

Early this morning sometime between 4AM and 5AM (I woke up at those times), I had a weird nightmare about zombies.

The dream started with me getting a ride by car from one town to another. While driving, another car came closer and a shootout started, the driver was a zombie partially hanging out of the window to shoot. The car came up next to the car I was in and shots were passed back and forth, then it fell back.

Suddenly the car slowed down because there was a big group of people walking slowly all over the road and next to it like cattle. All of them were zombies as well. After that the car picked up speed again.

In the next section of the dream I was lying at home in bed and waking up from the outside door of the kitchen opening. From my bed I can see that door which is between 5 and ten meters away. Through the door came a zombie because I forgot to lock the door before I fell asleep. In my dream I woke up trying to grab anything to use as a club that I could get hold of while still lying quietly on my bed. At that stage, I finally woke up and it was as dark as in the dream.

Guild Wars: Canthan new year menu

In the online MMORPG game Guild Wars, the guild that I am in [fang] is trying to get all of the ingredients for the menu of the five chefs. Some items are easy to get hold of, others are just not coming because the creatures that drop them are stingy. The guild has got several of each, the goal is ten of each which should hopefully soon be reached.

Getting more Zentai suits

The time has finally come to get more Zentai suits over eBay as I did last time. The choice came down to three vendors where I now have to check specifically which one has what I am looking for. This time I also need to get Zentai sutis in different sizes, especially of those for females. If I get lucky, I can also get replacements for a black Spiderman mask and gloves that went missing, as well as black eye masks for my Incredibles costumes which also went missing. My local suppliers are causing too many delays or just ignore requests.

Red Alert 3 Battle nearly lost

Last night I was busy on a 6 player map in Red Alert 3 with 3 teams of 2 players each. All others were computer players and I was sitting in a nasty location. The team I was using was Empire of the Rising Sun which does not have any anti-air troops, but several anti-air vehicles. A lot of their defenses and vehicles have toggle modes depending on what is needed. Power generators is a weak spot. It helps to build walls around the ore refinaries to prevent group forces from causing any real damage. The V4 of the soviets shoots over those.

In the battle last night my resources got cut off. Fortunately, I had one depleted ore harvesting spot left and a good base defense with garrisoned buildings from the beginning of the game when all players were still present. The medium computer player on my side was a good help. Yuriko was of good use to take out two enemy bases. Since there is a limitation to the number of replays that Red Alert 3 can store, I did not store the replay for later viewing.

Event: Barn Dance of the Domestic Animal Rights Group (DARG)

The Domestic Animal Rights Group (DARG) in Cape Town is holding a Barn Dance on 24 January 2009. It is a fund-raising event since the organisation is an NGO which cannot afford advertising and has to take care of over 200 animals.

Entrance fee is 80 Rand per person, there will be various events and entertainment available.

About DARG:

DARG is a non-profit organisation that rescues abandoned and abused animals,
and
promotes the humane treatment of all animals. We have served the Cape Town
community since 1995 providing a vital service to animals and people alike,
through sheltering, sterilizing and re-homing animals, and also assisting pet
owners from not only Imizamo Yetho and the Hout Bay communities, but also the
greater part of Cape Town.

DARG is also a pro-life organisation, which means we do not euthanize animals
unless strongly advised to do so by a Vet. Because of this we have animals
that remain at our shelter for a very long time and it is our aim to provide
them with a safe, loving environment and the necessary medical care while
waiting for new, loving owners to come in and adopt them. We presently have 93
dogs and 147 cats and kittens in our care.

Should you require any further information, kindly contact Heather at DARG on (021)
790-2050 or 0383 or on 0823912776.

India costumes

This last weekend I got confirmation about the start of getting some indian costumes for a Western theme made. I also found a huge toy shop in Voortrekker road in Parow which has got some very nice indian wigs that I can use. I bought one to see what they are like. Since the costumes will most likely be male and female, I will have to get a second wig. The wig also includes a red headband and a red feather.

Costume rental website navigation update

Last night I updated the costumes section main navigation of my costume renting website. The change was long overdue because the top of the page was too crowded. The navigation is currently floating on the left, but that is not fully ideal.

Getting costumes back after vacation

My vacation was from 21 December 2008 until 3 January 2009. Several people rented costumes from me before I left to go to Namibia. Some are also still on vacation and some simply have forgotten to return my costumes due to the long time period.

Back from vacation to Namibia

On Saturday, 3 January 2009, I arrived back home from vacation to Namibia to visit family. The trip was good. I saw some giraffes at Gocheganas near Windhoek.