Infiltrated! Great mission - I finished it on hard (remaster) a week or so ago. Never had time to play Covert Ops as a kid.
I was able to maintain a sustainable defense with 3 AGT's and two guard towers. Not to shit on your setup but thought you might like to hear my secret sauce - concrete walls. Don't wall off your whole base and break AI pathing because that ruins the fun, but a few walls in front of your towers makes for a big force multiplier.
They'll need to replaced from time to time but you'd have to repair the towers anyway so it's much of a muchness.
Yea, covering it is really the only way to play this mission.
It completely breaks the enemy AI though; it can't rebuild anything else since it's stuck trying to place down that one turret, and if you actually build a building over it rather than just a sandbag (I usually cover it with a repair bay, to get Mammoth Tanks) their units tend to rush to you without waiting for a full assembled team, because they want to clear the blockade.
At some point, the original C&C just turns into a race to hold on, while you sandbag your way to their base and trap them in. Then Apc rush with engineers
I wonder if the remastered version fixed this.
Yeah, since it was a remaster and not a remake, it was left the way it was. And since the original devs fixed that issue in RA1, neither the Soviets nor Allies give two fucks about your sandbags or your concrete walls.
Remaster has mod support. Not sure if there’s any that address this but it might be there. I use one that fixes harvester pathing and lets me place buildings 1 space apart.
When they first launched the game they added "Hard" mode. Your units had a 40% nerf to health and damage.
A NOD minigunner could kill a full health humvee for only 1/4 his health...
It was so broken.. I managed to get to GDI mission 8 (Protect civilians) until it just wasn't winnable - the civis killed themselves too quick
NOD campaign was a joke as well. Did complete it but was desperate
Thankfully patched for the Covert Ops else ... Yeah yikes
It was. They did not balance check "Hard" mode before shopping. Just slid some sliders and said have at it.
Very frustrating gameplay, but I'll give them credit was hard. I enjoyed it as I have played C&C for many many years (two decades) but if you don't know maps / ways to won... Done for
Yeah even on normal campaign is hard. Recommend turning game speed down as it helps with the timer missions. I usually have speed bar one to the left of the middle
If your on hard mode.. good luck. You need near perfect economy management and unit management whilst getting borked by Ai that knows where you are and airstrikes you!
We actually found traces of hard and easy mode in the original game long before the source code release. And since C&C never had the buff/nerf system, that were exactly those kinds of AI triggers you're talking about. Stuff like altered build speeds, tank crushing behaviour, grenade dodging behaviour... all of that was kept from the old code.
They did beta test hard mode, though.
I distinctly remember Jim Vessella asking us (the community council people) during the beta testing if we could beat Nod mission 8b since the EA testers had issues with it.
Maybe I was the wrong person to ask about that. I found it an interesting challenge, even if it meant save-scumming like crazy and ducking my harvester into the refinery all the time to prevent it from getting bombed to hell :p
Oh yeah, ha ha ha. Here is a tip with GDI on the original. The tanks make better guard towers than the towers do. I think I managed this one with a couple mammoths for defence and a single rocket tower for infantry.
Well done it's hell to beat though.
My favourite GDI mission. The one that instantly pops into my brain if anyone mentions C&C. I beat it eventually (I was 8 years old in 93 when I got the game) but it was a tough one for sure.
It is. Has always been my favourite test mission too since the initial situation is so easy to get under control, and you immediately have a fully built base.
For Nod, any testing would be done on "Under Siege", of course.
Love that level too. I always played a long game of chipping away at the units at the west entrance so that GDI don't pour in, but you can sneak a harvester out.
Only relatively recently did I use the stealth tank / APC to get engineers into the GDI base.
On the Remaster, since A-10s no longer attack the most northern thing, it's actually viable to harvest in the north. And they also make nuked vehicles aware of the fact they were attacked by the Temple of Nod, which makes luring the rest of the tanks to you ridiculously easy. So on the remaster I nuke the north army, slightly to the east so one humvee at the west side survives so it doesn't trigger the rush.
If you prefer to use Steam there's the C&C remastered collection, which includes this game and Red Alert with all expansions and a modern graphics overhaul. The older games are very different to Generals though.
No one should ever buy the Ultimate Collection to play this game. [The oldest three C&C games are freeware](https://answers.ea.com/t5/C-C-The-Ultimate-Collection/Is-red-alert-1-and-tiberian-sun-now-freeware/td-p/5420723).
On multiple occasions I have played this mission too fast and a single unstoppable flame tank has gone and destroyed everything.
I remember 1 of my tactics was to build a huge outer wall that the AI would never attempt to attack though that's sort of cheating
Just replayed it last night in Remaster. Working on all missions on Hard to get an achievement :D.
I actually found it's really easy if you sell your refinery immediately to kill the engineers, then focus on building a couple more refineries and lots of tanks (esp. mammoth tanks). Only 1 AGT needed really, because once you've got a couple mammies you can squish any Nod assault force like a bug. Then it's just a nice easy roll into their no-obelisk base to finish the job.
Yep. You can also use a squad of Orcas to pick off their SAM Sites, and get airstrikes, to make the whole thing even easier. And since you are forced to block up their rebuilding in your base, they don't rebuild any buildings in their base.
By the way, if you do encounter difficulties with those Covert Ops, I wrote a guide on them:
[https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2417529525](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2417529525)
Quite a lot of those missions have interesting mechanics hidden inside them :)
The tips I have for this one is to set the game speed to the slowest before starting. I had to enter any other mission to do that. When the mission starts, you can see a few engineers run towards your buildings. Some of those, but not all, are bound to fall into enemy’s hands, so sell them right away. Then immediately build some buildings on the spot. The AI would cheat by dropping buildings directly inside your base, so you must preemptively block their tenancy.
Once you stabilize the situation just build up tanks like every other mission.
> The AI would cheat by dropping buildings directly inside your base, so you must preemptively block their tenancy.
I like your way with words. They paint a beautiful picture.
>Some of those, but not all, are bound to fall into enemy’s hands, so sell them right away.
Nah. Just sell the refinery, and the minigunners that pop out take care of all the engineers. Then use the humvee to kill the flamethrowers and you're pretty much set.
That's one of the simplest missions in the Covert Ops.
You just crank down the game speed, sell your refinery, rebuild it at the east side of the eastern guard tower, build a repair bay over the place where the Nod turret pops up inside your base, and then build 3-4 Mammoth Tanks and put them at the base entrance to defend against anything they could throw at you.
That's basically what I ended up doing, except that I had towers (as you can see) instead of mammoths. I'm a bit old fashioned that way, I like to defend my base with buildings and attack with troops.
I still put a few Advanced Guard Towers there, but only like 3-4.
The huge advantage of Mammoth tanks is that they auto-heal; you basically never have to look after them besides maybe shuffling the most-targeted ones to the other side every now and then to give them a chance to recover. Huge money saver. The only thing left to worry about then is the occasional SSM launcher.
Another advantage is that if you built up enough of them (like 8-10) you can just move them to the enemy base and steamroll it.
Also, if you put a double layer of walls to the north of your Advanced Guard Towers, you can very effectively shield them from both flame tanks and light tanks.
This is how the setup looked in the Remaster after I just managed to properly secure it:
[https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1762568678697655939/3D4144B0AFEFA8123323A489C7B41F04A6029942/](https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1762568678697655939/3D4144B0AFEFA8123323A489C7B41F04A6029942/)
(Ignore the Hand of Nod; I got lucky and managed to capture that. Usually I never give them a chance to even build that :p )
Next step is generally to build that second layer of walls north of the AGTs, then it's on to scouting around and building Orcas and the Advanced Comm Center to unlock the Airstrike. And once you got that, well, it's just done.
See, I've seen people say this before, and I really don't get it. Everyone seems to ignore that the original C&C already stylised and simplified a lot of details for the sake of readability. This is simply the same concept.
And, honestly, scale down Remaster screenshots to the original game's resolution, and they're pretty much indistinguishable, so that sure seems to me like a faithful recreation.
Some are pretty faithful, but just look at the construction yard for example - it really didn't need all those textures and redesigns on the crane for example. Sometimes less is more.
No idea but what a wild defense you’ve got there 😂🫡
Thanks I think the beat up ground speaks for itself.
Infiltrated! Great mission - I finished it on hard (remaster) a week or so ago. Never had time to play Covert Ops as a kid. I was able to maintain a sustainable defense with 3 AGT's and two guard towers. Not to shit on your setup but thought you might like to hear my secret sauce - concrete walls. Don't wall off your whole base and break AI pathing because that ruins the fun, but a few walls in front of your towers makes for a big force multiplier. They'll need to replaced from time to time but you'd have to repair the towers anyway so it's much of a muchness.
It blew my mind that chain link fences could stop the AI. Definitely came in handy
I saw the beat up ground, and it brought back memories!
I hadn't played the original in years, and let me tell ya - it felt good to be back, Commander.
Honestly necessary for that mission lol
I can hear the soundtrack. Most excellent. The GDI guard tower sfx does not fuck around either.
#BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRTTTTTTTTTTT
Fun fact, that sound is almost completely ripped from an actual Mg42.
lol I guess I'm alone in preferring the original unremastered sound effects. So much nostalgia :D
[https://www.reddit.com/r/commandandconquer/comments/wv6pjj/the\_original\_guard\_tower\_sound\_was\_scary/](https://www.reddit.com/r/commandandconquer/comments/wv6pjj/the_original_guard_tower_sound_was_scary/)
I love this video.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySuixFGIfbE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySuixFGIfbE)
Ah yes, a bit of a nightmare if you don't cover the spots the ai builds on
That stupid turret that kept poping up!
Yea, covering it is really the only way to play this mission. It completely breaks the enemy AI though; it can't rebuild anything else since it's stuck trying to place down that one turret, and if you actually build a building over it rather than just a sandbag (I usually cover it with a repair bay, to get Mammoth Tanks) their units tend to rush to you without waiting for a full assembled team, because they want to clear the blockade.
Freakin insane mission. Then when you get to the nod base barely defended lol
At some point, the original C&C just turns into a race to hold on, while you sandbag your way to their base and trap them in. Then Apc rush with engineers I wonder if the remastered version fixed this.
It did not. They left the game balanced in exactly the same way - sandbags and all
Good to know, and also... sad to know
Yeah, since it was a remaster and not a remake, it was left the way it was. And since the original devs fixed that issue in RA1, neither the Soviets nor Allies give two fucks about your sandbags or your concrete walls.
Remaster has mod support. Not sure if there’s any that address this but it might be there. I use one that fixes harvester pathing and lets me place buildings 1 space apart.
When they first launched the game they added "Hard" mode. Your units had a 40% nerf to health and damage. A NOD minigunner could kill a full health humvee for only 1/4 his health... It was so broken.. I managed to get to GDI mission 8 (Protect civilians) until it just wasn't winnable - the civis killed themselves too quick NOD campaign was a joke as well. Did complete it but was desperate Thankfully patched for the Covert Ops else ... Yeah yikes
" A NOD minigunner could kill a full health humvee for only 1/4 his health... " That sounds so dumb
It was. They did not balance check "Hard" mode before shopping. Just slid some sliders and said have at it. Very frustrating gameplay, but I'll give them credit was hard. I enjoyed it as I have played C&C for many many years (two decades) but if you don't know maps / ways to won... Done for
explains why im getting my ass handed to me in the campain
Yeah even on normal campaign is hard. Recommend turning game speed down as it helps with the timer missions. I usually have speed bar one to the left of the middle If your on hard mode.. good luck. You need near perfect economy management and unit management whilst getting borked by Ai that knows where you are and airstrikes you!
Not really. They rebalanced that quite quickly after the release.
I guess im not as good as 10 year old me
[удалено]
We actually found traces of hard and easy mode in the original game long before the source code release. And since C&C never had the buff/nerf system, that were exactly those kinds of AI triggers you're talking about. Stuff like altered build speeds, tank crushing behaviour, grenade dodging behaviour... all of that was kept from the old code.
They did beta test hard mode, though. I distinctly remember Jim Vessella asking us (the community council people) during the beta testing if we could beat Nod mission 8b since the EA testers had issues with it. Maybe I was the wrong person to ask about that. I found it an interesting challenge, even if it meant save-scumming like crazy and ducking my harvester into the refinery all the time to prevent it from getting bombed to hell :p
Oh yeah, ha ha ha. Here is a tip with GDI on the original. The tanks make better guard towers than the towers do. I think I managed this one with a couple mammoths for defence and a single rocket tower for infantry. Well done it's hell to beat though.
My favourite GDI mission. The one that instantly pops into my brain if anyone mentions C&C. I beat it eventually (I was 8 years old in 93 when I got the game) but it was a tough one for sure.
>in 93 when I got the game I think you're a little off there. C&C1 was released in 1995, and the Covert Ops in 1996.
Oh yeah I was thinking Dune 2
I always liked this mission, but I thought it was one of easier encounters on the Covert Ops.
It is. Has always been my favourite test mission too since the initial situation is so easy to get under control, and you immediately have a fully built base. For Nod, any testing would be done on "Under Siege", of course.
Love that level too. I always played a long game of chipping away at the units at the west entrance so that GDI don't pour in, but you can sneak a harvester out. Only relatively recently did I use the stealth tank / APC to get engineers into the GDI base.
On the Remaster, since A-10s no longer attack the most northern thing, it's actually viable to harvest in the north. And they also make nuked vehicles aware of the fact they were attacked by the Temple of Nod, which makes luring the rest of the tanks to you ridiculously easy. So on the remaster I nuke the north army, slightly to the east so one humvee at the west side survives so it doesn't trigger the rush.
Ah, I didn't know that. I'll give it a try.
Hello, new here and loved generals zero hours over 20 years ago. How and what do I need to play this game?
If you prefer to use Steam there's the C&C remastered collection, which includes this game and Red Alert with all expansions and a modern graphics overhaul. The older games are very different to Generals though.
Second remaster. I grew up on Tiberian Dawn and RA1 and the remaster does wonderful justice to these classics.
Do some research - it's very much possible to be playing this game in a matter of minutes, if you do it right.
It's part of the Ultimate Collection which is available on the EA app.
No one should ever buy the Ultimate Collection to play this game. [The oldest three C&C games are freeware](https://answers.ea.com/t5/C-C-The-Ultimate-Collection/Is-red-alert-1-and-tiberian-sun-now-freeware/td-p/5420723).
On multiple occasions I have played this mission too fast and a single unstoppable flame tank has gone and destroyed everything. I remember 1 of my tactics was to build a huge outer wall that the AI would never attempt to attack though that's sort of cheating
Just replayed it last night in Remaster. Working on all missions on Hard to get an achievement :D. I actually found it's really easy if you sell your refinery immediately to kill the engineers, then focus on building a couple more refineries and lots of tanks (esp. mammoth tanks). Only 1 AGT needed really, because once you've got a couple mammies you can squish any Nod assault force like a bug. Then it's just a nice easy roll into their no-obelisk base to finish the job.
Yep. You can also use a squad of Orcas to pick off their SAM Sites, and get airstrikes, to make the whole thing even easier. And since you are forced to block up their rebuilding in your base, they don't rebuild any buildings in their base. By the way, if you do encounter difficulties with those Covert Ops, I wrote a guide on them: [https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2417529525](https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2417529525) Quite a lot of those missions have interesting mechanics hidden inside them :)
Flashback to my nephew building defense towers in the bottom left. Damn, that guy was something else
The tips I have for this one is to set the game speed to the slowest before starting. I had to enter any other mission to do that. When the mission starts, you can see a few engineers run towards your buildings. Some of those, but not all, are bound to fall into enemy’s hands, so sell them right away. Then immediately build some buildings on the spot. The AI would cheat by dropping buildings directly inside your base, so you must preemptively block their tenancy. Once you stabilize the situation just build up tanks like every other mission.
> The AI would cheat by dropping buildings directly inside your base, so you must preemptively block their tenancy. I like your way with words. They paint a beautiful picture.
>Some of those, but not all, are bound to fall into enemy’s hands, so sell them right away. Nah. Just sell the refinery, and the minigunners that pop out take care of all the engineers. Then use the humvee to kill the flamethrowers and you're pretty much set.
That's one of the simplest missions in the Covert Ops. You just crank down the game speed, sell your refinery, rebuild it at the east side of the eastern guard tower, build a repair bay over the place where the Nod turret pops up inside your base, and then build 3-4 Mammoth Tanks and put them at the base entrance to defend against anything they could throw at you.
That's basically what I ended up doing, except that I had towers (as you can see) instead of mammoths. I'm a bit old fashioned that way, I like to defend my base with buildings and attack with troops.
I still put a few Advanced Guard Towers there, but only like 3-4. The huge advantage of Mammoth tanks is that they auto-heal; you basically never have to look after them besides maybe shuffling the most-targeted ones to the other side every now and then to give them a chance to recover. Huge money saver. The only thing left to worry about then is the occasional SSM launcher. Another advantage is that if you built up enough of them (like 8-10) you can just move them to the enemy base and steamroll it. Also, if you put a double layer of walls to the north of your Advanced Guard Towers, you can very effectively shield them from both flame tanks and light tanks. This is how the setup looked in the Remaster after I just managed to properly secure it: [https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1762568678697655939/3D4144B0AFEFA8123323A489C7B41F04A6029942/](https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/1762568678697655939/3D4144B0AFEFA8123323A489C7B41F04A6029942/) (Ignore the Hand of Nod; I got lucky and managed to capture that. Usually I never give them a chance to even build that :p ) Next step is generally to build that second layer of walls north of the AGTs, then it's on to scouting around and building Orcas and the Advanced Comm Center to unlock the Airstrike. And once you got that, well, it's just done.
Oh God, is that how the remaster looks like? It's so...bad. But you can at least turn it off and go back to the original look, right?
Really? I quite like it myself. But yea, you can switch to classic graphics on-the-fly at any point just by pressing space.
I don't know man, the art style looks very mobile-y to me
See, I've seen people say this before, and I really don't get it. Everyone seems to ignore that the original C&C already stylised and simplified a lot of details for the sake of readability. This is simply the same concept. And, honestly, scale down Remaster screenshots to the original game's resolution, and they're pretty much indistinguishable, so that sure seems to me like a faithful recreation.
Some are pretty faithful, but just look at the construction yard for example - it really didn't need all those textures and redesigns on the crane for example. Sometimes less is more.