BellaOnline Forums Computers Computer - Console Gaming Help Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun Tips

Hello, I am a fan of Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun. I play on the web and I also play the regular game. It is a great game. If you have any cheats, hints, etc., please post them here. I'll begin with my Battle Strategies:
Infiltration: Once you have proper cash [you must be GDI for this], and know where an enemy base is, send a Carry-All with an MCV and an escort of good fighters near the enemy base, and build a small base by their base, with component towers and vulcan cannons or RPG's, and get the escort that your MCV had, and kill their construction yard, then the war factory, then the refinery, ect. [Note: if the enemy base is cloaked, make a mobile censer array to see the stealth].
Quicker Money: Right after deploying your MCV, build 2-4 power plants, then 2 refineries. This way, you'll make cash much quicker, and have more excess for Titans [If you've got a GDI War Factory], and various tanks [If you've got a Nod war factory].
Chaos Tactics: Make a large army of infantry early in the game, spread them out near an enemy base, and attack something in the middle of the base. The other person/AI won't know what to guard, and will spread out, letting you get to the construction yard more easily. Once near the MCV, destroy it, then the War Factory, then whatever you want.
Back-Stabbing: You must be in an at least 3-player game to use this effectively. you ally with the closest player to you, and build a great army. Next, you ask if you can help guard your ally's base with your great army. Once they are there, you tell someone else to ally with you and attack your ally with a light attack. Once your back-stabber ally leaves, ask if you can guard your original ally's MCV. Then you tell your back-stabber ally to attack big. Once the attack is on, un-ally your original ally, and destroy his/her bases necessities, like Refineries and War-Factories.
Disk-Rampage: [GDI Barracks and War Factory required] Make a huge group of Disk Throwers and head it with a few Titans or Wolverines. Then send the out as a Battle-Group and kill any enemies in sight
Carry-all Distraction: [GDI MCV required] First, you prepare at least 2 Disrupters and at least 3 Carry-alls. [Note: you always need 1 more carryall than you have disrupters, to deflect SAM fire]. Send the empty Carryall first, then your loaded ones a second or 2 later. In theory, the SAMs will go for the empty Carry-all first, and by the tiime it crashes, the others are on the ground shooting.
Intimidation: Build any kind of APC and send it to the enemy base. It should be empty or just have a light infantry. after sending it, send 1 or 2 full ones, with good soldiers or engineers. Capture/destroy the bases necessities and take surviving APC's back to the base. [Note: You might want to send more than one empty APC, to make the enemy think you're just wasting money. As you send the APC's with unit's in them, you also might want to send a few Orca Fighters or Harpies for other distraction].
Mini-Bases: [Nod MCV and Tech Center required] Make an MCV and move it near your base, but not too close. You need to start building a stealth generator. If your base is stealth, don't move your MCV from the stealth until your stealth generator is about done, then move the MCV pretty far from your original base and deploy it. Then build the stealth generator, and make a bases necessities, such as a Hand of Nod, a War Factory, a Refinery, a Tech Center, and a few Power Plants.
Death in a Minute: [this happens at the beginning of a game, and you must be Nod for this] Deploy your MCV at the beginning of the game. Make a few refineries [2 is fine, keep it under 20] and a Hand of Nod. Then make a War Factory and Radar [and maybe a Tech Center too], until you can make Sub-APCs. In the mean time, start making cyborgs and light infantry. Put the infantry in the APC(s) and send them to the middle or your base. The second you can send the APCs to the enemy base [when it's scouted], send them and watch the carnage!!!

Those are great tips! I used to be hooked on Tiberian Sun but I have to admit I haven't played it in a while ...

I've only recently played any command and conquer style game and it was Red Alert 2. I am assuming they have a pretty similar lay out. I have played a lot of StarCraft and there is a lot of thought that goes into what they call "build order" for StarCraft.

That is to say, in what order you should build the very most basic elements up, for the fastest start.

There doesn't seem to be much on this with Red Alert 2. I'm not really sure if even having more of the guys that go and collect the gold (or whatever) helps, or to what extent it helps. Is it better to have two of the buildings for storing the gold (or whatever) or is it better to spend that money on extra collector units? Or does it make no difference? Or is there little point in extra of either?

Can you tell the collectors where to go? They seem to just wander all over the place and get shot at. Is it more efficient to build a new base so that you can cut down on the length they travel from the gold (or whatever) back to their collection building?

Sorry that I can't remember the names of anything. Insert names like "refinery" or "chrono-miner" or whatever liberally.

These questions are critical to StarCraft where you start with almost zero resources. Maybe they aren't as super-critical to Command and Conquer style games but I'd still be interested in knowing. I often end up out of resources in Red Alert 2, and I'm not really clear how to identify what's holding me up.

Yes, you want to build your base somewhere defendable and also near the tiberium. Your collectors go to the closest tiberium they can find so you want to build your refinery near the field. You also can put defenses around the field. It's good to have lots of harvesters, to gather it up quickly, and also good to have multiple refineries, so the harvesters don't have to queue in line waiting to dump their load.

It's a different level than Starcraft that had actual little "workers" bringing a "worker load" back to the base. Starcraft is more like the little people in Age of Empires bringing baskets of berries in <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Well in StarCraft each load is 8 units and to get that 8 units the drone must move to the crystal/vespene gas. That's the same in C&C games.

Once there it might have to wait if another drone/collector is sitting on the crystal/gas. I don't know if that is the same in C&C. But I don't think it would make much difference. In StarCraft it makes a difference for the vespene gas because you typically only have one place for gas and six or seven or ten for crystal. The result is that more drones means more crystal until you have something like 18-30 of them, but once you have three drones on the gas, there's no pay-off to building more. Now in Red Alert 2 the gold seems spread out quite a bit so I would guess there is usually no bottle neck -- more like the crystal than the gas -- but after a while you've collected all the gold just lying around on the surface and only those little mine things which look like corkscrews are left. At that point are spare collectors just going to queue up?

In StarCraft after harvesting the gas/crystal (this takes so many seconds) the drone heads home. In Red Alert 2 apparently the chrono-miner teleports back, but the Soviet miner doesn't. That would be a killer advantage in StarCraft, but it doesn't seem to make much difference in Red Alert 2 for some reason. Perhaps the travelling time is less as a proportion of the entire round trip?

Finally the drone gets home and dumps its harvested load off. In StarCraft this is instant and as many drones as you like can deposit their load at once, but I think it takes a little while in Red Alert 2. This means in StarCraft there's no point in getting a second harvesting building unless it's nearer to the resources or you think someone is going to destroy your other building. In Red Alert 2 I've seen people suggest you build extra refineries to speed gathering so presumably the miners have to wait to unload and it takes an appreciabnle amount of time.

So if the collector has to queue up to unload in Red Alert 2 and queue up to load up in Starcraft the formula would still be the same. You'd optimally want enough collectors so that there is always one in the queue, just. In StarCraft this is 3 drones. ie the queuing part is about one third of the total round trip. Does the same hold for C&C games? Should I have about 3 miners per refinery? and then build more refineries if I want more resources beyond that? (Because the Allies chrono-miner teleports home I guess you'd only need perhaps 2 of them per refinery?)

Well so much for theory. I try doing this and the result is usually about 3/4 the way through the game I have zero resources and my collectors are bimbling around doing nothing for some reason.

I may be accidentally telling them to move somewhere with some troops and then after they arrive they don't do any collecting. Can you point them at a certain place? They seem to be uncontrollable.

Can you play Tiberian Sun with me?

King---
Sure, if you can play online. My screen-name on C&C: TS is "demoncat9" What's yours?

In the C&C series your harvesters shouldn't just hang out unless they ran out of ore. And where in StarCraft you can completely run out of something if you don't conserve well enough, usually in C&C there's a tiberium tree (or whatever the things were called) making more for you. But I don't know that I've ever run out in the regular games. It's really, in both cases, a case of building yourself up conservatively.

They obviously make the levels so they're winnable but a challenge. So if you're playing a level, if you've built up the right number of units and such you shouldn't run out of ore - or if you do you should already have everything you need to win the level. So if it's a certain level you're stuck on, we should be able to help you figure out what you're not quite building up right.

Sometimes I found a bunch that had become clogged up in some valley trying to get past other units going the other way. I can't think that explained it all though.

I can definitely see that happening - the AI in that game was reasonably good but not brilliant. I definitely had troops doing some pretty stupid pathfinding until I gave them a nudge.