Command & Conquer:Red Alert - Westwood Studios A few hints and tips by James Judge In the following article I'll go through all of the units and buildings available to both the Soviets and Allies in this brilliant game and suggest a few tactics for the newer RA player to get to grips with. The tactics have been developed from playing multi-player games with two other players, so I'll be covering the units that aren't accessible to the single player and, therefore, this file is best used when playing multiplayer or skirmish maps. I've divided the file into Ally and Soviet sections and each section into a further two sections - Buildings and Units ALLIES - BUILDINGS CONSTRUCTION YARD Your first and most important building that allows you to create further buildings for your base. It is constructed from an MCV and is, really, the centre of your base. Given that it has light armour you should protect it as best you can - place it in the centre of your base so enemy units have difficulty reaching it, make sure that it has air cover surrounding it and that there are a couple of units and/or a turret/Tesla coil nearby to pick off the odd nuisance. As soon as you can you should look to building another Construction Yard because if your primary one is wiped out early on in the game you will be left with very little to continue your battle, and no means of adding to it. Strangely enough, though, this building has the greatest resistance to nuclear bombs out of all the available structures. Rarely will a nuke take the building into the yellow health zone, and even two in a row won't destroy the damn thing. They'll just make the surrounding landscape look dirty. Oh yeah, the more Construction Yards you have, the quicker buildings will be built. POWER PLANT These are the workhorse buildings of your fledgeling base. Without power none of your defences will work and construction of other buildings and units will progress slowly. It's therefore important to make sure that you have more than enough power plants to go around as these are quite often the first target for a ground-based assault. Try to keep at least two or three plants more than you really need and as soon as possible upgrade to Advanced Power Plants. ADVANCED POWER PLANTS Are the big brothers to power plants. As soon as possible build these in preference to the small structures. However, if you do ever run out of power, building a standard power plant is quicker than an advanced one and will, therefore, get your defences back on line quicker. The trouble with these are that they have little armour, so don't group them together in your base. A nuclear strike followed by a few well placed rockets from V2s will have your base's defences crippled with no juice what so ever. By spreading them around the base enemy units will have to work to get to them and one nuke won't be able to damage (or destroy) three of four buildings at once. ORE REFINERY The second workhorse of your base, and one of the most important. As soon as you can get one up and running. You'll get an Ore Harvester in with the bargain and it will start getting you money ASAP. The refinery needs to be on the edge of your base, as near to a supply of ore as possible. You must give it room so that, when you've got three or more harvesters, the harvesters don't get jammed and just sit around doing nothing at all (as continually happens to me). When playing a skirmish mission the computer AI seems to like building about five of these buildings. The reason for this isn't apparent to me as I find that one seems to suffice for the ordinary multi-player game. However, if there is a lot of ore to be had and you end up with six or more harvesters then building a secondary refinery is good as (a) your first may have been swallowed by the outer edges of your base, (b) it lets two harvesters unload ore at once and (c) if one is destroyed you've still got another. Defend the buildings religiously as although they are easy to replace, when one is destroyed you can lose up to 2000 credits in one foul swoop, which isn't clever. The armour of the building is light so don't expect it to stand up very long against a large attack or a small one coupled with a nuke... ORE SILO These small and easily built structures become necessary the more ore you collect. Each is able to store 1500 credits and you'll soon find the need to build three or four through a long game. As with the Power Plants, don't group these together as they are easily destroyed and losing three lots of 1500 credits is plain lunacy when it could have been avoided. TENT BARRACKS The first building that can make you some offensive units, namely infantry. Not much can be said except that these aren't needed to win the game - rarely do I build a barracks and if I do it's to unlock the ability to create Turrets and Pillboxes. The more barracks you have the quicker units are trained, but they are easily destroyed. WAR FACTORY The building that will make the majority of your army as it builds all ground based units except infantry. Therefore it is necessary to build one as soon as possible and to defend it rigorously. As with Barracks, the more there are of this structure the quicker units will be built and I recommend building two of these at the early stages of the game to create a healthy vehicle force that can be put into use either offensively or defensively. Not terribly draining on power and cheap later on in the game, if you are left with nothing else to build, an extra Factory wouldn't go amiss. However, if power or credits are at a premium these can be some of the first buildings to be sold off if the need arises - just make sure you have one left building your army. NAVAL YARD If the map that you're playing on has large sections of water, or waterways that allow access to the majority of the map, then as an Ally you'd be a fool not to build a Naval Yard which builds and repairs Naval units. The yard needs to be fully in the water when constructed and must be defended by a mixtures of ground and sea units once the enemy catches onto the fact that you're trying to wipe them off the map from water. Again, the more Yards you have the quicker the units will be built, however, unless you are facing other Allies in your battle the need for more rarely arises as waterbased supremacy is guaranteed if you have but a small, well constructed naval force. HELIPAD The Allies only access to the pleasures of airborne destruction. A helipad builds and reloads helicopters for you and every time you build one a Long Bow helicopter is thrown into the bargain. Hooray! Any mission against a halfway competent adversary will facilitate the need to have air units, so building a few of these is the way to go at about midway through the game. You only need one Helipad to build numerous helicopters, however, only one helicopter can be reloaded at once and the process is not automated. You need to select a chopper, tell it to move onto the helipad and repeat for all your copters. This means a lot of work and long reloading sessions for a large airforce. However, this can be cut down with the building of multiple 'Pads and allows you to regularly harass the enemy with bombardments from above. Easily destroyed though, so don't group them and defend them well if air warfare is your cup of tea. PILLBOX The bottom-end of defensive buildings. The Pillbox is only really useful against enemy infantry, and even then they operate better when grouped in numbers - a string of three or four spells certain death to even a large force of enemy infantry. However, their armour isn't all that great and if there are a couple of tanks attacking them they won't stand a chance. Start building Camouflaged Pillboxes as soon as possible. CAMOUFLAGED PILLBOX Is better armoured than the Pillbox and is difficult to spot for enemy tanks, so it is ideal for negating the threat of enemy infantry. When dotted in with Turrets Camouflaged Pillboxes prove their worth. Again, use in multiples for the best effect and try to use the terrain on the map to gain a good advantage. If there are cliffs creating a valley leading to your base then three of these put at the end in a line (with the middle Pillbox's area of fire overlapping its neighbours quite a way so that two Pillboxes can target the same unit - leading to its instant demise) will prove quite a good stopping force for enemy infantry and even give lightly armoured vehicles a run for their money. Luckily Pillboxes don't suck up much power, so you can be still running when the lights go out in other parts of your base. TURRETS Are wonderful defence devices when used in large groups, making bases virtually impenetrable by ground forces. Like Pillboxes they should be used in large numbers with their firing radius overlapping one another so that one enemy units is targeted by at least two turrets - the quicker you can destroy an enemy unit the less damage that particular unit will inflict on your Turrets, and two guns are better than one. Also, like Pillboxes, they don't use a lot of power and so don't get turned off as quick. They can severely damage enemy units, especially if the opposition are funnelled into their killing grounds through the use of natural terrain or walls. AA GUNS A Turret for the sky, these heavily armoured structures are a must if your enemy has taken to the sky. They are cheap, but depend on quite a bit of power, so make sure that you have plenty of surplus energy around so they don't go off-line. A small line of these at the outer edge of your base should be able to pick off small aerial nuisances and a few dotted around your base (with maybe two or three clumped by your more important bases) will stop all but the largest of aerial bombardments. The Guns themselves will be the target of both ground and aerial attacks, so make sure that there are Turrets or ground troops around and that the Guns' fire radius overlap wherever possible. The Guns pack a very heavy punch, so Migs won't take much in the way of a beating and even the larger transport planes used for dropping Paratroopers will be destroyed if your coverage is good enough. SERVICE DEPOT This structure lets you do three important things. The first is build new MCVs to create more Construction Yards. Although they are expensive - it's well worth it. Secondly it allows you to build and reload Mine Layers. Finally it allows you to repair vehicles and air units. This is invaluable as repairing a unit is only a fraction of the cost of building one, so it makes far more sense economically to continually repair your units than just let them provide easy kills for your enemy. Having only one seems to be sensible, but if your playing style means that you suffer a lot of damage, but few actual casualties, then a secondary Depot may be useful as it'll provide a higher turnaround for repairing units. This structure is very useful and important, so should be built ASAP once you have gotten your primary defences installed and an army being created. RADAR DOME Lightly armoured but highly useful, this structure provides an aerial view of all of the discovered terrain and is invaluable for highlighting where ore is and, more importantly, where the enemy is attacking from next. Unfortunately it can't see through the fog of war, so is only really useful (if the option has been selected) if you're an Ally with satellite capabilities. Not a massive loss if destroyed, but an inconvenience. TECHNOLOGY CENTRE Another of the obligatory structures to build as it allows you to construct the more advanced units and buildings such as Cruiser and Gap Generator. Also, as the Allies, you will receive (after a certain time) a GPS satellite after constructing this building. Quite a drain on energy and needs to be well defended if you want to keep building the advanced units. Should be built ASAP. GAP GENERATOR One of the truly innovative Ally structures that'll render useless all but one of the enemy's methods of infiltration. By planting a Gap Generator in the centre of your base the Fog Of War permanently covers your base, meaning that accurate aerial and nuclear assaults become extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible which is VERY desirable. Only available after the building of a Tech Centre it is cheap and not too power hungry. Don't plant one right beside your Command Centre or other buildings of importance as a cheap trick (on the enemy's behalf) is to drop a nuke at the centre of the shroud in the hope of destroying the Generator and any surrounding buildings. One way of avoiding this is covering your base with multiple Generators (two to start with, four for really large bases) meaning that you'll have a good cushion of shroud to work with and the enemy will find it harder to target anything - even by chance. Once you have one of these up and running, though, keep an eye out for enemy spies as this is the only way to continually defeat a Generator without actually destroying it or its power supply. Only available in multi-player games. CHRONOSPHERE This is the one Allied unit that I just can't quite figure out the use of. It takes a while to build, is expensive, drains power and the chronoshift that it gives you takes forever to recharge - slightly longer than a nuke. The way to use it is to click on the Chronoshift icon on the construction bar, then on the unit you want to transport and finally the destination of the Chronoshift. You can only transport vehicles and even then one at a time - don't think about filling an APC with Tanyas as the Tanyas disappear and electricity starts spouting out of the Chronosphere severely damaging your base. Oh yes, that's a point - make sure it is a fair way away from any vital buildings as when it does backfire it is spectacular and damaging. Given all of that, it is the ideal way to deal with a singular marauder some way away from any of your units and if your opponent is really badly defended then throwing a strong unit into the middle of his base will give him something to think about, at least. Don't plan for the unit to hang around its destination for long though - it'll snap back to its original location after a few minutes. A building that's only useful if you want to have a bit of fun really. There may be a valid use for it, but I can't figure it out... SANDBAG BARRIER Cheap, takes no power. You know I was talking about funnelling units into the killing field of Pillboxes? Well, for infantry this is perfect - they can't pass through it or destroy it. Tanks and other vehicles, however, can. So, for more heavier forms of persuasion use Concrete Barriers. CONCRETE BARRIERS Need to guide a unit of enemy tanks to a glut of turrets? Well, this is the way to do it. Enough said, really. FAKE STRUCTURES Cheap, requiring very little power, these buildings are perfect for subterfuge tactics. All of the major buildings have a cheap fake and never be scared of liberally scattering them around. Not only does it make your opponent think you're doing do much better, the chances of a real structure being damaged is reduced significantly. One particularly good battle I remember had me, in the later stages of the game, having a really large base. I had three real Construction Yards (just in case) and a similar number of War Factories. I also had four fake Construction Yards and a couple of fake War Factories, Radars etc. My opponent then decided to attack me and took great pleasure in sending strike after strike of Migs against me, coupled with a large ground assault and a nuke that he had stored up. He did a lot of damage, no doubt, but all of his ground units were wiped out after coming against my combined defences and ground troops. Or so he thought. In actual fact, he destroyed the majority of my fake buildings, only slightly damaging my real ones. How I laughed. I then exterminated the git. - o -