Charles

I agree. That being said, whatever rules (rush or not) , it will still be true that the longer a game goes, the less Ordos are likely to win

This "Short Game" option is really a wonderful improvement !! It's not only about having to find harvesters but also the fact that some players just troll at the end with their remaining infantry. it's even worse with Ordos players who kept some stealth raiders. Sometimes, eliminated players themselves dont even know where are their remaining units. "Short game" option also raises the importance of your last base - I really like that !

"Deviators can achieve little, their attack had an impact maybe 25% of time :-/" Well experience certainly made me change my mind! Actually, deviators are Ordos' best option if the game can't be won quickly. In the past I never built many of them, thinking they were to be used as some diversion/support for a tank force. So yeah, if you have only a few devs, they can all miss their shot and make you regret having invested in them. However, a group of like 20 deviators can be hard to tackle, especially if they are supported by 5-10 siege tanks. 20 deviators will never ALL miss ! Ordos are still the 3rd best House overall, but they are not useless. In fact, it can be argued that in 1vs1 situations, all other things being equal, Ordos have upper hand against Harkonnen.

Thank you for the explanations :) Also hats off for having made airstrike working again !

What do you mean by "keep the online games more balanced"? Do high res give advantage?

I would certainly not oppose this. In my opinion the unaccuracy of death hand is a flaw in this game. It's weird that you can invest some money, power, and (perhaps more importantly) time to build a palace (which is supposed to be your ultimate weapon) , but all this can have zero effect on the game if you are unlucky. It can even help your opponent if you get frustrated by these repetitive Death hand failures. So currently, I think this accuracy issue makes the Death Hand the weakest of the 3 Palace weapons (behind Fremen and Saboteurs in this order). Having become myself an Harkonnen user since 6 months, I never build Palace for 2 reasons: unaccuracy is definitely 1, the other is that I like Sardaukars and I like to play with the 600x800 resolution. When my IX and High Tech are built, I can produce sardaukars, quads and (whatever unit from the Heavy factory) without ever having to move up or down the scrollbar. This is no longer possible if I have Palace. Therefore, I would be curious to try Feda's innovation but it remains to be seen if Harkonnen players would all use it. In this regard, I don't think it would be a big change in the balance between the 3 Houses.

Adriano : headphones would just make me look more isolated from the "real world" so... bad idea :) Thanks for helping me find solutions though ! Athanasios : unfortunately we talk here about a daughter 4 months old , not a son 5 years old... she's still a little young to play this. Congrats for getting through this, I hope to duplicate you at some time :)

Hi there, It was already complicated to play Dune because of this unpredictable daughter of mine :) But matters are worse now: my wife is literally angry at this game :P I can't really explain why. At this point, I understand it as a mix between "hearing this game makes me crazy" (because of the sounds, repetitive explosions, repetitive calls such as Unit ready ! Unit lost ! Yes Sir ! Unit ready ! At your command ! Yes Sir ! Unit ready! (...) ) and some jealousy as "I would very like to have such an addictive and passionate hobby myself" . So, until she calms down somewhat, I'm gonna take a break. This changes nothing to the fact that it's an amazing game and you guys did a wonderful job to make it available on CNCnet. I guess I'll return at some point. Am I the only one that have family issues with Dune 2K ? :) Regards, Charles

:P I disagree with your statement regarding top players that do the exact same thing. They don't. Actually I have seen lots of games decided by a strong sneak attack catching off-guard a player that was too much focussed on building an army at just one spot. Efficient sneak attacks don't need a lot of tanks, just 5 quads can hurt a lot if well microed and if surprise is achieved. In that regard, it doesn't really matter how wide entrances are. I think your opportunities are better to attack (and/or to sneak) if your opponent is at bottom right.

Hello Arakis, Am I the only one to have noticed some imbalance on the famous map Habbanya Erg ? Every starting spot has 2 entrances except the bottom-right one which has 3 (left, top and right) . (top-middle starting spot has only 1 entrace but it is a large one) In a classic tag-team match top vs bottom, it's not an issue if the player at bottom-right has an ally starting at the middle-right position because that will make the right entrance almost impossible to reach for the other team (those starting at "top"). However in a 1vs1, if you begin at bottom-right, it's very probable your opponent is at top-left: he can basically threaten your base from 3 ways while you can only threaten his from 2. Do you think it does matter?

IMO prices are ok like that for combat tanks, should be the same for each race. Your proposition suggests that speed has absolutely no importance, so that price should only adjust to pure power. I think this is up to each player. Some build one super army/super wall that will slowly push and crush opposition, others like to rely on speed to make efficient sneak attacks. If Hark tank costs more than others, I think no one will try to play Harkonnen anymore. Yes they have more armor but this is already balanced by the fact that they are slower and this is important in multiplayer. (not so in singleplayer though) Missile tanks have the best range of Arrakis so they are of capital importance. They can pin anything even sonics. I like the fact that they have poor armor because it makes other tanks still valuable. Siege are also important but to a lesser degree. You only need a few in an army to prevent being caught off-guard by a mass of troopers. For Atréïdes, siege tanks are close to irrevelant because of the availability of sonics, but I do order some from starport as you can't order sonics. You are right about rifle infantry. This is especially true in standard 8-min no-rush games because everybody has time to upgrade heavy factory, which gives access to siege tanks and make light infantry (and also trike/raider) quite obsolete. However, when playing no-rules on a small map, it can be good to have some infantry and trikes (easier to get than siege tanks) if you fear a quick and massive tropper rush.

In my opinion noobs are able to learn the rules and become regulars if given appropriate chance. Look at Cherif, Juan, Pnumb, etc. There seems to an interesting number of new players. That doesn't mean they become very good but the important thing is they can play and have fun.

Hi guys, Yesterday I was very surprised to learn that in a standard 8-min no-rush game, an Ordos player is allowed to place his stealth raider right inside an ennemy's refinnery so that harvesters can no longer deliver spice. With all due respects, I would appreciate an explanation about that. I'll try to convince you why it should not be allowed. First of all, why do the 8-min rule exists? Please tell me if I'm wrong, but I came to understand it's fun when each player has the opportunity to develop a strong economy at the beginning of a game. During the 8-min period, we can't attack base or harvesters because it's good to focus on refs and 3 heavy factories so that we develop our economy fast. Here I'm really puzzled at how do we prohibit attacking harvesters, but allow a stealth raider to stop just inside an opponent's refinery. In my opinion, positionning a stealth raider at that precise spot is just as harmful to the opponent's economy as directly attacking his harversters. Maybe even more, because when "Harversters [are] under attack", there is a warning. There is no warning against a stealth raider denying you to use a refinery. How can you defend against this "strategy" in an 8-min no-rush game? One single infantry can't hold a raider so I suppose you must build quickly a barrack in order to position at least 4 infantry (or troopers) near each of your refineries. Or else, you keep your starting units inside your base to deal with stealth raiders and don't scout the map. One way or the other, don't you think it gives the Ordos player a tremendous advantage? Consider also the fact that while we can scout everywhere, we can't stop units inside an ennemy's base in the no-rush period. Because besides automatically firing at units in range (I acknowledge stealth raiders don't ) , it's also harmful because you can't place your new buildings wherever you want. How many times have you played and someone says "Yo blue, move this trike, tnx." "Yo yellow, move units outside of base." etc. So the other question is this: why do we allow a stealth raider to stop inside an opponent's base during the no-rush periode while no other units can? You know, I don't care that much about the no-rush rule. Actually we could try to play no rules on Erg 3 , we could see some creative strategies and build orders. But let's be coherent about what is a "rush". A stealth raider stoping inside a refinery makes this refinery unworkable, in fact if the other player doesn't realize this instantly, it can doom his/her economy. It's great harrasment so I'm curious to know how you don't consider this a "rush" . Best regards and have a good one! :-)

With respect to Ordos, they clearly are the worst race. I will play with them sometimes for fun and to make some tests. True, they can achieve map control if you exploit well their speed. But they are so week and it's frustrating to rely only on starport to get missile tanks. In a game against Juan, I took Ordos and he had Atréïdes. I achived total map control. He just camped and set up strong defensive lines near the 2 entrances to his (only) base. I destroyed every harvester but the game still last something like 1hour ! You can imagine the kills, he had almost twice than me since only me attacked... with Ordos. What I learned from this game : Ordos can achieve map control, but map control is not sufficient to compel a camper to surrender and they are always out-reached. Deviators can achieve little, their attack had an impact maybe 25% of time :-/

Hi there, Players that were on CNCnet during Christmas vacation (Feda, Fildakor, Verbusage, Kipper, Dato, Wyq, Le, Ayman, Blazin, etc.) will recognize me. I like Dune2K since a long time but I just began play multiplayer. Pretty addictive... I will not be able to play as much now that the vacation is over but I hope to be able to practice with you sometimes on week-ends. So first of all, thank you for making this game available. I don't know who best deserves these compliments but I suppose the list includes FunkyFrash, GruntLord and Feda. You made my Christmas vacation one notch more enjoyable :D it's a great game and I hope I can improve, at least at the point where I'm good teammate and not just a liability :D Now over the strategy thing. I lost 1vs1 (on the obvious Habbanya Erg 3 map) in very different circumstances. Verbusage builds like 88 combat tanks and a great number of quads by the 8-min mark, he does 1 big push and I just have not enough stuff to stop him. On the other hand, Kipper builds a lot of tanks too but they come from at least 3 different ways. While I stop or destroy 1 or 2 groups, 3 others are already coming destroying my base and it just never stops. In this game, I could set a second base but that just made more paths available for Kipper to keep me off-balance. Obviously if a player is better than another, I suppose he's gonna win whatever the strategies. But all things being equal, what is your favorite one? Do you prefer 1 big push or several small ones? BTW Happy new year Dune fans ! Charles