Let me first start by telling you how astoundingly fun this is. Alright, moving on..
I’m going to post a number of articles on the beta as I play. This first one covers the balance of the nations you can play as.
One of the biggest changes from RA2 (aside from the inclusion of Japanese an exclusion of Yuri) is that the ore is no longer mined from fields, but from weird little auto-mining things. The refineries are then placed at the shortest distance possible, and you are forced to only have as many collectors as there are mines. This is by far the thing I hate most about RA3 - the rest of the game is pretty well made (albeit with a short techtree).
The Japanese are often perceived the most powerful. Their infantry are great, their navy is great, their air units are great, and their mechs and tanks are great. This wouldn’t even be bad, if the other teams weren’t weak in areas. They also build differently. The other two races have a radius around command posts of a sort (including their conyard) where they can build. The Japanese build little nano cores that can be moved wherever and unpacked into units. This lets them expand to a full economy in a few minutes, regardless of the fact that the refineries are more expensive by 500 (for a total of 2500 in price). The other teams must slowly lumber toward an economy, being able to capture only 1-2 ore areas right away (more later as they expand using special deployable buildzone units). This gives the Japanese a big economical advantage, but early on this is all funneled into their buildings, which must be individually upgraded to support building the more advanced units. This also makes production buildings a bigger target, as to build those advanced units it’d take a new building and several upgrades when one is destroyed.
The Soviet Union has some nice units, like it’s Sickles for tearing up infantry, it’s tesla-weaponed boats, etc., but it’s real power is in two areas. The USSR has V4 units, both boats and land-based, which launch large missiles at the enemy. This is the most effective anti-building weapon in the game (perhaps rivaled by Japanese laser battleships), as it keeps you out of range of any defensive structure. They also have the powerful Tesla trooper, which can be attained faster than most advanced units. These guys can tear through tanks and buildings like paper, provided you have enough of them - but watch out for vehicles trying to run them over! My favorite tactic for land-based battle is a large group of tesla troopers, some V4 launchers, and flak troopers to round it out with AA and a bit more AT punch. Simply moving this group near a base makes the base die. The other advantage of the Soviets is the way their upgrades work. When you build the requisite buildings for a unit, any production facility you make can build them. This means that you have less buildings to defend, but also less redundancy. In strategy, you must be careful to counter everything, have some anti-infantry sickles, a few AA trucks, etc., or else the strategy won’t work due to unit counters.
The Allies also cannot build away from their conyard, same as the Soviets, until making deployable units that make new build zone. This slows the economical expansion, as it does for the Soviets. This team’s tech tree is based on conyard upgrades. There are two levels of upgrades that only have to happen on your conyard or a deployable build zone unit (which in this nation is also the gatherer unit). The Allied forces have the best cheap defense unit you can get - rocket buggies. A group of these can tear through anything, even the tough armor of the Kirov bomber. They shoot air and ground, and do wonders against armor and aircraft. Their main weakness is infantry (anti-armor of course), but these can be run over, and with enough buggies (as holds true with any unit), even a unit that is strong against them doesn’t stand a chance. The Allies have a good bomber array. They have small bombers that deliver two bombs, and if you have 4 or so of them (the load of one airfield) you can take out most small buildings. There is a bomber further in the techtree, called the Century bomber, as well. These monsters can carry troops and also bomb in a line. These are much more effective, and much more resilient, than the smaller ones. This means that they get to their target more often and do more damage. They cost much more, and take longer to build, however. I also doubt that they’d have enough time to drop troops and bomb without dying. The allies are also very powerful in the early game, with the most powerful basic infantry. In addition to all of these units, probably one of the more popular ones is a huge naval unit that can simply roll onto land. These buggers decimate buildings, tanks, and most other things. They are extremely weak against air, and simple anti-armor infantry, however. These are pictured in the below screenshot on land (and the above one as boats).
If anyone would like to know anything specific, or see screenshots (taken by me for you) of the game, perhaps specific things in it, let me know by commenting! Your comments will guide the next RA3 article I do, so be clear if you want to see something specific!
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